For a Song

by Morales, Rodney;

  She used the nail of her middle finger to nudge the chip back toward me. “A boat? You own a boat?”

  “I live on it.”

  “You shitting me?”

  I shook my head.

  She got more animated. “OK … let’s see…. You gamble. You smoke. You live on a boat.”

  “You’re trending toward legitimacy, but yeah, that’s basically it.”

  “Do you follow all the boating regs? They used to drive Matthew crazy.”

  “I don’t pay attention to any regs unless I have to.”

  “Boy, you got me wondering about your moral compass.”

  “Is that something you need to go sailing? Like a sextant?” I looked up at the shimmering night sky. “I just go by the stars.”

  “I’m not joking. You’re supposed to be a detective. A defender of the law—”

  “Cops defend the law. PIs only claim moral high ground. It’s … it’s fuzzy.”

  “Isn’t it your job to go after guys who break laws?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Laws you seem to ignore.”

  “I only ignore the stupid ones.”

  “So did Kay’s dad. He extorted money. Probably dealt in drugs too. But maybe he thought those were stupid laws.”

  “I think there’s a difference. And I think you just wanna argue about something.” It was time to call it a night. I put the chip back in my jacket pocket.

  “I just don’t think PIs should go about flouting the law.”

  “Point taken.”

  “Are all PIs like you?”

  I shrugged. “I have no idea what the average PI does. We don’t have meetings. Just conferences, which I never attend…. And Lino Johnson? He was no extortionist. He was a pakalolo dealer.” I was taking Minerva’s words as gospel. “There is a difference.”

  “He’s buried at Valley of the Temples, you know.”

  “I’ve seen the gravestone.”

  “Kay used to go there all the time. Said it was the only place she could find peace.”

  “Did you ever see her buy flowers?”

  Mia shrugged. “Not really. Why?”

  “Just thought she might have a favorite type. No biggie.”

  “Is this detective work?”

  “Could be.” I pictured North Shore Willie holding up the dried pikake. Wonder if he was dealing some of his marijuana crop. If so, what separates him from Lino? “You got a favorite flower?”

  “I love all kinds. A plumeria, behind the ear—that, to me, is Hawai‘i. Red torch ginger—oh, my god. Then there’s pikake, best smell ever…. And the first time I saw all that bougainvillea coming out of the lava fields, you know, coming out of Kona Airport. Those colors, reds, oranges, sprouting out of the black…. Jacaranda’s another one. Lavender flowers. I could go on and on.”

  I’m sure you could. “You ever been to his grave?”

  Mia shook her head. “Valley of the Temples is all I know.”

  “Maybe Vegas is a bad place to start. Especially when there’s evidence that she’s on or around this island.”

  “What evidence?”

  “A certain kind of flower. A missing boat. Strange characters showing up at my boat”—I thought I’d not mention Amber by name just yet—“and bringing new angles to the case. I’d love to go on a trip but I’m having too much fun here.”

  “Are you fucking with me?”

  “I have a strong feeling that Kay is on this island. And, if she is, she’s involved with the kind of thugs we just met up with. Therefore, I don’t want you anywhere near this. If this is what I think it might be, we may have to leave it to the right people.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I’m in the business of finding missing people. Sometimes I’m hired to follow a husband or a wife that’s gone astray. With drugs and guns, you want people with badges. I don’t like to get into the shit that’s best handled by the cops or the Feds. It’s messy and it’s their jurisdiction. They’ve got the manpower. They got forensic labs. High-tech surveillance equipment. And most of all, clout. That … is what I mean.”

  “You’re saying if Kay’s disappearance is linked to drugs or guns then you’re out?”

  “As long as it’s a missing person case, I’m in. But I can’t put you in danger.”

  “Please don’t shut me out, Kawika. I’d risk my life for Kay.”

  “That’s commendable, but impractical. From what you’ve told me, we could be dealing with some nasty, yet powerful, people. We may not have a choice but to get out of the way and let the authorities do their thing. Sometimes it takes an army, sometimes a judge’s authorization … things that a PI with a staff of one just can’t do.” Mia didn’t look too happy. “Anyway, this discussion is premature.”

