Zero Break

by Neil Plakcy

  Judy was a tita, a tough girl, a sometime hooker, sometime pickpocket, and could usually be found hanging around Waikiki. We’d picked her up on an assault charge soon after Ray became my partner, and we discovered she was the kind of girl who knew the Honolulu underworld and worked it to her advantage. It was easy to consider that she might know of someone breaking into houses in Zoë’s neighborhood.

  We got into my Jeep, opened the flaps, and started cruising. It was sunny, with a scallop of cirrus clouds across the sky, and as we passed Ala Wai Beach Park there was a line of cars waiting to turn in, tourists heading out for sport-fishing or ready to lobster up on the sand. I had the “Island Warriors” CD of Jawaiian music playing, our home grown mix of ukulele and reggae rhythm, and it felt like a day we were going to make some progress.

  We crossed the Ala Wai Canal into Waikiki and it felt like coming home. I had lived on Lili’uokalani Street, patrolled the neighborhood as a beat cop, and also, for a brief time, been assigned to the Waikiki station as a detective. I knew where the mokes and titas lurked, in the shadowy places tourists should avoid. Someone had scrawled help wanted, telepath. you know where to apply on the side wall of a convenience store.

  A couple of blocks later I swung onto Kalakaua Avenue and we started looking for Judy. We spotted her as we were entering the hotel district, near the recently renovated Royal Hawaiian. I was sure they appreciated having her hang around outside the hotel, in her low-riding jeans, midriff-baring white t-shirt, and multiple heavy stainless steel chains around her neck.

  She was leaning against a palm tree, smoking a cigarette. “Hey, Judy,” Ray called, leaning out the Jeep’s window.

  Her hair was a bottle blonde, and I could see the dark roots starting to show. I thought that the shark tattoo above her belly button was new. “Aren’t you guys out of your native habitat?” she said. “You got nothing to do downtown, you gotta come over to Waikiki and harass innocent people?”

  I slid the Jeep up next to a fire hydrant, put on my flashers, and Ray and I got out.

  “Now, is that the way to greet a couple of old pals?” Ray asked. “We came all the way over here to see you.”

  She took a long drag from her cigarette. “I ain’t been in trouble in ages.”

  I leaned back against the Jeep. “We’re not looking to bust you, Judy. We’re looking for information. You know anybody who breaks into houses?”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  I always kept a few fifty-dollar bills in the back of my wallet for such occasions. I keep a log and periodically put in requests for reimbursement from the department’s petty cash fund. I pulled one out and Judy frowned. “Houses where? Round here?”

  “Over around the Kapalama Canal,” I said. “Between there and the H1.”

  She took the fifty from my fingers, folded it, and stuck it into the pocket of her jeans. “I’ll ask around. You still got the same cell number?”

  “You have me in your favorites?” I asked. “I’m touched.”

  “Touch this.” She grabbed her crotch.

  “No thanks. You know I don’t go there.”

  We got back into the Jeep, and I made a note for the folder of the fifty I’d given Judy.

  The Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism was housed in one of the high-rise buildings near the Iolani Palace. Ray and I showed our ID to the receptionist, and asked to speak to Zoë’s boss. She had to look Zoë up in a directory, and then work backwards to figure out who she reported to. Her phone kept ringing, though, and so it took her a few minutes. “She was in the energy office,” she said finally. “That would be Mr. Nishimura. I’ll call him.”

  Nishimura, a tall, stoop-shouldered Nisei, came out to the reception area a few minutes later. “This is about Zoë Greenfield?” he asked.

  “It is. Can we speak with you somewhere private?”

  He nodded, and led us back through a series of hallways to a small windowless office where there was just room enough for a pair of metal visitors’ chairs. He sat behind his desk, which was piled with manila file folders and random office supplies, as well as a computer monitor that had to be at least ten years old.

  “I read about Zoë’s murder in the paper. Someone broke into her house?”

  “On Saturday night,” I said. “When was the last time you spoke to her?”

