Mahu Blood

by Alex Beecroft

  It was just after ten, time to wake Gunter from his beauty sleep. “You have a few minutes to assist the police with their inquiries?” I asked, after he picked up.

  “Are you buying breakfast?” I heard him yawn through the phone.

  “Beachside Broiler in fifteen.” I hung up and told Ray, “I’m taking a run over to Waikīkī. Be back in a while.”

  Gunter and I often ate breakfast at the Beachside Broiler when I lived in Waikīkī. It was a touristy buffet in one of the hotels on Hobron Lane, with an ocean view and pretty decent food. On my way inside I picked up one of the free magazines and found a two-for-one coupon. I was flipping through the magazine and looking at the ads for gay bars when Gunter came in, skinny as ever, his blond buzz cut newly shaved. He wore a skin-tight white tank top with a rampant dragon on it, flames from the dragon’s mouth swirling all the way around to his back.

  “So what’s the occasion?” Gunter asked, as we loaded up our trays with macadamia nut pancakes, sausage patties, fluffy rolls and slices of fresh pineapple and papaya.

  I waited until we were seated, in a quiet corner of the restaurant, before I asked, “You know a guy named Adam O’Malley?”

  216 Neil S. Plakcy

  Gunter’s forkful of hash browns stopped halfway to his mouth. “When you ask me about men, it usually means they’re either under arrest or dead.”

  “Dead.”

  His fork clattered back to his plate. “Shit.”

  “So you did know him?”

  “Yeah. Not that well. I tricked with him a couple of times, and then I gave him a client referral about a year ago. He took me out to a fancy dinner to say thanks.”

  “What kind of referral?”

  “Guy I knew who was starting a business, needed some legal advice. What happened to Adam?”

  I told him about finding O’Malley’s body the day before. He just nodded, and we both ate in silence for a few minutes.

  “That jive with what you knew about him?” I asked, pushing my half-finished plate away. I’d lost my appetite. “That he picked up the wrong kind of guy?”

  “Yeah.” He told me the same story I’d heard from Greg Oshiro—conflicted about his sexuality, O’Malley looked for men who’d treat him badly.

  I shook my head. “Poor son of a bitch. You know any of his friends?”

  “Not really. I’d just see him at bars now and then.”

  “You hear of anybody else who’s gotten in trouble the same way Adam did? Picking up a guy and getting mugged?”

  “Usually it’s the tourists who get in trouble,” Gunter said.

  “But if you want to ask around, this group I belong to, Māhū

  Nation, is sponsoring a picnic tomorrow afternoon. One of the guys there might be able to point you toward someone.”

  “Māhū Nation? What kind of group is that?”

  “Just a bunch of guys. Once you abandoned me for domesticated life, I had to look for friends elsewhere.”

  MAhu BLood 217

  “I can do without the drama queen routine. I get that from Mike.”

  “Yeah, he’s so hot he has to wear asbestos underwear.”

  I’d seen Gunter get catty before, but there had always been an undercurrent of fun. That day, though, he didn’t seem happy.

  Was he jealous that I’d moved in with Mike? Left him to his single life?

  I remembered my purpose. “Thanks for the tip about the picnic. I’ll talk to Mike about it. It might be a good way to find someone who saw my victim at The Garage.”

  When I got back to headquarters, Ray told me he had found O’Malley’s name in conjunction with KOH in a couple of places online. Once he had been quoted in a Star-Bulletin article, and he’d been mentioned a few times as the attorney of record for KOH. But there was no indication of what kind of damaging information he might have had.

  I tried the FBI, but the agent on duty informed me that Salinas was involved in a case and all the agent could do was take a message.

  We hadn’t released O’Malley’s name to the press yet, and I wondered what kind of reaction we could get out of his coworkers. I called his office, and a human being answered the phone. I hung up without saying anything; I just wanted to see if anyone was there.

  “It’s a wonderful world, isn’t it?” I said. “Hard-working attorneys piling up billable hours over the Labor Day holiday.”