  I didn’t want to tell Mia that in my five years as a PI I had developed a decent network—useful connections, including a few people who thought they owed me something. But I turned to them with discretion. Accruing too many debts in this business can put you out of business—permanently. Violence was a last resort, but it was a resort nevertheless. I just didn’t want Mia anywhere close if things got messy. I also didn’t want to tell Mia that the years I’ve spent playing poker have helped me become a quick study when it came to reading faces. She wasn’t telling it straight when I asked her if she’d communicated with Kay since May seventh. She wasn’t telling it straight when I asked if she’d seen Lino’s grave. I had to find out why.

  We bid each other goodbye with a quick embrace, pressing cheek against cheek. As I watched her get into her car I tossed the bent, unsmoked cigarette in the trash. She looked at me, mouthed the words It was him, and drove off. I got in the Corolla and drove back to the boat as if I were, in fact, guided by stars.

  24

  (Day 7—Sunday, May 27) Early the next morning, as I cut a papaya in half, dug out the seeds, and added a lemon slice, I pondered last night’s strange encounter with those men. Why would they confront a pair of cyclists? Were they just being assholes, or were they hiding or protecting something? I ate the half papaya, swallowed my now daily dose of Advil, and washed it all down with ginger tea. I wasn’t hungry for anything else. The tea was both soothing and stimulating and I began to feel pretty good, ready for the world and whatever it brought to my cabin door.

  I picked up the morning paper, formulating my day plan. I would track down Smokin’ Joe, call and check in with Minerva, then Mia, and perhaps tail Mia—I was curious about where she went when she wasn’t working out.

  With the Sunday paper being ninety percent ads and extraneous sections—“Revenue,” the bosses used to tell us, “that’s the bottom line”—the hard news was even more lost in the fluff. The “Local News” section featured an article about the Republican governor’s chief aide. He was being accused of sexual misconduct. Why was I not surprised? I looked for and pulled out the sports section, and learned that the Padres were on a hot streak, that Ichiro and the Mariners were closing in on the Angels, and that Prince Fielder and A-Rod were leading their respective leagues in home runs.

  There was a time when this stuff used to matter.

  I checked out the obits, saw no recognizable names, then turned to section B. An article on endangered orangutans in Bali caught my eye, but not to the extent of the page three headline:

  Man Found Dead in Mānoa Cottage

  I stared at those five words. Then the three that followed, in a smaller font and italicized:

  Foul play suspected

  Synapses were slow to fire. It took me a moment to realize the gravity of these words, and their implications. It got more troubling as I read on. The address, the description of the dwelling, the scant details on the estimated age of the victim—they all fit Gerard. No name was given, pending contact with relatives. I initiated a careful query. While I knew I could use my contacts in HPD to find out who the dead man was, I knew I had to distance myself at the same time, make it seem casual, off the cuff. If it was Gerard, I didn’t
need my name associated with his.

  I hoped against hope that it wasn’t him. And couldn’t help but speculate as to whether Amber, and/or someone she enlisted, could have taken it upon themselves to confront him, and things got out of control—all as a result of what she considered the incredible injustice of being passed over.

  Well, people have killed for a lot less.

  I phoned Brenda.

  “Look, I’m not gonna be calling all the time, but I really need this one. The body found in Mānoa, any lead on the vic’s name?”

  No answer for a good half-minute. Brenda was probably rehearsing her response in her mind, weighing every word. Finally, she said, “I’ll ask around and let you know.”

  “Thanks, Bren—” I almost added “I owe you one,” but we’d long given up on who owed what to whom. Our relationship was a mortgage we had both defaulted on; the banks had long ago foreclosed.

  I couldn’t wait for Brenda’s response. I called my favorite HPD connection. By the time Brenda had called me back to say she had nothing I had already confirmed that indeed it was Gerard. I didn’t tell her what I knew.

  She did ask, “Is this related to your case?” and I had said that it might be.

