“So was Stu okay when he left that night?”
“Totally. He wasn’t limping or anything.”
“Do think Stu jumped in or did he get pushed?” I said.
Jason jerked his head back as if I’d poked a finger in his eye. “No way he’d jump. First off, the dude can’t swim and he hated water. If Stu Wilkerson was gonna do something stupid like that, he’d use a gun. And if you’re asking if I pushed him, the answer’s not just ‘no’ but ‘hell no.’ I had no reason to hurt him.”
He glared at me; I glared back.
I changed the subject. “But Natalie thinks Barry did have a reason: money.”
“That’s what she’s saying.”
The glass doors opened and an early-thirties woman in dark slacks and a plain white blouse came outside and started heading our way. She had a photo ID badge on a lanyard around her neck. I pegged her for the hospital social worker Stu’s doctor had mentioned. She looked vaguely familiar but I chalked it up to we’d probably shared an elevator or passed in the hospital hallways.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I’m looking for Stuart Wilkerson’s sister. Is that you?”
I stood. “Yes, I’m Pali Moon.”
“Great. I’d appreciate a few minutes of your time. Are you willing to talk to me?”
She seemed a bit abrupt for a social worker sent to console the next-of-kin, but what did I know? From what I’d heard about social workers, their job pretty much consisted of juggling too many cases and making too little money. And in a hospital setting, I suspected they rarely got to be the bearer of glad tidings.
“Sure.”
She flicked her eyes down to Jason. “And you are…?”
His eyes narrowed. “I’m Jason, Stu’s friend. Who are you?”
She hoisted a black messenger-style bag off her shoulder and pulled out a white business card. “Sorry,” she said, handing me the card. “I was so glad to find you I must’ve forgotten my manners. I’m Wendi Takeda with the Honolulu Journal-Dispatch. I’m investigating what happened to your brother.” She looked at Jason. “And to your friend.”
“You’re a reporter?” I said.
“That’s correct. An investigative reporter.”
“And you work for the newspaper?”
“That’s also correct.”
“But didn’t I see you on the news last night? I mean, the television news?”
Wendi narrowed her eyes. “That was my twin sister, Cindi. We’re both reporters. Only I’m a journalist, and she’s a, well, you saw what she is.”
I checked her hands to see if she’d been de-clawed.
“How did you hear about my brother?”
“All the major news organizations monitor the emergency channels. At first the call seemed like it was just another drunk falling in the canal. But I had a hunch and followed it up. Your brother’s infection is a much bigger story. We at the Journal believe his condition was caused by the city’s woeful disregard for human life and safety when they decided to pump untreated sewage directly into the canal.”
“Maybe, but his doctor claims they’re not sure what caused Stuart’s infection.”
“Oh, please. They’ve pumped fifty million gallons of raw sewage into our city’s main waterway and they can’t do the math? They should’ve closed Waikiki Beach days ago.” She pulled out a tiny tape recorder. “Would you mind? Just a few questions.”
I took a seat on the bench next to Jason, but Wendi remained standing. Actually, she paced. Her twitchy demeanor reminded me of a guy I knew in college who used to chug Red Bull and chase it with a shot of espresso before he’d go in to take a final. I was pretty sure he never got a gold star for penmanship.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s start at the beginning. How much do you know about what happened Tuesday night? I mean, do you know how your brother wound up in the canal?”
“We were just talking about that,” I said. I looked over at Jason to see if he wanted to weigh in, but he looked content with me doing the heavy lifting. “As near as we can tell, he met with a business associate at the Waikiki Yacht Club and later he fell in the water. The Yacht Club’s right at the mouth of the Ala Wai Canal, you know.”
“Yes, I know. Was it accidental, or do the police suspect foul play?”
“I don’t even know if the police have weighed in on this.” I looked over at Jason. “Did you hear anything?”
Jason rocked back and forth, the heels of his hands digging into his thighs. After a long moment of silence, he looked up. “You know, I need to get going. I start work at four.”
