Damned in Paradise

I thought for a second. “Joe, are the private dining rooms in use upstairs?”

“No. Earlier tonight, not now.”

“Where’s ‘Commander’ Bradford sitting?”

Joe pointed, and I moved through a haze of smoke past the Chinese woodwork of booths and the press of couples on the dance floor, weaving through the mostly kanaka crowd until I found Bradford, casual in white mufti but no tie, seated in a booth off the dance floor. He was with a woman whose name I didn’t recall but, from my previous visit to the Ala Wai, remembered as the wife of another officer. She was brunette and pleasantly plump and half in the bag.

“Good evening, Lieutenant,” I said.

Hollowly handsome Bradford, a drink in one hand, a smoke in the other, looked up; his face went from blank to annoyed to falsely affable. “Heller. Uh, Judy, this is Nate Heller, he was Clarence Darrow’s investigator.”

Pretty, pretty drunk Judy smiled and bobbled her head at me.

“Actually,” I said, “I still am.”

“You’re still what?” Bradford asked.

“Darrow’s investigator. Sentencing isn’t for a week; we’re tying up some loose ends before going to the governor for clemency.”

Bradford was nodding. “Slide in. Join us.”

I stayed where I was. “Actually, I wondered if I could have a word with you, in private.”

“Sure.” He shrugged, grinned, nodded out toward the packed dance floor where couples were clinched, swaying to the soothing three-part harmonies and seductive rhythms of the George Ku Trio. “But where would we do that, exactly?”

“I need to get a look at the private dining room upstairs, where Thalia crashed the Stockdale party. Maybe you could point it out, and we could use that for a private chat.”

He shrugged. “Okay. If you think it’d be helpful to the cause.”

“I think it would.”

He leaned forward and touched the brunette’s hand, which was tight around her glass. “Can you take care of yourself for a couple minutes, hon?” he asked.

She smiled and said something unintelligible that passed for “yes,” and then Bradford and I were wending our way through the crowd at the edge of the dance floor, heading for the front of the club. There were stairs to the mezzanine on either side; Bradford, carrying his drink in a water glass, was in the lead as we wandered toward the right.

“Don’t get the wrong idea about Judy,” Bradford said, looking back with a sickly grin. “Her husband Bob’s out on sub duty and she’s kinda lonely, needed some company.”

“I won’t.”

He frowned in confusion. “Won’t what?”

“Get the wrong idea.”

Up the stairs, past a few booths where couples cuddled and kissed and laughed and smoked and sipped their spiked Cokes, we came to the first of several small dining alcoves, not unlike the one at Lau Yee Ching’s where I’d spoken earlier with Horace Ida.

“Which one was the Stockdale party in?” I asked him.

Bradford nodded toward the middle one, and I gestured like a gracious usher toward the door; he stepped inside, and I followed, shutting the door behind us.

The walls were pink and bare but for, at left, a small plaque of a gold dragon on a black background; straight ahead, a window looked out on the parking lot; a cheap version of a Chinese chandelier was centered over a small banquet table.

“This is where Thalia was,” I said, “when you came looking for her.”

“I wasn’t looking for her.” He shrugged, sipped his drink. “She was just here already when I stuck my head in. I was, you know, socializing, goin’ around the club, table-hoppin’.”

“I think you’d noticed what a bad mood Thalia was in,” I said. “And how drunk she was getting.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“You were concerned about her behavior. You were aware, that ever since you dropped her…I assume you dropped her, as opposed to her dropping you, but that is just an assumption…that she’d gotten involved with a rougher breed of boyfriend.”

He took a step toward me. “You’re supposed to be helping Tommie Massie.”

“You’re the one supposed to be his friend. I’m not the one who was fucking Thalia.”

He took a swing at me—in fairness, I should point out he might have been a little drunk—but I ducked it easily and threw a hard right hand into the pit of his stomach. He doubled over, reflexively tossing his water glass—it shattered against the left wall, splashing the dragon—and went down on all fours and crawled around like a dog, retching. What he puked up was mostly beer, but some kind of supper was in there, too, and it made an immediate awful stink.

I went over and opened the window; a breeze wafted in some fresh air. “What was it about, Jimmy? Did you want Thalia to dump her native musician boyfriend, and come back to you? Or did you just want her to be more discreet?”

He was still on all fours. “You fucker. I’ll kill you, you fucker…”