We played this game a bit longer, as I headed back toward Waikiki. After a while I no longer saw the car in my rear-view. I drove to the KCC parking lot.
Still putting on a show in case I was being watched, I walked over to the theater and made like I was checking the windows and doors. Every knob I wiggled was locked, every window snapped shut. I got back into my car and headed toward the harbor.
Back on my boat I hunkered down.
What had I done to elicit this response? Was it the comment I made to Aaron about Tinian? Did it have something to do with Mia? Or Mia and Les and their hasty departure?
More insidious, are the members of abbacus aware that I am aware of them and now I’m in their collective crosshairs? Crossing lines no one else will cross—shouldn’t that be their motto? Or could it be HPD, one of Richards’ boys in Homicide? If the unholy and the insidious were coming out of the woodwork, how should I respond? If I were still a journalist I would try to shine a very bright light on these people. But I was a PI now and I had to act like one.
I tried Mia one more time. Again, no answer. Not even a leave-a-voicemail message prompt.
I went on deck with my binoculars. I made like I was checking out the wave breaks out at Kaisers, and after a minute of looking in that direction I discreetly spun around and gazed at the parking lot. The Chrysler was there.
I decided not to venture out till I had a plan. Back in the cabin I made a few calls, including one to Orse. It went to voicemail and I left a message for him to call me. I wanted to ask him about Sal, since I knew they were tight. Just wanted to confirm his reticence.
While waiting for someone to call me back, before I made another round of calls, I tried my new cable hookup. I flipped through the channels. Got glimpses of The Shawshank Redemption, Ocean’s Twelve, and The Bourne Ultimatum. I locked in for a few moments of the original Get Smart before I decided I wasn’t missing anything. I shut off the TV and went back on deck, scanning the parking lot again. The Chrysler wasn’t there. I watched people pass by, up close and in the distance, but there was nothing discernibly odd. I neither saw nor heard anything that I would term suspicious. And then the sun began to set.
I had wasted a good part of the day, so I wasn’t about to waste a night. As I got ready for another visit to Mia’s place followed by a return to Chinatown I heard some noise above. I clambered onto the deck and saw Richards and another detective.
“David Apana,” the other detective said, “we’d like for you to come to police headquarters with us.” Richards, his arms folded, said nothing.
“Can I ask why?”
“Your name came up in our investigation of the murder of one Gerald Plotkin.”
“It’s Gerard.”
“What?”
“It’s Gerard. Not Gerald.”
“So you did know him.”
“No. I just read about him in the papers. And your partner here pronounces it Gerard too. Maybe he knew him.”
“Wise ass. Let’s go.” Richards’ partner motioned me toward the unmarked Dodge Stratus.
“Am I under arrest? Am I a suspect? Inquiring minds want to know.”
“We’re trying to decide that,” Richards said, finally speaking.
“That was you following me, in that blue Chrysler that needs an alignment job?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Thought we were buddies.”
“Just doing my job. Get in.”
“So am I,” I said as I got into the back seat, almost getting my slippered foot smashed as he slammed the door. “So am I.” No handcuffs. That was a good sign. No interior door handle in the back seat. Not a good sign.
They had the goods on me, so to speak. I quickly learned the damn valet at Indigo had given them a perfect description of the man Gerard had drinks with that night, the night of his death. Lily, the waitress, was a corroborating witness. They had shown her a photo of me and she said, “Yah, that’s him.” I should’ve left a larger tip.
They said if I didn’t own up they would take me downtown, have her ID me in a lineup and I’d be really up shit creek by then. So I owned up. Admitted meeting up with the dead guy and told them why: He too knew the missing girl. I didn’t feel like mentioning Amber or her very odd request.
Richards’ partner drove. Immediately it became obvious to me that we weren’t headed toward police headquarters, not unless the department had moved to east Honolulu. After coasting down the Waikiki Strip, the driver didn’t take a left on Kapahulu, but went straight toward Diamond Head. It was a cool, pleasant twilight—perfect weather—which made me wonder why they had the AC on so high. Richards, riding shotgun, asked the questions, turning back to look at me when he did. Since I sat directly behind him he had to do some serious contorting to see my facial expressions.
“Did you know that Plotkin was involved in drug smuggling?”
“Nope. I know next to nothing about the deceased. I asked him a few questions about Caroline, which he candidly answered and then we talked about movie scripts.”
“Movie scripts?” Richards said, scrutinizing my face. It wasn’t giving him anything.
“Exactly. Movie scripts.”
Richards faced front. “You know you’re getting in the way of my case.”
“I’m helping you make your case.” I was channeling movie lines, something I do when distracted, finding the world and the questions that existed outside of this police vehicle more intriguing.
The driver said, “You wouldn’t know how to follow a lead if it bit you on the ass.”
“Hey, that’s pretty good. Who you quoting, Tom Sizemore or Joe Pesci?” I couldn’t help but mutter, “Fucking moron.”
He turned around. “What the fuck did you just say?”
“Nothing. I just hope you’ll WATCH THE ROAD!”
A car had cut in front of us. He braked hard.
“Good thing someone’s paying attention,” I muttered, more to myself.
