‘So you’re Mr Walker, are you?’ she snarled. ‘Well, Mele Kalikimaka, Mr Walker. You bitch!’
Andrea pulled the trigger twice, sparks flew from the barrel, but the twin explosions were masked by a clap of thunder and soon blown away in the wind. The first bullet hit Liu in the throat, causing this awful gurgling gasp from her mouth along with a spray of blood. The second bullet smacked into her chest straight through the heart, and she fell backwards down the embankment and into the lagoon. She landed on her back, with half her head and one arm in the water, her right arm resting on her chest and her feet up, with the blades sticking out the toes of her boots still shining bright and deadly in the dull light from the bridge. Liu’s dark hair swirled languidly in the current and apart from that there was no other movement.
‘Nice bit of shooting, Thelma,’ said Norton, turning to Andrea, who was still standing in a combat stance with Mick’s gun in her hands. ‘You sure plugged that danged varmint.’
Andrea dropped her arms and they both walked over to Liu’s body resting in the lagoon. ‘Fuckin’ bitch!’cursed Andrea. ‘I gave her a good job too.’ She walked down the embankment a little to view her handiwork, giving Liu’s body a heavy once up and down, settling on the two knife blades sticking up from her boots. ‘So that’s how she done it, eh?’
‘Yep,’ agreed Les. ‘That’s how she done it.’ Les gave the body a once over himself, noticing a heavy ring glinting on Liu’s right hand. He didn’t bother to have a closer look; he had a pretty fair idea what would be on it.
As they stood there, the wind swirling across the surface of the lagoon picked up Andrea’s lei of blue and white flowers. It drifted and spun across the rippling water before finally resting in the red-stained murk alongside Liu’s head, almost like a wreath. Les and Andrea had a last look then walked back to the pathway. Mick was still slumped up, unconscious, against the stairs, a smear of blood staining the white concrete where he’d split his head open against the pylon.
Andrea looked at him and shook her head. ‘Fearless Fosdick was a lot of bloody help, wasn’t he?’ Then she seemed to think for a moment. ‘Maybe not. Maybe he was, after all.’
She walked across to Mick, put the gun in his right hand with his finger on the trigger, wrapped her hands around his, then lifted his arm up and fired two shots into the air. The smoke quickly dissipated and she left Mick with his hand resting in his lap still holding his gun. The state Mick was in she could have left him holding his dick and he wouldn’t have known.
‘Powder burns, Andrea?’ enquired Norton.
Andrea winked. ‘You’re on the ball, aren’t you, Les? Now it looks like he did it. Buggered if I know what he was doing out here. Probably just followed me around — the prick. But now he’ll be a police hero.’
‘You reckon?’
‘Of course. He’ll put it down to brilliant detective work or something. Get a police commendation. Have a look at him, he doesn’t know whether he’s Arthur or Martha. So he’s not going to argue when he comes to. And the cops won’t. This’ll wrap it all up just nicely. And if it gets down to the nitty gritty, which it won’t anyway, I’m wearing gloves and there’s a gun in my purse that hasn’t been used.’
‘You did bring a gun with you?’
‘Yeah, just a little .380 Backup. That’s why I grabbed boofhead’s .38. Be like using a pea shooter against that ratbag.’ Andrea smiled at Les. ‘Anyway, we’ll work out what to tell the cops by the time they get here. You’ve signed the odd statement or two in your time, Les.’
Norton shook his head. ‘That’s… just it, Andrea. I won’t be here to sign any statements.’
‘You won’t!?’
‘No. I’m leaving for Sydney at eleven-thirty. I have to get to the airport at half past ten. Didn’t you get my message?’
‘I saw something in the kitchen, but I didn’t take much notice.’ Andrea was a little stunned. ‘You’re fair dinkum, Les? You’re going back tonight?’
Les nodded. ‘Yep. Warren’s had to go, and I have to go with him. And, to be honest, Andrea, I want to go. This whole thing is starting to give me the shits. Fights, murders, cops. I can get enough of that back home without coming to Hawaii.’
‘Oh. Oh well. Fair enough.’ Andrea gave Les a bit of a suspicious once up and down. ‘So what are you doing out here anyway?’
