Black Jasmine (2012)

by Toby Neal

  “I wasn’t always a police officer.”

  Lei laughed. The aftermath of adrenaline was making her a little punchy. She took the picture of the dead girl to the three captives they’d stowed in the back of her Tacoma.

  “Anyone recognize this girl?”

  The guys all looked at it and shook their heads. “She looks dead,” one of them said. He was just a kid, no more than sixteen, and Lei knew they’d be letting him go later.

  “She is. Went off the cliff at Pauwela Lighthouse. We’re just trying to figure out who she is.”

  “She a hooker?” one of the men asked.

  Lei looked up sharply. The man was in his fifties, a belly straining the oversized board shorts he wore under a fraying UH football jersey. His eyes, sunk in dark folds, got shifty.

  “What makes you think so?”

  “That red hair. Can’t be real.”

  “We’re just trying to identify her at this point,” Lei said. “What do you know?”

  The man pinched his lips shut and sat back. “I don’t know nothing. Never seen her.”

  Lei moved on, making a note that James Silva, age fifty-two, bore more questioning down at the station. Lei showed the photo around to everyone they’d caught. They all denied having ever seen Jane Doe.

  The officers and Pono worked the group, getting names and addresses and writing up charges so they could be put in the group lockup at Kahului Station. Pono was working on trying to identify who’d organized the fight. The ‘‘paddy wagon” finally arrived, an old pineapple ag worker transport bus that had been modified for the MPD.

  The transport rumbled off with its load of downcast defendants, most of whom would be out that afternoon. Several teens and young boys had been caught up in the raid; they were often used to prep and care for the birds because they wouldn’t be arrested. Lei had seen the rolls of cash those kids were carrying. What was the incentive to stay in school with so much easy money to be had and Uncle or Dad raising birds worth thousands in the backyard?

  She and Pono leaned against the hood of her truck as Animal Control loaded up the rooster cages, still emitting agitated crowing. They’d take them down to the Humane Society, where they’d be adopted right away by their former owners or someone else using them for breeding stock.

  “I wouldn’t mind taking home that black bird,” Pono said thoughtfully. “It’s not illegal to raise chickens, and he’d be a valuable breeder.”

  The black pranced in his cage, sun reflecting off iridescent feathers.

  “Bet Tiare would have a few words to say about the crowing,” Lei observed. “Not to mention, his owner seemed ready to defend him to the death.”

  “These birds’re confiscated. He can’t have him back.”

  “Yeah, but the only way to make sure the birds don’t get back into the game is to destroy them. You ready to do that?”

  They both looked at the colorful birds filling the back of the Animal Control van. Pono looked at Lei. “Be a shame.”

  “Lotta things are a shame.”

  The dust was settling on the whole operation and they got in the truck. Many abandoned vehicles still cluttered the area. As she turned on the Tacoma, Lei had an evil thought.

  “Let’s impound these cars. Raise a little money for our department with some fines.” Lei stuffed down the conflicted feeling she had about straining the finances of subsistence-level families. These men had chosen the illegal blood sport with its risks—and they’d probably make up the fines next weekend.

  “Damn, girl, you’re good. Lieutenant’s gonna love that idea.”

  They called the tow company that subcontracted for the county. In short order, several trucks arrived, winching up a host of vehicles to be locked into the MPD Station impound yard, a big fenced lot behind the central Kahului station.

  “This is double genius. To claim the vehicle, they’re going to have to admit they were at the fight, or at least their vehicle was somehow there, and we can flag them in the system.” Pono grinned, thick fingers flying over his laptop as he updated the incident report.

  They headed back to Haiku Station in the village. The police station building was a renovated gray warehouse squatted behind the Haiku Cannery Mall, a giant Quonset hut pineapple packing plant in another era.

  The lieutenant was in her office. Somehow she kept the surface of her metal desk immaculate except for her computer and a stack of in-and-out trays. Her eyes were on her monitor when Pono knocked on her doorway; she beckoned without looking up, and they took the two hard plastic chairs facing the desk. When she was good and ready, she pushed a button on whatever she was doing and turned her attention to them.

