Slay Ride for a Lady Read online

  SLAY RIDE

  FOR A LADY

  Harry Whittington

  a division of F+W Media, Inc.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  Also Available

  Copyright Page

  CHAPTER ONE

  WHEN I FOUND her, she had the baby with her.

  Maybe that’s why I was in her corner from the first. Whatever else they said about her — and believe me, they said plenty — Connice looked after her baby ahead of everything else.

  Somehow she’d rented the room over a Japanese tailoring shop on Beretania. There’s a part of Honolulu that belongs to the tourists, and when you’re in it, you might as well be in Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania, or Greenville, South Carolina, or maybe Mobile, Alabama.

  But Beretania, down by the carnival park, College Walk, and River Street and Aala, isn’t that part. People rent rooms down there when they’re trying to get away from Cannonsburg and Greenville, and all the people you knew back there, and even the memory of those people. You don’t want to be found. It was like that with Connice Nelson. But I had found her.

  I went up the outside stairway over the tailoring shop and knocked on the door. At last she answered it. She looked at me and didn’t even bother to smile.

  “Are you Mrs. Connice Nelson?” I knew she was. I knew what my job was, and I knew what I’d heard about her. But when I looked at her, I felt like being polite.

  You know how it is with women when they are thirty-eight or thirty-nine? If they’ve been beautiful, so beautiful people turn to stare in the streets, and men try to buy them mink coats, it’s a lot tougher.

  She was beginning to be heavy in places. But her full lips were soft, her nose was small and straight, and in her pale blue eyes was the kind of beauty that comes from way down deep. Why had a woman like Connice ever married Henry Nelson in the first place?

  “My name is Nuuanu Kapiolani,” she said with a straight face.

  “I smiled at her. “May I come in, Mrs. Kapiolani?”

  “Miss Kapiolani,” she corrected me. She stepped aside and I brushed past her into the small apartment. I nodded toward the baby sleeping in a scarred baby bed.

  “And who is that?” I said. “Your mother?”

  She smiled at last and went and stood over her baby.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Kids look like kids to me.”

  “Don’t you like children?”

  I shook my head but said, “I suppose so. In the country, in the spring sometimes, I like ‘em. Just for a little while.”

  Now she smiled and for the first time she really looked at me.

  “You’re nice,” she said.

  I shook my head again. “I’m a hellish guy, Miss Kapiolani. Mean. Brutal. I hate God’s world, and everybody in it.”

  She smiled, and her sweet face had all the beauty they raved about when she was nineteen. I found myself wondering if she even remembered what it had been like when she was nineteen.

  “Sometimes it seems a mess,” she said softly. “Sometimes you think you cannot stand it. And sometimes you wonder, what’s it all about? What’s it all prove?”

  “It’s a rat race,” I said. “And all the cheese to the biggest rats.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Do you know my husband?”

  “I work for him,” I said.

  She sighed. “Well, you seemed nice, anyway. Just at first.”

  “It’s the money,” I told her. We were still standing there facing each other over the baby’s crib. I was holding my hat in my hand and I hadn’t looked at the baby. “You get so you’ll do anything for money.”

  Now she shook her head. “No,” she said. “You think you will. You think about the cars you could have. And maybe the women. Yes, the women,” she was looking at me narrowly and she smiled as she decided that. “You think about the places you can go, and the things you can buy. The horses you can bet on. But after while, you find out you can’t. You’re fed up to here, and you can’t. Not even for the horses and the women.”

  I knew what she meant. She was really saying, I hate him. I can’t go back to him. I’ve run this far. I’m broke. I cannot run much farther. But I can’t go back to him, either. So, you be a decent little louse and go back to him. Say to him, I couldn’t find her, Mister Nelson. I looked all over the world, but I couldn’t find her. And I couldn’t find the baby.

  She was standing there looking at me, as though she was following my thoughts. “You didn’t find me, did you?” she whispered.

