“Made a killing, eh?” his father said, chuckling. “Wanted to tell us all about it?” He was already starting to sweat. The machine whirred as he pedaled. He sure wasn’t reading Kenny’s mind this time.
“I just—blew into town for a quick visit,” Kenny said. “What’s for breakfast? I’m starving.”
The rattling of the cycle ceased. “You said you wanted to talk to me about something, son.”
“Just wondering if you’d mind if I plug my computer into your phone line for a while this morning after breakfast.”
His father’s head tipped to one side. “It sounded urgent.” “You know how urgent I am about breakfast.”
“You don’t fool me, son.”
“Really, Dad. I just want to do a little—um—financial research. Something I thought of last night.”
His father looked unconvinced, but let the subject drop. He looked at the bedding on the floor and asked, “How did you get in?”
“Colleen.” His sister’s name popped out by long-entrenched habit. He and Colleen had always colluded on backing up each other’s alibis. “I threw a rock at her window.” He prayed that she had been home last night.
His father’s face opened into a wide smile. “Well, it’s good to see you. Are you home for long?”
“Just for today, this trip.”
“Ah. Too bad.”
“But I’ll be back next week.” He hoped he would.
“How’s the City of Gold, Tan-Kwo? How’s this earth-shaking computer-rattling dynamo of modern thought going?”
“Still shakin’.”
“And rattlin’ and rollin’.” His smile restored, his father waved him downstairs. “Try some of my special muffins. Keep your strength up,” he said, starting up the Exercycle again.
“I’ll die first,” Kenny whispered, already having sampled his father’s flaxseed lumps.
His mother was out taking her morning constitutional, so Kenny and Colleen made rice and poached eggs for breakfast, surprising her when she came through the door, her face screwed up in joy at seeing him. When their father came down to join them, after a disapproving glance at their choice of foods, he ate hurriedly, tossing back another cup of coffee. He munched a heavy black muffin, adding sound effects as he chewed, so that they would all regret the glorious enzymes they were missing. The family left after breakfast, leaving Kenny on his own, but not before Colleen extracted a discreet promise that Kenny would pay big for her silence about his arrival through the window.
He sat down at the dining-room table and put his head in his hands. His cowardice disgusted him. But he couldn’t do it to his father, watch the handsome old face crumble, face his mother’s tears.
He would pretend for a while longer. He plugged his computer into the phone jack, logged on to the Net, and went back to his research.
He found “A Slot Mechanic Tells All,” scrolled through the page, selected a few items to save, and studied “Mega-winning tip number three”:
“If you are worried that the guy who sat down on the stool you just left and won got ‘your’ jackpot, rest easy. The random number generator is moving constantly, faster than you can swing that handle down or punch that button, picking different combinations and wildly creating patterns. This happens even when the machine is not being played! The rhythm of your play is not like anyone else’s rhythm, so it will hit different at different moments, depending on who is playing. So move on and don’t worry that someone’s gonna break into your dance— you’ve got just as much chance as the next guy of snagging the next big beauty.
“Smart gamblers stay away from the slots. Two-thirds of all casino profits come from slots. The odds are stacked heavily against you.”
He logged off, feeling such advice arose out of those polyglot unreliables, myth, fact, belief, and anecdote. He couldn’t reach any reliable conclusions. He thought of accessing the City of Gold site. He used to sit for hours, scrolling around and flying from place to place, inhabiting his dream.
But not today. He realized that all he really wanted to do was get back to the trailer. He would swipe some spices from his mother’s kitchen and make pineapple chicken and walnut prawns for Jessie’s dinner.
18
MARINE CORPS BASE, Kaneohe, island of Oahu, Hawaii. A long curving road along the bay led to the guardhouse. Paul was given a map and waved in.
The girl, or woman, or better still the Marine, lived at #203 Company B Barracks. Marine Corps Corporal Bonita Banks answered the door. She was African-American. Hawaii’s ethnicities were so intermixed and so diverse that Paul was starting to see himself as locals here must see him—as a pasty-faced Caucasian, just another minority.
