The Pearl Harbor Murders (6 page)

"I know," Hully said, and nodded toward the entry-way to the lobby.

Colonel Fielder—slim, casually attired in red aloha shirt and white slacks, his dark hair widow's-peaked, with a narrow face and hawkish eyes and hawkish nose—stood just inside the doorway, staring out at the dance floor, obviously viewing his son dancing with the
nisei
singer—and just as obviously unhappy.

Shaking his head in apparent disgust, Fielder exited.

"It's gonna be ugly," Dan said.

"Pearl asked me to set up a meeting between her and the colonel—she wants to plead her case."

“If she thinks batting her lashes at that hardnose is going to do the trick, she's dreamin'."

Out on the dance floor, something "ugly" was already transpiring. A soldier—a handsome brown-haired kid in a green sportshirt and tan slacks, not very tall but with wide shoulders and an athletic carriage—was tapping Bill on the shoulder—hard—as if to cut in.

"Oh hell," Hully said, shaking his head.

"Who is that guy?" Dan asked.

"Jack Stanton—he's a corporal over at Hickam... used to date Pearl."

"Ouch."

"Fact, that's who she threw over for Bill."

"Double ouch."

Out on the dance floor, Pearl was desperately trying to keep the peace as the sailor and the soldier began shoving each other.

"You take Bill," Hully said, getting up, "I got the dogface."

The crowd was forming a circle around what was clearly about to erupt into a fight, with reactions that ranged from shouts of indignation to squeals of delight. Hully and Dan broke through just in time to see Stan-ton connect with a right hook to Bill's jaw.

Bill went down on a knee, but came up with his own right hand to the soldier's belly, doubling the boy over.

And the fight was over before Hully and Dan could break it up, because the soldier—like everyone here—had been to that sumptuous, endless luau, and his stomach ... filled with
poi
and raw fish and roast pork and a dozen other delicacies ... did not take a punch well.

The soldier, clutching his stomach, scrambled out of there, struggling not to throw up, heading for the men's room, as relieved laughter rippled across the crowd. Soon the onlookers began to dance again, the Harbor Lights beginning to play "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," with Pearl magically back onstage to sing it.

"I'm going after that bastard," Bill said, lurching forward, and Hully grabbed him around the arms, from behind.

Hully whispered harshly in his friend's ear. "You get back to the
Arizona
—you want your dad to see this? Much less get wind of what this fight is about?"

Bill,
oke
or not, sighed and nodded.

"Get him the hell out of here," Hully said to Dan.

"Sure thing," Dan said, and took charge of his friend, walking him out.

Then, suddenly, O. B. was at Hully's side. "Did I miss some action?"

"Just a sailor and a soldier, fighting over a dame," Hully said.

Jitterbuggers were jumping and kicking before them.

O. B. asked, over the blaring music, "Fielder's son?"

Hully nodded.

The old man shook his head, nodded up toward the pretty girl in the low-cut blue dress, her breasts jiggling provocatively as she sang the up-tempo tune.

"That little Pearl of the Pacific up there," he said, "is gonna get some poor fool killed."

And then O. B. turned and went out, leaving his son to marvel at how little got past his old man.

FOUR
Nightmare at the Beach

At the luau, after his son had gone in to enjoy the dance band, Burroughs sought out his friend Colonel Kendall "Wooch" Fielder, and chatted on the Niumalu lawn under the soft pastel glow of Japanese lanterns ... an irony lost on neither man.

Burroughs sipped a glass of red wine, and the slim, hawkish-countenanced Fielder worked on both a cocktail and a cigarette. Wooch—a nickname that dated to the colonel's Georgia Tech football days—was a frequent participant in Niumalu poker games. Sunday through Thursday, curfew requirements kept everyone but officials indoors, and card games had become a favorite pastime.

Lots of drinking went on at these "whiskey poker" games, and Burroughs had kept active, despite his current abstinence from the hard stuff. He loved poker with a passion, and was accepted as "boss of the play and ruler on all technicalities."

Fielder was a key player because liquor was rationed, but as a high-ranking officer, Wooch could bring unallotted bottles from the officers' club.

"Listen, Wooch," Burroughs said, "I want a correspondent's card. With war coming, no one's gonna give a damn about fiction writing—I want to get in the thick of it, and write about what's really going on."

