Clipped Wings

by Toby Neal

  “Food is going missing from the walk-in fridge. We have an alarm on the front and back doors of the restaurant, so I don’t know who or how the food is disappearing. What I can do?”

  “Did you ever get a smartphone, Aunty?”

  “Of course. Only you still using that old flip phone, Sweets,” her aunt teased.

  “I do have to use a smartphone for work, of course.” Lei pulled her work phone out of her pocket. “There are these great little remote nanny cams you can buy that run off your phone. I’ll buy some and have them shipped to you, okay? You just put them up where you want to watch something, and they’ll detect motion and ping you on your phone, and you can see who’s taking things.”

  “Oh, honey, that would be so good.”

  Lei could hear sizzling in the background, and pictured the big old-fashioned iron grill that Aunty used for most of the cooking on the restaurant’s menu. “Whatchu making, Aunty?”

  “I’m cooking up a hundred pieces of Spam for tomorrow’s musubi. I always sell out of it at the counter.” In addition to sit-down meals, the restaurant also kept a basket of easy to-go items for busy families to grab on their way out the door.

  “I get one of those most days at the corner store,” Lei said. “So ono.” A delicious snack that had originated with Japanese sugarcane workers in lieu of a sandwich in the fields, musubi were comprised of a tightly packed block of white rice with a slice of fried Spam on top, the whole thing wrapped in a flavorful sheet of thin, delicious nori, a paper like pounded seaweed. “The tourists have no idea how tasty they are.”

  “I know, and I love them too. But I’m still here at seven at night cooking Spam after the breakfast and lunch shift. Good thing I got my helper Josef coming in early tomorrow morning to put them all together before the restaurant opens. He one good kid. He comes and works from four thirty a.m. ‘til it’s time for school.”

  “That’s pretty dedicated. How does he get into the building?”

  “He has a key, and the code. But most of the waitstaff has that access, and he one good boy. I already asked him and he doesn’t know where the missing food’s going.” Lei heard a ding. “That’s the rice cooker. Before I hired Josef, I had to come in at four thirty every morning. Now I can roll in at seven like the queen of Sheba.”

  Lei laughed. “No one ever accused you of being lazy, Aunty. Sounds like you’re lucky to have him.”

  “He’s a hard worker,” Rosario said affectionately. Calling someone a hard worker was her highest form of praise.

  “Well, I’m glad you have the help,” Lei said. “I’ve already used my work phone to order you those cameras. They should be there in a couple of days. Ask Momi if you have any trouble hooking them up.” Momi did all of the organization of the restaurant and the bookkeeping, to free Aunty up to manage the food and cooking.

  “Thank you, Sweets. You made my day now that I know you going come home for Christmas.”

  “And with any luck, I’ll have a young friend with me.” Lei took a sip of her chardonnay. “Consuelo’s an amazing girl, but she’s had it rough. I’m going to try to get special permission to bring her. I can’t wait to see her bite into your mango bread, or some of those poi rolls.”

  “Bring anyone you like, Sweets. Okay, I’ll look for those cameras. And soon we’ll solve the mystery, thanks to my niece in the FBI!”

  They said goodbye, and Lei ended the call, smiling. She sipped her wine and watched the dogs play, romping and jumping in the waning evening light. The night blooming jasmine slowly opened, and she shut her eyes and leaned her head back in her comfy chair to breathe in the incredible smell.

  She was tired. Tomorrow was soon enough to do that research on Consuelo’s roommate.

  Chapter Five

  Consuelo

  Consuelo started awake, her heart pounding. Fai was shaking her shoulder roughly.

  “It’s time.” The older girl thrust a handful of clothing at her.

  Despair swamped Consuelo even as adrenaline hit her system. If Lei had tried to get her transferred, it hadn’t happened quickly enough. She climbed out of the bunk and changed into the nylon basketball shorts and tank top Fai handed her. The older girl had received a package yesterday, and gym clothing was allowed for when the girls had exercise time, so apparently Fai had obtained an extra set for Consuelo. The box had been opened by the COs, but they had missed the little extras Fai’s uncle had included.

