For a Song

by Morales, Rodney;

  I returned to my original stakeout spot. I could see Mia pass her window every now and then, going through the motions of a night alone in front of the tube. Tube, a dated term if there ever was one. Wasn’t it all diodes and processors now?

  After awhile I felt my phone vibrating. I pulled it out of my shorts pocket.

  It was McMichaels.

  —’Sup?

  —Did some checking around. Hate to have to say this, but it’s probably one of our guys.

  —HPD?

  —Yup.

  —I just spent an hour with a very scared girl. She claims she’s being followed again. This time it may be a Crown Vic.

  —Jesus.

  —Any idea why HPD might be all over this?

  —Hey, I’m just a—

  —I know; a captain in Vice.

  —If I knew what my confrère in Narcotics and those fuckheads in Homicide were doing, I’ d probably shoot myself.

  —What if it’s a rogue cop?

  —Then she’s got a problem. Look, rogue or not, your friend had better watch out.

  —Thanks, Norm.

  I hung up.

  Sacré bleu.

  I called Mia. “I’ve checked the area. Nothing’s happening out here. Not right now. I’m going to look into something and return later.”

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Sorry to put you through this.”

  “No trouble at all. Call me, anytime, if you need me. Or want to talk.”

  “Thanks. I owe you one.”

  35

  After a quick stop at my boat to change into my nighttime outfit of shirt and jeans I headed to Chinatown. The sun was down, the horizon creamsicle and coral, above it increasingly darker hues of blue. The humidity was markedly lower, a good time to tail someone. I parked the car in the municipal lot at Nu‘uanu and Nimitz and walked to Maunakea. I canvassed the area, looking especially on the sidewalk and street for any accumulation of toothpicks and soon enough I saw Aaron entering an Asian grocery store. I crossed over to Nellie’s Flower Shoppe, which was quite empty after what probably had been the Memorial Day surge. He came out of the store, adjusted his toothpick and walked past New Oceania Imports, B&E Catering, Fat Lady Singh’s, then entered Pake Charlie’s. He seemed to be making his rounds. I ran back to the car lot and retrieved my car and parked further down Maunakea—the direction he seemed to be going in.

  He walked right past my car, got into a Ford minivan—what happened to his vintage Malibu?—which had been parked illegally in a loading zone, gunned the engine, and sped off. I followed. He was not only a link to the people I sought, he was the weakest link.

  Aaron headed toward Waikiki. I followed him down Ala Moana Boulevard, stayed right behind him as he angled toward Kalakaua. From Kalakaua he took the right lane and turned into the Sheraton/Royal Hawaiian complex. He pulled up at the valet kiosk, handed the keys of his Ford to a man who seemed to know him, and, dragging a sports jacket, headed toward the hotel.

  I valeted my car and followed Aaron. He bypassed the shops and headed straight toward Cinnabar, the nightclub whose chief investor was Genaro Blankenship.

  The club wasn’t open; it wasn’t going to be open till later in the evening, but Double-A waltzed in anyway. I sat in the hotel lounge and punched out Mia’s number.

  She answered on the first ring. “Hey, Kawika. Are you back?”

  “Not yet. Got a question. Forgot to ask you earlier.”

  “Shoots.”

  “Kay ever talk about a particular song?”

  “Boy, is that a strange question.”

  “I mean, in relation to her dad, or that guy we just talked about, Jerry Herblach.”

  “Jesus, where are you going with all of this?”

  I told Mia what Minerva had said and she acknowledged that there was this one odd incident with Kay. This happened when they first began to hang out together.

  “Kay and I were headed to the beach. I was driving and Kay was channel surfing. KKUZ was playing its usual Jawaiian fare and Kay was going off about the station’s unfortunate emphasis on that, you know, lame sort of reggae, what she often called ‘reggae for dummies.’ Right then ‘Ku‘u Leialoha Pikake’—you know that song?—it came on. Kay stopped talking. She seemed struck, as if by lightning. She just pressed her hand on her heart, said, ‘Oh god,’ and she got real quiet. I thought she was having a heart attack or something, then I heard her sobbing. I pulled aside, put the car in park, and just hugged her while she sobbed and sobbed. Then, when she seemed to have gotten past whatever it was, she smiled, that precious Kay smile, and said to me: ‘That’s my song. My dad used to sing it to me all the time.’ Then she kind of chuckled and said, ‘I’m all right.’”

