The Pearl Harbor Murders Read Online Free Page B

Niumalu, a bedroom with bath and sitting room (Hully bunking it on a hideaway couch). Burroughs picked up the pace of his writing, even as he and his son enjoyed late, leisurely breakfasts, long lunches, afternoons of driving, horseback riding, fishing, sunbathing and, most of all, tennis.
    He and Hully—and Jack, too, for that matter—had always enjoyed a friendly rivalry, where sports were concerned... swimming, riding, wrestling, tennis. Maybe Florence considered him immature, but Burroughs preferred "young at heart," and enjoyed trying to keep pace with his athletic offspring.
    Hully had extended the friendly competition to quitting drinking, and losing weight. Burroughs knew his son feared his father was becoming an alcoholic, and privately had his own fears in that regard. So he had quit—and quit smoking, as well. Hully was down to 177 pounds, a loss of ten, and Burroughs had dropped sixteen pounds, down to 182.
    After getting back from seeing Frank Teske off, the father and son had eaten a light lunch in the Niumalu dining room, after which Burroughs headed into the bungalow, to get some writing done—he needed to get his hero, Carson Napier, out of one jam and into another. He and Hully would play a round of tennis in the late afternoon on the court on the Niumalu grounds—Burroughs had prevailed yesterday, two sets to one... a spirited game that had exhausted him, though he was damned if he'd let his boy know just how tired he was.
    In the sitting room with its pale plaster walls, near a churning window fan, Burroughs was at his typewriter, working on his new Venus story, when two sharp knocks at the bungalow door drew his attention away from the gargantuan beasts threatening his spaceman. He rose from the typing stand—wearing a white sportshirt, white slacks and tennis shoes (ready for his game with Hully)—and saw a familiar face through the screen door.
    "I know you're a teetotaler now," Adam Sterling said, holding up frosty bottles of soda pop, "but I'm assuming that doesn't include root beer."
    A broad-shouldered six-foot two, his brown hair graying at the temples, strong-jawed, deep-tanned Sterling might have been a hero out of one of Burroughs's own books—in fact, he looked a little like Herman Brix, that poor bastard who almost died playing Tarzan in the Guatemalan jungle for Florence's ex-husband.
    "I can use something wet right now," Burroughs said through the screen. "You want to sit outside and chug those things?"
    Sterting wore a white linen suit and a light blue tie; he'd apparently come from his office in the Dillingham Building in downtown Honolulu.
    "No, Ed," he said, and he was almost whispering, "I'd like you to ask me in."
    "Well come on in, then," Burroughs said, opening the door. "But it's stuffy as hell in here."
    Stepping inside, Sterling said quietly, "Actually, Ed, I need to talk to you—in private. This isn't even for Hully's ears—he isn't around, is he?"
    "No, he went down to the beach for a swim. Probably looking for his next girlfriend."
    Sterling nodded, but—oddly—he took a quick walk around the one-bedroom bungalow, making sure he and the writer were indeed alone. Burroughs watched this not knowing whether to be amused or insulted.
    Finally, they sat on the couch and sipped their root beers and Burroughs wondered what the hell was on the FBI man's mind.
    "How goes the writing?" Sterling asked him.
    He grunted. "Sometimes I think plots are like eggs."
    "How so?"
    "A hen's bom able to lay just so many eggs, and after she's dropped her last one, she can sit on her nest and strain and grunt and never squeeze out another. I'm starting to think a writer is born with just so many plots."
    A smile creased Sterling's face. "Why, have you been straining and grunting?"
    "Hell, yes, and rearranging my feathers; but I'll be damned if I can squeeze out a new plot, and these old ones are starting to smell."
    Sterling shrugged. "I thought that last Tarzan, the one about the secret