Lyman here, of course. Or his fat friend, either.
I was about to set off down another path when from the convergent paths that joined here, one by one, figures emerged. None was Lyman, but they were just as menacing: three dark men, pimps, bootleggers, the city council among this roughneck rabble perhaps, the men whose domain I had invaded.
Each had something in his hand—one a gleaming knife, another a blackjack, yet another a billy club. No unseemly repetition—variety…
A fourth man stepped into sight and it was Lyman. He had yet another weapon, a gun—not mine, his own, a revolver.
So he hadn’t made a break for it—he’d got reinforcements, got himself armed.
And come back for me.
Lyman had an awful grin; it would have been awful even without the holes I’d put in it with my forehead.
“You make mistake, cop,” Lyman said, “comin’ alone.”
The crack that split the air sounded like a gunshot, and the agonized cry that followed it might have been a bullet-wounded man’s; but it was something else entirely.
It was a blacksnake whip in the deft hands of a little old Chinaman in a white suit. His knife-scarred face looked ghostly and ghastly in the hell-fire glow, his lips pulled back over his teeth in a grimacing smile as he moved nimbly among them, sending the leather tongue stingingly after each man, tearing clothing and flesh, moving in a circular fashion like a lion tamer in a cage full of beasts, with speed, with grace, and red slashes of blood appeared on the front of this one, on the back of that one, even down the face of another of these much-larger-than-he men he was flaying, their shrieks as long and jagged as their wounds and just as terrible.
Lyman had got his taste of lash across his shirt, shearing it angularly, and his revolver had flown from his hand reflexively. But unlike the other men, who had fallen to their knees in pain and tears, Lyman again took off down a path.
I took off after him.
This time he was headed for the road, for Ala Moana Boulevard where now only a few cars were parked, Chang’s among them; none of them must’ve been Lyman’s, because he headed straight across the road, into the thicket, and I was right behind him, as we both went into and through the undergrowth, snapping branches, shearing leaves, crunching twigs, and then we both burst through the brush, onto the beach, no white sand here, just a short rocky slope to an ocean that stretched in an endless ice blue shimmer, the tiny moon slice throwing silver highlights.
He probably figured he could follow the beach to nearby Kewalo Basin, where the sampans were docked, where he could find some kind of boat and elude capture once more.
Not tonight.
I tackled him and we both sailed toward the water, then plunged into its warm embrace, separating as we hit. We both got our footing on the sandy, rocky floor beneath us, water to our waists, but he was still in pain from that bloody gash on his chest and I slammed my fist into his bearded face with everything I had, hoping to hell I would break
The blow sent him reeling back, and he fell backward into and under the water with a hell of a splash. I jumped after him, found him under there, breathing hard as I held the bastard under. When I felt him go limp, I hauled him by the arm and back of his shirt, up onto the shore, making no effort at all to protect him from the rocks I was dragging him over.
When I walked him through the thicket, he was like a man sleepwalking, guided largely by my steering him with my hand clutching a wad of the hair on the back of his head. We emerged, Lyman barely conscious as I guided him along, and I escorted him across the street, toward the handful of parked cars.
From the other side of them, where he’d been crouching, the fat man popped up like an unfriendly jack-in-the- box—with my gun in his hand….
The crack of the blacksnake was followed by the howl of the fat man, who would have one hell of a scar down his back for the rest of his life. My gun went sailing out of his hand and I caught it perfectly, with one hand, as if it were an act we’d both long rehearsed.
I tossed Lyman against the running board of the nearest parked car. He collapsed there, breathing hard, head hanging, shoulders hunched.
The fat man was running down the road, toward Honolulu, and Chang was out in the street, cracking the whip after him, not landing a blow but lending the runner further motivation.
I was soaking wet, exhausted, breathing hard, throbbing with pain, and exhilarated as hell.
Chang was smiling as he approached me; with an agile flip of his wrist, he caused the long tail of the whip to curl up in a circle, which he grasped.
“Shall we take suspect in?” he asked pleasantly.
“I don’t think that’s the way Charlie Chan would do it,” I said, nodding to the coiled-up whip.
“Hell with Charlie Chan,” he said.
And, blacksnake tucked under his arm, he snapped the cuffs on the groggy Lyman.
20
The following afternoon, Prosecutor John Kelley joined Clarence Darrow, George Leisure, and me in the outer sitting room of the Darrow suite. Kelley, in the same white linen suit he’d worn so frequently in court, was pacing. His ruddy face was redder than usual, his blue eyes darting.
“I don’t like it,” he said. “I don’t like it the least damn little bit.”
“John, please sit,” Darrow said gently, magnanimously gesturing to a place on the tropical-pattern sofa next to Leisure and me. Darrow, in shirtsleeves and suspenders, was sprawled in his easy chair, feet up on the settee, as
