The Pearl Harbor Murders (5 page)

Perhaps it was time to get back home, to his mother, in the house in Bel Air. He was well aware she suffered from chronic alcoholism—he'd witnessed her incessant drinking since his childhood. Her periods of sobriety were now very short—a week or two—followed by ten days to two weeks of a bender resulting in delirium tremens and, ultimately, a doctor's care. Hully knew the affliction would follow his mother to the grave—if it didn't send her there, first.

Nothing remained but to try to make her life as happy and as free of worry as possible, and to keep her from injuring herself. Shortly before he left, he'd fired a maid and driver who were aiding and abetting his mother's bingeing, and taking advantage of her financially.

Truth was, he was enjoying himself here in Hawaii, and dreaded going back home—he loved spending time with his father, adored Waikiki with its gentle, flower-scented breezes, and had enjoyed several brief romances here ... even if Pearl Harada hadn't been one of them.

A hundred guests had descended upon the Niumalu by sundown, far more than the relatively few residents of the thirty cottages scattered about the tropical grounds. The tables in the dining room had been rearranged, fit together picnic-style, but Hully and his father—and another forty patrons, inclined toward a more authentic, traditional presentation—sat like Indians on the lawn on lau hala mats, gathered around a long narrow spread of food exhibiting great variety and color, including the exotic likes of
lomi-lomi
(salmon rubbed and raw, mixed with shaved ice, onions and tomatoes);
ti
-wrapped breadfruit, yams, bananas and beef;
opii
(raw limpets);
pipikaula
(Hawaiian jerked beef);
limu
(dried seaweed);
laulau,
parcels of pork with salted butterfish; and two kinds of
poi,
one made from breadfruit, the other of
taro.
And chicken and mahimahi and, of course, the delicious shredded pork from the
imu.
Eventually
noupio
(coconut pudding) was served, but it took a long while, and a lot of serious eating, to get there....

Hully and his father both capitulated to having wine with their meals, passing on the stronger stuff—
oke,
short for
okolehao,
ginlike booze derived from
ti
root and, according to O. B., "every bit as good as horse liniment." Free-flowing
oke
and wine made the evening even more festive, and casual, and it was plenty casual, with even some of the admirals and colonels wearing the currently popular, colorful silk "aloha" shirts, the women in loose-fitting, equally colorful muumuus, or the occasional kimono—Japanese fashion and culture were much admired locally, despite the threat of war.

In fact, the top brass themselves were here tonight—Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, commander of the Pacific Fleet, and Lieutenant General Walter C. Short, commander of the U.S. Army ground and-air forces. Kimmel wore a white suit with a light gray tie that vaguely invoked his Naval dress whites, while Short was in a red-and-yellow aloha shirt.

Hully's father knew both men. Kimmel and Short sat almost directly across from O. B.—the two most powerful military men on the island had arrived together, with petite, attractive Mrs. Short (it was well-known that Kimmel had left his wife on the mainland, so as not to be distracted in his Hawaiian duty... even if his name was Husband).

As usual, Kimmel—whose strong voice was touched with a Kentucky bluegrass twang—seemed uncomfortable in a casual setting, his broad brow troubled. The admiral was in his late fifties, five feet ten inches of compact muscle and bone, his dark blond hair graying at the temples, with clear, direct blue eyes, a slightly hooked nose, and a sternly set mouth and chin.

Short, on the other hand, was affable and easygoing, and the close friendship between the admiral and the general puzzled many, as they would seem personal and professional opposites. A slim, wiry five feet ten, in his early sixties, Short had a thin, delicately boned, sensitive face with deep-set eyes under frequently lifted brows, with a high-bridged nose and a thin upper Up and sensuous lower one.

"Ed," Short was saying, helping himself to two fingers of
poi
(no utensils allowed at a luau), "how did a fellow with a military background like you wind up an
artiste!"

"Nobody's ever accused me of being an artist before, General," Burroughs said, nibbling a chunk of banana. "Biggest disappointment of my life was when Teddy Roosevelt turned me down for the Rough Riders."

Short frowned and smiled simultaneously. "I thought you were in the cavalry—the 'Bloody Seventh,' who fought at Little Bighorn and Wounded Knee."

