The Pearl Harbor Murders by Max Allan Collins

his pals are in listening to her band—maybe it's time for me to do a little espionage work of my own."
    Burroughs put a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Don't be hard on the boy, Wooch. You were young once. Hell, even I was."
    Fielder nodded, barely, and strode toward the Niu-malu lodge, from which emanated the muffled sound of the band playing "I'll Remember April."
    Burroughs, cup of wine in hand, wandered, stopping now and then for conversation. A few guests were chatting in the hotel courtyard—not a spacious area, particularly since the hub was taken up by a rock-garden, and standing room was compromised by the yawning fronds of potted tropical plants on the periphery. The dining room was open onto this rock-garden courtyard, and the loud, lively dance music of Pearl and her Harbor Lights limited conversation, as well.
    But Burroughs was amused to find Otto Kuhn—his blonde wife on his arm, "playboy" or not—chatting with secret adversary Adam Sterling of the FBI.
    Kuhn—even at six foot, still towered over by the strapping, brown-haired FBI agent—had blue-eyed bland good looks, dark blond hair and wore a white linen suit with a silver tie. Elfriede Kuhn was of medium height, with a nicely slender shape, and one of the few women present not swimming in a muumuu or wrapped up in a kimono—she wore a simple black cocktail dress, rather low-cut. Both husband and wife were attractive individuals in their dissipated forties.
    The conversation was focused on an upcoming battle: the annual Shrine-sponsored football game tomorrow, in which the University of Hawaii would meet Willamette. The German favored Hawaii, while the FBI agent—a Willamette University graduate, it happened—not unexpectedly argued for the out-of-town team.
    Burroughs, who didn't give a damn either way—he was a boxing and wrestling fan—stood on the fringes of the conversation, politely; then the German—his blue eyes languid—changed the subject, drawing Burroughs directly in.
    "I feel my countrymen owe you an apology, Edgar," Kuhn said, his accent thick, his manner smooth. "It is something I have long meant to bring up."
    "Why an apology?" Burroughs asked, already amused.
    "Like so many German men, when was it... ten years ago? I was a devoted fan of your Tarzan novels. What a sensation you were in my homeland!"
    Burroughs sipped his wine, offered up a wry smile. "That is true—my first German royalty check was the largest single foreign payment I ever had."
    "Every man and boy in Deutschland caught Tarzan fever," Kuhn said, admiringly, eyes as bright as any young fan of the Jungle Lord's adventures.
    Mildly chagrined, the writer said, "Well, like most epidemics, it ran its course. Or I should say, got cured."
    "What was done to you was most unfortunate," the German said, shaking his head, "most unfair."
    Her pretty features pinched with sympathy, Kuhn's wife said, "Oh, yes, how foolishly the press behaved."
    The FBI agent, confused, said, "What was done to you, Ed?"
    "Well, it was my own damn fault, or my agent's—after we did so well with the first four Tarzans, a rival publisher bought the rights to a book my regular German publisher had skipped over— Tarzan the Untamed, a thing I did during the world war."
    Eyebrow arched, Kuhn glanced at Steriing. "It was published as Tarzan der Deutschenfresser. ... It too caused a sensation."
    Sterling still appeared confused, and Mrs. Kuhn further translated, her manner as delicate as her words were not: "Tarzan the German Devourer."
    Now the FBI man got it—perhaps, as the Tarzan fan he had often professed to be, he even recalled the plot of the novel: Tarzan—his beloved wife Jane apparently murdered by a German officer—goes on a blood-lust rampage against the Hun, including setting loose a ravenous lion in the German trenches.
    "You can't give my stuff away there, now," Burroughs said, with a laugh. "As Mrs. Kuhn said, the German press lambasted me—one article advised readers to throw