‘What am I doing out here?’ Norton stared into Andrea’s eyes for a moment to give his brain time to start tap-dancing. ‘Well, I know it was none of my business, but I sort of mentioned about the priest, James, to Mick. And he told me about how this was where he died and how and when it happened. And let’s face it, Andrea, you’ve always had a big heart and… been a bit of a romantic. So I figured you’d be out here… paying your respects sort of thing. I mean, you did love the bloke. Plus, I was a bit worried about you. And I just couldn’t leave without saying goodbye. And knowing that you were all right.’
‘Oh, Les, you’re so sweet. You really are.’
‘Yeah well, you know me. We’re both just a couple of softies when it’s all boiled down.’
‘Yes, you’re right, Les. We are, aren’t we?’ Andrea squeezed Norton’s hands for a second then looked up at him. ‘So how did you know it was Liu?’
‘I didn’t.’ Les couldn’t be bothered going into all the details and he didn’t have the time. ‘I just saw what I thought was a bloke on the bridge so I yelled out. And she just happened to go off her brain. But I did see her talking to one of Takushi’s sons last night. And Mitzi said she was a bit weird. You can bet she’s a hired killer. And a bloody good one too. Probably works for the Yakuza.’
Andrea’s face tensed. ‘Yeah. That makes sense,’ she nodded slowly.
‘Fair dinkum, Andrea,’ said Les. ‘If I were you, I’d put my cue in the rack.’ He nodded towards Liu lying in the lagoon. ‘You’ve got this thing all squared away and you’re bone lucky you’re still in one piece. You’ve made your money. Between the FBI and the Yakuza, your luck’s going to run out sooner or later. I’d pack my swag.’
Andrea nodded again. ‘Don’t worry, Les. I just happened to say to James tonight, along with my prayers, I might not be seeing him again for a while. But I’d always remember him. Always.’
Les took Andrea’s hand. ‘You’re beautiful, Andrea. Beautiful.’ Les looked into her eyes as a tender moment passed between them. ‘So what about the fifty?’
‘Fifty? What fifty?’ replied Andrea, dropping Norton’s hand.
‘The fifty grand reward.’ Les nodded towards Mick. ‘You’re not gonna give it to him, are you?’
‘Shit no!’
‘Well? What about your old mate?’
‘You!? What did you do? You just happened to be bloody walking past.’
‘Yeah. Just happened to be walking past,’ said Les. ‘I ran up those stairs, dragged you from the jaws of certain death, then stood between you and a crazed killer.’ Norton sniffed and choked back a tear. ‘I was prepared to lay down my life for you. Dead and in my grave I could have been, trying to be your shield and protection. And for what already?’
‘Les, this is a bridge at Ala Moana with Andrea Hayden. Not Waterloo Bridge with Vivien Leigh. Get fucked, will you.’
‘Thanks.’ Les shook his head sadly. ‘You’re a hard woman. Not the Andrea Hayden I used to know.’
A smiled formed on Andrea’s face that tight the words squeaked when they came out. ‘All right, I’ll give you half the whack. Twenty-five grand.’
By contrast, the smile that quickly formed on Norton’s face would have lit up the dark side of the moon. ‘I’m still at the same address in Bondi. But I’ll write it down again before I leave.’
‘Terrific. Anyway, what do we do now?’
‘Well, why don’t we leave Steve McGarrett where he is, get his keys and call the HPD from his blue and white. It’ll be parked up there somewhere. You can say you’ve witnessed a shooting and a police officer’s been hurt. In five minutes there’ll be cops everywhere. T
he radio shouldn’t be hard to work out.’
‘I got a better idea. Why don’t we walk back to my car and I’ll ring from my car phone. And when the cops arrive I’ll go into a state of shock. To be honest, I wouldn’t mind sitting down for a few minutes. And by the time the cops get any sense out of me and Dick Tracy, you’ll be halfway to Australia.’
‘Good thinking, Ninety-nine.’
‘Besides, I got my chequebook in the car.’
‘Oh, even better. Didn’t I always say you were a princess, Andrea?’
‘Get out of my arse, Les. Come on, before I change my mind.’
