The refusal was met with a flicker of relief. Fenner filled the coconut-shell mug, emptied half of it in one long quaff. “Beer is my one weakness,” he said. “I’m the saloon next door’s best customer. Three buckets a day in this kona weather.” He paused and then said, “I can drink four and still retain full control of my faculties.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Quincannon said truthfully.
“Well, then. If the two birds you’re after are still in Honolulu, I should be able to find them for you wikiwiki. If they’ve gone to another island, or sailed for the Orient or the South Seas, I can find that out wikiwiki, too.”
“What does ‘wikiwiki’ mean?”
“Speedily. Do they know you’ve trailed them here?”
“No. They can have no idea of it.”
“No more than two days, then, as long as they haven’t gone into hiding for some other reason. Longer, in that case. Satisfactory?”
“Yes. And the cost?”
“My fees are reasonable, but I’ll need an advance.”
“How large an advance?”
“The charge for one day’s work. Forty dollars, American.”
Reasonable enough, as long as it could be charged to R. W. Anderson for reimbursement. Though if Fenner was more than two days on the job, his fees would make serious inroads in the amount of cash he and Sabina had brought with them.
“Agreed,” he said.
“Now I’ll have their names.”
“Jackson Vereen, known as Lonesome Jack, and E. B. Nagle, known as Nevada Ned. Those are their real names. The aliases they used to buy steamer passage are James A. Varner and Simon Reno. Likely they’ll still be using them here.”
“Descriptions?”
Quincannon provided them in detail. He emphasized the likelihood that the pair had sought private rather than hotel accommodations, provided the fact that Nagle was a morphine addict who might need to procure more of the drug if the supply he brought with him should run out, and finished by saying, “They may have frequented the local saloons and bagnios since their arrival, but not more than a sampling if they’re pursuing a new swindle.”
“What type of swindle do they specialize in?”
“Fake stocks when they can find a suitable mark, but they’ll work any con that has a substantial payoff. Whatever scheme brought them here has to have that kind of potential.”
“So it would seem.”
Quincannon said, “You should have enough to go on now, Mr. Fenner. Can you get started right away?”
“As soon as you leave. Where are you staying?”
“In Waikiki, with a couple named Pritchard my wife and I met on the ship. They invited us and she talked me into accepting.”
Fenner elevated a thick eyebrow. “You brought your wife along on a hunt for two crooks?”
“She is also my business partner, a former Pinkerton operative and a detective the equal of any man.” His tone and narrowed eye challenged Fenner to make an issue of this.
The fat man merely shrugged. “I don’t know the Pritchards. Their address?”
Quincannon had gotten it from Lyman and repeated it.
“I’ll get a message to you as soon as I have news,” Fenner said. “But you’ll have to come here to collect it and pay the balance owed in full. Satisfactory?”
“Satisfactory.”
Quincannon paid him the forty-dollar retainer in greenbacks. They shook hands — Fenner’s was rough-skinned and surprisingly dry — after which Quincannon went to the door. As he let himself out, he saw the fat man rising to his feet. True to his word to immediately commence earning his fee. Either that, or he was on his way to the Trader’s Rest to replenish the empty bucket.
6
Sabina
It was just past four o’clock when John returned. He looked as limp, damp, and wilted as his clothing, but he was in better spirits. The meeting with George Fenner, which he related in some detail, had been more encouraging than he’d expected. Still, he was not completely convinced that it would take Fenner no more than two days to learn the whereabouts of Lonesome Jack Vereen and Nevada Ned. “I’ll believe it when and if it happens,” he said. That was John — skeptical by nature of any investigator other than himself and his partner, particularly one who was unknown to him and whose abilities were as yet unproven.
While he was changing into a fresh suit, Sabina told of her chance meeting with the Pritchards’ neighbor, Gordon Pettibone. She made no mention of Mr. Pettibone’s rather lecherous appraisal of her in her bathing costume; it would only have aroused John’s jealousy and predisposed him to scowl and snap at the man when they met. As it was, he was not keen on having tea with strangers. Or tea at all, for that matter. He considered it unpalatable, had flatly refused to drink the weak tea with milk the steward had brought during his bout with seasickness. The only beverages he cared for were coffee and warm clam juice, the latter a drink she found unpalatable.
Gordon Pettibone and his nephew were already present with Margaret and Lyman when Kaipo showed her and John onto the lanai. It did not take long after the introductions for her to decide that Philip Oakes was as unlikable as his uncle. He was a slender, dapper person midway through his thirties, clad in a cream-colored suit with knife-crease trousers and a paisley cravat. He had slicked-down sandy hair, a thin mustache, an air of self-importance, and an annoying habit of repeating every third or fourth sentence as if he suspected his listeners of being hard of hearing. In his youth he probably would have cut a handsome figure, but telltale signs of dissipation suggested a chronic overindulgence in alcohol.
Mr. Pettibone was more sedate in his attitude toward Sabina after meeting John, whose size and demeanor brooked no familiarities with his wife. Philip Oakes, on the other hand, was not as perceptive as his uncle. From the gleam in his shiny blue eyes Sabina could tell that he was one of those lecherous wolves who, upon meeting an attractive woman, immediately imagines her without a stitch of clothes on. He continued to openly ogle her even after being informed that she was a bride of just six months, and seemed either oblivious to or uncaring of John’s displeasure. To avoid any unpleasantness she maintained an aloof attitude, speaking to him only when absolutely necessary.
The table around which they sat had been set with a silver tea service, a tray of canapés, and another tray that held a bottle of scotch whiskey and a soda siphon to accommodate Pettibone and Oakes. The latter saw fit to accommodate himself two more times during the ensuing hour, and would have done so a third time if his uncle hadn’t stayed his hand with a sharp look and an even sharper “No, Philip.” The only indication of the liquor’s effects on him was an increased tendency to express and repeat himself at length.
Inevitably he asked after their business interests. John gave him the same answer he had the Pritchards, that they owned a private consulting firm. But that was not enough to satisfy him.
“You and the lovely Mrs. Quincannon both? Really? What sort of consulting do you do?”
“We would rather not discuss the particulars.”
“Oh? Very hush-hush, eh? Very hush-hush? It wouldn’t involve government work, by any chance?”
“It has in the past, yes, as a matter of fact.”
“And occasionally still does,” Sabina added.
Evasive answers, but with truthful foundations. Their investigations were indeed private and often hush-hush at the request of their clients. John had served as an operative of the United States Secret Service for a number of years, and just recently, as a favor to his former superior, the head of the Service’s San Francisco office, he had been instrumental in breaking up a new and insidious counterfeiting scheme.