Damned in Paradise

“Mrs. Fortescue!” a reporter called. “What’s your reaction to the verdict?”

Her chin was, as usual, high; and there was a quaver in her voice, undercutting the casualness she affected: “I expected it. American womanhood means nothing in Honolulu, even to white people.”

Another reporter asked Tommie the same question.

“I’m not afraid of punishment,” he said, an arm around the sulky Thalia. “The Navy is behind us to a man.”

“Go Navy!” Jones said.

Lord nodded and said the same thing, shaking a fist in the air. You know what? I think I would rather pick my backup out of the crowd at a Wednesday night prayer meeting.

Another reporter called out: “How about you, Mr. Darrow? What’s your reaction?”

“Well,” Darrow said, gathering his briefcase and other things off the defense table, “I’m not a Navy man, but this does bring to mind a certain phrase: ‘We have not yet begun to fight.’”

“You beat the second-degree murder rap,” the reporter reminded him.

“The verdict is a stunning travesty on justice and on human nature,” he said, working up some steam. “I’m shocked and outraged. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

And as Chang Apana lead Darrow’s clients into the waiting arms of the Shore Patrol, C.D. turned and winked at me, before trundling out, along the way filling the ears of the reporters with more expressions of his surprise and disappointment at this gross miscarriage of justice.

I caught up with Chang in front of the courthouse. Flashbulbs were lighting up the night as the defendants were piled into two Navy cars; Thalia was allowed to ride back to Pearl with Tommie.

“Chang!”

The little cop in the Panama hat turned and cast his poker-faced gaze my way.

“What was that about this afternoon?” I asked him.

“I owe you apology, Nate.”

“You owe me an explanation.”

People were lingering in front of the courthouse. Kelley and Darrow had been buttonholed by reporters, and we were in the midst of a chattering crowd, mostly haole, mostly unhappy.

“This is no place to talk,” Chang said. “At later time.”

And he slipped away from me, into the crowd, stepping into a patrol car that pulled away from the curb, leaving me just another unhappy haole in the crowd.

That evening, I kept an appointment at Lau Yee Ching’s at Kuhio and Kalakaua Avenue, a sprawling, spotless pagoda palace that put any Chinese restaurant back home to shame. The beaming host, in black silk pajamas and slippers, asked if I had a reservation; I gave the name of the party I was joining and his face turned grave before he nodded and handed me over to a good-looking geisha.

The geisha, whose oval face was as lovely and expressionless as the white-painted women in the Chinese tapestries along the walls, was expecting me.

She was Horace Ida’s sister.

“My brother is innocent,” she whispered, and that was all either of us said as she led me through a fairly busy dining room that seemed more or less equally divided between tourists and locals, to a private dining alcove where her brother was waiting.

Then the geisha was gone, closing a door on us.

“Victory dinner, Shorty?” I asked, sitting across from him at a table that could have sat eight.

“We didn’t win anything today,” Ida said sourly. “That guy Kelley will prosecute us next.”

“Sure this place is safe? It’s hopping.”

A steaming plate of almond chop suey was on the linen-covered table; a bowl of rice, too; and a little pot of tea. Ida had already served himself and was digging in. There was a place setting waiting for me—silverware, not chopsticks like Ida was using.

“Reporters don’t bother tail me here,” he said, shrugging. “They know my sis works at Lau Yee’s, I eat here all the time, on the cuff.”

“Your sister sleeping with the owner?”

He glared at me; pointed with a chopstick. “She not that kinda girl. I don’t like that kinda talk. Her boss believes in us.”

“Us?”

“Ala Moana boys. Lotta Chinese and Hawaiian merchants put up dough for our defense, you know.”

“That’s the rumor I heard. Of course, this is an island full of rumors.”

This meeting was my idea; I had let him pick the place, as long as it wasn’t the damn Pali. I’d wanted somewhere public, but not too public. Neither one of us wanted to be seen together, particularly by the press. Officially, we were in opposing camps.

“Rumors like the story that you fellas got blamed for what some other carload of boys did,” I said. “It’s all over the Island…but nobody seems to know who these invisible men are.”

Ida, mouth full of almond chop suey, chuckled. “If I know who really do it, you think I wouldn’t say?”