  “We brought in eighteen arrests at the cockfight bust.” Pono had taken a few moments to print his report and he pushed it over. He’d told Lei never to approach the throne without an offering. Omura shuffled through the write-up. Lei hoped Pono had taken the time to run spell-check.

  “Nice work. How many of the detainees were juveniles? That will affect the final arrest count.”

  “Six.”

  “Well. You can’t include them in the arrest report. They can be included in the total count, though. So did you get any of the organizers of the fight in the roundup?”

  “Hard to tell. They all said they just got a text message about the date and time, that none of them had anything to do with putting it together. That’s all my CI knew as well. We’ll do follow-up interviews with them alone.” Pono gestured to Lei. “Impounding the cars was Lei’s idea. We think that will bring our station some fine revenue, and we can also flag those vehicle owners for monitoring in the future.”

  Brown eyes so dark the pupils were invisible traveled slowly over Lei’s grubby clothes and disordered hair. Lei shifted on the plastic seat. She tucked dusty athletic shoes under the chair.

  “Impounding vehicles is standard procedure in a raid like this. I think I’d have had something to say if you’d forgotten to do that.”

  Lei glanced over at Pono. He looked blank. This was their first raid of this type; obviously they’d gotten lucky by covering it. Lei’s stomach clenched in a familiar cramp.

  Omura seemed to relent. “Next time, I’d like a quick briefing before the raid; then we can make sure everything’s covered. What’s nice about the impound is that those fines will be directly credited to our station in terms of district funds, so you’re right, we can use the money.”

  She looked back down at the paperwork. “Says you had Animal Control take in the birds. What’s happening to them?”

  “Animal Control takes them to the Humane Society. They’re adopted out.”

  “More likely picked up by their former owners.” She picked up the phone, dialed a number she appeared to have memorized. “This is Lieutenant Omura at MPD. May I speak to your director?”

  Lei had an intuition of what was coming. She glanced over at Pono and saw color drain out of his face, leaving it ashy. He rubbed his lip beneath his mustache.

  “Hello. This is Lieutenant Omura, commanding officer of Haiku Station. Our officers performed the raid that resulted in the fighting cocks you’re currently holding. I’m requesting the euthanization of the birds that were brought in this afternoon.” A pause, obviously objections on the other end.

  “Yes, I know that’s not your policy. However, if you won’t do it, I’ll send some officers down there and we’ll destroy them ourselves. These birds are going to end up back in the ring or breeding more birds for fighting, so we have to make sure we are taking permanent steps to eradicate the problem.”

  More arguing. The lieutenant’s threat was empty, Lei hoped.

  “Well, if it’s humane you’re concerned about, you should consider what means my officers will use to dispatch the birds.”

  A shorter pause this time. Lei rubbed her hands on her jeans, missing the black stone.

  “Great. Thank you for your cooperation in reducing the gambling, violence, and negative community impact that go along with cockfighti
ng. Oh, and if this gets to the papers, I’m going to know it was you who leaked it, and I don’t like leaks…No, I’m not threatening, just communicating clearly.”

  Omura hung up the phone.

  Lei’s hands were fisted on her thighs as she restrained herself from patting Pono’s rigid arm.

  Omura looked up. “I know it must seem harsh, but those birds have no other purpose or function than fighting. If this were a drug raid, we wouldn’t let the merchandise back out on the street. In the future, I don’t want the Humane Society involved. It’s going to be a mess if the media gets this, and with the way they sounded, they may try to leak it. In the future, we’ll just eliminate the birds ourselves after we confiscate them.” Omura must have seen something in Pono’s expression because she addressed him directly. “I know it goes against local culture, Kaihale, but they’re just chickens. Dismissed.”

  They got up and went out. Pono turned and went into the men’s room, probably punching a wall. He wouldn’t be the first to leave the Steel Butterfly’s office and do that.

  Lei went to the cubicle. Two new files were on her workstation; she booted up her computer as she leafed through them. One was a report of a possible meth lab near the junior high, the other a questionable disappearance of a passenger off the cruise ship in Kahului Harbor. The responding officer had almost immediately bumped it to the detectives since the passenger’s home address was Haiku.