  Both girls put the few things they wanted to keep into pillowcases; Consuelo packed the photo of Angel and the Canfield quote, a few old photos of her family, and her notebook.

  “Yeah, don’t you try to leave that notebook behind,” Fai hissed. “I don’t want you giving away any clues.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Consuelo said stiffly.

  The only illumination was thin, milky moonlight coming in through the high window and an embedded night light the COs used for checking on the inmates. Fai opened the box from her package and tore open a large loaf of cellophane-wrapped banana bread. Boxes were X-rayed for metal or weapons, but only visually inspected after that. Packages were also sniffed by scent dogs, but the strong smell of banana bread must have thrown the dogs off, because inside the loaf were a plastic key and two vials.

  “Now comes the tricky part,” Fai whispered. Consuelo could tell the other girl was nervous by the tremble in her voice. The Tongan unscrewed the pointed caps of the vials and squeezed the contents into the crack adjacent to the door lock.

  A combustible combination of acids, the chemicals began working as soon as they connected with each other. A thin wisp of toxic-smelling smoke wafted from the doorjamb.

  Consuelo hid her face, breathing through the edge of her blanket and shutting her eyes against the fumes. Her mind ticked over the steps she’d taken, and what she could do next.

  There hadn’t been much, unfortunately.

  A few minutes later, Fai grabbed her shoulder.

  “I think it’s ready.” With no interior handle, there was no way to open the door but to push. Fai pushed.

  The door gave a bit, but held.

  “I don’t think the acid ate all the way through the wood,” Fai whispered harshly. “Come help me.”

  The two girls ended up running and throwing their weight against the door. The remaining resistance finally gave with a crack and squeal that sounded like a scream.

  Once out in the hall, Fai in the lead, they hurried to the room where Jadene was locked in with her roommate. Both of those girls were awake. Fai used the plastic key on their door, and unlocked it.

  At the last minute, Jadene and Fai turned on Jadene’s roommate, a sturdy local girl named Pua, and shoved her back in, locking her inside the room.

  “Bitches!” Pua yelled. She pounded and screamed, but the walls and doors were fairly soundproof.

  “We have to hurry now in case anyone hears her,” Fai said. They ran down the hall. As had been arranged with one of the COs who owed Fai’s uncle a favor, the door into the rec room was left unlocked. From there it was a simple matter to open the exterior door out into the yard.

  There were surveillance cameras in the hall, the rec room, and on the yard, but Fai’s uncle had also paid for the system to be down for maintenance. The girls trotted unchallenged across the yard, keeping to the shadows, to a chosen exit point in the shadow of one of the buildings.

  Fai squatted down and dug in the soil just beneath the chain-link fence topped in coils of razor wire, and produced a pair of heavy wire cutters. Consuelo felt her chest tighten with stress and regret. She looked back around, her gaze desperately sweeping the dim yard.

  She’d never expected them to get this far.

  Fai began cutting the wire in a seam, Jadene prying the wire open further as the powerful girl made each cut.

  Suddenly lights went on inside the main cinder block building, and a pulsing electronic alarm split the air.

  “That stupid Pua,” Jadene hissed. “I bet she got someone to come with all her carryin
g on.”

  Fai hunched her shoulders, throwing muscle into the cutting. “Almost there.”

  Consuelo looked back again, still hoping someone would stop them. One of the doors to the main hall flew open.

  “Halt!” an amplified voice yelled, but Fai had made the opening big enough. She wriggled through, tearing the fabric of her shorts on the sharp wire. Jadene whirled and grabbed a handful of Consuelo’s long hair, shoving her in front. “Get through there, bitch.”

  “No,” Consuelo cried, grabbing the fence. “Help! Help me!”

  Fai reached back through the hole and grabbed Consuelo, but she struggled harder, desperation giving her strength as she writhed and twisted in the other girls’ grips.

