Mahu Box Set

by Neil S. Plakcy

  His kids, Ashley, Alec, Ailina, and the newest baby, Apikela, rode with their mother, Tatiana, a big-boned daughter of Russian immigrants to Alaska who had floated up on our shores and fallen in love with Haoa. She drove a Chrysler PT Cruiser which was perennially loaded with kids, toys and various levels of debris.

  At the rear were Harry, his girlfriend Arleen next to him, her son Brandon strapped into a car seat, Harry’s longboard strapped to the roof of his BMW, and Terri in her Land Rover, with her small son Danny. It struck me that we probably had every variety of luxury car on the islands represented, along with my father’s beat-up old truck, the previous beat-up old truck which he’d passed down to me, and Haoa’s landscaping van.

  The parking, hugging, kissing and unloading seemed to take forever, especially with the kids all clamoring to get out on the water. Harry and Terri finally volunteered to chaperone the lot of them, and while the rest of the adults unloaded, they trooped down to the Pacific to check out the surf conditions. The littlest kids had boogie boards, but Ashley and Jeffrey, who were already teenagers, both had graduated to real surfboards.

  I helped Haoa lift the pig out of his van, and noticed him wincing. “How you doing, brah?” I asked. He’d gotten banged up pretty badly over the last month, between getting himself into a variety of fights, and then redeeming himself, at least in my eyes, by rushing to save me when a bad guy was about to shoot me.

  “I’m getting old, Kimo,” he said. “Forty. Jesus.”

  “Cool,” I said. “So I can beat your ass when we go surf.”

  “You never do dat,” he said.

  “I’ll beat both of you,” Lui said, coming up to join us. “When we go surf?”

  “Soon as we get rid of this stuff,” I said. Lui helped Haoa and me carry the pig over to where the women were putting the food together, and then the three of us dropped our shirts, grabbed boards and raced each other to the water’s edge, then out into the surf.

  “Go, daddy!” Ashley cried.

  “My dad’s the best surfer,” Jeffrey said.

  “Uncle Kimo’s the best,” Keoni said defiantly. “You watch.”

  “You don’t know anything,” Jeffrey said, cuffing his brother.

  “Loser buys everybody shave ice,” I called, launching myself into the waves.

  My brothers were always so much older than I was, Lui by ten years, Haoa eight, that I never got to hang out with them as equals. Even once I returned to the islands from college, both of them were so busy with their families and their careers that sometimes they seemed more like uncles than brothers, though I felt a visceral closeness to them whenever we were together.

  For the first time that day, I felt like we were three brothers. I hadn’t seen Lui shirtless, in board shorts, since he was a teenager; my oldest brother is rarely seen without a suit, or at least a sports jacket.

  Haoa’s more relaxed; in his landscaping business he usually wears polo shirts embroidered with the name of the business, khakis or chinos, and deck shoes or sandals. But I hadn’t been on the water with him in years, either. The three of us raced through the breakers, laughing and talking stink, as the rest of the family gathered on the beach to cheer and watch.

  I knew I was the best surfer in the family, at least in part because I was the only one who’d kept on surfing, year after year, and because I secretly thought I was the one with the most talent, too. But my brothers gave me a run for my money. I remembered being a little kid, watching Haoa and Lui surf and being amazed at their prowess. Those feelings came back to me as I watched them both jump on their boards, catch waves, even do a little carving. They were both rusty, sure; and the waves at Waimea Bay, though nothing like Pipeline, were still pretty strong. But my brothers, like me, were Hawaiian to their core, and for us, surfing is like riding a bicycle; you never forget how to do it.

  The kids on shore exploded into laughter any time one of us fell, and cheered wildly as we bobbed, turned and rode the waves in. We must have surfed almost an hour like that before we called a truce. “So who wins?” I asked, as the three of us trudged up the shoreline, dragging our boards.

  The kids had obviously been practicing together, because with one voice, they shouted, “Uncle Kimo!”

