Fire Knife Dancing (Jungle Beat)

by John Enright

  “Seized as evidence, locked up somewhere downtown in the prosecutor’s office, I guess. Bloody waste.”

  CHAPTER 17

  EARLY THE NEXT morning Apelu was back at his stakeout of the Woos. Seven hours of nothing surprising. He limited himself to one cigarette an hour, but in the abandoned house’s wild yard he had spotted some sugar cane growing and he cut himself a small stalk to chew on. That helped. It made him feel like a kid playing hooky from school, hiding out with a secret pleasure. Before two p.m. he was back at Asia’s house for the call from the FBI, which came precisely on the hour, Dwayne speaking.

  “Detective, you’re not taping this call, are you?”

  “No, Dwayne, I’m on your side, remember? Here, I’ll even turn the answering machine off, okay?”

  “Are you alone, Detective?”

  “Yes, Dwayne, shit, I’m alone. What’s the news?”

  “Well, we’ve got a cold trail on this Tia/Sila woman. According to the police, they haven’t picked up anyone for overstaying in weeks. No record on her.”

  “Did you check with Immigration?”

  “Zero there too. I even checked with the attorney general, and all he could give me was that you were her sponsor, as well as the sponsor for the dead girl. But Sparks had already told us that. We need that girl as a witness, and after what happened to Sparks, I wonder if we’re going to find her.”

  “The AG is in a bind there. She can’t turn up dead, because at least two honest, uninvolved police officers know she was turned over to Immigration, no matter what Immigration told you. Despite what your agency might think about us savages here, almost all Samoan cops are good, honest guys who draw the line at murdering young women. She might disappear for good, but more probably over in Western Samoa or on her way there than here, like lost overboard. Did the AG seem surprised when you asked him about her?”

  “Not especially, but he did have that information about you and her at his fingertips.”

  “What did you tell him about Agent Sparks?”

  “Just that he was missing, and we suspected foul play.”

  “Things aren’t going well for the AG just now. Let’s put a little more heat on him. Tell him you’d like to run a ballistics test on any M1 carbines that may be on-island.”

  “That’s what fired those shells?”

  “A very good chance, and the only M1 carbine I know of was seized as evidence more than a year ago.”

  “Got you. And don’t tell him why we want a ballistics test.”

  “Yeah, let’s see what he does.”

  “Say, Detective, what do you know about Ezra Strand? One of my agents went to talk with him this morning at the prison, and he wouldn’t talk, pretended he didn’t know English.”

  “Ezra’s out there somewhere. Maybe not enough cranberry juice.”

  “What? Well anyway, he spoke English well enough with Agent Sparks.”

  “Sparks spoke with Ezra?”

  “Sure, more than a month ago. Sparks tried to turn him, let him plea to something insignificant if he’d testify to the grand jury about the AG’s involvement in the smuggling operation. Sparks was trying to put a quick wrap on it and get out of here, but Strand wouldn’t cooperate. Sparks said he went sort of loony.”

  Apelu was smiling into the phone. So, maybe crazy old Ezra wasn’t that crazy after all and might be able to return to the world of the sane if all this gets resolved. In too deep? Act crazy and see if you can get excused from the room.

  “Don’t worry about Ezra,” Apelu said. “If he’s of any use at all it will be after the case is made, not in making it. Any luck finding the cars and drivers?”

  “Negative. No one wants to talk to us.”

  “Anything else?” Apelu was still smiling, thinking about Ezra’s crazy comfort zone. I guess he knew I’d be smart enough to duck, Apelu thought, just like when fire knife dancing with a partner you had to trust that when you swung the flaming blade at his head he would know enough to duck and that when he swung his knife at your shins in return the timing was right for you to leap.

  “We’ll hit the AG with the ballistics test request this afternoon. By the way, they’ve put an all-points bulletin out for you. These guys really don’t like you.”

  “Thanks for telling me. Tomorrow same time?”

  “You got it,” Dwayne said. “Be careful out there.”

