Better Off Dead

by Meryl Sawyer

  Where was Paul?

  He worked long hours with his uncle in the family pharmaceutical supply business. It was a good living, but they would never have been able to afford a home on Maunalua Bay near KoKo Head, if Chad hadn’t given them a no interest loan for the down payment. A smaller version of Diamond Head, KoKo Head was the symbol of the Back Bay, a friendly neighborhood and a great place to raise children.

  She had her brother to thank for this as much as her husband. Her two sisters lived nearby again because Chad had loaned them down payment money. His mansion in the ritzy Kahala area near Diamond Head was spectacular, but Keke found it slightly cold. Maybe this Devon woman would move into his life and warm up the place.

  Chad had been away years, and the family had gotten used to the idea that he was never coming home. Then Papa had been killed in an accident a little over three years ago. Just after the funeral, their mother was diagnosed with cancer. Chad had bought a chain of dive boats and shops and returned home. He’d taken over for Papa as patriarch of the family.

  Keke peered in the fridge, tired of trying to satisfy a mother-in-law who refused to be pleased. She pulled out some stuff and was suddenly aware it had been an awfully long time since she’d heard anything from Lui and Mei. At three and five they were old enough to be alone in the next room watching television, but they were awfully quiet, a sure sign they were up to something.

  She walked toward the den and heard low grunting or something. Rushing in, she saw two naked women French kissing each other, watched by a nude man who was hung like a horse.

  “That does it! Uncle Nomo is never baby-sitting here again.”

  Paul’s teenage nephew had once again fiddled with their satellite blocker to watch porn flicks. She snapped off the television and whirled around. Lui and Mei were sitting on the floor, their eyes wide, their little mouths gaping open.

  Her first impulse was to scream: Time out. Go to your rooms. But this wasn’t their fault. At five, Lui had already learned channel surfing from his father. Obviously Nick’s program had bored them. Lui had surfed until he’d come upon the adults only station his uncle had been watching.

  At three, Mei probably wouldn’t have a lasting impression of what she’d seen, but Lui was a different story. Five-year-olds talked and asked questions.

  “Lewis, May,” she called them by their English names, the way she did when they were at school so they would know she meant business. At home and with family, she used the Hawaiian versions of their names. “You mustn’t pay attention to movies like these. Adults play funny games sometimes.”

  Lui, so like Chad it was frightening, opened his mouth to ask something, but Keke didn’t have time. Paul was going to have to explain this R-rated movie to his son. The doorbell rang. The mother-in-law from the Black Lagoon had arrived. “Turn on Nick and don’t change the channel.”

  Keke rushed to the front door and swung it open. Paul’s mother had already taken off her shoes and neatly placed them beside the row of shoes haphazardly lined up to the left of the door.

  “Mother Nakamura,” she greeted the older woman in the customary fashion that honored her status in the family.

  “Is that burned baby bok choy I smell?”

  “We’re not having baby bok choy. Tonight we’re having my favorite dish.”

  Mother Nakamura’s dark eyes snapped, but she didn’t say a word as she walked into the house. She didn’t even remind Keke, the way she usually did, that the Japanese brought cleanliness to the islands like the custom of leaving street shoes outside to prevent dirt from being tracked into the house. Paul drove in that second.

  Keke stood with Mother Nakamura in the doorway and waited for her husband. He was going to have to entertain his mother while she made enchiladas. Looking harried, Paul rushed up to them.

  “Mother.” He dutifully kissed the old witch on both cheeks.

  “Sorry I’m late.” He gave Keke a quick peck and slipped out of his loafers..

  Lui and Mei had wandered into the room behind Keke. Nani—beautiful—she thought. They had the ruler-straight black hair that reflected their Japanese ancestry, pale skin, and wide blue eyes—the Langston eyes. They seemed to have Langston personalities, as well. With luck, neither of them would have Mother Nakamura’s sour disposition.

  Even though their grandmother came each Wednesday evening for dinner, the children hung back. They were a little intimidated by her. Once again, Keke wished her mother had lived. Then her children would have truly known a grandmother’s love.