“Jessie called me last night. Come in.” A few plants dangled in the window, but nothing could disguise the military-issue furniture.
“Iced tea or orange juice?” Her small-chinned, oval face contrasted with a sturdy body clothed in camouflage fatigues. Her hair was severely controlled into a small bun at the back of her head, and her lips bore traces of sunscreen. Paul noted tangerine toenail polish on her bare feet and felt relief. Not that he was uncomfortable just because she was a Marine. Certainly not.
“Whatever you’re having.”
“How is Jessie?” She poured two drinks, handing him one. “She sounded unsettled. Things haven’t gotten any better, I guess. Running away’s a bum’s solution, that’s what I told her. You can’t escape yourself or your problems that way.”
“She’s got troubles. She told you about them?”
“Yeah. But what could be worse than last year? She lost her husband and her military career, all she ever wanted. ’Course, she still has . . .” She stopped.
“What?” Paul’s eyes had gone back to her toes.
“Yeah. I’m a woman, all right.”
“I’m aware,” Paul said.
She seemed to like the way he said that and curled her toes like a happy cat to prove it.
“How long have you known Jessie?”
“The whole time she was in the Corps. We went through boot camp together. Jessie and I had both been jocks in high school. Runners. Somehow Jessie managed to get together some money for boxing lessons, too. We played tennis after our duty shifts. She was my best friend out here. Outsiders, you know?”
“Outsiders?”
“Wrong minority groups for this place.”
“There are right ones?”
“Oh, yes indeed. Hawaiian, of course. Portuguese, anything Asian or Pacific Islander. She could get away with looking kind of Hawaiian when she was out of uniform, that was cool, even if her hair was so short. But not me. When this tour is over, I’m headin’ back to Atlanta.”
“So she felt out of place?”
“There are more Natives than you might think on this rock. She loved it here. She didn’t let it bother her. Even her racist father-in-law, she tried to be nice to him again and again. He never said anything but she knew. And I met him once. You could feel it like you feel the sun burning your skin here in August.”
“Amazing he could live here at all, if that was his attitude.”
“He was one messed-up rich haole.”
“It must have affected her marriage.”
“Jessie thought, you know, keep trying. He’ll come around. I could have told her. Then this thing with Dan came down. She put up with the backbiting and the rumors for a long time. But then she told me one day that fella broke into her apartment and left her a nasty little present. Her tour was just ending, and she changed her mind about reenlisting and she booked. I didn’t hear from her again until last night.”
“How did she explain that?”
“She said she was sorry and she had good reason.”
“Did you believe what she said? That Atchison Potter broke in?”
“I believed her. I told her, ‘Go to the police.’ But she wouldn’t. I said, ‘Why not?’ But you can’t make that girl talk if she doesn’t want to.”
“What exactly was her work
at the base?”
“Started out learning to be a communications specialist, but she transferred out and went into landscape maintenance. She did a good job, got along good with the guys. They knew she was taken and they let her alone.”
“Hard to believe,” Paul said. “She’s attractive.”
“No, no, she didn’t step out on Dan.”
“She use computers in her work?”
“Everybody does. She was always coming up with systems, spreadsheets, all that. Native Hawaiian plants to replace invading species, designs for the pathways.” She laughed, lowering the lids over her brown eyes. When she raised them up again, her eyes sparkled. “Not that anyone took a bit of notice. Which gravel is more aesthetic and practical, questions like that only Jessie cared about.
“But that’s not really why you’re here, is it? You want to know, did she kill him.”
“That’s right.”
“No. She had no reason to. She didn’t care about the money. She was in love. Let me tell you something. I was with her right after Dan drowned, down at the beach and later right here in this room. You never heard such carryin’ on. This girl grieved.”
Paul put on his dubious look. “Come on,” he said. “Everybody cares about money. Husbands and wives— they have problems. I’ve been married a few times. I ought to know.”
