Hank looked skeptical. “Wouldn't he have had to hit the door-close button for the doors to close?” “ Uh-uh. I tested it out. The door-open button keeps them open for about five seconds after pressing it, unless you keep your finger on it. So he probably just caught the doors before they closed.”
Hank's skeptical look didn't change. “Where's the other key?” he asked, picking up the one she had returned.“Did you find what this went to?” “ That much I did accomplish. It goes to the service elevator. The other one I didn't bother to try. Norman says it might belong to one of the apartments, but I don't have time to try it in every door. Anyway, Kay's got it, but I think she's about given up too,”
“You sound disappointed,” Hank said, continuing to chuckle at the unhappy Corky. “What's this theory of yours you say went down the drain?” “ I was holding out for a premeditated killing, maybe a hit man for Wayne, maybe someone out to get Anton for some other reason. I figured it had to be someone who planned on killing Anton and was going to make darn sure the two of them didn't show up on a floor where someone wanted to get on. The only way I could see for him to do it was to stop between floors after knifing Anton and to climb out the emergency hatch at the top.”
“That was sure a wild one!” Hank hooted his amusement. “Who'd be fool enough to go riding on top of an elevator?”
It was Corky's turn to laugh as she told Hank about the elevator surfing all over the country and the suspected surfing at the Nikko Arms. “ Well, I'll be damned. I used to get into all sorts of crazy scrapes when I was a kid but I never thought of climbing on top of elevators. Of course, being raised in Wanakai where there was no building over three stories high may have been what saved me.”
“I still can't believe this was a mugging.” “ You don't have to believe it. In fact you don't even have to think about it. That's enough time wasted on this case. I'll talk to the chief and see if we can slip it back into the files.”
Corky sighed. “So what else is on the stove? I've got most of the routine work cleaned up, and Napua seems to be on its good behavior this week.” “ It is quiet. Tell you what. I need some relief from all this crap.” He waved his hand at the piles of papers on his desk. “So let's give your hit man theory one last test. We'll check with Simplicio Cheng.”
“Simp…oh, you mean the Fat Priest. Why you insist on calling him by a name he probably wouldn't recognize himself is beyond me.”
“Well, whatever name he answers to he's the best informant on Elima. If there's anything at all to this hit man business, he'd know about it.”
***
Kay reached into her briefcase and pulled out a small tape recorder.“OK if I tape this? I'd like to have the other attorneys hear what you have to say.” Wayne shrugged. “I can't see any reason why not. What I'm going to tell you is going to become common knowledge, I'm sure, since I have absolutely no intention of paying blackmail.”
Kay depressed the record button as Wayne continued. “As a matter of fact, I did try to hire someone to kill Anton. So far as I know, there's only one person other than me who knows thatup until this moment. So you can see why I'm so certain about the author of this note.”
Kay suddenly felt the same sense of impending disaster Sid had referred to when he had begged off the case. Christ! she thought, When the jury hears this, they're going to shut their minds off to any other evidence. Aloud, she said, “Want to start at the beginning?”
“ Sure. It was no empty threat made on the spur of the moment when I saw Anton at dinner with my wife. I began working on my plans to kill him before I was even ushered out of the restaurant. I wasn't about to kill him myself. I was damned angry, but I wasn't crazy. After what happened back on the mainland, I knew the first one suspected would be me. So, I decided to be more rational about it, if you can ever consider jealousy to be rational. We go to professionals when we're sick, and we go to professionals when we get into difficulties with the law as I'm doing now, so it made good sense for me to go to a professional to get rid of Anton.”
Kay was taking notes, using the activity as an excuse to hide from Wayne the expression on her face. Though she prided herself on being able to mask her feelings, the cold description of a plan to kill a human being appalled her, and she wasn't entirely convinced she could keep the emotion from showing.
