"What the fock kinda system you got here, homes?" Jesus Fernandez said finally, the beer ad now beaming out of the television screens not holding his attention to the same degree as the game that the ad had interrupted.
Buddy Kai had been waiting for the better part of an hour to hear something come out of the guy's mouth not related to the fucking game, something that had even the remotest connection to the reason they were both in a bar at the Honolulu airport. And this is the best the moddafockah can do? Buddy thought.
The Los Angeles connection was the problem, of course, Jesus having flown all the way from LA that morning just to bleed Laker blue while Detroit kicked the collective butts of his home-boys in the first game of the NBA championship series. Jesus had followed the action on four or five different television screens in the bar, but they all told the same sad tale.
"Not my system, you know," Buddy said quietly. He had hopped over from Hilo for this meeting, but so far it hadn't been worth the energy required to cross the street. For a moment he even began to second-guess his decision to move toward the Mexicans in the first place, but it didn't take him long to remember that the Mexicans had done most of the moving and he had never been offered much of a choice.
"Well, it's focked," Jesus said Buddy couldn't argue with that, so he didn't bother to comment. Instead, he leaned back in his chair and began to inventory the gold Jesus was flashing in front of him three or four necklaces, a bracelet on one arm and a watch on the other, several rings on the fingers of both hands, and many of these pieces encrusted with precious gems of one kind or another.
"How much money you wearin'?" Buddy asked.
"If I know the answer to that question," Jesus said, "it's too much."
Too much eithah way, Buddy thought.
"The sheet been sittin' here for two weeks already," Jesus said, referring to the Honda Accord stuffed with crystal methamphetamine Jesus had sent from LA to Buddy on the Big Island only it was still sitting on Oahu, waiting for an inter-island barge.
"Put the shit in your suitcase, brah," Buddy said, "you gonna get it here way quickah, I promise."
"You think this sheet is funny, homes?" Jesus said, his face broadcasting clearly his own opinion on the subject.
Kinda, Buddy thought, but what he said was this: "Cornin' ovah this week, you know. Soon as we get it, we gonna sell it."
"Anything goes wrong, ese, you ain' gonna be laughin' no more."
"Not laughin' now, you know. Just more used to it."
"Whatever," Jesus said. "I still say the system is focked."
"Saved you from payin' good money to see that fockin' game, you know."
"True," Jesus said. "But ain' gonna be no more games like that, believe me."
"I wondah," Buddy said.
"Believe me, homes," Jesus said. "The Lakers got all the horses in this fockin' race."
"Not," Buddy said. "I wondah 'bout this deal. Anyt'ing goes wrong, you gonna be pissed. Not'ing goes wrong, the Japs gonna be pissed."
"Let us worry about the Japs," Jesus said. "All you gotta do is move the fockin' sheet."
"No problem," Buddy said, but what he was thinking was this: On my end of this fockin' deal, I gotta worry 'bout everyt'ing.
3
Jay-Jay Johnson perked up considerably as soon as Jolene and Kapua walked through the door of his party house off Ainaola, Kapua the primary object of his carefully calculated attentions since the first time Jolene had brought her around two or three weeks earlier.
Jay-Jay had a serious yen for brown beauties like Kapua, but she was a lot better than most and way better than the skank Jolene had become over the past twelve months--Jolene all skin and bones now, and to make it worse the skin gray and pasty like she had died without even knowing it.
That was the thing about Kapua--she was still ripe, still juicy, still something you could sink your teeth into. Jay-Jay had been sucking on the best of his own weed for most of the night, so he knew he was looking at the girl through a warm, mellow haze. But even after adjusting for his buzz, Jay-Jay began to believe the girl was the best thing he had seen for months, if not longer. His blue eyes began to dance behind his innocuous granny glasses while he sat in his chair at the battered kitchen table and watched Jolene guide the princess through the throng of partiers to say hello.
"Hey, sweetheart," Jay-Jay said as he and Jolene kissed each other on the cheek, Jay-Jay sticking to his chair so Jolene had to bend in his direction to do it. "I was hoping you'd come by."
