by Chris Bauer
“I wouldn’t do that, Trout. I’ll make it up to you and your friend, damn it. You have my word—”
“My friend’s fiancée is fucking dead! An anonymous tip he just got says you’re the reason.”
“‘Just got’ means what? When did he get it?” Lanakai said.
“Today.” Philo didn’t mention the research docs that came with it.
“On my honor, I didn’t kill any of those people, Trout.”
“Someone out there is saying you did. You see the news? Three of them, all gutted like field-dressed deer, all on Kauai. My friend’s fiancée was a research scientist…”
Philo detailed the horrific murders with the precision of a crime scene cleaner. “Now there’s been a fourth. Her body parts were dropped around the Alakai Swamp after her evisceration. Too huge a coincidence that you’re back in Hawaii and all these people are getting gutted and hacked up…”
“Trout, listen to me. I swear on my island ancestors that I did not kill those people. Someone is framing Ka Hui. They do the deed, then they deliver their organs to me…”
“Framing Ka Hui? A crime family you told me no longer exists? What do you do with the organs? I’m thinking they find their way into someone else’s body for big payoffs—”
“That’s not the point. The point is I’m not killing people and taking their organs…”
“I guess I don’t really give a shit, Lanakai. The cops are onto Ka Hui, and I’m fine with letting that run its course.”
“It’s not me, Trout, goddamn it! It’s the fucking Yakuza!”
Invoking that name low-bridged Philo, forced him to hit the reset button on the conversation. He knew the Yakuza, knew about them way back when he was a new Navy SEAL twenty years ago. You couldn’t go out at night in the islands without seeing one or more of their head-case warriors terrorizing the nightclub owners. He’d found the Yakuza stereotyping to be true: slicked hair, sharp dressers, and full-body tattoos, genitalia included, something he’d personally validated in one barroom brawl involving saving a damsel in distress from a rape. Feared and revered, they were a menace to the Japanese-Hawaiian community, yet they occasionally acted as a benefactor. Classic mob family behavior. Steal you blind but hand out paper towels and water when your community gets hit with a hurricane.
And then there was the Yakuza affectation for severed pinkies: yubitsume, or “finger-shortening.” An odd punishment for one indiscretion or another, removing the tip of the pinky finger on the left hand, penalizing Yakuza swordsmen from centuries past. A generations-old practice. Misplaced machismo. Idiots. Add to this their newfound fascination with the U.S. Navy per Evan…
“You tell me it’s the Yakuza, and that’s supposed to make me enlist? You want to put me between you and them? I’d get killed in the crossfire. No thanks.”
“Philo. Please.” Lanakai’s tone changed. Philo sensed the desperation, could almost see his pleading face. “They’ve got one of my associates. If I don’t cooperate, she ends up like the others.”
She, Lanakai said. A female prisoner held by a crime cult that prided itself in barbaric loyalty to its male-dominated organization. Things would not bode well for this “she,” before, during, and after her death.
Philo’s mind continued rebooting, recalculating. He needed more info, and Lanakai kept talking.
“You might remember her. She was with me the night of the Philly fight. She’s a cleaner like you, except she works for me. Or she did.”
She’d told Philo her name, then told him to forget it. Told him to forget her avocation, and to forget who she did it for. Knowing who she was, she’d said, would be too dangerous.
But Philo hadn’t forgotten her; no way could he forget so kindred a soul. To not betray what he felt for her—it wasn’t covetous or flirtatious, it was an affinity, an appreciation, an understanding—to not give Wally any sort of upper hand about her, he’d need to short circuit the rest of this discussion.
“I don’t want a name. The less I know about her, the better. So here’s the deal. It’s your lucky day, Lanakai. I’m already in the islands on vacation. I will help you—”
He needed to keep Lanakai off balance. Needed to keep him from sensing any of Philo’s personal connection to her. Better for him to come across like an opportunistic bastard.
“—for two hundred grand. Take it or leave it.”
