For a Song

by Morales, Rodney;

  “So you know.”

  Yes, I did know. Operation Shave Ice was the code name for a coordinated effort by federal, state, and county officials. This was an all-out war on the distribution and sale of crystal meth. Agents and police supposedly dismantled five loosely affiliated ice drug rings in Hawai‘i. “Wrote a couple articles on it back then,” I told the two. “Between fifty and sixty people were arrested for selling ice. You guys happen to have any?”

  “This was not only on O‘ahu,” the taller one said, “but also the Big Island, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Phoenix.”

  What were they telling me? That Kay and Matt had gone on a magical mystery tour of afflicted areas? Or was it coincidence…. Guys in suits—Mia said Kamana had introduced Kay and Matt to “player” types in splendid attire. What if these were the same guys? What if the shakers-slash-movers those two had been introduced to were actually federal agents? Worse, what if I were now meeting with Kamana’s boys, or even members of abbacus who were posing as Feds?

  My only comfort was that Norm and Sal would never do this to me. Especially after what I’d been through. The world couldn’t be that weird.

  “The strategy,” the shorter agent was saying, “was to utilize the ‘Enterprise Theory of Investigation,’ which is to seek the dismantlement of an entire criminal organization. Because Hawai‘i had been labeled a High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, we were working with local officials.”

  “Guys like Norm McMichaels.”

  “He was involved, yes.”

  “This was ocdetf, the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force.”

  These fuckers and their acronyms. “Glad you told me what it stands for, since you Feds are kind of OCD when it comes to covering your asses. Or was it assets?”

  They ignored my comment.

  One of them picked up a file. “You really should read this. Might be worth the headache.”

  I grabbed the report and skimmed. First there was an account of how crystal meth had been brought into Hawai‘i, initially, by Asian criminal organizations—Yakuza? And while a few of these organizations were still involved, most of the stuff was now coming in from Mexico and California. More recently, they found that a lot of the crystal meth flowing into Hawai‘i had come from California via Canada, rather than Mexico, to avoid stricter customs and Border Patrol inspections. The other trend they noticed was how boats were being used more than airplanes to deliver the illegal shit. Criminal organizations with ties to the Tijuana and Sinaloa cartels were using everything from Matson containers to racing boats.

  I shook the report at them: “Is this why you guys zeroed in on my boat?”

  “Wasn’t us.”

  “It was the local cops.”

  A timely knock followed that remark.

  “Must be room service,” I said. “Or the local cops.”

  Another knock and then whoever had knocked discovered the doorbell.

  The shorter guy sprang up and opened the door. Two more men walked in. They were dressed for the beach, in t-shirts and cargo shorts. Oh, fuck. It’s T-Rex and Stoner. The guy I knew as Stoner was carrying a cardboard cup carrier that held three grande-sized, lid-covered Starbuck coffee cups.

  “Take a break, guys,” he said. “We got this one.”

  The tall suited guy joined the short one and they both left.

  As soon as the door closed, T-Rex turned and said to me, pointing with his thumb toward the door, “So fucking old school. No wonder people despise us.” He wore a CSI—Las Vegas shirt.

  “‘Us?’ You’re one of them?” I turned toward Stoner, whose t-shirt featured SpongeBob SquarePants. He was laying the cup carrier down on the kitchenette counter. “You guys were tracking me the whole time.”

  “No, not the whole time, but when our key witnesses disappeared we thought a guy like you could sniff out where they went.”

  “My head hurts.”

  “It’s not as complicated as it seems,” Stoner said as he sat across from me.

  “That’s not what I mean. I mean my head really hurts.”

  “Sorry about your … accident,” Stoner said.

  “One of your guys just told me that it was the local cops who raided my boat. Any idea who gave the order?”

  “All evidence points to the dead guy, Tyler Froom,” T-Rex answered. “You know he’s dead, right?”

  I saw him die. “Heard about it.”

  “The problem is—,” T-Rex added, “and it took us a while to figure it out, sad to say—one of our guys was leaking information to him.”

  “You see,” Stoner added, “he was the real threat. Initially we thought it was Geary. We thought he was the one giving the orders.”