“Well, I haven’t, but in this case, I know better. They were always talking about the future, how she’d reenlist and he’d finish his degrees and get a teaching job at UH.” Bonita had been leaning against the chair. Now she sat down in it, straight backed, hands on her knees, vigilant but not hostile. Paul felt appreciative to have someone like her protecting his shores.
“What did you think of him? Dan?”
“Oh, he was a honey. Mature for his age. Not a kid, no sir. His grilled ahi was the best. What are you looking for? That he beat her? He was gentle with her. A shame he went the way he did.”
“You’re very direct, Bonita. I appreciate that.”
“Thank you. I intend to be.”
“When did you meet Dan’s father? Atchison Potter?”
“Only after Dan died. After the funeral. He came up to Jessie and me and he said, get this, ‘You won’t get a cent.’ I was proud of her. She looked him in the eye, and said, ‘I forgive you for that, Mr. Potter.’ But he got on her case after that. He talked to Sergeant Irwyn and told him something, I don’t know what. Next thing that happened, we walked into the lunchroom and one of the men made a remark and the other guys laughed, not funny laughs, you know what I’m saying? And then—I already told you—she tell you what he did once he got in?”
“Yeah, she did. What I can’t understand,” Paul said. “What I can’t get—why is he so sure she killed his son?”
“From the start he never liked her. I told you. He was so proud of Dan. He didn’t want his precious boy marrying an Indian. You might think I’m saying this because I’m a person of color myself and maybe oversensitive. I’m not. He hated her because of her race. Now this was interesting, because Dan was dark for a haole boy. And so was Mr. Potter. That’s how it works. Somebody probably called him a name when he was a kid and he felt bad. So he got this hateful pride at being a haole. See? You registering that?”
“I think so,” Paul said.
“Here’s something even more bizarre, now I’ve got you going on the race thing. All right. Often in Hawaii, people are proud not to be haole. If you’re born here with the bad luck to be Caucasian, you try to marry a Filipina, a hapa—mixed race—an AJA, a Portuguese-background person, or best of all, a Hawaiian. So your kids will be real locals.”
“You’re making my head spin,” Paul said.
“So it was a strange attitude.” She laughed again. “I have this theory that he was afraid his mama strayed. You know.”
Paul remembered something Nina had told him. “He was adopted,” he said.
Bonita nodded, shook her head. “Ooh, that fool,” she said. “What a hypocrite. He was in a masquerade. If he couldn’t really be haole I suppose he thought he could at least make sure the grandkids came close.”
Outside the open door, a Marine was mowing the square of crabgrass and it smelled and looked like Kansas, like Wheaties and church and the mall. With a coconut palm waving in the background.
“Did you ever see Dan when he was sick?”
“Oh, yeah. The second time, Jessie said. I went to their place to pick her up for tennis and she said he was in the bedroom. He had bad stomach flu or something. I could hear him in there groaning.”
“Do you Marines learn about poisons—biochemical agents and so on? Did Jessie have access . . .”
Well, he had to ask.
The eyelids half lowered and her head bent forward to put what was left showing of her eyes in a direct line with his. “You just blew it bad, baby. I thought you had some sense.”
“I need an answer, though,” Paul said, standing his ground. “If the other side hears about it and we don’t— you see?”
She considered the argument and restored her head to a less confrontational position. “We had a course in biochemical agents. Anthrax, that kind of stuff. She didn’t poison him, though.”
Paul smiled. “Just had to ask. Don’t worry.” He would do the worrying.
“You and the police and Potter’s lawyer. All nice and then you spring the same old b.s. questions. I only put up with you today because Jessie asked me to. Don’t be sending anybody else. You register that?”
“I had to ask,” Paul repeated.
“Yeah, you did. I don’t have to like it.”