Andrea’s car was a white Chevrolet Cavalier with tinted windows. Les waited on the footpath while she fossicked around under the interior light, getting something from the glovebox. She came back out, closed the door behind her and slipped a cheque into Norton’s jacket pocket.
‘I don’t know about what I’m paying my girls, but that’s got to be the easiest twenty-five grand you’ve ever earnt.’
As Les bent to put his arms around Andrea and give her a )kiss several muscles in his back tore plus a rib cartilage. ‘I don’t know, Andrea. I wouldn’t say that.’ Their lips brushed and Les gave his old friend one on each cheek. ‘See you later, Andrea. You look after yourself. And thanks for the —’
‘That’s okay. You look after yourself too, Les.’ Andrea took Norton’s hands and looked up at him for a moment. ‘And, Les… Thanks for being there.’
Les gave her one more on the lips. ‘See you, Fenwick.’
‘See you, Tripeman. Aloha.’
Andrea gave one last brief wave and got back in her car as the wind bowled a thick mist of rain across the roadway. Les jogged to the Mustang, did a quick U-turn and headed straight back to the hotel. He didn’t know what to think as he peered through the click-clack of the windscreen wipers and weaved in and out of the other cars. It had been one weird experience. The funniest part though was the flying saucer. When he first saw it he thought it was the real bloody thing. Norton’s mind was still going all over the place when he pulled up in the hotel driveway and left the car with the attendant.
Back in the room, his drink was still sitting on the table where he’d left it and the ice had just melted. Les tossed half of it down and looked at his watch. By the time he sorted out all the rattle at the desk and got to the airport, it’d be more like eleven than half past ten. He threw some water over his face, ran a towel and comb through his hair, then rang the desk, saying he was on his way down and could they have his bill ready and arrange a taxi for him. Certainly, Mr Norton. Not a problem. Les zipped up his bags, made sure everything was packed and had a last look around his room with the lights on and nothing doing. No TV, no golden oldies, nothing. Just silence and emptiness and rubbish. It hadn’t been the best holiday Norton had ever had. Les smiled at the bed and felt his back pocket. However, there were a couple of pleasant memories. He picked up his bags and hurried down the corridor to the lifts.
A mob of Japanese tourists wanting to change traveller’s cheques arrived at the desk the same time as Norton, so it did take a little longer to check-out than he thought. But he waited patiently until it was his turn. No, Mr Norton. Telephone calls et cetera cannot be charged to the room. Sorry. Les paid with his VISA card, then got a syrupy goodbye and hope you enjoyed your stay in Hawaii. Aloha.
Waiting in the driveway was a white stretch limousine. It wasn’t really a limo, but a huge taxi that doubled as both. So seeing it was a bit quiet on a damp Wednesday night Les got the filmstar treatment. He threw his bags in the back and climbed inside, among about half an acre of air-conditioned, blue velvet comfort.
‘Hey, mate,’ he said to the driver, ‘drive past Ala Moana Park. I want to have a last look at the Christmas decorations outside the shopping centre. You can pick up the H1 the other side of Iwilei.’
‘Yes, sir. No problem.’
Les checked his bags and made sure he hadn’t left anything in the hotel. Passport, wallet, traveller’s cheques, et cetera. No, everything was in order. There was a digital clock just above the radio console in the back. He was running late, but he should make his flight on time.
The driver came round onto Ala Moana Boulevard, crossed the bridge over the canal and drove past the park gates. As they went alongside the shopping centre Les could see two ambulances and two police cars outside the bus stop on the other side of the median strip. There were lights flashing around the tiny arched bridge and another two police cars at the opposite side of the park winking red and blue in the distance. Sirens coming from somewhere heralded the arrival of more.
‘Looks like there’s been some sort of an accident,’ said the driver.
‘Yeah,’ agreed Les. ‘It’s probably the wet roads.’
‘Can’t see any car wrecks, though.’
‘They’ve probably towed them away.’
Les watched the police lights disappear from the window then turned to the front as the gravity of what he’d just been through sank in. The Norton luck had been with him again. This was more than luck though. It had to be. Les winked up at the night sky. Thanks again, boss. He closed his eyes, gave a sigh of relief then settled down into the comfortable back seat and thought about what it was that eventually led him to Mr Walker.
