Out of respect to his friend and his time, Sam decided to get right to it. If he was wrong, he could always go back and fill in the blanks behind him. All traces of mirth faded as he looked up at Dany. “Is it true?”
Over the course of a half minute, every emotion receded from Dany’s face, a muscle twitching in his neck the only outward movement of any kind.
“Who’s asking?” Dany asked, answering Sam’s question with one of his own.
“So it is?” Sam asked, sensing that by Dany’s response.
“Who’s asking?” Dany repeated, arching an eyebrow and staring back at him.
To his knowledge, nobody knew of Sam’s occasional discussions with Kimo. It was an arrangement that had started by accident eight years earlier, had benefitted them both since. If it came down to it, he would not jeopardize himself or his friends on the security detail to help Kimo, but if he could do it without mentioning too many names, he would.
“Yesterday morning somebody stopped by the warehouse and said they’d heard some things,” Sam said, sticking to a sanitized version of the truth for the time being.
“And they asked you to check it out?” Dany asked, his gaze boring into Sam.
“No, they just asked if I had heard anything,” Sam replied. “I told them I hadn’t, that the whole thing sounded crazy.”
Dany held his gaze, slowly bobbing his head up and down. “Does, doesn’t it?”
Internally, Sam felt himself breathe a sigh of relief. He was by no means out of the weeds yet, but he had taken an important first step in finding what he needed without raising suspicion. “So much so, it bothered me. Kept thinking about it all day yesterday. Thought I’d come down here, talk to you so next person ever stops by, I can tell go to hell.”
“Ha!” Dany spat out, rocking back away from the table before leaning forward again. “Big teddy bear Sam Nakoa tell anybody to go to hell. That’ll be the day.”
A self-conscious grin spread across Sam’s face as he raised his eyebrows and again glanced over to the barman. “Sounded good anyway, right?”
“It did,” Dany agreed before falling silent. He kept his eyes aimed down before leaning his bulk forward and resting his forearms on the table.
“Because it’s you, I’ll tell you what I know, which isn’t much, and I’ll trust it goes no further.”
Sam matched the pose across from him. “Goes without saying.”
This time it was Dany’s turn to glance over to the bar, where a pair of sunburned tourists in linen shorts and straw hats had just sidled up. He watched them make small talk with the barkeep, and once content they weren’t listening in, pressed ahead.
“Three nights ago, Duke called in Nainoa and Malcolm for a special overnight detail. I’m not supposed to know that, but they were both absent from work the next day, and I heard them discussing it this morning in the locker room.”
Sam nodded. More than once he’d gleaned important facts from hearing things he shouldn’t through the red metal lockers.
“I’m not sure what exactly they were doing, but from what it sounded like, they were on a guard duty from about midnight until almost sunrise.”
“Guard duty? At that time of night?”
Across from him Dany raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “I don’t know. And it’s not like I can just ask. I could tell by the way they were talking, it wasn’t something that was meant to be shared.”
“What about Duke? He ever mention it? Put out a request for people?”
“Nothing,” Dany said, shaking his head. “And you know as well as I do how special assignments are supposed to go.”
Sam bobbed his head in understanding. He did know quite well that all special assignments were to be offered in descending order of seniority. For an overnighter to be given directly to the two lowest men on the totem pole without ever mentioning it to the others was surprising to say the least.
There was only one last question to ask, something Sam was dreading more than everything else combined. He hated putting his friend on the spot, and knew whatever the answer was, it would never be passed along, but he needed to know just the same.
“Do you think it’s true?”
Dany leaned back and looked out toward the sea, running a thick hand over his face before shifting back to Sam, his expression solemn.
“Honestly? I have no idea what to think right now.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The entire evening on Mary-Ann Harris’s public calendar was blocked out. With the primary election just months away, this was not out of the ordinary. Nearly every night since the first of the year, her time had been parceled out, meeting with donors or attending fundraisers. Unseating the incumbent was something that had been done only once in the history of the state, and in that situation the sitting governor had earned far more ire than Randle.
Campaigns were expensive by any measure. For someone in Mary-Ann’s position, they were a veritable money pit.
Unlike most every other appointment in her calendar, though, the meeting was simply marked Private. No further explanation was given, no contact number listed where she might be found.
Some of the low-level campaign employees had noticed the appointment when it first appeared a day before and had taken to speculation. The most popular hypothesis was that the widow had finally found someone worthy of a fling. Others offered safer choices, such as the candidate just needed a night at home to rest.
Mary-Ann was quite aware of every eye at headquarters watching as she gathered her things at a quarter to 6:00 and headed for the door. Her Prada bag looped over an arm, she kept her head aimed straight ahead and walked through the room, most of her face hidden behind a pair of large sunglasses. She pretended not to notice, pushing through the front doors and down to the street where a taxi was waiting for her.
Where she was going, it was important to be as inconspicuous as possible, and nothing fit the bill in Honolulu like a cab in the early evening.