  Lei was on the phone with the guest coordinator of the Rainbow Duchess when Pono returned, stone-faced. He didn’t boot up his computer, just picked up his lunch box and jacket and headed for the door. She let him go without comment.

  The passenger, one Robert Simmons, had been taking a honeymoon cruise with his new wife. They’d just returned to Kahului after a “great week at sea,” where they’d apparently been physically affectionate enough to have drawn the attention of other passengers—but when they went to leave the ship, the bride had been unable to locate the groom.

  Lei corroborated the details and made an appointment to see the ship’s staff and the wife first thing in the morning, then closed up the workstation. It was four p.m. by then; she had just enough time to swing by Kahului Station on her way home and question Silva about his hooker comment.

  She called Pono’s phone as she drove into town, but it went to voice mail.

  “Sorry about the black rooster, Pono. She’s a bitch, but the lieutenant had a point about where the birds will end up. Listen, meet me at the Rainbow Duchess dock tomorrow morning at eight; we have a missing passenger to follow up on. I’m interviewing one of the dudes we busted who said something about Jane Doe.”

  She folded the phone shut and slid it into her pocket.

  Lei had Silva brought out of the general holding cell and escorted to an interview room by Gerry Bunuelos, one of the detectives at Kahului Station. Bunuelos had agreed to sit in and assist. He escorted Silva in, clipping the man’s handcuffs to a ring on the bolted-down steel table.

  “Don’t know why I need all this.” Silva spread his hands wide. “I went to a cockfight. So what? I’m not a criminal.”

  Lei sat in the aluminum chair across from him and tried for good cop.

  “Standard procedure. Sorry, buddy.”

  “Well, my wife is on her way, so hurry up with this—whatever it is.”

  Good cop wasn’t a fit, Lei decided.

  “You said this girl was a hooker. Why?” She pushed the eight-by-ten glossy print of the girl’s face over.

  “I just said she looked like the type, with that fake red hair. Girl like that. . .” He shook his head.

  “Girl like that, what? Deserves what she got?” Lei felt heat roar up the back of her neck. “This girl was just that—a girl. She was a teenager. Whatever she was, she didn’t deserve to die like this.” She pushed a full-length, unretouched shot of Jane Doe’s mangled body over to Silva, who recoiled. “Take a good long look—buddy.”

  “Hey, man, I’m sure you didn’t mean any disrespect by that,” Bunuelos chimed in, picking up the good cop thread.

  “I didn’t. I didn’t!” Silva cried, looking ill as his eyes refused to look away from Jane Doe’s hamburgered midsection.

  “Guy like you has needs, right?”

  Silva’s head bobbed. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” Then he seemed to realize what he was saying and shook his head. “No, no, I’m married. Happy married man.”

  “So you go to hookers now and again. You ever see her? Lahaina, maybe? She with a massage company or something?” Gerry sounded so sympathetic that Lei narrowed her eyes at him.

  “No. No needs. No hookers.” Silva seemed to be withdrawing into himself, still shaking his head.

  Lei smacked the photo with her open hand. The loud crack made him jump and look her in the eye. She kept his gaze with sheer willpower and meanness. “Tell me. I just want to find out who she is. You won’t be in trouble, I promise.” The velvet of her voice contrasted with an implicit threat.

  Silva rested his head on his cuffed hands, closed his eyes in surrender. “I saw her once. She was in a lineup.”

  “What do you mean, lineup?”

  “Like, when you pick a girl. For the night.” His voice was just a whisper. Lei pushed the tape recorder closer to pick it up.

  “Where was this?”

  “Miramar Hotel.” A classy place, the Miramar had been open since the 1970s. It was an elaborate Moorish-style Lahaina landmark.

  “What’s a guy like you doing in a place like the Miramar?” Lei’s voice dripped contempt.

  “Construction wrap party. We finished a job, and the owner had us all there to celebrate. He ordered up what he called ‘room service.’ She was in a lineup, like I said.”

