“I’m not going to shoot Virginia,” Arch said. His tone was softer, his words coming out slower and more contemplative.
“Not on purpose. Once shooting starts though, anything can happen,” Matisse said.
Arch looked over at his newfound friend in surprise. The rough -talking, hard-eating islander was taking an unexpected tack. “We’ve got time. Okay, it’s only half an hour back, but my mind’s pretty much made up.”
“Nah,” Matisse replied, pointing back the way they’d driven in from.
“Ahi at Kahuku this hour on Sunday. His wife works shift at Kahuku Hospital only seven miles. Five minutes, maybe less without traffic.”
The ridiculous Pontiac, which hadn’t had an oil change for God knew how many miles, turned over and started instantly with a gutty roar. Matisse always pumped the accelerator for half a minute before turning on the ignition, no matter how many times Arch told him he was flooding the carburetor. Matisse drove the seven miles at his usual dangerous clip, passing cars in no passing zones and waving at almost all pick up trucks they came across, moving or stopped. It didn’t seem to matter if anyone was in the parked trucks, Arch noted.
Matisse parked in a doctor’s parking spot at the very front of the hospital. They got out and went inside the emergency entrance. Matisse seemed to know every nook and cranny of the place as they made their way through the labyrinth of the complex. He said “hey” to everyone they passed, or simply made the Shaka symbol, which involved extending the index and little fingers of his right hand while wiggling his wrist. They found Ahi holding court at the back corner of the cafeteria, once more surrounded by a group of local people sitting instead of kneeling. Matisse stopped Arch from approaching by putting out his meaty left hand and hitting him on the chest.
“He’s talking story,” Matisse observed. “We wait for break. He’s seen us so it’ll only be a little bit. Let’s have some fried chicken. It’s great here. Coffee over there. Molokai Peaberry. Da best. Free. Two bucks really, but nobody ever says anything if you don’t pay.”
Arch got a cup of coffee and gave his card to the cashier, indicating that she should put Matisse’s heaping plate of chicken on the bill. The woman smiled a big smile and put the questionable card on the lip of her register.
Matisse joined him a few minutes later. “Signed for the stuff, hope that’s okay,” he said, plopping Arch’s card on the table between them.
He began working his way through the chicken, pushing a drumstick over in front of Arch. Arch looked down at the overly blackened thing but took a single bite anyway. Like almost all food cooked by locals in Hawaii, it was unbelievably delicious. He took small bites until only the bone was left. Ahi stood, as Arch was finishing, and wading through his little group of followers, and made his way ponderously to their table.
“Permission to sit?” he asked, unexpectedly.
“Sure,” Arch said, puzzled by the man’s strange use of words
Ahi smiled broadly. “I was a Marine, so many years back.” He turned the end chair around and sat down on it, cradling his huge forearms over the back.
Arch didn’t know what to say, he was so surprised.
“You got trouble because the meeting at the house didn’t go so well?” the big Hawaiian asked.
“No,” Arch answered, truthfully. “It didn’t go at all. Virginia might be there or she may not. The guy who did this to my hand was there, with his partner, both armed. I wanted to go in but Matisse said we needed to talk to you first. So here we are.”
“The Marine Corps’ frontal assault’ not always bad, but usually only works with a lot of casualties.” Ahi said the words with a smile, his dark eyes seeming to twinkle.
“Yeah, that’s what Matisse said,” Arch replied, glancing over at Matisse who was working his way through an entire fried chicken not long after consuming a monster breakfast and a whole pie. “What do you think?” Arch asked, finally.
“They got a big plane at Bellows,” Ahi said. “Landed in the night some time back. Lots of wind from that plane. What’s on it is important. Somehow it’s connected very deeply with something in the mountains here. And this is my land, my people’s land.”
Arch was surprised again. It had taken Arch days to find out the same information, and not nearly in as much detail as Ahi had.
