His eyes found their way back to her. “You’re my gold,” he said.

“Yes. Go on.”

He told her, in fragments, but just as she’d hoped, about the Japanese plundering golden treasures and fine objects in China. The scheme went back decades. He was like an art dealer on his death bed, recounting his greatest sales and acquisitions.

“Good contract,” he sputtered, “so very good. General Yamashita.”

Kanani could feel her blood racing through her body, in her wrists, up her neck. “Where?” she demanded. “Where exactly?”

He jolted. His head jerked her way.

“Is it here? Right here?” she growled. “No? You understand?” She tried in her clunky Japanese, “Where here on island? Where exactly? Tunnels, lava tubes, what?”

“You!” he shouted. “You not my wife. My wife dead. Bombings. My son.”

“No. Hindi. No . . . Ee-eh.”

“Do you know how many wives I kill? My unit. My crew?” His hands clawed up.

She shook her head, the blood rushing to her head with panic. They had that opium here, pipe and all. Maybe she could load him one, maybe—

“Children? You have?” he demanded.

“Me? No, I—”

He tore at his kimono as if looking for a wound. He pulled it down and sat up, half naked now, the veins in his neck throbbing. Glaring at her.

You come at me, Geisha-san, I bust you up, she thought. But she knew she’d go down fighting all too fast against a tough like this, just a black crab facing a shotgun.

He wiped at his mouth. He made fists. He stood up, planting one foot down, then the other, his eyes straining to focus on her.

“You tell me,” he growled in English, “who are you? Or I kill you.”

His hands clawed, one clenched around an imaginary sword handle, the other pointing as if wielding a pistol.

She had a whisky bottle, somewhere behind her.

“Please don’t,” she said, stalling.

“Or maybe I have Frankie do it?”

She recoiled. “Who? I don’t . . .” She could feel the bottle behind her, on the counter.

He laughed. “He Hawaiian like you. But, oh, he good. Man, he good. Frankie, he like blood flowing . . . Maybe he like it more than gold.”

She turned and grabbed the bottle.

He bounded after her. She could’ve bashed it over his head. She handed it to him.

He grabbed the bottle with both hands and chugged the last few fingers of whisky left. He threw it against the wall, and it clunked away, somehow not breaking.

She handed him the bottle of rum now, the Filipino rum. He grabbed that with both hands and chugged, backing up to the edge of the chaise. Panting. He groaned and leaned forward. She snatched the bottle from his hands right as he vomited out onto the floor with a loud slap. She stepped back, the sour stench filling her nose.