"Ed," Fielder said, smiling, exhaling smoke, "what the hell do you want to fool with that nonsense for? A man of your reputation, a man your age ..."

"An old fart, you mean. A hundred bucks says I can do more sit-ups than you—right here, right now."

Fielder laughed, a little. "And here I always thought you talked that way because you were drinking."

"Well, I
have
had a little wine—but come on, Wooch... you can hook me up, you can wrangle me that card. I want to see some action."

"Let's wait till there's some action to see, why don't we?"

Over to their left, in the flicker of torchlight, standing near one of the bungalows which was draped in purple and rose-colored bougainvillea, General Short was engaged in a smiling conversation with Morimura of the Japanese Consulate. Mrs. Short, in a floral muumuu, was at the general's side, and a pretty Oriental girl, with contemporary makeup and hairstyle but wearing a kimono, was on Morimura's arm. Everyone had cocktails in hand.

"What's the story on the toothy little Jap diplomat?" Burroughs asked Fielder.

"If that pipsqueak is all Tojo has in store for us,"

Fielder said, snorting a laugh, "we don't have much to worry about. Intelligence clears him—inexperienced, doesn't show up on any list of attachÈs."

"Why is the brass so friendly with him?"

"What's the harm? Morimura spends most of his days playing golf, and his nights in nightclubs and restaurants. He drinks heavily, and I understand practically lives at the Shuncho-ro."

That was a well-known teahouse on Alawa Heights overlooking Honolulu.

"Well, hell, Wooch—that would give the little bastard a ringside view of Pearl Harbor, and Hickam Field to boot."

"The only view that amiable buffoon is interested in is the teahouse girls, like that one he escorted here, tonight. He's taken half the geishas in Honolulu on glass-bottom boat rides around Pearl Harbor."

"Sounds to me like he makes a habit out of socializing around battleships."

Fielder gestured with his cocktail in hand, sighed smoke. "Ed, a certain amount of espionage is to be expected. How can we keep the Japanese consulate from studying local newspapers, and listening to local radio broadcasts? ... As for the ships in Pearl Harbor, all a 'spy' has to do is perch someplace and watch. It's legal—we do the same damn thing to them."

Arching an eyebrow, Burroughs said, "You'll notice that smiling, sociable Mr. Morimura keeps bis distance from our German friend, Mr. Kuhn."

"Your point being, what? That they're in league, helping each other spy? Those playboy clowns?"

The writer shook his head. "You don't read enough pulp fiction, Wooch—ever hear of the Scarlet Pimpernel, or Zorro?"

"Kuhn and Morimura are harmless fools—not that I don't agree with you, Ed, that all this... fraternization ... is unsettling."

And with that statement, Wooch Fielder's expression shifted, or had Burroughs simply not noticed the anxiety in the man's narrow eyes?

The colonel moved near Burroughs, his manner more intimate, his tone a near whisper. "Ed, your son and my son are close ... as close as we are."

"I'd say so."

"Would you ask Hully if he's heard anything about Bill and that... that little Japanese singer?"

Burroughs, who knew damn well Bill Fielder had been dating Pearl Harada, said only, "Be glad to check."

“This morning, I had an anonymous call to that effect. ... I don't usually pay much heed to such things, but... Christ, Ed, you don't think Bill could be that foolish, do you?"

With General Short visible in laughing conversation with the Japanese vice consul, Burroughs said, "Wooch, she's a pretty girl. If you were young and healthy, would you think about politics, or that Hedy Lamarr face and figure?"

Fielder drew on the cigarette, nodded, dropped the spent butt to the grass and heeled it out. "I think I'll peek in there and see for myself. Bill and his pals are in listening to her band—maybe it's time for me to do a little espionage work of my own."

Burroughs put a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Don't be hard on the boy, Wooch. You were young once. Hell, even I was."

Fielder nodded, barely, and strode toward the Niu-malu lodge, from which emanated the muffled sound of the band playing "I'll Remember April."

Burroughs, cup of wine in hand, wandered, stopping now and then for conversation. A few guests were chatting in the hotel courtyard—not a spacious area, particularly since the hub was taken up by a rock-garden, and standing room was compromised by the yawning fronds of potted tropical plants on the periphery. The dining room was open onto this rock-garden courtyard, and the loud, lively dance music of Pearl and her Harbor Lights limited conversation, as well.

