The Betrayers

Chapter Sixteen

I CONFIRMED, OF COURSE. A lighted cigarette and a few whispered words could hint of treachery, but they weren't proof. You might be able to think up an innocent explanation if you thought hard enough, and jumping to unfavorable conclusions about people is an occupational hazard in a trade like ours, full of disillusioned characters with a low opinion of human nature. I'd had some embarrassing experiences along those lines myself. So I confirmed.

I tailed the man cautiously when he came out of the dining room some ten minutes later, having checked his watch several times in the interim, as if he were anxious not to be late for an important engagement. He led me around the hotel a bit as a matter of routine and pulled one or two of the standard see-behind-you tricks, but he didn't really expect to catch anybody following him, so he didn't. She must have convinced him I was safely on my way to Lahaina. Quite soon he gave up being careful and headed down a path toward the beach. She was waiting for him in the shadows.

They talked for quite a while down there. I didn't risk trying to sneak in close enough to overhear the conversation. The fact that it was taking place was enough. It was beginning to look very much as if my first hunch in Honolulu had been correct, despite Monk's denials, and the woman had been planted on me very cleverly with a most convincing cover story. In any case, whoever she was she could hardly have a motive for conferring secretly with one of Monk's men that meant anything but trouble for me.

They parted company at last, and he walked down toward the shore, while she came up the path to the hotel. She passed quite close to where I crouched in the bushes. I watched her out of sight, noting that, unlike the average woman in a narrow dress and high heels, she managed to walk without excessive posterior undulations. She looked respectable and restrained and expensive, obviously a very high type of lady, the kind who'd never dream of giving herself to a man casually, merely to win his confidence.

I made a face at my thoughts and told myself that everything was fine. Just great. This new development had actually improved my situation. Trustworthy women are a menace to have around, I told myself, particularly when they're beautiful as well. You get to feeling responsible for them and their damn beauty. Tricky, double-crossing females, on the other hand, regardless of looks, make no demands on the conscience, and they can be very useful. For instance, they often know things the trustworthy ladies don't.

I slipped out of my hiding place and headed for the car, telling myself that l was really a very smart fellow and they should have known better than to try to put one over on Matthew Helm. So I got into the car and somebody rose from the floor behind-where I should have looked but hadn't-and stuck a gun in my ear. That's approximately what happens in this racket whenever you start thinking about how very smart you are.

"Take it easy, Eric," said a youthful male voice I recognized. "This is Francis. Bill Menander, remember? It's your turn to keep looking straight ahead or comes it a big hole in the head. You'd better check your dose, Mr. Helm. I only slept for an hour and fifteen minutes on what you gave me back there at the porpoise farm."

I said, "I'll tell the lab. What happens now?"

"You pass your gun back here, very slowly."

"Here it comes." I held it up and felt it taken away. "And now?"

Before he could answer, somebody came running up to the car. "Okay, Bill," said a breathless man's voice that I didn't recognize. "I got the kanaka. He's out cold."

"For how long?"

"For long enough. Let's get out of here before Pressman comes looking for his tough beach boy… Move over, you!"

I moved over. There were, of course, all kinds of spectacular responses I could have made, but most of them are designed to leave people dead on the ground. Taking a gun away from a man is risky business at best. Taking it away from him without hurting him isn't something you want to try unless you've got a life or two to spare. And there were some interesting angles here. It seemed better to explore them cautiously than to act like a hero agent with a short fuse.

I sat docilely in the right front seat, therefore, with the gun at my neck, while the unknown youth beside me drove us down the hotel hill and south along the coast highway.

"What's a kanaka?" I asked at last.

The driver glanced at me irritably, as if to tell me to shut up, but Francis answered behind me, "It used to mean just a man. Well, a native man. I think Jack London once wrote a story called 'The Kanaka Surf.' That was the big he-man surf that only natives could handle, as opposed to the malahini surf, the little surf suitable for tourists to play in. It used to be a proud word, I guess, but people took to using it in a derogatory way, so now… Well, you've got to be kind of careful whom you call a kanaka. It's kind of like calling a Mexican a greaser. I mean, Rog here wouldn't call Mister Glory a kanaka to his face, would you, Rog."

The driver said, "Go to hell. I'm not scared of that beach bum. You should have seen the way I took care of him. He never knew what hit him."

