Damned in Paradise

“I did not make table,” Chang said, lighting up a fresh cigarette. “But I provide makings.”

“This is all stuff Chang confiscated in Chinatown gambling raids,” Jardine said, with a nod toward the black and white dragon. “Like to see Charlie Chan go wading into that crowd.”

“Detective Jardine is too generous with praise,” Chang said. But he obviously was eating it up.

The secretary brought me the coffee. I thanked her and we exchanged smiles and I watched the hula sway of her hips as she wandered back to her desk, efficient but in no hurry. Hawaii was the most distracting damn place.

“So, Detective Jardine,” I said, “whose side are you on? Besides your own…in the Massie case, I mean.”

His mouth twitched; his hawkish face remained otherwise blank, though his eyes were sharp as needles. “I do my job. Gather evidence. Report what I see. It’s not up to me who gets prosecuted.”

“Would you have prosecuted the Ala Moana boys?”

Another twitch. He exhaled smoke. “Not without a better case.”

I sipped my coffee; it was hot and bitter and good. “Do you think they did it?”

A shrug. A deep suck-in on the cigarette. “I don’t know. There are some pretty persistent rumors floating around town that another gang was roving around that night.”

“Any leads on who they might be?”

Jardine shook his head, no. “But then we didn’t pursue any.”

Frowning thoughtfully, Chang said, “Something puzzling. There is saying on Islands—‘Hawaiians will talk.’”

“So I hear,” I said. “But nobody’s even whispering about who this second gang might be. What do you make of that?”

Jardine shrugged again, taking a sip of his coffee. “Maybe there is no second gang.”

Chang lifted a forefinger. “Confucius say, ‘Silence big sister of wisdom.’”

“You mean, anybody who knows who this second gang is,” I said, “is smart enough to keep quiet about it.”

“What happened to ‘Hawaiians will talk’?” Jardine asked grouchily.

I lifted a forefinger. “Capone say, ‘Bullet in head little brother of big mouth.’”

That made Chang smile. Smoke from the cigarette between his fingers drifted up like a question mark before his skeletal, knife-scarred face.

“Well,” Jardine said, “somebody took Thalia Massie to the old Animal Quarantine Station. I don’t know who it was or what they did to her, but she was there.”

“How do you know?”

“We found things of hers.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, remembering, “some beads.”

I had dismissed this, knowing how easily they could have been planted.

“A string of jade-colored beads,” Jardine said, “and some Parrot matches and Lucky Strike cigarettes Mrs. Massie identified as hers.”

“Her purse was found, too, wasn’t it?”

“A green leather purse, yes, but not by us. The Bellingers, the couple that Mrs. Massie flagged down for a ride after it happened, found the purse on the road, later, when they were on their way home.”

I sipped my coffee, said casually, “Weren’t you one of the first detectives to talk to Thalia? Weren’t you there that night, at the house in Manoa Valley?”

Jardine nodded. “She didn’t want to get medical attention, refused to go to the hospital, really put her foot down. Of course, I knew in a rape case how important a pelvic examination was. But she wouldn’t hear of it. Finally I convinced her husband, and he convinced her.”

“What sort of shape was Tommie in?”

“Pretty well in his cups.”

Chang said, “Tell Detective Heller about Lt. Bradford.”

Jardine frowned. “You read too much into that, Chang.”

“Tell him.”

I knew Bradford’s version of the “mix-up,” but was eager to hear the cops’ side. Strangely, Jardine seemed hesitant to get into this.

“Lt. Massie corroborated Bradford’s story,” Jardine said. “Bradford spent the evening at the Ala Wai Inn in Massie’s company. He’s not a suspect in the rape and beating.”

“But you did arrest him that night,” I said.

Jardine nodded. “For mopery. He was drunk, he had his fly open, he told us to go to hell when we pulled alongside him.”

“That gets you more than arrested in Chicago,” I said.

Jardine was stabbing his cigarette out in an ashtray that sat on one of the dragon’s limbs. “He told us we