“ Unfortunately for my purposes,” Wayne continued in a flat, unexpressive voice, “the kind of service I needed isn't listed in the Yellow Pages. But my years in real estate have brought me into contact with a wide variety of people. I'd overheard a conversation once between two construction workers, laborers who were as often unemployed as not, who'd both just come over from Honolulu and were working on a building I had listed. They were speculating about a recent unsolved gangland killing back on Oahu, and they agreed a third party of their acquaintance had been the perpetrator and had done it for a fee. Out of curiosity, I talked to them about it. Actually, I didn't think much of it at the time except to wonder if what they said was true and, if so, how anyone could kill for a living.”
“Do you mean you remembered his name?” Kay sounded skeptical. “ Right, and it was surprisingly easy to find him. He was in the white pages.” At this point some emotion began to show in Wayne's voice, and Kay identified it as mild amusement. “William Surrette. He turned out to be a quiet, soft spoken, friendly personshort, slender. I beat around the bush, just not believing this Surrette was what the workers said he was. He didn't do any bush beating at all. He wanted ten thousand dollars up front and another ten after he killed Anton. It was just as easy as that.”
“You paid him?” Kay could not keep the astonishment out of her voice. “ Uh-uh. I was still seeing red from the encounter with Anton, but I began to come out of my fit of madness as I sat talking to this cool and calm killer. I told him I'd have to think about it. I'm sure he figured it was the price slowing me down. Actually, it wasn't. I'd expected to have to pay more than twenty-thousand, and I can easily afford it. It wasn't because of any sudden sympathy for Anton or because of any moral scruples I didn't take Surrette up on his offer.
“ It was like beginning to sober up at the end of a long evening of drinking. I realized what I was letting myself in for. Blackmail occurred to me even then. The whole scheme begin to sound really ridiculous. Besides, Rissa and I had definitely broken up by then, and she was on Oahu and Anton was on Elima. In other words, I began to cool off. I told Surrette I'd get back to him, and I came home.”
“ That was it?” “Not quite. A lot of things began to change about then. For one thing, I moved out of our house. It's rented, now. As soon as Rissa and I can settle our affairs, I'll put it on the market. It was about the time I was deciding to move, when the fire broke out at the Nikko Arms. I'd already made a couple of easy condo sales there. So later the same week I dropped by to see Norman, partly to commiserate with him, partly to see what the prospects were for future listings, what with the fire damage.
“ That's when we worked out my exclusive on both the rentals and sales there. Norman was down at the time, but I didn't think the risk was so great, considering the way sales and rentals have been booming all over the island. So we worked out a contract. I don't know if you've been in any of the condos, but they're rather nice. There was a vacant one there which looked especially good, and I got that included in the contract at a discount. So I moved in.”
“I'm not sure I see the connection between all this and your change of heart.” “ Really?” Wayne looked surprised. “For me, changing homes is always a big move, a watershed of some sort. I'm not the kind of real estate man who lives in a home only long enough to find a customer for it. I lived in the same house in Nevada for almost twenty years, and this house is the one I bought and moved into when we first came to Elima. There were a lot of memories attached to it, and it was something of a purging to leave it. I put what Rissa wanted in storage and sold just about everything else, or gave it to the local thrift shop, right down to clothing. The condo wa
s a new beginning. Then there was Karen.”
Kay said nothing, knowing Wayne would continue. “ Karen Schwartz's much younger than I am, very lovely, very different from Rissa, and we're in love. We've talked a lot. Mainly about me. She persuaded me to think differently about Rissa, about Anton, about my crazy jealous streak. She's better than the counselors Rissa and I went to. Even so, it hasn't been easy for me to change.”
Wayne paused and laughed. “You should have seen the look on Anton's face when I walked into his office and asked him if he was interested in doing some more work for me. It took a while for me to persuade him I didn't have a gun in my pocket. He did a couple of jobs for me. Good work, too. He was a damn good painter, himself, even if he wasn't much of a supervisorand his crew needs a lot of supervision. He was one of the cheapest in the business around here, so he had plenty of work to do. He did exceptionally well on the jobs I hired him for after the quarrel. I think he kept remembering how angry I was at the Malalani, which I'm sure helped to spur him and his crew on to a better than usual performance.”
