Penniless Hearts

by Eve Gaal

  Reaching out and quickly overpowering her, the bald one trapped Tina's long elegant arms behind her, while telling The Fist to hold on and put away his gun. His filthy hand clamped over Tina's mouth, and he pulled duct tape out of his back pocket, sealing her lips. “Don't kill him,” he said, wrestling nylon cord out of his pocket, and tying it around her wrists. “We'll just leave Darin a little surprise for when he comes back. The mutha-fukka will know we mean business.” Then he helped The Fist tie up Ron and they pushed him into a small office near the corridor. A few seconds later they pushed Tina into the same office, her ankles also tightly bound. “Normally, my buddy here would finish you both off in a heartbeat, but I want my money and Darin has it.” Kicking Ron, he turned to Tina and said, “Just tell Darin I want my money, and we'll be back tomorrow with the stuff.” He then turned to The Fist, “Right?” He sneered, picking up the worn briefcase.

  “You know it. Let's go.” The Fist slammed the door shut and Tina looked up at the Corolla brochure sealing the window.

  * * *

  Chapter Sixty-One

  John couldn't believe his tear-filled eyes. “Carl, is that you?” he yelled across the lobby. Carl held a hotel towel under his right arm and a plastic bag with his shirt and pants in his left hand. He wore a knee-length bathing suit, and his chest and face were as red as the last picked ripest strawberry of the season. “What happened to you?” John asked, approaching the older man who smiled and waved.

  “Fell asleep out there under the blasting sun.” Carl replied, “I'm sure glad to see you John. You weren't here earlier were you? I might be old, but I could have sworn I saw you kissing someone,” Carl laughed. He knew John was a straight shooter, who wouldn't cheat on Penny.

  Wiping tears off his face, John said, “It's a long story, but you might have seen me. I'm glad to see you too, but right now, I've got to go.” Tourists kept bumping into him and filling the elevators. “Tina called and said you're in 422, right?” John's hands were shaking and he moved to put them into his pockets. Hopefully Carl didn't notice his blubbering watery eyes.

  “Yeah,” Carl said, seeing something strange in John's demeanor. “I'm in 422. Come on up and I'll take a quick shower before we get some chow.”

  “Can't right now,” John said, “we might have a problem, a serious problem.”

  “What John? You look paler than I did this morning. Something wrong, I mean besides your headache?”

  “I don't know,” John walked slowly toward the elevator with Carl, “I have to find out before I talk about it.” Pushing the elevator button furiously, he returned his shaking hand to his pocket. “That's going to hurt tomorrow,” he said looking at Carl's chest.

  “Oh, I'm all right. We Navy men are used to a little sun. It's the peeling I hate the most.”

  “Well, I've got to go.” John said, with deeply furrowed eyebrows.

  Carl wondered what mysterious development had caused John to look depressed. Maybe he had found out about the man Penny wrote about in her note. “Were you kissing that girl just to make Penny jealous?” he asked in a humorous tone. He liked John and hated seeing him upset. “You knew it would happen sooner or later, my friend.”

  “What?” John asked. He backed away when the elevator opened.

  “You never asked her to marry you, John. What were you thinking?” Wiping sand off his right foot, Carl got in the elevator and said, “It was just a matter of time before she met someone else.” Five teenagers crowded in after Carl, with wet hair and colorful beach towels.

  The elevator closed and John stared at the shiny door for what seemed like a long time.

  * * *

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  “Hi Penny,” a woman, smiling a fake smile and holding a clipboard, entered the interrogation room. She had a small bag of chips in her hand and she pulled a can of cola out of the pocket of her white smock. “I figured you're probably hungry by now, so I brought you a snack. Here, I might even have a candy bar on my desk.”

  “Thanks,” Penny looked at her and wondered what they proposed to do to her next. “I guess I'm not being released?” She asked, taking the chips.

  “No, dear.” The woman said, replacing her phony smile with a poker face. Setting the can down in front of Penny, she glanced at her clipboard.