  “There’s a lot to it,” I said. “You see, I was on the police force back home in Tampa…. I was a sergeant of detectives, homicide.”

  “It’s a wonder I never saw you,” she mused.

  “It wasn’t much of a job,” I said. “But I’d been at it for thirteen years. I had a good record. There was a man was killed. It was sort of a personal thing with me. He was a good man. I was about to arrest the murderer. I know I was. They told me to drop it. I refused. Then that night after I’d had coffee with the chief and one of the lieutenants, they told me to forget it, I ran over a man.”

  “You killed him,” she said.

  “Yes. I killed him. So I was out of a job. It was a manslaughter rap and I was out in two years.” My mouth got itself twisted in a hard line although I tried to keep my voice light. “You can’t get a lot of work.”

  “So Henry hired you?”

  “He wanted me to find you.”

  “You didn’t find me,” she said. “You couldn’t be that bitter. Please.”

  “If I don’t, another one will.”

  “Maybe not. He doesn’t really want me.”

  “But he said he did. He said he really wanted you. You see, I thought I was out on good behavior. But I found out. Henry Nelson needed me. You see, it’s a tough thing.”

  “Yes. It’s very sad.” She drew the covers up about the baby. I still didn’t look at it. When she looked up, she was trying to smile. “What’s your name?”

  “Henderson,” I said.

  “Bill? Frank? Tom?”

  “No,” I said.

  “How old are you?”

  I said, “I was born in 1915. But I’m a hundred years old. I’m a thousand. I stink I’m so damned old.”

  “You’re pretty,” she said with that soft little smile again. “I’m glad he sent you.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m glad he sent me, too. I was rotting in that jail.”

  “You feel that you owe him a great deal?”

  “I don’t owe him anything. I’m afraid of him. It’s in here. In my guts.”

  “Yes,” she said. She walked away to the front window and stood looking down at Beretania Street.

  I looked down at the baby. It had soft red-gold hair. She had brushed it all up into a single curl on top of the baby’s head. Its lips were soft, and it was chewing in its sleep. “The baby’s getting hungry,” I said.

  “Yes,” she spoke over her shoulder. “She’ll wake up in a minute.”

  Now that I’d begun to look at the baby, I couldn’t stop. “I could think it over,” I said at last.

  “I might run away again.”

  I looked at the back of her. Her hair was soft and blonde in the light. Her shoulders were beginning to be heavy. Her hips and thighs strained against the cheap frock she wore. Her legs were as good as ever.

  “Don’t do it,” I said. “I found you here. He’d been looking
for you for six months before I started.”

  “You mean it took you only three weeks to find me?” She turned from the window and looked at me again.

  “It was four days on the ship,” I said. “I knew where you were before I left San Francisco.”

  I thought she was going to smile, but she didn’t. Suddenly, she shivered as though she were sharply cold in the warm room.

  I knew what she was remembering. I had been over it all after her. The bus trips. The long delays. The day coaches. The cheap hotels. She could have had anything in the world she wanted. The finest suites, plane travel, reservations, maid service. But she could only have bought it with Henry Nelson’s money. She warmed bottles for her baby over gas burners, she sat up all night on buses with the baby sleeping in her arms. And I knew she was thinking, I ran so fast, and so far? Seven months of running, and he found me in three weeks less four days for boat travel across the Pacific. “It’s a rat race,” she said at last.

  For a long time neither of us spoke. She stood there looking at me, with her back to the window and the light behind her. I could hear the sewing machine down in the tailoring shop, I could hear the baby chewing in its sleep. Seconds ticked away while she looked at me. I guess I looked like defeat and frustration to her. She had tried so hard to get away, and she’d almost made it, and then I turned up to find her just when she thought she was going to be free.