  “It must have been Friday afternoon. She didn’t come to work on Monday, and she didn’t call in. She’s always been a very conscientious employee. But she didn’t return any phone calls and I didn’t know what else to do.” He motioned at the pile of folders on his desk. “We’re running short handed here as it is. I just didn’t have the time to go searching for her.”

  “What is it that you do here?” I asked. “Or rather, what did Zoë do?”

  “As you saw out front, we’re a division of the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, which collects and analyzes economic development statistics. Our focus here is on energy policy and analysis. Did you know that Hawaii is the most oil-dependent of all the fifty states?”

  We both shook our heads.

  “Ninety percent of our energy needs are supplied by imported petroleum. Given the current political climate worldwide, it’s important for us to do what we can to reduce that dependency. Zoë worked on alternative energy sources—administering grants, compiling statistics, making recommendations.”

  I remembered the boat trip Mike and I had taken on Levi Hirsh’s boat, when Levi had been pointing out his investment in harnessing the ocean’s waves. “Wind power, ocean power, that kind of thing?” I asked.

  He nodded. “We have a mandate to supply 70% of Hawaii’s energy demand with renewable resources by 2030. We’re working with researchers at UH, and with private industry, to develop biomass, hydroelectric power, solar power, anything we can. Zoë reviewed budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”

  “Do you know if she received any threats as a part of her work?” I asked.

  “Threats?” Nishimura almost laughed. “Detective, we’re accountants. Yes, we work with a lot of money—but there are so many checks and balances, so much bureaucracy, that one person couldn’t do much to favor one group over another. There’s some subtle influence peddling, of course; you’re going to get that in any agency. But threats? No.”

  “How about in her personal life? Do you know if she was dating anyone?”

  “Zoë worked for me, so we kept our relationship on a professional basis,” he said. “But she might have talked to one of the other analysts, or one of the support staff.” He picked up the phone. “I’ll get my admin to ask around for you.”

  I held up my hand. “If you don’t mind, we’d rather ask ourselves.”

  He put the receiver back down. “Of course. If there’s anything we can do…”

  “We’ll need to look at her office as well.”

  Nishimura introduced us to his administrative assistant, a Chinese woman in her mid-fifties, with the kind of no-nonsense attitude that reminded me of Juanita Lum, the admin for Lieutenant Kee in Vice. Though Kee was the guy with the gold braid on his shoulders, she was the one who ran the department.

  “Zoë was a quiet girl,” she said. Her name plate read Gladys Yuu. “She kept to herself. But then, most of these accountants are like that. More comfortable with numbers than people.” She pursed her lips for a minute. “There’s a girl in the statistics department. Miriam Rose. They had lunch together sometimes.” Her face softened. “You don’t think it was just a terrible accident—some burglary gone wrong?”

  “We’re looking into everything. So anything you know about her, or her life, might help us.”

  She thought for a minute. “Well, there is one thing. I didn’t approve, but of course, it’s not my place to say.” She hesitated, then gave in to her impulse. “I’m not a nosy person, you understand, but I like to know what’s going on in the department. It helps Mr. Nishimura to have someone like me around.”

  “I
’m sure,” I said. “When I was a kid, my mom used to help out in my dad’s business. And she was always the one who kept track of him and the other guys.”

  She smiled. “Then you understand. One of Zoë’s jobs was to monitor contracts and grants. Though she wasn’t the friendliest person, she did get to know the people at the various companies.” She lowered her voice. “I understand she got one of them to hire a friend of hers.”

  “What company would that be?”

  “A Chinese firm. I have a card here.” She opened her desk and pulled out a vinyl storage book for business cards. After flipping through a few pages, she drew one out of its plastic holder. The front of the card was in English, the back in Chinese ideograms.

  The company name was Néng Yuán, which didn’t tell me much, though the logo was a stylized wave. The president’s name was Xiao Zenshen. “You know anything about them?” I asked.

  Gladys turned to her computer and started typing. “They have a grant from the state to explore wave power,” she said. The boat trip with Levi Hirsch came to my mind again. It looked like I was going to be calling him. That was okay; he was dating Terri Clark Gonsalves, my best gal pal from high school, and Mike and I often double-dated with them.