Wendi checked her watch. “That’s two hours from now.”
“Yeah, but I need to shower and everything.”
He got up and sprinted toward the glass door like a kid being let out for recess.
“What’s his story?” said Wendi.
“He’s Stu’s best friend from way back. I think he’s worried about him and he doesn’t want to talk about it.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But I’ve been doing this a long time. It always seems that the ones who have nothing to say are usually the ones with the most to hide.”
CHAPTER 19
Wendi Takeda gave me her take on the situation. “I think your brother didn’t just fall into that canal. I think he was pushed in. But that’s not why I’m here.”
“Are you thinking Jason did it? Because I just asked him and he was pretty emphatic he didn’t.”
“Like I said, I’m not overly concerned with how your brother got in the canal,” she said. “I’m more interested in what happened after that. How he ended up in Intensive Care with a nasty infection no one will talk about.”
She took a seat next to me on the bench and spoke in a conspiratorial voice. “Look, I know it’s your brother, and I don’t mean to sound callous. But the big story here isn’t what went down on Tuesday night. The story is what’s going on right now.”
“My brother Stuart has an infection. The hospital is treating it. That’s news?” I said. “People come to the hospital every day with different things wrong with them. Why would you think Stu’s case is any more newsworthy than someone who came here with a heart attack or a broken bone?”
“Because your brother’s infection isn’t normal. It wasn’t caused by normal things. It was caused by negligence and a total disregard for human life.”
“Yeah, by whoever tossed him in the canal.”
“No! You don’t get it, do you?” she said.
I slumped against the back of the bench. Right then my cell phone went off. I checked the caller ID. It was Natalie. I clicked it over to voice mail. I’d call her back later.
“Look,” said Wendi. “I’m not family so they won’t tell me anything. But they’ve got to tell you everything. In return, I’ll help you find out what happened Tuesday night. What do you say?”
“I don’t care what happened. I only care about my brother getting well.” I got up and made my way to the door.
“You will.” She said, in a stern voice loud enough to reach me as I grabbed for the door handle.
I turned. “Will what?”
“Will care what happened. And when you do, give me a call. You’ve got my numbers.”
I felt for the business card I’d slipped in my pocket. Then I went back inside.
***
I went to the hospital cafeteria and called my brother Jeff in California. “I’ve got to check out of the penthouse tomorrow morning, but there’s been an accident and Stu’s in the hospital.” There was no love lost between Jeff and Stuart so I wasn’t surprised when Jeff didn’t ask if he was okay.
“Do you need to stay over?” he said.
“I’d like to, if possible. But I don’t want to impose on your fraternity brother.”
“He’s cool. Let me give him a call. How much time you need?”
“I don’t know. I’m hoping it will just be a few days but it could be as long as a week. By the way, how are things at the lab?”
“Crazy. In fact, I’m
in the middle of something right now. I’ll get back to you,” he said.
A few minutes later my phone alerted me I had a text message.
‘1 wk. No more. Ppl arv nxt Sat. Lv Jeff’
Moko came back to the hospital after work. I was reading a months-old magazine in the waiting room when he showed up.
“You still here?” he said.
“Yeah. I was hoping for an update. I figured as soon as I left the doctor would show up.”
“Where’s Natalie?”
“Who knows? She left right after you went back to work and I haven’t seen her since. She said she was having morning sickness and being here at the hospital wasn’t helping.”
“It’s not morning no more,” Moko said. “What’s she got now, ‘night’ sickness?”
I let it drop. I’d never been pregnant so I didn’t figure I had the right to judge.
“No word from the doctor?” he said.
“Not since I was in Stu’s room earlier this afternoon.”
“In all this time, you didn’t go back in again?”
“No. You have to put on all this stuff over your clothes. A gown, a cap and a mask and gloves. Also, I didn’t want to get in the way. Stu’s got a long hard fight ahead of him.”
“You get any dinner yet?” Moko said.