“There’s a woman named Virginia in charge of the operation, only not really,” Arch said. “General DeWare from Kaneohe seems to be her boss, although I’m not sure of anything there. She’s at that house on Sunset. I need to talk to her about everything, and I can’t do that if she’s guarded by some armed men. Matisse thinks it’s a bad idea to use the frontal assault, so again, here we are. Any suggestions?”
“John Martin,” Ahi said, after almost a full minute of staring up at the foam ceiling of the cafeteria.
“John Martin?” Arch asked, baffled.
“Actually, Sergeant John Martin,” Ahi replied, his eyes coming back down to meet Arch’s own. “He runs the Honolulu P.D. over here. Got put out to pasture years ago for drunk driving. Now he’s the man.”
“Haole man, like me, running the police over here?” Arch asked, in surprise again.
“You not Haole,” Ahi laughed. “You here so long you like one of the people. You Kamaaina. And John has a Haole name, but he actually one of the people. Ohana. Of the land.”
Arch accepted the huge compliment with a big smile of his own. The “H”-word was almost universally used by locals to describe Caucasians in Hawaii, whether they were born there generations ago or simply visiting as a tourist, and generally they used it right to their faces. “So, what’s Sergeant Martin supposed to be able to do here?”
“John brings a bunch of the guys in uniform,” Ahi said. “What can they do? Shoot the police? Arrest them? I don’t think so. You get Virginia’s attention. Maybe no violence. I’ll come too. I’ve been shot before.”
“Shot before? Marines?” Arch asked.
“The Nam. An Hoa. Sixty-Nine.” Ahi answered, his expression turned deadpan serious.
“You don’t look that old,” Arch said, with doubt in his voice.
“You don’t look like a spy. You don’t look like a tough man. You don’t look like you’re violent. You don’t look lost or like you don’t have a life. You don’t look like you’re old enough either. Some of us have that ability, not to look like what we are or what we should look like from where we’ve been.”
Arch absorbed what the big Hawaiian said without speaking for a moment. Matisse finished his chicken, then licked his fingers clean before using several napkins. Arch thought he detected a vague knowing smile on the man’s lips while he worked.
“John Martin and his merry men it is,” Arch said, finally.
“We go Laie Point?” Matisse asked, getting to his feet.
“I’ll call. Take a few minutes for John to gather his guys together,” Ahi responded. He took out a new iPhone 6 from a hip pocket with some difficulty, before standing and backing away from the table.
Matisse smiled and followed Ahi but only to dump his tray of trash into a nearby bin. He returned to once again sit across from Arch. “See, I told you. What can they do at that house if we show up with a bunch of local cops? Ahi’s the man. My brah.”
“Really? What happens when those clowns inside the house simply fail to come to the door and there we all stand in the driveway?” Arch replied, slowly shaking his head. “They’ll know we know where the house is too.”
Ahi pocketed his phone and walked to the edge of the table. “They’re coming. John was a Marine too. He loves this kind of stuff. I don’t know how many of his buddies are coming but it should be enough.”
They walked back through the convoluted corridors of the hospital until they arrived out by the car.
“I’ll put the top down,” Matisse volunteered. Arch wondered if Ahi would fit into the cavernous back seat even with the top down. It took a few minutes, and not a little effort, to get loaded into the car, but then
they were on the road. Matisse took the car up to blinding speed, closing fast on some tourist’s rental car in front of them. Ahi leaned forward and briefly gripped Matisse’s shoulder before letting go. Matisse immediately slowed the Pontiac and followed the tourist Toyota all the way back to Sunset Beach. Arch would have thanked Ahi but the passing wind in the convertible was too loud for his voice to he heard.
The turn down onto the access road unexpectedly became dramatic, as they approached the outer gate normally blocking entry to the house. Two unmarked vans and a bunch of privately owned police cars clogged the entire area. The gate to the house and the garage door were gaping open. Several officers were standing at the back of a black Chevy Suburban parked inside the garage. Matisse pulled the Pontiac up close to the back of one of the vans and shut it down. Both men helped Ahi extricate himself from the rear seat. The officers stopped talking and watched them approach.