The first thing that had made him suspicious was the photocopies of the knife wounds and the bruising round the cuts. You didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to see there was something just a bit odd about them. They all went upwards as if they’d been delivered by a powerful uppercut. Powerful enough to break the bones yet twist the knife around at the same time. Yet the marks on the right-hand side of the girls’ faces were enough to leave the faint indentation of a ring and that was it. A man punching with strength like that would break their jawbones at least. But the thing that got Norton thinking was the fight in the lift with Mitzi. Les had never had a fight in a lift and the only one he’d ever seen was in an old James Bond movie on TV. Les couldn’t remember the name of the movie but he remembered the night he saw it. A girl had invited him round to her unit for a cooked meal, a few drinks and whatever. She was a heavy 007 fan and there was a double-header on the box that night. James Bond didn’t turn Les on all that much. But for a nice meal, nice drinks and a chance for a bit of the other, Norton didn’t mind sitting through a double-header. Or a triple-header for that matter. They both got awfully drunk and that was how it turned out. Anyway, in the follow-up movie Les remembered James Bond also fought some horrible old Dyke with this horrible name and she had some trick thing with a knife in her shoe. Bond either shot her or his squeeze at the time did. But it was a fair while ago and just another 007 flick and at the time Les was more interested in getting his lady friend drunk than what was actually happening on TV. Then later on the woman’s horrible name came up during the drink at the Diggers and it was in relation to the bloke who got killed in the caravan park at Forster. Which was why Les rang his detective friend Gary Stanton; who filled him in over the phone as best he could and it all started to make sense.
When the detective doing the investigation pulled the fishing knife out of the deceased’s chest, he noticed one side of it was sticky. Forensic analysis showed traces of some kind of adhesive, which in itself was nothing. However when the cop was looking around the small caravan he noticed a pair of gym boots belonging to the deceased’s wife, or now widow, and across the toe of one it looked like it had been scraped clean. When he ran his finger across the clean part of the toe it too was sticky. In the boot of the deceased’s car was a roll of gaffer tape. So it was feasible that the deceased’s wife had taped the fishing knife to the sole of her gym boot then kicked it up into her husband’s chest when he came home drunk, instead of her story, which was that he menaced her with the knife, then in a drunken state fell on it. It would be pretty hard to prove one way or another because at the time the poor woman had a broken collarbone and a sprained wrist, along with two black eyes from the last hiding her drunken boofhead husban
d had given her. Hard to prove, even if the detective did notice a photo on a sideboard in the caravan showing the woman in her younger days as the star striker in a women’s soccer team. And earlier that night, the wife’s sister just happened to be in the vicinity before the accident and just happened to call back for something just after it. So even though the cop did have his suspicions, the bloke was nothing better than a drunken, wife-bashing dropkick, so why bother? He only got what he deserved. But as a private joke, the cop nicknamed the case the Rosa Klebb killing, after the horrible old bag in the James Bond movie, because she had this poisoned knife blade sticking out from the toe of her shoe too, with which she tried to do a job on James. But you have to be up pretty early in the morning to get the better of 007.
So it was possible, surmised Les, that some woman could be murdering those hookers with a knife or something sticking out from the toe of her shoe. The knife wounds suggested it and the bruising around the entry, which was supposed to come from a fist, was also very much the same shape as the toe of a boot. And a woman would just about hit hard enough to leave those marks on the hookers’ faces without breaking any bones. The marine ring could be a ruse to make it look like the work of some psycho in the military with a hatred for women, especially hookers.
So if it was a woman doing the killings: who? Back to the fight in the lift. Mitzi. It had to be her. The way she was throwing that knuckle duster around like it was going out of style. She’d be able to do the same thing with a bulky signet ring and her boyfriend was a martial arts expert; you could bet he’d have taught her plenty. Plus, she was Andrea’s accountant. All the girls would know her and trust her. She’d probably drop them off at home now and again or call round, and bingo! Have this in the chest to remember me by, girls. The ‘I love Andrea’ bit could be another ruse. When it comes to telling lies, women can be just as good as men. Better.
Mele Kalikimaka Mr Walker Page 19