End of the Beginning Read online

  She lay there, trying to decide whether she wanted to kill every Jap in the world or just kill herself. When the door opened again, she gasped in horror and reached down with futile hands to try to cover herself. But the soldier who came in, although he stared and laughed, only stared and laughed. He carried a tray probably stolen from the elementary-school cafeteria. He set it down on the floor and went out.

  Dully, Jane eyed it. It held more food and better food than she’d seen in months. The Jap lieutenant hadn’t lied about that. For a little while, Jane didn’t think she could eat. She wanted to throw up.

  No matter what her mind wanted, she saw rice and vegetables in front of her. Almost without conscious thought, she found herself eating. The plate emptied in what seemed the blink of an eye. The wages of sin are . . . lunch, she thought, which went a long way toward telling her how punchy she was.

  Food even came ahead of putting her pants back on. She was just starting to reach for the jeans when a noncom walked into the room. He laughed to find her half dressed, and gestured that she should lie down on the bed again.

  “No,” she said, even though he carried a bamboo stick like the ones the Jap guards used when they wanted to hurt POWs but didn’t want to kill them. “I’m not going to just give it to you.”

  Maybe he spoke a little English. Maybe the look on her face told him she wouldn’t cooperate. Either way, he did what he wanted to do. He whacked her with the stick again and again. She tried to grab it, but she couldn’t. She screamed, but he ignored her. When she did her best to knee him in the crotch, he twisted to take it on the hip and slapped her in the face.

  Before long, no matter how she fought, he was in her, slamming away to please himself without the faintest thought for her as anything but a piece of meat. When she thought he was distracted, she tried to bite him. Without missing a stroke, he jerked his shoulder back. Her teeth clicked on empty air. He smacked her again, and came in the same instant.

  Out of the room he went, whistling one of the Japs’ unmusical tunes. Jane lay on her back, his seed dribbling out of her onto the sheet. If she fought every man who came in here, she’d be dead in nothing flat. Part of her said that would be for the best, but she didn’t want to die. She wanted to live till the Americans came back, and then to have her revenge.

  If she just lay there and let them have her, maybe they wouldn’t hit her. But could she do that without losing her mind? She had no idea of anything just then, except how many places she hurt and how disgusted with life she was.

  “God damn you, Yosh,” she muttered. “Why didn’t you tell me what they wanted me for?” He’d probably been too embarrassed to come out and say it; middle-aged local Japanese were downright Victorian. But why, oh why, oh why, hadn’t she taken the hint and lit out for the tall timber?

  OSCAR VAN DER KIRK PACED HIS CROWDED little apartment like a tiger going back and forth in its cage. “For God’s sake, will you cut that out?” Susie Higgins said. “You’re making me nervous.”

  He did stop—for about thirty seconds. Then he was going back and forth again. “Something’s happened to Charlie,” he said.

  Susie rolled her blue, blue eyes. “How can you tell?” she said in tones obviously intended for sweet reason. “He’s a surf bum. He’s even more of a surf bum than you are. He doesn’t know today what he’ll do tomorrow—and he doesn’t care, either. If he disappears for a few days or a few weeks, so what? Maybe he’s gone up to the north shore again or something.”

  “Not now.” Oscar’s dismissal of that was altogether automatic. “It’ll be flatter than a pancake up there this time of year.”

  “Then he’s got some other harebrained scheme going instead.”

  Oscar shook his head. “I don’t think so. We were supposed to go out together this morning, but he didn’t show. You can count on Charlie. If he says he’ll be somewhere, he’ll be there.”

  “Maybe a shark ate him.”

  “Maybe one did,” Oscar answered. “You can joke. You don’t go out there like I do. It doesn’t happen very often, but it happens. Or maybe the Japs got him.”

  Susie snorted. “Why would the Japs want a half-breed surf-rider, for crying out loud? Get serious.”

  He didn’t answer. He could think of some reasons. He’d had an encounter with an American sub skipper out there on the Pacific. Maybe Charlie Kaapu had, too, or with the crew of a flying boat, or. . . . Who could tell? Oscar had never said a word to anybody—Susie emphatically included—about his meeting. If Charlie had any brains, he would have kept his yap shut, too. The fewer people you told, the fewer people could blab. Living under the Japs had taught the people of Hawaii what living under the Nazis taught the people of France: keeping your head down, not drawing the occupiers’ notice, was a damn good idea.

