We agreed that they would continue the up-front investigation, as well as looking into The Next Wave. I would keep investigating Rich Sarkissian, and keep surfing, hoping somebody would swim along who had the clue we were looking for.
Investigating Rich
Driving back up to Hale’iwa, I felt a surprising sense of relief. I hadn’t liked working behind the backs of fellow detectives, even if I didn’t particularly care for them, like Al Kawamoto. And it was good to know that I was no longer alone on this investigation, that I had Ruiz and Kawamoto to back me up if I needed them.
I stopped off at The Next Wave for a cappuccino and to go over my notes and see what I was missing. The only employee on the floor of the store was Ellie, an older woman whom I’d most recently seen as a barista at the Kope Bean. “Had to close down,” she said, making me a mochaccino. “No more customers. Luckily Dario hired me.”
“Where is he?”
“In the office,” she said, nodding toward the rear of the store. “Been there ever since opening. Even when I call back there and tell him I need help with customers, he doesn’t budge.”
I took my coffee back to his office, and knocked on the closed door. There was no answer, so I tried the handle. The door was locked. “Dario? It’s Kimo.”
“I’m busy,” he called from behind the door. “Go away.”
I considered saying, “I’ll let you suck my dick if you open the door,” but decided that probably wasn’t my wisest move. Instead I went back to the coffee bar, which Ellie had abandoned to ring up a pair of sunglasses for a haole tourist at the front register.
Dario’s business was going downhill fast, as were a lot of businesses on the North Shore. If I didn’t find the killer soon, the economy of the whole area might crumple, leaving a lot of people out of work and in dire financial straits. Not to mention Dario’s sanity, which seemed to be evaporating as fast as his business.
I recapped what I had learned, trying to put it all into perspective. The chain of events seemed to begin with Lucie Zamora, a girl with dreams who needed money. She had begun selling ice, getting her supply from someone at The Next Wave. Ruiz and Kawamoto were going to check with Vice on that. I entertained the thought briefly that her contact could be Dario himself, but I decided that was wishful thinking on my part. If I still felt threatened by him in some way, I couldn’t depend on the law to lock him up. He was my problem to deal with.
Lucie had probably recruited Mike Pratt and Ronnie Chang to bring back crystal meth after attending the Mexpipe competition. I would see Harry the next day and find out if his snooping into their bank accounts revealed anything, but I already had anecdotal evidence, from Trish and Will Wong, that both had extra cash on hand after their trip.
Something had gone wrong after they returned from Mexico. Mike had been upset about the damage to his board, and his experience with the Christian surfers in Mexico might have given him bad feelings on moral grounds, too. Either way, he had been complaining and somebody might have seen the need to shut him up.
Lucie and Ronnie had been killed a few days later. Had Lucie figured something out about Mike’s murder and challenged the killer? She was just ballsy enough, and cash-hungry enough, to have tried a blackmail scheme. Perhaps she had implicated Ronnie, relying on his computer experience to track her supplier’s funds.
If that was the case, it was a wrong move on her part, because it had gotten them both killed. But I still stumbled when I came to a connection between those three murders, and the killing of Brad Jacobson and Tommy Singer. I closed my eyes and tried to let my mind run free. Where was that elusive connection?
Suddenly, with an electric jolt, my eyes popped open. Could it be that I was the connection? I had been sent to the North Shore to investigate the three murders. Suppose the killer knew that, and wanted to throw me off the track. So he or she killed Brad, knowing of my relationship with him? That was bound to put a whole new spin on things—maybe even to remove me from the investigation.
It was a strange idea, but not the strangest. There were many cases on record where a killer had attacked someone close to an investigator, either as a warning, a tease, or a distraction. Who knew I was looking into these murders? Who could have been threatened?
I started making a list. I had talked to Trish, Melody, Rich Sarkissian, and Tepano about Mike Pratt. Frank, Lucie’s old boyfriend, the bartender at the Drainpipe, had filled me in on her life and directed me toward Butterfly. Brad and his circle of friends: Jeremy, Ari, Rik, George and Larry, all knew I was looking into her death. Since Ari was in business with both Dario and Bishop Clark, I had to assume that they might have heard from him, at least in passing. I had talked to Ronnie’s parents, his high school teacher Victor Texeira, and his old friend Will Wong, as well as his boss, Pierre Lewin. I’d spoken with Lucie’s mother, too.
The only people, besides Lieutenant Sampson, who knew I was officially undercover were Terri and Harry, but both of them were so far removed from the case I couldn’t imagine them having an impact. Anyone on the first list, though, could have been the killer, or could have passed the word on to the killer that I was nosing around.
I let my mind wander on Rich Sarkissian. I knew he was jealous of surfers, that he hated the way they trespassed over Bishop Clark’s land. I realized I’d never checked to see who owned the property where he lived, and I went online to the property appraiser’s office. The cottage was owned by Melody Isaacson, from the halau, so I figured she had made some kind of deal with Rich. Perhaps she was even sleeping with him, though I’d seen her kiss Mary at the bar.
I needed to give up analyzing other peoples’ sexuality. My own was confusing enough.
Back to Rich. Could the case be as simple as that—despite everything else I’d discovered, perhaps Rich had simply killed Mike, Lucie, Ronnie and Tommy because they’d all trespassed. Brad had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Or maybe Rich was dealing ice, too. Those prosthetics had to be expensive, and he lived in a lovely cottage that he couldn’t afford on a security guard’s salary. Maybe he had killed the first three as part of a turf war. He had access to a lot of weaponry in Bishop’s cabinet.