  I gave an exaggerated bow, and one of my brothers kicked my behind, knocking me headfirst into the sand. Immediately, all six of my nieces and nephews, along with Danny Gonsalves, were on top of me. Ashley and Jeffrey wanted a private surfing lesson, and then I had to fool around with the other kids and their boogie boards. It was almost noon by the time I dragged them all up the shore to the picnic area so we could start the luau.

  I found myself in line next to Terri. She was wearing a navy polo shirt and black shorts, and when she pulled off her dark glasses for a moment I saw dark circles under her eyes. Her husband Evan had died just a month before, and the grief was still wearing on her. “How are you holding up?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I get through the days. Tatiana’s been great. She’s always inviting Danny over to play. He and Ailina go to kindergarten together. They’re like little sweethearts.”

  “Good for them.” I smiled. “I’m glad you guys could come up here today.”

  “I wasn’t going to, but Tatiana insisted. I didn’t want to intrude on a family thing.”

  “You know you’ve always been part of our family.” Terri and I had gone to Punahou, a Honolulu prep school where both my brothers had preceded me, and even though her family was one of the wealthiest in the islands, we’d always been great friends.

  “I know, and I appreciate it, now more than ever.” She paused. “I know that you’re working undercover,” she said in a low voice. “Harry told me. I know he wasn’t supposed to, but I was feeling so miserable about what happened to you that he thought he had to tell me.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about,” I said, loading my plate with lomi lomi salmon, kalua pork, long rice and vegetables. I saw Harry coming toward us. He looked as skinny as ever, though his mop of black hair seemed to have been cut at a fancy salon, instead of with a bowl and a pair of scissors. “I left the force. I’m just up here surfing, trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life.”

  “Harry,” Terri said darkly, as he arrived in line behind us. Back in Honolulu, I had counseled him to start working out, to bulk up some of the muscles he would need to improve as a surfer. After not seeing him for a couple of weeks, I noticed the workouts were starting to have an effect; his arms seemed at least a little more muscular under his short-sleeved aloha shirt.

  He looked from my face to Terri’s. “Shit,” he said. “Were we not supposed to know?”

  “Get some food, Harry. We’ll talk.”

  Terri and I walked over to a picnic table under a stand of palm trees, and sat down. Harry joined us a few minutes later. Across the way, I could see Arleen, a sweet Japanese girl Harry had met through me, holding Brandon, all the moms swarming over the new baby in our midst. “What makes you think I’m working undercover?” I asked.

  Harry looked sheepish. “As long as you’re not a cop any more I can tell you,” he said. “I hacked into your bank account.”

  “You did what?” Terri and I both said, almost simultaneously.

  “I was worried you’d run out of cash. You know with all those patents in my name, I’m running a big surplus. So I was going to transfer some money to your account. I figured if you didn’t know where it came from, you couldn’t complain.”

  “That’s a really—nice—sentiment,” I said. “Strange, but nice.”

  “Once I got in—and by the way, your bank’s site isn’t very safe from hackers, any teenager could break through—I saw that your paycheck was still being deposited. But some of the codes on the deposit changed two weeks ago, and just for my own amusement, and to see if I could do it, I decoded them. You were switched from District 1 to District 2, on temporary assignment undercover.”

  I shook my head. “Jesus, Harry. How many
crimes do you think you committed just doing all that?”

  “Well, if you’re not really a cop anymore then you aren’t obliged to report me, are you?”

  I sighed. “Lieutenant Sampson—he’s my new boss. He was worried that if Lui got wind of my assignment, he’d find some way to get it on TV. So I had to promise to tell everyone that I had given up the job and was coming up here just to surf.”

  “I don’t know that I’d trust Lui either,” Terri said, wiping her fingers on a napkin. “Sorry, I know he’s your brother, but look what he did to you, Kimo. If he ran that story about you being gay without telling you—or your parents—I don’t think he has any ethics at all.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. But I guess I agreed with Sampson, because I said I’d do it his way.”

  “So your parents don’t know you’re still working?” Harry asked. “Your mother must be having a cow.”

