One Man's Paradise

by Douglas Corleone

  I finish counting the bills and I know exactly where they came from. Directly from the top, the kingpin, whoever that is. The money is meant to assure Turi that the organization will take care of him, so long as he keeps his fucking mouth shut. It also assures the organization that Turi won’t get stuck with some incompetent public defender who would have Turi singing like a canary before the first court appearance. Give Turi the money to give to the lawyer and everyone is happy. Any lawyer with any sense and a lick of self-preservation would know he can’t flip this client like a pancake on the griddle. The client will either get off on a technicality or do his time like a man. As far as all parties involved are concerned, there is no organization. Turi is a freelancer, and the ice, it fell from the sky.

  I hand Turi a receipt and I thank him. The interview is over, but he doesn’t stand. Maybe with all that girth, he simply can’t.

  “You new to the islands, brah?” he asks.

  For a paltry thirty-five hundred bucks he wants to chat. For the full five grand, I’d take him over to Sand Bar for some afternoon karaoke, but fifteen hundred is still sitting in his pocket instead of on top of my desk where it belongs. Instead of paying my rent, it’ll no doubt end up with Turi in McDonald’s, assuming he can still fit through their door.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I recently moved here from New York.”

  Although I didn’t think it possible, his smile widens.

  “Welcome to my island, Mistah C.”

  Moku Nui belongs to Palani. Oahu belongs to Turi. I better plant a flag somewhere before all the good islands are taken.

  “I see you live in Kailua,” I say, looking over his client intake form.

  “Yeah, brah. All my life.”

  I recognize the address, too. It is only a block away from Nikki’s cottage, where I spent this past Saturday night after driving her home from Waikiki. She consumed much of my thoughts on Sunday, such that I missed much of the Giants kicking hell out of the Cowboys.

  “Have you ever left Oahu?” I ask.

  Turi smirks, motions with his head to the window behind me. I swivel in my chair to face, briefly, the mountains like powerful giants reclining to look deep into the heavens.

  “Why would I ever do that?” he says.

  I open my desk drawer and retrieve a stack of freshly printed business cards with THE CORVELLI LAW FIRM embossed above my name at the top. I hand him a stack of fifty or so.

  “These are for your buddies.”

  “T’anks,” he says. “I’ll make sure my brothers get these.” Turi reaches into his back pocket, the client chair creaking under him as he shifts his weight. He pulls out a card of his own and hands it to me.

  “You ever have any problems, you ever need anything, you give me a call. I got your back, Mistah C.”

  I take the card and thank him. It reads only T, followed by just six numbers.

  “The last digit,” he says, “is one.”

  “One?”

  “Yeah. One. That’s for how many people I trust, including myself.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Not five minutes after Turi trucks his wide load out the door does Jake walk in with a file folder tucked under his arm.

  “I just got off the horn with Flan,” he says, dropping into the client chair vacated by Turi. “He was able to get the information you asked for.”

  After my Saturday-morning meeting with Palani on Moku Nui, I telephoned Flan and asked him to obtain a list of Shannon’s professors at the law school. I look at my watch. Not yet noon on Monday. I’ll give Flan this, he works fast.

  Shannon’s remark to Palani that her grades would suffer if she stood up the man she was scheduled to meet in Waikiki the following day may have been a brush-off. Then again, it may have been more. It’s a stone Palani dropped in my path, and for once, true to my word, I intend to overturn it.

  Jake flips through the contents of the folder and finds what he’s looking for. He squints at the page as I wait.

  And wait.

  I consider reaching across my cluttered desk and plucking it from his hand. Why the hell doesn’t he get a pair of glasses? Is he too vain? Does he fear they will not go well with his wrinkled skin and rosy gin blossoms? I pull a nail off my index finger, spit it into the nearby wastebasket, and continue to wait.

  “Shannon’s most recent professors are all at the law school lecturing as scheduled,” he says. I sigh and crack my knuckles. So much for my new theory.

  “But,” he says, raising that one finger in the air, “one of her first-year professors is on sabbatical.”

