“And Joe wasn’t convicted on no robbery beef, either,” Ida was saying.
“He wasn’t?”
Ida shook his head, no; we were passing by another park—according to a wooden sign, Queen Emma Park. “Joe loaned some money to this friend of his, Toyoko Fukunaga. Fukunaga owe Joe this money too long, and wouldn’t pay. After time, Big Joe shake the cash outa Fukunaga, and Fukunaga file a complaint. They have trial, but jury can’t make up their mind.”
These guys seemed to inspire hung juries.
“DA say they skip ’nother trial if Joe plead guilty on assault and battery,” Ida continued. “He do thirty days.”
So Big Joe Kahahawai’s criminal record consisted of a disagreement between him and a friend over a debt.
A rambling country club clubhouse marked the spot where the streetcar line ended, and private residences began to thin out to nothing as the valley road began to wind. Ida took a fork to the right, about a mile past the country club, and we sailed along the bank of a stream, briefly, before the road plunged into a tunnel of trees, shutting out the moonlight.
I was getting uneasy again. “Where are you taking me, Shorty?”
“We see Pali,” he said, as if that meant anything to me.
The eucalyptus-tree forest gave way to sheer ridges of stone, and the sides of the valley seemed to gradually close in on us as we climbed. My ears were popping. The air had turned chill, the wind kicking up.
“Gettin’ a little cold, isn’t it?” I asked. “You wanna put the top up on this buggy?”
Ida shook his head no. “Pali might rip canvas top right off.”
What was Pali, a goddamn Cyclops?
“Who the hell is Pali?” I growled.
“Pali is cliff,” Ida said, “where Kamehameha and warriors drive Kalanikupule’s warriors back over edge. Long drop.”
From the backseat came Henry Chang’s helpful voice: “Two-
“It’s thoughtful of you fellas to try to make me feel at home,” I said. “But maybe any more sight-seeing oughta wait till daylight…”
We had rounded a final curve and now a breathtaking panorama stretched out before us; the golden glow of the moon had been replaced by silver, and it was with this gleaming paintbrush that the greens and blues of the vista were touched, muted into an unreality like that of a hand-painted postcard, mountains, cliffs, bays, strands of coral, ivory endless sea under a starry black-blue dome. God, it was lovely. Christ, it was far down.
And shit, the wind! It was a cold howling gale up here, whipping hair, flapping clothing, flapping
“Get off car!” Ida yelled at me. These guys seemed to say “off” where a normal person would say “out”; but somehow it didn’t seem like the time for a semantic discussion.
And we all piled out, that nasty air current making fluttering human semaphore signals out of all our clothing, the dark flowered silk shirts flying like the absurd flags of several silly nations. My tie was a waggling tattletale tongue.
Suddenly Henry Chang was on one side of me, and Benny Ahakuelo on the other, and each gripped me just above either elbow. Ida was facing me, his pudgy face set in a stern fearsome mask, his black hair waving, whipping. David Takai stood just behind him, his slicked-back hair having more success against the wind than the rest of us, his flat face blank, dark stone eyes unreadable.
“Last December,” Ida shouted, “big buncha sailors grab me, haul my ass up here, wanna make me confess I rape that white woman.”
Ida began unbuttoning the shirt even as the silk flapped around his hands.
I glanced out at the view: rolling hills, the even lines of a pineapple plantation, cattle fields, rice paddies, banana-tree groves, and the seas striking, curling, foaming over the distant reef. All of it, silver in the moonlight. Lovely. I wondered how lovely it would look as I was windmilling through the air on my way to the rocks two thousand feet below.
Or was Henry Chang exaggerating? Was it only fifteen hundred feet?
Ida had the shirt off and he handed the fluttering garment to Takahi, who was attending him like a servant. Was Ida freeing himself up to administer me a beating? And I would have to take it; the other three could hold onto me and I’d just have to fucking take it….
But now, in the ivory bath of the moonlight, Ida’s surprisingly lean body revealed streaks of white scars, a sea of them, slashing his flesh, and he turned like a model showing off a new frock, and revealed a back that was even more brutally striped with welts that had graduated to scar tissue. He had been brutally whipped—front and back.
Then Ida wheeled, and he came very close to me, as Henry Chang and Benny Ahakuelo held me. Yelling to be heard over the gale, he said, “They work me over pretty good, whaddya think?”
“Not bad,” I managed.
“And I not confess. Bleed like hell, pass out after while, but goddamn,
Chin high, his proud point made, Ida held his hand out to his attendant Takai and took back his flapping garment, got it on, and buttoned up, despite the wind.
