by Kay Hadashi
“I’ll remember that.” She took a sip of her wine. It was worse than she had expected. “Are you Bunzo?”
He pointed to himself with a surprised look on his face. “He’s long gone. Sold the place to the current owner a few years ago. They decided to keep the name, even after the clientele changed. Why are you asking about him?”
“No reason. Just an odd name.”
“This place used to be famous, after the war. Bunzo, too. That’s how he got all his customers.”
“What war?” she asked, when he came back from pouring drinks for patrons at the far end of the bar.
“World War Two. You’re new on the island, aren’t you?”
“Why do people keep asking me that?”
“You’ll learn that everything here is either before the war or after the war.”
“Why was that so important?” she asked.
“Maybe because Pearl Harbor is only a few miles from here? Or that all the belongings and property of the Japanese population here were confiscated at the beginning of the war, and very little of it was ever returned? Or that many of the young Japanese American men enlisted in the US Army as soon as they could to show their loyalty, and all of them were sent to Europe to fight the Nazi Germans and fascist Italians?”
Gina was feeling uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was going. All she’d wanted to do was break the ice so she could ask about Tuyo beer. Here she was, getting a history lecture about a war that happened before her parents were even born.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to irritate you.”
“No problem. It’s just that my ex comes from one of those Japanese families. I’ve heard all about what they lost back then, and how hard they worked after the war to rebuild their lives. They’re pretty proud of that.”
“They should be.”
He went off to help the other bartender on duty by pouring a few more drinks, and eventually came back to her.
“My name’s Chuck,” he said, wiping the bar with a towel.
“Gina. Nice to meet you.”
“You didn’t come in here for a history lesson, or to drink our fine wine. You mind telling me why you’re here, or do you need to pay up and clear out?” he asked.
“Just wanted to ask a couple of questions.”
“About?”
“The kind of merchandise you sell here.” As soon as she said it, Gina knew her choice of words were bad.
“You a cop?”
“Do I look like one?”
“A little.” He refilled her glass before she’d been able to empty it. “Look, this place is legit. Maybe some of the patrons are looking for half-hour dates, but you’ll have to take that up with them out in the parking lot. We don’t push any drugs here, okay?”
“I’m not asking about drugs, but that’s good to know.” It was time to get out her phone and find the picture of the Tuyo bottle cap. “Do you serve this brand here?”
“Tuyo? I think we have a case of it in back. Why?”
“Hard to find the stuff,” Gina said. “I’ve heard that not many places sell it?”
“It’s less about selling the stuff and more about finding someone willing to drink it.”
“Pretty bad?”
“I tried it once. Couldn’t finish it. Only way to categorize the stuff is as gut rot.”
“Okay if I try one?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Won’t be cold.”
“That’s alright. I just want to see how bad it really is.”
“Suit yourself.”
He went down the narrow hallway to the back for a couple of minutes and returned with a single bottle. She watched as he held the bottle in one hand and flipped the cap off with an opener. The cap fell and bounced on the par a few times, mostly ignored. He set the bottle on the bar without a glass and took her glass of wine away. Before he could toss the cap away, Gina snagged it.
“Enjoy your Tuyo,” he said before walking away.
“Enjoy your Tuyo,” she mumbled sarcastically once he was out of earshot. She carefully grabbed the bottle only at the top of the neck where he hadn’t touched and had a taste. “Oh my god.”
Keeping the beer close so it wouldn’t be taken, she watched the patrons in the bar. It was mostly a pickup joint, not even a meat market. If the girls weren’t hookers, they were trying really hard to be one night stands. With the guys, there seemed to be some sort of epidemic that only blond hair dye could treat. If gold chains on guidos back home kept the evil spirits away, blond hair on Asian men seemed to accomplish the same in a Honolulu dive bar.
At first, she didn’t notice the man walking toward her through the crowd. Once he got clear of the others, she got a better look at him. With tattered jeans and an orange Hawaiian print shirt, and a fedora on his head, she almost didn’t recognize him.
His shoulder grazed Gina’s as he sat on the stool next to hers. He said nothing to her, but ordered a drink from the bartender, an ‘old fashioned’, not at all similar to the neon-colored drinks everyone else was consuming. He leaned his elbows on the bar until his drink came. He gave it one swirl with the swizzle stick before taking a drink. When he set it down on its napkin again, he jabbed at the orange twist as if it were a practiced habit. Still ignoring Gina, Detective Kona took a second sip.
Gina took another swig of her beer, now not noticing so much how bad it was. She had other things to think about right then.
His shirt was too loose to notice if he had a piece in a shoulder holster. Maybe all he had was a .22 under a cuff of his pants. He was big enough to keep anyone back, though, probably the biggest man in the bar right then.
When she leaned close to him, simply to cross her legs in the other direction, she caught his scent. He’d put on cologne to cover his body odor. A small feather was tucked into the ribbon that circled his hat. The loose sleeves of his shirt hid his upper arms, something Gina still wanted to see.
After a third sip of his old fashioned, he gave her a glance, barely turning his head. “Howzit.”