  “Come to your grandmother.”

  Mei stood there, her blue eyes wide.

  Keke tried to intercept Lui as he charged up to Paul. He dodged by her and grabbed his father around the knees and gazed up at him.

  “Daddy, Daddy, is your pee-pee as long as the man’s on television?”

  “CHINATOWN DATES BACK to the eighteen hundreds when Chinese laborers were brought to work in the sugar cane fields,” Keke explained.

  Devon listened politely. Chad’s sister was taking her to find material to cover the chairs and tables. Keke had Chad’s eyes and shiny chestnut-colored hair, but she was petite and liked to chatter.

  “The pakes—that’s what we call the Chinese—started out dirt poor, but now many of them are among the wealthiest people on the island. They live everywhere. Very few live in Chinatown. There are a lot of Koreans, Filipinos and Vietnamese here now.”

  “These buildings date back to the 1800s?” Devon asked, looking at the buildings and thinking they didn’t look that old.

  “No. Sometime shortly before the First World War, a fire was deliberately started to control a bubonic plague epidemic. The wind whipped it out of control and wiped out all of Chinatown and the surrounding areas, too.”

  There were plenty of seedy dives in Chinatown, Devon noticed and not for the first time. She’d been here before. There were also plenty of noodle factories, herb shops, bakeries and jewelry stores.

  She caught her reflection in a window. Finally she was beginning to get used to the way she looked. The cosmetic surgery had changed the shape of her eyes, giving them a slanted, catlike expression. Her nose had been altered slightly and it was now smaller than it had been. A chin implant had added length to her face.

  WITSEC had insisted she have the surgery, but of course, they weren’t paying for it. She had signed her second MOU—Memorandum of Understanding. It outlined what WITSEC would and would not do for her. Curt Masterson had specified WITSEC would be repaid for the cosmetic surgery from the sale of her condo and gallery.

  “There it is,” Keke said. “Tail of the Dragon. The name refers to the wisp of heroin smoke as it curls upward. Chinatown. Opium dens. Get it?”

  Devon eyed the ten-foot vertical banner with a menacing black dragon fluttering in the breeze. The warehouse was up a long, narrow street in what appeared to be the worst part of Chinatown. This was the dark underbelly of Honolulu tourists never saw.

  A place to hide.

  Since Santa Fe, Devon looked at the world around her as a dangerous place. She never knew when they would find her, when she would be on the run again. Or when she would die.

  She’d lied to Eddie and Chad, when she’d said that she’d only been here four weeks. She and Zach had arrived a month earlier than she’d told them. Warren had taken part of each day to brief her. She had spent the remainder of the time casing the island.

  Always search—ahead of time—for cover. Always have more than one escape route in mind. Always have cash and another identity stashed in a safe place.

  Masterson had assured her that Hawaii was a great place because few WITSEC people were relocated in paradise. They wouldn’t look for her here. She’d countered by saying there was really only one way out—by air. In the end, he’d persuaded her to go.

  This time she’d taken more precautions. She’d studied the terrain and had money and a phony ID she’d bought on the street stashed in another place—just in case. She’d taken the added pre
caution of using a private mailbox company as her address. The home telephone number she had given was for one of the two cell phones she kept with her at all times. No one knew where she lived except Warren.

  For a moment she thought about Chad. Yesterday at lunch, she’d been physically closer to him than she’d ever been. Not a good idea. There was an underlying magnetism between them. It would only mean trouble if she allowed anything to happen.

  “I know this place looks like a rat hole,” Keke said, “but it has great fabric. Trust me.”

  “Okay.” Devon struggled to keep her tone cool. She really liked this woman and had from the moment Chad had brought her into the office. Devon forced herself to pull back and not be swept up by Keke’s infectious optimism about everything.

  The lucky woman had no idea how ugly life could get.

  They entered a dimly lit warehouse three stories high. From floor to ceiling were bins filled with bolts of fabric. Tall ladders slid along rails from side to side. On them were husky men with weight lifters belts around their waists.