  I had asked McMichaels how Plotkin had died. He said investigators were being mum about the circumstances surrounding the crime, following the commonplace procedure of withholding details just in case someone confessed. Homicide guys interview a lot of crazies who come in and claim they knifed a shooting victim, shot a person who had had his throat cut, strangled a victim of food poisoning, and so on.

  I thanked Norm and the minute I hung up a flood of images came to me: Gerard’s bare feet on his desk as he leaned back in his chair, his impassioned gestures as we talked at Indigo, the way he slurped his martini, his Chaplinesque stumbling around, reaching for his dropped keys when he got home…. Those images were replaced with an imagined one: a stiff with a bullet in him. Or stab wounds. How did he die?

  And what kind of client am I in with? I again punched in the number Amber had given me. Maybe I got it wrong last night.

  It wasn’t wrong.

  I closed my cell phone and it vibrated in my hand. Maybe it was Amber, saying she just missed answering.

  It was Sal.

  “I was just about to call you,” I told him.

  “Beat you to it.”

  “What’s up?”

  “You won.”

  “Won?”

  “Yeah. The free lunch. Sally pulled your card.”

  “Is that why you called?”

  “Nope. I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner about Smokin’ Joe. What I need to tell you is, Joe operates on less than a full deck. A few years back he was beaten up badly. I mean badly. He almost didn’t make it. Shattered ribs, broken fibula, multiple contusions, a concussion. He had been handcuffed and beaten. From what I heard, and this is just hearsay, these unknown perps would have killed him if he hadn’t broken out of those handcuffs—seriously, they thought they were done with him and he just erupted, like he was the fricken Hulk. They ran and then he must have collapsed. He was found nearly dead. But not dead. An ambulance took him. He spent three weeks in intensive care. A few more in a care facility. Brother Curtis never visited.”

  “Holy—”

  “Joe’s never been the same. Word is that he’s harmless, but he’s like a fricken time bomb. I always wonder, when will this fucker go off? Brother Curtis strikes me as the lowest of the low. He’d sell out his own brother. Dangerous as hell.”

  “Thanks, Sal. I’ll be wary…. How’d Joe get that nickname, by the way?”

  “During his wrestling days he used to have that Joe Frazier way of coming at ya. The only smart thing was to get outta his way.”

  “Good to know he’s harmless. At least, so far.”

  “Yeah, just don’t piss him off. Oh, the blonde came by again. Lino’s ex.”

  “That’s … interesting.”

  “She didn’t ask for anything. She had a drink, talked with Sally for a couple a minutes, then left. She might be becoming a regular.”

  “Keep me posted.”

  “And I know you’ve been asking around about that dead guy.”

  “Oh shit.”

  “Look, if you know something, you better share it with Homicide. Those clowns don’t like it when PIs withhold information.”

  “It was just exploratory. The missing girl—”

  “Caroline Johnson—”

  “Yeah, she also goes by Kay. She was a part of the theater scene. The dead guy was a director. I was checking out a possible angle.” As I uttered those words, to cover my ass, it struck me that maybe it was an angle. What if Gerard’s death and Kay’s disappearance were somehow related?

  “Well, anyway, come by … for that lunch.”

  “Sally really pulled my card?”

  “No. I was pulling your leg.”

  “So, no lunch?”

  “Hey, I pull the cards. Sally doesn’t deal with that kinda shit. Every Friday I go through the cards, throw out all the ones that sound like assholes. Your card makes you sound like an asshole too, by the way, but since I know you, and since you took my advice and waited on Mr. Sperry, you’re this week’s winner.”

  “Nothing like a rigged contest.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  For a minute he sounded like the Sal of old. Who woulda thought? A few years ago he had been isolated, thoroughly burned by his work for the Criminal Investigations Squad. It started when he turned down an obvious bribe, then learned that his fellow officers depended on bribes the way waitresses and bartenders counted on the tip jar. When he found evidence of large-scale corruption, when he learned that just about everyone on that elite squad was on the take or connected in some way to the criminal world, he took what he had to Internal Affairs. Instead of getting results he found himself getting weird looks. The matter stalled. Frustrated, he turned to the FBI. This led to some firings and court cases, but things got worse for Sal. He was harassed, hounded, shot at, and blackballed for trying to do right. It got to where he trusted no one.