He could see that Jolene was chafing to cut to the chase--as usual, she had no time to waste on small talk--but he turned his attention to Kapua to repeat the same greeting he had shared with Jolene. The princess had come into the room behind some interesting cleavage, but she flashed a lot more of it when she leaned down to peck Jay-Jay on the cheek.
God is so fucking good, Jay-Jay thought. The girl looked younger up close than she had from across the room, which was fine with Jay-Jay--the fresher the fruit, the sweeter the juice. Jay-Jay had a good eye for judging the age of these princesses; this one was 15 or 16, no more, and Jay-Jay had a bar of iron between his legs by the time he finished inhaling her sweet scent and kissing her discreetly on her smooth dark cheek.
The princess was rigid where Jay-Jay's hand rested briefly on her shoulder, like her guard was up, and he knew there had been nothing extra in the touch of her lips to his cheek. It was all enough to make Jay-Jay smile, so that's what he did.
"Wassup, Kapua?" he aske'd innocently, brushing a blonde dreadlock away from his forehead with the hand that had been on her shoulder.
The princess hesitated, as though she suddenly couldn't recall why she was standing in Jay-Jay's kitchen, but Jay-Jay just sat there behind his gentle smile and waited until the reason came back to her.
"You have more ice?" she said finally, her eyes down like Jay-Jay might see straight into her mind if she made eye contact with him. Jay-Jay smiled even more broadly at that; he had started reading her mind from the first moment he laid eyes on her--her mind and her future, too. Everything had been laid out in front of him as soon as she walked in the door.
"You know I do," Jay-Jay said. "How much you want?"
"Don't have much money," the princess said, looking up very much like she had that first night to try to fend off what she still feared was coming next.
"Please," Jay-Jay said. "You know I don't want your money, sweetheart."
"Not gonna do not'ing for it, you know," she said with a little toss of her head, her back straight and her arms folded protectively across her chest.
"Do I still seem like that kind of a guy to you?" he asked.
Kapua shook her head shyly, as though embarrassed to have suggested such a thing. Jay-Jay looked at her closely, and then at Jolene almost foaming at the mouth next to her. He had their full attention, that was obvious. What a piece of cake this business is, he said to himself. Sooner or later, sweet princess, you'll do anything for this shit--any fucking thing I say. Right now, though, it's time to ratchet this delightful little game up a notch.
"Actually," Jay-Jay said, "I do need a favor from you, Kapua." He was staring straight into her deep brown eyes now, and she was staring back; he watched as her gaze turned suddenly more wary, as though the other shoe she had always feared might drop was right now beginning to do exactly that. Which it is, Jay-Jay said to himself, but you won't recognize it at first.
"What kind of favor?" she said.
"Would you stop coming here?"
"What?" she asked, after a mental double-take that Jay-Jay could see just behind her eyes.
"Would you stop coming here?" he said again.
"Why?" she asked, already thinking exactly the wrong thing, already set up perfectly for the curve.
"Because I can't stand it anymore," he said earnestly, his own eyes beaming out what he hoped was just the right amount of his private misery.
"What do you mean?"
Jay-Jay looked away before he replied, as t
hough embarrassed by what he had to say. "I'm afraid I'll do something inappropriate, Kapua, and we both know you don't want me to do that."
The girl stared at him like he was speaking a foreign language, and he let the stare percolate for a while before he continued. "You don't know how you make me feel, girl," he said when he thought the time was right. "You're so fucking gorgeous, Kapua. Do you realize I'm hard right now, just from looking at you? I've never experienced anything like you before."
Jay-Jay said this with the same note of earnest certainty he had started on, but he glanced at Jolene for an instant while he did it because Jolene had heard it all before. She looked back at him blankly and didn't say a thing. We're cool, huh, baby? Jay-Jay said to her silently. Long as I keep the fucking ice coming, we way cool.
"I don't understand," Kapua said, which Jay-Jay thought might be the truest words the girl had ever spoken.
"You don't want to be around me when I'm like this," he said soberly. "I'm thinking things you shouldn't have to deal with." Then he watched her carefully, counting to himself as he read her reaction in her eyes. He reached eight before she seemed about to speak again, and he spoke first.
