Sleeping Dogs by James C. Clar

Sleeping Dogs by James C. Clar

Honolulu, 1942

The ceiling fan spun lazily overhead, pushing stale, smoky air in slow circles around my office above a pawn shop on Hotel Street. I lit another cigarette. My chair creaked as I leaned back and put my feet up on my desk. I stared out through slatted blinds at a sun-drenched Honolulu afternoon. I had the wireless on, more news from Washington. Not much of it good. Roosevelt’s latest update mingled with the sound of a steam whistle from the harbor a few blocks to the south. A ship must have been maneuvering into port.

The little bell on my office door tinkled and there she was. Tall, lustrous black hair cascading in waves to her shoulders. She wore a bright yellow dress that clung in all the right places … and in even a few more. She had the kind of eyes a guy could fall into and drown. I couldn’t fall fast enough.

I reached over and turned off the radio. Went around to the other side of my desk and pulled out a chair. She settled in. Looked like she belonged in a high-end perfume ad, not in some low-rent PI’s office.

“You’re Eddie O’Brien,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“I am when I want to be. Right now, I think I want to be.” I lit another cigarette and blew the smoke away from her toward the window.

“I guess it’s my lucky day, then.” She gave it right back to me with a wry smile.

 “Mr. O’Brien,” she went on, “I need you to find someone for me. His name is Jimmy Higa.”

A Japanese name. I should have sent he on her way right then and there with a “terribly sorry, ma’am. I can’t help you.”  Of course, I didn’t. I’m not very smart sometimes. The attack on Pearl Harbor rattled the island to its bones. Eighteen months later, the place was still shaking. These days, folks with Japanese surnames were none too popular. And that was putting it mildly.

“And you are?” I asked with as much indifference as I could feign.

“I’m Olivia Drake.”

From her lips the name tinkled lightly the way gin and dry vermouth sometimes do when they’re strained slowly over ice and poured into a chilled glass by someone who knows what they’re doing.

“I’m afraid that Jimmy’s gotten mixed up in something,” she picked up where she left off.

“I’m worried. He hasn’t been seen in few days and, well, with anti-Japanese sentiment the way it is now … “

She paused and I gave her some room to work her way into whatever it was she was working her way into.

“Mr. O’Brien, I want him found … but discretely. My husband is a busy man and right now he’s under a great deal of stress. I don’t want him to be distracted … by anything.”

“Military?” I asked. “Your husband, I mean.”

“Yes. He’s a commander. Naval Intelligence.”

“What’s your connection with this Higa?” I gave her a long look. To her credit, she met it without blinking those pretty eyes.

“Childhood friend. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we.”

And there the lie sat … with its legs crossed and a look that said, “let’s not make a scene, old chap.”

I didn’t like smell of things much but work was work and I needed the money. The envelope Olivia Drake took out of her clutch and slid across the desk to me helped change my mind, but just a little. It held an old photograph of Jimmy Higa and a stack of greenbacks heavy enough to anchor a small boat in Ala Wai Harbor. If you had a small boat and wanted to anchor it in Ala Wai Harbor, that is. So far as she knew, she added, Jimmy liked to play cards.

The trail led from the backstreets of Kalihi to a dockside cardroom out near Keehi Lagoon. A few bucks and some bruised knuckles later, I had a solid line on Higa. He was a sometime jazz musician with two expensive habits, gambling and drugs. Last my contact had heard, he was holed up in a room above a noodle shop in Moiliili; a young, half-Japanese kid one step ahead of his loan shark and his dealer. Not a story that was likely to end well.

I didn’t want to spook the kid into running so I decided to check with Olivia Drake before making my next move. I met with her the following afternoon in my office.

She nodded once or twice while I filled her in on what I knew. She clutched her purse like it held dynamite.

“Thank you, Mr. O’Brien. You’ve done more than enough. I’ll take it from here.”

Something in her tone set off one of those little warning bells in my head.

“Are you planning on talking to him?” I asked.

“Yes. I want to see if there is anything I can do to help.”

I lit a cigarette, stood up from my desk and walked around it so that I was standing in front of her.

“That neighborhood,” I said, “might not be a bad idea to have some company.”

“No,” she flashed a fifty-thousand watt smile my way as she turned to leave.

“Jimmy and I go way back. Besides, I can handle myself.”

“I’ll bet you can, doll,” I muttered under my breath as I closed the door behind her.

