indignation.”
“Well, I certainly appreciate you sharing this information with me, Dr. Porter.”
“I only hope ah’m not required to take the stand in this second trial. If ah have to get up and tell everything ah know, it’d be awful—it’d make monkeys out of everybody.”
A familiar raspy voice to one side of us said: “No fear of that, Dr. Porter.”
Darrow, his potbelly like a beach ball he was hiding under the top of his black bathing costume, pulled up a third chair and sat.
“In the first place,” Darrow said, “I’ve already suffered through one ‘monkey’ trial. In the second, I would never dream of calling you to the witness stand—you’re one of the two honest physicians I’ve ever met.”
I said to Porter, “And how many honest lawyers do you know, Doc?”
Porter’s only response was a little smile.
We kept our voices down; the continuing beach noise created privacy in this crowd.
Darrow asked, “Can I assume you’ve filled my young friend in on what you know, Doctor?”
Porter nodded.
Darrow fixed his gray gaze on me as he jerked a thumb toward Porter. “John here has provided some remarkable insights not only into the Ala Moana case, but the psychology of the various racial groups on Oahu. I’d imagine we’d be hard pressed to find another naval officer with the doctor’s intimate knowledge of Hawaii’s social strata.”
“You flatter me, Clarence,” Porter said.
Darrow turned his gaze on the doctor. “Now I must risk insulting you, John, because I need to ask you to withdraw from this little gathering—I need a few moments alone with my investigator.”
Porter rose, and in one graceful gesture swept his straw fedora from the table even as he gave a little half- bow. “I’ll be in the Coconut Grove, Clarence, enjoyin’ an iced tea.”
“Be sure to ask for sugar,” I told him. “It’s not automatic in this part of the world.”
Porter snugged on his hat and smiled. “Whereas a slice of pineapple, rather than lemon, is. These Island customs are curious. Good afternoon, Mistah Hellah.”
And Porter strolled inside.
“After hearing the doc’s story,” I asked, “have you changed your opinion about Thalia?”
Darrow’s smile was a wavy crease in his rumpled face. “I still find her a clever girl.”
“You just don’t believe her story.”
A grand shrug. “It’s not important that I believe her; it’s important that her mother and her husband
On the phone, I had told Darrow about my encounter last night with Horace Ida and company.
He leaned back in his chair, folded his hands on his round tummy. “You weren’t the only one that spent some time yesterday with Island luminaries. Know who Walter Dillingham is?”
“Somebody important enough around town to get a street named after him.”
“That’s his father’s street. Walter Dillingham is the president of a dozen companies, an officer or board member of a dozen or so more. He had me for luncheon yesterday at his home on Pacific Heights. Speaking for not only himself but the entire so-called
“So what?”
“So,” Darrow drawled, “if all those important rich white people think those boys are guilty, I figure there’s a damn good chance they aren’t.”
I nodded, relieved by Darrow’s line of thinking. “It’s starting to seem possible, maybe even probable, that those boys—including Joe Kahahawai, the man our clients murdered—didn’t abduct and attack Thalia Massie.”
His smile turned crooked. “I ascertain that those young fellows were apparently fairly convincing in last evening’s melodrama…but the fact remains, on the way to making their point, they did kidnap you.”
“Granted. But they had their reasons, and it sure got my attention. Are you going to see them? They desperately want to talk to you.”
He shook his shaggy head no. “Conflict of interest. Perhaps after Mrs. Fortescue, Lt. Massie, and the sailor boys are free, I might be able to meet with them—until then, simply not possible.”
“What if they grab me again?”
He grunted a laugh. “Those sweet innocent boys? Perish the thought.”
“Look, they’re Island roughnecks, slum kids, but I don’t think they’re rapists, and I don’t think you do, either, C.D. Hell, these damn police used identification methods abandoned half a century ago by any civilized police department.”
His expression turned mock curious. “When and where was it you encountered a civilized police department? I don’t remember ever having the pleasure.”
“You know what I mean. Three times, they dragged the defendants in front of Thalia, as good as telling her, ‘These are the parties we suspect, and we want you to ID ’em.’”
He was shaking his head, no. “The issue is not whether Joe Kahahawai was innocent or guilty. The real point to consider is that our clients
