Unknown Victim

by Kay Hadashi

  “Red. Italian, if there’s something ordinary people can afford.”

  “Italy’s a long way from here.” He handed her a bottle of a brand she was familiar with, and turned her nose up to at home. “This is our cheapest red Italian.”

  “Why is it so expensive? This is wine, not jewelry.”

  “You’re not from around here?” he asked.

  “Cleveland.”

  “Everything is cheaper on the mainland. The last time I looked at a map, Cleveland’s closer to Italy than Hawaii. Anything that has to be shipped here costs a lot more, just because of that. We don’t get so many brands here as on the mainland, either.”

  Gina put the bottle back where it belonged. “What else do you have?”

  “Local people like to buy local. It’s cheaper, and helps local businesses. We do whatever we can to keep our money in Hawaii rather than send it to some bank on the mainland.” He took a bottle of red wine off a shelf. “Not too many vineyards or wineries in Hawaii, but there’s a good one on Maui. This is their red table wine.”

  Gina tried reading the name on the label. “Kula…huh?”

  “Kulakeokea. It’s the part of upcountry Maui where it’s made. The Rossini family has a little vineyard up there.”

  “This is made by Italians?”

  “Big family on Maui. I think they’ve been here for a long time.”

  “Good enough for me,” she said, putting the bottle in her cart.

  “Anything else I can help you with?” he asked. “There are a lot of good beers made in Hawaii these days.”

  “Not much of a beer drinker.” Thinking of beer reminded Gina of her quick chat with Clara that afternoon. She got out her phone and found the picture of the bottle cap that Clara had balked at. “Do you sell this brand of beer?”

  He looked quickly. “Tuyo? Never heard of it. Which is strange, because I’ve been vending beer, wine, and liquor for a long time. Where’s it from?”

  “Somebody said the Philippines.”

  “It’s not familiar to you?” he asked.

  “Why should it be?”

  “Because you’re Filipino.”

  “I’m Italian,” she said.

  “That’s why you were looking for the Italian wine?”

  “Right. Any idea where I can find Tuyo beer?”

  “At a Filipino store. We have a lot of other beers. None of them are from Cleveland, though.”

  “Probably a good reason why.”

  He handed her a six-pack of bottles. “Peroni is Italian, isn’t it?”

  “Even my dad doesn’t splurge for it. Thanks for your help.” She put it back on the shelf. She started toward the checkout, but stopped. “Where would I find a Filipino store?”

  “You really are new in town. They’re all over the place.”

  “Maybe there’s a street name or part of town?” she asked.

  “Try Kapalama.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “They sell maps at the checkout counter.”

  Gina pushed her cart toward the front of the store. “They sell maps at the checkout counter,” she mumbled sarcastically.

  When she got her bags of groceries, Gina stalled for a minute.

  “Do you know where Kapalama is?” she asked the clerk.

  “Kapalama what?”

  “I don’t know. I was told to go to Kapalama.”

  The clerk began counting on fingers. “There’s Kapalama Mall, Kapalama Hospital, Kapalama Clothing Store, Kapalama Market, Kapalama Park. All kinds of places called Kapalama in Kapalama.”

  “Just the part of town called Kapalama.”

  “You want to snap it up, lady?” someone in line said. He was two customers back and had a case of beer balanced on one shoulder.

  “Sorry, just asking for directions.”

  “The exit door is over there,” he said with a swing of his head. That jostled his beer, which he had to steady.

  “You’ll get your beer soon enough,” Gina said. She looked back at the clerk, who seemed completely unconcerned if she had merchandise to scan or not. “Kapalama?”

  The clerk vaguely pointed a polished fingernail. “Go evah on Beretania and turn right on Nuuanu. Go over the freeway. That’s Kapalama.”

  “Thanks. What’s evah?”

  “Come on lady, will ya?” the man griped again.

  “That way.” The clerk pointed her finger again. “Not like you’re going to Heaven.”