  “Fabric is sorted by color. Tell them the color, and they’ll bring down every bolt with that color. Since you need so much fabric, you’ll tell them the color and the yardage you need.”

  The wizened old Chinese woman behind the counter barked at them, “Color?”

  “Canna red,” Keke snapped back.

  “Rose petal red,” Devon whispered to her.

  Keke’s voice was low. “This is Hawaii. Chinatown. We don’t think in terms of rose petals. Canna grows here. Everyone knows that shade of red.”

  Devon watched, thinking that elsewhere in America they would have used forklifts. Here they had sling and rope contraptions, dating back to the early twentieth century.

  “Look at this roll,” Keke whispreed. “Say ‘take away’ if you don’t like it. Do not say you like anything. If you do, they will know you’re an easy mark and charge you more.”

  “I’ll let you handle the negotiations, if you don’t mind.”

  Keke beamed, her smile an echo of her brother’s. “I’m good at it.”

  They rifled through dozens and dozens of rolls of fabric. Many of them would have worked but Keke and Devon didn’t find any of them to be special. A few more bolts were brought down from the uppermost reaches of the warehouse. These were dusty and had obviously been up there for a long time.

  They unrolled one after another. Too intense. Too heavy. Too fussy a pattern. Devon was losing hope. All the fabric had been great, but not quite what Devon had in mind.

  “Devon,” Keke whispered, “check this.”

  She moved over to the bolt of fabric Keke had unwound and was holding up to the light of a bare bulb swinging on a long cord between racks of fabric. “Let’s get several bolts to the light, but this is the one we’re interested in, I think.”

  Keke motioned to the men standing nearby. She had them haul several bolts of fabric to the side door that opened to an alley. The odor of garbage and incense nearly choked Devon, but Keke was unfazed.

  “Look at this! It’s vintage material,” she whispered.

  Devon sucked in her breath. This was IT! A sheer red silk with the barest trace of silver woven into the fabric. The silver seemed to glint here and there, a reflection of the light rather than part of the material.

  “This is perfect,” Devon whispered. “I can see the silver centerpieces filled with flowers, the white china with its platinum band and the sterling silver dinnerware—all of it against this red silk.”

  “Okay. Here’s what we do,” Keke whispered. “I’ll ask the prices of all of these. You pretend to be mildly interested in all of them. Let me do the bargaining.”

  LATE THAT AFTERNOON, Chad watched from Eddie’s desk as a tall gaunt Asian woman sashayed up to Devon with the bored groom in tow. Just looking at Devon made his pulse kick up a notch.

  “I’m looking for Lori Evans. I’m Phaedra Nitsu.” She glanced at the man beside her. “Our wedding is Saturday.”

  Phaedra? A Greek name with a Japanese surname. What were her parents thinking? Never mind what they’d been thinking. Her parents must be rich. She was wearing enough bling-bling for a dozen women.

  “I’m here to check on the arrangements for Saturday,” Phaedra informed everyone in a raised voice. “Let’s hurry. I have to be at the Halekulani spa by six.”

  The Halekulani—house befitting heaven—was the only five-star hotel on Oahu and charged accordingly. Chad knew the rehearsal dinner was being held at La Mer, the hotel’s best restaurant. After a dinner there, Chad hoped the wedding caterer was really good. He hadn’t wanted to worry Devon by telling her it was a new company. No one knew why Lori selected it.

  That was the tricky part about destination weddings. Since the bride didn’t live close, she couldn’t see everything, sample every morsel of food. Off-island brides relied more heavily on the coordinator than if they had been married in their hometown.

  Devon was already standing, regal in her own way. “I’m Devon Summers. I’ve taken Lori Evans’s position.”

  Phaedra appeared baffled. “No one told me.”

  “Lori had family problems. Don’t worry. I’ve coordinated weddings for the Cress Creek Country Club in Chicago for the last four years.”

  Phaedra seemed annoyed. She glanced at her fiancé. He shrugged.

