“A guy could get used to it,” I said, wondering what she had in mind.
23
You might think you’re doing something creative here, Mr. Caine, but you are nothing but an interloper. This is strictly a matter for law enforcement. You don’t belong in this.” Kate’s boss, Captain Dale Yoshida, loomed over me as well as he could. He was a thin, nervous nisei in a dark blue suit, white shirt and black knit tie. He was barely five feet tall. His cigarette-roughened, movie-tough’s voice made him seem taller than he really was. He reminded me of a Japanese version of Humphrey Bogart.
I slumped in Kate’s leather chair, dressed in freshly washed khakis and a black and green Aloha shirt she’d purchased for me. I was still barefoot.
“You wanna give us a statement or be held as a material witness? What’s it gonna be?”
“Neither,” I said. “Let me go over it one more time.”
“Forget that. We’re not taking any suggestions from you. What do you do for a living? Private detective?”
I nodded. “Most of my work is executive protection and asset recovery.” Asset recovery was a fancy name for retrieving stolen property. Because of the volume, that made up the bulk of my income. I liked the way the buzzwords sounded as they rolled off my tongue.
“Whatever. Tell me again how you got messed up in this?”
“I’m doing inquiries for Admiral Winston MacGruder, the father of the murdered girl. The trail led me to Thompson.” Well okay, it wasn’t the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but this wasn’t a priest I was talking to.
Yoshida glared at Kate, who was sitting on her couch, her legs curled underneath her body. Her posture and her poise were utterly feminine. Her face betrayed nothing.
“This clown licensed?”
“Yes. And he’s known to HPD and DEA. Talk to Lieutenant Kahanamoku. He checked him out. According to DEA and Kimo he’s loose, but he’s straight.”
Yoshida grunted and turned back to me.
“You claim you saw a videotape of a girl being raped and murdered by two Japanese nationals. You subsequently identified the victim in the movie as Carolyn Hammel. And you claim the owner of the motor vessel Pele then murdered his receptionist, a girl named Jasmine, whom we both know works for Chawlie Choy, by feeding her to the sharks. And you claim that he threw you into the sea, right after that attack, and you managed to fight off the sharks and swim ten miles to shore in the middle of the night. You expect me to believe all that?”
“That’s what happened.”
“But you won’t give us a formal statement.”
“No, sir.”
Yoshida looked through his notes. “You claimed that you were fired on while you were in the water. With automatic weapons. Oh, and I like this. They handcuffed you and strapped a heavy weight belt on you before they threw you in. And you escaped. Who’re you, Houdini?”
“I got lucky.”
“Yeah.” He let the silence continue for a few heartbeats to underscore his disbelief, his eyes never leaving mine. “You claim they fired on you while you were in the water and one of the rounds struck you in the leg. You returned fire. You admit to firing a forty-four-caliber round from this”—Yoshida held up my UM-1—“into the bottom of the hull, driving off the boat.”
“That’s correct.”
“You admit to all that.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You admit to an act of piracy on the high seas, a federal crime. Is that how you want me to charge you?”
I said nothing. I couldn’t tell if Captain Yoshida was serious or if he were testing me. I decided he was too smart to actually believe what he was saying.
“Let me go over this part again. You admit to giving information to Thompson, this alleged criminal, about a man in his organization, one Garrick Choy. And this man subsequently was found tortured and shot to death in a cane field near Waipahu. You claim that this information was given to you by the man’s father, who knew what you were going to do with the information. Is that right?”
“It isn’t right, but it’s what happened.”
“This isn’t the time for humor, Mr. Caine. Is what I said accurate? Did the father of this boy intentionally set him up for murder through you, as unwilling or as unwitting as you claim to have been?”
“At the time, Garrick Choy was being held by some of Chawlie’s people at his home. Garrick escaped and ran straight to Thompson. We didn’t know until after it happened.”
“You know for a fact that he escaped on his own? Without help? Or was he set free?”
I shook my head. “I have some ideas on the subject, but you wouldn’t be interested.”
“It sounds pretty fucking far-fetched to me,” said Yoshida.
Except it was the truth. I was grateful that Yoshida had keyed on the facts I’d presented in the order I’d presented them. He’d stayed away from Mary MacGruder, whose involvement in the torture films was known to Kate. And I was gratified that Kate had not told Yoshida about Thompson’s blackmail approach to the admiral, or MacGruder’s apparent failure to report it.
MacGruder may have known who murdered his daughter when he hired Souza.
“What about this Jeep that’s been impounded over at Young Street? It was left with its motor running and the keys in the ignition in the middle of an intersection. It’s registered to you. You want to report it stolen? Or you want to admit to abandoning your vehicle?”
“I’ll admit to all of that.”
“You’re gonna have trouble getting insurance in this state, you know that?” Yoshida turned over another page of his notebook. “I can’t decide whether to charge you with abandonment of a motor vehicle or with reckless endangerment, or with interfering with a police investigation. That’s a felony. I think I can make it stick, too.”
When I did not respond, he continued.
