The Pearl Harbor Murders by Max Allan Collins Read Free Book Online

big-band music of Pearl and the Harbor Lights on the dance floor adjacent to the dining room.
    Hully and his father split up—he noticed O. B. talking to Colonel Fielder at one point, out on the lawn, and to that German playboy Otto Kuhn, in the rock garden—and the younger Burroughs sat at a table with Ensign Bill Fielder and Seaman Dan Pressman, smoking cigarettes, drinking oke (except for Hully, who had switched from wine to coffee), listening to Pearl and the band do "Oh, Look at Me Now."
    The only concession to Hawaiian-style music made by Pearl and the Harbor Lights was the inclusion of two guitars, one of them steel, and of course the boys in the band did wear blue aloha shirts with a yellow-and-red floral pattern. Bathed in pale pink stage lighting, Pearl—standing at her center-stage microphone, which she occasionally touched, in a sensually caressing fashion—wore a clinging blue gown, with a daring dÈcolletage that showed off her medium-size but firm, high breasts to fine advantage.
    "I'm going to tell the old man tonight," Bill was saying. He was a handsome Naval officer in his early twenties with dark hair and a cleft chin—despite his crisply military haircut, he looked more like a kid than a sailor, in his green aloha shirt and white slacks.
    "I can see what you see in Pearl," Hully said, and he certainly could, his eyes returning to the ethereal, erotic vision she made on stage under the pink lighting in the low-cut blue gown. "But you've only been going with her for a month.... Can't you wait—"
    "What, till war breaks out, and I'm at sea, fighting her relatives?" Bill's dark eyes were sharp, but his speech was slightly slurred—too much oke. "There's not going to be a better time to break this to Dad—certainly after we're at war with Japan, it's not gonna be any easier."
    "Bill," his friend Dan said, a blue-eyed blond sailor
    from California, "she's a nice girl, and I mean you'd have to be blind not to see she's a living doll... but you gotta admit—she's been around."
    “Take that back!" Bill said, stiffening.
    "Okay, okay," Dan said, patting the air with his palms. "I didn't mean she was ... fast or anything. Just that she's dated a few guys.... Maybe you should wait a couple months, get to know each other better."
    "Dan's right," Hully said. "Wait a little bit—get past the physical attraction and know each other as people ... just to make sure...."
    "I am sure—Pearl's the girl for me. She's sweet and she's nice and she'll give everything up for me, her singing, everything... just to be my wife and have my babies."
    "Maybe you ought to think about that, too," Dan said.
    Bill glared at him. "What?"
    "What it'll put your kids through—you know, the racial thing."
    "Pearl's half white. Our kids'11 be all American. Dan, I won't hear this kind of talk."
    "Okay, buddy ... I'm just trying to help. You've helped me before, plenty of times—I'm just trying to be your friend."
    Bill sighed and nodded.
    The band was starting to play "I'll Remember April," and one of the guitar players began to sing the lilting ballad. Bill shot out of his chair as if from a cannon, muttering, "This is one of Pearl's free songs," and headed for the bandstand.
    Then he was out there dancing with her, holding her close, gazing into her eyes like a lovesick puppy, and she was gazing back, a beautiful woman who seemed equally in love. It was romantic, and frightening.
    "His father is going to kick Bill's ass," Dan said.
    "I know," Hully said, and nodded toward the entry-way to the lobby.
    Colonel Fielder—slim, casually attired in red aloha shirt and white slacks, his dark hair widow's-peaked, with a narrow face and hawkish eyes and hawkish nose—stood just inside the doorway, staring out at the dance floor, obviously viewing his son dancing with the nisei singer—and just as obviously unhappy.
    Shaking his head in apparent disgust, Fielder exited.
    "It's gonna be ugly," Dan said.
    "Pearl asked me to set up a meeting