The Paradise Affair Page 7

  Stanton Millay had lodged there most of the previous week, a Chinese desk clerk informed Quincannon, but had checked out early Sunday morning. Apparently he had returned home to the Big Island. The question was whether he had gone alone or in the company of Lonesome Jack.

  Entrance to the bar lounge was through a beaded archway at one end of the lobby. A wall placard there advertised a nightly show of native Hawaiian dances, featuring one called “the hula kahiko.” The interior of the resort was a small, dark, stuffy space that opened onto a broad lanai lined with torches. The lanai was where the dances were held, evidently; tables surrounded a central fire pit on three sides, and there was a sandy area decorated with potted palms on the fourth. At this hour there were few customers, almost all of those present seated at the outdoor tables; the only ones at the bar that extended along one wall were a pair of middle-aged men in business suits. The single barkeep moved in indolent shuffles behind the polished plank.

  Quincannon stepped to the bar at a point farthest from where the two men had their noses in schooners of beer. The barman approached him with a professional smile of welcome lighting his ruddy cheeks. He was a broad-chested gent, bald except for a tonsure of curly brown hair above a pair of jug-handle ears. The Hawaiian shirt he wore, white with an array of bright orange-colored flowers, reminded Quincannon of one of his own favorite vests—a natty silk number festooned with orange nasturtiums that he seldom wore anymore in deference to Sabina, who considered it gaudy. Not here by comparison, it wouldn’t be. But then if he’d worn it in this climate, he would be roasting more swiftly than he already was.

  “Yes, sir? Something cool and refreshing, p’raps?”

  “Water,” Quincannon said.

  “Plain water?”

  “In a large glass. With ice.”

  He drained the glass in two swallows and called for a refill, which lasted three swallows. The cold water was much more soothing to his parched throat than the tepid glassful he’d drunk in the Chinese restaurant.

  “Hot day, isn’t she,” the barman said in a marked Australian accent. “Kona weather, y’know.”

  “All too well. You’re Oliver Winchell?”

  “That I am. And how would you be knowing my name?”

  Quincannon laid the business card Fenner had given him on the bar top. He’d looked at what was penciled on the back of it after leaving the restaurant. Just the numeral 6 followed by a star symbol, and below that the initials G.F. A code of some sort that induced an immediate change in the Australian when he saw it. His blandly bored gaze turned shrewd, eager; his shoulders twitched as if shrugging off his barman’s persona. He leaned forward, and when he spoke his voice had lowered two octaves and taken on a confidential note.

  “What can I do for you, mate?” he said. “Mate” now, not “sir”; the card, in his eyes, had put them on more or less equal footing, as with a couple of soon-to-be conspirators. Quincannon saw no profit in disabusing him of the notion.

  “Tell me about Stanton Millay.”

  “Mr. Millay? A fair dinkum gent. Lodges in our house reg’lar when he’s in from the Big Island.” Winchell’s voice dropped another octave. “Got an eye for a pretty face, he has. Fancies one of the girls wot dances the hula kahiko.”

  That explained the rancher’s preference for the Hotel Honolulu. “My interest is in the night a week ago when he was here drinking in the company of two Americans.”

  “The American gents, eh? Mr. Fenner was by askin’ about them just yesterday.”

  “On my behalf.”

  “Ah,” Winchell said. Then, craftily, “P’raps he told you about the arrangement him and me has.…”

  Quincannon fished out a silver dollar and put it down on the bar, closer to himself than to the Australian. Winchell eyed it covetously, and in a way that suggested he was thinking of asking for a twin. He would not have gotten it if he had.

  “Tell me about that night, Oliver.”

  “I remember it well. Saturday night, it was, the same day Mr. Millay came back from San Francisco.”

  “… He was away in San Francisco?” Winchell must not have told this to Fenner, else the detective would have mentioned it.

  “That he was. He travels there sometimes.”

  “For what reason?”

  “Buys cattle, sells cattle, likely—part of his business.” Winchell essayed a sly little wink. “Raises a bit of hell there, too, I’ll wager. He likes a good time, Mr. Millay does.”