  “Tell me it’s a male,” I say.

  “It’s a male. And there’s more.”

  My ass literally moves to the edge of my seat without my realizing it until I nearly fall off.

  “This morning, Flan called the girl’s hotel, the Grand Polynesian. He’s there.”

  “He’s there?”

  “He’s there. And what’s more . . . You’re gonna get an erection when you hear this, son.”

  “I doubt I’ll get an erection, Jake.”

  “Flan checked with a friend of his at Continental Airlines. The professor arrived at Honolulu Airport seven hours before Shannon was last seen alive.”

  “Jake,” I say.

  “Yeah?”

  “I have an erection.”

  “I knew you would, son. I knew you would.”

  Jake hands me the file folder containing the handwritten notes from his conversation with Flan, and just like that I have another suspect in the murder of Shannon Douglas, albeit a law professor. The professor’s name is Jim Catus, and I suspect he’ll have a squeaky-clean history. Nevertheless, Catus clearly now shares the same motive as my client. And if he doesn’t have an alibi—a tremendous if in this world of hotel video surveillance—he is the walking incarnate of reasonable doubt.

  If Shannon truly did not expect the professor until the next day, and he arrived early, it is possible, in a world of infinite possibilities, that he, and not my client, stumbled onto her and Palani’s little game of hide-the-sausage on the beach. And if that is possible, then it is possible, too, that he killed her in a fit of jealous rage. I’m not sure I would buy it were I sitting on the jury, but I’ll not have to. I’ll be the one selling it.

  I’m jumping the gun, I know. The way I jumped the gun in the Brandon Glenn case. Professor Catus is my new Carson Reese. I have to slow things down. I have to trap Catus under a glass and make sure he can’t wiggle his way free like Reese. The burden of proof hasn’t changed. I don’t need to convince a jury that Catus killed Shannon, just that it is possible he did. The question now seems to be, of what do I need to convince myself?

  “Do you have any idea of when the professor is splitting?” I ask.

  “He has a return ticket for next weekend, but with all that’s going on, who knows?”

  “I’ll get to him tonight, see what he has to say. As far as we know, the police haven’t even looked in his direction, so I might just catch him off guard.”

  “What if you scare him off, son?”

  “All the better. It’ll make him look guilty as hell.”

  “By the way,” Jake says, “how did your two interviews go on Saturday?”

  The heat is rising in my face. I can feel it, and I try with futility to hold it back. I am blushing the way I did under the glow of the porch light in front of Nikki’s cottage, and once again I’ve nowhere to hide.

  “One went better than the other,” I say. “In fact, one went very well, indeed.”

  “Well, son,” Jake says, rising slowly from his chair, “let’s hope your interview tonight goes at least as well as that.”

  “Somehow,” I say under my breath, “I doubt that.”

  CHAPTER 15

  I am prepared to pull the fire alarm on the fifteenth floor at the Grand Polynesian hotel. I am prepared to smash the headlights on his rental car and alert the valet. I am prepared to call in a bomb threat, really I am. I am prepared to do just about a
nything to get Professor Jim Catus out of his room and downstairs so that I can pull him aside and speak to him alone.

  As it turns out, I don’t have to do anything. I recognize him immediately from his photographs on the law school’s Web site. I recognize the sharp profile, the thinning gray hair. I even recognize the clothes. Apparently, he didn’t get the memo on the dress code here in the tropics. He’s wearing a sport jacket with suede patches at the elbows, a pair of charcoal gabardine slacks.

  It’s not so much luck, my spotting him. I have been sitting here in the lobby of the Grand Polynesian for nearly three and a half hours contemplating which clever stunt I should pull to get the professor out from his room. I had pretty much settled on the fire alarm when I caught sight of him stepping out of the elevator with a copy of the Honolulu Advertiser in hand.

