Damned in Paradise

“The time discrepancy.”

Another flinch of the mouth. “There is no time discrepancy.”

“I’m afraid there is. The activities of the five rapists are fairly well charted—we know, for example, that at thirty-seven minutes past midnight, they were involved in the accident and scuffle that made them candidates for suspicion in the first place.”

“I left the Ala Wai Inn at eleven thirty-five, Mr. Heller.”

“That’s a pretty exact time. Did you look at your watch?”

“I wasn’t wearing a watch, but some friends of mine left the dance at eleven-thirty and I left about five minutes after they did. My friend told me later that she had looked at her watch and it’d been eleven-thirty when they left.”

“But your statement that night said you left between half past midnight and one.”

“I must have been mistaken.”

“And if you did leave between half past midnight and one, those boys didn’t have time to get from the intersection of North King Street and Dillingham Boulevard, where the minor accident and scuffle took place…”

“I told you,” she said, rising, “I must have been mistaken, at first.”

“Your memory improved, you mean.”

She whipped the sunglasses off; her grayish-blue eyes, normally protuberant, were tight and narrow. “Mr. Heller, when I was questioned that night, in those early morning hours, I was in a state of shock, and later, under sedation. Is it any wonder that I saw things more clearly, later on? Isabel—come along. Beatrice.”

And Thalia moved away from the table, as Isabel gave me a withering look—two parts disgust, one part disappointment—and Beatrice followed. I noticed the maid had left her little purse behind and I started to say something, but she signaled me not to with the slightest shake of the head.

When they were gone, I sat there wondering, waiting for Beatrice to tell her mistress that she had to go fetch something she’d forgotten.

And soon she was back, picking up the purse and whispering, “I have tonight off. Meet me at Waikiki Park at eight-thirty.”

Then she was gone.

Well. Hotcha.

Looked like even with Isabel mad at me, I still had a date tonight.

9

The gentle rustle of palms and the exotic fragrance of night-blooming cereus gave way to the insistent honk of auto horns and the pungent aroma of chop suey as quietly residential Kalakaua Avenue turned suddenly, noisily, commercial. And even the star-flung black velvet sky and its golden moon were eclipsed by the glittering gaudy lights of Waikiki Amusement Park, engulfing the corner of Kalakaua and John Ena Road like a bright spreading rash.

Signs directed me to turn left on Ena for entry into the parking lot; across the way were shack-like businesses catering to the amusement park overflow, cheap cafes, a beauty parlor, a barbershop. Locals, kanakas and haoles alike, were walking along in the yellow glow of street-lamps, couples strolling the sidewalk hand in hand, drinking bottles of pop, nibbling sandwiches, licking ice cream cones; just a block or two down was the beach. A few native girls in their teens and twenties, looking both absurd and sexy in flapperish attire, were trolling for sailors and soldier boys; this was the sort of typically sleazy but seemingly safe area you might expect to find outside any amusement park.

I wheeled Mrs. Fortescue’s Durant roadster into the pretty nearly filled lot, in the shadow of a roller coaster, Ferris wheel, and motorcycle death loop. The music here wasn’t the Royal Hawaiian’s lazy steel guitar and ukulele mix designed to lull rich tourists away from their money: it was the familiar all-American song of the midway—bells dinging and kids screaming and the calliope call of a carousel. And this tune, too, was designed to part a fool from his money.

She was waiting around front, at the arcaded entrance on Kalakaua, just under the A of the looming white bulb waikiki park sign, leaning against an archway pillar, a cigarette poised in fingers whose nails were painted blood red. The white blouse and long dark skirt were gone, replaced by a clingy bare-armed tight-in-the-bodice knee-length Japanese silk dress, white with startling red blossoms that seemed to burst on the fabric; her shapely legs were bare above white sandals out of which peeked the red-painted nails of her toes; her mouth was lip-rouged the same bright red as the flowers on the dress; and a real red blossom was snugged in her ebony hair, just over her left ear. Only her white clutch purse remained of this morning’s mundane wardrobe.

“Mr. Heller,” she said, and her smile set her face aglow. “Nice see you.”

“Nice see you,” I said. “That dress is almost as pretty as you are.”

“I didn’t know if you show up,” she said.

“I never stand up pretty girls who ask me out.”

She drew on the cigarette, emitted a perfect round smoke ring from a perfect round kiss of a mouth. Then, smiling just a little, she said, “You flirting with me, Mr. Heller?”

“It’s Nate,” I said. “And with the way you look in that dress, any man with a pulse would flirt with you.”

She liked that. She gestured with her hand holding the cigarette. “You want smoke?”

“Naw. Might stunt my growth.”

“Don’t you got your full growth, Nate?”

“Not yet. But stick around.”

The white flash of her smile outshone the flickering lights and neons of Waikiki Park. I offered her my arm and