Unknown Victim

by Kay Hadashi

  “Cheese sandwich? I was hoping there’d be Tuyo beer in his stomach.”

  “American cheese on white bread, with mustard and mayonnaise. No pickles or lettuce. Just orange-colored cheese. College co-ed diet.”

  “It still amazes me a coroner can determine what someone has eaten, even several hours later.”

  “His stomach contents were still mostly undigested and he’d had nothing to wash it down. The coroner put the time of the last meal within two hours of time of death.”

  “What was his time of death?” Gina asked.

  “You reported finding his body between five-thirty-five, and five-forty. According to body temperature and lividity, time of death was between two AM and three.”

  “Didn’t you tell me once that the coroner thought he didn’t die right away, but it might’ve taken a couple of hours for him to slowly bleed to death internally?”

  “He said that’s typical in an ice pick injury to the liver.” He stopped before getting into his car. “Miss Santoro, you have a knack for investigation. It’s a shame you didn’t stick with law enforcement.”

  “So I’ve been told. But like my sister says, I’d need to pack nine millimeters of heat on my hip if I wanted to make it a career, which is something I’m not willing to do.”

  “You’ve sworn off firearms altogether?” Kona asked while climbing in his car.

  “I’ll never touch one again in my life.” When Kona started his engine, Gina stepped back. “Thanks for answering my questions. What happens next?”

  “Nothing with you, Miss Santoro. Now that the autopsy is done, and my CSI team has collected all the evidence they can from the body, there’s no reason to keep him in the morgue.”

  “You’re already sending him to the funeral home without knowing his full identity?” she asked.

  “Not much choice. If no one steps forward to claim his body, he’ll get a pauper’s funeral.”

  “Where would he be buried? I’d like to attend. I think someone should be there, even if it’s just me.”

  Detective Kona shook his head. “In this state, unclaimed bodies are cremated and buried by the cemetery groundskeeper at his convenience. We live on an island. We don’t have the luxury of burials, unless someone is willing to pay for a plot.”

  He gave her a nod before backing out and turning for the little bridge to leave. Gina turned back for the porch, which was becoming her lounge area and living room.

  “He said it himself, that the vic’s injury was consistent with an ice pick. He also thought there was something to my evidence diagrams. He didn’t laugh, anyway.”

  Trying her best to ignore her notes on the case, she went back to drawing her visions of the future of the estate gardens. It wasn’t long before a pickup truck arrived, one she recognized. She smiled and stood when Kenzo the handyman got out and came to the porch.

  “Nice day and you sit here alone?” he asked her.

  “I’m working on some ideas for the estate.” She flashed her sketchpad. “Is this a social visit or did you come to check on the water heater?”

  “Little bit of both.” He took the sketchpad and looked at her drawings. She had as many smudges and erasures as drawings. He tapped a bent finger on the rough drawing of the Japanese garden that she’d copied from the few old photos she’d been given by Millie. “Looks good.”

  “I’ll have to find someone to help me with that. Don’t tell the Tanizawas, but I don’t know much about Japanese gardens.”

  “So far, so good,” he said, handing back the sketchpad.

  Gina still hadn’t got an answer about why he was there on a Saturday afternoon. According to his code of rules, it would be too late in the day to work outside. He didn’t seem the type to drop in on people, just for a chat. “I have a pitcher of lemonade in the fridge. Would you like some?”

  That almost got a smile from him. He followed her into the house to the kitchen. “Sounds good.”

  She poured two glasses. Handing him one, she noticed that if he hadn’t been slightly bow-legged, he’d be taller than her. Instead of sitting at the kitchen table, he walked around the room, inspecting the walls.

  “No walls yet?” he asked.

  “Not yet. I’m looking forward to seeing it painted.”

  “Pick out a color yet?”

  “I’m thinking yellow. From the pictures I’ve seen of the house, it looks like everything was white. I thought a pale yellow might make it more cheerful. Maybe it’s not historically accurate, but do you think the Tanizawas will mind much?”