  “He was,” T-Rex said as he took the lounge chair.

  “You know what I mean. He didn’t have the power to enforce.”

  “Just saying he was the guy. The facilitator.”

  “Just saying he had no power.”

  “And Junior did,” I said to remind them I was there.

  “There was a leak,” T-Rex said directly to me. “And it had to come from someone with authority. Someone who not only had prior knowledge of past operations, but also knew where our safe houses were located.”

  “Your key witnesses. You’re talking about Caroline and Matt.”

  “Yeah. You see,” T-Rex added, “when they came to us in Mexico, we offered to protect them. Got them a safe house and everything. Then they disappeared. Poof. Like they’d been spirited away.”

  “At first we feared we’d find them in a ditch somewhere,” Stoner said. “Then we thought it could be even worse.”

  “How could it be worse?”

  “Worse as in dead and no corpses to be found,” T-Rex said. “Not even skeletal remains.”

  “Yeah,” Stoner intruded, “like, disappeared in the Copper Canyons.”

  “Lotta bodies in that region,” T-Rex got up and walked toward the kitchenette.

  “Yes, too many bodies.” I wasn’t just thinking Mexico when I said that.

  “You guys want coffee?” T-Rex said.

  “Just water,” I said. “I need to take a piss.”

  Stoner pointed to the bathroom. I got up, slowly, and walked as smoothly as I could to hide the fact that all my aches were returning. Sal’s magic smoothie was wearing off.

  When I returned from the bathroom, I saw T-Rex pouring some Kahlúa into his coffee.

  “On second thought, I’ll take one of those.”

  Stoner handed me a lidded cup.

  I removed the lid, added the liqueur, put the lid back on and sat down, placing the cup on the crowded coffee table. “So you were saying?” I said to T-Rex.

  “I was saying we had lost them—”

  “This is in Mexico.”

  “Yes. And were going crazy trying to find them.”

  “Then we were approached by Drew Geary,” Stoner interrupted. He put his coffee down and leaned back, placing his sandaled feet on the coffee table, right on some sheets of paper. “He told us that ‘his people’ had taken them. Thought our ‘safe house’ wasn’t safe enough.”

  “He was probably right,” T-Rex put in.

  “Then he told us he was done. Finished. Said he had had enough. Wasn’t into killing innocent people. Said that was a line he couldn’t cross. But, and this is a big but, since Froom had given the order, and since he was the guy in charge….”

  “Yeah we get it, Wayne.”

  “Wayne? Your fucking name is Wayne? Shit, I like Stoner better.”

  “Fuck,” he spat, “this cretin’s name is Reginald.”

  “I go by Reg,” T-Rex said as he put his cup down on the carpet and took up the story where Wayne had left off. “You see, Geary knew that if Froom ever found out Caroline and Matt were alive, he’d be dead.”

  “He is dead.”

  “Oh yeah … you’re right. That … that was pretty unfortunate. ’Cause he was our only link to where they were.”

  “Geary was working with us
,” Wayne, aka Stoner, said, “or should I say ‘workin’ us,’ to bring down Froom. That was his bargaining chip.”

  “Wasn’t he the craziest fucking lawyer ever?” Reg said to Wayne. “Kinda liked him, man.” He looked at me. “You take him and that Serrano guy. Man, they could sell NASA on a Jupiter landing.”

  “Yeah,” Wayne followed, sighing at the same time, “incredibly shrewd fuckers. We told Geary to return to Hawai‘i, told him to carry on as if nothing had happened, which is probably what Froom also told him to do. What better way to cover up a murder?”

  Right. Act like nothing happened. I sipped the coffee. It stung way in the back of my mouth, where the healing had just begun.

  “But that wasn’t enough for Froom,” he continued. “What I mean is, he believed Geary when Geary told him they had been taken care of, but he wanted to cover all his bases. So he had that Plotkin guy killed, ’cause he knew, thanks to whoever was leaking information, that Plotkin was meeting with a reporter about those rape murders in Tinian.”

  “Froom was trying to tyler up all the loose ends,” Reg said.

  “And trying to frame you for Plotkin’s murder,” Wayne added.