  “Do you know where he met the two with him?”

  “On the ship coming across, eh?”

  No, Quincannon thought, it was much more likely that Vereen and Nagle had made Millay’s acquaintance in a Barbary Coast saloon or one of the three Uptown Tenderloin fleshpots. That cleared up one point, if so.

  “Were you in a position to hear some of their conversation?” he asked.

  “Snatches of it here and there when I served ’em, only that. We’re always busy here of a Saturday night.”

  “What were the snatches about?”

  “Sheilas, mostly.”

  “Sheilas?”

  “Women.” The sly wink again. “Eager to sample the local wares, the two Americans were. Mr. Millay was talkin’ up a bawdy house he knows in Chinatown. I don’t recall as I heard him say which one—”

  “Not important,” Quincannon said. “What else did they talk about?”

  “Well, I think they might’ve had a deal on.”

  “What kind of deal?”

  “Sorry, mate, I can’t tell you because I didn’t hear ’em say what it was. Kept their voices down the one time I come in earshot while they were on about it. Something to do with the cattle business, I reckon.”

  “Did Millay call either of the Americans by name?”

  Winchell started to answer, but one of the men at the other end of the bar interrupted him with a call for another schooner of beer. He said, “Half a mo,” and hurried off to comply.

  Quincannon waited, drumming fingers on the bar top. A swindle involving the cattle industry? It was possible, he supposed, but it struck him as improbable. Vereen and Nagle would know as little about the cattle business as he did, surely not enough to orchestrate a related con game that would fool a seasoned rancher.

  Winchell came back and resumed his confidential pose. “Now what was it you was asking again?”

  “If Millay called either of the Americans by name.”

  “By name. Well…”

  “Jack or James? Ned? Simon?”

  “None of those is familiar. No, I don’t recall that any names was used whilst I was near.”

  “All right. Did Millay bring them back again after that night?”

  “No. I never set eyes on ’em a second time. Mr. Millay, he was in most nights last week to see Leilani, the hula dancer.” Wink. “He’s got good taste in sheilas, he has. Leilani is a sweet little piece.”

  “Did he have anything to say about the Americans?”

  “Only once,” Winchell said, “and not much then. Funny, though. I asked him how his American friends were and he said, ‘Friends. A poor damn joke that is.’ Turnabout from that first night when they was cobbers, eh?”

  “Is that all he said about them?”

  “That’s all. He seemed some devo—upset, like—to have ’em called to mind. Maybe the deal they had on fell through.”

  Maybe so. But if Millay had seen through the swindle and ditched the pair, why had they stayed on in the Hoapili Street bungalow instead of returning to San Francisco? And why would Nagle keep the crude map sewn into his jacket lining? And where was Vereen now, if not gone to the Big Island with Millay or on his own?

  There was no more useful information to be gleaned from Oliver Winchell. Quincannon slid the silver dollar across the bar and the Australian made it disappear with the alacrity of a stage magician performing a conjuring trick. Now you see it, now you don’t.

  * * *

  The question of whether Stanton Millay had returned to the B
ig Island alone or in the company of Lonesome Jack Vereen was largely if not fully answered by a clerk in the office of the Inter-Island Steamship Company. By claiming that Millay and the pseudonymous James A. Varner were business acquaintances, Quincannon learned that both men had purchased tickets for Kailua on the Kona Coast on Sunday morning.

  The tickets had been purchased separately, however, at different times. Did that mean Millay and Vereen had not been traveling together, or simply that they had arranged to meet on the ship? And where were they bound once they arrived—the cattle ranch, the mysterious auohe?

  Passenger transport to the Big Island was limited to one sailing per day, and this day’s ship had already departed. Quincannon booked cabin passage for himself to Kailua on tomorrow morning’s steamer. The delay chafed at him, but he supposed it was just as well he was unable to leave immediately. Sabina would be furious if he were to disappear for an indefinite period with no more explanation than a brief message. And he would need fresh clothing, his toilet kit, and extra ammunition for his pistol.