  He shrugged and finished him lemonade. “Should be okay.”

  “I’ve been hoping the outlet to the stove could be rewired so the stove worked right. Apparently, that would burn the house down, though,” she said.

  “We could do it today.”

  “Oh, you’re an electrician, also?” She looked at the handyman. “Because I don’t want to burn down the Tanizawa’s house.”

  “Any problem with the roof?” he asked. “Is the hot water tank working okay?”

  “Neither of them leak, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Kenzo gave her a shrug. “House won’t burn down if we do it right.”

  “We?” The last thing Gina wanted to do on a day off was rewire the kitchen. She wasn’t responsible for the house, only the gardens. She’d also discovered a place with perfect weather nearly every day and wanted to use it for something other than being the handyman’s apprentice. She had a tennis racket, and there was a park nearby with courts. With a little luck, she might find someone needing a partner. “I guess I should help. I don’t know if we have everything we need, though.”

  “Your day off. Don’t have to help.”

  “How long will it take?”

  He gave her another shrug, this time with a little smile. “Hour, if it goes well.”

  “How long if it doesn’t go well?”

  He smiled even bigger. “Depends on how long the fire department is here.”

  Gina shook her head but laughed. “Okay, let’s do it. I suppose you have what we need in your tool box?”

  He waved for her to follow her to his truck, where he already had a length of heavy wire cut, and a toolbox to go with it. The first task was to remove the under-sized wire already in place from the fuse box to the stove, and then pull the new wire through the same holes in the walls. Then a new fuse was put in, and the proper outlet installed. Almost all of it was done in silence, as usual with Kenzo the handyman, and within an hour, Gina was plugging her stove into the outlet.

  “Try it,” Kenzo said.

  Gina turned on one burner after another. After a moment, she held her hand over each burner to test them.

  “Hot?” he asked.

  “It’s great! Thanks.”

  He began putting his tools away. “Now you know how.”

  She turned off the stove again. “I guess it’s true. We learn something new every day.”

  “Whether we want to or not,” he muttered.

  “Ha! And no fire department, either!”

  With that, he was gone, the job done, leaving Gina to the rest of her day.

  ***

  The tennis courts at the nearby community park were deserted. All Gina could do was practice serves using the six balls that she had. Once those were knocked to the opposite side of the court, she’d run to collect them and knock them back again. After an hour of that, she was in a heavy sweat and her water was gone. She collected her balls one last and put them away in their canister. It had felt good to practice during the heat of the afternoon, and she figured she was a pound lighter because of perspiration. With a bottle of Gatorade from a vending machine, she continued mopping sweat from her face as she drove through town, taking herself on a sightseeing tour.

  With no real idea of where she was going, Gina would turn the little Datsun in the direction of something that looked interesting. After a while, she had no idea of what part of town she was in, but she was finding as many Buddhis
t temples and schools as there were churches, or even supermarkets for that matter. Palm trees were everywhere, and she tried snapping pictures of the various types. There were quite a few palms on the estate that still needed to be identified, and images of a new palm-lined entrance were forming in her mind.

  She was beginning to recognize a few landmarks, and before she knew it, she was back at the Kapalama Park. To her surprise, every single one of the homeless shelters had disappeared just since that morning. Parking in the same little lot at one side, she walked through the park.

  “Where’d everybody go?”

  She found patches of flattened grass where mini cardboard homes had been or someone had slept, burned spots where someone had a campfire, and other places that needed mowing. She figured that the city mowers would be there the next day, and wondered if that’s why they’d all left, just to stay out of the way. Finishing her quick little tour of the park, she stopped in the restroom. Even that had been cleaned since the morning.

  “They’re a lot more organized than I ever guessed, that’s for sure.”