The next morning, I woke up with one of those itches you just have to scratch. The kind you know you should leave alone but can’t. I drove into Moiliili and found Tanaka’s Noddle House. I walked around the back and went up a flight of rickety stairs that hadn’t been painted since Wilson was president. There was only one door up there that I could see. It was closed but it wasn’t locked. The frame was so warped from years of sun and humidity, I don’t think you could have locked even if you wanted to.

 I knocked quietly. There was no answer. I nudged the door open with my shoulder, careful not to touch the knob. Old habits die hard. The inside was about what you would expect in such a place. What you might not expect to find was a dead body. It was a Japanese-American kid, mid-twenties. He’d been shot in the head. From the size of the wound, it looked like a .22 or a .25.

Given Jimmy Higa’s background, the authorities would no doubt write it off as small-time gang violence – a drug deal gone bad or an example being made over unpaid gambling debts. Still, something about the scene didn’t add up. First of all, hoods – even small-time hoods – don’t carry .22’s. or .25’s. Those were pea-shooters, women’s guns. Secondly, the place had been tossed, but frantically, inexpertly. Whatever they were looking for, from the state of things, I figured they hadn’t found it.

I spent a few moments looking around for myself, carefully … like I was using a tweezers and not a pitchfork. Noticed a cover from Life Magazine on the wall above the bed in a cheap frame. It was Ginger Rogers. The picture wasn’t straight. Maybe it had always been crooked, maybe all the commotion in the room recently had thrown it out of kilter. Or maybe there was something taped to the back. Like maybe a manila envelope with what looked like a couple of love letters to a Japanese guy who at one time seemed to work up at the consulate in Nuuanu. There was a copy of a birth certificate too. The names of the parents didn’t mean anything to me but I had a pretty good idea who the child was.

I kept the envelope and wiped the picture down and put Ginger Rogers back on the wall. She hung straight this time. I stepped over Jimmy Higa, it didn’t seem to bother him. Nothing would ever bother him again.

 I left the room and pulled the door shut behind me with my handkerchief in my hand. I walked down the stairs and back to my car. I was pretty sure no one had seen me. If they had, they certainly hadn’t paid me any attention. Somewhere a wireless was playing. I recognized the song, Bing Crosby warbling his way through “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby.”

I took a nice leisurely drive up into College Hills. Trade winds, white puffy clouds and even a rainbow or two. From the top of Kamehameha Avenue, the city spread out below me. I could see an arc of south shore Oahu, from Aloha Tower to the west to the sere bulk of Diamond Head to the east. It was a picture-postcard-perfect morning in paradise. If you didn’t count a dead kid all alone on the floor of a cheap room above a two-bit noddle shop, that is.

I parked in front of a neat bungalow style home with a coral walkway lined by a couple of well-tended royal palms. There was a low stone wall to the right of the front door below a bay window. The wall was covered in purple and red bougainvillea. A bevy of zebra doves cooing somewhere completed the idyllic scene. I rapped twice on the door. It made a sound like a shovel full of wet dirt landing on a coffin.

Olivia Drake opened the door and, without a word, stepped aside and let me in. I got the feeling she was expecting me, or somebody very much like me. I was banking on the fact that, this time of day, she would be alone. That her husband would be busy at work, keeping the island safe from invasion. She excused herself for a moment and went into the kitchen, a tea kettle was whistling. I noticed her purse on a table just inside the doorway where I stood.

“You killed him,” I said without preamble when she came back.

She moved closer to her purse … more out of instinct than with any real intent.

“Don’t bother, I’ll get it for you.”

I grabbed her purse, opened the clasp and peeked inside. It was there all right, a small .25 caliber pistol with an inlaid mother-of-pearl grip. I shut it, walked into the living room and put it down on a teakwood coffee table.

“Is this what you were looking for in Jimmy’s room?” I asked as I took the manila envelope out from under my arm where I had been clutching it and tossed it down on the table on top of her purse.

“Tell me about it, Ms. Higa.”

“Why? You know all about it now. What’s the point?”

“I know some of it,” I said. “But I’d like to hear from you. I’m guessing you probably want to tell it.”

“I had no choice,” she began. “Jimmy was in trouble. He needed money.”

“So … what? He started blackmailing you.”

“Yes.”

“With the fact that you are actually part Japanese?”