  “So you recognize her. Sure you didn’t do more than that? Does she have any special features, distinguishing marks?” Lei wanted to know if he knew about the butterfly tattoo. Silva shook his head, sweat pearling across the top of his lip.

  “No. I never saw nothing. She had on a little white robe. They all did.”

  “White? That’s odd for a hooker.”

  “It was shiny white stuff, you know, like satin. They’re a classy outfit. I mean, according to the owner. He said he was ordering the best. Since we’d made his dream house come true, he was going to make some of ours come true, too.”

  “So what did you have?”

  “A blonde. She was older.”

  “Right. Older. Okay.” Lei tried to keep the sarcasm out of her voice but failed. “Anything interesting about these whores beside the white robes? Anything you remember?”

  “The girl I was with. She had an accent.”

  “What kind?”

  “How should I know what kind?” He finally showed a little spirit, clashing the cuffs against the table. “I wasn’t there to talk to her.”

  Lei paced as Bunuelos took over.

  “Anything else stand out to you about that evening?”

  “No. Is my wife going to find out about this?” He glanced nervously at the closed door.

  Lei let an evil grin move across her face. She had a wide mouth with a lot of teeth, and Stevens had said her evil grin gave him bad dreams. “I don’t know. Anything your wife should know?”

  “I told you everything. I can’t stay in here. I have a health condition. . .” Silva degenerated into a whine.

  “So we need your boss’s name. The guy who threw the party.”

  “He can’t know I ratted about the whores!”

  Lei smacked the table again. “Shut up and focus. You get no promises. You don’t deserve any until you give us something we can use.”

  Bunuelos put his hand on her arm. “Settle down, Detective. The man only did what anyone would do when presented with that kind of opportunity.”

  He winked where Silva couldn’t see it. Lei whirled up and paced again. Bunuelos turned back to Silva.

  “We’ll do what we can. No reason your wife needs to know anything but that you got picked up with a lot of other guys at the co
ckfight, and the contractor won’t know who told on him about the hookers. We aren’t trying to bust anybody for that—we just want to find out who this girl was.”

  “John Wylie. He’s a pretty big developer, does a lot on the west side of Maui.” Silva hung his head. Sweat rings marked his armpits in the dusty shirt. Lei wrote down the first note she’d taken for the interview on a pristine yellow pad she’d set beside the tiny recorder.

  “So what do you know about who organized the cockfight?” A stab in the dark but worth a try now that she had him talking.

  “Nothing. I don’t know nothing! I got a text with the date and time like everyone else!”

  “Someone sends the texts, keeps track of who’s fighting their birds, who’s attending. Someone organizes these things.”

  “I don’t know anything real. I swear. But I hear it’s a guy on Oahu who gets a cut. All the owners who put birds in the ring pay a fee to him; he’s the ‘house’ you can bet against, and somehow the ‘house’ does better than most.”

  “That’s gambling for you. So what do they call this guy?”

  Silva looked up. “My wife could leave me over this. You think it’s a good idea for me to get two in the head, too?”

  “C’mon, quit being such a drama queen. This is Maui. No one rolls like that around here.”

  “You just never find the bodies.” He looked down, shook his head, his voice a whisper of defeat. “I don’t know anything worth anything. He’s called the House. That’s all I know.”

  “Oh. Didn’t realize that was his handle.” She gave a nod to Bunuelos, who unclipped the handcuffs from the ring. “Thanks, Mr. Silva. We appreciate your cooperation. Now, was that so hard?”

  “You sure my wife won’t find out? She’ll just leave me in here if she knows. . .”

  “You gave us a name, so we’re square. Couple of names, in fact. But we know where you live.” Lei did the grin again.

  He nearly ran out of the room, followed by Bunuelos. Lei collected the recorder and notepad and followed him out. Stevens was waiting in the hall. Her heart gave a familiar thump at the sight of him.

  “Michael!”

  Lei knew Stevens was ever aware of setting a good example in front of the men, so while not keeping their relationship a secret, they weren’t advertising it either. The echoing linoleum hall was empty, so he leaned over and gave her a kiss, a hard stamp on her mouth that left her wanting more.