“Shut the fuck up!” Richards said.
“Yeah, shut the fuck up!”
“Sure it’s my silence you want? I know an easy way to do that. Stop asking questions.” Richards said nothing. He pulled out a cigarette pack, pulled out a filtered cigarette and placed it between his lips. He then offered me a smoke. I shook my head. He placed the pack in his jacket pocket and pulled out a lighter. After failing to ignite even a two-second fire, he rolled down his window and threw the lighter out the window. Fucking litterbug. He then pulled a book of matches out of his pants pocket and lit what appeared to be the last match. I reached to roll down the window and remembered that there was no handle I could crank. I was, in effect, trapped in the back seat.
By this time we had cruised along the southern shore past Diamond Head and were well into Kahala. From Kahala Ave. We turned mauka on Elepaio, which led to Kilauea, and I thought of Minerva, in her house, worried to death about her missing daughter, and probably wondering in earnest if Kay’s disappearance had anything to do with events of nearly twenty years ago. Or maybe she was wondering what the goddamned PI she had given a thousand-dollar check to was doing at this moment.
When we continued east on Kalanianaole I began to have some serious concerns about our little excursion. Where were they taking me? It didn’t help that this trip reminded me of the way Thalia Massie’s husband, her mother, and her husband’s Marine cohorts sped down this very same road three quarters of a century ago, with the lifeless body of Joe Kahahawai, a cousin of my maternal grandfather, barely hidden under a blanket in the back seat. Was this to be my fate?
Silently we went past ‘Aina Haina. Silently we turned into Kawaikui Park. Rather than going into the parking lot the driver took the left lane, which looped around back to the highway. Either we were turning back or we were going to shoot across the highway and up the hill, to a really high-end gated community, a community so upscale it made Lanikai look like an inner city.
We were turning back.
“No
tice,” Richards said, disrupting the disturbing silence, and talking to no one in particular, “notice that we’re looking straight, straight at Diamond Head. I drive this road every day and I can’t tell you how long it took me to realize that it was Diamond Head I was looking at. That’s how much curve there is on this road.”
“Good detective,” I said.
Richards turned and looked at me disdainfully. I had to lower my head a bit to see it. Diamond Head sparkled in the twilight. Lights were springing up everywhere to counter the oncoming darkness. Richards reached into his jacket, pulled out his cigarette pack, then reached down and from under the overloaded dashboard pulled out the heating element. He lit up. Now I yearned for a smoke. “How about offering?”
“Fuck you. You had your chance.” He inhaled, rolled down the window and blew out smoke that ricocheted into my face. I hate secondhand smoke.
“Never liked filtered cigarettes anyway. I mean, what’s the fucking point?”
Richards rolled down his window and flicked ashes out, knowing full well that they’d blow into my face. I shut my eyes and took it all in.
We were nearing the Kahala, where the highway ended and the freeway began. Detective driver accelerated. Once more Richards spoke.
“Look at it now. It’s way on our left.” I looked. He meant Diamond Head. “It’s this island’s most recognizable feature. Yet everybody seems to know it from only one vantage point, from the Waikiki Beach side, from the west….” He looked at me square in the eye and added, “They only know one side.”
Diamond Head didn’t look so distinguished from this vantage point.
“It’s just a crater with a lip,” I muttered.
A quiet minute passed.
“He doesn’t know shit,” Richards said to the driver.
I sat up and leaned forward. “What I do know is I can tail a suspect a lot better than the clumsy idiots you’ve been sending to tail me. You must like a wild goose chase.”
He took another drag, turned to me and again blew smoke at my face. He wanted to piss me off. “Hate to disillusion you,” he said, “but there’s been no tail.” He rolled down the window again and threw the half-smoked cigarette out. Then rolled the window up.
I waved off the smoke. “Light-blue, 2001 Chrysler Sebring. Hard to miss in the rear-view.”
“HPD never uses Chrysler Sebrings. Not for anything.”
Detective driver took the Kapi‘olani exit lane and within seconds it was clear that we were headed back to the harbor. We never went to the police station. This encounter seemed purposefully off the book.
When we reached my slip, Richards got out and opened my door. He said, “Get out. You’re off the hook for now, but if I learn that you’re holding back any vital information—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know the drill.” Fucker.
“I bet you know the drill.” As I stepped out he pointed a finger at me. “Get in my away again and you’ll regret it.” Some of what he was saying was making no sense. I just went along.
I put my wrists together. “Wanna uncuff me now?”
He just glared at me. I wanted to drill him.
Richards kicked the back door shut and got back into his shotgun seat. He took one more look at me, showing his disdain, then crushed his matchbook and tossed it in the gutter. That was the third fucking time I’ve seen the asshole litter. I just hated fucking cops who thought they were above the rules they were supposed to enforce.
The driver floored the accelerator and I raised my favorite finger, hoping they’d see it in the rear-view. I picked up the matchbook and was about to throw it in the trash when I heard Rian’s voice:
“Hey. Hold on.”
I stopped. Looked at him. He nodded toward the crushed matchbook. I opened it.