  Gladys looked up. “The rest of this is pretty scientific. I’m afraid I don’t understand much of it. I can print it out for you, though.”

  She hit a couple of keys and the printer behind her desk came to life. “Do you know the name of the friend she got hired there?” I asked.

  Gladys shook her head. “It was just something I overheard. But Miriam might know more.”

  We took the printout from Gladys, and she led us back through the maze of corridors and introduced us to Miriam Rose. She was a young Filipina, probably late twenties, in a white blouse with a floral print wrap skirt. Big round sunglasses were propped on her head, and she had a red silk rose pinned to the right shoulder of her blouse.

  Gladys introduced us. I could see she wanted to stick around and hear what Miriam had to say, but I smiled and thanked her for her help, and said we’d be back to her if we needed anything further.

  Miriam worked at a tiny cubicle, just big enough for a worktable and a rolling chair. The walls were plastered with photos of what looked like her family – middle-aged parents, Miriam, a younger sister and an even younger brother. She was a cat lover, too; there were pictures of a fat calico sunning on a white sofa, Miriam holding the cat, the cat playing with her brother and sister.

  She smiled at Ray and I could tell from the way she held his hand a little longer than she held mine that he was the best one to take lead. “Is there someplace we can talk?” he asked her.

  She led us down the hall to a small lunchroom that smelled of stale coffee. “Sorry,” she said, lifting the glass pot off its warming stand. “Somebody always leaves the coffee to burn.” She began cleaning the pot. “I was so upset when I heard about Zoë. We were friends—well, not out-of-work friends, or anything. Zoë was quiet. But we ate lunch together sometimes. We both like sushi, and we’d bring in different stuff for each other to try.”

  She filled the pot with water, ripped open a bag of coffee and poured it into the filter, then joined us at a round table.

  “Did Zoë ever mention any problems she was having?” I asked. “Anyone threatening her, for example?”

  “I got the feeling she was having problems with her ex,” Miriam said. “She never came right out and said he was harassing her, but sometimes she’d get a call, and she’d be angry. I never asked about him, though.”

  And never knew that the ex was a woman, I figured. That’s a big problem when you’re investigating what happened to a person in the closet, whether gay or lesbian. They don’t talk about their personal life at work, because they’re always worried about using the wrong pronoun. So they say little or nothing, and then when you go to interview the co-workers, they’re clueless.

  Miriam didn’t know anything else. She introduced us a couple of other co-workers, but none of them had anything to add. We handed cards around and asked them all to call if they thought of anything. Miriam took us back to Gladys, who showed us the cubicle where Zoë worked. There weren’t any personal items there – not even snapshots of her daughters. It was sad.

  Gladys promised to look through the things Zoë had been working on and let us know if there was anything that looked odd. “Miriam will help,” she said.

  We thanked them both, and Miriam led us back to the elevators. “I feel so bad for Zoë. I wish there was something I could do.”

  FINDING A DRAGON

  A scruffy guy with a t-shirt that read ‘I said no to drugs, but they wouldn’t listen’ passed us as we walked back to where I’d parked the Jeep. It was clouding over, and a light breeze tossed the palm trees around us, skittering a paper cup down the street.

  My stomach grumbled. “Lunch?” I asked.

  “That sour coffee smell put me off my feed,” Ray said. “But I guess I could eat.”

  We decided to get some lunch at a Zippy’s down the street. It had stopped raining, but the sky was still full of heavy clouds. “I feel like trying something different,” Ray said, as we stood in line.

  “Mike loves the soup with mandoo—they’re Korean dumplings, and the kim chee fried rice. He says it reminds him of stuff his grandmother made.”

  I preferred to stick with the old Hawaiian specialties my mother had made when I was a kid, stuff like lau lau, steamed packages of pork and fish, and kalua pig, baked in a traditional oven pit. Or chicken rolled in mochiko flour and fried, or sweet and sour spare ribs. But I’d been putting on a few pounds lately; I wasn’t surfing nearly as much living with Mike up in Aiea Heights as I had when I lived on Waikiki. So I opted for the somen salad instead, skinny Japanese noodles like vermicelli over lettuce, eggs, char siu pork and imitation crab meat. I wasn’t sure it was that much healthier, but it was a salad.

