Last Notes from Home (41 page)

What came next was even more astonishing. On the headstone I had already noticed an expensive tape recorder, and it suddenly occurred to me that where the Brigadier’s family, I included, had failed him, Jimmy would now damn well rectify. In the manner of a sergeant in the Irish Guards, Jimmy called us to attention, bent over, pressed the play button, and we were startled to hear what Jimmy later told us was the official U.S. Army Band beginning the A part of Frédéric Chopin’s “Funeral March” done in
lento
tempo. At the conclusion of the A part, the drum cadences used to keep everyone in step began, one could hear the sound of a single caisson rolling over what sounded a cobbled pavement, the sound now muted, and someone who sounded very like Richard Burton began reading selected passages from Pericles’ funeral oration:

“So died these men as became Athenians. You, their survivors, must determine to have as unaltering a resolution in the field, though you may pray that it may have a happier issue… you must realize yourselves the power of Athens, and feed your hearts upon her from day to day, till love of her fills your hearts; and then when all her greatness shall break upon you, you must reflect that it was by courage, sense of duty, and a keen feeling of honor in action that men were enabled to win all this, and that no personal failure in an enterprise could make them consent to deprive their country of their valor, but that they laid it at her feet as the most glorious contribution that they could offer.”

The tape then went into the more cheerful, almost lullaby tempo of the B part, after which the drum cadences began again, again muted, and again someone who sounded very like Burton:

“Turning to the sons and brothers of the dead, I see an arduous struggle before you. When a man is gone, all are wont to praise him, and should your merit be ever so transcendent, you will still find it difficult not merely to overtake, but even to approach, their renown. The living have envy to contend with, while those who are no longer in our path are honored with a goodwill into which rivalry does not enter.”

The tape then returned to the grave A theme of Chopin’s work, and this was followed by what was obviously a twelve-gun salute, going immediately after into the most moving—it broke one’s heart—rendition of Taps I’ve ever heard. The entire ceremony took no more, than fifteen minutes, and when we returned to the Royal Hawaiian we repaired to a table at the outdoor Mai Tai bar and Jimmy ordered a round of drinks. When I thanked and toasted him for his kindness, I said to Jimmy that the voice reading sounded very like Richard Burton’s. “And just who in the bleeding hell’s voice do you think it was, you bleeding culchie! Of course it was Dickie’s voice! Dickie’s been one of us for years, contributed more cash than I could ever tell you. You of course must know that Welshmen hate the bleeding Limeys more even than the Irish do, and that, me lurverly, would have to make it the very essence of loathing. Even Dickie’s drinking buddy, Dylan, as broke as he was and no matter the unhappy circumstance of his drunken demise, contributed a fiver from time to time.” How did one enter a conversation with this fat mad Irishman? “And who do you think was playing Taps?”

As I knew it wouldn’t be in the least necessary to say
who
I held my peace.

“Chuck Mangione.”

“Chuck Mangione, for Christ’s sake?
You mean Chuck hates the bleeding Limeys, too?”

“But of course, you silly oaf. He’s one of us, always has been. Mangione is not just one of those bleeding wog El Wopos, he’s Siciliano”—didn’t I know it!—”from that gorgeous island of rebellious, Machiavellian dukes and princes. The bugle has no range, me lurverly, and though Chuck’s flugelhorn has a lower range than the trumpet, my guess is, me lad, that you never heard Taps played like that before.’’ I just sat there, agape, staring at this madman, then poured down my vodka and grapefruit juice and, while O’Twoomey smirked and lovingly caressed his great belly, ordered another, adding, “Make that a double.”