  10

  QUINCANNON

  The broad sweep of Honolulu Harbor resembled that of San Francisco Bay in the number of vessels anchored offshore and at the long piers. The main difference was the warships here—gunboats and battle cruisers that were part of Admiral Dewey’s Asiatic Squadron, refueling and taking on supplies for their passage to Cuban waters. Quincannon had little tolerance for war, and the present one was particularly unpalatable—a tempest in a teapot brewed by Washington bureaucrats and whipped to a frenzy by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer and their rallying cry of “Remember the Maine! To Hell with Spain!” as a means of selling their New York newspapers. Warmongering politicians, muckraking journalists … a pox on the lot of them.

  The naval ships, sailing barques, and other craft all sat motionless on the gunmetal-gray water like toys fashioned from gigantic blocks of wood and metal. A forest of masts pierced a sky that seemed to have been flattened down over the sea beyond the channel entrance. Kanaka stevedores moved sluggishly on the docks, loading and unloading cargo at a retarded pace that would have cost them their pay on San Francisco’s Embarcadero. Even the dray horses stood or plodded limply in the sodden heat.

  Quincannon again felt as if he were melting by the time he located Justo Gomez’s place of business. The torrid weather had dulled his sense of urgency, but his temper was still crimped and primed. Any sort of provocation was liable to set it off.

  Justo’s Bait and Tackle Shop was a small building on the waterfront, weather-beaten and in ramshackle condition. The heat-thick smells of brine and fish flared his nostrils when he entered. Nets hung dustily from two bare walls. Behind a plank laid across a pair of sawhorses, a man clad in dungarees and a sleeveless shirt sat slouched in a rattan chair with his feet up on the plank. He was short and wiry, dark-skinned, with black hair and black eyes and swarthy features that proclaimed his Portuguese/Hawaiian ancestry. Sweat glistened on his bare shoulders and arms like oil on burnished wood.

  Only the black eyes moved as Quincannon approached him. They were shrewd, calculating. After a few seconds of scrutiny, his thin lips parted over as many gold teeth as white in a wily grin.

  “Aloha,” he said.

  “Justo Gomez?”

  “Sure, that’s me.” The grin widened. “Man, you look like you just off some old pirate ship. All that brush you got on your face, somebody ever call you Blackbeard?”

  Gomez, it seemed, compensated for his small stature with an aggressive, bullying manner. The snotty rudeness was a splinter-like goad on Quincannon’s temper. He was proud of his whiskers; an insult to his facial hair was an assault on his self-esteem.

  He said sharply, “No one that ever lived to draw another breath.”

  The little man lost his grin. He swung his feet off the plank, stood up slowly. “What you want, haole? Some kine fella looks like you, dressed like you, ain’t interested in fishing.”

  “Information.”

  “You come to the wrong place,” Gomez said. “Justo sells bait, nets to catch fish. He doan sell information.”

  A single silver dollar would not have been enough to prime this one’s pump, and even if it had been, Quincannon was not inclined to part with any more bribe money. “I’m not buying,” he said.

  “You want it free? Hah. Justo doan give nothing away free.”

  “Tell me about Lonesome Jack Vereen.”

  Gomez’s only reaction to the name was a squint of one eye. “Who?”

  “Lonesome. Jack. Vereen.”

  “Never heard of nobody with that name.”

  “How about James A. Varner?”

  “Not him, neither.”

  “Don’t try my patience, Gomez,” Quincannon snapped. “You supplied him and his partner with a bungalow on Hoapili Street last week.”

  “… Who tole you that?”

  “Never mind who told me.”

  “Who are you, man? Some kine policeman?”

  “Close enough. A friend of George Fenner.”

  “That hewa.” Gomez shaped a spitting mouth to go with the epithet. “What you want from me, hey?”

  “I told you, information.”

  “Justo got nothing to tell you.”

  “I think you do.”

  “You crazy in the head. You want to know about those other two haoles, go talk to them.”

  “Vereen isn’t in Honolulu anymore. He went to the Big Island. I want to know why.”

  “How I gonna know why? Go away, haole. Justo doan want you in his shop.”