  “Thanks for the help.” That’s when Gina noticed the little girl standing right next to her, clutching a packet of dried fruit to her chest with both hands. Not much more than five or six years old, the girl gave Gina’s hip a nudge to get her moving.

  Getting out of the way, Gina looked for an adult that might be with her, but there wasn’t anyone except the man with the case of beer. She watched as the clerk scanned the packet and handed it back to the girl as if she were just another customer.

  “Dollar fifty-nine, sweetie.”

  The girl reached into a pocket and brought out a handful of coins. She had to reach up and over the edge of the counter to drop them. The clerk counted them.

  “Got any more in there? Still ten cents short.”

  The girl silently shook her head once.

  “No can let you have the sweets unless you have all the money for them.”

  “Hey, is this place for customers wantin’ to buy stuff, or a kindygarden?” the man with the beer asked.

  He went ignored when the clerk asked the girl, “Is your mommy around? Maybe she has the other dime?”

  The girl simply looked back at her.

  The man dropped his case of beer on the counter. “My beer’s getting warm standing here so long!”

  Gina finally got involved in the little soap opera that was unfolding. Much ado over a dime. She crouched down to be eye level with the girl. “Is your mother waiting outside?”

  The girl looked at her with large eyes, said nothing, and then looked back at the clerk. She was clutching the packet of dried fruit tighter to her chest than ever.

  Gina stood. Digging through her wallet, she found a dime for the clerk. With that, the girl pushed her way past Gina.

  “Salamat po,” the girl mewed quietly as she scurried away with over-sized rubber slippers on her feet.

  Gina tried following the little girl, and by the time she got outside, she was gone.

  “Where’d she go? I was right behind her.”

  Gina looked around the parking lot for the kid. She was nowhere to be found.

  “Could at least have said thanks.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Thursday morning started a little too early for Gina. Her saving grace was the new coffeemaker that Florinda and Clara had bought her, and the potent grounds that came with it. She’d been in Hawaii for nearly a week, jetlag was long gone, and her appetite had returned. She wanted a big breakfast since the day’s planned work would be long and tiresome, and she wanted the fuel on board to get her through. Burnt toast just wasn’t going to be enough.

  Getting two eggs, butter, milk, and cheese from the fridge, she was going to make that omelet she’d been wanting all week.

  A bowl and a fork sat on the counter in front of her, ready to catch and whip egg yolks and whites. Picking up a brown egg, she raised it over the bowl, her mind aiming it at the rim.

  Gina lowered her hand again. She looked at the egg cradled in the palm of her hand. It was the same as any other brown egg, cool to her skin, slightly heavy for its size, the surface somewhat course. It had an odd color, somewhere between brown and green. She knew the yolk inside would be bright, a deep yellow if not orange, and stand up from the runny whites. All she had to do was give it a whack on the rim, and plop it into the bowl.

  She put the egg down and picked field work dirt from under a fingernail. She gathered the egg again, knowing she was stalling for time.

  “Gotta crack it open, Gina, gotta crack it open,” she muttered, staring at the egg nestled on th
e palm of her hand.

  She raised it, looked at her target on the rim of the bowl, and prepared to swing.

  “Oh, come on. Just crack the stupid thing already.”

  She began to swing, but stopped.

  Not today.

  She put the eggs away and made a cheese sandwich for breakfast instead. Taking that and a mug of coffee, she went to the front porch, her newly chosen place to eat breakfast, taking enjoyment in watching the sky lighten at dawn. She had company when she got there.

  “Oh, you’re back, and you’ve brought your own breakfast again, I see.”

  Leaving her coffee and breakfast on the seat of the patio chair, she went back inside for a tissue. By the time she got back to the porch again, the black cat had dropped the rat. This one was still alive, though. Wounded, its little legs were working overtime trying to get away.