On a Sunday at the Punchbowl two months later, O’Twoomey had no sooner pressed the
play
button than dark thunderheads rushed over the head of Columbia’s statue, an immediate tropical downpour began, we fled to the vehicles—I to Jimmy’s enclosed Jeep—and we were no sooner into the semicircular drive of the Royal Hawaiian when the sun broke brilliantly through azure skies. In the manner of General Rommel ordering his corporal back to the front, O’Twoomey told Toby to return to Punchbowl, then stuck his arm out the window and violently signaled for a rain-drenched Robin and Hannibal to follow us. At the cemetery we were shocked and enraged—
”Bleeding fucking grave looters!”
—to discover all the Divine Kapio-lani’s leis had been stolen. Prior to this time we had always assumed that Punchbowl’s caretakers had removed them as they rotted during the week, or that the Divine Kapiolani had had them removed when she had fresh ones delivered before our weekly dusk ceremony. Obviously this hadn’t been the case and Robin, herself the possessor of a larcenous heart, came up with the most trenchant solution. Early on someone had spotted the leis as the work of Kapiolani, and that someone had waited for our weekly departure from Punchbowl and had doubtless stolen them to sell at a kiosk on Kalakaua. “Probably that bleeding fucking fat wog swindler with whom Exley does business. The Maguires were a warring clan. They knew bleeding nothing about barter. The Maguires just took what they bleeding well wanted!”

Among relaxing rounds of golf, we spent the following week on Lanai mapping strategy for ensnaring the miscreants, O’Twoomey, on his kelly green phone, filling in Robin as the plan matured and resolved itself. With a credit card Toby would steal from a hotel room on Saturday night (a trifling matter for Toby), he and I would go to the Honolulu International Airport on Sunday morning and rent two nondescript Fords or Chevrolets, preferably basic black or gray. On Sunday afternoon Toby, Hannibal, and I would drive one of the cars to the back of the memorial, then make our way down past the frangipani trees
(Plumeria acuminata)
and the Courts of the Missing and hide behind the enclosure of Court Two, from which we could get the best view of section T, in which the Brigadier was buried in grave 358. At the usual time, Robin and O’Twoomey would come to the grave and proceed with the service, then depart in the other rented car.

Everything went exactly as planned. Toby was wearing a black wig. Naturally a master at this sort of thing, Toby said that should anyone come up with an accurate description of Hannibal the cops would feel it so exaggerated as to be farcical. Robin and O’Twoomey’s rented black Ford was hardly off the grounds of Punchbowl when two Samoans, damn near as tall as Hannibal but a good deal fatter, began taking the leis off the wicker stand and began stringing them along their massive forearms as though they were beads. Reaching under the flowing aloha shirt he wore when armed, Toby went to the small of his back, undipped the holster holding the Walther, handed it to me and whispered, “You won’t be worth a shit on this caper, Exley. I just want you in the car with the motor running when Hannibal and I get back there.”

To Hannibal he then said, “Look, Hannibal, and listen closely. I don’t need your help with these fat slobs. Even if their arms weren’t encumbered with those leis, those gobs of puke couldn’t move fast enough to get their hands up against me. Agreed?” Hannibal nodded solemnly. “Okay, then, all I want you to do is make sure we get every one of those leis, every blessed one of them, back to the car. I don’t want a petal left behind, any indication whatever of what this fight was about. Got it?” As the two Samoans had already started walking nonchalantly away from the grave, Toby said, “Let’s go,” and he and Hannibal broke into a feverish run toward them, while I, Toby’s holster and .32 stuffed in my belt at my belly, started back up the marble stairs past the Courts of the Missing. When I reached the Court of Honor and was passing Bruce Moore’s statue of Columbia, who has breasts almost as beautiful as Robin’s, standing on the prow of a carrier, I for the first time noticed the words inscribed below the carrier’s prow, Lincoln’s message to a bereaved mother:
the solemn pride that
MUST BE YOURS TO HAVE LAID SO COSTLY A SACRIFICE UPON THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM.

