The Paradise Affair

10 Quincannon

The broad sweep of Honolulu Harbor resembled that of San Francisco Bay in the number of vessels anchored offshore and at the long piers. The main difference was the warships here — gunboats and battle cruisers that were part of Admiral Dewey’s Asiatic Squadron, refueling and taking on supplies for their passage to Cuban waters. Quincannon had little tolerance for war, and the present one was particularly unpalatable — a tempest in a teapot brewed by Washington bureaucrats and whipped to a frenzy by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer and their rallying cry of “Remember the Maine! To Hell with Spain!” as a means of selling their New York newspapers. Warmongering politicians, muckraking journalists... a pox on the lot of them.

The naval ships, sailing barques, and other craft all sat motionless on the gunmetal-gray water like toys fashioned from gigantic blocks of wood and metal. A forest of masts pierced a sky that seemed to have been flattened down over the sea beyond the channel entrance. Kanaka stevedores moved sluggishly on the docks, loading and unloading cargo at a retarded pace that would have cost them their pay on San Francisco’s Embarcadero. Even the dray horses stood or plodded limply in the sodden heat.

Quincannon again felt as if he were melting by the time he located Justo Gomez’s place of business. The torrid weather had dulled his sense of urgency, but his temper was still crimped and primed. Any sort of provocation was liable to set it off.

Justo’s Bait and Tackle Shop was a small building on the waterfront, weather-beaten and in ramshackle condition. The heat-thick smells of brine and fish flared his nostrils when he entered. Nets hung dustily from two bare walls. Behind a plank laid across a pair of sawhorses, a man clad in dungarees and a sleeveless shirt sat slouched in a rattan chair with his feet up on the plank. He was short and wiry, dark-skinned, with black hair and black eyes and swarthy features that proclaimed his Portuguese/Hawaiian ancestry. Sweat glistened on his bare shoulders and arms like oil on burnished wood.

Only the black eyes moved as Quincannon approached him. They were shrewd, calculating. After a few seconds of scrutiny, his thin lips parted over as many gold teeth as white in a wily grin.

“Aloha,” he said.

“Justo Gomez?”

“Sure, that’s me.” The grin widened. “Man, you look like you just off some old pirate ship. All that brush you got on your face, somebody ever call you Blackbeard?”

Gomez, it seemed, compensated for his small stature with an aggressive, bullying manner. The snotty rudeness was a splinter-like goad on Quincannon’s temper. He was proud of his whiskers; an insult to his facial hair was an assault on his self-esteem.

He said sharply, “No one that ever lived to draw another breath.”

The little man lost his grin. He swung his feet off the plank, stood up slowly. “What you want, haole? Some kine fella looks like you, dressed like you, ain’t interested in fishing.”

“Information.”

“You come to the wrong place,” Gomez said. “Justo sells bait, nets to catch fish. He doan sell information.”

A single silver dollar would not have been enough to prime this one’s pump, and even if it had been, Quincannon was not inclined to part with any more bribe money. “I’m not buying,” he said.

“You want it free? Hah. Justo doan give nothing away free.”

“Tell me about Lonesome Jack Vereen.”

Gomez’s only reaction to the name was a squint of one eye. “Who?”

“Lonesome. Jack. Vereen.”

“Never heard of nobody with that name.”

“How about James A. Varner?”

“Not him, neither.”

“Don’t try my patience, Gomez,” Quincannon snapped. “You supplied him and his partner with a bungalow on Hoapili Street last week.”

“... Who tole you that?”

“Never mind who told me.”

“Who are you, man? Some kine policeman?”

“Close enough. A friend of George Fenner.”

“That hewa.” Gomez shaped a spitting mouth to go with the epithet. “What you want from me, hey?”

“I told you, information.”

“Justo got nothing to tell you.”

“I think you do.”

“You crazy in the head. You want to know about those other two haoles, go talk to them.”

“Vereen isn’t in Honolulu anymore. He went to the Big Island. I want to know why.”

“How I gonna know why? Go away, haole. Justo doan want you in his shop.”

Quincannon had reached the limit of his patience. He had dealt with swaggering crooks like Gomez before, and the only sure way to handle them was with a show of greater aggression. He fixed the half-caste with the basilisk glare that had been the bane of many a lawbreaker, swept the tail of his jacket aside so that his holstered Navy was visible, and stepped up close to the little man. Sight of the weapon widened the black eyes, caused them to wiggle in their sockets.

“Hey,” he said, “what kine big gun you got there?”

“You want me to show you, up close?”

“No. No.”

“Then answer my questions.” Quincannon tapped the Navy’s handle with his fingertips. “Tell me about Vereen.”

Gomez seemed to be making an effort to swallow his Adam’s apple. “I doan know that name, only Varner.”

“How do you know him?”

“Him and the fat haole come in seven, eight days ago, looking for place to stay. Big kanaka waiwai, he send them.”

“What does ‘kanaka waiwai’ mean?”

“Rich fella. Friend of Justo’s.”

“Stanton Millay.”

“Sure. You know him, what you come to me for?”

“I don’t know him, but I will before long,” Quincannon said. “Friend of yours, is he? What do you do to curry his favor, supply him with women?”

“Hey, what you think Justo is?”

“I know what Justo is. You supplied Vereen and his partner with women, too, didn’t you?”

“I doan know what you talking about.”

“The devil you don’t. Where and how did those two get together with Millay?”

“I doan know.”

The repetition of Gomez’s favorite phrase led Quincannon to lift the Navy partway out of its holster. He held it there meaningfully, then let it slide back down, but he kept his hand on the handle. And added a little more candlepower to the fierceness of his glare.

Gomez’s eyes wiggled again and he said quickly, “Some kine place in San Francisco, that’s where they meet.”

“What kind of business deal have they got cooking with Millay?”

“I doan know. They doan tell Justo nothing.”

“But you know there is a deal,” Quincannon prodded, “I can see it in your face. How do you know?”

“Something I hear the fat haole say to the other one. That clock gonna make us rich, he say.”

“Clock? What kind of clock?”

“Maybe not clock, maybe cloak. Justo ain’t sure.”

“Does either mean anything to you?”

Gomez wagged his head.

“Is that all you overheard?”

“That’s all. Other one shut him up quick, you bet.”

Clock or cloak... neither seemed to fit the established pattern of a Vereen and Nagle swindle, though with those two anything was possible if there was enough profit to be had. Gomez’s eyes said he wasn’t lying, but he might have misheard.

Quincannon said, “Did either of them say anything about an auohe?”

“Auohe?”

“You know what the word means.”

“Sure, sure. Hidden place.”

“Some sort of hidden place on the Big Island near the Millay ranch.”

“I doan hear nothing like that.”

“What about mention of the ranch or the Kona Coast?”

Headshake.

That was all Quincannon could or would get out of him. He stepped back, folded over the tail of his jacket to conceal the Navy again. Gomez let out a breath, then produced a dirty cloth that might once have been a handkerchief and smeared his face free of sweat.

“You some kine bad fella,” he said then, not without a grudging measure of admiration. “What you gonna do to Vereen when you find him?”

“Mayhap the same thing I’ll do to you if you tell anybody we had this little talk.”

“I doan tell nobody. Not me.”

“A wise decision.”

“Poor Justo,” Gomez said mournfully. The little half-caste had decided to feel sorry for himself. “Got all kine pilikia nui. Wife, four children, police, now bad kine fella like you.”

Quincannon had nothing to say to that. Without turning his back to poor Justo, he took himself out into the breathless afternoon.