“Hi.” She took a sip from her bottle, not even noticing it was beer.
“Never seen you here before.”
“First time I’ve been here.”
“The bar should be honored for it.”
Feeling a bead of sweat break loose from her hair on the back of her neck, she ignored it. When she reached for her bottle, she almost knocked it over. She’d swallowed two gulps before the tang of the bitter taste brought her back to her barstool.
Chuck the bartender made a show of wiping the bar in front of them, probably waiting for drink orders. When he didn’t get them, he wandered off again.
“What are you doing here, Santoro?” Kona asked quietly.
The conversation had suddenly changed from crappy pickup lines to something else, she didn’t know what. “Ringin’ in the New Year with a drink.”
“Some new year you’re expecting to have, if it’s starting in this dump.” His lips barely moved when he spoke.
“It’s my year, and no one else’s to tell me what to do with it.”
“Touché. How’s the Tuyo?”
“I’m looking forward to pregnancy morning sickness more than I want to finish this.”
“Personally, I’ve never wanted either.”
When the bartender made a sweep of glasses and bottles on the bar, Gina kept her Tuyo tight between her fingers. Kona asked for a glass of water.
The bartender nodded at the bottle Gina clung to. “Looks empty.”
She smiled at him. “I guess I’m a little odd. I collect these things.”
“Beer bottles?”
Her answer even drew Kona’s attention.
“Yeah. You know how women like to scrapbook things? I take the label off all the beers I’ve ever had.”
The bartender gave her a shrug and poured a water on the rocks for Kona.
“Nice comeback,” Detective Kona said once they were alone again. “What’s the bottle for?”
“Pri
nts.”
“Of?”
“Him,” she said. “To see if they’re a match to anything you collected from the vic.”
“And that’ll prove?”
“That maybe the vic had been in here.”
“Which means what?” he asked.
“Maybe nothing, but at least you’d have someone to lean on for finding out who he was.”
Kona played with his glass of water, clinking the ice on the sides. “I thought you were a gardener?”
“A gardener that found a dead body on the front porch. There’s more to that guy than meets the eye, and you know it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be in a dive that serves Tuyo on New Year’s Eve dressed like that.”
“What’s wrong with the way I’m dressed?” he asked, looking insulted by her comment.
“Nothing, if you’re planning on going home alone.”
“Pretty harsh, Santoro,” he mumbled. “I suppose you have a fingerprint set at your house, and a way of running it through law enforcement data bases?”
“No, but I know a police detective who does. I was planning on turning it over to him next time I saw him.”
“Without chain of custody, it wouldn’t be evidence of anything except that you have bad taste in beers.”
“Too bad for me.” When Chuck strolled back, Gina asked for the ladies’ room. He pointed her down the narrow hall. While she was down there, she made quick work of looking for the stock of beers, just to see how much Tuyo they might have on hand. There was a single case stacked on top of more expensive stuff. Flipping the flap up, she found that only two bottles were missing.
By the time she got back to the bar, Detective Kona was gone, and so was her bottle. Their stools had been filled by two young women with fluorescent-colored drinks.
When the bartender looked at her, Gina pointed at the counter where she’d left her bottle.
He shrugged. “I don’t have it. Your boyfriend paid your tab, though.”
Going out to the parking lot, she didn’t see Kona or his sedan anywhere. She did see someone having a smoke near the back door of the building, not far from the garbage dumpsters. She went there to talk with the other bartender that was on his break. He was a suntanned Asian guy with spiked hair and chubby cheeks. He had a couple of tattoos on his arms and neck.
He did the chin lift-reverse head nod thing that everybody seemed to do in Hawaii. “You’re the one who had the Tuyo. What’d you think of it?”
“It’s giving my liver something to do.” She got to the point of talking to him by showing him the picture of the dead man on her phone. “This dude look familiar to you?”
He looked for a moment. “Chuck thinks you’re a cop.”
“Good for him. I’m not. What about the guy in the picture?”
“What’s so important about him?”
“He’s dead and I’d like to know who he was.”
He flicked his cigarette away and looked at the image on her phone again. “Why are you asking around here about him?”
She brought up the image of the Tuyo bottle cap. “This was found in his pocket.”
“A man with discerning taste. So?”
“Bunzo’s is the only place I’ve found that serves the stuff. I also noticed only two bottles were missing from the case of Tuyo in the hallway near the restrooms, maybe the one I had, and this one.” She tapped her fingernail on the image of the bottle cap.
When he stood, he wasn’t much taller than Gina, and his waist was as chubby as his cheeks. “The only reason I believe you’re not a cop is that you’re not from around here. But you’re investigating his death, and that makes you no more popular than the cops.”
“Look, when I found the guy, he was dead on my front porch. When the cops came to get the body, there were no matches for his fingerprints in their system. That made me curious of why some no-name homeless dude decided to die on my doorstep, okay? You know him or not?”
“I’ve never seen that guy before. I’m only here in the mornings.”
“Seems like nighttime right now to me,” she said.