"Mister Glory?" I said. "Who's that, the bronze character in the jeep?"

"His real name is Jimmy Hanohano," Francis said. "He's supposed to be descended from kings or something."

The youth called Rog said, "So what? So's every Mick I ever met."

Francis said, "Anyway, Hanohano means honor or glory in Hawaiian, so he called himself Mister Glory in a band he had for a while. Mister Glory and his Surf Kings. He still sings and plays in the bars-that Beyond-the-Reef kind of mush-and makes love to the female malahinis. They really go for him. He can do the old-time slack-string guitar bit, too, real ethnic, but you've got to catch him in the mood. But you don't want to meet him drunk with a broken bottle in his hand."

"Ah, shut up," said Rog. "You sound like his press agent or something. He's not so damn tough."

"Well, I just hope you laid him out good. He's one guy I don't want any trouble with. And Pressman's another. That hatchet-faced creep would order us killed like ordering eggs for breakfast."

"Maybe he already has. Or the Monk has. There's the only guy who scares me. Those damn blue eyes of his… Hang on, we might as well turn here and get off the road a bit."

As we swerved, the headlights flashed across one of the colorful tourist-bureau markers put up to identify local points of interest. Then we were bouncing along a dirt track through the big Hawaiian mesquites-excuse me, kiawes. The road emerged from the trees and dove into a sugarcane field that seemed endless in the dark: just interminable rows of tall green cane sliding into the lights on either side of the car. Finally this gave way to a canyon of sorts, heading up into the invisible hills. Rog stopped the car under a wall of rock and cut the lights and the ignition. There was a little silence after the engine had died. Francis tapped me on the shoulder.

"Here's your gun, Mr. Helm," he said, holding it out to me butt first.

I looked at it, a little startled. As I say, we're disillusioned and suspicious; we don't believe in Santa Claus at all. And there are a number of nasty routines that start with giving the prisoner back his gun. Before I could make up my mind to grasp the weapon, Rog had reached out and snatched it from Francis' hand.

"Have you lost your everlasting marbles?"

Francis said, "We need the man's help, don't we? He's the only guy we can turn to. So who's going to help looking down a gun barrel, yet? Give it back to him." He spoke to me: "Sorry about the holdup, sir, but we had to talk to you and you were being watched. There wasn't any quick way to explain without letting the whole world know… Give it back to him, Rog!"

"Take it easy. Let's hear what he can do for us before we get so damn generous with the firearms. Ask him about Jill."

"What about Jill?" I demanded.

"That's what we want to know, Mr. Helm," Francis said. "She told us she had a kind of date with you this morning. We know she was trying to make up her mind about telling you… "He stopped.

"Telling me what?"

Rog asked suspiciously, "Did you see her this morning?"

"Yes, I saw her. She checked me out on a surfboard. Well, more or less."

Rog said sourly, "That must have been something to see!"

I regarded him for a moment. There was enough light to make him out after a fashion: one of those handsome, tanned,, sneering, dime-a-dozen boys with streaky, too-long hair. Not that I have any objection to long haircuts. Wild Bill Hickock wore his to the shoulders and nobody was heard to complain. But then, Hickock had a little more than hair going for him. All you could say for Rog was that he was making his associate, Francis, look better all the time, despite the plump face and the silly little moustache.

Francis said, "Lay off, Rog. Don't mind him, Mr.

Helm. He's just scared. We're both scared. We don't know what the hell we've got ourselves into, sir, and now the Kilauea Street house is closed and nobody answers the phone and Lanny's dead and Jill's disappeared. You don't know where she is? She claimed you'd been sent to investigate the information she'd passed to Washington. She was going to identify herself to you as soon as she dared. Didn't she tell you anything while you were out there together this morning?"

I didn't answer at once. The fact that Jill had apparently confided freely in these boys was a blow; it made a joke of our attempts at security-particularly now that Francis had blabbed the essential facts to the warm night air. It wasn't hard to decide how far I trusted him and his associate; I didn't trust them at all. Even if they were sincere, which hadn't been proved, they were obviously inexperienced and not too bright in professional matters.

However, this wasn't really important now because there was somebody out in the dark whom I trusted even less, somebody who'd already heard too much.