  Fifty minutes later, after feeding Nick and Nora, Apelu was back on his stakeout at the Woos’ house. He could feel things falling apart on the other side. Stuff had to start happening. Apelu hadn’t mentioned Dr. Win Chung to Dwayne. The FBI seemed to know nothing about any of that, and Apelu wasn’t about to try to explain it to them. Win Chung didn’t fit into their case and would just confuse them.

  This time Apelu didn’t bring three bottles of water and some tuna fish sandwiches to his stakeout. He brought a bucket of KFC takeout and two big bottles of Steinlager. He was determined to stay late. He didn’t have to. The sun was still up when the Woos’ black SUV pulled up and Atalena Woo and Werner’s Fijian girl took Tia from the vehicle into the house.

  Apelu instantly realized his dilemma. He now had most of the herd he wanted—Tia, the Woos, the Chinese men, even the Fijian girl—inside a corral, but he had no way of closing the gate. There were no outstanding warrants on any of them—as if he were in a position to ask for or enforce them. He had no backup to maintain surveillance. He wouldn’t be in contact with Dwayne until the next afternoon, and even Dwayne had nothing on any of them.

  It started to rain, hard, just as darkness descended. He was soaked by the time he got to Asia’s car up at the Laundromat. He got even wetter on the twenty-yard dash from Asia’s parking space to her back door. He stripped off his wet clothes and toweled off. There was something close to a chill in the air. He called the Rainmaker.

  “Dwayne’s room, please.”

  “Who?”

  “Dwayne.”

  “We have no Mr. Dwayne registered here, sir.”

  “That’s his first name. You know, one of the four palangi guys who checked in Monday night—Dwayne, Ethan, Rick, and another guy.”

  “The rooms are not registered by first names, sir.”

  “The FBI guys. Connect me to one of their rooms.” Apelu held the phone to his ear with his shoulder as he cinched the towel around his waist.

  “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know who you are talking about. Do you have a last name?”

  Apelu hung up. He would have to drive in to the Rainmaker. He rummaged through his bag, looking for something to wear. Even through the rain he heard the car door close up at the end of the lane where Asia’s car was parked. He was sure he had locked the car’s doors. He switched out the light and got Ezra’s shotgun from beside the back door. He was still dressed just in the towel as he slipped through the sliding door onto the deck and then down the steps. He could hear a car’s engine departing and someone approaching on the path. He cocked the shotgun, and it made a sound louder than he had expected. The steps on the path stopped. He raised the shotgun in that dark direction.

  “Apelu, is that you? Don’t shoot. It’s me, Asia.”

  Apelu lowered and uncocked the shotgun. “Wait,” he said. “I’ll get the lights.” And he went back up the steps and inside.

  There are about as many different ways of knowing people as there are people to know. Oh sure, we put them in classes—friend, enemy, lapsed friend, acquaintance, someone else’s friend—to make it easier for other people to understand affectional distances, but really you don’t know any two people in the same way. There are different things to understand for one thing, a different mix. A fact of life that for one person is a badge of pride may very well be a deep secret for someone else. People lie and tell the truth in idiosyncratic ways. You never know. The face they wear for you may be a face they’ve never worn before. So, is that really them? You know, the girl at work you think is cute, but everybody else seems to hate her guts. If anyone could be just the same sel
f all the time with everyone, we’d consider them handicapped—Down syndrome or something. Apelu had noticed that about himself on the most basic level—language. He recognized the fact that the Apelu who spoke English was not the same as the Apelu who spoke Samoan. One of the dangerous things about being a cop was that far too often you saw only the mask and heard only the ventriloquist voice that people produced when facing the law. That wasn’t really them, not the them their kids knew or anybody else knew. If you’re a cop too long you begin to suspect that everyone’s a liar, when actually they may only be lying to you because you are a cop. Two-faced was much too small a number.

  Asia was soaked to the skin by the rain. She dropped her bag at the door and went to the bathroom for a hot shower and change of clothes. Apelu found something to wear besides the towel. He fixed a pot of coffee.

  “Now we’re even.” Asia, dressed in a terrycloth bathrobe, was toweling her hair at the bathroom door.

  “Even what?”

  “On pointing the shotgun at each other.”