“Inside,” one uniformed officer said, pointing toward the wall at the back of the garage.
Arch was the first one through the back door. He passed through a short corridor and then into the residence’s ground floor main room. The big double glass door gaped open, as it had before, with the drapes still flapping in the light wind. Virginia sat on a long couch facing him, her eyes hugely round, her mouth sealed shut with a piece of duct tape. Duct tape also held her knees together, and it was obvious that something held her arms together behind her back. A tall, dark and handsome police officer stood next to Virginia’s right shoulder. He was in uncommonly good physical condition without an ounce of fat, much less the usual thick layer most islanders carried around.
“Ahi, uncle!” the officer exclaimed, as Ahi trundled in with Matisse just before him. “You said the woman shouldn’t speak until you got here so this is the only way we could shut her up. The fellas she was with are upstairs, a little less comfortable, but okay. I put their guns in the trash compactor. All you have to do is push the button. We also restrained them with tape so you don’t need keys or any of that. Anything else?”
“You want to know what this is about?” Ahi asked his nephew.
“Nah, uncle, they not very interesting. No drugs, just a lot of talk about how important they are. Call us if you need anything.” Several other officers in SWAT uniforms began to file down the stairs. In seconds the house was nearly empty.
Arch sat next to Virginia on the couch and began to slowly peel the duct tape from her face whispering “I’m so sorry” as he worked.
XII
Peeling the duct tape from Virginia’s face was like peeling skin from the surface of a Kiwi fruit. Virginia said nothing. Her eyes spoke for her and there was as much warmth in them as there is warmth emanating from the bottom of blue glacier ice.
“There,” Arch announced, with a tepid smile and a small forced laugh.
Then he went to work on freeing her bound wrists. Matisse handed over a small pocketknife, with the blade exposed, to assist. Being very careful not to injure the woman further, Arch sliced slowly through the sticky tape.
“You bastard,” Virginia breathed out, using the fingers of both freed hands to massage and smooth the lower part of her face. “I see you’ve added some more fat to your ridiculous band of local swine,” she continued, glaring first at Matisse and then Ahi, both standing on the other side of the small coffee table that separated them.
“Where’s the Haole woman?” Ahi asked, craning his huge head to look around the room. “Where’s the, you know, the wonderful Haole woman you love?”
Matisse turned his head to avoid the appearance of laughing openly.
Arch frowned at the Abbot and Costello routine he was observing, but his attention was caught by the faint sound of someone using the front stairs.
“Who’s in the house?” he asked, thinking of Kurt and Lorrie left bound and gagged upstairs by John Martin’s hastily gathered team of whatever they were. Neither Matisse nor Ahi made any response.
“I want you and your flock of Kanaka lemmings to get the hell out of my house right now,” Virginia ordered. In emphasis, she rose unsteadily to her feet while pointing toward the glass double doors still gaping open in the wind. As all eyes in the room turned to look where she was pointing, a man walked through the curtains.
“No one seems to be answering the front door,” General DeWare said, entering and stopping when he was a few feet from Matisse’s right shoulder.
“Apparently, that didn’t deter you,” Arch responded, putting the General’s sudden appearance together with the footsteps he’d heard earlier.
“I presume the two imbeciles you have working for you are running free to commit more stupidity?”
“Enough with the verbal jousting,” DeWare answered, raising one hand as if to ward off further comments. “I think it’s time we all had a talk about what’s going on and what needs to be done,”
“Now why don’t I think that’s going to happen?” Arch asked, rising to his feet and standing next to Virginia.
“This isn’t a secure place,” the general said, acting like Arch hadn’t even spoken. “Let’s all meet in half an hour at the Haleiwa Café. There won’t be anyone there at this hour after lunch. No recordings. Nobody will be listening in. We can be frank with one another.”
