Damned in Paradise

She didn’t smile at that. “You were giving Mrs. Massie hard time today.”

“That’s my job.”

“Giving her hard time?”

I shook my head, no. “Trying to shake the truth out of her.”

“You think she lying?”

“No.”

“You think she telling truth?”

“No.”

She frowned. “What, then?”

“I don’t think anything—yet. I’m just starting to sort through things. I’m a detective. That’s what I do.”

“You haven’t made mind up?”

“No. But somebody did do something to your boss lady. I mean, she didn’t break her own jaw. She didn’t rape herself.”

She thought about that. Sipped her drink. “Crimes like that don’t happen here. Violence—it not Hawaiian. They a gentle race. Tame like dog or cat in house.”

“Well, only two of these dogs were Hawaiians. One cat was Japanese.”

Something flickered in her eyes, like a fire that momentarily flared up. “Two are Hawaiian. The Chinese boy, he half-Hawaiian. This not a crime that make sense, here. Rape.”

“Why not?”

“Because girls here…” She shrugged. “…you don’t have to force them.”

“You mean, all you have to do is buy ’em a Coke? Maybe put a little rum in it? And you’re home free?”

That made her smile, a little; like I’d tickled her feet.

But then, like the flare-up in her eyes, it disappeared. “No, Nate. That not it…hard to explain to mainlander.”

“I’m a quick learner.”

“Before missionaries come, this friendly place. Even now, only rape you hear of is…what do you call it when the girl is underage?”

“Statutory rape?”

She nodded. “Young girls give in to older boys, then parents find out, or baby is on way…then you hear about ‘rape.’ Colored man forcing himself—on a white woman? Not happen here.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” I said. “Besides, are you telling me the racial line doesn’t get crossed under the sheets?” I nodded toward the polyglot parade of lust out on the dance floor. “What’s that, a mirage?”

“It get crossed,” she said. “Beach boys—Hawaiian boys who teach surf at hotel beach? Their pupils usually female tourists, sometimes lonely Navy wives…but this sex is, what’s word?”

“Consenting.”

She nodded.

“Is that what you think? Your boss lady had a fling with a beach boy and it got out of hand? And she concocted a story that—”

“Didn’t say that. You must…you must think I’m terrible.”

“I think you’re a livin’ doll.”

She avoided my fond gaze. “But terrible person. Traitor to employer.”

I shrugged my eyebrows, sipped my spiked Coke. “I don’t think a rich person paying a servant a few bucks a week buys any great sort of loyalty. If it did, guys like me couldn’t ever get the dirt on anybody.”

“You honest man.”

I almost choked on the Coke. “What?”

“You say what you think. You don’t hide nothing.”

Often I hid everything, but I said, “That’s right.”

“Will you dance with me?”

“Sure.”

The Happy Farmers had just begun “Love Letters in the Sand,” and the steel guitar was pretty heavy on this one, and as I held Beatrice near to me, the fragrance of the flower in her hair made me giddy—or was it the rum?

“I thought you might not come,” she said, “because of Miss Bell.”

“We’re just friends, Isabel and me.”

“She told her cousin you sweethearts.”