"Including this one, this bigger and wealth- • tp ler.
"I'd say, yeah."
"This man comes to me one year ago. He brings me a business deal. I will do him certain favors; he will do me certain favors. This is the way of business. I am a man of business, not a man of politics. What do I know of politics?"
"What do you know of Jim Davitsky?"
"I know that he is a man of power."
"I presume you checked him out before committing yourself to anything."
"Of course. He is what he says he is. What do you say he is?"
"Never met the guy. But he's a prince, yeah. And maybe a devil."
Han stirred, scratched his knee, regarded me through slitted eyes. "This man tells me now that you are employed by his enemies to interfere in his business. What do you say?”
"I say I'm over here on a Visa card that's about to blow up in my face. I have no employers and I have no idea who his enemies are, except himself. I had a client, sure, for about two minutes, but she was hardly an enemy of any prince. A scared kid, that's all, with this prince laying all over her, and she came to me for help. I didn't help in time. He snuffed her. That was two days ago. Several other people have been snuffed since then, all in my shadow. I don't like it. And I don't like this prince of yours."
Eyes gleamed at me as he commented, "This is a matter of honor with you."
"Maybe you could call it that. It sure isn't a matter of money."
"Or business?"
"Not hardly. I'm not even getting expenses."
Han withdrew into another deep contemplation and we cruised through several more minutes of silence, the other men in that vehicle respectfully still but alert and obviously ready to leap to any command.
Presently Han leaned forward and snapped his fingers at the driver's neck. We pulled into a little park and the guys again left us in privacy, withdrawing to a distance of about twenty feet but still watchful and ready to leap.
Han lit a cigar and lowered the window, so I lit a cigarette and relaxed into my corner of the seat.
After a couple of puffs on the cigar, he said quietly, "Let me tell you about this man. He comes to me with this story of connections in high places, the power of politics, and the politics of business. You say he is a devil, but ..."
I give him respectful room to complete the thought, then tell him, "That was a figure of speech."
"Yes, but he has the problem in the head. I have noted this problem. He calls it business. But I ..."
Again I waited respectfully, then said, "Maybe he makes a business of his problem."
That drew a sharp look, a long and careful study of my face. Finally he says, "Maybe you are right. Let me tell you this. This house at Kahala. It is a stage."
"Stage for what?"
"For business, he says. Yet I wonder. This house has false walls everywhere. It has hidden rooms behind deceptive mirrors, concealed television cameras throughout and sound devices. This entire house is a secret television studio. This man calls it the business of politics yet I sometimes wonder if his politics are not clasped within his loins. What do you say?
I cracked my window and sent smoke outside; told my friend Charlie, the Godfather of Chinatown: "I say he's a dangerous son of a bitch. Let me tell you how I see this man. Never did an honest day's work in his life. Born rich, with every privilege, and getting richer day by day doing nothing. Trusts no one, because he's so rotten inside himself, and feels that he owes nothing to anyone. He could be a true prince of the land, use his position and influence to make the world a little better without hurting himself in any way, yet he uses that power to gain more power. And for what? Where does it end, Charlie? It ends where it begins, I think, and you already said it—clasped within his loins."
Han nodded his head in an understated little jerk of agreement. "Ah. We see alike. I will tell you this in humility, Mr. Copp. I do not like this man. I have never liked this man. But business . .. well, business is business. We do not need to lie down together to do business together. But ... as you say, where is the end of it? What did I truly need of this mainland prince? Why did I admit him in? What do you say?"
I shrugged. "Business begets business, doesn't it. We buy stock and sell stock and never see the certificates. Then one day we meet the stockbroker eye to eye and instinctively hate his guts. So we find ourselves a different broker. They all sell the same stock. Right?"
I got another gleam for that. He worked at the cigar for a moment, then tossed it out the window with a tired little sigh. "So what of this haole woman? You have plans for her?"
"My jury's still out on her."
"This haole woman is not his mainland partner?"
"Did he say that?"
"He infers this. Or wahine, maybe."
Subtle shades, there. Haole simply means mainlander or Caucasian. Wahine is the Hawaiian word for girl or woman; in this context, something more intimate than business partner was being suggested.
I asked, "Had you seen her before tonight?"
I don't know if he evaded the question or if he was simply focused elsewhere, because he came back with: "These I do not understand. For a lowborn woman, youth and beauty are her tools for survival. There are no lowborn haoles. So why do these highborn women engage in this work?"
"You mean whoring?"
"Whoring, yes. I do not like the word. If my wahines are whores then I am a pimp. I do not like this word, either."
I asked, very gingerly. "What would you call it?"
"Surviving," he replied quietly.
"You seem to be surviving rather well."
"Ah, it is beyond mere survival for me, Mr. Copp. I have survived, but there are levels of survival and I still must struggle. It has not been easy, let me tell you. But I am not a pimp. I am a man of business. My wahines are ladies of business. It is the business of survival. What would they do? Where would they be? Boat people, you see, these are boat people. Where would they be?"
I asked, even more gingerly, "Where would they be if you gave them a fair split of the profits?"