  It is fortunate I marked him. I was less than thrilled with the idea of causing such chaos at this immense resort. Sure, there was that nervous excitement, like the time Milt and I swiped the city attorney’s briefcase containing his entire legal file right before the civil trial in a police brutality case and chucked it in the garbage. We watched the city attorney squirm before the judge until finally he caved, making us a high six-figure offer to resolve the case. Ah, the good old days.

  But this would have been different. The Grand Polynesian is the largest resort in Waikiki, with over three thousand rooms, six swimming pools, fourteen restaurants, and nearly a hundred shops. The thought of seeing five thousand guests and two thousand employees scampering out of the hotel gave me pause. But the whole point is now moot, and I can think myself quite cool for having devised the scheme and for having the willingness to follow through with it. Whether I would actually have or not.

  Here I am now, watching my subject. I am James fucking Bond, 007 himself.

  I duck behind a Polynesian plant and see my subject stop to view the menu outside the Rainbow Restaurant in the main lobby. A leaf from the plant tickles my nose. I push it out of my face, but it’s rubbery and it bounces back, hits me in the eye. Goddamn, it hurts. I rub my eye and scratch my nose. I look back toward the Rainbow Restaurant and my subject is gone.

  When I eye Catus again, he is heading for the door. I take four strides toward him before my right foot slides out from under me causing me to crash onto the marble floor. My spine is just one great length of pain as three bellhops rush to my aid. Two of them assist me to my feet while the third helpfully points to the yellow sign ten yards away reading CAUTION: WET FLOOR. I look past them to see Catus looking back toward the commotion before exiting to the street.

  What would 007 do? I decide not to file a report, although I’m sure I could’ve made at least ten grand off the fall. I brush myself off and tell the bellhops I don’t need any medical attention. One of them attempts to hand me a Band-Aid for my fractured vertebrae. Another informs me there’s karaoke tonight in the Sunshine Lounge. The third son of a bitch is still pointing at the sign.

  I push them all aside and continue to the door, making it without incident.

  I step into the night and think the sport jacket might not have been such a bad idea after all. It’s chilly, but I never heard James Bond say it’s chilly, so I push the thought aside. I follow Catus from Kalia to Kalakaua, where he window-shops here and there. While I watch him standing outside an art store eyeing up a large wooden dolphin, I decide that tailing suspects is much more exciting in the movies than it is in real life.

  I am hoping he’ll stop at a restaurant, or better yet, a bar. I could use some drinks, some liquid courage before beginning my inquisition.

  He walks up a block to Kuhio, and I keep pace about eighty feet behind.

  My cell phone vibrates in my right front pocket and I curse the person who invented them. I pull the damned thing from my pocket and the caller ID reads jake.

  “Speak,” I snap into the phone.

  “Kevin? May I speak to Kevin please? Kevin, is that you?”

  I just don’t get it. I could understand it if Jake were calling someone’s home and more than one person could have picked up the phone. But this is my cell phone. He knows it’s my cell phone. Who the hell is going to answer it besides me?

  “Yeah, Jake, it’s me.”

  “How did it go with the professor?”

  I don’t tell him that I spent three and a half hours trying to decide how to get him out of his room. I don’t tell him about the incident with the plant or that I nearly broke my neck on the wet marble floor.

  “I have him in my shights,” I say in my best Sean Connery voice.

  “Your shights? What the hell are you talking about?”

  I snap the phone shut. He sounded drunk anyway. I’ll let him know how it went in the morning. I’ve known him but a week, and he’s already growing on me like the ivy up the brick wall at Wrigley Field. I’m starting to like the son of a bitch.

  Catus finally ducks into the Whale Watcher Bar & Grill. I stop outside and wait, giving myself a manicure, biting what’s left of my nails and some of the skin around them.

  I wait outside for ten minutes because I think that’s what they do in the movies. It’ll lessen the chance that he’ll make me when I walk through the door.

  When I step inside, I see him bellied up at the bar, his head buried in the Advertiser. Next to the paper sits an empty Collins glass begging to be filled.

  The Whale Watcher is a dismal blue with a nautical theme that’s making me seasick already. I am surrounded by models of boats, photos of boats, paintings of boats, toy boats, sailboats, girl boats, and boy boats. Even the salad bar is shaped like a boat.