  “No! I don’t want to go!” she yelled. Jadene finally let go and dove through the hole into Fai’s arms. The two older girls hit the ground, scrambled up, and ran for a black pickup truck Consuelo could just make out idling at the edge of the cleared area that marked the compound’s boundary.

  Consuelo fell to her knees and clasped her hands behind her head, watching the girls reach the truck, jump in, and speed off. The CO pursuing them reached her. He knocked her flat to the ground, cuffing her, then yanked her up roughly.

  “Where did they go?” The head night watchman, Keone, was a heavyset man. He’d always been someone she avoided. All the unplanned running had winded him, and he puffed cigarette breath into her face. Consuelo felt his rage at being made to look incompetent. He shook her. “Tell me now!”

  “I didn’t want to break out! I tried to stay here. Please call my friend, Agent Texeira!” Consuelo cried.

  “I’ll call someone for you,” Keone said, and backhanded her so hard that everything went black.

  Chapter Six

  Consuelo

  Consuelo awoke on a gurney trundling somewhere. She tried to sit up. Panic surged through her—she was restrained at her feet and hands! She was strapped down, hardly able to move.

  “Help! Help me!” she screamed, thrashing. “Help!”

  “You just hush that noise.” The voice speaking to her was familiar—Aunty Marcie, who’d often been kind. “Calm down. I’m taking you to the infirmary.”

  Consuelo forced her muscles to relax as ceiling lights moved by overhead. Her cheek throbbed where Keone had hit her. Her scalp hurt from the other girls pulling her hair.

  “Please call my friend Lei Texeira,” she whispered to the CO. “Please. I left a note for her in my room. I was forced. I didn’t want to go with them.” They’d already wheeled into the infirmary. Consuelo turned her head, desperately tracking Aunty Marcie. “Please. I was forced!”

  “Just relax,” Aunty Marcie said. “You’ll be fine.”

  Consuelo yelped as the medic stabbed her in the arm with a needle. A few minutes later, she slid into darkness.

  Dry mouth and pounding in her head.

  Consuelo sat up slowly, relieved to discover she was no longer restrained, and looked around.

  As she’d expected, she was in the isolation unit.

  This wasn’t the first time she’d seen the inside of this little “shoebox” from hell. She’d got into a scuffle with some girls early on, and spent a few days in here before Fai became her protector.

  She actually liked being alone. The worst thing about “the shoe” was not having her notebook.

  Hopefully Marcie or someone else had found the note she’d left tucked into her bedding. The letter detailed the escape, what she knew about Fai’s plans and family, and that she was being coerced.

  But Keone hadn’t seemed like he was listening, and she couldn’t tell if Marcie had, either.

  Consuelo looked around the cell. The bed was a single metal shelf covered in rubber that folded up to the wall. A toilet, and a sink beside it, filled in one corner. A paper cup rested on the rim of the sink. The walls were padded with berber-style carpet, both to keep inmates from injuring themselves and to deaden sound. The only illumination to the roughly six-by-ten-foot space was a wire-covered window near the ceiling, and a couple of embedded glow lights overhead.

  Lying on the cot, Consuelo mentally reviewed the situation.

  If Aunty Marcie didn’t contact anyone for her, she could be stuck in here for weeks.

  She had to pinch herself on the arm to keep from giving in to the wave of hopelessness that swept over her at the thought. She’d made it through that dark time in the psych hospital by focusing on the things she had to live for, and that would stand her in good stead now, too.

  She might be all alone with hardly any family, but she had friends.

  Powerful friends.

  And she had information, too. She’d gleaned all she could about Fai and her gangster uncles. They were connected with the notorious Boyz organized crime operation that controlled the construction trade in Honolulu.

  If she could get someone to listen to her, she might be able to help get them stopped.

  Lying there, Consuelo daydreamed about the book proposal her lawyer, Bennie Fernandez, had told her about a few weeks ago.

  “HarperCollins wants to publish your memoir,” the cherubic little lawyer had said, polishing his round glasses. “The conditions of you getting a reduced sentence include that you have to pay back all the property damage you caused. If you write the memoir, you might be able to achieve that, and still have a little something left over for when you get out of here.”