But Burroughs was amused to find Otto Kuhn—his blonde wife on his arm, "playboy" or not—chatting with secret adversary Adam Sterling of the FBI.

Kuhn—even at six foot, still towered over by the strapping, brown-haired FBI agent—had blue-eyed bland good looks, dark blond hair and wore a white linen suit with a silver tie. Elfriede Kuhn was of medium height, with a nicely slender shape, and one of the few women present not swimming in a muumuu or wrapped up in a kimono—she wore a simple black cocktail dress, rather low-cut. Both husband and wife were attractive individuals in their dissipated forties.

The conversation was focused on an upcoming battle: the annual Shrine-sponsored football game tomorrow, in which the University of Hawaii would meet Willamette. The German favored Hawaii, while the FBI agent—a Willamette University graduate, it happened—not unexpectedly argued for the out-of-town team.

Burroughs, who didn't give a damn either way—he was a boxing and wrestling fan—stood on the fringes of the conversation, politely; then the German—his blue eyes languid—changed the subject, drawing Burroughs directly in.

"I feel my countrymen owe you an apology, Edgar," Kuhn said, his accent thick, his manner smooth. "It is something I have long meant to bring up."

"Why an apology?" Burroughs asked, already amused.

"Like so many German men, when was it... ten years ago? I was a devoted fan of your Tarzan novels. What a sensation you were in my homeland!"

Burroughs sipped his wine, offered up a wry smile. "That is true—my first German royalty check was the largest single foreign payment I ever had."

"Every man and boy in Deutschland caught Tarzan fever," Kuhn said, admiringly, eyes as bright as any young fan of the Jungle Lord's adventures.

Mildly chagrined, the writer said, "Well, like most epidemics, it ran its course. Or I should say, got cured."

"What was done to you was most unfortunate," the German said, shaking his head, "most unfair."

Her pretty features pinched with sympathy, Kuhn's wife said, "Oh, yes, how foolishly the press behaved."

The FBI agent, confused, said, "What was done to you, Ed?"

"Well, it was my own damn fault, or my agent's—after we did so well with the first four Tarzans, a rival publisher bought the rights to a book my regular German publisher had skipped over—
Tarzan the Untamed,
a thing I did during the world war."

Eyebrow arched, Kuhn glanced at Steriing. "It was published as
Tarzan der Deutschenfresser.
... It too caused a sensation."

Sterling still appeared confused, and Mrs. Kuhn further translated, her manner as delicate as her words were not:
"Tarzan the German Devourer."

Now the FBI man got it—perhaps, as the Tarzan fan he had often professed to be, he even recalled the plot of the novel: Tarzan—his beloved wife Jane apparently murdered by a German officer—goes on a blood-lust rampage against the Hun, including setting loose a ravenous lion in the German trenches.

"You can't give my stuff away there, now," Burroughs said, with a laugh. "As Mrs. Kuhn said, the German press lambasted me—one article advised readers to throw their Tarzan books into the garbage can."

"Sanctimonious nonsense," the German said. "Were you expected to soft-pedal your honest convictions, at the height of a bitter war?"

"Well, I should have seen it coming, and blocked publication in Germany—it was dated material, wartime propaganda, and shouldn't have been reprinted, anywhere."

Sterling said, "I guess politics and entertainment don't mix. You've never regained your footing over there, in all this time?"

Kuhn answered for Burroughs, "Adam, you don't realize the extent of our friend's popularity—the fever turned into a furor...."

Sterting frowned. "What does Hitler have to do with it?"

Burroughs laughed, almost choking on his wine. "Not 'f¸hrer,' Adam—fur-or."

Embarrassed, the FBI man said, "Sorry."

"An understandable confusion," the German said urbanely. "After all, there
were
public burnings of your books, Edgar."

Mrs. Kuhn asked the writer, "Did your German publishers ever ask you to offer an... explanation, or apology to your readers?"

"An open letter from me was published," Burroughs said, and Kuhn—aware of this—was nodding. "I didn't apologize, exactly. The novel reflected what I thought and felt at the time I wrote it. I wasn't about to assume a spineless attitude and retract and apologize ad nauseam."

With a nod—though stopping short of clicking his heels—Kuhn said, "Well, please allow me to offer an overdue apology myself, on behalf of the German people."