Slay Ride for a Lady

by Harry Whittington

  I gave her the hundred dollars. “And so our friendship passes,” she said with a smile. “May good come to you. Aloha.”

  “See you,” I said.

  I looked at my watch as I walked back the way I had come. I kept watching for a taxi but there was none. I knew this had to be timed just right. By now the police would have found the little shadow knocked out in the alley. The call would be on.

  But I knew better than to run. I kept walking and kept looking for a taxi. It was almost three-thirty when I got to the big drug store on Hotel. I went in and sat at a counter.

  I was suddenly hungrier than I’d ever been before. But I checked my watch and knew I didn’t have time to eat. I ordered a coke and a sandwich. I held the baby against my hip. The waitresses cooed at her and talked to her. The baby didn’t even whimper.

  At exactly ten minutes of four, I went out and caught a taxi.

  There was music and singing and shouting as I ran up the ramp at the Matson company pier. There were leis and native bands. I could hear the throb of the ship’s engines as I ran.

  I was almost up the ramp when I realized someone was running behind me.

  I hurled a quick look over my shoulder. And he was upon me. He was a tall, thin man, with a long head and gray hair. His nose was sharp, and his eyes dark. His tan skinned face was lined.

  “Sorry, Mr. Henderson,” he said. “You’ll have to go with me.”

  “Who are you?” I said.

  He smiled. “Haven’t you seen me before?”

  There was a warning blast from the ship. “I haven’t time for games,” I panted.

  “This is no game,” he said. “I’m from the Honolulu police. I’ve been following you since you left the police station this morning!”

  • • •

  “LISTEN,” I SAID. “I am on my way back to Tampa. I have business there. Nothing is going to stop me.”

  “I have already stopped you,” he said quietly.

  “Don’t be too sure of that,” I said.

  “You have stayed free this long only because Lieutenant Guerrero wished to see what you would do. Also he wished to get his hands on this baby here in your arms. Did you really think he would put only one man to watching you?”

  The music was louder, the way it is over there just before a sailing. There was a feeling, a tension in the air of a ship’s departure. There were shouts and cries from the Matson pier to the huge white ship tied along side it. I knew in only a moment the gangplank, with its short canvas sides and big M, would be removed. The throb of the ship’s engines went through the whole building.

  “Even if you had gotten away on this ship,” the detective reminded me, “you would only have been returned from San Francisco as a material witness in the murder of this woman.”

  I looked at him straight in the eye. His gaze wavered under mine. “Still,” I said. “It is a chance I mean to take.”

  He smiled enigmatically at me and reaching in his coat pocket took out a small police whistle. He put it to his mouth and blew shrilly upon it.

  As he blew, the baby began to scream and tremble, terribly frightened.

  There was the last blast from the ship’s whistle. There was the song “Aloha” of which you get so damned tired there in the islands.

  I knew the gang plank was coming down. People were moving away down the ramp and as the thin detective shrilled again upon his whistle. I drove my suitcase hard against him, and his face turned green. The whistle fell from his paralyzed hand, and as he doubled forward toward me, I wheeled about and ran toward the ship.

  I ran up the short gang-plank as fast I could. There must have been, at that last moment, at least twenty people who decided to leave the ship. These visitors, all singing and laughing like people in some foolish musical comedy, streamed around me. I pushed through them roughly, with the baby crying and the people laughing.

  These fools didn’t seem to mind the way I snarled at them. They only laughed at me, reached at the baby, and slapped me on the back. One woman tossed a lei over my head, and as my hands were full, I came aboard the Hilotania with baby, baby bag, suitcase in my arms and a bright wreath of flowers about my shoulders.

  Somehow the wreath seemed to me one of those “Rest in Peace” things I had seen in Ybor City funerals. I wanted to pull it away, but I could not.

  As I stepped on deck, two stewards stopped me. They wanted my tickets. I put the suitcase down and then a woman reached for the baby. I let her take Patsy while I showed my tickets to the steward.