24
A handcuffed Kaipo paced in her room in the one-story wing of a shitty pay-by-the-hour Kauai motel. One double bed. Cable TV with every other channel pay-per-view porn. A bathroom with a painted cement floor that extended into the shower, the shower floor flush with the rest of the bathroom. Easy to clean with a hose, like at a gym or the penguin exhibit at the zoo.
Her use to the Yakuza so far had been a posed soft-core porn photo taken on a cell phone. A degrading picture, but no other harm done. A marketing photo meant for one customer only, as bait: Wally Lanakai.
A fist pounded on her door. “Step back,” a man’s voice said. “We’re coming in.”
With breakfast, she hoped. She did as she was told, moved away from the door. Two Japanese men entered, well-groomed in their dark suits and shined shoes. Conspicuous in one man’s hands were leg irons and chains. The other man was the letch they’d posed her with in the racy photo, a big guy whose smile said he would totally enjoy seeing her in these chains.
“What, no breakfast?” she said.
“You will eat breakfast with the oyabun,” the man with the leg irons said, “but you will need to wear these.”
Mr. Yabuki’s motel room was next to hers. They walked her in, her chains dragging. Better accommodations than hers, but not by much. The table had been set for two: flowers, napkins, Chinet dishware and utensils. The bags the food came in said Uber Eats, their contents filled with local mom-and-pop restaurant containers. A deadpan Mr. Yabuki, seated and already eating, gestured at his men with his fork to deposit her in the seat across from him. The cuffs and the leg irons came off, but the handguns came out, all trained on her.
“American comfort food plus some fruit and vegetables and some sushi,” Mr. Yabuki said. “Eat.”
She raised a fork; the guns followed its path. She put the fork down, pissed. Mr. Yabuki grunted in Japanese. The weapons returned to the holsters under their jackets.
“Let me begin. We are not animals, Ms. Mawpaw. We are businessmen. I brought you in here with me this morning to A, feed you some breakfast, B, update you that Wally Lanakai has been properly incented and is now mulling over a proposition I made that concerns you. He is still, by the way, quite attached to you. And C, you are here to understand what is happening. It is something much larger than me ridding the islands of Ka Hui.” He glanced at her plate. “You are not eating. You need to eat.”
She eyed the food, chose to address her host. “Wally will not stay in the islands. He’s here to make a quick buck and to get leads on me, then leave. Law enforcement’s been through this with him one time already, will never let him stay. Once he leaves”—she raised her fork, took a small bite—“the police will become more interested in you.”
“Ms. Mawpaw.” Mr. Yabuki continued to eat, chewing through his words. “That does not worry me. Our organization is bigger, older, smarter, and more venerable than anything Ka Hui ever was. We are flourishing.”
“In Japan,” she said. “Here in the islands, you’re viewed as interlopers who should stay in their own lanes. Only the nikkejin revere you, afraid their Japanese-American heritage could betray them again. The rest of the islanders find you a pesky nuisance. A bug that needs to be squashed. The Feds eliminated Ka Hui first, with good reason. The big dogs. The cops will get around to you soon enough. They haven’t yet because you never mattered.”
Mr. Yabuki slowed his chewing, stayed interested in his plate, snubbed her rudeness, his deadpan face returning. His non-reaction was chilling, something Kaipo felt from across the table.
He put down his fork, used his napkin on his mouth, a
nd moved his plate out of the way. He folded his hands on the table and finally gave her his full attention, evaluating her more closely. He cleared his throat.
“You were going to return to Wally Lanakai when we picked you up, correct?” he said.
“I need to talk him out of his organ trafficking efforts here in the islands.”
“Ah, yes. Sure. It would more likely have turned into you becoming his whore in return for him rethinking his transplant business. ‘I will let you fuck me if you stop exploiting the people here.’ Noble, but nothing more involved than that. You would satisfy his carnal needs, like a good whore does, with the whore hoping she might ‘change him.’” He air-quoted.
She stayed silent, didn’t snap at the chum Yabuki had tossed in the water.