“On the basis of Detective Alapai’s report, which was based almost entirely upon two confidential informants, we acquired a federal search warrant and detailed a raiding party to the Honolulu Yacht Club this afternoon. Before we got there we were forced to call it off because our star witness—you—refused to cooperate. The other CI is dead. And if I’m to understand your statement made willingly to Detective Alapai, you gave the information to his killers as to his activities, which directly resulted in his death. And you’re supposed to be my witness?”
“I’m not your witness,” I said.
“You’re anything I want you to be, Caine. We have no evidence a crime has been committed, except the ones you admit to. Did you know that even if we had that fucking tape in our possession, even with a clear chain of evidence, we might not get a conviction in a court of law? Tapes are being thrown out of court right and left these days. Photographs, motion pictures and videotapes are becoming inadmissible as evidence more and more. They’re too easily changed by computers.
“So you saw a tape. So what? Hollywood does it all the time. They make it look real. It’s their job, remember? And the receptionist, Jasmine? What’s her real name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you actually see her thrown to the sharks? Did you witness her murder?”
“No.”
“No. So you cannot give evidence that anyone else was even on that boat, much less thrown to the sharks. She could have been a prop, this whole thing just a charade to fool you.”
“I don’t think so.” I remembered the bruises on her arms and legs and I remembered the terror in her eyes. Nothing had been faked. And they had been fairly serious about trying to kill me.
“You don’t think so.” Yoshida’s eyes bored into me, searching for the lie.
“But it happened,” I said, holding my stare.
Yoshida nodded.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know it did.”
Behind Yoshida, Kate sat up on the couch and put her feet on the carpet, listening intently.
“This afternoon the Shark Task Force caught an eighteen-foot tiger shark off Sandy Bea
ch. It vomited the contents of its stomach when it was brought aboard the boat. The crew found pieces of what looked to be the lower portion of a human torso. It had not been in the shark’s stomach for long. Medical examiner’s got it now, but it had been identified as a human female, twenty to twenty-five years of age. The time of death is impossible to determine, as is a positive identification. We’re getting DNA typing but we need something to compare to.
“We have a missing person report on Thompson’s secretary by her roommates. I’ve got a team of lab people going through her bathroom. They’re looking for hair samples and they might have to resort to her toothbrush for dried saliva. We might get lucky.
“Your story will be verified.”
“But the shark I killed was a twenty-footer.”
Yoshida shrugged. “There’s plenty of them to go around out there,” he said. “One or two less doesn’t bother me. Then there’s the two-twenty-three Remington slug that Jane Wayne over there pulled out of your, ah, your leg. It’s impossible to shoot yourself in the butt with a high-powered rifle without having traumatic injury so severe your leg would have to be amputated. And there would be powder burns. I’ve discussed your wound, as Detective Alapai described it, and the condition of the bullet with the medical examiner. He told me that your wound and the bullet’s lack of impairment are totally consistent with your version of the events. Therefore, I’m willing to believe almost everything you’ve told us.
“You’ve confirmed what Kate’s original confidential informant told her. We’ve suspected Thompson has been producing snuff films for over six months, but we can’t find any victims and we can’t find any real evidence that he’s actually doing it. Other than the Hammel girl and the MacGruder woman, no bodies or even a trace of the crime have surfaced. From what you told me I think I know how he’s getting rid of the bodies. And from what I know of sharks I think I know why the sudden increase in the number of large tigers and whites off our shores, and the increase in the number of shark attacks here.”
I nodded, waiting for what must be coming next.
“But that doesn’t mean anything to us right now. We’ve got a one-man crime wave out there. Two, if we count you. But we’ve nothing to take to a grand jury for indictment. Thompson can leave the island any time he wants. I can’t stop him. He can continue what he’s been doing and I can’t do anything about it. I wish you’d shot him, but no such luck. Our sources told us he got off the boat, him and all his boys. Nobody seems to have been hurt.”
“Only murdered,” I said. I didn’t count. I was getting my strength back. The gunshot wound was actually just a small puncture wound, no worse than I would have received sitting on a nail. The jellyfish stings were painful, but getting less so every hour. And the bump on my head didn’t give me a concussion. My real physical problem was exhaustion and blood loss. With sleep and a decent meal or two I’d be running again. In a day or two.
“Yeah. It looks that way.”
“If you can find that AR-15 you can match the bullet. The one Kate took out of my leg.”
“Chances are he ditched it at sea before he reached the harbor.”
I agreed. That’s what I would have done, given the circumstances of a possible miss and a flooding bilge, and the remote possibility of a police reception at the dock. The tapes would have gone overboard, too. Those were copies, of course. The masters would be carefully hidden. That set my mind working in another direction.
“Kate suggested that we could use you. Thompson thinks he’s won, but he’s not sure. In a day or two, if you don’t show up at your boat, he’ll know it. Lay low for a couple of days. Rest up. Let your wounds heal. We’ll keep it our secret that you’re still alive. Just the three of us. I don’t want to hear that some Chinese criminal knows you’re still breathing. In a few days we’ll talk and decide what to do.”
I nodded. But I already knew what I was going to do.
“No official reports. No nothing. That way Kate doesn’t get in trouble for practicing medicine without a license and not reporting a gunshot wound to the police.”