  “He came really close to—”

  “Oh, fuck!” Reg had knocked over his coffee cup, and the lid had come off. “Fuck!” he said again, like it was the worst thing that had happened in world history. He retrieved the cup, looked into it, and swore a third time.

  “Look at the mess, you shit,” Wayne said as he stood up and stalked into the bathroom.

  “Fuck the mess,” Reg said as he looked down at coffee spreading through the carpet. “That’s good fucking coffee.”

  Wayne came back with a towel and threw it over the spill.

  “Got a little left,” Reg said as he lifted the unlidded cup to his mouth, held it high, and drained the last few drops.

  “You guys for real?”

  Reg looked at me, incredulous. Probably bummed about the coffee. “Are you for real? What is it you do? Mr. Private Detective? You’re a fucking anachronism.”

  “Yeah, really old school,” Wayne said.

  “I’ve heard worse…. Why were you guys on the Big Island?”

  “You’re asking us?” Wayne said. “We were just following you. Figured you were onto something.”

  “And you did a triathlon—”

  “—To keep our cover. Dumb move. I’m still hurting.”

  Reg, still looking bummed, holding his empty cup, said, “That’s ’cause your friend from Narcotics….”

  “Vice, not Narcotics. What about Norm?”

  “He was our liaison. He told us you were trying to do what we were trying to do. You see, the thinking was, if we could find the missing duo on our own, Geary would lose his bargaining chip. McMichaels suggested we fold you into the case.”

  “It was a delicate operation,” Wayne said.

  “And you walked right into it.” Reg stared again at the mess on the rug and shook his head.

  “Am I supposed to say ‘my bad’?” I said, reliving what I had walked right into just a few days ago.

  “By no means, brah.” Wayne sat back down and re-placed his sandaled feet on the table. “Think of it as a stage play. Every actor knows his—or her—part. The script is tight. Tight.”

  “And then someone walks onto the stage,” Reg added, getting into the drama of it, “and everyone has to improvise. Or blow the whole fucking scene.”

  Like this scene? “Geary put me there. At the theater. He sent someone to lure me. He was working with Froom to frame me.”

  “Oh, the old Froom frame,” Reg said.

  “The world’s a stage, brah,” Wayne offered.

  “Yeah, Wayne’s World? Did you just make that up? Or did you steal it from your snitch, Willie Shakes?”

  “The world’s a staging area,” Reg put in.

  Was Curtis, at Geary’s house, folding me in? Apparently, when I stormed into the house, I had blown the plan. Plan B, I guess, if Plan A was to simply find the missing couple. If I hadn’t gone there, Geary would still be alive and Froom would be going to jail. I felt sick. I let my face fall into my hands and sighed.

  “You OK?” Reg said. “Your head?”

  “I’m OK….” I looked up to see Wayne sipping at his coffee.

  My mind was going in twenty directions. Somebody was leaking stuff to Froom. Norm was in on all this. What about Rian, Sal, Mia? Who else? In fact, it was Rian who had informed me about Geary. Maybe he was setting me up, making sure I’d go to his house. “Say, was Rian working with you guys?”

  “Rian … Sal….”

  Sal. Makes sense. He pretended he didn’t know things. But when he got the word to fold me in, he began working with me.

  “What about Mia?”

  They looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders, and shook their heads. “Sorry,” Reg said, in a bad Mexican accent: “Aquellos hombres, sí, Mama Mia, no.”

  “It’s the Enterprise theory—,” Wayne said.

  “I just heard about it … from the guys you sent outside.”

  “Oh, you mean the day shift?”

  “Yeah, the day shift…. So did you find out who was leaking to Froom? Telling him what the next move was.” Telling him I would be at Geary’s house? If Rian sent me there….

  “We still don’t know,” Wayne said. “For all we know, it could be one of the guys that just left the room.”

  “Or one of you.”

  “Yes, or one of us,” Wayne said.

  “Either Mr. CSI or Mr. SpongeBob SquarePants.”

  Wayne took another sip of coffee. I took a sip too, taunting Reg with my clear appreciation of that sip.