  “Is this one of them shotgun relationships?” Apelu asked, pouring coffee.

  “I’m glad you’re all right,” Asia said, wrapping her hair in the towel.

  “Okay so far.” Apelu put the two mugs of coffee on the counter, and Asia came over to take one.

  “Apelu, we have got to talk.”

  “I’d like someone to talk to.”

  “It’s business, Apelu, serious business. Could I have some milk and sugar, please?”

  As he went to get the milk and sugar Asia said to his back, “This Ms. Ah Chong, whose name you gave me, are you friends?”

  “That would take more time being acquainted to see if it was possible. Why?” Apelu put the sugar jar on the counter and went to get the milk from the fridge.

  “I was just wondering how close you were.”

  “Tell me this isn’t jealousy,” Apelu said as he stooped down to search for the milk carton in the fridge.

  “No, it isn’t jealousy. Just sympathy. I didn’t know how much it would hurt you when I told you she was dead.”

  Apelu had found the carton of milk and was standing back up. “You know that?”

  “Yes.”

  “For a fact?”

  “A fact.”

  Apelu put the milk carton down on the counter and went to the telephone. He dialed his home number. It rang and rang and nobody answered.

  It was simple the way Asia told it. Crime scenes are usually simple to describe, because it’s always after the fact. The action has passed. Crime scenes were static, frozen in those few important minutes of their special history. Lisa’s car had been found at the bottom of a ravine off the twisty road back from Aliepata on the eastern end of Upolu. She was found in it, crushed. Two sets of skid marks up on the road and yellow paint impact scrapes along the driver’s side of the car indicated her car had been forced off the road, probably by a yellow bus or large truck. No witnesses. Villagers had gotten down to the car fairly quickly—it was obvious from the road that someone had gone over—but she was already dead.

  “How do you know all this?” Apelu didn’t want to see Lisa in the mangled car. His mind was going there. Where were her glasses? Had someone pushed them back up her cute little nose one last time?

  “I was looking for her, remember?”

  “And you just happened to find her at the bottom of a cliff?”

  “I had help, Apelu, investigative help.”

  They were standing on opposite sides of the blue Formica-covered kitchen counter, staring at one another, neither one blinking, neither one moving.

  “Your name really is Sally something, isn’t it?”

  “No. At least my name really is Asia. That much is true.”

  “And the rest of it…?”

  “That’s why we have to talk, Apelu, to get things straight between us.”

  This part wasn’t so simple. They both pulled up stools, still on opposite sides of the counter, and sat down. Asia fixed her coffee, took a sip, and began to talk.

  “I wanted to explain all this to you before, but my superiors wouldn’t let me. They didn’t trust you. You were just another probably corrupt Samoan cop to them. They didn’t know you like I know you. That was one of the reasons I went to Apia, to talk with them about you, that you had uncovered the prostitution trafficking that we hadn’t known about, that we had to cut you in on what was going on. Ms. Ah Chong’s death convinced them. I’m sorry it took that.”

  “Your superiors?”

  “At the US Consulate there, State Department nerds, desk defenders.”

  “You work for them?”

  “I’ve been an investigator for the State Department for seven years.”

  “And your Samoan husband?”

  “Oh, Paulo is real enough, but I’m not a grieving widow. We met in college. He was on the football team. But he’s not dead, like I told you. He’s just ex. He’s a high school football coach in Atlanta now. No, I didn’t come here to get over his death. I was sent here to keep an eye on Ezra and Leilani’s place, to be a spook, because I knew how to speak some Samoan. I thought it would be cool to pull a gig in the tropics with no bosses around. It was nice for several months. Until now.” Asia unwrapped her hair from the towel and shook it out, running her fingers through it and back. Those strong hands again.

  “How did you get such strong hands?”

  Asia looked at her hands. “Ceramics, I guess. I throw a lot of clay when I’m home.”

  “Which is where?”

  “Seattle. You are a detective, aren’t you?”

  “Why were you watching Leilani and Ezra?”