  “Even better, it’s your turn to drive,” Ray said.

  The Fields and Yamato office was in a high-rise tower overlooking the port of Honolulu. A teenaged Hawaiian boy sat at the reception desk, working at a computer monitor. “Aloha,”

  he said. “How can I help you?”

  I introduced myself and Ray and showed her our badges. “We need to ask some questions about Adam O’Malley.”

  “Mr. O’Malley isn’t in today. Would you like to speak with his 218 Neil S. Plakcy

  paralegal?”

  “Sure.”

  He picked up the phone and punched in a couple of numbers.

  “Sarah, it’s Akamu, out at the front desk. There are a couple of police officers who need to speak to someone about Mr.

  O’Malley.”

  He listened for a moment, then hung up. “She’ll be right out.”

  “I’m surprised to see the office open on a Saturday,” I said, as we waited.

  “We’re not officially open. Just a few of the attorneys and paralegals are here. I’m a student at U.H., and I’m interning here for the summer. I go back to school right after Labor Day, and I figured I would get a few more hours in while I can.”

  He was a cheerful kid in a light blue chambray shirt, and we chatted for a couple minutes until a stocky woman in an open-necked blouse, navy skirt and matching pumps came out to the lobby. I thought the bright red streak in her dark hair was an interesting touch in such a conservative environment.

  “I’m Sarah Byrne,” she said. “You have some questions for Mr. O’Malley? If it’s important, I can call him.” She had a crisp Australian accent.

  I shook my head. “We need to speak to someone about him, and the cases he worked on here. Is there a place we can talk?”

  She led us to a small conference room off the lobby. Floor to ceiling windows looked out at the port, where despite the holiday a crane was offloading containers from a big ship.

  “I’m afraid we have some bad news for you,” I said. “Mr.

  O’Malley was found dead in his apartment yesterday morning.”

  She reached out to one of the plush armchairs to steady herself. “Oh, my,” she said, and she began to cry.

  Ray poured her a glass of water from a pitcher on a side table, and I helped her sit in the big captain’s chair.

  “Do you know what happened?” she asked, once she’d MAhu BLood 219

  dabbed at her eyes and taken a sip of water. “Was it a heart attack or—was he killed?” Her eyes widened.

  “We’re still working on the details,” I said. “That’s why we’re here.”

  She began to stand up. “I think you should speak to one of the associates.”

  “We will, soon. For now we just want to get some background on Mr. O’Malley.”

  “Where there any clients that you know of who were unhappy with his work?” Ray asked. “Anyone who might have threatened him?”

  Sarah sat back down, clutching the tissue in her right hand.

  “We focus on corporate litigation,” she said, shaking her head.

  “We don’t handle criminal work at all. And Mr. O’Malley was a very quiet sort of a man—not the type to get into arguments, certainly not with clients.”

  “Was he upset about anything?” I asked. “Or did he seem worried, or unusually agitated?”

  “Not at all. He had just come back from a business trip, and he said he was glad to be home.”

  “I understand he was in Washington, DC last week,” I said.

  “Do you know what kind of case that was?”

  “I can’t give yo
u any information about our clients or ongoing litigation,” she said. “But I can tell you the case involved copyright infringement and both parties are large, well-known multi-national corporations. Mr. O’Malley was in touch with various members of their in-house counsel, so there wasn’t a specific individual who was involved in the case.”

  “Was it usual for him to take a Friday off?” I asked.

  “Mr. O’Malley worked very hard,” Sarah said. “I know he put in long hours when he was in Washington, because of the time difference. But when he did take a day off it was usually a Friday.

  I don’t know why, because most of the time he’d be back in the office that weekend.”

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  “How about his personal life?” Ray asked. “Can you tell us about any friends or activities?”

  “He started at the same time I did, about five years ago,” she said. “He went to college and law school in San Francisco and then worked for a firm there for a few years. I don’t know very much about his private life.” She paused. “He wasn’t the kind of boss to get personal. I knew he wasn’t married, because he didn’t wear a wedding ring or have any pictures on his desk. But I don’t even know if he had a girlfriend.”