  “A herd,” I said. “New cows popping out daily.”

  The three of us ate in silence for a few minutes. “Are you making any progress?” Terri finally asked.

  “I’ve been learning a lot, but without a partner to bounce it off I’m feeling swamped.”

  “We can help,” Harry said. “I provide the logic, Terri provides the heart. Together we’re a full person.”

  “Arleen thinks you have a heart,” Terri said.

  “You know what I mean. You’ve always been better at the touchy-feely stuff, I’ve always been better at the logic. Kimo’s always been the one who just bulls through and gets things done. We’ve been like this since high school and we’re not likely to change.”

  When we were at Punahou, Harry and I were mad to surf, sneaking off every available moment to drag our boards into the water, ignoring homework. He was the only reason I’d made passing grades, though somehow he’d scored straight As and gone off to MIT for undergraduate and graduate degrees in computer science. He’d come back to the islands just a few months before, teaching a little at UH, fiddling with some inventions and managing the money he’d made on the mainland.

  Terri had been the good girl, president of the honor society, homecoming queen, a straight A student herself. She had made sure we knew when our tests were and dragged us to extracurricular activities. It was good to be together with them both again.

  I outlined the facts. “That poor girl,” Terri said, shaking her head.

  “Hey, there’s two dead guys, too,” Harry said.

  “I know, but I keep thinking that this Lucie is at the center of things,” Terri said. “I’m getting a clear picture of her from the details. She sounds determined to succeed, but it’s not just a lack of money that’s standing in her way, it’s her attitude toward money.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, sitting forward on the picnic bench.

  “You said she loved labels—name brand clothes. Usually people wear those clothes because they want to fit in, to be like people they see as better, and they want everyone to see that they’re worthwhile, too.”

  Harry and I must have both been looking skeptical, because she continued. “It’s like that saying, dress for the job you want, not the job you have.”

  That was a saying I’d heard.

  “Lucie was dressing like the person she wanted to be—successful and rich—the person she wanted people to think she was. Combine that with her drive to succeed as a surfer, and you have somebody who’s willing to do almost anything to achieve her goals.”

  “Okay, I get it,” I said. “So then what do you think got her killed? Somebody who perceived her drive as a threat?”

  “It’s possible. But you also said she was Filipina, right?”

  I nodded.

  “And the Philippines is almost completely Catholic.”

  “Your point?”

  “My point is that she probably had a strong moral upbringing, but her desires overwhelmed her morals. Then maybe something happened that changed the balance again.”

  I was starting to see where she was going. “Mike Pratt was killed,” I said. “You think maybe either she knew who killed Mike, or suspected, and her morals were resurfacing, maybe making her a threat to the killer.”

  “I think it’s a possibility,” Terri said. “Plus you said that Mike had gotten involved with a Christian surfing group in Mexico, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you think maybe he was involved in smuggling some drugs back from there. It’s possible those Christian surfers got him thinking that what he was doing was wrong, and he tried to back out, go to the authorities.”

  “This is very interesting,” I said. “So let me see if I can construct a scenario. Lucie’s this very determined girl who needs a lot of money to feed her habits—surfing and shopping foremost. She overcomes her Catholic upbringing to become a low-level drug dealer. She plans to go to Mexpipe, and makes arrangements to bring some crystal meth back—some of which I found in her apartment.”

  “Makes sense so far,” Harry said.

  “She knows Mike Pratt and knows he needs money, so she recruits him to help her. They come up with a scheme to smuggle the crystal back to the US in their surfboards.”

  I stood up and started walking around. “But while they’re in Mexico, Mike hooks up with the Christian surfers, who make him see that what he’s doing is wrong. By the time he gets back to the States, he’s really upset—both on moral grounds, and because the board he loved is ruined.”

  “Where does the Chinese guy fit in?” Harry asked. “Don’t forget the Chinese guy.”

  “Ronnie was Lucie’s friend, right?” Terri asked. “Maybe she recruited him, too.”