  “Who are you?” Penny asked, opening the chips and putting one in her mouth. The white smock indicated she might be a shrink or a doctor. Thick black framed glasses made her appear wise, but the way they pushed down on the bridge of her tiny nose, seemed uncomfortable. If she could live her life with those glasses, Penny surmised, she must not be too brilliant.

  “I'm the psychiatrist who has been appointed to this case.” She said pulling the chair out and sitting down.

  “Wonderful,” Penny said crunching down on a chip. Aware of her sarcasm, she considered the circumstances, deciding she really didn't care about impressing this doctor or anyone else.

  “Penny,” the shrink said somewhat gently, “I'll be honest with you. Nobody's buying your story about trespassing and why did you tell the detective you were Pele?” Clearing her throat she continued, “Even more incriminating is the latest drug shipment accusation related to the helicopter pilot and your phone calls to a guy called Darin. Do you know a guy called Darin?”

  “Kind of, but don't you think I should get a lawyer before I answer any more of your questions?” Penny asked, staring intently at a box-shaped chip before taking a bite.

  “I'm not sure that will be necessary if I find you mentally incapable of going through with the investigation and subsequent trial. If we show that you are incompetent then there are no proceedings. This is serious stuff with very severe consequences, and the detective already has the chief convinced you're–let me just say–” she paused, “unstable.” The psychiatrist looked down at her notes and back up to Penny, “I do want to hear about Pele, but I'm having trouble with the incriminating drug charges. Especially since, I don't see why you would come to Hawaii alone, unless you needed to make a shipment. Why go to Niihau, unless you were using that as a scheme to throw everyone off your trail? You just admitted you know Darin, and we've been following his moves for years. The guy is allegedly one of Hawaii's biggest suppliers of illegal narcotics. It's been a tough case to crack and even tougher to prove. Finally, they nabbed one of his managers, and it's only a matter of time before Darin gets caught too.” The doctor watched Penny's expressions while making notations.

  “I had no idea Darin did stuff like that. Wow.” Penny sighed, calmly reaching for the cola to quench her aching soul. “Besides, I don't know him very well,” she said swallowing.

  “Our records indicate otherwise.” Then glancing up at the clock she asked, “Don't you work with his girlfriend, Tina?”

  “Yes, but I only called him because I needed a ride to the airport.”

  Surprised, the doctor smiled, maliciously arching her eyebrows, “In a helicopter?”

  “He offered me a free island tour, but the pilot, that Mac guy, had an emergency and left me on Niihau.”

  “Yes, well we already have that story and it doesn't explain the ticket to Hilo in your bag.” She scribbled something and asked, “Now, what about this hallucinatory Pele business?”

  “I was kidding.” Penny said, rolling her eyes, trying desperately to remain calm and rational. Stupid detective, she thought. The ones on television usually had a sense of humor.

  “Do you always kid around with detectives who have a certain woman's prison in mind for all non-native criminals? In case you didn't know, the prison for thieves and trespassers also houses murderers, retired prostitutes and semi-rehabilitated drug addicts. I don't think you'd like it. In fact,” She stopped and smiled her phony smile, “your best bet would be to continue the mentally unstable ploy. That is unless you start giving us some lucid answers that will shed some earth shattering light on why you're here in the first place.” It didn't seem like any of her questions were being answered, and the doctor st
arted to think that Penny might actually be a user rather than a seller of drugs. “When was the last time you got high Penny?”

  “Excuse me?” Penny's heart beat faster, and she felt shocked by the question.

  “I've never been high on drugs; I don't need drugs to be high. I'm usually high on life,” she said staring at the gold heart on the doctor's neck. A gold heart-shaped pendant hung gracefully from a thin gold chain. How did this woman get a gold heart around her neck? Penny imagined the woman looking at the jewelry case in the mall, and selecting the necklace herself.

  The door opened, and holiday music filled the room. The detective stood in the door and said, “We just got a weird call from Waikiki police.”