  “You’re kinda mean, you know that?” she said to the cat, as she picked the rat up by the tail and carried it off toward the stream. The cat trotted along behind, watching carefully. Gina dropped the rat in the deep grass and stepped back. “You don’t need to bring me these. Just eat them out here where I can’t watch, okay?”

  ***

  Gina had decided to get things organized with her work crew. She had too many little jobs going here and there, and wanted to focus their efforts. She decided the priority would be on Flor and one team pruning the fruit trees, while another team continued to dig the pond, leaving the search for ornamentals in the old Japanese garden for later. Most of all, she wanted to see real progress on something. But both teams needed more tools and better wheelbarrows than the rickety old thing they’d been trying to use, so when Felix showed up for work, she gave him the credit card.

  “I should’ve gone in yesterday afternoon so we wouldn’t waste time waiting for a store to open this morning.”

  “Hardware stores will be open pretty soon,” Felix said.

  “Just figure out with Flor what he needs, and if the diggers need more shovels. When you’re there, see if you can price chippers. I want something that’ll chip the branches but also shred all the weeds into smaller stuff that’ll compost faster.”

  “Wood chips don’t decompose so fast,” Felix said.

  “I know. I want to use those to cover walkways.”

  He looked out at the farm. “There’re walkways?”

  “Someday. I need to mark where I want the paths, and someone needs to go through with the weed whacker to chop down the weeds to the ground.”

  “Need a better whacker for that.”

  “Okay, fine. One, and I want it industrial sized, something that will chop down anything that gets in its way. I want to get to bare dirt. Get extra string for it, too.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Really?” she asked.

  Felix flashed his usual smile. “You have a lot of good ideas.”

  Gina chuckled. “Yeah, like taking on a project I know nothing about in a place I’ve never lived.”

  “Why don’t you come to the hardware store with me?” he asked.

  “Maybe I should. It would be nice to see where the money is going.” As the rest of the crew slowly arrived one vehicle at a time, she got out her phone and found the images of the bottle cap. “Have you ever heard of Tuyo beer?”

  “Where’d you find that?”

  She wasn’t going to tell him it was something found in the dead man’s pocket the day before. “Just around.”

  “You haven’t been drinking it, have you?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Pretty nasty stuff. I’ve been here for a long time, but I still remember seeing guys drink that stuff when I was a kid. The ones that drank it all the time got pretty sick.”

  “Sick how?” she asked. Gina wondered if that might have something to do with how the man died. He’d been stabbed in the liver, and the liver was what processed alcohol. Maybe Tuyo was made with the wrong kind of alcohol, something his liver couldn’t deal with. Gina still couldn’t understand how being stabbed with only an ice pick could kill a guy, but maybe that coupled with bad beer did him in?

  “Really bad quality control in making that stuff,” Felix said. “You know anything about beer?”

  “Only that it doesn’t taste good. I thought it was pretty easy to make beer?”

  “You’d think so. From what I’ve heard, there’s two different ways of making it. One is pasteurized. That’s when they go through the entire brewing process until they get the alcohol content to the level they want, and then they boil it to kill the active yeast. The other way is cold filtered. That’s when they put formaldehyde in the beer to kill the yeast to stop the fermentation process.”

  “Formaldehyde? Isn’t that poisonous?”

  Felix nodded. “That’s why they put it through a filtration process to neutralize the formaldehyde and draw it off, leaving only pure beer behind. Those beer makers say it tastes better, and that the pasteurized beer isn’t as flavorful after it’s been boiled.”

  “So, what’s the problem with Tuyo then?” she asked.

  “Tuyo cold filters their beer because it’s a faster and cheaper process in the long run, at least for them. Their problem is that they don’t always filter the beer through fresh filters, or filter it at all. Kill the yeast, run it through a sieve to get the big stuff out, and pour it into bottles. The formaldehyde doesn’t get drawn off.”

  “How can they do that?” Gina asked.

