AN UNMARKED CAR followed the taxi I took from police headquarters to the hotel. They were so obvious about it that even the driver caught on before we were halfway there, and he kept looking in the rear-view mirror, sometimes at the surveillance car, sometimes at me. Far from enjoying the drama of the moment, it made him nervous and he snatched the fare and took off without thanking me for the tip.
Bridges’ boys pulled in right behind and watched me as I went into the hotel. The car they were using was so plain a car, in colorful Hawaii, that only a fool could fail to recognize it and take its two burly occupants for plainclothes cops. True to his word, Bridges was making it hard for me, and it could only get worse.
I like to tip well because I know what these people make, but this time the desk clerk didn’t smile when I asked for my key. Instead, he said the manager wanted to see me, and I didn’t have to guess what about. That could be more of Bridges’ work, or the manager might be doing it on his own bat; it didn’t matter; I wasn’t welcome anymore. He was apologetic but firm and there was no point getting mad at the fat Chinese-Hawaiian who ran the place. After all I had been taken away by the police and the fact that I was back didn’t mean I was innocent of whatever it was I was supposed to have done. Naturally the manager said none of that, but it was what he was thinking. Fuck Captain Bridges, I thought.
“We want no trouble, Mr. Rainey,” the manager said.
“That’s okay,” I told him. “I’ll check out in the morning.”
In my room I fixed a drink and sat down, still mad at Bridges, to go over what had happened. Some cops are relentless and this one was: it was enough for him that I might be involved in the bombing of the hospital. To be considered capable of such a horrible thing came as a shock, but then Bridges didn’t know me at all and his conviction that all mercs were low-lives must have made me seem a likely suspect. If I proved to be innocent, then no serious harm was done: that was how the bastard would look at it, and I wondered how many lives he had ruined in his pursuit of the ungodly.
Of course I knew why he had turned me loose and why he was putting on the screws. I was supposed to panic and run, to lose my surveillance; that was when the real surveillance, the second team, would take over. Sometimes these old dodges work or the cops wouldn’t keep going back to them. I’d run and they’d run and when I slowed down they’d do the same, hoping to be led to the right place and to the right people.
I had another drink and switched on the seven o’clock news and even with the drinks in me I was chilled by what I saw. All day they had been working in the rubble of the hospital and bodies still were being carried out as cranes lifted the steel girders and massive concrete slabs that had been a children’s hospital. The television cameras moved around, not forgetting an occasional pretty girl, and on the faces of all present was the same shock I felt myself, and I thought: These terrorists, how do they get that way, what makes them do it?
The governor had rushed back from a San Francisco conference and was there on the scene. Interviewed, he said it was the most shocking outrage in the entire history of the United States. I agreed with him: it was. Nothing was said about the Hawaiian Liberation Army, though this group, still unknown to the public, had gone one better than all the other terror groups: they had committed the ultimate crime, and I thought that’s how it goes: to capture the world’s attention in an age of horrors you have to do something really spectacular.
Some state official gave it as his opinion that this was the work of one man: the man who drove the stolen ambulance and killed the security guard, the man who was seen running away. A senior state police officer said the entire state law enforcement apparatus was moving into high gear and there were several good leads which he was not prepared to discuss at the present time. There was no cause for alarm since this appeared to be an isolated incident and the culprit was sure to be caught with dispatch.
Listen good, all you tourists, I thought. But I knew in my bones that they’d never get away with the cover-up. Blue Hawaii just wasn’t equipped to deal with terror groups, and ignoring this particular group would make its members all the more vicious. They’re like that, these publicity hungry bastards: to them terror is a media event; they are the rock stars of the far left. The IRA kills Lord Mountbatten and some greasy Turk with a St. Tropez look tries to knock off the Pope. I had to admit that the children’s hospital number was a show stopper, but where was the recognition? It was like Mick Jagger dropping his pants with the lights out.
A little drunk now, I could picture the boys and girls of the HLA glowering at the TV set in their headquarters, with automatic weapons stacked in the corner and pot smoke in the air, vowing vengeance on the Establishment because credit for their spectacular was being given to this lone “maniac.” And that was why I thought Bridges’ bosses were making a terrible mistake with their half-assed cover-up. The terrorists would be pissed and so they would plan something worse, though it was hard to imagine what that would be. A bigger hospital maybe? No, they wouldn’t try that because from now on all hospitals would be too heavily guarded. I was just noddling around with this idea, you understand, but there was some sound thought there—and never mind the sour mash I’d been drinking.
Having started at the top, they could only go on from there. I was sure of it: they would try something worse.