He gleamed at me. "Ah. I do so. It is a fair split, all things considered. They have more money in one year than could be realized from an entire lifetime elsewhere. Also I give them my protection. But these highborn haole women ... ah! ... what do they need of this?"
I was thinking of a particular haole when I told my friend the Godfather: "I think the word is 'equalborn,' Charlie, without highs or lows out of the womb. It's not what you're born with in our country but what you do with. Some of us just go for the brass ring, without questioning what it means, and sometimes it ends up around our necks and we never find out how it got there." Hey, I was beginning to sound like a Ph.D. candidate myself. "I think your man Prince Davitsky has attached chains to a lot of those rings and I think the guy has pulled in a lot of poor fish with them. I intend to stop that if I can. If I don't someone else will, because this guy is too rotten to survive. I think you hear my words and know what they mean. You've been down all the hard streets yourself, so I don't have to tell you what it means to find yourself connected to a guy like that. He will go down. If you are connected, so will you. I rest my case. That's all I've got to say about it. You do what you have to do. As long as I'm alive I'll do the same."
He put his hand outside and snapped the fingers.
Quickly the guys were all back inside and we were moving again.
I got no conversational clues because there was no conversation.
Ten minutes later we hit Hotel Street and parked behind my rented car. Saint Peter removed the clip from my gun and stuffed it into my pocket, grinned and put the gun itself into my hand.
Beats me how these guys communicated, unless it was all set up in advance.
Charlie did not offer me his hand but he gave me a gleam and told me, "Do what you have to do, Mr. Copp."
I said, "Thanks," gave him a straight message from my own eyes and walked away clean.
Like I said, Charlie Han is
an entirely pragmatic man, a survivor ... and a gentleman. Well, almost one.
Chapter Twenty-seven
I STOPPED AT the first pay phone outside China-
town and made contact with Billy Inyoko. I found him at home, and woke him up at five A.M.
"What the hell? You've been sleeping while I'm bearding the lion?"
His voice was thick and the tongue a bit unresponsive to the demands of speech as he replied, "I figured you'd be getting some sleepytime too. Where are you, Joe?"
"Downtown. I just left Charlie. We smoked
the peace pipe."
The cop was coming awake fast. "What does that mean?"
"It means there's more than one route to heaven. I don't know, maybe you won't like the route I found, but maybe it will at least relieve some of the local pressure for a while. I believe I convinced him that he's been walking the wrong side of town. Would you guys settle for the old status quo?"
"Maybe. If it...maybe you'd better tell me exactly what you mean."
"I don't know exactly what it means. But Charlie has given me clearance to go after Davitsky. I think it means that alliance is dead. Guess you'd have to tell me what that means to the local situation."
"It could mean a lot, yeah," Billy replied guardedly. "If it's for real."
"I think it is. Look, Billy, I can't be all things to all people. I appreciate your Hawaiian hospitality and all that but I can't hum one tune and whistle another at the same time. I don't even exactly know why the hell I'm over here, but I know what brought me here and dammit I have to play my own song. I've been trying to respect—"
"Simmer down," he interrupted. "I'm not mad at you."
"Well, hooray for that. But I'm a little mad at you, pal."
He chuckled. "Hold it while I switch phones."
Funny how you can know a guy professionally for years yet know nothing whatever about his personal life. I guess I had known that Billy was married and had a family but it was a vague thing with no details attached to it. It never really occurred to me to wonder about it, I guess, but now I could see him in my mind's eye slipping out of bed and heading toward another phone so as to not disturb his sleeping wife.
When he picked up somewhere else, I asked him about it.
He said, "Sure I'm married—what do you think, I'm living in sin all these years? Hell, I'm almost a grandpappy."
Somehow I could not picture Billy Inyoko in that role. And for some reason, trying to do that, it made me think of another guy. "Does Charlie have a family?"
"Charlie Han? Sure. I think half of Chinatown is related to him, one way or another."
It's funny, yeah. You just don't see these men that way. A man is more than his work. So why do we always judge him by his work? Oh, this guy is an accountant, that one over there is a banker, a cop or a judge or a plumber—why does that always seem to be enough to size a man?
I asked Billy, "You have a lot of boat people here?"
"Enough. Too many, maybe. Our fair share, for sure. Why'd you ask that?"
"Something Charlie said to me."
"Well, he should know. He's the big man in their community."
“I see.”
"What does this have to do with anything? What're you up to?"
"You telling me you don't know? I'm not under surveillance?"
"It's a small island, Joe, but it has a lot of problems. And not nearly enough cops. I never said I was assigning you a babysitter. You told me to get off your back."
"Somehow I figured you weren't going to do that, Billy."
"Well I did. Are you saying you need some oversight now? What do you have in mind?"
"Guess I have nothing in mind. I can't go out there and put a bullet in the guy's head. I can't make a collar. So what the hell can I do?"
"What would you like to do?"
"I'd like to rattle some teeth."
"Well ... you've got that luxury, see."
"Guess I need some info."
"What can I tell you?"
"Charlie Han, Davitsky and Jones left Chinatown at about midnight with four Oriental girls in tow. I saw them all on Davitsky's boat a short while later and they went somewhere. Where did they go? Why the party with things
so tense? Did Davitsky know I was on that plane?"
