Fire Knife Dancing (Jungle Beat)

by John Enright

  “He seems content,” Apelu said.

  “He doesn’t eat much,” Leilani said, “but, oh my, he must get his cranberry juice. There’s no telling what might happen if Ezra doesn’t get his cranberry juice. Would you look into that for me, Apelu? Make sure Ezra gets all the cranberry juice he wants. They wouldn’t have that at the jail, would they?”

  “No, ma’am, but I’ll make sure he has a steady supply.”

  “He can get quite…angry without it, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know, ma’am.”

  “Oh yes. A doctor once prescribed it for his mood swings. Ezra swears by it.”

  “And T-bone steaks?” Apelu asked, fishing.

  “Oh no, Ezra can’t have any of that. No red meat. Doctor’s orders. Don’t get him anything like that, Apelu.”

  The Fijian girl returned with their lunch—large papaya halves filled with a lightly curried seafood salad, thick chips of deep-fried breadfruit, more iced tea. They ate in silence. Leilani had a healthy appetite for a bona fide little old lady, and she ate like one of Apelu’s growing daughters—bowed over her food, intent on how each bite was assembled and delivered. Her eyes never left the skirmish field of her plate until she was done, pushed her plate away, dabbed her lips with a victory napkin, and took a polite sip of tea.

  “So, who is this Willie whose wonderful lunch I have just consumed?” Apelu asked, also pushing his plate away, at which signal the Fijian girl came and removed them. She leaned close to Apelu when she did so, brushing his shoulder with her breast, giving him her scent for just a moment.

  “Oh, just the son of an old friend, who was supposed to be in town and was supposed to come up and say hello. He’ll show up one of these days. Young people. But it is such a delight and a surprise to have you here, Apelu. Young Willie and I can have lunch another day.”

  “Willie Schneider?” Apelu asked, still fishing.

  “Why yes. Do you know him? Fine young man.”

  “No, I haven’t met him, but I’ve heard of him. Import/export business isn’t it? What he’s in?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t know, Apelu. Young people these days are involved with so many different things. Who knows? Not like the old days. My father was never anything but a fisherman, and all I’ve ever done was dance.”

  “Maybe people were better at what they did when they only did one thing,” Apelu said, watching the unchanging horizon.

  “Well, have you ever been anything but a policeman?” Leilani motioned something to the Fijian girl in the shadows of the house.

  “Okay, right. But I don’t think of myself as a cop the way you think of yourself as a dancer or the way your father thought of himself as a fisherman. It’s just an occupation I accidentally fell into. It’s a job, a nine-to-fiver, a paycheck I can’t afford to give up. And actually I once was a fire knife dancer when I was young, remember?”

  The Fijian girl reappeared with a tray bearing a one-liter bottle of Vailima and two frosted glasses. Apelu glanced at her once then looked away. She was much too attractive, and her soft smile seemed to both mock him and invite him at the same time. He stared at the horizon as she poured their beers and he didn’t turn back to the table until she had left.

  “So, do you still think of yourself as that, a fire knife dancer?” Leilani asked, taking a sip of lager.

  “No, that’s gone, like being a high school football player. Now I’m just a farmer who can’t support his family from farming, who has a day job for the government, which happens to be in the police department.”

  There was the sound of a car approaching, then a British racing green Land Rover drove slowly past them all the way to the garage. Apelu had never met Gigi and was rather looking forward to it, when a man of about his own age emerged alone from the driver’s-side seat. He was tall with black hair and dark skin, but you could tell from his facial bones that he had palangi blood in him. He didn’t seem to have seen them sitting there in the shadow of the patio. He opened one of the garage doors, then garaged the Rover. He came out of the garage carrying several plastic shopping bags, put them down, pulled his key chain out of his pocket, and clicked it. The Rover answered with a lock-up beep. He closed the garage door, picked up his bags, and headed for the back of the house. He was conservatively dressed in gray slacks and a blue polo shirt. He was trim enough to look good in it.