If I have a good name it had been dirtied and the only way to get it clean again was to do it myself. Because even if the police got lucky and they caught the entire HLA membership with one cast of the net, there was a good chance that nobody would get around to clearing me of the original suspicion. I didn’t want to live the rest of my life with people whispering: That’s Rainey, the guy who had something to do with the Hawaiian Liberation Army, the time they killed all those kids in Honolulu. He got out of it but that’s because he was smarter and more experienced than the others. That guy knows how to cover his tracks, the sneaky fuck.
Bridges hated mercs and so this new charge against me would go into his file and stay there if I didn’t take some action. I couldn’t hire a press agent, I couldn’t take a full-page ad in the New York Times; my image refurbishing would have to be done with a gun. I couldn’t kill all of them, but I could kill some of them. The important thing was to kill or capture those at the top, the ones who planned it. If they killed me, then nothing was lost.
My room faced the street and I could see the two cops sitting in the unmarked car. Others would be watching the back and by now they were sure to have somebody in the hotel, probably at the desk or hiding behind room service. But no matter how good they thought they were, I could lose them, the first and second surveillance teams, and even a third presented no special problem. I had done it before, and with better men than these guys.
But not tonight. Never run without a plan unless somebody is shooting at you. I hadn’t decided on my next accommodations and there was no reason why I should make it interesting for Captain Bridges. It didn’t have to be a hotel or motel; officially I was a free man unless I tried to make a dash for the Mainland.
I would need a good handgun, but I couldn’t see any difficulty there. In the travel folders Honolulu may be all blue skies and brown-skinned girls doing the hula; there is another side of it, just as there is to Miami. Its underworld is one of the most vicious in the world.
The Hotel Nani is in the Kapalama Heights district, a long way from Waikiki or any other beach. Pearl Harbor and Hickham Air Base are no great distance away from the Heights, and there is a good view of both. I hate the damned beach except for a swim, and that’s why I had chosen to stay at the Nani in the Heights, a quiet area compared to many other parts of the city. My next move would be downtown, where the action was, and where I had a plan for losing Bridges’ boys without having to use any rough stuff. If it worked, I would just walk away and they wouldn’t know it till later. As late as possible, I hoped.
I was feeling better now that I knew what I was going to do. The surveillance car was still parked out front and I hoped they would have an uncomfortable night of it, not that I have any special dislike of cops. They are a fine body of men and much to be admired when they do their jobs right, keep their fingers out of other peoples’ pockets and don’t make up the rules as they go along.
It was night now and there wasn’t much else to do but eat and go to bed. A steak and baked potato and a bottle of Pearl beer came from room service, delivered by one of the usual waiters and not some cop in a false beard.
“Compliments of management,” the Filipino waiter said.
I gave him a five and he smiled. A little guy with shiny black hair and narrow shoulders, he didn’t look as if he got enough to eat himself. Half the Filipinos in Honolulu are illegals and they sweat them good. This one hesitated before he wheeled out his cart. Then he said, “Cops in kitchen asking questions about you. They want to know everything you do.”
“And what did you tell them?” I asked.
He looked surprised. “Me, I don’t tell the son of bitches nothing. The manager tell them everything. He is a son of a bitch too.”
“Yeah,” I said. “There sure are a lot of sons of bitches in the world.”
“Ah, is not so bad, mister. You cheer up.” He grinned and went out.
I ate and went to bed and during the night the HLA flew over the city in a light plane and showered it with Xeroxed sheets claiming responsibility for the hospital bombing. They were all over the street when I got up the next morning, packed and went out to catch a cab. It was early and the sanitation department hadn’t got around to that part of town. I picked one up and there it was in big black letters:
FREEDOM THROUGH TERROR! TOTAL WAR!
It was long and shrill and at times it rambled as these things sometimes do. Whatever else it was, it was frightening, and if it frightened me, then it must have had the powers that be pissing in their pants. The writer or writers—these things usually are produced by committees—compared the bombing of the hospital to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and claimed that it had been necessary: a way of saving lives in the future. The gist of it was: see what we do for openers. It can only get worse, if the Yankees don’t go home. It warned of another “political act” within thirty days unless some progress was made toward returning “the kingdom of Hawaii to its native people.” It was “signed” by the Soldiers of the Hawaiian Liberation Army.
I read it in the cab on the way to the Bishop Street Hotel, a place I’d seen on my walks through the old part of the city. Bishop runs right down to the harbor and there must be two bars to every block. A few of them have music and dancing so they can call themselves discotheques and stay open till four. The other bars have to close at two and until then the neighborhood is honky-tonk and it can be dangerous if you flash money or get careless about the people you drink with.
The driver shrugged when I gave him the address. He knew where it was and what it was: a tough joint with hookers in the lobby and the room clerk protected by a sheet of bulletproof glass with a slot to pass the money through. My friends the cops followed along and they must have been asking themselves: what is this guy up to now? As soon as Bridges got to the office they’d reach him with the radio, or maybe he’d given orders to do a patch-up to his home phone. Come to think of it, the son of a bitch must have been up half the night after the total war leaflets rained down over the city. Well, he couldn’t blame me for that no matter how hard he might try.