  “Everything seems to be in order, Mr. Henderson,” said the steward. “Except your wife, she is not with you?”

  “She’s not going,” I said.

  “Very good sir. If you will mail her ticket to the San Francisco offices, I’m sure the company will refund the price of her ticket.”

  “All right,” I said. “Which way to my stateroom.”

  “We’ll have a boy show you.”

  I turned for the baby. But she and the woman were gone. In a rage, I started forward. There was a knot of maybe ten women, of all sizes and ages, most of them dressed in white, still with leis about their shoulders.

  In the center of them was this blonde woman who had taken the baby from my arms.

  I pushed my way in among them. The baby was whimpering.

  “Give me my baby.” I said.

  The blonde only laughed at me, and turned half away, and the rest of them only laughed and went on cooing and making faces at Patsy. Patsy’s whimper changed to a scream.

  I grabbed the woman’s shoulder in my right hand.

  I know my fingers hurt her. I saw her face go very white as I turned her back to me.

  But she went on smiling, as though it were important to keep these women about her from knowing how badly I was hurting her.

  “Now give me the baby,” I said.

  She looked up at me. Tears glinted in the corners of her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “She is such a beautiful child. We only wanted to look at her.”

  I let her go and took Patsy in my arms. The baby stopped crying at once. All the women laughed and chattered about this. The blonde was still looking at me.

  “All right,” I said to the blonde. “It was only that you were frightening her. She does not like people.”

  “She takes after her father,” the blonde said.

  “Perhaps,” I answered.

  I pushed back through the crowd of women. My eyes for a moment met those of the tallest of them. Her nose was large, and her mouth twisted a little with an insolent smile. “A real nice gentleman,” she said straight at me.

  I don’t think she could have said four swear words as insultingly. I only stared at her.

  “Go to hell,” I said very softly.

  She heard me. “Aloha,” she said without smiling.

  The decks were still crowded. I followed a wiry brown Hawaiian in a natty steward’s uniform through a companionway, down a wide metal ladder to a lower deck. We went along it, stateroom doors were open. We passed the office of the Ship’s doctor, and turned along a second corridor.

  He pushed open the door of number 18-B.

  “Most everyone will be on deck, sir,” he said. “You’ll want to watch the Aloha tower, you can see Waikiki and Diamond Head as we leave the Island.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I handed him a dollar. “Would you bring some warm milk for the baby?”

  “Yes sir. The dining room is aft. All corridors are clearly marked with directions fore and aft. Dinner is announced with chimes. A doctor is just along the corridor. You may call him at any hour if you need him.”

  “All right,” I said.

  The boy bowed and closed the door after him as he left.

  I put the baby on the bed and changed her pants. I knew one thing, she was going to need a lot of attention. Just changing those pants was no small matter. I felt damned inadequate as I stood there looking down at her.

  She laughed and put out her han
d to me.

  Funny, I thought, the way things happen. The only kid I’d ever had anything to do with was my brother’s boy. I had never married because I’d begun young in a rotten business and I’d soured on everything. I always said I’d marry if I found a woman I could trust, and I always managed to find something about them I couldn’t trust.

  I’d had plenty of dames, though. Too many of them. Sometimes I was with one of them when I should have been working, because in thirteen years I’d learned I wasn’t going anywhere in the Tampa police department. I hated my job. I hated the things I had to stomach, and the only way I could forget was with a bottle and a dame. And I never cared much for one without the other.

  And here I was in trouble up to here, and with a baby on my hands. I don’t think it was out of my mind more than a few minutes at a time that there was something I had to do for that baby. Some way I could make her safe, and get her back where she belonged at the same time. I worried about it. But I got nowhere near an answer.

  My trouble had just begun. If they didn’t move fast enough to get me off the ship, they’d have me returned from San Francisco.

  One thing I was sure of. Henry Nelson already knew that I had beaten the Honolulu rap and was headed home. It didn’t take a radio message long to get four thousand miles. And Henry Nelson would know that if I was headed home — without Connice — that a lot of things were clear to me that had never been clear before. He would know I was on my way to see him.