He had promised to buy lunch for Dan Potter’s best friend, a UH grad student named Byron Eppley. He took his time driving back over the Pali, stopping to linger at the lookout and catch the view back toward the Windward side. In the distance, he could just make out Chinaman’s Hat before the mountains came down to the sea and cut off the rest of the view toward the North Shore. Droplets of rain dashed against his face on the windy cliff. Just as he made it back to the car, the heavens dumped buckets.
But fifteen minutes later as he turned onto University Avenue toward Manoa Valley, the sun shone again, opposite a sky-spanning rainbow. The kids on the street hadn’t even bothered to take shelter. A girl in front of the Varsity Theater smiled, drying her hair with her T-shirt, not caring that she was showing more than she probably should of her toned brown stomach. Three Asian girls sat together at a table in front of the Greek Restaurant, wiggling their tiny feet in black wedgies, backpacks piled at their feet. Paul smiled. They smiled back.
Eppley waited at a small table inside, positioned with an ideal view out the window toward the girls.
They shook hands and ordered from the proprietor. Eppley had chosen the place, probably because it was close to home for him. When the beer came, Eppley ducked his head shyly and asked what this was all about, and Paul gave him the truth, that he was trying to help Dan Potter’s wife. He talked about the legal maneuvers going on in Tahoe but Eppley wasn’t picking up much of it.
He was of indeterminate ethnicity—it wasn’t normally the first thing Paul would have noticed but Hawaii was getting to him—a thick, black-haired, substantial customer, wearing cheap eyeglasses and the usual baggy shorts. The T-shirt said, “Bruddah Iz,” and showed a picture of an even more substantial customer with a sweet expression, swathed in leis and holding a ukulele. Eppley’s hand jiggled when he picked up his glass. Paul thought, We’re on to something.
“I suppose you want to know—uh, if I can get Jessie off the hook. I can’t.”
“Okay,” Paul said. The moussaka came. Paul was hungry. He dove into it.
“That’s it?” Eppley said. He stopped eating and pushed his chair back an inch, as if freeing himself up for flight.
“What are you so antsy about?” Paul said. The lamb flavor was right there and it wasn’t too greasy. Here Paul was eating Greek food in Hawaii. Go figure.
“She probably thinks—maybe she thinks I di
d what I did because I believed the stories or something.”
Astonished, Paul grabbed his napkin and wiped his mouth until he had adjusted his expression to expressionless.
“Jessie told you, didn’t she? It makes me look bad, I know.”
“She told me,” Paul said gravely.
“I was under a lot of stress. The thesis. I’m going for a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics. UH is world class in the field, in case you didn’t know.”
“That’s why it happened?” Paul said, running alongside, making an encouraging remark.
“And I admit it, I needed the money badly. Tuition. I’m not a rich kid like Dan was.”
Now Paul could hardly wait. He poked around in the moussaka as if there might be a gold piece in there, trying to look neutral so Eppley could project whatever he needed to project on him.
“Oh, hell. I’m ashamed. I won’t make excuses.”
Enough with the mea culpas! Paul squeezed his napkin, nodding knowingly. “Get it off your chest,” he said. Nudge, nudge.
“Maybe it’s not too late. The sonofabitch shouldn’t be able to steamroll her out of that money. Who would have thought she’d ever get any? I thought, He’ll get his judgment, his revenge paper. He’ll be happy. He’ll never get anything from her because she’s never going to have much, she’s not the type. Know why he did it? Other than general malice.”
Paul shook his head, too excited now even to make a pretense of eating.
Eppley spread his hands. “To keep her from making any claim on his money. Dan had a trust account. He thought she might try to take it. So, see, if he had a big judgment against her, it would be no use her trying to get it. He would just take it back. That’s how I worked it out, anyway. He sure didn’t seem to need the money. I guess he had plenty of his own.”
“You mean the father.”
“Mr. Potter. Jessie had just taken off and I was getting ready to drop out of UH, because I couldn’t pay the tuition. It was only a couple thousand but I didn’t have it. I have five younger brothers and two sisters. I couldn’t go to my parents. I’m Tongan, by the way.”
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