I checked into a forty-dollar-a-day room with a nice view of a brick wall. The bathroom must have been put in during Hawaii’s brief period of an independent republic in the 1890’s, when a bunch of Americans led by Sanford B. Dole grabbed the islands away from Queen Liliuokalani. There were cigarette burns in the carpet and the television set had a coat hanger antenna. In New York a dump like that would have fetched no more than twenty-five bucks. Here, in the most expensive state in the Union, it was about average.
To me, it was a start.
I went out as soon as I threw my suitcase on the bed. The bars were just opening and I went into the biggest and brassiest, one that looked as if it got a lot of G.I. and Navy trade. It smelled of the night before. A big place with a tiny dance floor and a stereo set-up to provide music. Behind the long bar were plastic pictures of Diamond Head, the surf at Waikiki, Douglas MacArthur, FDR, JFK, Ronald Reagan and Don Ho. Along with the pictures were old World War II overseas caps and tinpot helmets, a Springfield rifle without a bolt, a sign that said REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR. Underneath the legend someone had scrawled HOW COULD I FORGET IT. The name of the place was The Brig.
A few early morning drinkers were there and everybody was talking about the HLA. It must have been like that all over town. One guy who was trying to cure the shakes said MacArthur would know how to deal with fuckers like that. Only one bartender was on duty at that hour and he gave me a cold beer and a glum look. I stayed there for one beer, then went down to a sailor place on the waterfront and had breakfast. My friends the cops left their car and followed me on foot.
I had a whole day ahead of me and I killed part of it by taking the US Navy shuttle boat out to the Arizona memorial. It runs every half hour between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. I thought of the 1,102 men entombed in the old hulk and I thought of the Hawaiian Liberation Army. The two cops walked around pretending to be interested. We went back together on the same boat.
That night two new cops were in the car when I went to The Brig a few minutes after ten. One was dozing and the other woke him up. He jerked upright behind the wheel when his partner dug him in the ribs. I’d hate to be a surveillance cop. I don’t know how they can stand the boredom and the sandwiches and the coffee. Not that I wasn’t bored myself. Killing time can be a bitch especially when you know exactly what you are going to do.
The Brig wasn’t in full swing yet, but it was getting there, with a good crowd at the tables and the bar and more people coming in. Disco music was thudding, but only one couple was on the floor, a dispirited looking hooker and a sailor with a load on. All the sailor could do was stagger and snap his fingers in a parody of the real swinger, and although the hooker knew the steps she went through them like a zombie. Most of the drinkers at the bar were G.I.s or sailors. This was a beer drinking crowd and at two dollars a bottle the house was doing pretty good.
I found a place for myself and ordered a bottle of Bud. The guy who had been touting MacArthur as a remedy for terrorism was still there or had come back. He was over his shakes and was working on a new set of tremors. I waited to see if the two cops would follow me in. They didn’t. The only one there who took any notice of me was the bouncer and he kept his eye on me because he thought I might be a cop or a plainclothes military policeman. He looked like an ex-wrestler, not very tall but packed with solid fat, the sort of bruiser who could bull a troublemaker out the door with his weight. This was his territory and given time it might be possible to do business with him, but I didn’t have time to earn his trust.
What I wanted was an army uniform with sergeant’s stripes on it. At my age I couldn’t be anything less than a sergeant. I could get along without the stripes. It would be better if I had them. People look at the uniform rather than the man, that is, unless they know his face and respond to that. The surveillance cops knew my face, but not in a familiar way. Anyway, the peak of the cap would hide some of my face and it would be turned the other way. I had done it before and it had worked then.
The man I wanted to do business with was a G.I. gangster, one of those petty crooks and racketeers you find in every outfit. If I didn’t find such a character in The Brig, then the army wasn’t what it used to be. Guys like that are into every scam: shy-locking, dope, theft of military property. Nearly all of them are sergeants because sergeants are the real managers of the army and only a very young or very unwise officer thinks otherwise.
I knew I had found my man when I got talking to a small foxy-faced noncom who came in about eleven, stood next to me at the bar and ordered a double shot of Ambassador scotch. Now maybe he had been saving up for that double belt. I didn’t think so after he called for the same again and treated himself to an expensive cigar and smoked it only halfway down before he threw it away. Here was a career soldier living the good life on a first sergeant’s pay.
These guys are always looking for a new connection. I guess he thought I might be it, though it was obvious that he wasn’t going to say anything that might land him in the stockade. While he sized me up—good clothes, good wristwatch—he knocked back another Ambassador.
