VII

“THIS IS STUPID, OSCAR.” REAL ALARM RODE SUSIE HIGGINS’ VOICE. “YOU’RE going to get yourself killed, and you’re going to land everybody who ever heard of you in hot water.”

“Which bothers you more?” Oscar van der Kirk asked.

“You think I want the Japs breathing down my neck, you’re nuts.” Susie was one hard-headed gal.

Oscar couldn’t even say Charlie Kaapu hadn’t done anything. He didn’t know that, not for sure. From what the police sergeant in Honolulu said, the Japs sure as hell thought he had. The Kempeitai… The more he repeated the name to himself, the scarier it sounded. Would they knock on his door in the middle of the night, the way the Gestapo was supposed to do?

“I’m just going to spread some fish around,” Oscar said. “The way things are these days, food works better than cash.”

“You can’t even talk to the Japs,” Susie said, which was largely true. “How are you going to get them to do what you want? They won’t even know who you’re trying to spring.”

He made money-counting motions. He couldn’t very well make fish-counting motions; there weren’t any.

“I’ll manage,” he said with more confidence than he felt. “Besides, they’re bound to be using local clerks and such. Somebody will understand me. If you’re trying to give somebody something, people always understand you.”

Not even Susie tried to argue with that. She only said, “You’ll get into more trouble than you know what to do with.”

“You said the same thing when I went to the police station,” Oscar reminded her.

She wasn’t impressed. “Okay, you were lucky once. How come you think you’ll be lucky twice?”

That was a better question than Oscar wished it were. Trying to make light of it, he said, “Hey, I’m lucky all the time, babe. I’ve got you, don’t I?”

Susie turned red. She was a lot tanner than she had been when the war left her stuck in the middle of the Pacific, but the flush was still easy to see. “Damn you, Oscar, why do you have to go and say stuff like that?” she said angrily.

“Because I mean it?” he suggested.

She turned even redder. Then, very suddenly, she jumped up and dashed into the apartment’s tiny bathroom. She stayed in there for quite a while, and didn’t flush before she came out. Her eyes were suspiciously bright. She wagged a finger at him the way his mother had when he was four years old. “You know, it’s funny.”

“What is?” Oscar said. Whatever she’d been doing in there, it sure as hell wasn’t laughing.

“First time I saw you, before you ever touched me or took me out on that surfboard or anything, I knew I was going to go to bed with you,” she answered. “I wanted to get the taste of Rick out of my mouth as fast as I could.” Rick was the ex-husband whose becoming ex- her trip to Hawaii had celebrated. She wagged that finger again. “And don’t you dare say anything about getting the taste of you in my mouth.”

“Me? I didn’t say anything,” Oscar answered as innocently as he could, though she’d done that, all right. He’d slept with a lot of women getting over their exes in a tropical paradise. That was one of the things a surf-riding instructor-a surf bum-was for.

“Oh, yes, you did.” Susie sounded fierce. “You said something sweet. Going to bed with you is easy. The hard part is thinking I might…”

“Might what?”

“Might love you,” she said in a tiny voice.

“Oh.” Oscar went over to her and put an arm around her. “You know what, kiddo? I might love you, too. You know what else? I think we ought to wait and see what happens before we do anything. If it looks like the Japs’ll win and keep this place, then we know where we are. If the Americans come and take it back, then we know where we are, too. Right now, it’s just a mess. How can we make plans if we don’t know what the heck to plan for?”

“How can we make plans if you go sticking your head in the lion’s mouth?” But Susie clung to him as if he were a surfboard and the shore a long, long way away.

He kissed her. But then he said, “I’ve got to do it, hon. Nobody else is gonna give a darn about Charlie, but he’s my friend.”

She took a deep breath. Had she said, If you loved me…, they would have had a row. A few months earlier, she probably would have. Now she swallowed it instead. “I’m not going to be able to talk you out of this, am I?”

“Nope.”

“Well, I’ll be here if you come back, that’s all.” She didn’t wag a finger at him this time-she poked him in the ribs. “Now I suppose you’ll expect another fancy sendoff. Won’t you, bub? Huh? Won’t you?” She poked him again.

“Who, me?” Oscar hoped he didn’t sound like somebody about to drool on the shoes he wasn’t wearing. Susie laughed at him, so he probably did. Later that night, they emphatically enjoyed each other’s company. Oscar slept soundly.

He went to Honolulu Hale the next morning. Life went on under the Japanese. People got married. They bought and sold property. They paid taxes on it. They got peddler’s licenses. They sued one another. Most of the clerks who’d worked for the U.S. Territory of Hawaii went right on working for the Japanese Kingdom of Hawaii.

There was a new department, though. SPECIAL CASES, the sign above the door said. It wasn’t quite All hope abandon, ye who enter here, but it might as well have been. Several people in other, safer queues looked up, startled, when Oscar walked through that door. A little old woman who seemed hapa — Hawaiian and maybe hapa-Chinese made the sign of the cross.

A clerk who might have been of the same blood glanced up from the papers on his government-issue desk. The nameplate on the desk said he was Alfred Choi. He gave a good game impression of never letting anything take him by surprise. “Yes?” he said. “You wish?”

“I have a friend who’s been, uh, jailed. I don’t think he’s done anything, and I want to help him get out if I can,” Oscar said.

“This is for the police, or for a lawyer,” Alfred Choi said. Oscar unhappily shook his head. Choi looked at him, as if noting the door through which he’d come. “This man, this friend”-he made it sound like a dirty word-“has some connection to the occupying authorities?”

“Uh-huh,” Oscar admitted, even less happily than he’d nodded before.

“Give me his name.”

“Charlie Kaapu.” Oscar wondered if Choi was going to press a secret button that sent a dozen Kempeitai men with pistols and samurai swords charging into the room. Nothing like that happened. The clerk got up, walked to a four-drawer filing cabinet about ten feet away, and went through the third drawer for a minute or so.

When he came back, his face was grim. “You can do nothing,” he said. “I can do nothing. No one can do anything. The occupying authorities have dealt with him.”

“Is he-dead?” Oscar didn’t want to say the word, or even think it.

Alfred Choi shook his head. “Not yet,” he said, which didn’t sound good.

Maybe he was trying to put on the squeeze. Oscar hoped so; that was better than the alternative. Picking his words with care, Oscar said, “I catch a lot of fish-more than I need, sometimes.”

“I have enough to eat, thank you,” Choi said. “I could take fish from you. I could, ah, string you along.” He used the slang self-consciously. “But since I have enough, I tell you straight out: I cannot do anything for your friend. Nobody can do anything for your friend. His case is pau.” The Hawaiian word for finished, in common use in the islands, sounded dreadfully final here.

“Could I talk to anybody else?” Oscar asked.

“Do you want the Kempeitai to talk to you?” Alfred Choi sounded abstractly curious, as if he didn’t give a damn one way or the other. He likely didn’t. It was no skin off his rather flat nose.