Outside the car, the late day sun left a golden hue over the city. Late commuters loaded and unloaded from city buses, students on bicycles weaving between them at every stop. The business casual attire that had dominated the scene just an hour before had already started to give way to tank tops and slippers, board shorts and backwards hats.
Mary-Ann watched it all slide by with indifference, thinking about the meeting.
It was the third time in the last month she had met with Thomas Zall, each one carrying a more clandestine nature. The first was a simple meet-and-greet at the campaign headquarters, an encounter Harris had thought was nothing more than a potential booster stopping by for a visit.
It was there that Zall had introduced his plan. The straightforward idea was nothing short of a bombshell to Mary-Ann, the kind of thing she watched on Netflix late at night but didn’t think actually existed. She was given just 24 hours to make her decision before the conversation was forgotten, the details of it to be denied forever.
Once the stunned silence of what had been laid at her feet wore off, Mary-Ann made the call, confirming her interest.
The second meeting, if it could even be called that, was a quick phone call. The plan had already been described, so the only thing left to do was give the heads up that the first part had been accomplished as promised.
Two hours later, Mary-Ann had met with Kimo Mata.
This was the third meeting between the two, a summons having arrived the previous day, asking to meet again. Given the unusual circumstances, Zall was requesting an in-person meeting, even offering his home as the site for it.
The thought of another face-to-face encounter was almost enough to make Mary-Ann’s skin crawl. As a person, Zall was an affable, likeable man. For all he represented, and the things he was pulling her into, he was nothing short of evil incarnate.
There was no way to imagine his motivations for spearheading what he was doing, but Mary-Ann felt reasonably certain they were all vile.
Every nerve in her body tin
gled as the cab climbed upward along Tantalus Drive into a housing community known as Ridgeview Estates. Following the directions that had been given to her, she directed the driver to the top of the lane, turning through a pair of bronze gates and winding up a cobbled stone driveway.
Having been active in the Honolulu community for decades, Mary-Ann had more than once heard the name Thomas Zall. It was well-known that he was an investment magnate who had relocated to the islands a few years before, fleeing the crowds of New York City and bringing his wealth with him. Beyond that, details were sparse at best. He was known to give the expected amount to charity for a man of his stature and to play his role when local politicians came around at election time, though for the most part he kept to himself.
How he now filled his days was anybody’s guess.
Climbing out of the taxi and taking in his home for the first time, Mary-Ann could understand why.
Stretched out before her was a modern-style, two-story villa. Built into the sloping landscape, the structure jutted out from the mountainside, a sparkling beacon of white marble and glass. The lawn was immaculately kept, the grass trimmed like a country club fairway, replete with flowering trees and plants of every variety and color.
Moving up the front walk, Mary-Ann could see the panorama of Honolulu stretched below.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” a voice asked, turning Mary-Ann away from the view, her breath catching.
Seated in a white Adirondack chair on the front porch was Thomas Zall. Dressed in a pink Oxford shirt and pressed slacks, he sat with one leg crossed over the other, his bare ankles visible above leather loafers. Beside him, a glass table contained a crystal decanter and two snifters, both empty. Opposite the table was a matching chair, the entire porch bathed in the parting rays of sun.
“Very,” Mary-Ann replied, taking her place in the vacant chair, neither person bothering with false salutations. There were no pretenses of friendship or camaraderie, no time to be wasted on such matters. It was well understood that neither person was especially fond of the arrangement, but that it was a necessary evil they would both endure for as long as they must.
“May I?” Zall asked, removing the crystal stopper from the decanter and lifting it from the table.
“Please,” Mary-Ann said, glancing over to the taxi parked on the driveway, her chauffeur for the night squirrelled away inside.
One at a time, Zall poured an inch of brandy into each glass and replaced the stopper in the decanter, both of them swirling and sipping their drinks. For a while they sat in silence, Mary-Ann waiting for Zall to take the lead.
Eventually, he did just that.
“I assume by this point you have acted on the information I gave you?” he asked without turning to face her.
Mary-Ann paused long enough to relay the fact that she was not one of his many servants and would not be spoken down to. “I already had a meeting in place when your call came in,” she said, a hint of an edge to her voice. “It was done by 10:00 yesterday morning.”
If Zall noticed her tone or the curt nature of her response, he did nothing to show it. “Two full news cycles have passed,” he said, “and not one word of it.”
“You said you expected that might happen,” Mary-Ann replied. “Are you now surprised?”
A sinister laugh rolled out of Zall. “Surprised that it was covered up? Hardly. But I am a little surprised you have not managed to capitalize on it yet.”
Mary-Ann felt her pulse pick up a bit just thinking about it. She took another sip of the brandy, letting it slide down her throat, warming her body from within.
“I contacted Kimo Mata, considered the best investigative journalist in the state. I assume he is now confirming the information before going forward with it.”
“What is to be confirmed, though?” Zall countered. “I gave you everything you needed.”
“True,” Mary-Ann said, her fingers pressing in tight on the cut crystal in her hands. “But there was no scene left to investigate, no witnesses around to confirm anything. If he just goes public with something like that, against the governor, it could be a career killer.”