  Charlie didn’t even tell me anything, if there was anything to tell, Oscar thought. That hurt his feelings, even though he’d just gone through all the reasons keeping quiet was a good idea, and even though he hadn’t told Charlie about the sub. Logic? None at all. At least he could laugh at himself for realizing it.

  Susie was studying him. She’d never been to college—he wasn’t sure she’d finished high school—but she was better at reading people than he was. “You’ve got that knight-in-shining-armor look on your face again,” she said. “Don’t do anything dumb, Oscar. You can end up dead. Easy.”

  “Me? Don’t be silly.” He laughed—uneasily. “Some knight. I’m just a surf bum myself—you said so. Besides, when did you ever see that look on me before?”

  “When you took me in,” Susie answered. “Oh, I knew what you wanted. Fair enough—that’s the knight’s reward. But a lot of people wouldn’t have wanted to go on with it when things got tough. You did.”

  “You walked out on me,” he reminded her.

  “That wasn’t on account of the Japs. We were driving each other squirrely,” Susie said, which was true. She sent him a sidelong look. “But Charlie can’t give you what I could—or he’d better not be able to, anyway.”

  His cheeks heated, as much in anger as in embarrassment. He was no fairy! If Susie didn’t have reason to know that . . . Her eyes sparkled. She’d wanted to get under his skin, and she had. But he wasn’t going to write Charlie off just because she’d annoyed him. Stubbornly, he said, “He’s my buddy, darn it. I was going to go round his place, see if anybody knows anything, that’s all. Safe as houses.”

  “And then you wake up,” Susie said, which sounded a hell of a lot more caustic than Yeah, sure. She looked at him again. “I’m not going to be able to talk you out of it, am I?” She shook her head. “No, of course I’m not. You do have that look. Well, for Christ’s sake be as careful as you can, you fool.”

  He managed a lopsided grin. “You say the sweetest things, babe. I didn’t know you cared.”

  To his surprise—hell, to his amazement—she turned red this time. “Damn you, Oscar, sometimes you’re an even bigger blockhead than usual,” she muttered. He almost asked her what the devil she was talking about, but he had the feeling that would be letting her win, so he kept quiet.

  When they went to bed that night, she reached for him before he could reach for her. She slid down and took him in her mouth till he was close to exploding, then straddled him and rode him like a racehorse. By the time she finished, he thought he’d just won the Kentucky Derby. She leaned forward to give him a kiss, her breasts pressing softly against his chest. “Wow!” he said sincerely.

  “You’ve got something to remember me by, anyway,” she said, “in case I never happen to see you again.”

  “I’ll be fine,” he said. Susie squeezed him and didn’t answer. She’d already given him her opinion.

  When morning came, she was out the door before him. Her job had regular hours, which he’d always despised. And she had to get over to Honolulu, while he only needed to wander over to the shabby part of Waikiki. Tourists, jammed hard against the beach, didn’t think Waikiki had any shabby parts. The farther
inland you went, though . . .

  Charlie’s apartment building made Oscar’s seem like the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. On the mainland, stray dogs would have been sniffing at garbage on the corners in this kind of neighborhood. Here, they’d probably been caught and cooked and eaten. He didn’t see any, anyhow.

  A woman who looked as if she worked on Hotel Street came out of the building. “Hey!” Oscar called to her. “You seen Charlie any time lately?”

  “Who wants to know?” She eyed him. “Oh, it’s you. You hang around with him. Maybe you’re okay.” She stayed cagey, though. “How come you wanna know?”

  “He owes me a bottle of okolehao,” Oscar answered, which wasn’t true but was plausible. With liquor imports from the mainland cut off, the stuff distilled from ti root was the best hooch around, and correspondingly important. You would want to find out about somebody who owed it to you.

  “Yeah?” the woman said. Oscar knew what that hungry tone of voice meant: she wondered if it was still in Charlie’s apartment. But her shoulders slumped as she went on, “I ain’t seen him since the cops took him away night before last.” Plainly, she figured that if the cops had him, they had his okolehao, too. Oscar would have bet the same way.