“No. But I’m not really hungry. I haven’t done anything all day but sit here and watch CNN and read magazines. Where do they get these magazines, anyway? Prevention? Men’s Health? Living Well? Seems to me these magazines are kind of sadistic for a hospital waiting room.”
“Sad—what?”
“Sadistic. Like putting salt in a wound. I mean, if you’d ‘lived well’ and used an ounce of ‘prevention’ you probably wouldn’t be here.”
“Yeah, I get it.”
“Do you want to go in and see your brother?” I said.
“Yeah. But I’m kinda nervous about it.”
“You want me to go with you?”
He nodded. I’d never been able to play big sister to Moko, and for a moment, it struck me as sad.
“Let’s go.”
We gowned up and I helped Moko tuck his tangle of hair into the blue paper cap. This time, I added a pair of blue shoe covers to my ensemble. When we were as veiled as a couple of Iranian women at a Tehran fish market, we went in.
Stu was in exactly the same position he’d been in eight hours earlier. I didn’t really expect him to be lying on his side or propped up watching TV, but seeing him in suspended animation like that made it look like he hadn’t made much progress.
Moko gasped behind his paper mask and I reached over and took his hand. It was weird holding hands with rubber gloves on, and I nearly made a distasteful joke, but thankfully I kept it to myself.
“Why’s he all puffed up like that?” Moko said.
I looked at Stu’s face. I couldn’t be sure, but he did look a bit more swollen than he had earlier.
“He’s got an infection. From what the doctor said, they think it’s a pretty bad one and they’re giving him a bunch of different antibiotics. See those bags hanging there? They’re all IVs. So Stu’s got like a ton of fluids going into him. That puffs you up,” I said. “You know, like when you put a dry sponge in water. It puffs up.” It was a lame explanation, but to some degree even I believed it.
A nurse bustled in as we watched the machines beep and ping while Stu remained as motionless as a hunk of driftwood. “Oh, hello,” she said. “I hope you’re all members of the patient’s immediate family.”
“Yes,” I said. I looked over at Moko, but he appeared to be transfixed by the patient monitor machine. Stu’s heart rate, blood pressure, temperature and pulse were illuminated along with various colored lines that sketched out a moving graph of his condition.
“I’m Pali, the patient’s older sister. And this is Moko, his younger brother.” No way was I going to go into a lengthy discourse on the various ‘halfs’ and ‘steps’ involved in our relationship. When an ohana member is fighting for their life, I figured family is family.
My cell phone went off in my pocket. The nurse shook her head. “No cell phones in here,” she said. “Please turn it off; or at least to vibrate.”
I pulled out the phone. Natalie again. I clicked it to the vibrate mode.
The nurse’s paper gown rustled as went about checking Stu’s IV lines and changing empty bags for full ones. When she finished, she put a gloved hand on my arm. “You know, we have a chapel on this floor. It’s just down the hall, past the waiting room and then on your right.” She gave my arm a little squeeze before she left the room.
“What’d she mean by that?” Moko said. “Chapel? I got in enough chapel time in high school to last me a lifetime.”
“She was just being nice. People in the ICU are pretty sick. She probably says that to everyone.”
“You think?”
Our eyes met. Like passengers on a sinking ship we each needed to think we were helping the other hold out hope. Too bad it didn’t work inside our own heads.
***
Moko insisted I take a few hours off. “You go back to your place and get a shower and some rest,” he said. “I’ll stay until midnight.”
“But what if something happens?”
“Look, what good is it for both of us to be sitting here?” he said. “And anyway, Stu’s got to get all those drugs in him before he starts to get better. Did you see that stuff? Drip-drip-drip? That’s gonna take time.”
I was sick of CNN and my back was stiff from the ergonomically-challenging chairs in the waiting room so I agreed to leave. I took the bus back to Waikiki and practically fell asleep in the elevator as it slowly rose to the thirtieth floor.