  To get to the freeway, she had to pass Bunzo’s Bar. The parking lot was half full, mostly of pickup trucks. It was good ol’ boys time at the bar.

  There was still something strange about the bar that unsettled Gina’s mind whenever she thought of the place.

  “Three bartenders, all of them kinda sneaky about things, all of them entirely different from each other. One of them owns the place, but he works in the evening rather than during the day, which is something he lied to me about the first time we met. That doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t he want to work when the bar wasn’t so busy, and have the other guy work at night? What was his name again?”

  The Datsun’s little engine struggled to get up to freeway speed as she merged into traffic.

  “Hughes. What was his deal? A healing scab on his arm that looked suspiciously like a knife wound, and a suspicion of cops, just like the other two bartenders.”

  She noticed the time on the dashboard clock, one of the few things that still worked in the old Datsun.

  “He said he gets off at five, and made it sound like an invitation. If I hurry, I could shower and be back at Bunzo’s in time to meet him.” She chuckled. “Don’t even have to shower before going to that place.”

  Even though her toe was pressing on the gas pedal, she wasn’t convinced it was a good idea to meet Hughes that evening. Even if the scab on his arm had come about as innocently as Detective Kona had implied, there was something about Hughes that didn’t fit, even more so than the other bartenders.

  “All I have to do is have him take me to a bar, take the beer bottle or plastic cup he drinks from, and then turn that over to Kona for fingerprints. He said he wasn’t getting any matches from the pocketknife or wallet. Maybe it’s time to collect a few more for comparison. He never did tell me what he found on my beer bottle from last night.”

  She got off the freeway and angled for East-West Road to take her home.

  “Something stinks about Bunzo’s and it’s not just the dumpster.”

  When she got back to the estate, the roofer/plumber/electrician/handyman was on the front porch having a cigarette.

  “You came back,” she said. “Did we forget something with the wiring?”

  “No matter. Nothing else better to do. Got living room painted with primer.” He stood to leave. “I’ll be back on Monday to help finish the walls.”

  “Okay, well, thanks.” Once he was gone, Gina made a quick inventory of the few things she had, just in case something might’ve found its way into his truck while she was away. Everything was there and in the same places as she’d left them. “Who does that? Who just drops by to paint a room, only because he had nothing else better to do with his day? How’d he get in, anyway?”

  While she showered, she couldn’t help but think people were keeping an eye on her. Being naked right then, she got a start, and quickly finished.

  “Okay, the bartender that owns Bunzo’s is Japanese, or Asian, or something. I don’t know. So is the roofer. Is the owner of Bunzo’s sending the roofer by to keep an eye on me? Are they somehow related? But I met the roofer before I found the body of the dead man, and I didn’t meet the owner of Bunzo’s until after I found the dead man. Everything is upside-down with that guy’s death.”

  She dressed in the only blouse she had that was clean and had a floral print. That matched the loose skirt she selected, the only one she’d brought that wasn’t wool. After plucking a few brow hairs, she combed and fluffed her wavy hair. By the time she was done dressing, she looked ready for a date.

  “Catch more flies with honey than vinegar, as they say.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  When Gina got to Bunzo’s, the parking lot was full.

  “Only five o’clock and the place is already jammed.”

  She’d need to park in the street somewhere before going in to meet Hughes. Her only plan was to get picked up by him and go out for a drink, or even a meal, and conduct an interview trying to determine what he knew about the darker operations at Bunzo’s Bar. There was more to the bar than crappy booze and bad pickup lines. Drugs, prostitutes, maybe even murder were on the daily happy hour specials. All Gina wanted was to know the real name of the dead man found on her porch that week before putting him to rest in a pauper’s grave. If she could learn why he died on her porch, it would be icing on the weird welcome cake that she’d been presented with upon arrival in Hawaii.

  When she saw a couple come out hand in hand, she waited while they went to their car to take their parking spot. Maybe it was because they walked past the dumpsters that she thought she recognized the daytime bartender. She backed out again and into a small space at the curb. Cutting her lights, she sat stock still when Hughes drove out, taking his date with him.