  I knew for sure there had been plenty of men who had started out to see Henry Nelson with vengeance like a cold and terrible thing in their hearts. Few ever reached him alive. None had ever gotten anything for his efforts except a cement kimono, a broken skull or a fast ride out of town.

  Nevertheless, I meant to get back to him. I don’t know what happened to me when I hunkered there in that apartment over the dead body of Connice Nelson. I don’t know. But it happened inside and out. I no longer had any thought except the obsession to square things with Henry Nelson, for Connice and for myself.

  Nelson and his lawyer, Phillips Clark, would see that as soon as they heard that I was on my way. In my mind, as I stood there over Connice’s baby, Patsy, I could almost see them as they got the wireless message.

  “So now he’s coming back?” It was as though I could hear Nelson’s voice. It was the sort of voice you’d expect a big man to have. College educated, accustomed to power and money, all shot through with arrogance, and bitterness that came to him, I suppose, along with the loss of his left arm.

  I heard a lot of versions about where Nelson lost that arm. But the nearest truth was that about twenty years ago, a gang of hoodlums got fed up with Henry Nelson’s crooked, underhanded betrayals. He was dragged from his law office one night by unidentified men who cut off his left arm. There were other stories about a further operation, but mostly you heard he was rescued in time. None of the hoodlums was ever caught by the police. But in twenty years Nelson got plenty of revenge. The loss of that arm made him more dangerous. Now, he was not quite whole. He was not quite like the men around him. He resented it if anyone handed him anything, or seemed to notice he had lost an arm. And yet because of it, he took a thousand advantages. And more, Nelson wasn’t whole, so he didn’t mind watching, with his bitter face twisted into a smile while a whole man was dismembered.

  “It compensates,” Nelson had once said when I was near. “It improves a man’s memory to lose an arm or a leg, or a testicle. Wouldn’t you say that’s right, Buster?”

  Buster Eddington would be lounging, with his crew-cut head back. “I’m firmly of the opinion it will immeasurably improve this man’s faculty of retaining and recalling.”

  And what would Nelson do when he heard that I was on my way back to Tampa?

  “We can stop him,” Phillips Clark would confidently advise.

  Nelson would toss the message to his desk then. “All right,” he would say, dismissing the matter, “stop him.”

  No, I thought bitterly, Nelson wouldn’t give his personal attention to the matter of stopping a punk — an ex-sergeant of police detectives. Nelson was a big man. He was worth millions and his crowd was the sport coat and twelve dollar scotch crowd. His men were elected Mayor, Councilmen. They named Airports and Bridges and Housing Projects after them. There was plenty of evil, and plenty of rottenness in the political machine that Henry Nelson controlled, but it was hidden, so that no matter what happened on the lower levels of the rackets, the fixed elections, the rackets, the white slavery, the bribes, and the gambling levels, none of the stink ever worked up as high as Henry Nelson.

  As I stood there, with Patsy’s fist curled around my index finger, I thought of the way I’d like to kill Henry Nelson. The City of Tampa could give me a medal and then send me up to Raiford to burn. But first I knew I had to get to him. And to do that, I was going to need help. I smiled bitterly. God’s help. And some other, more earthy, and more tangible. And then I thought of Big Mike Rafferty.

  Between the political machines of Big Mike Rafferty and Henry Nelson there wasn’t a lot for the defrauded people of Tampa to choose. Nelson went in for white tie and tails, and Big Mike went in for fish fries, and back slapping. Underneath they were almost identical, although powerfully opposed. Big Mike’s men were rougher, but in recent elections, Big Mike had been able to stuff more ballot boxes. Henry Nelson still owned City Hall body and soul, but he had lost a great deal of the town to Rafferty.

  I knew if anyone could help me get back to Tampa alive, it was Big Mike Rafferty. And if Big Mike believed I was going to somehow get to Henry Nelson, he would help me.