  “What's up?” the doctor asked, her eyes still focused on Penny's green irises.

  “Some guy saw the helicopter crash report today and the station erroneously reported a graphic artist from a mainland newspaper being on board as one of the passengers.”

  “Okay, I saw the report. The guy went down from the smoke or something. What about it?” The doctor looked at the detective and then at her watch.

  “I guess the report said the graphic artist died, but it didn't say his or her name.”

  Penny listened to the music, 'ruppa-pum-pum, ruppa-pum-pum.' The Little Drummer Boy had been her mother's favorite Christmas song. Humming the music to herself, she became oblivious to the conversation taking place around her.

  “Right, but it turned out there was no graphic artist on board after all. I followed the whole story and I even heard the reporter correct her previous account. So?” The doctor asked impatiently.

  “That Mac guy–the decorated war-veteran pilot who crashed, well, he's one of Darin Martin's best friends and since we ran a background check on this perpetrator, I found out she's an artist for The Globe.”

  “I'm sorry, the point is?” Confused, the doctor waited for an explanation, her curiosity piqued.

  “I think the guy at the Waikiki station was looking for her,” he said, pointing at Penny, “Except he thinks she's dead. The dumb bastard just implicated her in the drug shipment without even knowing it.”

  The doctor shook her head in disbelief, “She did just admit to knowing the Martin fellow.”

  “Really? Maybe she's less loopy than I thought.” The detective pointed again, only this time he held his hand in the shape of a gun, pretending to fire it and then pretending to blow out the smoke by blowing on his index finger. “How many ccs have you given her?”

  “None yet,” the doctor replied. “She appears pretty calm to me. I don't think she's 5150.”

  Penny saw him point, but held her tongue, forcing her lips into a grin. She didn't know what they were talking about and she really didn't even care. Tapping on the table with her finger, 'Ruppa-pum-pum, ruppa-pum-pum,' she whispered. If this boring inquisition had any resemblance to what constituted adventure, then John was right. Adventures are overrated.

  “Who was the guy at the Waikiki station looking for?” The doctor asked. “Did you get a name?”

  “A girl called Penny.”

  * * *

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  “What do you mean you can't talk about it?” John shouted at the clerk sitting behind the police station counter. “I need to know what's going on. It could be my girlfriend. I need to know if she's even alive.” Hanging onto the counter with both hands, he felt the blood rush into his aching temples, making his head throb like a jungle drum, albeit slightly out of sync with the faster pace of his beating heart.

  “Please, have a seat sir,” she said, pointing to orange plastic chairs. Opting to stand, he watched the woman carry on with paperwork. He listened to her vacuous phone conversations and watched her file her nails. The more he waited, the more he wanted to rip the wooden counter out of the wall with his bare hands.

  Annoyed, she looked up at John who stood snorting at the counter like a bull waiting for the gate to open at a rodeo. “Sir, we cannot talk about that case. If you'd like to speak to an officer, I will call someone for you to talk to, but it may take some time, they are all very busy today.” She wrote something down, looked up at John and said, “You need to settle down mister, this is a police station and I'm sure you don't want anyone thinking you're disturbing the peace.” Handing him a form she said, “Here's a pen, why don't you fill out this missing person's report?” Attaching the sheet to a clipboard, she laid it on the shiny counter.

  An hour passed since John had walked in and asked about the helicopter report and the missing, possibly dead passenger. The heavy-set woman in the khaki uniform picked up her nail file again and started filing long burgundy nails. He could hear her chatting away on the phone, “No, I don't like that diet either,” she told her friend on the other end of the phone, “You can't have carbs, you know.”

  The minutes seemed like hours and finally John stepped back up to the desk to inquire about the accident, “Well, is there anyone who can tell me about the helicopter crash on the Big Island?”

  “Not right now,” she said, in a high-octave shrill voice. “Sir, I need you to sit down.” She pointed a recently filed nail towards the waiting area and asked, “Did you fill out the missing person's report?”

