He held Meyer up by the collar, then shoved him in my direction.
I grabbed Meyer just before he lost his balance and by some miracle, we avoided crumpling into a lump of old bones. “What do you want?”
“I should thank you, actually. You eliminated that pain in the ass Stone. After Daniels dusted Jimmy, I left there and waited here. But you never showed up, so I got tired of waiting. Figured maybe I could find it.”
“What?”
“Stone’s stash. I knew you wouldn’t bring it out in public.” He smiled. “Stone’s been using again—since he killed Shapiro. So you took care of my two biggest problems. But now that puts you two at the top of my list.”
I said, “So you were there?”
“I was sitting on a bench in the shade in front of the zoo. I could have taken out Daniels, but I was tired of Stone’s egotistical bullshit.” He shrugged. “He thought I was gonna back him up, instead, I let nature take its course.”
The final break in the partnership. “You shoot us up here and you’ll never get away before someone sees you,” I said.
“I’m not shooting you here. We’re going to take a little ride.”
Meyer yelled, “What did he say?”
“Shut up, old fool,” said Willows.
“What? I’m hard-of-hearing!”
Willows raised the gun in the air as if to strike Meyer. He spat, “Shut up!”
“Okay, okay. No need to get pissy. I just wanted to know what your intentions were, that’s all.”
In a loud voice, I said, “He can’t hear crap!”
Willows stifled us with a glare and a zipping motion across his lips. Or maybe it was when he pulled the slide on the gun. Anyway, we both raised our hands and nodded. I thought about the security cameras on the roof and hoped that someone would think to check them. Maybe Julia? She’d have film of the whole thing. I wouldn't tell him about the cameras. Or remind him that this would be his second time to be captured on video, but he must have seen me glancing in that direction. Even in the dark light, I could see the rage painted on his face. “Where is it?”
“Where’s what?” I tried to sound innocent, but was too tired and scared. Consequently, I did a crappy job.
He pointed the gun at my face and yelled, “Where’s the goddamn camera go to?”
Meyer perked up. “Hey, I heard that. You use the same service as me? I use Brinks. You use them, too?”
“Shut up,” said Willows. “If you used a service, they’d be here already. Now, where’s the computer? In your apartment?”
I wondered if I could still salvage this. “It’s a remote storage service.”
Willows said, “Bullshit. You ain’t that smart.”
“I figured out Stone’s MySpace account, Shapiro’s death. Remote storage isn’t that difficult. You just—”
“Shut up. We’ll grab your computer on the way out to be safe. Now move.” He motioned at the stairs, then pointed the gun at me. “You first. And, if you try anything funny, your friend dies.” He pointed the gun at Meyer’s head. Not again.
When I got to the top landing, I said, “Why don’t you just let us go? We’ll give you the drugs. Whatever you want.”
“You had that chance with Stone. Now shut up.”
I was halfway down the stairwell when I heard Meyer stumble. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that Willows was holding him up by the collar with one hand. He pointed the gun at me. “Move.”
I was on the second step from the bottom when Willows commanded, “Stop.”
I held my position as he came down two stairs. I was on the second, Meyer on the third, Willows on the fourth. Willows motioned with his head for me to go further.
I started to say something, but he cut me off. “Zip it.” He motioned again.
When I reached the landing, I noticed a movement to my right. I saw the reflection of the flash attachment and instinctively moved left. Behind me, a brilliant flash lit up the stairway. Willows' gun went off and Meyer stumbled down the last step. He would have landed face first on the concrete, but an arm reached from the darkness and shoved him in my direction.
Another flash left me half blinded and a second shot also went wild. Willows yelled, “Shit!”
I heard Willows curse again as he lost his footing and fell the remaining two steps. Through the glare that clouded my vision, I saw Alexander jump from the shadows and slam his fist into the other man’s jaw. I thought Willows would go down, but he hit back and landed a punch in Alexander’s stomach, then slashed downwards with the barrel of the gun. Alexander raised his arm and blocked the blow. The impact jerked the gun from Willows' hand and sent it into the bushes.
Willows swung wildly. He landed a punch that sent Alexander sprawling to his right. I heard a clatter as he collided with the camera and sent it tumbling across the pavement. Willows stumbled onto Alexander and planted both hands on his throat.
I helped Meyer to the ground and blinked several times to clear my head. A few feet away, Alexander frantically struggled to pry the hands from his throat, but Willows just squeezed harder. Alexander threw a weak punch, but missed, his energy and air almost spent. I searched frantically for the gun, but it was lost in the bushes. There was no time to call for help. Nothing to do but save my friend. The glint of landscape lighting reflected off the lens of Harris’s camera.
I found it, grabbed the strap, turned, and swung with all my might. My swing was smooth and fast, just like it had been when I nailed Johnny Bakerton’s pitch. Willows looked up just in time to see the camera smash squarely into the side of his head. A loud crack split the night, Willows slumped over, blood bubbling from his temple and Alexander pried himself from under the dead weight.