“So you think this Surrette didn't hear about your reconciliation with Anton and assumes you hired someone else, someone cheaper, to do it for you?” Wayne nodded. “News travels fast around here. I would guess he even heard about the reconciliation and, like you, just didn't believe it.” As Wayne spoke, an unmistakable look of amusement spread across his face.
Uncomfortable with the accuracy of Wayne's evaluation of her unspoken opinion, Kay ignored it and asked, “Surely you didn't give Surrette Anton's name? “ No, but it would have been easy enough for him to put two and two together and come up with it. A Chronicle reporter arrived at the Nikko Arms and interviewed me Saturday right after the killing. Foolishly, I went along with the interview. The fight at the Malalani was undoubtedly the subject of considerable talk in all circles on this island. Surrette has enough contacts here to have allowed him to make all the logical connections. There's one other thing convincing me he's the one who wrote the note.”
“The $20,000?”
“Right. That's what he wanted for doing the job. Now, he wants the money even though he didn't do the job.”
Chapter 12
The Fat Priest had in fact been a priest, or so the local Filipinos in touch with their homeland claimed. The incident which had led to the break with his Church was unclear, but how the severing of the relationship had been the bishop's and not Simplicio Cheng's decision was common knowledge. Shortly after coming to Hawaii, he had married an American-born Filipina and had eventually applied for and obtained US citizenship through the marriage.
Presumably, he had taken these actions as insurance against deportation, which otherwise might have been the consequence of his activities in the gray region between the legal and the illegal. As it turned out, these precautions were probably unnecessary, since the Fat Priest's continued presence had become of value, first to the Honolulu Police Department and next to the police force on Elima, where he had eventually transferred his game cock rearing and accompanying gambling activities. He had found the atmosphere of the smaller island more congenial for these essentially rural pastimes.
Though largely immobilized by his almost four-hundred pounds, the Fat Priest somehow managed to maintain his contacts with the nether world, and was always ready to exchange his accrued knowledge to the police for the overlooking of some of his less lawful enterprises.
Hank and Corky found their informant to be no different in his physical appearance from the time of their last encounter. His eyes were two pea-sized black buttons peering out through narrow slits. His small, bridgeless nose turned upwards and exposed another pair of dark openings. His almost dainty mouth completed the features crowded in a small area on an otherwise featureless face. The face itself blended imperceptibly with the bulges of flesh radiating out from his neck.
Today, the officers found him at home and were brought into his sitting room by his niece, a small nondescript mestiza who quickly ducked out after having ushered them into her uncle's presence. He waved them to chairs while he himself sat in an oversized upholstered piece of furniture, custom designed for his bulk.
“So nice to see you again, Lieutenant DeMello and Sergeant Honda. So much more pleasant for me to be able to offer hospitality to you rather than the other way around.” “ I have to admit it's an improvement over my office,” Hank said as he looked around at the luxurious surroundings. “And it's a hell of a lot better than the interrogation room at the station,” he added with a grin.
While they were speaking, the Fat Priest's niece had slipped in quietly with a tray of cookies and two elaborately decorated, enamel pots, one of coffee and the other of tea. She poured a cup of tea for her uncle, placed it on a table at his elbow, and then slipped out of the room as silently as she had entered.
“Please do help yourself. Now, how can I be of service?”
Corky and Hank each poured themselves a cup of coffee. While Hank went on with the interrogation, Corky savored the aroma and rich taste of the black coffee.
“My guess is you pretty well know already why we're here.” The large head gave a barely perceptible nod. “When I learned the entire complement of the Napua Police Department's homicide squad intended to call on me, I naturally searched my memory for the most recent unexplained death on the island. The name of Antoine Figueroa instantly came to mind.”
“We're not much interested in the dead man.”
A trace of a smile moved across the crowded features. “I imagine the person responsible for the gentleman's demise is your prime concern.”
Hank nodded.