  Bartending seemed to be doing him good.

  But that pleasant thought disappeared as soon as I remembered that Gerard was dead. I had to solve the mystery of his death as much as I needed to solve the mystery of the missing girl. Kay’s case was of more immediate concern in that she might still be alive. But the name that kept coming to me was the name that Gerard had mentioned, only because he practically spat it out. Plus, I knew I had heard or seen that name before and it was driving me crazy.

  Jerry Herblach. Maybe the whole world knew about this guy. It kept eating me that I had seen the name somewhere. Thinking I may have seen the name in the file Mia had given me a few days ago, I pulled it out. Found nothing in the Tinian documents. I pulled out the clippings related to Lino Johnson. Most had been cut from newspapers, but there also was a police report on this death. This multipage document was folded up and its edges looked as if they had been ravaged by termites. Probably had been in a drawer for over a decade.

  The medical examiner’s statement was attached to it. The autopsy had revealed fragments of a bullet lodged in his left ventricle. That’s the one that killed him. Another bullet had entered his chest and exited his lower back. A downward trajectory. The police report itself, obviously not for public viewing, speculated that his death was tied with criminal underworld activities. It listed his known associates as Aterton [sic] and Curtis Sperry, William Soto, and Ron Akamine. Said he had been working for TLDU under the leadership of Genaro Blankenship, who was “known to be cozy with the criminal element.” Jesus, this guy was Lino’s boss! It also mentioned that Blankenship was pals with City Councilman Josiah Kamana. What a spin that put on Kay’s recent encounters with that politician. And if Blankenship can be linked to Lino, could Kamana be too?

  I stopped and reminded myself that I was looking for another name: Jerry Herblach. Ignore the other trajectories, I told myself.
I scanned through every page. Toward the end, I found what I was looking for. There was a brief mention of a legal dispute involving Lino and “music impresario” Jerry Herblach, information that to my knowledge had never been made public. Music impresario? Could this be the same guy? According to the document, the victim had brought forth a legal case, one he subsequently dropped.

  Jerry Herblach, music impresario? What were Gerard’s words? He IS the music business here. Holy crap!

  All this was making me feel that Kay’s disappearance may have had as much to do with her father’s connections as it did the Tinian incident, more than Minerva had thought or indicated. I was tempted to call Mrs. Alter and ask her directly what she knew about Blankenship, Kamana, and Herblach, and their possible connection to Lino, but I wanted corroboration first.

  My Internet connection was a bit slow, and I was getting stir crazy, so I got in my car and drove to the Waikiki Library and got onto one of the computer terminals. I googled Jerry Herblach. There were over 300,000 hits. I put his name in quotation marks. 2,229 hits. Better.

  I clicked on a link that looked promising. It featured some curious biographical information. Back in the early 1980s Jerry Herblach had composed “Ku‘u Leialoha Pikake.” Jeez, HE wrote THAT song? It was first recorded at first by Na Pili Coasters, then covered by just about every artist in the Hawaiian music community. He parlayed his small earnings from song royalties into building his own little record company and studio, JH Audio. He signed artists such as Bruddah Keo and Mililani Onaga. He also got involved with community theater, mostly musicals. In the 1990s he was a board member for both Mānoa Valley Theatre and Diamond Head Theatre. Around the year 2000 he shifted his focus and his money to movie production—first the indie film Being Orson Welles, which barely broke even, and then Hardnose, a low-budget martial arts film that was box office gold. By 2004 he had become a major player in Hollywood. I clicked Images and saw a couple of pictures of Jerry, who had male pattern baldness a la John Malkovich and seemed to wear shades all the time. There were pictures of him with the current governor and mayor, Danny DeVito, Rocky Aoki, and Jennifer Lopez.