  So we have Lino singing a song written by Jerry Herblach to his young daughter. But then there was that line in one of Gerard’s e-mails: He couldn’t have written it.

  “She say anything else?”

  “Not that I remember. I think that was it.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate the info.”

  “If you got any other bizarre questions, just call.” She hung up.

  By 9:30 Cinnabar seemed to be doing great business. There was a long line of people dressed to the nines standing behind a rope-line, waiting to get in. My aloha shirt and jeans would have got me into most clubs, but not this one. I walked around to the beachside.

  In Waikiki a lot of the oceanfront hotels have venues that face the beach, and, fortunately, Cinnabar was one of them. After getting past the flyer-dispensing sand hustlers, with their time shares and discounts on overpriced luaus, I sat on a concrete embankment with my binoculars, knowing the unlit ocean backdrop rendered me invisible. From my vantage point I could observe Aaron as he sat at the bar, his back to the counter, gazing upon the scene, nodding his head steadily to the dance rhythms. Strobe lights, synched to these rhythms, tracked the walls and ceiling. A scantily dressed woman approached Aaron and either licked or whispered something into his ear. He took his trademark toothpick out of his mouth and grinned. They talked briefly and he patted her ass as she left.

  I turned toward the ocean; darker than indigo, except where the crests of the waves were lit up by the Waikiki nightlights, it was an ideal spot for a rendezvous. The romantic promise of Waikiki, with its gentle breezes, balmy air, splendiferous sights, a view shattered by the incursion of kids hawking plumeria leis to tourists walking along the sand.

  I pivoted and gazed into the club. Found a spot against the sea wall where I could lean back in an almost sitting position. After a good ten minutes, I saw a sharply dressed man approach Aaron. They shook hands, local style, and embraced. Both were animated as they spoke, gesturing and laughing. When I got a good look at this player I realized it was the same guy as in those Vegas pictures: Blankenship.

  Undoubtedly, Aaron was still affiliated with his former boss, but how? How deep was their relationship? Here was a guy who leaked information like a broken dam, a guy who could never keep his mouth shut, so it was quite possible that he had already told Blankenship about a nosy PI asking about Kamana and mentioning the latter’s taste for young girls. Whatever did transpire between Blankenship and Aaron, both their faces took a turn toward grim, with Aaron aggressively nodding to what might have been instructions. After they again shook hands and did their man-hugs, Blankenship walked away.

  I got the valet to retrieve my car and got onto the avenue till I hit Monsarrat. The drive was less than two miles.

  “I’m back,” I said to Mia over the phone when I got there. Told her I was going to check out the area again.

  “Need anything?”

  “Nah, I’m good.”

  “Today’s ride, up Tantalus. That was supposed to be my last ride before Honu.”

  “That’s this weekend?”

  “Saturday.”

  “Well, rest is good too.”

  She didn’t catch my hint and continued to talk. As much as I wanted to ste
er her away from our favorite subject of late, the one that had permeated nearly every conversation, we quickly returned to a discussion of the big man.

  “No doubt Kamana’s the one with real power,” she was saying. “He’s too well connected. All those years in both City Hall and the state capitol. Some of the guys he goes way back with are now judges…. My thinking is if this Tinian affair starts pointing to him, he’ll let somebody else, maybe even Blankenship, take the fall. He’s too crafty to be caught.”

  I told Mia about the rumors surrounding Kamana’s next move politically.

  “Why on earth would he even want the governorship? It’s probably less power than he has right now.”

  “I don’t know. Legacy? Ego? Speaking of ego, I went to the same school as ‘Fat Face.’” She looked at me puzzled, so I added “Ike Irashige.”

  “Oh. Did you know him?”

  “Not really. He was in the class above mine. You might know the type. Student body president. Belonged to every club and organization.”