“Filling in because it’s New Years. Busy night. I’ll be back in the morning to open the place, not that it’s any of your business.”
“Who’s the owner?” she asked. “Maybe he knows the guy?”
“I’m the owner.”
“You’re Bunzo?”
“I bought it from him but kept the original name. Anything else?”
“Sounds good, thanks,” she said, backing away from him. She gave up on her interview when the stink of the nearby dumpster got too strong. Getting in her Datsun, she left. She kept an eye on the rearview mirror as much as she did the road ahead.
Chapter Fifteen
As far as Gina was concerned, she still had another hour to sleep when her phone rang with a call from Ana on Saturday morning.
“If it wasn’t illegal, I’d kill you for calling so early,” she told her sister.
“Too much to drink last night?”
“Barely had anything. You do realize there are five time zones between us, right?”
“Wasn’t my idea for you to move to the other side of the world. Mom’s miffed at you again, by the way.”
“Again or still?”
“A little of both. Why didn’t you call her yesterday?”
“I’ve called her every day since coming here. I don’t get a day off?” Gina asked.
“It was New Year’s Eve. She didn’t hear from her second favorite daughter.”
“She’ll live. How’s Dad?”
“Same ol’. Talking about retiring again.”
“He never will. Maybe on paper, but not from driving beats. Put him on.”
She waited while Ana went to the basement, following her footsteps in the family home by listening to squeaks in floorboards and doors shutting here and there.
“Hey Dad.” Gina caught up with her father’s news, which wasn’t much more than busting the oldest Russo son for drunk driving. “Know anything about Rolexes?”
“You’re earning so much with that job that you can afford a Rolex?”
“Not hardly. I came across one the other day. I’m still trying to figure out why someone loses a nice watch and not come back to look for it.”
“Because it didn’t belong to whoever lost it. Where was it?”
“In the grass by the front porch steps. It seemed like it had been sitting up in the grass and not down by the dirt. It wasn’t dirty or damaged at all, more like it had just fallen off someone’s wrist.”
“What kind of band?” he asked.
“Gold-colored metal, with a fold-over style clasp.”
“Was the clasp open or closed?”
“Open, but not working right. That’s what gives me the idea it fell off someone’s wrist.”
“Gina, a watchmaker wouldn’t put a cheap band on an expensive watch, one that would pop open accidently. Take a look at the brand name of the band. Is it Rolex branded?”
“I don’t have it. I turned it over to the police.”
“You called the police to report a found watch?” he asked.
Gina still hadn’t let on to her family about finding a dead body on her porch earlier in the week. “They were already here about something else. I got pictures of it, though. I’ll try to read whatever is on it later. Anything else I can do?”
“I’d act it out. If you still had it, you could wear it on a wrist and walk around the front proch to see if it snagged on anything. Try to figure out what someone had been doing when they lost it. Maybe that could give you some insight of who the owner might be.”
She made a mental note of his suggestion. “How’s Mom? Ana keeps saying stuff about Mom being pissed at me.”
“Not so much now. You could’ve given her a little more lead time that you were leaving town.”
“I told her the same day I took the job, which was the day after I was offered it.”
“Just don’t forget her birthday, which is next month,
or you won’t be allowed back home.”
Gina laughed. “Probably not. Dad, let me ask one more question. What do a Rolex, an old windbreaker, a bottle cap from crappy brand of beer, and a cat with a dead rat have in common?”
“What’re you into, Gina?”
“I don’t know,” she said, pouring a cup of coffee. “Can you keep something quiet?”
“As long as it’s legal.”
“Look, I found a body on my front porch on Monday morning.” She told her father what she knew about the case. “Just a no-name homeless man that had been sleeping there the previous couple of nights. All he had in his pockets were the bottle cap, a bloody pocketknife, and a wallet with nothing in it but an old snapshot. But I found the Rolex in the grass just a few feet from where the body had been.”
“He was stabbed in the liver with an ice pick and had no other injuries?” he asked.
“That’s right. No other injuries that I’ve heard about.”
“And the investigator thinks he was killed elsewhere and his body was dumped there?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“Any other evidence on his body?” her father asked.
“Freshly mown grass clippings on his shoes, the type of grass doesn’t match anything on the estate. To me, that means he had to have walked across a newly mown lawn not long before he was killed, and have walked nowhere else after.”
“Why nowhere else?” he asked.
“It seems to me most of the clippings would’ve fallen off if he’d gone anywhere after walking through the clippings, right?”
“That would depend on the amount of moisture on his shoes and the grass, and if he had anything else on the soles of his shoes that might make the grass adhere better than water.”
“I don’t know anything about that.” Gina put that on the list she was making of things to ask Detective Kona the next time she saw him. She figured it wouldn’t be long before she got another lecture from him about interfering in his investigation.
“Are you trying to solve his murder? Because you need to remember you’re no longer on the force, not here or there. You can’t interfere with an official investigation.”
“I’m not trying to solve the murder. I’m just trying to figure out who the guy was.”