Presently Toby and Hannibal jumped into the car. Both were garlanded about the neck and arms with the Divine Kapiolani’s leis, both were sweating profusely, and both were laughing like hyenas, Toby, among gasping breaths, saying, “Jesus, Hannibal, Jesus, Hannibal, that slob’s moronic head split like a fucking pumpkin!” Hannibal said, “Like a fuckin’ papaya. That prick no rob no more grave.” Later, Toby was even to remember the name of the master sergeant whose gravestone the Samoan’s head had hit: Peter Rasbeck, also the winner of a Silver Star, state: New York. And Hannibal could not have described the Samoan’s condition more succinctly.

The article was buried in the morning
Advertiser.
Fortunately for us the Samoans had a rap sheet longer than Hannibal’s lingam, everything from breaking and entering to aggravated assault to sodomy to incest, both had twice done time in the state penitentiary and their description of Toby as “a black-haired skinny guy” and Hannibal as “the biggest meanest bruh” they’d ever seen was said to be taken lightly by the state police as they felt it was some nitpicking “lower-echelon thug feud.” After O’Twoomey read the article, he sighed relievedly and said, “Serves the bleeding fucking grave robbers right.”

When we were checking out at first light, I heard O’Twoomey tell the deferential desk clerk he wouldn’t need his suite and Towers rooms for two months. Lord Lisdoonvarna had always had a hankering, he said, to see Australia and he and his court would be flying down to Melbourne and taking a leisurely train trip across the Outback, disembarking at Alice Springs or wherever en route to Perth the fancy moved them. Unable to resist it, O’Twoomey had of course to add, “Yes, siree, I’m going to take me an elephant gun and bag me a couple wog aboriginees.” The clerk, knowing Jimmy was going to lay a C-note on him, pretended to find this hilarious and assured O’Twoomey that space would always be available to him at the Pink Palace. On the Cessna going back to Lanai, I said, “Are we really going to Australia?”

“Don’t be stupid, Frederick! We’re simply going to lay low on Lanai for a couple months. Don’t you think that the wisest thing to do, me lurverly? I mean, your extremely competent pal Toby—and I shall always, Frederick, be immeasurably in your debt for having introduced me to Toby—has, after all, damn near killed a bleeding wog. Don’t you think it might be the wiser course for us to respect your chum’s privacy and whereabouts for a couple months?”

“What about Robin?”

“What about bleeding Robin?”

“You mean, I won’t be able to see her weekends?”

“But of course not. How can I make it any plainer that none of this group is going anywhere near Honolulu for weeks?”

“Then m have to have Robin fly over here weekends.”

“Miss Robin will most assuredly not be coming to Lanai. Your chum Hannibal informs me that the two of you make noises like whales mating in the Maui Channel, and I’m certainly not going to expose these wog children on Lanai—
total innocents all!
—to any such feelthy bestial shenanigans as the two of you shaking the flimsy walls of the Lodge with your reprehensible piglike grunting, groaning, and oinking. It shall not happen under my roof, sir!”

A self-righteous O’Twoomey was genuinely something to behold. “But I can’t live without Robin for two months!”

“You mean, me lurverly, that you can’t live without that disgusting, nauseating feelth for two months. Isn’t that what you mean, Frederick?”

“Put it any goddamn way you want, Jimmy.”

“It’s Your Grace, Mr. Exley, until this plane settles onto the tarmac of Lanai.”

“Your fucking Grace.”

“Keep it up, Frederick, and I shall have Hannibal punish you. Oh, punish you severely, me boyo!” Sensing my acutely pained frustration, O’Twoomey sighed and said, “There is a way, Frederick. You might marry Robin, you know? And at least that feelthy oinking would be sanctified in the eyes of Our Lord Jesus!”

“Marry Robin? Are you fucking crazy, O’Twoomey? But of course you’re fucking bonkers. I’ve known that since the day we met! Absolutely and unequivocally bonkers!”

Even Toby and Hannibal, who hadn’t been missing a word, found the vision of Robin and me living in connubial bliss somewhat more than they could handle. Toby, who had been making his approach to Lanai, called the airport and, among the silliest laughter I’d ever heard from him, told the guy he was circling back and asked him if he was cleared for yet another approach.