  In my excitement, I pulled my finger roughly from the fingers of Patsy and she began to wail. I laughed at her, and shoved my finger back at her.

  As she stopped wailing, there was a respectful knock at the door.

  “All right,” I said. “Come in.”

  The door opened and the steward entered. He was carrying two baby bottles on a tray. He was no longer smiling.

  “Milk for the baby, sir,” he said. “And with his compliments, the Captain would like to see you now, sir. In his quarters.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I WENT UP forward to see the Captain.

  There was a small, hand-lettered sign on the door to his quarters, Captain Charles M. Spoor.

  The Captain was behind his unlittered desk when I came in. He stood up and nodded.

  “I’m Dan Henderson, Captain Spoor,” I said.

  He looked at the baby. He tried to smile. But for him this was a difficult thing. Captain Spoor was a poker-rigid man, both in body and face. His lips were thin and it was not easy for them to smile. His ears were close-set and he wore his gold-braided hat straight above them.

  I stood there holding Patsy. “Uh, that’s a lovely child. How old is she, Mr. Henderson?”

  How the hell did I know? “Almost a year,” I said. “She’s almost a year.”

  I could tell by the increase of the speed of the ship that we were out of Honolulu Harbor now. There were just enough waves so that the ship rolled a little.

  “She seems older,” the Captain said at last.

  I looked at her. She was sitting contentedly in the crook of my arm. “Maybe she’s old for her age,” I said.

  He didn’t smile. “Do you mean large?” he said.

  I waited. The walls, or bulkheads of the office were lined with ships under Spoor’s command in the past. Through a porthole I could see people passing on the starboard deck. Some ship’s regulation was being announced on the p.a. system. The system wasn’t piped into the Captain’s quarters. I suppose he already knew the regulations, and had no interest in the orders of the day, or the latest movie being shown aft at eight, or as soon as it was dark.

  “A ship’s Captain,” Spoor said, “has a great responsibility. The welfare of his ship, the safety of his passengers, and the protection of property entrusted to his ship. During the war I was given a Commander’s commission, and assigned to one
of this company’s liners which had been taken over as a hospital ship by the Navy soon after Pearl Harbor. We were in the midst of the danger zones, sailing at times without lights, in seas alive with enemies, and sewn with mines, theirs and our own. A man becomes aware of his responsibilities in such nights.”

  The baby wriggled impatiently. I suppose she was bored.

  I continued to wait.

  At last, the Captain re-read a wireless message on his desk.

  He looked up at me.

  “Your name is Dan Henderson?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you from Tampa?”

  I nodded.

  “You booked passage for your wife and child. Your wife is not with you?”

  It was too involved to explain to Captain Spoor. And suddenly, I knew it couldn’t be explained.

  As I stood there, I remembered Henry Nelson’s instructions.

  Nelson had said. “This is a misunderstanding between Connice and me, Henderson. You understand that I want to make it up. But I’ve got to get Connice back here to do that, eh? She may not want to come. I never thought she would leave me. But now that she has, I don’t know what to expect of her next. She may try all kind of subterfuge to escape you. I won’t feel safe until you’ve got her back here in Tampa. So I think the thing to do is to buy tickets with adjoining staterooms. Keep the door open between them. Travel as though you are man and wife. It will be simpler, you’ll avoid having to make a lot of explanations, and you can be with her constantly so you can watch her.”

  I hadn’t liked the idea of her being my prisoner. But I had thought that was all that it amounted to. Now I knew better. I knew now that Nelson had meant to have those tickets discovered in Honolulu. They would have condemned me to certain death as Connice’s murderer, for, that far from Tampa, those tickets would make us seem lovers.

  Now that I knew Nelson had sent me on that long chase only to find Connice for him so that she could be killed, a lot of things were clear to me.

  “Frankly,” Spoor said at last, “this message calls you Dan Henderson, alias Victore Kapiolani. Which is your real name?”

  “Henderson,” I said. “I lived in Honolulu as Kapiolani.”