“Not always.”
“What do you mean?”
“Isn’t that near where Thalia Massie was abducted?”
Leisure’s tour guide spiel suddenly stalled. He nodded gravely. Then he said, “Best not to forget why we’re here.”
“Hey, don’t let me spoil the party. I’m eatin’ up this sunshine and ocean spray, too.” I nodded toward the dazzling coastline. “But you know how sometimes a girl looks gorgeous from a distance? Then when you get close up—pockmarks and bad teeth.”
A shrill siren split the air, the sort of breathy whistle that might announce a shift change at a factory, or an air raid.
“What the hell…”
Leisure nodded toward the shore. “We’re being greeted—and announced. That’s the Aloha Tower’s siren, letting locals know it’s a ‘steamer day.’”
A clock tower did indeed loom above the harbor, like a beacon, ten stories’ worth of sleek white art deco spire, topped by an American flag. Not everyone on this ship was aware they were visiting a United States territory; I’d even overheard the ship’s purser being approached by one well-to-do imbecile wanting to exchange his U.S. currency for “Hawaiian money.”
When the whistle let up, Leisure said, “Can you see the word above the clock face?”
“No.”
“There’s actually a clock face on all four sides, and the word aloha is over each one. It means hello—and good-bye.”
“Who’s idea was that? Groucho Marx?”
The ship was slowing down; then it came to a stop, as several small launches drew up alongside it.
“What’s this about?” I asked Leisure.
The attorney shrugged. “Harbor pilot, health officers, customs officials, reps from various hotels booking rooms for any passengers that didn’t plan ahead. It’ll be at least another forty-five minutes before we dock.”
The mainland reporters who had traveled with us had long since given up on getting anything out of Darrow (other than anti-Prohibition spiels); but a small rabid pack of local newshounds, who had just clambered aboard, sniffed us out at the rail.
They wore straw fedoras and white shirts with no jackets, pads and pencils in hand, bright eyes and expectant white smiles in tanned faces. At first I thought they were natives, but on closer look, I could see they were white men, darkened by the sun.
“Mr. Darrow! Mr. Darrow!” were among the few words that could be culled from their overlapping questions. “Massie” and “Fortescue” were two more words I made out; also “rape” and “murder.” The rest was noise, a press conference in the Tower of Babel.
“Gentlemen!” Darrow said, in a courtroom-quieting fashion. He had stepped away from our little group, turning his back on the view of Honolulu’s white buildings peeking around the Aloha Tower. “I’ll make a brief statement, and then you will leave Mrs. Darrow and me to make our preparations to disembark.”
They quieted.
“I would like you kind gentlemen to do me the small favor of informing the citizens of Honolulu that I am here to defend my clients, not white supremacy. I have no intention of conducting this trial on a basis of race. Race prejudice is as abhorrent to me as the fanatics who practice it.”
“What will be the basis, then?” a reporter blurted. “The ‘unwritten law’ of a husband defending a wife’s honor?”
A smirk creased his face. “I have trouble enough keeping up with the laws that’ve been written down. Altogether too many of ’em, don’t you think, gentlemen? People can’t be expected to obey ’em all, when there’s such a surplus. In fact, I think the imminent removal of a certain law—I believe it’s known as the Volstead Act—is a case in point.”
Another reporter took the bait. “What do you think will be accomplished by the repeal of Prohibition?”
“I think it will be easier to get a drink,” Darrow said soberly.
One of the reporters, who hadn’t been taken in by Darrow’s shift of subject, hollered out, “Do you expect Mrs. Fortescue to be acquitted?”
He chuckled silently. “When did you last see an intelligent, handsome woman refused alimony, let alone convicted of murder? No more on this subject, gentlemen.”
And he turned his back to them, settling in next to Mrs. Darrow at the rail.
But a reporter tried again, anyway. “Are you aware your autobiography has been selling like hotcakes here in Honolulu? Looks like the locals are checking up on you, Mr. Darrow. Any comment?”
Darrow arched an eyebrow as he glanced back in mock surprise. “It’s still on sale here, is it? I would’ve thought it would be sold out by now!”
For perhaps ninety seconds they hurled more questions at his back, but the old boy ignored them, and the pack of hounds moved on.
Soon the ship had gotten under way again, shifting its nose toward the harbor, slowly making its way to the dock; from the starboard side, we had a fine view of the city, and it was bigger than I expected, and more contemporary—not exactly a scattering of grass huts. White modern buildings were clustered beneath green slopes dotted with homes, all against an unlikely backdrop of majestic mountains. It was as if a twentieth-century city had been dropped by mistake, from a plane perhaps, onto an exotic primordial isle.
Down the rail from us, other passengers were squealing and laughing; something more than just the scenic view was getting their attention. Isabel, noticing this, glanced at me, and I nodded, and we moved quickly down there to see what was going on.
Finding another place at the rail, we saw brown-skinned boys down below in the drink, treading water; others were diving off the approaching pier to join this floating assemblage. Silver coins flew through the air, flipped and pitched from passengers down from us a ways, the metal catching the sun and winking, then plinking into the amazingly clear blue water. You could actually see the coins tumbling down. Then the white soles of feet pointed skyward as the boys dived for the nickels and dimes.
Somebody tapped me on the shoulder.
It was a good-looking college kid we’d met in the Malolo’s indoor swimming pool the other day. In a setting fit for a Roman orgy, rife with Pompeian Etruscan columns and mosaic tile, the sharp-featured handsome kid had been swimming with quick authority and caught my—and Isabel’s—attention.
He must’ve seen us watching him, because he had finally come over and struck up a conversation. He wanted to meet Darrow, who was sitting on a marble bench nearby, fully clothed, watching pretty girls swim (Ruby was off with the Leisures someplace). The affable kid, toweling off his tanned muscular frame, had introduced himself to Darrow as a fellow Clarence and a prelaw student in California. He’d grown up on a pineapple plantation on Oahu and was taking a semester off to spend some time at home.
“With a name like Clarence you’ll never need a nickname,” Darrow had told him.
“Oh, I’ve got a nickname, and it’s sillier than Clarence,” the good-natured kid said.
And he had told us, and it was a silly nickname all right, and we’d all had a laugh over it, though we’d never run into the kid on the ship again—he wasn’t traveling first-class. Now here he was, interrupting my view of native boys diving for nickels.
“Would you do me a favor?” he asked. “I can’t ask any of these stuffy rich people, and you seem like a regular guy.”
“Sure.” If I’d said no, I’d have been denying being a “regular guy.”
And the son of a bitch began taking off his clothes.
Isabel had noticed, by now, and was smiling with pleasure as the damn Adonis stripped to red swim trunks.
“Be a pal and keep these for me,” he said. “I’ll catch up with you up on the dock.”
And he thrust the bundle of shirt, pants, shoes, and socks into my arms, stepping out onto the deck just behind the passengers ogling the native divers.