  “The cops?” he said. “What do the cops want with Charlie? If you know him, you know he wouldn’t hurt a fly.” That wasn’t a hundred percent true; when Charlie had a few too many, he’d get into bar fights. But even those were on the friendly side. He’d never ground a broken bottle into anybody’s face or anything like that. Oscar didn’t think he’d ever gone to jail for one.

  “I don’t know what’s going on. I just mind my business.” The woman dripped righteousness. By the way her eyes darted now here, now there, she also minded other people’s business every chance she got. She said, “Maybe he couldn’t pay his rent.”

  “Nah. They just throw your stuff out on the street then.” Oscar spoke from experience. “Besides, he catches fish. Way things are now, that’s a heck of a lot better than money.”

  “Beats me.” The woman shrugged. “I gotta go, buddy. They come down on me like you wouldn’t believe if I’m late.” Away she went, hips working under her short dress.

  “Cops?” Oscar scratched his head. Were they doing the Japs’ work for them? Or had Charlie really gone and got himself in that kind of trouble? It didn’t seem like him, but how could you be sure?

  One way would be to go down to the police station and ask if you could bail him out. If the cops said yes, that would tell Oscar some of what he needed to find out. If, on the other hand, they said no . . . In that case, Oscar was liable to buy himself the same kind of trouble his friend had, whatever that was.

  He remembered Susie’s warning. He also—warmly—remembered her good-bye present. Did he want to take the chance of finding out what had happened to Charlie? It boiled down to, would Charlie take the chance for him? He knew the answer to that as soon as he formed the question.

  Waikiki’s police station was small and run down. The desk sergeant was a hapa-Hawaiian who even in these hard times seemed to overflow his chair. Oscar didn’t suppose cops missed many meals, no matter what. If a local Japanese were on duty there, he didn’t know what he would have done. But he did dare ask a man of Charlie Kaapu’s blood what had happened to him.

  The sergeant didn’t answer right away. He looked at—looked through—Oscar. File cards riffled behind his impassive dark eyes. He no doubt knew who Oscar was, and that Oscar and Charlie ran around together. He might have needed to remind himself of that, but he knew. He said, “They’ve taken him to Honolulu.” His voice, rough from years of two packs a day, revealed nothing.

  “Why would they want to do that?” Oscar didn’t have to fake astonishment. “What’s he done? What do they think he’s done? It can’t be anything much—you know Charlie, don’t you?”

  “Sure.” The cop looked through him again. “You want to spring him, right?”

  “Well, of course I do,” Oscar answered. “He’s my pal. Can I bail him out? I’m not broke.”

  By the way the sergeant touched his pocket, he was going for cigarettes that weren’t there. How many times had he made that gesture since Hawaii fell? From his sour expression, quite a few. “Bail him out?” he said. “I don’t know about that. It, ah, isn’t only the police that are interested in him.”

  “Who else?” Oscar knew he’d better sound naive. As if the idea were just occurring to him, he said, “The, uh, Japanese?” He’d better not say Japs around somebody who worked with them and, for all practical purposes, for them.

  “That’s right. He’s been poking into places where he doesn’t belong, sounds like,” the policeman said. “So you can go there, but. . . .” His voice trailed away. He’d made the same calculation Oscar had before.

  Oscar shivered. “Thanks, Sergeant,” he said, and left the station in a hurry.

  Into Honolulu? Into Honolulu, he decided, and started west. His knees weren’t knocking, but he didn’t know why not. He was scared green. He and Charlie had got caught in the crossfire between invading Japs and Americans right at the start of the war. He’d jumped into trenches when bombs fell not nearly far enough away. Going after his friend now, though, was consciously brave. So this is what courage feels like, he thought. Not letting anybody, even me, see how frightened I am.

  Maybe it would be all right. Honolulu’s police chief, still doing his job under the Japs, had come out from California not too long before the war to shape up a corrupt force, and he’d done it. The assistant chief was a full-blooded Hawaiian. Cops came from every piece in the jigsaw puzzle of nations that made up Hawaii. But if the occupiers said hop, the cops had to make like frogs.