"Sure, he knew. That's how I knew. We monitored a telephone call from Los Angeles minutes after your plane took off. One of Davitsky's lieutenants called from LAX and passed the word to one of Charlie's people. They had you set up coming in. That's why I put an arm on you myself."
"Great. So then you just turn me loose on a tether, staked out like raw meat inviting a hit."
"We were watching the play. Didn't I give you every support?"
"Everything but the truth. Why'd you put the collar on me?"
"Call it an interdiction. Fancy enough for you? Go on home, Joe. Hell, just go on home. I'm sorry, I—look, you're right to be mad, I had no right—go on home. I'll handle the paperwork here."
I said, "Where'd Davitsky take his boat?"
"They just went out and partied at sea. Charlie's boys were supposed to be taking care of you. They came back in at two o'clock. They were all still on the boat, all but Charlie Han, when I went to bed at four."
"The boat is back at Davitsky's joint?"
"Yeah. What are you thinking?"
"Nothing. Just sizing."
"Sizing what?"
"How the hell do I know what?"
"Go home, Joe."
"Fuck you, Billy," I said, and hung up on him.
Go home?
I didn't have a home to go to.
I knew that, see. Knew it for a long time; just never wanted to look at it. Like I said, why do we size a man by his work? Maybe that's the only size some men have. I also said earlier you can know a man by his home.
You can know me by my home, pal.
There's never anybody there but me. There's a fancy entryway and a fancy office-at-home and the fancy fucking gardens—and all of that is for nobody but me.
Go home?
I don't have a home. That was my Hawaiian illumination.
It damned near became my final one.
I hit that door with all the rage I'd been burying for a lifetime. It fell away from me, taking pieces of the wall with it, and I walked over it to get to Belinda the Bewitcher.
She knelt staring at me with terrified eyes from a llama-fur couch, and she could not run to me or away from me, nor could she call my name, because she was in chains and irons that linked the soft throat to her wrists and that to her ankles, and a sponge-ball was bound into her mouth by a silk sash. She was nude and bent into a very undignified acrobatic position that had to be painful even for a professional bewitcher.
I pulled the sash away and popped the ball from her mouth. "Sorry to invade your fun but we need a conversation."
"Jesus, Joe, get me out of this ..."—or words to that effect. I'm not really sure what she was trying to say, the voice was so racked and dry and the terror so dominant.
Frankly I did not know how the hell to get her out of that. The contraption was made up of heavy galvanized steel and padlocked onto her. The guy who put her into that probably had the keys on his person, and that person was nowhere present. I had already cased the joint from the outside and found no evidence of habitation inside or out; the boat was not in the slip; one of the cars was missing; the place seemed deserted except for the trussed turkey on the llama couch.
I found some small pointed tools in a drawer at the bar, brought her some water to lubricate the throat and went to work on the padlocks.
"Relax," I told her, "it's just karma. You're paying the tab, kid, for all these years of teasing."
She was crying and laughing at the same time, whether in hysteria or simple relief mixed with pain I couldn't say, but the eyes were looking better and the words more recognizable as she said, "Promise promise promise I'll never tease again. Be careful, Joe, they're around here somewhere."
"No
t now they're not," I told her, and cussed to myself as a tumbler slipped off the end of my pick without raising. Locks are not really all that complicated; you just have to push the tumblers up and keep them up while engaging the key plug, but that is easier said than done.
"Hold still, dammit," I fussed at her. "This is a delicate operation. How long ago were those guys here?"
"Seems like hours," she said, almost panting with the effort to get her emotions stabilized.
You know, I really had to give it to her; I mean, I was still mad as hell with this woman—a bit disgusted, too, I guess—but I had to respect the way she was handling herself. Some ballsy guys I've known would have been yelling bloody murder from the moment that gag came off. She was trying to work with me, and control herself—and still had presence enough to think rationally.
And she was in a hell of a fix. A heavy steel collar encircled her neck, without much clearance. The chair came down from the back of that, ran along her spinal column and through the buttocks to a double pair of cuffs. She was kneeling, with both hands drawn between the thighs and cuffed to her ankles as well as to the chain from her neck. That chain was pulled tight, no slack whatever, forcing the head into a sharp backward tilt. Very little struggling would be enough to put pressure on her windpipe and clamp off the air supply. Even to try relaxing the overextended positioning would clamp the throat. So, yeah, it was no laughing matter; I admired the way she was handling it.
But I guess I didn't want to let her know how I felt.
I got lucky with the neck lock, sprang the collar off and worked at the tortured flesh with both hands to relieve the hurt as she gratefully bent forward with the crown of her head resting on the couch. "There you go," I told her. "Next time look both ways before crossing to the hard side."
She spoke from the upside-down with a deeply wearied voice: "How many girls did I send to this, Joe?"
"Maybe not any," I told her.
"That's not true. This is what Maria found over here, isn't it."
I was working at the other lock. "I guess we'll never know what Maria found over here. She found the worst at home, that's for sure."
Copp For Hire, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) Page 14