I went through her closet. Nothing but clothes and shoes. A lot of the clothes were exercise clothes. No papers of any sort.
I checked under her bed. Aha, a clear, plastic storage box.
I pulled out the box, removed its blue snap-on cover, and rummaged through her files. First there was a mess of bills—electric, cable, and phone. No late fees; no indication of money problems. Beneath the bills was a loose assortment of photos, lots of them featuring her and other triathletes in action. There were pictures of Kay and Matthew also, and that drawstring guy. At the bottom of the pile—where else?—lay a photo of her and Mr. D. He wore a loose, unbuttoned shirt and jeans, as if he were modeling for GQ. She wore a short black dress and looked appropriately hot. Apparently she wasn’t being straight with me. But then, in the game of romance, everyone lies.
Under all the loose stuff I found a manila envelope, an envelope not unlike the one she had handed to me way back when.
I quickly scanned its contents. It looked like police reports and I saw that someone had typed in the name Froom. Curiously, these were reports filed by Saipan police investigating the Tinian incident—or incidents. There was also a slick, puff-piece type of brochure on hibiscus and its role in enhancing Hawai‘i’s pro-business profile. I put the envelope down and continued searching.
I checked the desk drawers, the kitchen drawers, the backs of drawers, the back of her toilet, the ceiling walls, looking to see if she too had been given something tiny yet pertinent as a flash drive. I found a few cassette tapes, some CDs and DVDs, but these weren’t the blank or recordable type. I sat down, found myself staring at the bike on the wall. Something about it stuck out. What got me back on my feet was realizing that her other bike, her Fuji Altamira, was missing. Did she take it with her? Did someone else take it? I stared at this custom-made bike, pondering. Impulsively, I lifted it from its wall restraints, then wrote a quick note to Mia, telling her it was I who took it and to please, please call me.
I picked up the folder and stuffed it under my t-shirt and into the front part of my pants. I rolled the bike toward the elevator. When the side-sliding doors opened I squeezed the discarded chair into the elevator along with the bike and took the whole sad load down with me.
I put the chair back with the streetside crap pile, then rolled the bike to my car. After removing its front tire and maneuvering the bike into the back seat, I headed out to Lanikai. At Les Biden’s place I hiked up the scored driveway. Walked the stairs. Knocked. Nobody. No Mrs. Loo. No Mia. Or they weren’t answering.
I walked down the steep steps and saw Marvin. He scurried into the bushes. Hope he’s being fed.
I searched around for a fake stone or something similar where someone could hide a key. It was to no avail. Knowing if I forced my way in, I would set off alarms; knowing I was already on camera, I looked right where I knew the lens to be and, with my palms facing up, shrugged my shoulders. Then I looked around for something to kick.
Another fucking dead end.
Discouraged, I drove back to my harbor home.
I was rolling the bike along the dock when I sensed someone behind me. I turned to look back and saw a mask-covered face. I was about to throw the bike at this ghostly figure when something—a bat or some kinda piece of wood—crashed into my head from the other side.
47
I opened my eyes and didn’t know where I was, except for the flickering stars. The moon was shrouded, rising toward crescendo, then OW! Oh my god, what did they hit me with? I tried to roll over onto my side so I could get up. It did not seem possible. I felt the back of my head, the spot from where the sudden pain had emanated. Oh shit; blood. I looked at my watch. I had been out for a good half hour. No sign of anyone. I managed to get into a sitting position, but with every move I felt pain in some part of my body. I finally forced myself to roll over and get onto my knees. The pain was now worse around my stomach, my left side, my groin. Thank god whoever was responsible had given me a powerful anesthetic before laying kicks into my prostrate form. It occurred to me as I fell to the dock that I saw both sandals and black leather shoes. Both the masked guy and the guy who hit me were huge.
I thought about the Sperrys. Curtis and Declan, in particular. But why would they do this? It didn’t add up.
I forced myself up and picked up Mia’s bike, which lay there like it had been kicked too. I tried to lift the bike onto the boat, but the pain in my ribs was just too much.
What I didn’t feel made me feel even worse. I didn’t feel the envelope I had slipped into my pants. It was gone. These weren’t your usual thieves. They would have taken the bike, or my wallet, which was still in my pocket. They knew what they were looking for.
I left the bike on the spit of dock between my boat and Rian’s boat and stumbled aboard. I barely made it to the cabin. Barely made it to the Advil. Was barely able to swallow. My jaw ached too. And a tooth was loose. It took me a while to get three tablets down. It took me another while to get back on the dock and affix Mia’s bike to the lifting ring with a vinyl-covered chain and padlock. By then I was too exhausted to care about the pain or anything and climbed aboard, made it into the cabin, and fell sideways onto my bed.
Red tape
(Day 16—Tuesday, June 5) When I got up, I sat up, felt all the pain all over again, and saw the horizon all lit up. I tasted blood and spat it out. Took more Advil.
My cracked ribs made it hard to move, but slowly I managed to get around the boat and assess the damage. I noticed that my security system and cable hookup had been thoroughly dismantled. The few files that I kept on the boat had been picked through.
Damn! I hobbled over to my car and found the trunk ajar. They got that set too. Fuck!