"Don't worry about the shit, Kapua," he said. "I'll still take care of you, I'm not saying that. Just tell Jolene when you want something, and she can come over and get it for you. Is that okay with you, Jolene?"
"Shuah," Jolene said, looking nowhere in particular but the word flowing as though its path had been greased in advance. "No problem, Pua."
"There's no reason why you should have to suffer because of the way I feel," Jay-Jay added.
He watched the relief flood over Kapua's face, the mystified expression still there but buried to a significant degree. Long as the shit keeps coming, Jay-Jay thought. Ain't that right, my gorgeous princess?
4
Dominic Rosario knew it was all over as soon as Kobe Bryant buried the three-pointer from the parking lot to send the game into overtime--the entire series, not just the second game, the stupid Pistons fucked now for giving Dominic's Lakers new life.
Once you got 'em down, Dominic said to himself, you gotta crush da moddafockahs. Just like the Lakers were doing when the phone rang, Kobe leading them through the extra period like the Grim Reaper on speed.
"Dominic?" a tentative voice said into Dominic's ear.
"Who's fockin' numbah you called?" Dominic said.
"Yours."
"Den who da fock you t'ink it is?"
"This is your cousin Karl from Matson's," the voice said next, the speaker apparently believing that Dominic's last question had answered itself.
"What you want?" Dominic said gruffly, but he wasn't feeling the same way he sounded. Tell me somet'ing I wanna hear, he said to himself.
"I might have something for you."
"Fockin' spit it out."
"We have a car coming in for Edith Kealoha Thursday"
"What da kine I fockin' wen tell you fo' watch?"
"Buddy Kai or Sonnyboy Akaka."
"Exactly."
"Yeah," Karl said. "But Edith Kealoha is Sonnyboy's aunty."
Dominic let his mind run until he got a hit. "Old, old one live in Panaewa?" he asked.
"Yeah," Karl said.
"No way she in da fockin' business, you know."
"I know," Karl said quickly. "The only thing is she doesn't drive, either. I wonder what she wants with a new car."
For the second time that night, Dominic knew it was all over--this time as soon as the words were out of Karl's timid mouth. It was still a long shot, sure, but this long shot was going to hit just like Kobe's, and Dominic could already feel it snapping through the net.
"Way to fockin' go, Cuz," Dominic said before he cut the connection with Karl and substituted it for a new one. He listened to three rings before the woman's voice came through.
"Yes?" she said.
"Dis da fockin' drug bitch, yeah?" Dominic asked.
"You have a rude mouth, Dominic," the woman said.
"Yeah," Dominic said. "But you fockin' gonna love what I gotta say."
5
One, two, three, Robbie Tsubamoto hummed under his breath. That's how element'ry it's gonna be. Come on, let's fall in love, it's easy; don't just stand there like a baby.
Robbie loved all those old soul tunes from the Sixties, and just about anything could set one to popping in his head--just like this meeting here, the three of them in Hilo's best hotel room: the old man, of course; Kitano, there because the old man couldn't or wouldn't speak English; and Robbie, the one who actually lived on the Big Island and the only one there with his ass totally on the line.
There were several more people within a stone's throw of the door to the room, the old man and his crew having taken over more than one room on this wing of the floor. All of these people were armed and dangerous, Robbie knew, but he could still have come up with an appropriate tune to accommodate the entire assemblage if pressed to do so. He was not so pressed, however; for better or for worse, he was now at the point where he had to deal directly with the old man--directly, that is, if you didn't count Kitano.
When the old man finally rattled something off in his guttural Japanese, Robbie let the old soul tune on his mind dry up and blow away. He needed to stay on top of this situation, if staying on top of it turned out to be humanly possible.
"He wants to know how much you know about this cop," Kitano said, referring to the account way past due that Robbie had known coming in was going to catch the old man's eye.
"Everything," Robbie said after thinking it over for a moment.
Kitano said something in Japanese, and Robbie saw the old man blink once as though a blink of his eyes was the same as an affirmative nod of the head for a normal person. Then the old man said something else.