"That's true, but the press agents would have you believe I fought side by side with Custer."

"Maybe that's what happened to your scalp," Hully kidded.

His father laughed at that, continuing, "The only Indians I came in contact with, at Fort Grant, were Indian scouts. No, my cavalry career was undistinguished, General. A flop like everything else I ever tried."

"Edgar Rice Burroughs," Kimmel said, putting some pomp into the name, "a flop? That seems unlikely."

"Admiral, I have sold electric lightbulbs to janitors, candy to drugstores and peddled Stoddard's lectures door-to-door. The only interesting job I ever had was as a policeman."

This was news to Hully, sitting next to his father. "You were a cop, Pop?"

Burroughs smiled at the admiral and general, pointing a thumb at his son. "You see, my boy has inherited my literary skill." Then he turned to Hully. "Yes, my poetic offspring, I was a police officer in Salt Lake City, my principal duty rousting drunks and hoboes. Even flashed my gun a few times."

Hully was impressed. "When was this?"

"Maybe ought three, ought four... don't really remember, exactly. But mostly I was a salesman—a bad one. I was peddling pencil sharpeners when I first took up writing."

"Had you always had an interest in literature?" Kim-mel asked.

"I liked Mark Twain, and
The Prisoner of Zenda,
if you call that literature. I was supervising other salesmen, had a lot of free time, and spent it reading cheap magazines. The fiction I read struck me as lousy, and I figured if other people could get paid for writing such rotten stuff, make room for Burroughs."

"I like your books, Ed," Short said, grinning, "and I won't have you downgrading yourself... and my good taste."

"Don't think I'm not grateful, General. No writer alive has taken more potshots than me—there are li-brarians and literary types who consider my stuff a bad influence, particularly on young minds like yours."

The general laughed, and said, "How on earth could Tarzan be considered harmful?"

"Well, a good number of kids have fallen out of trees, emulating him... otherwise, I think it's good for their imaginations."

Mrs. Short said, rather primly, "Don't you think some children have rather overactive imaginations, Mr. Burroughs?"

"With all due respect, Mrs. Short, the power of imagination is all that differentiates the human from the brute. Without imagination, there's no power to visualize what we have never experienced... and without that, there can be no progress, no invention."

Hully smiled to himself, thinking of his father's self-characterization of being a "lousy conversationalist." Of course, giving in to a little wine had lubricated his dad's tongue, no question....

Kimmel was frowning in thought. "How on earth did you come up with something as imaginative as Tarzan?"

The half smirk disappeared from O. B.'s face and his response was surprisingly serious—in fact, Hully would never forget what his father quietly, humbly said next.

"Frankly, Admiral, I suppose it came out of my daily life consisting of such drab, dull business matters. I think I just wanted to get as far away from commerce as possible—so my mind roamed in scenes and situations I never knew." He gestured to the tropical trees around them. "I've never been to Africa, you know—but I find I can write better about places I've never seen than those I have."

"Excuse me, Mr. Burroughs," said the young Japanese man seated on O. B.'s other side, "but I wonder if you are aware of how very popular you are in my country?"

This was Tadashi Morimura, who had introduced himself earlier—a diplomat in his late twenties, vice consul of the Japanese Consulate in Honolulu. Like Kimmel, Morimura wore a white suit and a tie; he was a boyish, slender man, his longish black hair brushed back on a smooth, high forehead.

"Well, I've had good foreign sales for years, though this European war is playing havoc with 'em."

"My cousin is named Edgar," Morimura said, with a shy smile. "Sir, I know many boys who have been named for you."

O. B. seemed genuinely touched. "That's the first I've heard of that. But I don't see why a boy in your country wouldn't respond to what kids here do—kids including General Short, of course."

"You mean the constant urge for escape," Kimmel said thoughtfully, even a little pompously. 'To trade the confines of city streets for the freedom of the wilderness ..."

"I think it's more," O. B. said. "I think on some primal level, we all would like to throw off the restrictions of man-made laws, the inhibitions that society has placed on us. Every boy, of any age, would like to be Tarzan... I know I would."

"As would I," Morimura said, raising his cup of wine.