Whoever is doing this knows about all the loose pieces of evidence and is determined to find and destroy it all.
Why not kill me?
On the other hand, why have more blood on your hands when you can scare somebody off?
Clearly I had been given a warning. Fuck if I was gonna heed it. I stepped out into a drizzly day. It almost never rains in June, but it was raining today.
I saw the bike, still lying on the dock where I left it. I had to get it onto the boat.
It was a struggle. I removed the lock and chain and almost screamed out in pain when I tried to drag it a foot. I then tried to finesse it so the front wheel reached the edge of the boat. Then I climbed aboard the boat and pulled the wheel without lifting my arms. It took me all of five minutes to get the bike onto the boat and into the cabin, but it felt like an hour.
I stared at the mass of steel and rubber, thinking. I had searched every inch of Mia’s small apartment, but I hadn’t searched this bike. It was light but not super light. I got up slowly, painfully, and ran my fingers along the frame, thinking It’s a hollow cylinder. I moved toward my toolbox, to dig out my hacksaw, already bracing for the pain it would cause me to saw through, but then came to my senses. That’s not going to work. It’s one thing to hide something in the frame of a bike, but to hide the fact that you did so? It sounded like too complicated a welding job.
I looked at the handlebars. Mia had mentioned converting her handlebars from drop bars and bull horns for certain kinds of races, so she had to have had experience removing and attaching them. I put away the hacksaw, pulled out a pair of pliers, and removed the rubber caps from the ends of the handlebars. Then I stuck in a rod to see if there might be something stuffed inside, and if there were something, it had better be more than bicycle registration papers.
Nothing. Shit.
The handlebars were wrapped with red, textured tape. When I squeezed the wrapped part of the handlebars I could feel the padding—for shock absorption, would be my guess. I began removing the tape, unraveling the cloth-like material.
Two three-inch pieces of gray-colored foam fell out. I struggled to bend and pick them up. I could feel something hard contained within them.
A pair of SanDisk flash drives.
I opened m
y laptop. Noticed the battery was low, so I plugged it in. When the desktop opened, I slipped a USB flash drive into the slot.
Every photograph was there. All scanned. The ones taken on that Tinian beach; profile shots of these same players; photos of others as well. One file was labeled Froom. Another file, labeled with the acronym that spelled out, albeit with an extra b, that ancient Chinese calculating tool, seemed to have a collection of documents relating to abbacus.
I tried the other flash drive. It was a duplicate.
I phoned Richards. I had awakened him from his sleep and he was righteously annoyed, but he got nicer when I gave him an account of what had just transpired.
“Go to Urgent Care, get fixed up, then meet me at the entrance to Diamond Head Tunnel,” he said. I wondered about his fascination with that locale.
• • •
Richards was alone, leaning against a Chrysler Sebring.
“I see that HPD never uses Sebrings.”
“Got this from the motor pool…. You OK? Man, you look like shit. You shoulda gone to Urgent Care.”
I was holding my left side. It hurt less when I did so. And breathing was still a challenge. “Not a problem. I’ll live.”
“You know they’re onto you.”
“Who?”
“Whoever killed Gerard is my best guess…. His car was found here.”
“Gerard’s Miata?”
“Yes.”
“Near his workplace.” We both looked toward the theater.
“I’ve been trying to figure out whether he drove up here, was killed, then taken in another car to his house, or if somebody else drove his car here after the fact.”
“He must have driven here, right? I mean, why would the killer or killers bring the car here after the fact? Doesn’t make sense.”
“You’re right. It makes no sense.”
“Nothing’s making sense…. You’re gonna tell me about the matchbook warning?”
“That’s why I had you meet me here.”
Richards gave me some background regarding the well-known problems afflicting the elite Criminal Investigative Squad (CIS) within HPD. It was common knowledge it has been linked for several years to Chinatown gambling, and how, rather than fighting corruption, it fostered a climate of corruption. What Richards added, which wasn’t common knowledge, was how high the corruption went. When I asked him about Ty Froom, the deputy chief of field operations, the man who oversaw CIS, he reiterated McMichaels’ revelation that he was married to Blankenship’s sister, making for a cozy relationship between top HPD brass and a top union official with ties to gambling. In their organizational chart, he continued to explain, this same deputy chief was above the guy that Richards’ boss reported to. Tumblers were clicking and falling into place. Both the deputy chief and Blankenship were very much involved and very much invested in Kamana’s political future. The plan was to help Kamana lock up the governorship, which confirmed what Orse had already told me.
Richards went further. He said if Kamana got elected, then it’s musical chairs. King Josiah would then appoint the current police chief—he has a law degree—to head the AG’s office, where he could be controlled, and then the Josiah-friendly Honolulu Police Commission would undoubtedly appoint DCFO Froom as the new chief of police.
“There’s a part two to this,” he added, then went on to explain how Kamana and company would use their combined clout to get one of their guys, an attorney who’s part of their coterie of friends and advisors, to make a run at the prosecuting attorney position, and maybe even use it as a launching pad for the 2012 mayoral race. That way they’d control the executive branches of both the city and the state.
