Read Online The Pearl Harbor Murders by Max Allan Collins - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Max Allan Collins
Tags: Fiction, Historical fiction, General, Historical, Mystery & Detective, History, Mystery Fiction, World War II, Military, Attack on, Pearl Harbor (Hawaii), 1941, Pearl Harbor (Hawaii); Attack On; 1941, Burroughs; Edgar Rice, Edgar Rice, Burroughs
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that rock; her brains were showing. Rage and nausea and sorrow rose in him, a volcano of emotions threatening to erupt. He turned to the musician, wanting to throttle the bastard, but something stopped him.
The man was weeping.
FIVE
Sad Song
After the luau wound down, Hully Burroughs had been in no mood to join his sailor friends Bill Fielder and Dan Pressman in any Hotel Street excursions. Bill had been rather on the morose side—he'd learned about Colonel Fielder's displeased reaction at seeing his son and the Japanese songstress on the dance floor; and Pearl herself had begged off any after-hours date, pleading fatigue from her night on the bandstand.
This meant Bill would get plastered, while Dan would be on the prowl for dames, and in that part of town, the likely candidates served up love for a fee. Hully was interested in accompanying neither a drunk nor a tomcat, and instead headed to the Royal Hawaiian, where Harry Owens's orchestra was playing. Nobody pulled off that hapa haole sound better, and Hully's odds of meeting a nice young female—a tourist maybe, as the absent, much-missed Marjorie Petty had been—were far better than down at sleazy Hotel Street.
He'd gotten very lucky—not in the way the sailors on Hotel Street did, either. He danced several slow tunes with a pretty brunette named Marion Thrasher, a local girl in her early twenties out celebrating a friend's birthday. She was down-to-earth and friendly, so different from the girls in California, all of whom seemed to be aspiring actresses (expecting Hully to land them a part in a Tarzan picture!). All he'd "scored" were a few lovely if tentative smiles, some conversation and a phone number... but he was walking on air.
Or rather driving on air, in his father's Pierce Arrow convertible, one hand on the wheel, elbow resting on the rolled-down window, enjoying the way the stirred-up, sweetly scented breeze raffled his hair. He loved this little low-rise city of Honolulu, which hid shyly under banyans and flowering shrubs, palm trees towering over telephone poles.
Waikiki itself was a bohemian village, increasingly given over to hotels and inns, but still with room for clapboard houses, fisherman's shacks, picket fences and vacant lots. On an evening like this—well, early morning, as it was approaching one a.m.—the sounds were unbelievably romantic, the music of strolling troubadours mingling with the benign roar of surf.
As he pulled into the moonlight-washed Niumalu parking lot, the revelry of the luau was long over, the staff's cleanup accomplished, with a few lights on in the lodge itself, but most of the bungalows—peeking from between palms—dark. He parked, headed down a crashed coral path toward the Burroughs bungalow, whistling "Sweet Leilani," jingling change and keys in his khaki pockets.
That was when he heard, coming from the beach, a man's voice—his father's voice, he could have sworn—shouting "You! Don't move!"
The shout conveyed an urgency, and a sense of menace, that sent Hully running down the path, and cutting through the hedges, toward the sandy shore.
By the time he got there, it was over: his father had apprehended (there could be no other word) the individual, who proved to be bandleader Harry Kamana. A bare-chested O. B. was hauling the aloha-shirt-sporting musician—who was blubbering like a baby—toward their bungalow.
Hully slowed and, approaching his father, was about to ask him what had happened when he noticed the twisted form of the girl, down a ways on the beach.
For a moment, he covered his mouth, in shock and horror; then Hully managed, "Is that... ?"
"It's the Japanese girl," his father affirmed. "Pearl Harada. Head crashed with a rock—I caught this son of a bitch red-handed."
Literally: the musician's right hand was damply red with blood.
"I'm going to take Harry here to our bungalow," O. B. said, holding on to the slumping, bawling musician, "and call the cops. You go
The man was weeping.
FIVE
Sad Song
After the luau wound down, Hully Burroughs had been in no mood to join his sailor friends Bill Fielder and Dan Pressman in any Hotel Street excursions. Bill had been rather on the morose side—he'd learned about Colonel Fielder's displeased reaction at seeing his son and the Japanese songstress on the dance floor; and Pearl herself had begged off any after-hours date, pleading fatigue from her night on the bandstand.
This meant Bill would get plastered, while Dan would be on the prowl for dames, and in that part of town, the likely candidates served up love for a fee. Hully was interested in accompanying neither a drunk nor a tomcat, and instead headed to the Royal Hawaiian, where Harry Owens's orchestra was playing. Nobody pulled off that hapa haole sound better, and Hully's odds of meeting a nice young female—a tourist maybe, as the absent, much-missed Marjorie Petty had been—were far better than down at sleazy Hotel Street.
He'd gotten very lucky—not in the way the sailors on Hotel Street did, either. He danced several slow tunes with a pretty brunette named Marion Thrasher, a local girl in her early twenties out celebrating a friend's birthday. She was down-to-earth and friendly, so different from the girls in California, all of whom seemed to be aspiring actresses (expecting Hully to land them a part in a Tarzan picture!). All he'd "scored" were a few lovely if tentative smiles, some conversation and a phone number... but he was walking on air.
Or rather driving on air, in his father's Pierce Arrow convertible, one hand on the wheel, elbow resting on the rolled-down window, enjoying the way the stirred-up, sweetly scented breeze raffled his hair. He loved this little low-rise city of Honolulu, which hid shyly under banyans and flowering shrubs, palm trees towering over telephone poles.
Waikiki itself was a bohemian village, increasingly given over to hotels and inns, but still with room for clapboard houses, fisherman's shacks, picket fences and vacant lots. On an evening like this—well, early morning, as it was approaching one a.m.—the sounds were unbelievably romantic, the music of strolling troubadours mingling with the benign roar of surf.
As he pulled into the moonlight-washed Niumalu parking lot, the revelry of the luau was long over, the staff's cleanup accomplished, with a few lights on in the lodge itself, but most of the bungalows—peeking from between palms—dark. He parked, headed down a crashed coral path toward the Burroughs bungalow, whistling "Sweet Leilani," jingling change and keys in his khaki pockets.
That was when he heard, coming from the beach, a man's voice—his father's voice, he could have sworn—shouting "You! Don't move!"
The shout conveyed an urgency, and a sense of menace, that sent Hully running down the path, and cutting through the hedges, toward the sandy shore.
By the time he got there, it was over: his father had apprehended (there could be no other word) the individual, who proved to be bandleader Harry Kamana. A bare-chested O. B. was hauling the aloha-shirt-sporting musician—who was blubbering like a baby—toward their bungalow.
Hully slowed and, approaching his father, was about to ask him what had happened when he noticed the twisted form of the girl, down a ways on the beach.
For a moment, he covered his mouth, in shock and horror; then Hully managed, "Is that... ?"
"It's the Japanese girl," his father affirmed. "Pearl Harada. Head crashed with a rock—I caught this son of a bitch red-handed."
Literally: the musician's right hand was damply red with blood.
"I'm going to take Harry here to our bungalow," O. B. said, holding on to the slumping, bawling musician, "and call the cops. You go
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