On balance, as long as the Japs didn’t invade, Big Itchy figured the war was a bonus. It brought a flood of money into the islands and a huge amount of passing trade from the millions of servicemen in transit to Australia and the Solomons. They tended to be much better customers for Big Itchy’s operation than the toffee-nosed swells who’d arrived on the China Clipper before the war. On the other hand, the town was now full of guys who’d been trained to kill, and who weren’t at all interested in being stood over by Big Itchy’s musclemen. After Tui and the boys got the shit kicked out of them for the third or fourth time down on Hotel Street, Itchy had decided to beat a tactical retreat from the mugging business, concentrating instead on sly booze, broads, and a modest numbers racket.

Turned out these palookas would just give you all their money if you asked them nice and got them laid or drunk in return.

Big Itchy’s office was neatly stacked with the raw material of his operation: crates of stolen booze, cigarettes, and food. The girls never came here. They hardly ever got out of the flophouses. Slim Jim knew there was a safe buried in the floor beneath Itchy’s desk, and it was a sign of the trust he’d earned that the knowledge hadn’t cost him his life. Big Itchy kept every dollar he earned in that safe. He didn’t trust the banks. They were full of Jews.

“Aloha, Jimmy,” the 240-pound criminal rumbled from the chair that sat astride his fortune. “You’re alive. That’s good. The war over yet?”

“No, the war’s got a way to run yet.”

“Fat times then.”

“Getting fatter by the day.”

Slim Jim undid the top button of his shirt. There were six men in the room watching him—Itchy, Tui, and four silent toughs. Big Itchy was unusual for his times, being an equal opportunity employer. As the bastard son of a white plantation owner and a lei girl, he had no truck with discrimination. As long as a man could throw a punch or shoot a gun, and keep his mouth shut, he had a future with Big Itchy Enterprises. The men who stood, without speaking, as Slim Jim stripped off his shirt, were a mix of Kanaks, one local Japanese, and two white men. As Davidson’s shirt came off they all saw the bandages he had strapped around his torso.

“Somebody’s husband catch you?” asked Tui.

Slim Jim just smiled. The wrapping bulged under his left armpit. He gritted his teeth and ripped off the plaster. A flexipad came away, stuck to it.

“That’s a lot of effort for a cigar box, Jimmy,” said Big Itchy. “What’s it made of, gold or something?”