"Is he good for this debt?" Kitano asked next, the exact question Robbie had known would be asked and the one he didn't really have an answer for--even though he had grown up with the cop in question and had already claimed that he knew everything about the guy.
"This is one touchy kinda guy," Robbie said. "But I think so, yeah."
"Ten thousand dollars is a lot of money," Kitano said.
"Not gonna cost you anything either way, you know," Robbie said.
Kitano rattled something else off and the old man responded, Robbie cursing himself silently once again for failing to learn how to speak the language that went with his surname when he had been given the opportunity as a kid. Kitano nodded slowly in the old man's direction, and the old man blinked his eyes again.
"How much did he win yesterday?" Kitano asked.
"Five hundred," Robbie said, reviewing in the back of his mind how the cop had finally hit a winner when the Lakers turned back the Pistons in Game Two.
"Encourage him to increase his bets to get even," Kitano said. "The deeper he gets the better."
Robbie's heart sank as he absorbed these words, even though they were what he had expected. He nodded to indicate that he understood the message, but he didn't agree with it. He hated to see this come down on his old friend, but there were things Robbie hated a lot more and the old man was capable of making many of them occur. So if Robbie had to climb up his old friend's back to get on top of this situation, Robbie was ready to make the footprints.
That's how element'ry it's gonna be, he thought, already working out in his head how to make his old friend think the whole thing was his old friend's own idea until the old man spoke again.
"He wants to know about the other thing," Kitano said.
"That's not my thing, you know," Robbie said, but he had said the same thing the first time they brought the subject up. Neither Kitano nor the old man responded; Robbie couldn't tell by looking at them if they had even heard the words. What they did instead was stare at him like the shit was going to hit the fan if he didn't answer the question pretty fucking soon.
"Buddy guys gonna win, they go head to head," Robbie said. "Dominic's weaker overall, I think, but
what the fuck do I know?"
Kitano translated that, but the names Robbie had offered floated through the Japanese words like flagships on a foreign sea. The old man listened, and thought, and spoke.
"Something happens to Buddy, who takes over?" Kitano asked.
Robbie wanted to say again he wasn't qualified to answer these questions, but he swallowed that desire and answered anyway. "Sonnyboy, I think," he said simply, wondering while he said it where all of this local drug shit was coming from and what it all meant to him.
Here's a sample from Richard Barre's The Ghosts of Morning. It is now available from Down and Out Books.
PROLOGUE
Huntington Beach, California, 1966
Surreal, that was how he'd play it--Dutch angles and following shots, the close-ups pinched tight--that sort of offness that went with the territory. The scene begged for it: boxy tract house, pseudo-Spanish with a hot-mop-and-tarpaper roof; geraniums around the foundation; dated-looking streetlights in a neighborhood well back from the water and the stores, the only hint of beach a salt-laced drippy fog that in a few hours would greet early risers like a slap with a wet towel.
Normal except for the spinning cop-car lights that bathed it in strobes of red and yellow. The surreal part.
Lannie Crowell snapped the snaps on his fleece-lined aviator vest, flipped up its collar against the dampness. Checking the settings on his old Bell & Howell one more time, he fired off a master shot, knowing he'd have to bump it two stops to even get it, overcome the inadequate glow from his jury-rigged sun-gun. Save it in the soup--always the way at KTVB, the news director there not above using Sterno if there was a chance it might develop film. Real five-cent station in a big-buck business.
No problem, Mom-o, Lannie thought, stay arid. Insert shots coming up.
He was early--earlier than he'd hit one before--and the crime scene hadn't been roped off yet, though a couple of cops were behaving in their usual officious way, shoving some wide-eyed neighbors around. Luckily they hadn't taken stock of him yet, and he was close enough to see fine. Especially when one of them pulled off the covering for a look. Through the lens, the girl, Carmen Marquez from his police scanner listenings, looked to be about eighteen, not much younger than him. A pretty thing with dark hair and smeared red lipstick, jeans and white Keds. High-school jacket over a white shirt; head at an odd angle where she lay on the cracked cement walk.
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