  Leilani called out to him, “Werner. Oh, Werner.”

  The man turned and saw them. “Auntie Lani. I’ll be right there.” Then he went into the house through a back door.

  “Do you know Werner, Gigi’s husband?” Leilani asked.

  “No, I don’t. We’ve never met,” Apelu said.

  “He makes her so happy. She’s a different woman since they’ve been together.” Leilani refilled their beer glasses, finishing the bottle. “You’ll like him. He’s not at all stuffy.”

  Werner opened the patio’s sliding screen door with his elbow. In one hand he held a fresh liter of beer, in the other his own frosted glass. He closed the screen door with his heel behind him.

  “Auntie, we’re going to take the rest of the day off.” Werner spoke in English, an English that in its youth had been marinated in the open, half-Cockney accents of Auckland boarding schools. “Life is too bloody short, and the beer is cold. Hello,” he said to Apelu, putting down the bottle and glass on the tray, “I’m Werner Gottlieb.” And he stretched his right hand across the table.

  Apelu had stood as Werner approached and leaned forward to shake the extended hand. The Germans had left behind few genetic souvenirs of their colonial decades here, the Gottlieb clan being one of the rare exceptions, notable for the fact that after four generations of intermarriage, few of them had sunk very much below their originator’s elevated social class. A large commercial building on Beach Road bore the family name. A recent Miss South Pacific had been a Gottlieb. Apelu remembered her photograph, could see the family resemblance in Werner. Apelu introduced himself, and they sat down.

  “Apelu came to tell me that Ezra is in jail,” Leilani said calmly.

  “Bloody hell. You don’t say?” Werner was pouring himself a beer. “What’s the old coot been up to now?”

  “A couple of weapons charges. He’s been taking potshots at visitors,” Apelu said.

  “Serves them right for wanting to visit him.” Werner seemed unsympathetic. Leilani said nothing. “So, Apelu, you over from Pago? Business?”

  “Apelu is with the police department,” Leilani said.

  “Then you must be here on holiday. We don’t allow any crime here.”

  “Actually, I’m here investigating a possible smuggling case,” Apelu said. “Leilani, do you have any idea why Ezra would have all those cases of motor oil, perfume, cigarettes, music CDs, and all stored at your house?”

  “Why, I have no idea what you are talking about, Apelu. All those cases of what?”

  “Cases of stuff he obviously didn’t need.”

  “In the house at Piapiatele?” Leilani asked, tilting her head to look at him.

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, I’m clueless,” she said. “Except that Ezra had gotten the idea at one point of opening some sort of retail store, but Ezra gets all sorts of crazy ideas he never follows up on. I figured that was one of them.”

  “Maybe that explains it,” Apelu said and took a sip of beer.

  “You think that old Ezra was into smuggling?” Werner sounded incredulous. He raised both eyebrows as he looked at Apelu. “That would involve other people trusting him, and frankly—sorry, Auntie—no one in their right mind would trust old Ez.”

  “You’re probably right. It does seem incredible,” Apelu agreed.

  A phone rang in the house and was answered. The Fijian girl came to the screen door and said, “Mr. G, it’s for you.” Werner excused himself and went into the house, taking his beer. In his absence there was silence. It was as if the possibility for polite conversation had been canceled somehow.

  When W
erner returned he asked Apelu if he needed a ride into town. He had to go back. Something had come up. Apelu accepted, but first he had to use the loo. Werner walked him into the house and pointed the way.

  As he washed his hands, Apelu could hear their voices, so when he opened the door to leave, he did so slowly. Through the partly opened door he could see an angle of the kitchen down the hall where the voices were coming from. He saw the Fijian girl walking away, then Werner following her, grabbing her by the elbow and turning her around.

  “What if I don’t just do that?” she said to his face.

  “I’m telling you leave it alone, leave it to me,” Werner said.

  She looked at him defiantly. He put a hand on her waist that slipped familiarly down onto her buttock.

  “Let me take care of it,” Werner said softly.