“You are wasting your time, Ms. Mawpaw. Lanakai-san has had a taste of the biggest paydays his black-market organs could ever demand. Any acquiescence to you would be temporary. Once he gets in your pants with regularity, he will go back to exploiting Miakamiians. Your people. The immune ones. My approach is smarter. It saves Ka Hui and the Yakuza a lot of trouble. Here it is: if I eliminate the predator’s food source, I eliminate the predator.”
Killing native Miakamiians. The raw materials for Wally’s scheme.
“The first was the helicopter pilot. Dramatic, and it cripples the tourism for that disgusting blemish of an island and the man who owns it. I plan to keep going until all the islanders are dead. And eliminating the food source gets Lanakai out of Hawaii for the long haul. That makes your approach moot.”
And would make her moot, too, in relation to Mr. Yabuki. He knew her origin, her ethnicity. It could have come from a good guess on his part, or it could have been from real research, but regardless, he knew.
“So you intend to kill me.”
“It could have gone that way, yes. But lucky for you, Lanakai is making it interesting. We have a wager. If he wins, I promised him he would get you back in one piece. If he loses, he won’t. You have five minutes to finish what’s left on your plate, Ms. Mawpaw.”
“You are wrong, Mr. Yabuki.”
“And how is that?”
“You—the Yakuza—are animals. To kill innocent people, just to eliminate a competitor, is barbaric. But you can’t pull it off. You don’t know who or where they are.”
Kaipo was fishing. The more she could learn about his agenda…
Mr. Yabuki spoke in Japanese to an attending Yakuza who responded by removing his breakfast dishes from the table and replacing them with a folder. Mr. Yabuki pulled out some papers and put on a pair of glasses.
“If you live on Miakamii, or anywhere else in the islands”—he shuffled the paper pile—“I know where each of you calls home as of the last two U.S. censuses. All one hundred sixty of you. A matter of public record, as are the number of occupied households on your island. But the names and home addresses of all who migrated from the island are not. The census databases are, however, eminently hackable. Plus the genealogy services are wonderful tools. We connected the dots. The ones who died, the ones who stayed, the ones who moved elsewhere in the islands, and—”
Kaipo had moved to the U.S.
“And by process of elimination, the ones, if any, who have left Hawaii entirely. Lanakai is complaining, but we are giving him exactly what he wants, Miakamii livers, just accelerating the process a bit. As an aside, there was only one Miakamii native who left Hawaii. That, of course, is you. And, as quite the convenient circumstance for us, here you are in person.”
Mr. Yabuki barked an order and the chains and cuffs reappeared. Kaipo was brought to her feet and shackled again. What served as breakfast time was over.
“Get your rest, Ms. Mawpaw. I’m busy making arrangements with Lanakai regarding our bet. He doesn’t have a chance at winning you back, but I’ll keep you in good condition, and safe, so he thinks he does. Until your fate can be determined.”
25
“I can handle it, Philo sir. I need to see it.”
A drive to the Kauai police station in mid-afternoon. They hoofed it to the front entrance from the parking lot, Patrick still defending his decision to see a certain video after Philo had confirmed his eagerness.
“It’s why we’re here in the islands, sir. Vacation and discovery, sir.”
“Exactly, Patrick.”
“Mr. Logan said it could be him, sir.”
“That’s what he said on the phone, bud.”
“I can do this.”
“I think you’re good for it, Patrick.”
Philo’s opinion of Douglas Logan had changed. He knew him only as an ornery old bastard, but he was one helluva protective ornery old bastard when it came to that small speck of an island, him advocating for every islander that Miakamii had ever produced during his reign as its steward. He’d gone out of his way to engage the police chief regarding a fifteen-plus-year-old crime involving the homicide of a transplanted Miakamiian who was, quite possibly, Patrick’s father.