  Quincannon had reached the limit of his patience. He had dealt with swaggering crooks like Gomez before, and the only sure way to handle them was with a show of greater aggression. He fixed the half-caste with the basilisk glare that had been the bane of many a lawbreaker, swept the tail of his jacket aside so that his holstered Navy was visible, and stepped up close to the little man. Sight of the weapon widened the black eyes, caused them to wiggle in their sockets.

  “Hey,” he said, “what kine big gun you got there?”

  “You want me to show you, up close?”

  “No. No.”

  “Then answer my questions.” Quincannon tapped the Navy’s handle with his fingertips. “Tell me about Vereen.”

  Gomez seemed to be making an effort to swallow his Adam’s apple. “I doan know that name, only Varner.”

  “How do you know him?”

  “Him and the fat haole come in seven, eight days ago, looking for place to stay. Big kanaka waiwai, he send them.”

  “What does ‘kanaka waiwai’ mean?”

  “Rich fella. Friend of Justo’s.”

  “Stanton Millay.”

  “Sure. You know him, what you come to me for?”

  “I don’t know him, but I will before long,” Quincannon said. “Friend of yours, is he? What do you do to curry his favor, supply him with women?”

  “Hey, what you think Justo is?”

  “I know what Justo is. You supplied Vereen and his partner with women, too, didn’t you?”

  “I doan know what you talking about.”

  “The devil you don’t. Where and how did those two get together with Millay?”

  “I doan know.”

  The repetition of Gomez’s favorite phrase led Quincannon to lift the Navy partway out of its holster. He held it there meaningfully, then let it slide back down, but he kept his hand on the handle. And added a little more candlepower to the fierceness of his glare.

  Gomez’s eyes wiggled again and he said quickly, “Some kine place in San Francisco, that’s where they meet.”

  “What kind of business deal have they got cooking with Millay?”

  “I doan know. They doan tell Justo nothing.”

  “But you know there is a deal,” Quincannon prodded, “I can see it in your face. How do you know?”

  “Something I hear the fat haole say to the other one. That clock gonna make us rich, he say.”

  “Clock? W
hat kind of clock?”

  “Maybe not clock, maybe cloak. Justo ain’t sure.”

  “Does either mean anything to you?”

  Gomez wagged his head.

  “Is that all you overheard?”

  “That’s all. Other one shut him up quick, you bet.”

  Clock or cloak … neither seemed to fit the established pattern of a Vereen and Nagle swindle, though with those two anything was possible if there was enough profit to be had. Gomez’s eyes said he wasn’t lying, but he might have misheard.

  Quincannon said, “Did either of them say anything about an auohe?”

  “Auohe?”

  “You know what the word means.”

  “Sure, sure. Hidden place.”

  “Some sort of hidden place on the Big Island near the Millay ranch.”

  “I doan hear nothing like that.”

  “What about mention of the ranch or the Kona Coast?”

  Headshake.

  That was all Quincannon could or would get out of him. He stepped back, folded over the tail of his jacket to conceal the Navy again. Gomez let out a breath, then produced a dirty cloth that might once have been a handkerchief and smeared his face free of sweat.

  “You some kine bad fella,” he said then, not without a grudging measure of admiration. “What you gonna do to Vereen when you find him?”

  “Mayhap the same thing I’ll do to you if you tell anybody we had this little talk.”

  “I doan tell nobody. Not me.”

  “A wise decision.”

  “Poor Justo,” Gomez said mournfully. The little half-caste had decided to feel sorry for himself. “Got all kine pilikia nui. Wife, four children, police, now bad kine fella like you.”

  Quincannon had nothing to say to that. Without turning his back to poor Justo, he took himself out into the breathless afternoon.

  11

  SABINA

  She had most of the day to herself. Lyman had gone to his office at J. D. Spreckels and Brothers, Margaret to the school where she taught Hawaiian history, and both Kaipo and Alika had their household duties to attend to. Sabina would have welcomed the solitude under other circumstances. As it was, with John off on his grim mission, she was too restless to remain in the guesthouse awaiting his return.