“For him or for you?” Zall asked.
Her resentment rose another notch as she placed the snifter back on the table. The first time Zall had met with her, he had seemed congenial, a businessman seeing an opportunity. It was his demeanor, his approach to the matter, that had set her at ease, made her think the scenario was even possible.
In the time since, his condescension had risen in spades. Whether it was a product of strain or his true nature coming out, she couldn’t be sure, but it was not her duty to wait and find out.
“Is there a reason you asked me here tonight?” Mary-Ann asked.
The comment drew Zall’s attention to her, his mirrored sunglasses hiding his eyes, his face blank as he stared at her. He remained that way before the hint of a smile appeared.
“I summoned you here to let you know that tomorrow night, another incident will occur.”
Mary-Ann matched the stare, willing herself not to react in any way. Inside, she could feel her heart beating faster, could feel the warmth from the brandy and the sunlight start to affect her, sweat threatening to break out at any moment.
“Incident?” she asked, her voice sounding much stronger than she felt.
“Yes,” Zall said. “It will happen at 9:00. I ask that you wait until tomorrow to relay that, but from then on, you are free to use the information as you choose.”
The air around her felt thick as Mary-Ann fought to breathe in and out. She kept her hands tight on the arms of the chair to keep him from seeing them tremble.
“And you’re telling me this...”
“In advance this time, yes,” Zall said, already guessing where she was going with the question. “My hope is that by being out in front of this one, it will achieve both of our intended goals.”
The words sent a jolt through Mary-Ann, almost forcing her to close her eyes and slump back in her chair. “And where will you be?”
At that, a smile stretched across Zall’s face.
“That’s the best part. Tomorrow night is the governor’s fundraising gala. I’ll be in the very same room with him when all the fun begins.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
As effective as the park had been the first time, Danilo couldn’t afford the risk of returning. None of the children had been harmed in any irreparable way, beyond a couple of missing adult teeth, but that didn’t make his situation any better. By now the children had no doubt told the police, their parents, the papers, and anybody else who would listen, about what had happened. Every playground in the city would have a patrol car staked out at it.
Chinatown was out as well. The likelihood of anybody noticing Cherry was gone, let alone missing her, was slim at best. The other girl, though, seemed a little cleaner, and she was hapai, meaning somebody had probably reported her absence. Coupled with the little display he had left on the beach that morning, HPD was bound to be looking.
That brought Danilo to Option C. It wasn’t one he had ever actually used before, merely a mental note in case he needed it. The first few times he had rolled past it, he hadn’t put the possibilities together in his mind, the solution almost too obvious. Not until the first fetus turned up tainted did he start to view things in a different way, seeing the third location as the treasure trove it could be.
The spring sunshine had given way to a warm evening, the sky above cloudless. Stars dotted the blackened night, millions of tiny crystals shimmering down, reflecting off the ocean outside Danilo’s window. Again, he was back in the van, the dog cage from a few nights before long gone.
With the radio off, Danilo fell in with the flow of traffic moving away from downtown, following the Nimitz Highway as it hugged the coast.
Three miles from the city center, Danilo turned off Nimitz onto an unmarked road before the highway merged with the H-1 toward the airport and Pearl Harbor. He followed the paved road a
quarter of a mile until it switched to gravel. Killing the front lights, Danilo let the van coast to a stop, surveying his surroundings.
Two stories above, traffic on the H-1 rushed by, semi-trucks and motorcycles, their engines whining. Despite the darkness, he could clearly see what he had come for, the slightest apprehension crawling up his spine as he did.
There, sheltered by the concrete expanse of the highway, was a homeless community.
Danilo turned the ignition off and sat in the darkness, observing the scene before him. Tents, tarps, and dwellings constructed from pallets and carpet dotted the hard-packed earth. Children and dogs scampered about while adults clung to the shadows.
A drainage canal just past the compound wound its way to the ocean. On a previous scouting run he had seen people washing clothes just feet from a neighbor relieving himself in the murky water.
Free of any moral qualms, Danilo knew this place fit his purposes to the letter.
Stepping out of the van, a rancid stench assaulted his nose, the combined scents of body odor, feces, and rotten food, almost enough to bring tears to his eyes. Passing a hand over his face and wiping it against his shorts, Danilo shouted out, “Anybody want to make some money?”
At the sound of his voice, the few people he could see turned toward him, light reflecting off their eyes.
“I said, anybody want to make some money?!” Danilo yelled again, raising his voice, making sure to be heard over the sound of the highway above.
This time a tremor of movement passed through the encampment. A few people took a step or two toward him. Several heads poked out of their shelters to see what the commotion was all about.
Taking a few steps forward, Danilo knew it was this moment that would dictate if his plan would work, or if he would have to go back to doing things the way he had a few nights before.
“My employer will pay $10 for every child’s tooth I collect here tonight.”
A murmur passed through the crowd, the closest ones to him turning and telling others. Danilo waited as many of the silhouettes threw up their hands or made dismissive gestures, returning back into their shelters.
Motive ; One Last Day ; Going Viral Page 12