“I am the police, Dale.” She hadn’t said much so far because her boss was talking to me.
Yoshida glanced over his shoulder and grinned. “Yeah. That’s right. I almost forgot.” He turned back to me, the grin on his face fading as he turned. “Kate’s CI report will be buried. You’re a missing person as of tonight. Or you would be if someone cared enough about you to report you missing. Do you have anyone who would miss you, Caine, if you were to vanish?”
I thought about it. It didn’t take long.
“No,” I said. “I don’t have anybody.”
24
Kate walked Yoshida to the door. I remained where I was, partly because they wanted to talk about me where I couldn’t hear what they had to say and partly because it hurt too much to move. They stopped in her tiny kitchen and spoke quietly for a few minutes before he patted her shoulder and stumped out the door. I noted that before he left he took something from his pocket and handed it to Kate.
She set the double locks on the door and went into her bedroom, telling me that she needed a shower and a change of clothes. I sat in the easy chair and watched a rainsquall passing over the mountains, waiting for the rainbow I knew would follow, and listening to the sounds of the woman in her bathroom. It was a private and intimate scene, the kind of thing I’d seldom experienced. I kept my eyes on the mountains and my ears attuned to the sounds coming from the bathroom, appreciating for a time the softer things in life.
Kate returned from her shower and sat next to me, bringing a glass of wine for each of us. She handed me my keys. I weighed them in my palm.
“I’ve been forgiven of my sins?”
She nodded, smiling. “It would seem so.” She was wearing a pink silk robe over matching silk pajamas, like the ones they used to wear in old movies. It made her look like a Polynesian Lauren Bacall. Her manner had transformed during Yoshida’s visit. She’d become proprietary. It made me feel a little uncomfortable, yet I liked it.
I’m not used to being owned or having anyone even make the claim. I’m a single, not any part of a couple. It is difficult to remember a time when it’s been any other way. I’d been attracted to Kate when I first met her and I thought she only tolerated my company in return. This was different.
“You really don’t have anyone, do you?” she asked.
“No. I live alone. I work alone.”
“Never married?”
“Well …” I said, thinking this was not the time to drag out old lost loves.
“Go ahead,” said Kate. “Tell me about her.”
“Almost married,” I said. “I met a girl in junior high school and fell in love with her immediately. It was like I’d been hit with a lightning bolt. Her name was Jayne, with a y, and she suddenly became the only female that existed on the planet. Other girls seemed to be of a different species.”
“This was junior high school?”
“Classic case of first love. I was thirteen. She was twelve. She couldn’t see anything good in me until high school so I carried the torch by myself. It didn’t dim, either, and she eventually came around. Maybe I grew up a little. Maybe she saw through what I was on the surface and realized that I really loved her, I don’t know, but we became a couple. We went together all through high school and college. Every year it was John and Jayne or Jayne and John. We were inseparable.
“This was the midsixties, you’ll remember, although you might be too young to remember what those times were all about. It was a time of free love, drugs and attacking the establishment. We weren’t like that. While other kids were taking their clothes off, smoking dope on street corners and protesting the war, we were planning for a future together, saving our money and making plans for the house with the white picket fence, two children and a dog.
“We agreed that I’d graduate from college, join the navy and marry when I got out, or at least not until I was given a permanent duty station.
We chose the navy because the Vietnam War was in full swing then and it seemed to be the safest branch of service available.
“I studied hard. I got straight As. Because of Jayne. I didn’t want to let her down. I graduated and was accepted to ocs. I worked hard there to turn myself into the best officer possible. Because I grew up on the water I excelled at what the navy called basic seamanship, and I was a whiz at the books. It sounds as though I’m bragging but it was true. I applied myself harder than I’d ever applied myself before. I ranked third in my class and was closing in on the second spot, right behind an Eastern establishment type from Harvard.
“So it was difficult to understand why I was called to the commanding officer’s office, pulled from morning inspection. Two marines all but arrested me and brought me to his office without any explanation.
“I was told, as politely and as gently as that kind of news could be told, that Jayne had been run down by a drunken driver in a crosswalk at six-thirty in the morning the day before. She’d been dead a whole day before anyone thought to notify me. The driver had been drinking all night and ran the red light because he said he didn’t see it—the sun was in his eyes. He didn’t see the young woman in the crosswalk, either. He had no explanation why he’d been driving seventy miles an hour in a twenty-five-mile zone.
“I was informed that I could be relieved of my duties at the school for a temporary pass to attend the funeral. The co told me that he’d see I was treated fairly. She wasn’t immediate family, you see. Not yet. I believed him. He was a good man, and I sincerely believed that he would do as he promised, but there was nothing back home now for me to go to. Jayne was gone and I was alone. I thanked him and told him I’d stay. He must have thought I was a cold bastard.
“It struck me that for that whole day after her death she’d still been alive to me, as alive as she’d ever been during our separation. I don’t know what significance that had, but I wondered about it for years afterward. I finally decided it’s always like that. Until you get confirmation, someone’s still alive. So don’t push confirmation. Avoid it at all cost.
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