“You building yourself a nice little house, gook?” he asked. “Get the hell out of my way.” He shoved the carpenter aside and grabbed a partially fastened slat with both hands and pulled it free from the wall. The carpenter’s eyes opened wide. Jason threw the plank off the deck and then kicked his foot through the sliding door of the house and ripped the thin dividing pieces of wood from the door frame while the carpenter stood by in helpless indecision.
“Well, what you say, you dumb bastard?” Jason shouted. “I’m tearing apart your crumby little house, how about that?” He ripped another slat free, he kicked his foot through another paper panel, the whole damn house was falling apart, cheap crap, Made in Japan, the only good thing they had was pearls. He picked up an ax from the deck and swung it fiercely, chopping at one wall and then another, splitting paper and wood, wrecking the house with a wild angry glee, and finally throwing the ax down at the feet of the shocked, trembling carpenter. He leaped off the deck and began to walk back to where Kemo was watching him from the open door of her shack. Her “friend” was gone now. He was going to give it to her, all right. If she thought what he’d just done to this house was something, then she had a little surprise coming because he was really going to give it to her.
The carpenter said something.
It might have been only a sob, because when he turned, the man was standing on the deck of the demolished house with his hands clenched tightly around the head of the hammer, both hands squeezing the head of the hammer, both hands trying to fit onto the small head of the hammer, trembling, the tears running down his face with the effort to contain his anger.
“What’d you say, pal?” Jason asked.
The man shook his head. Sobbing, trembling, he avoided Jason’s eyes.
“Did I hear you say something, pal?” Jason asked.
The man did not reply. He was shaking violently now. Behind him, Jason could hear Kemo’s approaching footsteps. He leaped onto the deck and yanked the man to him with one angry grabbing pulling motion and smashed his fist into the man’s face. The man fell to the deck and Jason kicked him in the head. Behind him he heard Kemo screaming. He whirled, jumped off the deck, and ran after her, catching her near the fire, grabbing her kimono and swinging her around, the kimono flaring wide over her naked belly and legs. He slapped her and called her a cheap little whore and then slapped her again. The fire leaped high with the flames of the dried wood he had fed to it. He kept slapping her in the light of the blaze until she dropped to her knees with blood streaming from her nose and her mouth, the kimono open. He barely realized that two Marine M.P.s had grabbed his arms and were holding him. He looked down at Kemo and said, “You don’t mess with me, honey. You don’t never mess with me.”
Kemo looked up. Through her broken teeth and her bloody lips she said in English, “You son a bitch basturr brack marker thief nogood basturr crook.” For good measure, and to ingratiate herself with the military police, she added, “Tojo nogood crap.”
The Marine colonel who searched Jason found that he was carrying two thousand five hundred and twenty-one dollars in yen.
“That’s a lot of money,” the colonel said.
“Mmm?” Jason answered.
“Where’d you get all this money?”
“I got lucky in a crap game.”
“Why’d you beat up that woman?”
“They tried to roll me.”
“Who?”
“Her and the guy working on that house. I was just strolling up the street and they jumped me.”
The colonel squeezed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, and sighed. The two M.P.s who had picked Jason up stood just inside the door of the hut, their hands clasped over their white clubs. “The woman says you’re involved in black market activities,” the colonel said. He had a flat dry voice. He sounded as if he were from the Middle West someplace.
“She’s crazy,” Jason said. “I never saw her in my life before tonight.”
“She says she knows you.”
“She’s lying.”
“She says your name is Jason Trench.” The colonel suddenly released the bridge of his nose and looked up. “Is that your name?”
Jason did not answer.
“She says you bought more than fifteen thousand dollars in stolen pearls last month, and that you were there to buy more today.”
“Where would I get that kind of money?” Jason asked.
“I don’t know.” The colonel shrugged. “Where would you get two thousand five hundred and twenty-one dollars in yen?”
“I told you. In a crap game.”
“Where?”
“Aboard the boat.”
“What boat?”
“The PT 832.”
“You the skipper?”
“Yes.”
“We’re going to ask your men about that alleged crap game while we keep you here. Is that all right with you?”
“Sir...”
“Yes?”
“Sir, are you going to listen to an old Jap whore, or are you—”
“No,” the colonel said.
“Good. I was afraid—”
“What we are going to do is keep you here while we question your crew about that crap game you say took place aboard your boat. Then we’re—”
“Well, I don’t remember if it was aboard the boat. It could have been with some Army guys up in—”
“Then we’re going to ask to see your ID card and your dog tags. Maybe your name isn’t Jason Trench. Maybe that woman’s talking about somebody else.”
“My name’s Trench,” he said.
“Oh?”
“They tried to roll me. She stopped me in the street and he came up behind me, and together they tried to roll me.”
“Is that your story?”
“That’s my story.”
“We found the man on the deck of that house, Trench. He—”
“Yeah, he tried to drag me inside there.”
“I thought he jumped you in the street.”
“Well, he...”
“We had to take him to the hospital,” the colonel said. “Somebody kicked him in the head.”
“I did. He tried to roll me.”
“Yes, I know, you said so.”
“It’s the truth.”
The colonel shrugged. “Truth or not,” he said, “you’re stuck with it.”
The thing he shouldn’t have done... well, actually there were a couple of things he shouldn’t have done, but the first thing he shouldn’t have done was turn back when the Jap muttered whatever it was he’d muttered; that was plain stupid. He should have just kept walking to where Kemo was standing in the door of the shack, and grabbed her and quietly taken her back inside, that was it, no sweat, instead of losing his head like that. He shouldn’t have lied about there having been a crap game aboard the boat either, because naturally when they questioned the other men, all of them — with the exception of Arthur — had tried to protect him by saying exactly the wrong thing. A crap game? Heavens, no, we never shoot dice aboard our clean little boat, they had said, golly Moses, no, all except Arthur. Arthur had possessed the good sense to know something was in the wind, and he had picked up the lie almost as if he were carrying radar. Yes, sir, he had said, there was a very big crap game aboard the boat, there are always a lot of very big money crap games. Even so, the lie hadn’t worked. Nor had he been very smart in pretending not to know Kemo either; that was really dumb. Not only was she able to tell them his name, and his wife’s name — “Annaburr,” she said, “he send the perrs to Annaburr” — but she was also able to tell them the number of his boat and the names of several of the men aboard her; it was amazing the things a man said to a woman when he was in bed with her. He had also apparently told her about a particular escapade in Kagoshima, where he had audaciously stolen an electric fan from the desk of the yeoman first, in the office ashore, a fan he later sold for seventy-five dollars. The funny thing about this particular fan was that the yeoman had painted it pink.