Several tenants rushed into the area. A few gawked at the scene. Julia burst through the crowd and secured Willows by pulling his hands behind his back. She pinned his wrists and kept him immobile with the practiced ease of someone used to self-defense. She said, “There should be cops here in a couple of minutes; I called when I heard the first shot.”
Alexander leaned against the wall, rubbing his arm where he’d been slashed by the gun. He stared at me. Or rather, at my feet. I said, “I’m okay.”
His jaw fell open.
“What?”
He pointed at the ground.
I looked down and saw the body of the camera. The back hung open, the flash attachment hung limply from the body and one of the straps had separated completely. Uh-oh.
Alexander mumbled, “Harris’s camera.”
I cradled the half-opened body in my hands as if it were a baby and passed it to Alexander. “You were in charge of it, not me.”
Alexander turned the camera over to look at the back, but it just flopped around. The flash lighted the pavement in a blinding, momentary burst of light. “How am I gonna explain this to the cops?” The flash lit up the courtyard, again. “Oh, man.”
“Flash works,” I said.
Alexander fumbled with the camera’s corpse.
I shrugged, “Look at it this way, that’s one helluva photo finish.”
Oddly enough, Alexander didn’t think that was funny at all.
Maybe my timing was off.
Chapter 38
It was nearly one in the morning by the time the police let us into my place. Both Meyer and I were exhausted and sacked out right away. I dreamed that night of surfing at dawn. The sun’s rise over the horizon was only what you could call majestic. The old man with long hair straddled the surfboard next to mine. He faced the rising sun, soaking up the rays with his face.
Dark clouds on the horizon approached, but he waved them away. “You like my office?”
I said, “Who are you? What am I doing here?”
“Surf flat today. You have good mana. That why you here.” A wave approached, so he turned toward shore and began to paddle. As he slid away through the water, he called to me over his shoulder. “Try on your knees; otherwise, you might have to paddle back.”
I gripped my board, watching other surfers glide past me. My board was twice the length of theirs, I had no idea why. Finally, I made it to my knees as a small wave approached. I began to paddle and rode my little wave about halfway in before I fell off the board. But, I’d done it—I’d surfed Waikiki!
I sat straight up in bed and glanced at the clock. Four in the morning. The sun wouldn’t be up for well over an hour, but I went out to the lanai and watched and listened. The nighttime ocean performed a symphony of sights and sounds, each moment different, each second a magical sequence of events that nature might never repeat.
As the sun rose behind me, foamy wavelets drifted onshore in a steady rhythm. I wondered which beach Kimu Ioneki was surfing at this moment.
Meyer didn’t rise until almost nine. He stepped out of his room with a cheery, “Good morning, McKenna!”
I grunted, “Morning.” Which, technically, it was, at least until noon. “You must be ready to go home.”
“Home? Yeah, I am. I’m ready to leave, skedaddle, hit the road—”
“What did you do, take a happy pill last night?”
“Vamoose, move on out—”
“Meyer!”
“What? You don’t want me to leave? Sorry, but I got an apartment of my own to get back to. It’s a mess, if you recall. You were going to call that Alejandro fellow and see if he might lend a hand to an old man. You know—”
“It’s Alexander. I’ll call him.” I didn’t need any more synonyms for anything, including moving, helping others, even getting a cup of coffee or Joe or anything else. Crap, now I was doing it. I stood and said, “Are you packed?”
“Yes sir! I’m packed and—”
“Let’s go.” I stood and started for the door. “I’ll get a ride back with Alexander.”
Alexander did show up to help and, thank goodness, after Meyer saw the mess in his apartment, his desire to regale us with his good humor waned. By the time we had the place back together, he and I were both tired. Alexander seemed more bored than anything, but returned me to my apartment, where he dropped me off so I could take a long afternoon nap.
As we sat in the parking lot, I said, “I’ve been dreaming of your Great-Grampa Kimu.”
He said, “I know. I knew since you denied it. You got all weird on me.”
“I dreamed I went surfing last night.”
Alexander put his hand on my shoulder. “That why you look so tired. So, you ready to talk about why you came here?”
I caught a glimpse of the ocean beyond the apartment building. Watched a gentle wave roll in. I smiled, free from the weight I’d been carrying. A lone surfer rode a wave nearly to the shore. “Yah, finally.” We talked for nearly two hours after that. It was time to share my story with my best friend—my wins, my losses, and my regrets. I could only hope he’d still like me after he knew who I really was.
It took a couple of weeks for everything to get sorted out, but in the end, it looked like Willows would spend a lot of time in prison for conspiracy to murder Bob Shapiro and Roger Lau and, of course, several counts of assault, attempted murder, etc., etc., ad nauseam. And Harris? She’d vanished.