  “How much are they offering?” Consuelo felt a little queasy at the thought of having to put into words the complex reasons that had driven her to steal a small airplane and begin a Robin Hood-style crime spree. Even though she hadn’t been involved with the destruction that had followed, she still felt responsible for that, and for the lives her actions had ended up costing. She’d been dealing with the whole situation by focusing on right now, surviving her life in prison.

  “It’s an advance of a hundred thousand, which is only a drop in the bucket to all the property damage caused by the anarchy movement you launched,” Fernandez said. “I’m arguing that you can only be held responsible for the houses you burgled.”

  “Thanks for that,” Consuelo said. “I want a chance to set the record straight. I might have been the one who started something, but I never meant it to end the way it did. I just wanted to draw attention to the gap between the rich and the poor in Hawaii.”

  “Well, you certainly did that.” Fernandez set his glasses on his little pink bulb of a nose. “But I’d hate for that message to get lost in all that came after. I think you should do the memoir.”

  Lying on the bunk, without so much as a blanket, let alone pen and paper, depression and despair swept over her.

  Consuelo shut her eyes.

  She’d never be able to tell her story, or do anything to fight guys like Jose Taika, Fai’s gangster uncle. She had a record, now. She was a criminal, just like they were. Just a number in a system that had no reason to do anything but lock her away, and shut her up.

  Consuelo closed her eyes and rolled on her side facing the wall. She willed herself to sleep, but that welcome escape wouldn’t come.

  Chapter Seven

  Rosario

  The package from Amazon arrived a few days after Rosario’s talk with Lei, just after the morning breakfast rush. Rosario wiped her hands on her apron and took the box from the deliveryman. She carried it straight back into the tiny office behind the kitchen, where Momi was sorting the morning’s meal tickets and whizzing through the accounting on her old-fashioned adding machine.

  Rosario took a moment in the doorway to gaze at her dear friend. The late morning sun came through a small window up above her partner’s desk and shone down on the beautiful, thick mass of Momi’s long black hair, just beginning to glitter with silver. Momi danced hula in a well-known halau, and she kept her hair and skin shiny and healthy with coconut oil.

  Rosario had feelings for Momi. Sometimes she hoped that the other woman had feelings for her too, but they had never spoken of them or acted on them.


  Her friend looked up from the pile of receipts. “Come in, Rosie. Take a load off and put your feet up. You been working too hard, as usual.” She pushed a stool out from under her desk and set it in front of the old armchair beside her desk.

  Rosario sat in the chair and elevated her feet, sighing with pleasure to take the weight off swollen ankles. She handed Momi the package. “Lei ordered these special cameras. They’re supposed to hook up to my smartphone. Let’s put one outside the walk-in, and another one in here, since you told me there were crumbs.”

  Momi nodded. “Sounds good. It still seems like someone has been coming in here, but I can’t quite put my finger on what’s different, other than the crumbs.”

  “Then let’s get to it, and put up these cameras. I’m ready to catch our burglar in the act.”

  That evening, when Rosario walked the six blocks from the restaurant to her little 1920s bungalow on D Street, she enjoyed the crispness of approaching California winter.

  People were already hanging their lights and putting out their decorations. Now that she knew Lei was coming, and hopefully bringing a young friend, it would be worth it to dig out the old wooden nativity set that Lei used to love to play with when she was a girl, and have her neighbor help her put lights up around the house.

  Rosario’s heart was heavy as she missed Lei’s father, her brother Wayne, still in a post-jail rehab setting. In spite of his record, Wayne was a good man. He’d tried to take the easy way in life and that led him down the wrong path, but he’d become a Christian in prison, kicked all drugs, and it seemed like he had really turned over a new page in his life.

  Hopefully Wayne would want to help her in the restaurant when he got out of his program. He had always been just as good a cook as she was, and she could really use the help in the kitchen. With Wayne working there too, she might even get a day off once in a while.