Once inside the apartment, I stripped off my clothes and left them lying in a pile on the floor. I took a long shower and got out feeling marginally better. Time to return Natalie’s call. No doubt she wanted an update on Stu. I could only imagine how stressful it must be for her to be unable to stomach the hospital environment yet waiting for news that could change her life forever.
“Hello,” she said in a sleepy voice.
I checked the clock on the stove. It wasn’t even eight o’clock. “Hi Natalie. Were you sleeping?”
“Pali? Is that you? Oh my God. Are you calling because—”
I didn’t want to cause her any more distress than necessary so I broke in. “No, no, everything’s going well. Stu’s resting comfortably, and they’ve got him on so many drugs I think I should buy stock in Bristol-Myers.”
“Good.” She let out a soft sigh. “I was worried, you know? I feel horrible I can’t be there. I want to be there. But I want this baby to be okay. If I get really sick and stressed out, I’m afraid…”
She didn’t need to finish. I didn’t know my brother well, but I’d seen the look on his face when he’d told me he was going to be a father. “You need to take care of your baby, Natalie. Right now, that’s your number one priority.”
“Thanks, Pali. I’m glad you understand.”
I went to the bedroom and pulled out a clean pair of cropped pants and a tee-shirt. Then I laid down on the bed. Two hours later I awoke with a start. I got up and got dressed. The bed was giving me a ‘come hither’ look as seductive as a siren’s song but I knew if I didn’t get back to the hospital before midnight I’d feel crushing guilt that I’d let my brothers down.
Maybe if I’d known what awaited me at the hospital, I would’ve crawled into that bed and called it a night. But playing ‘if I’d known then what I know now’ is a loser’s game. And right then, I wasn’t feeling like a loser. I was feeling like a caring big sister.
CHAPTER 20
The hospital was only slightly less busy at midnight than it’d been in the middle of the day. I guess that’s how it goes in places like that. Injury, disease, birth, death: none of that stuff wears a watch.
Moko was slumped in a chair in the waiting room when I showed up. I was pretty sure he was asleep, but when I touched his arm, he
jerked his head and said, “I’m awake. Just resting my eyes.”
“How’s he doing?” I said. “Any news?”
“Nah. I went in there a couple of hours ago, but he looked pretty much the same.”
“And no word from the doctor?”
“Nothin’. I hope there’s a survey or somethin’ when this is over with, because I’m gonna tell ‘em the customer service in this place sucks.” He smiled a thin smile. Deep bruised-looking pockets hung beneath his bloodshot eyes.
“You look beat,” I said. “I don’t have to work tomorrow. You go home and get some sleep.”
“My wife called a couple hours ago. She wanted to come, but she couldn’t find anybody to watch the kids.” The thin smile was back. “My kids are a handful. When I used to take ‘em over to Dad’s, he used to threaten to tie ‘em up and leave ‘em out on the lawn for the menehune to carry off.”
“Did Phil believe in menehune?” I said. Hawaiian menehune are like Irish leprechauns. They’re a popular way to get island kids to toe the mark. Nobody knows if the little dudes would even want kids—especially ones that parents have left outside because they’ve been bad—but no kid wants to take the chance.
“I doubt Dad believed in much ‘cept the almighty dollar,” said Moko. “But the menehune thing worked on the kids. But when my oldest turned nine, my dad switched from menehune to bribing him with money. Never too early to teach our ‘family values’ I guess.”
“Wow. You have a nine-year-old? How is that possible?”
“I got started early. That’s why I never did college. Dad wasn’t happy about that.”
“Well, right now you need to get home. Are you taking the bus? I think the last one comes at twelve-thirty.”
“Nah, I got my car here.” He pushed his wide body out of the cramped chair and stretched his arms overhead. “Man, that chair’s like a strait-jacket.”
“When do you have to be at work in the morning?” I said.
“S’posed to get there by eight. But I might call in sick.”
“They’ll know it’s because of Stu.”
“Yeah? Well, I am sick. Sick with worry.” His face crumpled and he hung his head.
O'ahu Lonesome Tonight? (Islands of Aloha Mystery Series #5) Page 11