  “Inspectors get paid off to turn a blind eye. Cheaper to pay them than to replace old filters, I guess. But the people who drink that stuff all the time get pretty sick with bad livers. I’m surprised it can even get imported here.”

  “Do you know where I can find it?” Gina asked.

  “Just drink Budweiser.”

  “I’m not going to drink any. I just want to see the stuff for myself.”

  “Why’s it so important?” he asked.

  “It just is.”

  “I’ve never seen it on shelves here.” Felix called Gabe over and asked if he’d ever seen Tuyo in a market.

  Gabe turned up his nose. “Tuyo? Only place I seen it is at Pinoy Boy Market in Kapalama.”

  “I’ve heard of Kapalama,” Gina said. “It’s a part of town in Honolulu, right?”

  “Nice there,” Felix said. “Flor and Florinda live there. But you stay out of Pinoy Boy. Too much trouble in that place.”

  “Whatever.” That reminded Gina of something. “Someone said something to me yesterday. It was salamat or something like that. What’s that mean?”

  “Salamat po means thank you very much. Or just salamat for a quick thanks.”

  “It’s a Filipino language?” she asked.

  “Every Filipino says it, no matter what language they use.”

  By then, her crew was assembled and Clara had taken the long way around the house to the backdoor, taking grocery bags with her. Gina explained her new schedule of getting the trees pruned and branches chipped by the end of Friday, the next day, and wanted the pond dug out by the next week. She and Felix left them to work while they went to the hardware store.

  “How much longer until the walls are put up in the house and get painted?” she asked as they drove.

  “One room a day is about as fast as I can manage by myself, maybe a little longer. Then about one or two weeks to paint them.”

  “Why so long to paint?”

  “I have to put down a coat of primer over everything, and wait for that to dry. Then a coat of regular paint, and wait for that to dry, followed by another coat of paint. In higher humidity, it takes a little longer for paint to dry. Just like that old saying.”

  “What old saying?” she asked.

  “Sitting around watching paint dry is really boring, so I’ll help in the gardens in between coats of paint.”

  After picking out the chipper/shredder that would suit her needs at the farm, she went down the sporting goods aisle to look at a few things. She found a badminton set.

  “Tak
ing up a new sport in your spare time?” Felix asked.

  “I’ve noticed the kids looking bored lately. Is this something they’d like to do?”

  “They’d love it. They could play beneath the trees at the back of the house.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. What else do they like to do? Do they read?”

  “Read?” he asked.

  “Yeah, like comic books?”

  “Not old enough to go to school, so they haven’t learned yet.”

  “I forgot kids are in school. It seems like summer vacation.” Leaning in one corner at the end of the display of sporting goods was a metal detector. “Ever use one of these?”

  “I got a cuz that uses it at the beach early in the morning after a high tide. He finds pocket change, occasionally a ring or watch. He makes a few bucks. Why? You lose something?”

  “The estate is supposed to be one part botanical garden and one part historical site at the end, right? I thought it might be fun to look for whatever might’ve been lost a long time ago.”

  “Like that old scythe we found the other day?” he asked.

  “Exactly like that. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. Just something to put on display for visitors to see.”

  Felix gave her a thumbs-up and a broad smile. “Good idea, as long as I get to be the one using it!”

  ***

  That evening, Gina convinced herself she was going supermarket shopping for the second evening in a row because she needed to stock the cabinets and fridge. With the part of town she wanted marked on her new map, and the name and address of the store on her phone, she set off in the Datsun.

  When she drove past Pinoy Boy Grocery Emporium, it was anything but. It was more of a corner grocery than an emporium. None of the signs were in English. If the place was back in Cleveland’s Little Italy, it would’ve been named Frankie’s Fine Meats, Smokes, and Liquor, the ‘fine meat’ being the hookers that hung around in the evening plying their wares. The pair of characters hanging around the front door that evening weren’t literature readers, and one even had his shirt open exposing a gold chain and a pumped chest.