The police had footage from the shop’s security cameras. A street-corner grocery store. All the players in the video had been identified at the time of the crime. The shop owner was killed by one of his customers. It turned into an involuntary manslaughter conviction, the bullet meant for another customer. Logan recalled the circumstances and had the police find the evidence video. He then called Philo to relate what the video showed: “The shooting was witnessed by the store owner’s young son… pre-teen… both father and son were from Miakamii. It was an argument between two customers…”
Douglas Logan arrived after them, grunted an acknowledgment to the cop on duty at the front desk, and thumbed the waiting Philo and Patrick through the doors to the detectives’ bullpen. “Chief Koo will meet us in an interrogation room with the detective. Follow me.”
No half-measures when it came to Douglas Logan, everything at full speed including his stride, plus Logan had been through this already. They marched up an aisle and followed Logan into a hallway. Detective Ujikawa ushered them all into a side room.
“Sit here, gentlemen,” the detective said, directing them to the seats turned around to face front and center for the best view of an overhead flat screen. “Before we roll the footage, Chief Koo would like to say a few words.”
“Mr. Stakes.” The police chief’s crusty, pragmatic disposition rivaled Douglas Logan’s. Philo could see him alongside Logan on the beach in ten years, the two of them surfcasting while still sniping at each other. Also like Logan, underneath the chief’s hardened crust, his compassion showed.
“This is gruesome footage. There is no audio. The film is spliced together from three cameras, and is the film used during the original trial. It shows a homicide. The perpetrator was caught, convicted, and he went to prison. Justice was served, but for grieving families there is only nominal satisfaction from seeing someone go to jail. Detective, go ahead, please.”
The black-and-white film footage started, was shadowy but cleared up quickly, from an outside camera above the store’s front door. Parked cars lined the street, at least one with its flashers on. A Japanese man entered the store, was casually dressed, his collar open, showing gold neck bling, a bare chest under it, his long pants sharply creased. The second camera, trained on the first fifteen or so feet of the store’s interior, picked him up as he selected a few packs of chewing gum, then grabbed a single red rose in a tube.
“It was Valentine’s Day,” Chief Koo offered.
The customer moved out of the frame and passed a young man, more like a kid, who was stocking shelves.
“Pause the video,” Koo said. He waited for a reaction from Patrick. “Anything familiar here, Mr. Stakes?”
“No, sir.”
The spliced footage continued, moving onto a third overhead camera, this one trained on the cashier, a Hawaiian man, the camera above and behind him, hanging from the ceiling. The man with the gum packs and the single red rose approached the counter. The camera showed the aisle that ran the entire length of
the store from the cashier counter to the entrance door, a north-south view from on high.
Chief Koo spoke. “Pay attention to what goes on behind this customer.”
A second customer entered the screen from the right, a man, this one Hawaiian, someone who was already in the store. He stood behind the first customer in line, looked past him, over the man’s shoulder, to make eye contact with the cashier.
“Stop the film, Detective,” Koo said. “Here is the tell that made all the difference in the world to the cashier, who was the store owner.”
The cashier’s nod was almost imperceptible, directed at the second customer in line. The detective re-ran it in slow motion a few times to prove what was there: the nod was a signal. The film started up again.
The second customer started an argument, words only, no threatening gestures, until the Japanese customer puffed up his chest and got nose to nose with him. The cashier could be seen leaving the counter and reentering the camera footage in the rear, behind the arguing men, who now circled each other. The cashier grabbed his son’s shoulders and shoved him out of the aisle, off camera.
In full view from behind, the Hawaiian man punched the other customer to the floor, ripped the rose tube out of his hand, and pushed the thorny rose into the Japanese customer’s mouth, cramming it down the man’s throat with both hands until he drew his gun and put it under the Japanese man’s chin.
Over the next three seconds the struggle moved the gun from the throat of one man to the cheek of the other before it went off. Neither customer was hit, but the cashier, still in the aisle, took a bullet to the mouth and was killed instantly. When the gun fired, it was in the Hawaiian man’s hand.
Chief Koo glanced at Mr. Logan. His cue. “Douglas?”