  The main station wasn’t far from Honolulu Hale, the city hall. Typewriters clattered as Oscar went inside. He wondered how the police got new ribbons, or if they’d figured out a way to reink old ones.

  By his looks, the desk sergeant here was at least hapa-Oriental. Japanese? Chinese? Korean? Oscar wasn’t sure. The man’s voice didn’t give anything away as he asked, “What do you want, buddy?”

  “You’ve got a friend of mine in jail,” Oscar said. The sergeant raised an interrogative eyebrow. Not another muscle on his face moved. Reluctantly, Oscar named Charlie Kaapu.

  That eyebrow jumped again, higher this time. Oscar wondered if the desk sergeant would yell for help, or if he’d just pull a gun and hold Oscar himself. But all he said was, “Sorry, you can’t have him.”

  “How come? I couldn’t believe he got jugged. He’s the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet. What do they think he did, anyway?”

  Instead of answering, the sergeant asked a question of his own: “Mac, you ever hear of the Kempeitai?”

  Oscar shook his head. “Nope. What is it?”

  “Japanese secret police. And now I’m going to do you the biggest favor anybody ever did: I’m not gonna ask you who you are. Get the hell out of here before I change my mind.”

  Oscar got. Once he was out of the station, he turned several corners as fast as he could, in case the sergeant did send police after him. But there was no sign of that. Oscar shivered. He hadn’t learned much about winter in California or here—Susie laughed at how ignorant he was. But winter, winter unquestioned, dwelt in him now.

  The Kempeitai. The name wasn’t chilling the way, say, the Gestapo was—at least not to Oscar. But—secret police? It was bound to be the same kind of outfit. And it had Charlie. What had he done? What did they think he’d done? What can I do to get him away? Oscar wondered miserably. Anything at all?

  CORPORAL TAKEO SHIMIZU HAD JUST FALLEN ASLEEP when an air-raid alarm bounced him from his cot. Wearing the thin cotton shirt and breech clout in which he’d gone to bed, he grabbed the rest of his uniform and his shoes and ran for the trenches outside the barracks hall. The Yankee marauders probably wouldn’t come close, but nobody got old taking stupid chances.

  Antiaircraft guns started going off. There were more of them in Honolulu these days
than there had been. There needed to be more, for the Americans came over the city—and over Oahu generally—more often than they had. Machine guns started hammering, too. Tracers scribed ice-blue and yellow arcs across the sky. Through the din of gunfire, Shimizu heard the deep growl of a flying boat’s engines, and then the roar of bombs going off.

  Twenty minutes went by before the all-clear sounded. The guns had fired for most of that time, though the American plane was surely long gone. Shrapnel pattered down out of the sky. It might end up doing almost as much damage as the bombs.

  Muttering in annoyance, Shimizu went back to bed. He hadn’t been sleeping long before the air-raid sirens screeched again. “Zakennayo!” he said furiously. “Why doesn’t the baka yaro in charge make up his mind?”

  He found out why in short order: more U.S. aircraft were in the sky. One or two hit Honolulu, while a couple of others caused a commotion at Pearl Harbor. That meant another fireworks display off to the west.

  What he wanted to see instead of more fireworks was a flying boat going down in flames. He didn’t get what he wanted. After the usual delay, he did get to go back to bed.

  An hour and a half later, a third wave of American planes came over Honolulu. By then, he was so tired he wanted to stay in the barracks even though the building would fall down on him if it got hit. Shouts from officers got him moving. Shouts from him helped get the men moving.

  Huddling in the trench, Yasuo Furusawa said, “They want to keep us from sleeping.”

  “They know how to get what they want, don’t they?” Shimizu growled. The Americans weren’t doing a lot of damage. They couldn’t, not coming over in handfuls. But they had all the Japanese in Honolulu—maybe all the Japanese on Oahu—jumping around like fleas on a hot griddle.

  He wondered if yet another set of U.S. aircraft would hit Honolulu just before dawn. None did, but a nervous gunner not far from the barracks opened up on something apparently imaginary. The gunfire didn’t wake Shimizu. Shards of steel crashing down on the roof did. He went to sleep again after that, too, which proved he was made of stern—and very tired—stuff.