Damned in Paradise

“You could always use that blacksnake,” I said, “if they won’t listen.”

Chang smiled gently. “They listen.”

Miraculously, the two men were sheepishly shaking hands, acknowledging that each was only trying to do his job.

“Mookini!” Chang called, and the round-faced cop, two heads taller than Chang, almost ran to him, stood with head bowed. “Too late to dig well when house is on fire. Go back to headquarters.”

“Yes, Detective Apana.”

And the copper and his summons went away.

The captain said, “Thank you, sir.”

Chang nodded.

The stateroom door opened and Tommie poked his head out. “Is everything all right, Captain Wortman?”

“Shipshape, Lieutenant.”

Tommie thanked him, nodded to me, and ducked back inside.

Chang walked me to my cabin.

I said, “Did you come aboard just to make sure that summons didn’t get served?”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps I come to say aloha to a friend.”

We shook hands, then we chatted for a while about that big family of his on Punchbowl Hill, and how he had no intention of ever retiring, and finally the “all ashore” call came and he bowed and started back down the corridor, snugging his Panama back on.

“No parting words of wisdom, Chang?”

The little man looked back at me; his eyes damn near twinkled, even the one surrounded by discolored knife- scarred tissue.

“Advice at end of case like medicine at dead man’s funeral,” he said, tipped his Panama, and was gone.

On the second night of the voyage home, leaning against the rail of the Malolo in my white dinner jacket, gazing at the silver shimmer of ocean, my arm around Isabel Bell, her blond wind-stirred hair whispering against my cheek as she snuggled to me, I tried to imagine myself back chasing pickpockets at LaSalle Street Station. I couldn’t quite picture it; but reality would catch up with me, soon enough. It always did.

“I heard you and Mr. Darrow talking,” Isabel said, “about you going to work for him.”

Our entire party—Tommie and Thalia, Mrs. Fortescue, Ruby and C.D., the Leisures, Isabel, and I—took meals together at one table in the ship’s dining room. One big happy family, even though Thalia hadn’t yet spoken to me. Or I to her, for that matter.

I said, “I’m hoping to work for C.D. full-time.”

“You’d leave the police department?”

“Yes.”

She snuggled closer. “That would be nice.”

“You approve of that?”

“Sure. I mean…that’s romantic. Important.”

“What is?”

“Being Clarence Darrow’s chief investigator.”

I didn’t pursue it, but I think she was trying to talk herself into thinking I might be somebody she could consider seeing, back home, at journey’s end, on solid ground. She was kidding herself, of course. I was still a working-class joe, and a working-class Jew, and only under the special circumstances of a shipboard romance could I ever measure up to social standards.

“Why is Thalo mad at you?” she asked.

“Is she?”

“Can’t you tell?”

“I don’t pay much attention to her. I got my eyes on a certain cousin of hers.”

She squeezed my arm. “Silly. Did something happen back there I don’t know about?”

“Back where?”

“Hawaii! I shouldn’t say this, but…I think she and Tommie are squabbling.”

I shrugged. “After what they been through, bound to be a little tension.”

“They’re in the cabin next to me.”

“And?”

“And I thought I heard things breaking. Like things were being thrown?”

“Ah. Wedded bliss.”

“Don’t you think two people could be happy? Forever, together?”