  “No,” John replied, “I wanted to talk to someone first.” Hunger didn't seem to mix well with the maraschino cherry and the bile forming in his stomach. Leaning against the counter for support, he held onto his stomach with both hands.

  Observing John's bandages, she assumed a barroom fight or surfing accident had caused his injuries. Tourists sure knew how to let their hair down and find trouble, she thought. After five years at the Waikiki station, she had seen it all. “Sir, are you okay?” she asked in a clipped, curt tone, making him realize he had better tell her what she wanted to hear.

  “I'm fine, but I would be a whole lot better if I could speak to someone about that crash.” Speaking deliberately, he tried hiding his physical and emotional pain.

  “I will call someone as soon as you fill out that form.” She said, stopping after every syllable, as if he were mentally challenged.

  John looked her in the eyes, trying to appeal to her softer side. “Do you have a boyfriend, or a husband?”

  “Yes, I do, but that's none of your business.” She wrote another note on her pad. “Are you trying to pick me up?” It occurred to her, he could be a sexual predator or a weirdo out on bail.

  The idea of him picking her up made the bile rise higher in his throat. He looked around for an ashtray or trashcan in case he needed to puke. “No, Ma'am, I'm just wondering how you would feel if something happened to your significant other and you didn't know how they were doing, or if they were alive?”

  “I would fill out that form.” She pointed at the clipboard on the counter. “Now sit down, before I tell the chief you're bothering me.”

  John preferred to obey and do what he needed to do within the confines of reasonable behavior. He had always listened to authority, acting gentlemanly and kind towards everyone. His proud parents had raised him well. He never swore unless he hit his thumb with a hammer and he treated women with courtesy and respect. Leaving a pretty lady like Heidi in the hotel bar made him feel horrible, but this woman deserved his wrath. She was acting beyond the limitations of decency.

  “Go tell him,” he screamed. “Go tell the chief I'm bothering you. Please.” His face was red, and his voice carried throughout the entire building. The rotund woman didn't budge.

  When the phone started ringing, she smiled, and spoke into the receiver, “Waikiki Station, may I help you?”

  A tall, balding man wearing a uniform came around the corner and asked, “Is there a problem here?”

  * * *

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  The cops figured that the ships came into the harbor in Hilo and transported everything by chopper to Darin, who laundered the income into auto contracts and leasing agreements. He then distributed the actual drugs with contacts on the mainland with sleazy b
ottom feeders they finally caught on camera. They had most of the puzzle pieces put together, but they still had dangling holes in their theory.

  The Channel Two helicopter pilot knew about the latest sting. His station manager had briefed him about Darin and the suspicious nature of Mac's visits to the Big Island. After all, Mac did island tours in Kauai and frequent detours to the Big Island didn't make sense.

  When the pilot soared past the newsroom offices, Darin poked his head up asking, “Where you headed?”

  “Sorry,” the pilot mumbled into his microphone, “I have to make a detour.” Worried, but trying to appear calm, he looked back at Mac and then at Darin. Darin's arms were bigger than most people's thighs and even with a bad leg, Mac could probably overpower him. Hoping nothing would get out of hand, he silently prayed and continued flying, one mile past the station, two miles….

  “What kind of detour? You know my friend needs a doctor.” Darin said, his face showing serious concern.

  “Of course, I'm going to get some help,” the pilot replied, striving to maintain his cool. Three miles…four…shit, where in the hell were they sending him? This was going to be the biggest bust in Hawaii's history, and he needed to stay focused. Drugs and corruption didn't belong in his homeland and he wanted to help transport their narcotic selling asses to jail. Five miles…six.

  Darin looked over at Mac resting in the back with his eyes closed, “You still with us?”

  “Barely, it really hurts,” he groaned.

  Twisting his body around and bending over Mac, Darin whispered, “I think this fool is taking us somewhere. Do you have your gun?”