  I find a stool away from Catus at the opposite end of the bar, fearing he will recognize me from the unflattering photo displayed by Gretchen Hurst on her cable news show, All Ears. I make a mental note to make an attempt at getting the “before” photos of Hurst from her plastic surgeon. But right now, I’m all business.

  “A martini,” I say to the bartender when she asks me for my order. “Shaken, not stirred.”

  She turns to grab the shaker, and I add, “Bone-dry. Three olives and a lemon peel.”

  She gives me a look and nods. Maybe it’s the Connery voice. Maybe I need to cut that out.

  “Make that a vodka martini,” I say. “Grey Goose if you have it.” James Bond or no James Bond, there’s nothing I hate worse than gin.

  My plan, if you can call it a plan, is to let him drink a few before I go in for the kill. It’ll give me a chance to drink a few, too. It’ll make the whole night a lot more fun.

  As he takes the first sip of his third Tom Collins, I take down the last of my fourth martini. As they say, one martini is just right, two is too many, and three is not enough. Or some shit like that.

  I head off to the pisser.

  I’m standing at the urinal, draining the lizard, more than slightly dizzy from the drinks, when who stands next to me but the professor himself.

  Hey, you. Yeah, you. Who the hell is following who?

  I hold my tongue, not saying a word. I turn to look at him, and up close in this light I can see the age around his eyes, the loose skin where tight skin used to be. I’ve turned too far, such that I nearly pee down his leg. I turn back and finish the job where I should.

  As I wash my hands at the sink, I watch his image in the mirror. He exits without washing at all. Another solid reason for me to never shake hands with anyone under any circumstances ever again.

  I head back to the bar and spy an empty stool right next to him. I’m drunker than I’d like to be, but what the hell.

  I take my seat next to him and motion toward the paper. “Are you through with this?”

  “Help yourself,” he says without looking at me.

  I take the Honolulu Advertiser, a prop on the stage I’m about to set. I turn to the sports section.

  “That Eli Manning is turning into one hell of a quarterback,” I say. “What a difference a few years make.”

  The photograph of the professor on the
law school’s Web site was taken in his office, a small room cluttered with Giants football memorabilia.

  A clever way for me to break the ice, is it not?

  He’s not taking the bait, not acknowledging me at all. Now I’m getting pissed that he’s ignoring me, so I continue, “Manning’s been patient in the pocket. Using the whole field. Looking more and more like his big brother every game.”

  “I’m not a fan of football,” he says abruptly.

  First he ignores me, now he’s lying. I never liked any of my own law professors and I sure as shit don’t like this one. My clever little Jedi mind tricks aren’t working, so I decide to go at him directly, take him head-on.

  “I suppose,” I say, “teaching law doesn’t leave one much time for leisure activities like following professional football.”

  The professor’s jaw drops to the floor and he doesn’t bother picking it up. The tan he’s worked on for the past week disappears without a trace.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he asks.

  The name’s Bombed. James Bombed.

  “I’m the fucking Welcome Wagon,” I say. “Sorry I’m late, but you never told anyone you were here. Luckily though, I found you.” I wink at him. “Aloha, Jim.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Catus looks around, probably fearing I’m a cop, that every patron in the bar is a cop, including the scruffy old man dressed like a one-eyed pirate three stools down. I allow him time to think before speaking again. Catus is smart. He knows the law. He knows that some conversations can be adjourned, but not escaped. He reaches for his Tom Collins and takes a hit. He’s decided to stay.

  “My name’s Kevin Corvelli,” I say, trying not to slur my words. “I represent Joseph Gianforte Jr. in connection with the charges brought against him for the murder of Shannon Douglas.”

  I look for a reaction, any kind of reaction, but he knew what was coming as soon as I said my name.

  “Did you know Shannon Douglas?” I ask.

  “Don’t play dumb with me, Mr. Corvelli. You know damn well I did, or else you wouldn’t be sitting here.”