  “Love the nickname.”

  “He was also a band geek. Hung around the band room between classes, during lunch period, after school. Sometimes all day.”

  “And what kind of student were you?”

  “I played drums in the school band. And that included timpanis, bells, wood blocks, vibes. I didn’t get tired of the vibes, but I did get tired of the atmosphere.”

  “Whadaya mean, atmosphere?”

  “I dunno. The rigid adherence to what’s on the page? I liked my music looser, so I quit being a drummer, got a cheap guitar and began to hang out with the non-band musicians—the ‘ukulele and guitar players. We had no room, no facilities. We just sat on the grass behind the music building and played and played.” As I said this I saw again the imprint of the ‘ukulele on Lino’s gravestone. Tomorrow I’ll be meeting with Minerva, to talk about this “song.”

  “Bet you smoked pot and thought you were one of the cool guys.”

  “You better fucking believe it.”

  Before we ended our conversation Mia mentioned the story in the news about the governor’s aide. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” she had said, “but that has died down. No media speculation. Nothing. After all the discussions in blogs, people have moved on to other topics, like whether Don Ho’s daughter was murdered—that kinda shit. There’s nothing in the papers.”

  I let out a sigh, a weak, “Yeah, I know.”

  I was only too cognizant of the ways of corporate media. To those on the outside it often seemed insidious, yet more often than not it was totally benign. Reporters had other stories to cover. The forces behind the modern-day Fourth Estate were profit-driven, so the task of management was to maintain the bottom line, which was the story of revenue. Unless a story was potentially something so big they knew it would boost sales and subscriptions, the newspaper brass were disinclined toward taking on the expense of extensive investigations. Or worse, even more expensive lawsuits, if a reporter got something wrong. It wasn’t going to happen.

  After scoping out the area one more time I got back in my car. My brief conversation with Mia had me thinking about Kamana and the media, and how either benign neglect or a willful need to avoid the real truth had worked in his favor. Kamana’s name had come up often during the Bishop Estate fiasco. He was a major player, working decidedly off-camera. When decency won over corruption, when the trustees were forced to resign and a new group of trustees, all seemingly more honorable, more dedicated to the people, were sworn in, once things settled down, once you saw who was running things—again—once you learned that guys like Kamana and his buddy Blankenship were still key operators, and still held the keys to the city, to the county, and to the state, you just wanted to fold your tent. Well, I did. Deep as I had been in the trenches of investigation I grew increasingly frustrated that I couldn’t follow leads. The city editor, aka my boss, was more invested in his own career, and was soon to leave for greener pastures. In the meantime, my buddy Sal was dealing with the shitstorm that followed his blowing the whistle on the CIS. I had nagged the city editor to let me cover this important story, and he told me it was old news. The news media could no longer ignore Sal’s debacle when it hit the courts a year later, but by then both Sal and I had found new lines of work….

  Back in ’99 the embattled Bishop Estate trustees, even as they were going down, still could flex their muscle. A lot of us in the press knew that Councilman Kamana had played a behind-the-scenes role in getting the then-attorney general ousted. But we weren’t allowed to look further into it. Funny thing, if you read the many articles and books that have come out on Hawai‘i’s lead story of 1999, bigger by far than the one in the national spotlight, which gleamed like a stain on a woman’s dress, you will find hardly a mention that just a few years earlier Kamana himself had been touted as a candidate for a trusteeship. It was a move that had the state supreme court seriously deadlocked, and they eventually went with a less controversial choice. Why Kamana had been termed, back then, a “controversial” choice was never explained. The question is, if his plan is to run for governor, as Levinson and McMichaels both claim, would any of this come up, or are he and his cohorts counting on the public’s short memory?

  If this were a horse race, I’d be putting my money on Short Memory.

  And out of the woodwork comes this guy Blankenship. An all-around player seriously linked to Josiah Kamana, maybe Jerry Herblach, AND perhaps dear old Lino Johnson, since they were part of the same union. He now loomed as a larger, more insidious figure. His stake in the nightclub made him a power in private industry as well. You add that to his union clout AND his in with the legislature, and you have a guy with way too much power.