  Apelu gently reclosed the door, counted to four, then reopened it loudly, waited for another two count, then emerged. Werner was standing in the kitchen doorway. The girl was gone.

  “Ready?” Werner asked.

  CHAPTER 7

  BY SUNDOWN APELU was home. The transition had been uneventful. Werner had said next to nothing on the speedy trip back to town. He had dropped Apelu at police headquarters, where he reconnected with Mati, who had them booked on the three o’clock plane back to Tutuila. A taxi to the hotel to check out and get their things, another taxi to Fagali`i in time to catch their flight, then another taxi to his house. Mati hadn’t had much to say either, thankfully.

  At home, the kids were glad to see him and Apelu felt like a shit because he hadn’t remembered to bring them anything from Apia. He hadn’t gotten a present for Sina either, but that didn’t matter so much because she was still acting chilly. But in bed that night she moved close to him and curled along his back and in that way she had reached over his hip to touch him and make him hard, wrapping her fingers around him as if his cock were a giant bolt she was trying to unscrew from his groin, stopping to reach down and roll his balls in her palm, then returning to his shaft, coaxing him out of his foreskin, squeezing and turning him. In automatic and welcome response Apelu rolled onto his side to embrace her, return her attentions, when a sword of flame flashed from his rib cage up to his shoulder and his neck. An involuntary gasp of pain escaped his open mouth and he rolled farther over onto his side, pushing Sina away, searching for a position that would give him respite.

  “What?” Sina said.

  “Ah ahh ah, jezus,” he said and twisted his torso about trying to make it right again. His cock went limp in her hand.

  “What is wrong with you?” Sina asked, letting go of him.

  He was in too much pain to explain. All he could think about was the pain. “Ah, fuck,” he said and rolled away from her, seeking comfort. The moment of reconciliation was broken. Sina went instantly musu again, She didn’t want to hear any explanations. Apelu was in too much torment to offer one. He was thinking about whether or not he should make a trip to the emergency room. As Apelu hugged his side and rolled away, Sina slipped from the bed and then the room. Too late Apelu called out her name to try to explain, but she was gone.

  Apelu awoke late after a difficult night to an empty house. School day, everyone gone. His side was vaguely better, a constant ache but no shooting pains until he sat up to get out of bed. In the bathroom medicine chest he found a bottle of Extra Strength Tylenol and took three. He decided against trying to shower. Getting dressed took a while. Sina had taken the pickup truck, so he walked up to the road to catch a jitney bus to town and work. He was late.

  The captain followed Apelu to his desk. “Nice vacation?” he asked.

  “Productive, I think.” Apelu sat down and pulled a report form and a pen out of his desk drawer.

  “Don’t get too comfortable. The commissioner wants to see you.”

  “Know why?”

  “Didn’t say.”

  “When?”

  “Better get up there now.”

  Apelu didn’t really know the commissioner. He was new to the job and new to the department. The previous commissioner had left under a bit of a political cloud a year or so before, and this one had been brought in out of left field. His previous position had been as director of the Department of Parks and Recreation. He seemed like an okay guy, but he wasn’t a cop; he was a politician.

  The commissioner’s office took up about a third of the second floor of headquarters. Its reception area was twice the size of CID’s squad room. The commissioner was there, sitting on the edge of his secretary’s desk with a cup of coffee, joking around with his office staff. He was finishing a story about a shark, a squid, and a fisherman with elephantiasis of the testicles. The punch line wasn’t that funny, but everyone laughed, the commissioner most of all.

  “Sergeant Soifua,” he said, “come into my office.”

  Apelu followed him into his vast inner office and closed the door behind them.

  “Soifua, when I agreed to send you over to Apia I didn’t know that I would have hell to pay for it.” The commissioner’s Samoan, like his jokes, was crude. “What in the name of a pig’s cunt were you doing over there?”

  “Just the smuggling investigation I was okayed for,” Apelu said.

  “Well, it’s out of my hands now. The attorney general wants to see you and he’s asked for an internal investigation.”