“Our father was from Okinawa. Daddy got a job in San Francisco. That’s where we were born and raised. Our parents died, Spanish flu. Jimmy and I drifted apart. Saw less and less of each other. Then nothing.”

Olivia Drake, nee Higa, paused. She turned her back on me and looked out the bay window into her front yard.

“Right after high school, I reinvented myself. I could see what was coming. I changed my name. burned every photo of myself, every document I had. Changed my hair-style. I came to Honolulu. It was easy for me to ‘pass’ here. The island is such a melting pot. Besides, I looked more like my father. Jimmy took after mom.”

“Then, one day out of the blue,” I interrupted. “You heard from Jimmy.”

Drake turned around and faced me. The sunlight streaming in from behind her cut the room into quadrants of light and shadow. Maybe there was a metaphor in that somewhere. I couldn’t say. I’m not the literary type.

“I don’t know how he found me. Didn’t even know he was on the island. We never actually met. I had no idea where he was staying. He had me wire him money. It was all very cloak-and-dagger.”

“OK,” I said pointing to the envelope on the coffee table. “That explains the birth certificate. What about the letters?

“An affair?”

Olivia Drake blushed.

“Certainly not. That was before I was married. When I first arrived here, I fell in love with a Japanese diplomat. It was a stupid and reckless given what I was trying to hide. But I was a just a kid.”

“So, you used me,” I said as I took a step toward her. “Fed me just enough so you could track your brother down and eliminate the threat.”

“Yes. I used you. Don’t forget, you were paid handsomely for your time. But you just couldn’t let sleeping dogs lie.”

“Mrs. Drake, in my experience, sleeping dogs don’t bark but they’re usually the ones that end up biting.”

“You don’t understand. With those letters and my Japanese blood, I could have been put into detention … or worse. My husband’s superiors would insist that he divorce me, disavow me. He’d have no choice. I did what I had to do to survive.”

I stood there for what seemed like an eternity before responding. Outside I could hear the sound of someone cutting grass in the distance. I thought about Jimmy Higa, desperate and cornered, just wanting a way out. Thought about Olivia, too. Half of her buried in the shadows, the other half grasping at the good old American Dream with blood on her elegant hands.

“No, you didn’t,” I finally said. “You did what you did to keep all of this.” I pointed to the ceiling, to the room around me. I wanted to get outside into the fresh air. Get just about anywhere other than where I was.

“What happens now?” She asked. “You turn me in?”

“At some point, Mrs. Drake, I’m probably going to have some explaining to do. To the cops and maybe the M.P.’s also. No way I can do that without putting you into the picture. I’ll give you forty-eight hours to do what you need to; to tell your husband whatever it is you’re going to tell him – however you decide to tell it. After that …”

I reached down and opened her purse. Took out the gun and put it in my pocket.

I turned and started toward the door. She didn’t follow me. She seemed a million miles away.

“That, by the way,” I said over my shoulder, “was just for insurance. In case you get any bright ideas. Once you’ve done what you have to, I’ll throw the damn thing into the ocean.”

Next day, late in the afternoon, I sat at my desk, feet up, reading the Star-Bulletin. The ceiling fan was working overtime and I had just poured myself a drink from the office bottle. An item on the back page made me sit up. A high-ranking naval officer’s wife had been found dead in their home in Manoa. Sleeping pills. The investigation was ongoing but the death was preliminarily being ruled a suicide.

I downed my drink. Locked up and took a walk down to the harbor. I lit a cigarette and watched the ships come and go. I thought about islands in general and Oahu in particular. This was a place of masks, of contradictions. A budding tourist paradise hiding knife fights and drug deals in back alleys. Booming sugar and pineapple plantations built on buried bones and, at times, virtual slave labor. People – people like Olivia Drake – came here to hide from the past behind those masks and contradictions. But the past always seemed to find them anyhow. Like I told her, sleeping dogs don’t stay asleep forever.

I reached into my pocket, took out Olivia’s gun. I tossed it up and down in the palm of my hand a few times. It glinted in the bright afternoon sunshine. I swung my arm back and threw it as far out into the harbor as I could. It made a sound like a whispered secret when it hit the water. A white tern swept down to investigate. The bird squawked shrilly and flew away disappointed. You and me both, brother. You and me both!

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright James C. Clar 2025

Image Courtesy: NoName_13 from Pixabay