  “Is there anyone here that he was friendly with?” I asked.

  “Any other attorney he might have confided in?”

  She thought for a moment. “I know who you could talk to. I’ll be right back.” She hurried out of the room.

  “She didn’t even know if he had a girlfriend,” Ray said, when she was gone.

  “That’s life in the closet.”

  While we waited for Sarah to return, we went back over what she had said, looking for anything we might have missed. Ray was facing the door, and said, “Here she comes.”

  I turned around. The first person through the door, though, wasn’t O’Malley’s paralegal—it was Peggy Kaneahe.

  Peggy’s dark hair, always down to her shoulders in the past, was now cut in a severe, yet fashionable bob. She was nearly 100% Hawaiian, and her skin had always been a rich olive-cocoa, a few shades darker than mine. Now, though, she appeared pale, as if she hadn’t been out in the sun in months. There were a few more lines around her eyes than I’d seen before, and she had the attenuated, rail-thin aspect of a single woman who exercised too much.

  She and I had a long history. Because of our last names, Kanapa’aka and Kaneahe, we always sat next to each other at Punahou. When we were sixteen I took her to our junior prom, and she was the first girl I ever kissed. She was the first I had sex with, too, one Saturday afternoon when her parents were at a christening on the North Shore. I broke up with her right after MAhu BLood 221

  coming home from my first year in Santa Cruz, after I’d had my first sexual experience with another guy.

  We dated again, briefly, when she returned to Honolulu after law school and was working in the DA’s office. Since I’d come out of the closet, though, I’d been careful to avoid running into her.

  She looked as surprised as I was. “Kimo,” she said.

  “Hi, Peggy. I didn’t realize you’d left the DA’s office.”

  “Two years ago.”

  She turned to Sarah Byrne. “I can take it from here, Sarah.

  Thanks.” She looked at us. “Assuming you’re done with Sarah?”

  I nodded. “If we have any more questions, we’ll get back to you.”

  Sarah left, and I introduced Peggy to Ray. “Peggy and I went to high school together,” I said, leaving out the gory details.

  We sat at the round table. Ray and I faced the water and the brilliant sun, while Peggy sat with her back to the light. I was sure it was some kind of attorney trick to put us at a disadvantage.

  “You’re working on Labor Day weekend,” I said, to get the conversation started.

  “I’m trying to make partner.” She paused. “Sarah said this is about Adam O’Malley? I have to say, I’m not surprised that he’s dead.”

  AdAM’s cAseLoAd

  I sat back in my chair and looked at Peggy. “That’s a pretty strong statement.”

  “Adam had a low self-image,” she said. “I know it’s a cliché, but he worked twice as hard because he didn’t think he was smart enough, or a good enough lawyer, to become a partner here. But at the same time he desperately wanted the prestige that comes with that title, not to mention the money.”

  She sighed, and the corners of her mouth turned down. I wondered if she was talking about herself as well. She had always been a driven student in high school, not content with anything less than an A in every class. She was on a full scholarship at Punahou, always feeling inferior to our rich haole classmates despite her grades.

  “From what I could tell, Adam’s inferiority complex carried over to his personal life,” Peggy said. “He never said so, but I knew he was gay. We were friends, and we were each other’s date sometimes when we had to go to business dinners.” She pursed her lips together and looked directly at me. “I seem to have a knack for attracting gay men.”

  I felt the sting of that dart but avoided acknowledging it.

  Fortunately Ray stepped in and asked, “He talked to you about his personal life?”

  “Not in much detail. But I knew enough not to ask him who he went out with on the weekend or why some lucky girl hadn’t snatched him up yet.” She paused. “I had the feeling he was attracted to the wrong kind of guy. Once he told me that he’d been mugged and had his wallet stolen, and from how cagey he was about the details I thought it was a hook up. And another time I saw a bruise on his arm, and his explanation was lame.”