Despite the pleasantness of the evening, the great food, the wonderful conversation, Hully couldn't help but be struck by the surreal incongruity of this social gathering: the commanders of the Army and Navy sharing
poi
with a Japanese diplomat, when everyone seemed to agree war between their two countries was both inevitable and imminent.

But Morimura seemed a pleasant sort, harmless, well-spoken, typically polite.

As the dining wound down, the entertainment increased, the evening alive with flaming torches and swinging swords, and various renditions of the hula from seductive, lyrical swaying to the frenetic hip-twitching version tourists craved. Wandering troubadours with ukuleles and steel guitars sang traditional Hawaiian standards, but also Tin Pan Alley island fare like "Sweet Leilani" and "Blue Hawaii."

By around ten, the luau proper was over and the guests were milling around the grounds, lounging throughout the lodge, in the rock-garden courtyard, and in the enclosed rear
lanai,
with its wicker furnishings and soothing view onto a tropical garden. The music, however, had shifted to the big-band music of Pearl and the Harbor Lights on the dance floor adjacent to the dining room.

Hully and his father split up—he noticed O. B. talking to Colonel Fielder at one point, out on the lawn, and to that German playboy Otto Kuhn, in the rock garden—and the younger Burroughs sat at a table with Ensign Bill Fielder and Seaman Dan Pressman, smoking cigarettes, drinking
oke
(except for Hully, who had switched from wine to coffee), listening to Pearl and the band do "Oh, Look at Me Now."

The only concession to Hawaiian-style music made by Pearl and the Harbor Lights was the inclusion of two guitars, one of them steel, and of course the boys in the band did wear blue aloha shirts with a yellow-and-red floral pattern. Bathed in pale pink stage lighting, Pearl—standing at her center-stage microphone, which she occasionally touched, in a sensually caressing fashion—wore a clinging blue gown, with a daring dÈcolletage that showed off her medium-size but firm, high breasts to fine advantage.

"I'm going to tell the old man tonight," Bill was saying. He was a handsome Naval officer in his early twenties with dark hair and a cleft chin—despite his crisply military haircut, he looked more like a kid than a sailor, in his green aloha shirt and white slacks.

"I can see what you see in Pearl," Hully said, and he certainly could, his eyes returning to the ethereal, erotic vision she made on stage under the pink lighting in the low-cut blue gown. "But you've only been going with her for a month.... Can't you wait—"

"What, till war breaks out, and I'm at sea, fighting her relatives?" Bill's dark eyes were sharp, but his speech was slightly slurred—too much
oke.
"There's not going to be a better time to break this to Dad—certainly after we're at war with Japan, it's not gonna be any easier."

"Bill," his friend Dan said, a blue-eyed blond sailor

from California, "she's a nice girl, and I mean you'd have to be blind not to see she's a living doll... but you gotta admit—she's been around."

“Take that back!" Bill said, stiffening.

"Okay, okay," Dan said, patting the air with his palms. "I didn't mean she was ... fast or anything. Just that she's dated a few guys.... Maybe you should wait a couple months, get to know each other better."

"Dan's right," Hully said. "Wait a little bit—get past the physical attraction and know each other as people ... just to make sure...."

"I
am
sure—Pearl's the girl for me. She's sweet and she's nice and she'll give everything up for me, her singing, everything... just to be my wife and have my babies."

"Maybe you ought to think about that, too," Dan said.

Bill glared at him. "What?"

"What it'll put your kids through—you know, the racial thing."

"Pearl's half white. Our kids'11 be all American. Dan, I won't hear this kind of talk."

"Okay, buddy ... I'm just trying to help. You've helped me before, plenty of times—I'm just trying to be your friend."

Bill sighed and nodded.

The band was starting to play "I'll Remember April," and one of the guitar players began to sing the lilting ballad. Bill shot out of his chair as if from a cannon, muttering, "This is one of Pearl's free songs," and headed for the bandstand.

Then he was out there dancing with her, holding her close, gazing into her eyes like a lovesick puppy, and she was gazing back, a beautiful woman who seemed equally in love. It was romantic, and frightening.

"His father is going to kick Bill's ass," Dan said.