“Let me assure you I cannot, as they say in some of those tedious, late-night gangster movies, 'finger' him for you.” Corky had slipped out her note pad, ready to take down significant names and addresses and, while Hank was pondering his next question, she took the opportunity to ask, “What kind of coffee is this? It's superb.”
The Fat Priest rewarded her with a barely perceptible smile. “It's pleasant to have an appreciative coffee drinker visit me. It happens to be Kona coffee, grown right here on Elima.”
Corky shook her head. “I've never had any Kona coffee tasting this good. Where do you buy it?” Hank was getting impatient at the conversation and tried to break in, but before he could do so, the Fat Priest answered,“Melita'smy nieceher husband grows his own and roasts it himself. I shall see to it a pound or two is dropped by your office.”
Having decided to save his main reason for coming to the last and, in the hope of uncovering anything else of value, Hank said, “You don't have to point at Wayne Harlan, just at other possibilitiesif there are any.”
“There are rumors.” “Let's start with them.”
“Norman Kurohara seems to have had an extraordinary amount of ill luck since his acquisition of the Nikko Arms.” Hank shook his head. “I've given it some thought. I'll buy the fire as a possibility, but murder seems unproductive and downright risky. If someone wanted to give Norm a bad time, sand in the air conditioner machinery would make more sense.”
“ Agreed, but human beings sometimes are blinded by the goals they set themselves, and are all too ready to adopt even unnecessary and dangerous means toward their achievement.”
“Other possibilities?” Hank repeated. “ Antoine, or Anton as he more recently referred to himself, mellowed considerably in recent years, but he at one time associated with a rather dangerous group on Honolulu. Since then, his sexual propensities had evidently shifted, but it is always difficult to make a complete break with one's past.”
“Anyone specific in mind.”
“No. I merely put it out as a possibility, since you asked. Now the most likely possibility I'm quite certain you have already settled upon.”
“You tell me.”
“A common, garden variety assault with robbery as the motive.”
“What do you think of robbery as a possibility?” The enormous shoulders moved upwards a fraction of an inch. “I would
consider it a probability. However, There is a more promising alternative. Mr. Harlan tried to, as they say in those wretched films, put out a contract on Anton.”
***
“Victorine here.”
Hank had recognized the voice immediately. “No work today, Clyde? It looks like you're going to have to put in another tough session on the golf course.” “ Hank, don't you know a pathologist never has time off? When you aren't sending me whole bodies to cut up, there's always someone at the hospital or at some doctor's office who's got a piece of tissue he wants me to look at and pass judgment on.”
“OK. OK. You've convinced me. You're overwhelmed with work. So how do you explain your taking time out to call me? We haven't had any business for you for days.”
“What about Figueroa?”
“I thought that was settled. Don't tell me he really died of snake bite.” Clyde guffawed and went off into the W.C. Fields joke about the handy rattlesnake, finally coming around to a reason for the call. “You're always bugging me for the final pm. I've got it sitting in front of me. Nothing spectacular in it, but I thought I'd give you a preview and also clue you in on how dangerous it is to be a pathologist.”
“You mean someone behind you might forget to yell 'fore?'“ Victorine ignored the jibe. “This has to do with bugs in the lab. Figueroa was a major Hawaiian distributor for hepatitis B. The lab reports his circulatory system was swarming with the virus. Old Doc Koga over at the state lab was so excited he called me up this morning. He said he'd never seen anything to come even close to the condition of Anton's liver, and he thinks it may be a new and much more virulent strain. He's even sent samples to the Center for Disease Control. His description made me put in an order for some double-heavy plastic gloves.
“ All of which tells us a lot more about Anton than just his having a bad liver. Koga says Figueroa didn't have much more than a few months ahead of him. After talking to Koga, I checked with Figueroa's doctor. He confirms Figueroa had severe hepatitis, even though he managed to stay ambulatory. He didn't think Figueroa was at death's door. He says, and he's right, that a biopsy is about the only way you can tell how far the liver has gone. See, Hank. The pathologist always has the last word.”
The Yoshinobu Mysteries: Volume 2 Page 24