That was the long-range scheme.
And my case involved those who were trying to subvert that scheme.
I told him all I knew about the missing girl—the film, her desire to redeem her murdered father, his ties to some of the same players he had mentioned, some of whom Kay and Matt had rendezvoused with in Las Vegas. I told him about the song, about Jerry Herblach, and my theory that all of these elements and events were somehow tied to Gerard’s death. I told him about how two envelopes with incriminating information about events in Tinian were brutally taken from me.
“However,” I said, handing him one of the flash drives. “I do have this. You need to take a look at it.”
Richards pocketed the drive.
“I been meaning to ask, what happened with your newspaper gig? What did you do to piss them off? Seems like you gave up a choice job.”
“Had its ups and downs.”
“But they fired you, right? There’s gotta be some shit behind that.”
“This just between you and me?”
“Illegal shit?”
“Not really.”
“Nobody died, right?”
“Nope.”
“Then my lips are sealed.”
I took a painful breath. “OK, well, I have this friend. At the paper. He really needed the job. The guy had a mortgage, wife, kids in college—the whole shebang. When the paper got bought up by Grey Media Inc., the new guys began to consolidate things—called them money-saving gestures. Then they announced that rather than just laying off people, everyone would have to take a drug test. Now I’ve taken my share of tokes through the years—”
Richards folded his arms. “Who hasn’t?”
“But I hadn’t touched the stuff for quite a while. So I knew I’d pass the test. But my friend….”
“A regular toker?”
“Daily…. His job was at risk. So I decided to make a big stink. Of course, they wouldn’t let me do it on their pages, like an op-ed piece, so I had to turn to their rival newspaper. Long story short, I created enough noise to get the ACLU all riled up and—”
“Let me guess. All the legal shit caused the testing to be delayed, meanwhile your friend bites the bullet for a couple of months—”
“And tests clean.”
“And you were fired for doing what you did.”
“No. I didn’t get fired. I got suspended. They knew if they fired me, there’d be all kinds of backlash. I had a lot of friends in the industry. So what they did was everything they could to make my life miserable. That’s why I resigned.”
“That’s why your wife left you?”
“You know about that?”
“She’s a public figure. Lives in a fishbowl.”
“Brenda had fifty reasons to leave me.”
“But this had to be the main one.”
“Jeez, you must be a detective.”
“Am I right?”
“Things weren’t right between us. The suspension just made it clearer.”
“Quite a sacrifice you made for that guy. Hope it was worth it.”
“The way I see it, if Brenda wasn’t about to see me through a rough patch, then we had nothing. I’m just glad I found out.”
“Most people don’t.”
That statement made me wonder about his home life. I chose not to ask. Instead, I said, “What’s the next step?”
“I’m gonna scrutinize this flash drive you’ve given me. Maybe it has some clues that’ll help me find the killer. My guess is killers. Get confessions. Find out who put them up to it. You know, the usual.”
My cell phone vibrated. I looked at who was calling. It was a text message, from Donny. It said, entirely in lower case,
got a leak in our midst. thats how they got to plotkin. murder happened outside diamond head tunnel. mias in danger, youre in danger. your friend rian is in danger. has to do with abacus.
“Your story just got confirmed.” I showed Richards the text and told him about Donny. In that instant I surmised why Rian had sent Kawika Jr. away.
“What’s ‘abacus’?”
I wanted to say, The name we can give to who we’ve been talking about.
“It’s all in the flash drive,” I told him. “It’s those same guys. And their operatives.”
He thought a minute, then said,
“Shit, it’s Donny who’s in danger. Tell him he needs to find a place where he can hide out for a few days.”
Richards had to report to work. Another grinding day for him, one that I was sure would be filled with delicate encounters, heady confrontations, angst—adding up to a wariness and weariness that comes with knowing your enemies are all around you.
“You know they’re watching you,” he warned before he drove off. “You just don’t know if they know what you know…. You keep moving forward, but you watch your back…. At the end of the day, when you get home, the kids are already in bed. You shower, eat a late meal, hope your wife isn’t too upset, then you crash out the moment you sit on the sofa. At some point you drag your ass to bed, then get up at sunrise and start over.”
His last words before he left: “You better go see a doctor.”
“We’ll get through this,” I said as he left, already out of hearing. As Richards drove further off, I said, louder, “My promise to you, Mr. Ornery Homicide Detective … we’ll get through this.” I hit reply on my phone and texted Donny back. Hoped he’d get my message. Hoped he was using a burner and not someone else’s cell phone.
The painkillers were wearing off, but I wasn’t stopping by no doctor’s office. Instead I picked up some orange juice, just so I could wash down more Advil, then picked up a venti-sized coffee at Starbucks, took all the free samples of pumpkin bread and headed to the harbor.
48
I was holding both my coffee and my ribs, trying to take the nasty step onto my boat when I heard Rian’s voice.
“What the shit happened to you, mate?”
I told him about the attack the night before.
“Aw, man! Shit! So sorry I wasn’t here, mate. Spent the night at Meg’s. I tell ya, I’m not too keen on this land-living. Clean sheets and comfort? Damn, I’d never get out of bed.”
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