  I made a couple of notes, then looked back up at Peggy. “From what we’ve discovered, Mr. O’Malley went to a bar on Thursday night, where he met a man he took back to his apartment. That 224 Neil S. Plakcy

  man is certainly someone we want to talk to, but we’re trying to cover all our bases. Do you have any idea why someone would want to kill him?”

  “I used to get death threats in the DA’s office,” Peggy said, picking unconsciously at one fingernail with another. “That’s one of the reasons I left. I just got tired of the personal hassle. But here, we don’t deal with real human beings and their problems. I like that. Nobody comes rampaging in, yelling at the receptionist.

  Nobody waves weapons at us or stalks us outside our houses.”

  She looked up at us. “Adam was a very quiet guy, and this is a low-key practice.”

  “Ray and I had an appointment with O’Malley on Friday afternoon, to discuss some suspicions he had about one of his clients, which relate to two other murders we’re investigating. He was threatened enough that he didn’t want to discuss things in the office.”

  “Which client?” Peggy asked.

  “Kingdom of Hawai’i. I understand he was the attorney of record for the group?”

  “If there’s any client who could have gotten Adam in trouble, they’re the one. I encouraged him to get rid of them, but he didn’t listen.” Her voice cracked at the end of the sentence, and I could see her struggling to maintain control.

  When we were in high school, our mothers were close friends, and her mother in particular was very proud of their Hawaiian lineage. I doubted Peggy would have let her mother volunteer for KOH. Even though my mother hadn’t been hurt at the rally, I wished I’d been more aware of what was going on and tried to keep her away from what was turning out to be a very questionable group.

  “What was it that you found suspicious?” I asked Peggy.

  “Adam mentioned they took in a lot of cash donations,”

  she said. “The man behind the group said that they had a lot of grassroots support among native Hawaiians, who didn’t trust banks. But I knew that was bullshit. Most of my family is MAhu BLood 225

  Hawaiian, and we’ve all got Bankoh accounts.”

  “So you didn’t believe him,” I said. “But did Adam?”

  “He believed what he wanted to. The non-profit and some allied corporations
generated a lot of billable hours because of some kind of complicated corporate structure and interconnected transactions between companies. Adam was up for partner at the end of the year. He thought if he could hold on to them until then, the partners would see him as a rainmaker and make him an offer.”

  She bit her lower lip, and I remembered how she used to do that when she was uncomfortable. “How did he die?” she asked.

  “He was killed in his apartment,” I said. “It’s possible that there was sexual activity involved or that the killer wanted to create a false impression. We just don’t know yet.”

  “I was an ADA for years, Kimo. You don’t need to sugarcoat for me.”

  “He was naked, tied to the bedposts, with a dildo stuck up his ass. His throat was slit.”

  As soon as I said it I felt bad, letting my anger and frustration and my discomfort at seeing Peggy again get the better of me.

  She didn’t even flinch, though. “And despite that situation you think there’s a possibility that his death is connected to his work?”

  “As I said, when I spoke to him on Thursday, he told me that he felt there were dangerous people connected with KOH and that he was frightened by them.” I thought about what I wanted to say next. “You can see we don’t have enough to show a judge.

  But we have a hunch that his death was more than just a hook up gone bad.”

  “And you want me to open up our confidential files to you,”

  she said. “Without a warrant. On the strength of your hunch?”

  I looked at Ray, then back at her. “That’s about it.”

  Looking at Peggy’s face, I figured she was running through her whole history with me. How many times had I dumped her 226 Neil S. Plakcy

  for the chance to go surfing with Harry Ho? How many times had I disappointed her or hurt her? She had gotten in hot water at the DA’s office over her attitude toward me. And here I was, asking her for a favor that could potentially damage her standing with Fields and Yamato.

  Ray stepped in to rescue me. “We have more than just a hunch,” he said. “Our investigation keeps leading us to a guy named Jun Tanaka, who runs the Kope Bean chain, and who’s a big backer, through his various corporations, of Kingdom of Hawai’i. The FBI picked him up last night on suspicion of money laundering.”