Every floor of Honolulu hotels are skirted with outside balconies; there is no hallway.
“Go on,” said Jill, “she turned right.”
“Well, that’s all,” said Jake. “She turned to the right and went through the banister and fell four stories and got killed. The wood’s kind of rotten, and the banister is very weak. Well, it’s not weak now, it’s just not there. Rosy took it with her when she fell. She fell kind of straight and she landed on her—” He paused, lifted his shaggy eyebrows. “She landed sitting down, if you know what I mean.”
“And that’s all?” asked Jill. “Nobody’s going to do anything about it?”
“What can anybody do? It was an accident, and that’s all. She wasn’t important, so the cops ain’t breaking their necks to find out much more. They figure I’ll make the routine examination and turn in my report which is required of the hotel; I guess they figure I can do it as well as they can. Sometimes I think the cops are lazy; but don’t tell nobody that because they might libel me.”
“Maybe it was murder,” said Jill. “If it was it would make a very good chapter in my book. I would call it ‘The Corpse with Dirty Feet’.”
“Yeah; but it wasn’t murder,” said Jake. “It was just that Rosy got drunk and went right instead of left.” He scratched his bald head as though something was biting him. Jill winced at this. She squirmed a little herself and straightened her jacket. “But you can tag along while I make the check-up on the details,” he concluded.
“That means,” said Jill, “you think and hope this is murder just as much as I do. Else you wouldn’t take me. You don’t fool me at all.”
Jake was scratching his leg; he didn’t say anything.
Jake and Jill stood on the sidewalk out in front of the only theater in Honolulu which featured high-class vaudeville; most people in the Islands didn’t know that vaudeville was out of date, and they thought these stage acts were quite a thing. Jake and Jill were a sight: Jake with his baggy coat open showing his pink, tieless shirt; and Jill a head taller, all dressed up like a rich tourist. She wasn’t a tourist, she was an old resident.
“I’ll tell you why we’re here,” said Jake, “it was just a little idea of my own. There’s a guy in here that’s got an act. He does imitations and all that. He was on an amateur hour once in New York and, when he imitated Garbo and Sophie Tucker, people thought he was almost as good as Shiela Barrett. The thing is, he’s Hawaiian; started out by touring the States in an Hawaiian string trio. These Hawaiians, they’ve got high voices when they sing; they can hit notes like a woman does, and he found out he could imitate everybody he’d ever seen on the screen, so he broke away and got his own act. It’s a pretty good act and he finishes it by doing a yodel.”
“But what has that to do with Rosy?” Jill asked.
“Well, I saw this guy at the hotel a few times; he was always with Rosy. I thought that was kind of screwy, because once these Kanaka boys get in the dough, and they come back to the old home town, they try to pretend like they never saw Hell’s Half Acre, and don’t even know it exists. They get maybe a thousand or ten thousand in the bank and they think they’re rich, and they want to live at the good hotels; and they don’t want to know nobody they knew back in the old days when they was eating poi and were glad to get it.”
“And you saw this boy down at the hotel?”
Jake scratched his chin. “Yeah, and with Rosy. That’s the thing. Because this guy — he calls himself Prince Kalemi now — he’s married to a Spanish dancer that’s in an act here at the theater. She does an adagio with a Russian. Kind of a good looking number, I’d say she was. Kind of—”
A huge, handsome Hawaiian emerged suddenly from the little side door that, was next to the theater’s foyer. He was carrying sheet music under his arm. He was six feet, and he had kinky hair, which was plastered back; his eyes were brown and very large. From the cut of his high-waisted gray trousers, and his Hollywood pleated coat, you could see he didn’t want anybody to mistake him for a beach boy.
“Prince Kalemi,” said Jake.
“I heard you wanted to see me,” Kalemi said, coming up; he had a deep, husky voice. It was smooth and studied.
“Yeah,” said Jake. “I wanted to know what you were doing hanging around with Rose?”
Kalemi’s eyes flickered. He spoke softly. “I read of her death in this morning’s paper. I was awfully sorry. I used to be married to Rosy. About six years ago, that was. Naturally, when I finally arrived back in the Islands for this engagement, I went down to see her. That was how I happened to be in the hotel.”
Prince Kalemi’s reply was so smooth and convincing that Jake floundered for another question.
Jill said, “You had correspondence with Rose all those six years, young man?”
“Why, no ma’am; of course not.”
“Then how did you know where she lived?”
Kalemi looked tolerant. “I got in touch with friends at the Rizal dance hall. They told me. Rosy was a taxi dance girl then, too.”
Jake finally revived himself. “You’re married now, Kalemi? A nice little number, I hear.”
“Thank you,” said the Hawaiian. “Yes, it is true; and I know you are happy for me.”
“Indeed we are,” said Jill, gradually being impressed with the Adonis build of the brute.
Jake glared at her.
When Prince Kalemi had gone, Jake said, “I’ll tell you what. We’ll take a walk over to the city hall; then we’ll go back to the hotel. There was a sailor that Rosy was in love with, and he’ll be there. Rosy roomed with another taxi dance girl. We’ll talk to her too. Just routine stuff, of course. You can come if you want to.”
“This city hall business,” Jill said. “You must have an idea.”
Jake didn’t say anything.
It was five o’clock, and the sun was very hot still. Jake and Jill had been asking questions of the people in Hell Acre Hotel, and now they were walking along the fourth floor balcony where there was no rail, because Rosy had taken the whole side of the place with her when she plunged. Jake knocked on the door of the room in which Rosy had once lived.
A tall, thin girl opened the door. She was garbed in a print dress, and wore no stockings. She was half-Hawaiian, and her legs and arms were very brown; her face looked better because she wore a lot of rouge to play down the thickness of her lips. She had warm eyes, but they looked kind of tired.
“This is Gertrude,” Jake said. “She and Rosy were friends. Anyway, they saved rent by living in the same room.”
“Yeah, that’s what we did,” said Gertrude.
Jake and Jill entered. There was a sailor in the room, sitting on a day cot looking at funny papers. He glanced up now. He was fairly handsome; but he hadn’t shaven today. He wore whites, and they were fresh and clean. He had short-clipped black hair; and on his arm there was the rate of yeoman.
“This is Barney,” said Jake. “He was Rosy’s boy friend.”
“That I was,” Barney said, “and I think it’s a stinking shame this hotel can’t have strong enough guard rails to hold people when they get crocked. By Gawd, if I was married to Rosy and had some legal right, I’d sue the pants off this joint.”
Jake scratched his bald head, and lifted his shaggy eyebrows. Jill was regarding the pair through her lorgnette.
Gertrude pointed at it. “You know,” she said, “I always wanted one of those hinkeys.”