  “Into what?” The shooting pains had returned to Apelu’s side.

  “I guess we’ll find out sooner than later, but for now you’re suspended, leave with full pay, until this gets sorted out. Any questions?”

  “Plenty.”

  The commissioner had stood and turned to end the conversation, but Apelu refused to stand up.

  “You are dismissed, Sergeant. Get your sorry ass out of my office.”

  From the commissioner’s office Apelu went to the assistant commissioner’s office, but he wasn’t in. Then he went to his captain’s office.

  The captain was just hanging up the phone. “The commissioner says you’re on suspension and that you should go see the AG and see if you can get this straightened out.”

  “You don’t know what this is about?” Apelu’s anger was rising. If this had anything to do with Mati, he would break his sneaking back, FBI or not.

  “Something to do with your Apia vacation is all I can figure. But get over to the AG’s and see what he’s got to say. I guess you don’t have to report to work until I hear different.”

  “Well, this sucks,” Apelu said, feeling suddenly helpless, and a twang of pain shot up his side. He cringed and bent over.

  “What’s wrong with you?” The captain seemed almost concerned.

  “Nothing,” Apelu said. “Nothing.”

  The attorney general wasn’t in either. Apelu made his secretary write down that he had come to see him and the time.

  “When will he be back?” Apelu wanted to know.

  “He’s in court. I can’t say.” The AG’s secretary was short, round, and professionally unfriendly.

  Apelu walked to the shipping agent’s office where Sina worked. He stuck his head in the door and told Sina—and the other women working there—that he needed the pickup truck but would have it back in a couple of hours. He didn’t give her a chance to respond. He took the truck and drove to Shimamatsu’s store and bought four large bottles of cranberry juice, and then he drove out to the prison in Tafuna and dropped the juice off with the warden, telling him it was essential that Ezra get the juice right away. Then he drove around for a while, stewing, at a loss to figure out what was going on.

  Back at the AG’s office, the AG was out to lunch. Apelu said that he would wait and sat down on a broken-springed couch in the reception area. On the wall he was facing was a gallery of photographs of all the attorneys general of the past twenty years, palangi then Samoan, ending with the current AG, all of them political appointees, none elected. Apelu knew the current AG by reputation only—one of those sons of a ranking family who had been sent off to college on the
mainland and returned with a law degree and an enhanced sense of entitlement. He was one of their native son success stories—a dedicated golfer, a cautious prosecutor, a bit of a ladies man, a political comer with an eye for higher office.

  When the AG came through the outer door and cut across the reception area toward his office, Apelu stood and followed him.

  “Sir,” the secretary said as her boss swept by her, “there is someone waiting to see you.”

  The AG paused long enough to ask, “Who?” and long enough for Apelu to be just off his right shoulder when he turned to look.

  “Detective Sergeant Soifua,” Apelu said about a hand span from his face.

  The AG took a startled step backward then another to his office door. “Come in, Sergeant,” he said.

  The AG circled immediately behind his desk and was on the phone, summoning assistance to his office. “Have a seat, Sergeant,” he said as he hung up, but neither of them sat. Apelu moved away from the door before it opened and two large Samoan men came through it.

  “Sit down,” the AG said again, taking his seat behind the substantial desk covered with piles of files. The two men took positions by the door, their hands folded in front of them like guards, and Apelu found a chair where he could watch them.

  “Sergeant Soifua, are you aware that the United States of America has a Department of State and that the Department of State has a consulate in the independent state of Western Samoa?”

  “Yes,” Apelu said.

  “Then are you also aware that any and all dealings, especially legal dealings, between our government and the government of Western Samoa must be managed on a diplomatic level between the US Consulate in Apia and the responsible parties in the Western Samoan government?”

  “I don’t know what that means to me,” Apelu said.

  “It means that by conducting a criminal investigation in the independent state of Western Samoa you have, without any vested authority, overstepped and transgressed treaty agreements between our two countries.”