I heard from Meyer that he found a manager for the complex, someone who could help reconstruct his lost records. It would take them some time, but they did have enough documentation to begin rebuilding what had been destroyed. After everything that had happened here, I think he was glad to leave the islands. He said the first thing he would do was pay a long-overdue visit to his brother in Minneapolis. I bit my tongue.
I pitched and got a job to write the entire story for the Advertiser as well as the follow-up stories for the trial. I knew it wasn’t going to win a Pulitzer, but I was pretty stoked over it. Do they still say stoked?
We turned the drugs over to the cops and that made them happy. Stone’s businesses were raided and the cops busted his drug ring. Stone wouldn't care—he was dead.
When Alexander called to tell me that he’d arranged the boat ride, I tried to back out, but he refused to accept no for an answer. Besides, he told me, Julia would be there along with Kira and the keike. Julia? Bathing suit? Sure, I could do this.
Alexander’s boat was a 42-footer. We had a perfect day—86 degrees, a few wispy clouds in the sky, trades at 10-15 mph, and almost flat seas. We all met at the Kewalo Basin, where Alexander moored his boat, Kimu’s Dream.
Alexander said he planned on taking us around the island to Kane’ohe Bay where we’d have lunch, do some snorkeling and scuba, then head back. Once we’d anchored in the bay, he readied the boat for the party while Kira, Julia, and I sat around the miniature dining table and gabbed.
Kira had been curious about how we’d figured out who had killed Shapiro, but her next question caught me off guard. “McKenna, you never been one do nice things for other people. You always for McKenna only. Why you get involved?”
“I, um, did it because of Harris’s sister.”
Julia gave me a playful punch in the arm. “You thought you were gonna get lucky with that blonde wahine.”
“Okay, guilty. It started out that way. It was later that I thought I was helping her put together money for her sister’s operation.”
Kira said, “So why you not back out once you suspect trouble?”
Obviously, Alexander hadn’t shared the details with her. “It was too late. By the time I figured it out, she already had her plan in motion. Julia, what’s going to happen to Daniels?”
“My boss decided to represent him on the murder charge. He thinks this is gonna be high profile.”
I said, “Good. Daniels made some bad choices, but in the end, he was just trying to help Bob. I’m glad he’ll get a good attorney.”
Julia nodded, “If Stone hadn’t raped his girlfriend—”
Silence settled around the table.
I cleared my throat. “You know what really irritates me? I have to rent that damned apartment again.”
The boat rocked as a small wake caught us broadside. We all rolled with the wave and Julia’s shoulder brushed mine. I’m not sure how it happened, but right after that my hand wound up on her thigh. She gave me an affectionate glance and took my hand in hers.
Holy cow. She wanted me.
To my surprise, she removed my hand and said, “I like you, but do that again and I’ll break your arm.”
Shit. Busted. “Got it. No funny business.” Guess I really was going to miss Legs.
###
Acknowledgements
The following people have all helped me in the creation of this book in one way or another. I’m sure there have been others that I am missing here. To those I’ve missed, I apologize sincerely—I should have kept better notes. To those listed here, I give a warm mahalo (thank you) for your kokua (help).
First, to Kathy Ambrose, my wife and the person who has put up with countless hours of being neglected while I struggled to create a character and story worthy of the time. She’s also read innumerable revisions as I stumbled along the way and always let me pursue my dream.
Thanks also go to Ed Stackler, an excellent fiction editor, for the idea of making Harris a woman and for his guidance on the elements of building a good story. I can only hope that I’ve hit the mark and not missed it entirely.
This manuscript began years ago and was then put off to one side as I went on to other projects. As a result, I’ve lost track of the early readers. However, I owe thanks to the members of the St. Phillips Neri Writers Group in Tucson, AZ for their feedback. Those members include Mary Ellen Barnes, Clark Lohr, Molly McKinney, Ellie Nelson, Constance Richardson, Shirley Sikes, Bert Steves, and Jim Turner. Most recently, I want to thank Dee DeTarsio, Brae Wyckoff and Jill Wyckoff for reading the manuscript and for their suggestions. I'd also like to thank Bobby Ramos for the information he provided about Kalaeloa Airport and Dillingham Field. He was extremely helpful and patient in answering questions and discussing the workings of both airports.
About the Author
Terry
Ambrose started out skip tracing and collecting money from deadbeats and quickly learned that liars come from all walks of life. He never actually stole a car, but sometimes hired big guys with tow trucks and a penchant for working in the dark when “negotiations” failed.
A resident of Southern California, he loves spending time in Hawaii, especially on the Garden Island of Kauai, where he invents lies for others to read. His years of chasing deadbeats taught him many valuable life lessons including—always keep your car in the garage.
Despite what his friends may say, Terry and McKenna are not the same person. When he’s not working on his next novel, Terry is reporting on real-life scams and cons. Learn more on his website or on his Facebook author page.
Find Terry online:
Website: http://terryambrose.com
Facebook: https://facebook.com/suspense.writer
Twitter: http://twitter.com/suspense_writer
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