  “I guess there’s no use to beg,” she said. “I hate begging and beggars anyway. I guess I knew that Henry would find me.” She laughed dryly. “I suppose some brilliant psychiatrist would say unconsciously I wanted him to find me. I must have known, even at first that Henry would find someone so much smarter than I. I don’t even know now why I tried it. Except — ” her fists knotted at her side. “I’d stood it as long as I could. Do you understand that, Henderson? Can you understand that I’m not a flighty, foolish woman, indulging some whim? I had to get away from him. But he wouldn’t let me. He wouldn’t give me a divorce. Not after he found out how badly I wanted one, he wouldn’t. He was afraid people would find out that I wanted a divorce, that I didn’t love him, that I hated him. That would be a terrible thing for a man like Henry. He’d kill me before he’d let anyone laugh at him. He said it was his Church. That was the reason he couldn’t give me a divorce, he said. But I knew better. I knew there was only one way to get away. And I did it. I ran in the night, and I hid. I rode buses miles out of my way, I did everything I could think, because I knew if I had to stay with him anymore, I would die. Do you understand any of this I’m saying to you?”

  “I know,” I said. “I knew you wouldn’t want to go back. I knew that when I started. But I didn’t expect you to be like this — ”

  “Don’t let me make you sorry for me. Henry would kill you if you came back without me, wouldn’t he?”

  “I couldn’t go back without you,” I said.

  “Do — do you have our tickets?”

  I nodded. “On the Hilotania. They’re in my hotel room. First class, all the way through.”

  She covered her throat with her hand. “I get seasick. Did you know that? I’ll be an awful mess to you.”

  “My name is Dan,” I said softly. “I’m sorry I tried to be tough with you. I’ve been a cop a long time, you can’t be soft. You can’t let people get to you.”

  “That’s all right, Dan.” Her eyes were swimming in tears. “I’ll try not to hate you. But I’m afraid I do. You — you’ve been very — very thorough, very clever to — to trail me like this. I’d talked to a very smart man, and he told me just how to escape anyone. I tried to remember everything he told me, I tried to do just as he said. I stayed right in crowds, I didn’t ever look over my shoulder, even when I was most afraid. And all the things I did — and here you are to take me home.”

  I wasn’t looking at her any more. It didn’t get me any where to watch her shoulders sag round, to see her mouth pull and tremble, to see her try to blink back her tears. I looked at the tiny gold locket on a chain about the baby’s throat. I touched it, picked it up between my fingers.

  “It’s — it’s her father’s picture,” Connice said hollowly, “no matter what else — it’s the least I could do for her.”

  I brought my fingers away from the locket.

  I walked away from the baby’s crib. There wasn’t much of any where I could go in that apartment. There was a small bed room, a dinky, brown kitchen with a black stove and an oil-cloth covered table, a sink with chipped enamel. It seemed every where I looked there was something I didn’t want to see.

  I went over to her. I looked down at her. My mouth was tight and hard. “There isn’t anything I can do. Do you understand?” She nodded without lifting her face. “Oh, I can let you and the kid there get inside me. But what difference does it make. I can see what you went through with Nelson. When they told me the mighty Nelson wanted to see me, I went looking for him. I found him at the Las Novedades out in Ybor City. He made me stand at the side of his table with my hat in my hands while he finished talking. He didn’t invite me to have a drink or anything to eat. He just let me stand there. I know what you went through. But what the hell difference does that make tome?”

  “I know,” Connice said. “I’m sorry I begged.”

  “All right,” I said. “Suppose you get your things together. You want to do that? I’m going to walk over to Hotel Street. I’m going to see if I can find something to eat. I don’t know. I’ll try to think of something. Maybe I won’t take you back. I don’t know, but don’t count on it.”

  “Please,” she said in a whisper, “if there’s anything you can do for Patsy and me — anything at all — ”

  “If there’s anything,” I told her evenly. “I’ll think of it.”

  She looked at me and tried to smile, but ended by biting down hard on her underlip.