  “We’d picked up a couple of illegals on the West Coast, mainland Chinese. Their paper trail took them back through here to Western Samoa. They were carrying letters of identity from American Samoa, which made them American Nationals. Their papers all had your AG’s signature on them. We figured there were more such backdoor immigrants and wanted to staunch it. When the smuggling thing involving your attorney general came up, there seemed to be a connection. I was sent to see if there was one. I lucked into this place. As you pointed out, no one else would live here because of the ghost thing.”

  Apelu got up and went over to the telephone and dialed his home phone number again. No answer. “Calling home,” he said as he hung up. “No answer. A week ago I told her to take the kids and go visit her mom in Apia. She wouldn’t.”

  “Have you spoken with her since?”

  “No. I was afraid if I called they would trace the call back here.”

  “Is that the only reason? It’s not a very good one.”

  “No. I didn’t want to talk to her. I didn’t want to hear her voice. I didn’t know what to say.”

  They didn’t say anything for a long moment, just looked at each other.

  Apelu looked away first. “When was Lisa killed?”

  “Two days ago, Monday.”

  “Listen, I’ve got to get over to the house. I’ll take your car. Is that okay?”

  “Of course, Apelu, but don’t you have stuff to tell me too? To bring me up to date?”

  “Yeah. I know where our girl Tia is and where two of your possible potential Chinese illegals are, if they’re still there, but that can wait. There’s nothing we can do about it tonight, in the rain, and I’m not sure what we could do about it anyway.” For some reason Apelu didn’t want to tell Asia about Mati’s murder or the FBI or the fact that they already had the AG on the ropes. After all her subterfuges he wasn’t into full-disclosure mode. It was like all of a sudden he wasn’t sure he knew her, wasn’t sure how much to trust her. How much else did he not know about her and what she was up to?

  “You’ll come back?” she asked without any inflection.

  “I plan to,” he said.

  “Nasty night. Be careful.” Asia was looking into her coffee cup. “I’m sorry I had to lie to you, Apelu.”

  Apelu was putting into his dry pockets what he had taken out of
the pockets of his soaked pants. “If the phone rings, let the answering machine take it before you pick up. If it’s for me, don’t pick up.”

  Asia didn’t say anything.

  “By the way, welcome home.”

  “It’s not home,” she said. “It’s just slightly less than being lost.”

  There was nervous music in Apelu’s head, a bad acid rock movie soundtrack. Other drivers irritated him. The rain had flooded the road in places, slowing down traffic to a prow-wave crawl. Killer potholes were hidden. When he came to his driveway in the dark and the rain he drove on by, down to the center of the village on its embayment, turned around and came back up the hill. He hadn’t seen it on his first drive-by, but nested in the downhill shadow of a container beside CJ’s store across the road from his driveway was a black and white. Inside he saw the glow of a cigarette being inhaled. He drove on by.

  He drove up to Torque’s place on Canco Hill. The stream was in the road again, only this time he was driving against it. He never got out of first gear. Dinner was just ending when he got there. The kids were cleaning up. They fixed Apelu a plate of sapasui—rice noodles in a soup of corned beef, cabbage, and onions—with a chunk of umu-baked breadfruit. Torque brought him a Bud Light.

  Sister was still in jail. The AG’s Office was delaying her preliminary hearing by repeatedly altering the charges against her. Torque had gotten to see her that afternoon, though. She was pissed but holding up well enough. The latest news was that they had taken Tia away. She had been held with Sister until today. The word was that she was being deported.

  Apelu pushed his emptied plate away. He was suddenly very tired. It was still raining. It had settled into a regular soak. He asked Torque if he could stay there for the night. He didn’t feature taking the Kia down that sluice. Torque called out to the kids finishing up in the kitchen, and the girl Lucy went and got a pillow and sheet and made up a bed for Apelu on a foam pad couch cushion in the front room. The kids disappeared into their rooms, and Torque said good night.

  Before he laid down, Apelu called his house one last time. Still no answer. He went to bed and listened to the rain. He had forgotten his pain pills and his sore ribs kept him awake. He got up again and called Asia’s house. He told the answering machine that the roads were flooded and that he would be staying up at Torque’s. Asia didn’t pick up.