  “Okay, the three of them bring the crystal back from Mexico and turn at least some of it over to Lucie’s supplier. I found the rest behind her medicine cabinet.”

  “Then there ought to be a money trail,” Harry said. “These guys weren’t sophisticated enough to cover their tracks. Maybe the supplier, but not Lucie, Mike or Ronnie. You could subpoena their bank records.”

  I shook my head. “Not without some probable cause. Judges don’t sign subpoenas based on speculation.”

  “I could check it out for you,” Harry said. “I already know how to get into your bank.”

  “I’m still a cop, Harry, as you have already figured out. I can’t ask you to do that—and I can’t use anything you find in court.”

  “Email me their names, addresses, anything you have,” Harry said. “That’s all you need to know. But you still haven’t established why the Chinese guy got killed. Just the haole and the Filipina.”

  “Ronnie disappeared the same day Lucie was shot,” Terri said. “Maybe she confided in him. He was a smart computer guy, right? Maybe she was trying to atone for her sins by finding out who killed Mike, and she recruited Ronnie to help.”

  “That’s as good a scenario as I can get for now,” I said. “Though there isn’t much I can do to prove any of it.”

  “You need to find the supplier,” Harry said. “That’s the guy who has the motive. But I hope you’re not going to tell me you plan to buy some ice yourself. Because you’re not officially a cop up here and you could get yourself into a whole heap of trouble.”

  “The idea did cross my mind,” I admitted. “But I met a guy who bought from Lucie. He must be buying somewhere else now that she’s dead.”

  “That’s the guy who was supposed to meet you for dinner but cancelled?” Terri asked.

  “Yeah. His name is Rik. He’s hard to get hold of because he works at Waimea Falls Park and he’s always having to cover for other guys’ shifts.”

  “Or he’s dodging you,” Harry said. “Is he working today?”

  I nodded. “I see a plan forming. You think we could take the kids over there this afternoon?”

  “It’s a good diversion,” Terri said. “That way you kind of stumble on him. We can keep the kids busy while you talk to him.”

  We agreed to head to the park after lunch, just as we were inundated by a flood of m
y nieces and nephews, and we gave up on the idea of talking any more then.

  A Walk in the Park

  It was almost two before we could break away a group of kids to head to Waimea Falls Park. Ashley and Jeffrey wanted to keep surfing, and Alec and Keoni wanted to stay in the water on their boogie boards. We left my parents, Lui and Liliha, and Haoa and Tatiana in a pleasant after-lunch stupor to look after them.

  We took a couple of cars over to the park because of the need for so many car seats. I checked with the elderly Chinese woman who took our money and found that Rik, one of the nature guides, was somewhere in the gardens; unfortunately, she couldn’t be more specific. We all took the electric tram up to the falls, but instead of swimming we elected to walk around through the gardens. The four of us concentrated on showing the kids the flowers and the exotic birds, stopping at the country store to buy them candy.

  It was as we were coming out of the store that we ran into Rik. It couldn’t have appeared more innocent, yet Rik was immediately suspicious. Fortunately, just as I said hello, Malia tugged on my pant leg and announced, “Uncle Kimo, I have to go bathroom.”

  “Why don’t we all take a bathroom break,” Terri announced. She picked up Malia and took Ailina’s hand, while Arleen scooped up Brandon.

  Harry, carrying Danny, said, “I saw the bathrooms over there. Kimo, you can wait here, we’ll all be right back.”

  “So you had to miss dinner Friday night,” I said to Rik, as the entourage began its trek to the bathrooms.

  “Yeah, we had a big party here, and a couple of us had to stay late to close up.” He looked around nervously. “I really should get back to work.”

  “Why don’t I walk with you, and it’ll look like you’re showing me the park.” I put my hand on his shoulder and gently steered him toward one of the paths. He was painfully skinny, and I felt like there was almost no flesh between my hand and the bones of his shoulder.

  “Look,” I said when we were out of earshot of the country store. “I know you used to buy your drugs from Lucie, and I’m not looking to jam you up. I just want to find out who killed her.”