  If his relationship with Kamana went back a couple of decades, where were those two the day Lino was shot? Could they have played a role? Had Kay stumbled on something to this effect?

  I knew what Jerry Herblach was doing back then. Producing records and composing songs. And one of these songs, “Ku‘u Leialoha Pikake,” the song that Lino once sang to his daughter, has become a local classic. Herblach had almost single-handedly built a recording industry in Hawai‘i and he was now reaping big-scale financial success in film.

  I wanted another look at those Vegas photos.

  My cell phone vibrated in my jeans. I looked at my watch. 11:15.

  “Yeah?” I hadn’t dozed off but my mind had drifted elsewhere.

  “You still out there?”

  “Yeah. Why aren’t you sleeping?”

  “Can’t. Why don’t you come up for a bit?”

  “I should get on home. I think you’re OK. And my houseboat is only ten minutes away. I can get here in five if I have to. Don’t worry.”

  “C’mon, I feel guilty enough that you’re out there. Come up. Just for a bit.”

  I exhaled the words “All right.”

  Mia was in her p.j.’s, if you call it that. A loose, thin t-shirt, and what seemed like a cross between panties and shorts. It was hard to tell.

  “I made some ginger tea. I always drink it to relax. It’s soothing. Want some?”

  “Ginger sounds good.” Mia moved to the kitchenette, while I stood looking around. “I like this apartment.”

  “It’s small, but it’s home.”

  “Bigger than my place.”

  “But mine can’t sail away.” She turned toward me, smiling. I’d never seen that smile before. It was quite a smile.

  “I hope not.”

  Mia cleared the coffee table, placed the teapot and cups there, and sat on the sofa. We sat for a few minutes, mostly talking about her triathlon strategy. She looked incredibly tired. She’d nod at something I said, but she wasn’t hearing. Her head would drop, then she’d snap awake. When she did this for the third time, this time with a cup of hot tea in her hand, I gently tugged the cup from her index and thumb. I checked the windows, made sure they were secured. I then sat on the desk chair, facing her, noting the highlights in her hair, the wa
y she’d occasionally snort a breath. I watched her for a few more minutes, taking in still more detail. Then her jaw dropped and she drooled a bit.

  Suddenly she jumped up. Looked at me in surprise.

  “Oh, god.” She looked around, seemingly looking for her bearings. She wiped her mouth. “I was dreaming—”

  “Which means you were sleeping. Now you can go to bed.”

  “Yeah.” She looked toward her futon bed, scratching her ass. She turned to me, said, “Thanks. You’re really sweet. I’ll be all right.”

  “I know you will.” She gave me a light hug and let me out into the cold a.m. I waited till I heard the rattling of the door chain and the tchoonk of the deadbolt, then headed to my car.

  I was wide awake, so I fired up the engine and drove back to the Royal Hawaiian Center parking lot and let one of the valets have the car again. When I got to my spot on the beachside of the Sheraton I quickly spotted Aaron. He was working the crowd in a semi-drunk way, working, I hoped, his way toward the exit.

  After what I assumed was a restroom stop Aaron finally exited the nightclub and then left the Sheraton. He was obviously tipsy, but successfully made it to a valet, who took a few minutes to bring forth his Ford minivan. If I waited for a valet to retrieve my car, I would lose Double-A, so I hailed a nearby cab instead, telling the driver to follow him. I wanted Aaron to know he was being followed, but he seemed oblivious. I made up some shit to the cab driver about my friend being drunk, which he was, yet insisted on driving home. I told the driver I could not convince him to let me drive, so the best I could do was follow him and make sure he got home all right. I also told the cab driver to stay close. Right behind, if possible.

  I wasn’t sure where Aaron lived. Hoped it wouldn’t be too far off. A trip to the North Shore would cost me an arm and a leg and then another arm. And probably my casino chip. When Double-A turned into Kapi‘olani Boulevard I remembered that there was an apartment building on the street that was rumored to be owned by the Yakuza. I would’ve bet the boat that he lived there, but he drove right past it and headed for another club—oh shit, a hostess bar.