  Ray decided not to experiment after all, and got a teriyaki burger with fries. The restaurant was crowded but we managed to squeeze into a side table. As we ate, I told Ray about Levi Hirsch and his interest in wave power. “I’m thinking maybe we call him and see what he knows about Néng Yuán before we go over there.”

  He agreed, so I flipped open my phone and found Levi’s office number at Wave Power Technologies. The receptionist put me through to Levi, and he agreed we could stop by the office after lunch. “You’re lucky you caught me here today. I’m heading to Idaho tomorrow.”

  “Idaho?” I asked. “You hungry for potatoes?”

  “It’s my daughter’s spring break. We’re going skiing in Squaw Valley. It’ll be the first time Danny has seen snow.”

  Danny was Terri’s son, and I was glad to see that things were moving forward between Levi and Terri well enough that the families were meshing.

  When we got to his office, I showed him the paperwork Gladys Yuu had printed out for us and asked if he could interpret it. He put on a pair of horn-rimmed reading glasses and took a look at it.

  “They’re one of our competitors,” he said, after reading through it. “There are lots of people looking for the magic ticket, and a bunch of different ways to approach harnessing wave power. Néng Yuán’s approach is different from ours. I’ve heard that Dr. Zenshen really knows her stuff, but I don’t understand all the tech stuff. I’m not even on the staff here; I’m just an angel investor and I help out where I can.”

  “Angel? Like with wings?” Ray asked.

  Levi laughed. “It’s a venture capital term. Angels rush in where mortals fear to tread. We get in on the ground floor with new businesses. Sometimes they pan out, sometimes they go bust. But if they make it big, the payoff can be huge.”

  “Huge enough to be a motive for murder?” I told him about Zoë Greenfield’s death.

  He frowned. “Can’t say. Of course, there are millions of dollars floating around these days, even in tough economic times. Renewable energy is a buzz word, and there are foundation grants, corpor
ate investments, and lots of greedy people trying to make a buck. I don’t see how killing a mid-level government bureaucrat could benefit anybody, but I’ll keep an ear to the ground for you.”

  The radio crackled as we were leaving Levi’s office. Dispatch reported that a pawn shop in an industrial neighborhood out by the Aloha Stadium, just beyond Pearl Harbor, had responded to our bulletin about Zoë Greenfield’s pendant.

  After navigating the tourist-clogged streets of Waikiki, we picked up the H1 and headed ewa. We don’t use directions like north, east, south and west on O’ahu; makai means towards the sea, while mauka is toward the mountains. Diamond Head is in the direction of the extinct volcano that towers over Waikiki, while ewa means the opposite way, toward the city of that name.

  We pulled up a half hour later in front of Lucky Lou’s. He ran a tourist trap operation out front, catching visitors on their way to Pearl Harbor with counterfeit Guccis and Cartiers, and rows of shiny gold chains that would turn your neck green about a day after you got home from your vacation. Around the back, there’s another entrance for the pawn shop, and that’s the one we took, scrambling to close the flaps on the Jeep and scurry inside as a light rain started to fall.

  Lucky Lou was about three hundred pounds and balding, a crabby New Jersey transplant. “Hey, Lou,” I said, making my way past racks of nearly new guitars, stereo equipment that would probably be warm to the touch, and cameras that troops from Schofield Barracks pawned to pay for working girls and their tender ministrations. “Let’s see that pendant you got.”

  “I gotta tell you, it’s expensive cooperating with the boys in blue,” he said. “I gave out fifty bucks on this.” He pulled a tray out of a glass-topped cabinet, and pawed through the earrings, chains and watches until he found the dragon pendant.

  I unfolded the picture Anna Yang had drawn and compared the two. It was an excellent match, down to the chip in the dragon’s hind claw. “Who brought this in?” I asked.