  “Jerk. He didn’t wait for me?” she muttered, watching his car go down the street in her rearview mirror. “I feel so insulted.”

  It caught her eye when someone else came out the back door of the place, carrying a bag of trash with him. It seemed odd to Gina that he’d have to take out the trash left over from the previous shift. He didn’t seem happy about it, as he jammed the bag into the dumpster and slammed the lid shut. Instead of going back in, big-nosed Chuck lit a cigarette.

  “He’s barely starting his shift and he’s already taking a break?”

  Gina checked the rearview mirror again, trying to decide if she wanted to follow Hughes on his date, or to surveil Bunzo’s for a while. If she went in for a drink, she’d have to mingle. She wouldn’t be able to warm a barstool for the second evening in a row. She had nothing to ask Chuck, and hadn’t exactly endeared herself to the Asian guy that owned the place, whatever his name was. Sticking the transmission in gear, she made a quick U-turn in the middle of the street and set off in the direction Hughes had gone.

  Doing a rolling stakeout was pointless with the vehicle she had at her disposal. The oxidized yellow Datsun with old-fashioned round headlights made her stick out like a sore thumb, and the engine would be uselessly underpowered in a chase. For that reason, she kept almost a full block behind Hughes’s car while following him in the hope he wouldn’t notice her. Traffic was busy on the surface streets, and whenever he made a turn, she lost him for a moment. The sky was getting dark, the sun getting low in the sky, and drivers were turning on headlights. Trying to remain hidden behind other cars, she closed the distance between her and Hughes so she wouldn’t lose him.

  He was acting as though he knew he was being followed by making turns every block or two, going left and then right, in no direction in particular. He never left the part of town she’d come to know as Kapalama, though.

  At one point, he parked in front of Pinoy Boy’s Emporium and went in, leaving his date to wait in the car. Gina rolled past to get a look at the woman he’d picked up. She was looking out her window, so Gina couldn’t get a good look at her. All she could tell was that she was blond.

&n
bsp; “Maybe it’s true, that blondes have more fun? She’s on a date, while I’m following them around. How pathetic is that?”

  Gina made a turn. While she waited at a traffic light, she wondered what the point was to be out at all that evening.

  “So what if a dead man gets a pauper’s grave? What is it to me? Why do I care so much about his name?”

  Deciding to go home, she went around the block headed for the nearest freeway on-ramp. As she approached Pinoy Boy’s for the second time, Hughes was just coming out. He had something clutched in one fist, and a six-pack of beer in the other. She was able to duck into a driveway, hopefully without being seen by him. When he pulled out into traffic, she followed, now much more closely.

  “Maybe it’s good I didn’t get picked up by him, if all he does is drive a girl around and drink beer.”

  Hughes made one turn, and Gina wondered if her suspicions were right. After a couple of blocks, he parked in the small lot at Kapalama Park. She had some tricky maneuvering getting the Datsun into an alley without being noticed. After backing into an apartment building carport, she crept back down the alley until she got a view of Hughes’s car. He’d backed into the space, the only car there.

  It was nearly dark by then, and parked next to a wall kept her hidden. She could see their faces through the windshield of his car. His dome light came on. She noticed something being handed back and forth, and figured it was a can of beer.

  “At least they parked before drinking.”

  She watched as it looked like he opened a second can.

  “Yeah, babe. Let’s go get some brewskis and party in my car,” she said in a false baritone. “Classy.”

  Only the occasional car went by on the street that separated them. She couldn’t see much of the park, just one corner of the restrooms and a small patch of grass. No one else was around; the homeless people that had been there earlier that morning were still staying away.

  “Good place to party. No one else around, quiet neighborhood, no streetlights.”

  Gina rolled her window down. Trying to listen to them, all she could hear was the music coming from his car.