  “Whadaya know about the Portlock shootout?” Reg said out of the blue.

  Here it comes. “Only what I read in the paper,” I ventured. No discernible reaction from either of them.

  “Wayne and I think it was the wife that shot Froom. We think Froom shot Geary first, then shot the wife, …”

  “Or vice versa …,” Wayne put in.

  “… but didn’t realize she’d come back shooting, like she was Mariska freakin’ Hargitay. She caught him turning, got him right in his fucking cheekbone.”

  “Yeah, why was he turning? That gets me. Turning toward what? If he was facing her, he wouldn’t’ve fallen that way.”

  How perceptive of Wayne.

  “Police are saying that the two guys shot each other simultaneously,” I put in.

  “Yeah, and they seem pretty anxious to close the case.” Wayne placed his cup on the coffee table.

  “Well, that’s because there’s a Tyler Froom Senior,” I told them.

  “Yeah, it’s cops covering up for themselves,” Reg declared. He kicked at the towel that had absorbed much of the spilled spiked coffee.

  “If the wife did it,” I said, “wouldn’t it be self-defense?”

  “Don’t know … you tell me,” Wayne said.

  It wasn’t just a figure of speech. They knew I was there. Is that what this debriefing is really about?

  “Getting back to Ms. Johnson and Mr. Serrano …,” Reg said.

  “Yes, please do.”

  “We really want to thank you for finding them. I tell you, when we learned of Geary’s death, man, we were going nuts. We were thinking, shit, Drew’s the only one who knows where they are….”

  “Man,” Stoner said, “how did you locate them?”

  “Old school techniques. Anachronistic shit you wouldn’t want to know about.” If they knew or suspected I was at the Portlock house, they couldn’t square that info with me being at that other place at roughly the same time. I was still trying to figure who those wizards were who spirited me away and covered it all up? Some renegade part of abbacus? Those independent contractors who go by the surname Sperry? It was curious in all this discussion that the Sperry name had never come up. Do these clowns even know about them?

  “Oh, one more thing,” Reg said. “Don’t know if you give half a shit
, but Dominic Serrano got arrested.”

  “He just got out.”

  “Parole violation,” Wayne said. “Taken away from the family home.”

  Oh my god. Connie must be sick. “Can you guys do something?”

  “Our hands are tied,” Reg said.

  “But don’t fuck us in the ass,” Wayne followed. “That’s Tyler Junior’s M.O.”

  Their schtick was getting old. “This is serious, guys.”

  “Sorry, but it’s out of our jurisdiction.”

  “Make it your jurisdiction. Fuck.” It might have been the spiked coffee, but I felt like I had been slapped out of my stupor. I stood up. “If you guys ain’t gonna do shit, I got things to do.” I started for the door, taking the coffee with me.

  “Wait,” they said collectively.

  I turned to look at them. “You wanted me here. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve—” I was about to say been through hell, but caught myself. “What do you guys want?”

  A stare down followed. I was not about to blink. I took another sip.

  “We know what Rian told you,” Reg finally said. “You had to have gone there.”

  “Then,” his other half followed, right on cue, “miraculously, you show up elsewhere.”

  “Your injuries?” Reg said, continuing their tag-team style. “You weren’t just body surfing.”

  I sat down on the rug. Crossed my arms and legs. Put my cup on the carpet. It looked precarious.

  They looked at each other. Their heads shook, their eyes opened wide. What was going on? “You guys can go on and on with your Jedi mind-probes, but I’m done talking.”

  “Fucking Yoda,” Wayne said.

  Long moments passed.

  “If you do talk,” Reg finally said. “We’ll cut him loose.”

  So they do have the authority. “And what, implicate someone else instead?”

  “Someone got away with murder.”

  “Murder of a dirty cop, you mean. A rapist and a murderer.”

  They looked at each other again.

  “So … tell me if I’m getting this … Froom shot first?” Wayne asked.

  “Froom murdered Geary. Not the other way around. Geary never fired a gun.”

  Another dramatic pause. Wayne and Reg traded glances. Another stare down ensued.

  “You think that’s enough?” Wayne said to Reg after a while.