Finally he said in an Arkansas twang, “Haven’t seen you in here before? You sorta look like a guy I used to know, gosh I don’t know, maybe ten, fifteen years ago. Fort Benning. Joe Clegg. You wouldn’t be him, by any chance?”
I can be false folksy when I want to be. After all I do come from East Texas and my people were country people come to the city.
“Sorry,” I said. “Been to Benning though. Had some good times there. Good times in a lot of places. Got out after Nam. You stayed in, huh?”
This bird was working on his second cigar. It probably cost a couple of dollars. Now he took a draw on it and blew smoke toward the ceiling. Here was a feller that had learned to appreciate the finer things.
“Army’s been good to me,” he said. “I wouldn’t think of leaving my happy home. Mind if I enquire what you do these days? Time will come when I’m too old to serve my country—unhappy thought—and I’m always interested in how other guys handle their situation.”
“Mostly I buy and sell,” I told him. “A little of this, a little of that. I manage to keep my head above water.”
He was a little drunk, but foxy as his face for all that. I would have to be careful not to scare him off. If he smelled Army CID he’d start talking about the weather or the best way to make spoonbread.
“I’m a good swimmer myself. Incidentally, my name is Fred Pincus and since you ain’t Joe Clegg, you must be somebody else.”
He laughed at that.
“J.T. Irwin is who I am, Fred. The J.T. stands for Jackson Tolliver.”
We shook hands and my pal Fred Pincus insisted on buying me the drink of my choice. I got my Jack Daniel’s and we clinked glasses, two good ol’ boys far from home.
We got along famously after that and when I mentioned some famous G.I. crooks in Vietnam, it turned out that he knew every one of them, some personally, some by reputation.
“That was a beautiful war,” he said. “Why did it have to end so soon? Of course not so good for the poor guys had to do the fighting, but for us guys in supply it was a honey.”
I bought the next round and his eyes lit up when he saw the kind of money I was carrying. This character had to be a rich man. Makes no difference, there is no limit to true greed.
When I finally asked him about the uniform he didn’t do anything but grin. No panic, no backing off. These guys can smell cop and he didn’t smell any on me. I think he was more curious than concerned.
He said, “I don’t know what you want it for and don’t tell me. Army payrolls have been stolen by men in uniforms they ain’t entitled to wear, not that you ain’t entitled, in a manner of speaking. Hush now, don’t tell me. But I have to tell you something; it’s going to cost you.”
I nodded. “Whatever is right, Fred.”
“You could get one for a lot less than I have to charge you. Could even get yourself fixed up at an army-navy store. More or less, that is. But you’re in a hurry, right? Anything else you need?”
“A regulation forty-five with an extra clip.”
“How much of a hurry for this merchandise?”
“Right now, Fred.”
He whistled. “That’s a tall order, J.T. I don’t know I can fill it on such short notice.”
“A guy like you, sure you can. Name a price, boy.”
“Fifteen hundred dollars,” he said promptly. “I think that’s a fair price seeing that it’s a super rush order and all. I don’t know that you’d be accommodated anyplace in Honolulu this time of the night.”
“A deal, Fred.”
“You ain’t said where you want to be fitted with this uniform. You want it to fit right, don’t you?”
“Bring it here. I’m standard for my height. I’ll trust your judgment. Can you make it fast? Like inside an hour?”
“Jesus man, you don’t ask much, do you?”
“Can you do it, Fred?”
“I can do it, but I don’t like it.”
I promised him another hundred for extra fast service and he took off after he swallowed the last of his gentleman’s scotch. Maybe I was kissing a lot of money goodbye. I didn’t think so. Pro crooks have their code and I might want to do business in the future. I hoped I was a good judge of bad characters.
I edged over to the door and sneaked a look at my favorite cops. They were still there in the nondescript car. I went back to the bar and waited for Fred to get back.
It took him more than an hour but he came through for me, arriving forty-five minutes late carrying a canvas carryall and looking pleased with himself. He set the bag down between us and said he had another pressing engagement. I could see his point. I might be big trouble. If he had known how big a trouble, he would have turned white.
I changed in one of the stalls in the men’s room. The uniform was a fair enough fit. It would do. I wasn’t going to wear it as part of an honor guard.
I checked the forty-five and it looked all right. So far, so good.
When I was ready to leave I stuffed my clothes and the canvas bag into the trash bin and covered everything with soiled paper towels. The trash bin had a hinged top so the clothes and the bag might not be found until morning when the porter cleaned up.
With the forty-five in my belt I went out into the dark, smoky bar to find myself a hooker. In The Brig they were as the leaves on the trees.
She was a passable looking blonde and had no objection to my slurred speech and slightly drunken gait.
“I want to dance lying down,” I mumbled.
“Dance anyway you like, darling,” she told me. “It’s fifty dollars for a short time. Longer than that we can talk price. Here, honey, let me help you.”
We started for the door.