Something was scrawled on the inner cover. It read, Watch out. This is way over your head. Way over mine. This was followed by a phone number.
“Thanks for the tip,” I said to Rian. I bowed slightly.
“What’d it say?”
“Uh, nothing. Just the name of a good Japanese restaurant.”
“Yeah, roit. But it’s none of me business. Say, wanna join us?”
“Wish I could, but I need to—”
“Yeah, we know. You’re a working detective. Go—”
“—check on a few things.”
“—solve your cases.”
So I went.
I had gone way past the allowable limit in terms of distractions. I headed toward the university—Hamilton Library, to be specific. There I’d have access to tons of newspaper files as well as the Internet.
I had focused my search for Kay and Gerard’s killers on the usual suspects, those with criminal backgrounds and a propensity for violence.
My interactions with Sal should’ve pointed me in a different direction, one that would explain Minerva’s apprehension about calling the cops when her daughter went missing.
The cops.
This made me very curious about events that occurred between 2002 and 2004.
It didn’t take me long to find an article I had co-written with Jess Mitsukawa. Titled “What’s Up with Our Prestigious Special Crimes Unit?” This was before they had renamed it CIS, probably to avoid the dubious acronym SCU, which was most local kids’ way of pronouncing school. The article began thus:
Documents that were released after a lengthy legal battle between the Tribune and the city reveal troubling relationships between HPD and the criminal underworld….
I remembered how when our newspaper was granted the right to see those documents there were so many redactions in them that it rendered them incomprehensible. HPD claimed that the redactions were necessary to protect the names of informants and undercover officers, and to protect ongoing investigations. Jess and I spent way too much time trying to fill in the names of the undercover cops—not to reveal them, but to know for ourselves. It was easy to fill in some, and because Sal was clearly the whistle-blower in this case, there was no need to blot out his name. He was suing HPD and the city for five million. In the end there was a quiet settlement with the agreed amount of cash undisclosed. Insiders said Sal would be left with shit. The lawsuit itself had cost the city over two million in court fees. I could only imagine what Sal’s lawyers charged him. Whatever was left, Sal had declared, would go to victims.
Councilwoman Annika Soares released a statement, saying “This has been a costly venture….”
Tell me about it.
I read more of my words:
The year-long Chinatown investigation, code-named Operation Ikaika Lima, was conducted by the FBI and officers from the vice division. The targets of the investigation were caught in the extensive video surveillance.
When Sal had turned to the FBI to go after his fellow police officers, it wasn’t that he liked or respected them in any way; he just saw them as the lesser of two evils. It must have been hell at police headquarters, with cops investigating cops, with the Feds stepping in, with everything about to blow.
Then came the clincher: Around that same time, our four-person investigative team—Danby, Orse, Jess, and me—were pulled off our investigation. And that’s when all that shit about drug-testing for newspaper employees began.
Curious timing.
Who has that kind of clout? Who can press a button or make a call and stop the trains from running?
Some of the so-called corrupt cops lost their jobs. But I always suspected that the big guns, i.e., those who ran the cops, had gotten away clean. Kamana had always topped my list of most powerful game-changers, but Blankenship, at least back then, was off the radar. It’s now apparent that both he and Kamana had the kind of clout to make judges shiver, to make city editors squash their own paper’s exposés.
They only know one side, Richards had said regarding Diamond Head Crater. Knew only its iconic western face. Was he hinting at more? That match trick of his supports that notion. When you’re looking at Diamond Head from its—for the lack of a better term�
�back side, what you see is not the familiar image reversed. You are reminded that it’s three-dimensional, that it is, indeed, a crater. What you see from the side we were looking from is a whole other ridge.
Then there’s its underbelly. Thanks to the military occupation after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Diamond Head is replete with secret tunnels, places that are present but not so easily seen—you have to go looking for them.
Same with guys like Kamana, Blankenship, and Herblach. Once you go looking, you find that they’re the modern-day equivalents of Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey; they are that coterie of rude senators in The Rose and the Sword; they have the law in their pockets. Relying on street thugs? That’s passé. No need for the likes of the Sperry brothers. Or piddling pizzlers like Double-A. These guys were immunized. They had far more sophisticated ways of dealing with enemies.
I tried Mia one more time and got the expected non-answer. What the fuck was happening?
After making sure there was no tail, I drove by her place. It was dark. No one home. I sat in my car fiddling with the phone.
I tried Les’s number. Had he returned home? Could she have returned there? No answer. Fuck! Answer your goddamned phone! I left a voicemail message: Just seeing if Mia’s there, or if you’ve seen her since this morning. This is very important.
I had been holding back from calling Sal, especially after my drunken mini-explosion the other night. But when I called the tavern he answered and the moment he heard my voice he said It’s time we have a tête-à-tête. Before hanging up I gave him a brief rundown of what had happened with Richards and that other cop. He said, Moves are being made. Perfect: an agentless assertion.
I didn’t want to check in with either Minerva or Connie. What could I tell them? That instead of finding, I’m losing people, and I got the cops after me? I fired up the engine, drove back oceanward in the light of an almost full moon, and stopped at a 7-11 for a sandwich.
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