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either.

    After the incident at the Shark Cave I went to my bank to visit my safe deposit box. There isn’t any money there, that’s aboard Duchess , but if Chawlie had anyone watching me I didn’t want him reaching the right conclusion. I carried a day pack with a few odds and ends and the five thousand dollars in cash. The fifty bills were a heavy load inside the pocket of the pack.
    I am not normally a nervous person. Two or three times I’ve carried more cash in places where the locals would have happily cut my throat for fifty cents American. But that money belonged to someone else and it was back in the bad old days when I needed an adrenaline rush with every job. The “crank” was as necessary for me as the income. I no longer am an adrenaline junkie. Having that kind of cash money makes me jumpy. And things have changed here. Parts of the island are no longer safe at night. Roaming gangs of vicious children are beating, robbing and raping both tourists and residents, choosing their victims with equanimity. Elementary-school arsonists are setting the mountains on fire. Waikiki no longer has the harmless Disney atmosphere it had ten years ago. At night, Kapiolani Park feels like Central Park.
    I’m not particularly worried about my own safety, but it was a comfort knowing the money would be out of my hands in a few hours.
    The memories and the sunset and the newlyweds and the alcohol combined to make me maudlin, and I wondered about the woman I had disappointed. I remembered her walking away from me near this very spot, marching off with a stiff back, her head held high. That she was better off without me was a foregone conclusion. She thought I could have been right for her, but she didn’t really know me and there were too many qualifiers. I knew she wasn’t The One. I’d loved that one long ago, and they’d killed her.
    I cut through Fort DeRussey and wandered back down Kalakaua Avenue toward the hotel when I judged the sky was dark enough and the crowds were thinning along the beach.
When I got to the entrance of the hotel I found I’d judged it right. Feeling like a salmon on a spawning run, I bucked against the pedestrian traffic flooding onto the street.
    The bar was empty of patrons. The sun was gone and so was the view, replaced by a vast darkness. Louise was leaning against the bar, resting her elbows on the ceramic tile, easing her back and her feet. She watched me enter the bar with such visible mixed emotions it made me smile.
    â€œI’ll sit at the bar,” I told her. “Make it easy on you.” I slipped onto the bar stool next to the waitress station.
    She smiled and didn’t move, her weariness and gratitude both visible. “What’ll you have, sugar?” She had a voice constructed of equal parts Louisiana bayou, cigarettes and cheap whiskey.
    â€œChardonnay.”
    â€œYou were here earlier. You stayin’ here?”
    â€œNo, ma’am.”
    She leaned toward the bartender, who’d heard the conversation. He nodded and reached for the house bottle.
    â€œSix fifty,” she said, placing the wine on the tile in front of me. I handed her a twenty and told her to keep the change.
    â€œKinda steep, ain’t it?” she asked, instantly wary.
    â€œCost of doing business,” I said.
    â€œExpense account, huh? You working?”
    â€œLooking for information on a girl who used to work here. Thought you might have known her.”
    â€œI probably do, mister,” said Louise. “And if I do, it’s probably best if you don’t ask.”
    â€œThis girl was killed about three months ago. She worked here before then, but I don’t know when or how long.”
    â€œThat MacGruder girl? The one that was in all the papers? That’s the one you mean?”
    I nodded.
    â€œThat poor little thing.” She looked at me again, this time really appraising me and my clothing. I’d changed