  “I’ve been with the Four Seasons, as well.”

  Chad grinned inwardly. That got them.

  “Here is a mock-up of your tables at the dinner.” She led the couple to the round table that Keke and Devon had only ten minutes ago completed setting up in the reception area. It featured the newly purchased red silk and had a complete place setting and flowers.

  “Spectacular!” Phaedra turned toward her husband-to-be, “We’re going to top Missy Okehu’s wedding in spades!”

  He kissed her, obviously more interested in the honeymoon than the ceremony. During the prolonged liplock, Chad winked at Devon. Her suggestion of a smile gave him a hot little buzz.

  “Wait,” cried the bride, springing from her fiancé’s arms. “I ordered plain red tablecloths. This must cost a fortune. My father will kill me. I’m waaay over budget already.”

  The groom put his arm around his fiancé. “Change it back to regular tablecloths.”

  Chad watched Devon put a soothing hand on Phaedra’s shoulder. “There’s no additional cost. We want weddings suited to each special person.” She gestured toward the table. “This shouts you! It’s sophisticated, unusual.”

  Chad smiled at Eddie, who was pretending to be working on his computer, while actually watching the scene. Devon was a real find. Maybe too good a find, Chad decided. Why did she “watch her back” the way Special Forces did?

  He planned to get to know her a whole lot better. That would mean finding out what secret she was hiding. The place to start was a background check.

  “The silk on your tables and chairs was woven almost sixty years ago for Madam Chiang Kai-Shek just before the Communists drove her from China to Taiwan. You’re looking at history—not an ordinary wedding.”

  “Perfect,” Phaedra squealed. “No ordinary wedding for me.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  BROCK HARDESTY STUDIED the program for the Miami Classic Car show. “Unfuckingbelievable!”

  Someone was showing a one-of-a-kind Gull Wing Mercedes. According to Mercedes Benz this was the only 300 SL coupe ever factory painted caper-green.

  He read the owner’s name out loud. “Jordan Walsh.” He’d never heard of him. Brock knew everyone in the elite group of Gull Wing owners who showed. This jerk must have just gotten into it.

  Brock was standing outside the Miami Convention Center where the cars were lined up to be washed before they were moved inside. Brock always arrived early with the transport crew and supervised the unloading. Even though specialized companies charged outrageous prices to shuttle cars around the show circuit, he didn’t trust them not to put a scratch or a ding on his babies.

>   Glancing at his Rolex, he saw time was slipping away. He carried his laptop with him. He should be working on it right now, but the wash crew might show up any second.

  He kept his laptop with him every minute he could. The dumb-fucks at the Pentagon didn’t keep track of their computers, and several had disappeared. Who knew what happened to the top secret information on them?

  To keep up with his workload and show his cars, Brock had downloaded material that was never supposed to leave Obelisk. The laptop was in the closet safe in his hotel room. He could be in his room working, but no.

  He was still waiting for the wash crew. They had a dolly with canisters of deionized water and lint-free towels. Most owners let them wash their cars.

  Not Brock. He paid them and borrowed their equipment. He loved washing his cars, loved drying them even better. The sensual feel of their curves and the smoothness of their hoods under his hands gave him a hard-on.

  If there were people nearby, he didn’t get an erection. Like sex, detailing his cars was best done in private. That’s why he stored them in a small building outside D.C. where his cars were alone in the facility. He didn’t want anyone around when he tended to his babies.

  The wash crew was still nowhere in sight. Brock decided to walk down the long line to see if the rare Gull Wing had arrived. About half the cars expected for the show were in line to be washed, and crews were unloading more every minute.

  There were a few owners around, but Brock didn’t know them. His work consumed so much of his time that he didn’t bother with anyone unless they owned a car like one of his.

  Ahead he saw it. Caper-green. Shit! Capers were those greenish brown things chefs threw on fish and stuff. Looked like bird turds.

  This green was nothing like that. It was a mossy-green with a radiance to it that suggested a dollop of silver had been added to the mixture.