  I crossed a side street, past a novelty shop, a photographer’s studio, a cheap restaurant. Down town Honolulu reminded me of lower Nebraska Avenue in Tampa. It was poverty stricken there by the bridge. A young girl was speaking to about a dozen loafers in the park. She was waving a Bible in her hand. Over beyond her was a shooting gallery, and a broken down merry-go-round. As I crossed the bridge a bum coming toward me looked me over. I gave him a quick look, I’d seen a thousand tramps like him. A threadbare blue coat in this heat, a pair of soiled white pants and run over shoes. His nose was large and pointed, his hair grew down his neck over his shabby collar.

  “You got a cigarette, buddy?”

  We stopped at the top of the small bridge. People passed us, the Navy Housing bus passed. Behind us I heard the tiny narrow gauge train pull into the Oahu Railway station. I flicked up a cigarette in my pack and offered it to him.

  He grinned at me. “I’ll just take two,” he said. “They’re small. You got a match, buddy?”

  I don’t know. Something about him angered me. Maybe it was the way he smiled. I shook my head. “I don’t,” I said.

  “That’s all right, buddy,” he said. He took a match from his coat pocket, snapped a light with his thumbnail and inhaled deeply. “You a cop, ain’t you, buddy?”

  “Yes,” I said. I started by him.

  “Not over here, though? Back Stateside, huh?”

  “Yes.” I said.

  He leaned against the concrete wall as I passed him. “Thanks, buddy. See you around.”

  I went on up the street.

  Henry Nelson seemed a long way off then. Walking along those narrowed, crowded red brick streets, seeing the tiny men and the smaller women with their flat chests and their flat noses. Tampa was a million miles away. Henry Nelson meant something in Tampa gambling and Tampa politics, but walking along Hotel Street, for the first time since I’d been a rookie cop, thirteen years ago, I felt free of any influence of Henry Nelson. Back there maybe there was only his rival big shot Big Mike Rafferty who was as important, and as dangerous. But from here, he seemed awfully little, and the world suddenly awfully big. I began to feel bett
er.

  I took a table in a restaurant on one of the cross streets near Woolworth’s and the East India store. I sat at a table near the wall. The waitress who took my order was the first pretty native girl I’d seen since I arrived on Oahu Island. She looked exactly like a china doll I had seen when I was a kid. Her breasts were firm and rounded, her features seemed chiseled, and I wondered why such a pretty girl would be working as a waitress down town.

  I was looking at her or I’d have seen my friend the bum sooner. It wasn’t until she turned away that I saw the tramp I’d met on the bridge. He was standing in the doorway with two dark-skinned Kanakas. The bum was standing between them, tall and threadbare. They were both wearing zoot suits and their black hair glistened.

  The bum nodded his head toward me. When his eyes met mine and he saw that I had recognized him, he just turned and walked away with the two men still talking to him.

  The two men came into the restaurant. They didn’t look at me again. But when the pretty little waitress came with my black coffee, she handed me a card. When I looked at her, her face was ashen. My hand brushed her fingers: they were icy cold.

  “It says, please to the telephone,” she said breathlessly. I looked at the card and that’s exactly what it said, “Please to the telephone.”

  “Where is the telephone to?” I said.

  She tried to smile. “Follow, please. I will direct you there.”

  I got up and followed her past the table where the two men sat. There was a vase on their table with two very red hibiscus in it. I went by quickly, but I noticed two things. One of them had cauliflower ears and broken nose of the professional boxer. The other was thinner and reeked of the strong pipe.

  There were telephones there, all right, but none of them was off the receiver. The little waitress by now was visibly trembling. She pushed back by me toward the dining room. “Excuse me, please,” she said.

  We were in this narrow passage with a closed door in one wall and the public telephones along the other. Back of us I could hear the noises from the kitchen. The dining room was very quiet.

  As the tiny girl went by me, I grabbed her arm and pulled her back hard against me. I heard her gasp of horror as I whirled back toward the two Kanakas.