Arch marveled at the smooth delivery of the man and his obvious ability to immediately take and hold control of the situation. The knowledge made him dislike the man all the more. “Do you think we’re that dumb? If you wanted listening devices then they’d already be in place. The Café is probably another of your little “safe house” operations.” Arch knew he was sounding paranoid and possibly silly but he couldn’t stop himself. The general seemed to garner all of Virginia’s attention every time he was on the scene. Arch glanced at Virginia’s face for any kind of support but she only had eyes for the general, her head nodding like one of those bobbing doll’s to be found in the back window of some old classic car.
“Your rental’s out front parked on the road,” DeWare said, tossing the Lincoln’s keys to Virginia instead of Arch. Arch snatched the keys in mid-air, only realizing afterward that the gesture revealed just how much the man was successfully playing on his angry emotion.
Arch tool a few deep breaths, slowly sliding the key fob into his right front pocket. “Okay, half an hour. The Café.” Before he could add anything more Virginia walked over the general and they went out through the double doors together, leaving Arch standing with Matisse and Ahi in front of him.
“That went well,” Ahi observed.
“He has troubled relationships,” Matisse added in Arch’s defense.
“Shut up. Both of you,” Arch stated, flatly. “There are a lot more serious implications about all this. What’s going on between Virginia and I is none of your business.”
“Okay, and it’s the first time any of them, anyone at all, has been willing to talk to us since this started,” Ahi agreed.
“Matisse, check and see if those clowns upstairs are gone, “Arch ordered. “And both of you please remember that I’m not part of your cause, no matter what I believe about it. I came here because of the woman and got thrown into whatever this is, but I’m not siding with you guys or anybody else.”
“You just called her ‘the woman,’” Ahi replied.
“Will you stop with these inane observations?” Arch shot back.
Matisse returned to report that the two bound men were gone, as predicted. They all walked silently out to where the Pontiac was parked. The Lincoln was about a hundred feet further down the road. Arch noted that the afternoon sun was hotter than normal when a spot was occupied where the trade winds didn’t reach.
“C’mon, we’ll take the Lincoln. It has air,” Arch said, walking toward the rental while clicking the locks open with his key fob.
“They had the Lincoln,” Ahi said, using his understated ‘Wisdom of Buddha’ tone.
“They returned it,” Matisse said, as the three approached the car together, “and it looks lik
e they even washed it. Only the Marines would do that,” he finished proudly.
“That’s not what he meant,” Arch said, stopping at the driver’s door and looking into the cars interior. “We don’t know much yet, and it might be valuable to some people if we didn’t know anymore. Let’s take the Bonneville. With the top down it’ll be fine as long as it’s not driven at a hundred miles an hour.” Arch stared at Matisse meaningfully when he was done.
“A bomb? A bomb? Are we talking about a bomb?” Matisse, said, astonishment coloring his every word.
“Probably not anything so dramatic, or drawing as much attention. Probably just bugged to high heaven,” Arch answered, turning to head back to where the Pontiac was parked.
Ahi took up most of the back seat while Arch drove shotgun. For the first time the Pontiac did not start instantly when Matisse turned the key.
“Oh no, my luck’s run out. Please start,” cajoled Matisse, lovingly patting the car’s steering wheel with his spare hand as he used the other to turn the ignition key.
“Stop before you run down the battery,” Arch instructed. “Pop the hood.” Arch got out and walked to front of the car. He pulled up on the heavy hood. There was no secondary latch. “The distributor top is loose,” he observed, leaning forward and down to snap the part back into place.
He dropped the hood when he was done, its slamming sound echoing back and forth off the ugly cinder block walls located on each side of the road.
Hawaii was a place of opposites and anachronisms. Intense living beauty interrupted everywhere with drop-dead ugliness. The trick was not to notice the ugliness and enjoy the beauty part.
The car started with its usual instant élan. Matisse lowered the electric powered top, which for unknown reasons still worked, and took off like he was leaving the Launchpad at Canaveral.
“That never happen before,” he yelled over the growing buffet of the wind.
Down In The Valley Page 10