But it was a far cry from anger over trespassing to murder, and there was nothing that tied Rich to either Brad or Tommy. Unless, as I reminded myself, Brad and Tommy had been killed to put me off the scent.
My cappuccino had gone cold. I threw it away and drove back up to Cane Landing, where I spent the next couple of hours going through all the material Sampson had sent, searching for something that would be a clear implication of Rich Sarkissian. He knew I was nosing around, asking questions about Mike, and it was certainly possible that he could have heard I was looking into Lucie, too, either from Bishop Clark, his employer, or Dario Fonseca, his previous employer.
It was incredibly frustrating. I felt that the solution was there, just beyond my reach. A storm swept in from the center of the island, rain lashing at the French doors, and the upset in the weather seemed to mirror the turmoil in my brain. I spent a couple more hours going over the material on Rich, reading it again and again and getting nothing new. After dark I tried to read a novel, and then to watch TV, but I couldn’t focus on anything.
Friday morning I surfed, hoping I could accomplish two things. First, that being out on the water would help clear my brain. And second, that some random surfer would come up to me with the solution to the mystery. Neither happened. I quit around noon, stopped at Fujioka’s for some weekend food supplies, and was on my way back to Cane Landing when Harry called my cell phone to say he was passing Matsumoto’s and needed further directions.
I met him at the entrance to Cane Landing and buzzed him through the gate. “Your surf killer is all over the news in Honolulu,” he said, as I helped him carry his stuff into the house. “They say people have left the North Shore in droves.”
“You’ll see when we get out to Pipeline. The place is deserted.”
I showed Ha
rry to the guest room. “Your mother called me this morning and she sounded pretty frantic,” he said. “She really wants you back home.”
“She called you?”
“She wanted me to persuade you to give up and come home. I told her you wouldn’t leave until you were ready.” He paused. “I got that information we discussed. But I don’t think it’s anything you didn’t already know.”
“Then we can look it over later. Right now I think we should just go surf.”
We grabbed our boards and headed for Pipeline, where we got in a couple of hours of heavenly surfing, the beach almost totally to ourselves.
“Man, I’ve never seen it this empty,” Harry said, when we took a break and collapsed on the sand. “I don’t think I’ve ever caught so many big waves in one day in my life.”
“And you have a serial killer to thank for it.”
We rested in the warm sun, then surfed again. Around four o’clock we dragged ourselves and our boards back up to Cane Landing, where after showers and a couple of Kona lagers we were ready to tackle dinner. I’d bought steaks, which we fixed on the fancy grill in the house’s back yard, accompanied by grilled peppers and baked potatoes. Finally, we sat down at Harry’s laptop a little after eight.
He brought up some spreadsheets he’d created after looking at bank records for Mike Pratt, Lucie Zamora and Ronnie Chang. Lucie’s was the most interesting, because there was almost no activity there. She made the occasional cash deposit, and wrote checks for things like the HECO bill—Hawaiian Electric Company— and the phone bill, to Verizon. No checks to Butterfly, no checks that resembled rent or car payments. Like Brad had said, Lucie was a cash basis customer.
Both Mike and Ronnie had made large cash deposits shortly after they returned from Mexico. Mike had made two deposits, about a week apart, for $5,000 each. “The government requires the bank to fill out forms for amounts larger than ten grand,” Harry said. “That’s probably why he split it up.”
Ronnie had made one deposit, for nearly $7,000. We figured he’d spent the rest on gifts for Lucie and his new board.
“What do you think Lucie did with her ten grand?” Harry asked.
I shrugged. “No clue. But she might not have had the money yet—remember all that crystal meth that I found in her apartment. Maybe she was holding out for a higher price, or waiting for demand to go up.”
I sat back. “This is all interesting, but there’s another guy I’m interested in now.” I told him what I knew about Rich, what I’d learned from Sampson’s reports, my own searches, and my conversations with Dario and with Rich himself.
Harry logged on to the Internet. “What do you want to know?”
“For starters, I’m curious now to know who owns that house where Rich lives, and if there’s any way to find out if he pays rent, and how much he pays.”
“You can’t start out with something simple, like where he went to school?” Harry grumbled. But he applied himself to the laptop, and not too much later he said, “The house is owned by the Sandwich Islands Trust. Isn’t that Terri’s family foundation?”
“Yup.” I frowned. “So it’s probably a Bishop deal, like Dario said. So much for my theory that Rich is living off drug money.”
“Nobody says he isn’t. It’s just that if the Clarks own the house where he lives, he’s probably not paying much rent.”
Harry applied himself to the computer again. When he looked up, he said, “You aren’t going to be able to use this information in court. I just want to let you know before you see it.”
I shrugged. “If I get some real evidence, I can always get subpoenas.”
“Well, you can’t tell anyone you’ve seen this.”
“Come on, Harry. What did you find? Pornographic pictures?”
“Nope. His bank statement.” He swiveled the screen around toward me.
“Jesus, Harry! I didn’t know you could crack the bank’s computer system right in front of me!”
“Uh-huh. Well, now you know. I’m getting good at this stuff—this is my fifth break-in in the last couple of weeks.” He pointed at the screen. “Unfortunately, if Mr. Sarkissian is raking in drug money, he’s keeping it under his mattress, not in his checking account.”
Rich’s balance looked like mine, right after I’ve paid all my bills. A five-figure number—if you counted the numbers after the period. “I don’t even want to know how you got in there,” I said. “But you’d better get out quickly.”
Banking with Dario
Harry hit a key, and the screen disappeared.
“Umm… Harry…” I said. “How about we try Dario Fonseca’s account?” I knew I was stepping over a line there, but I had been ignoring Dario, in the face of mounting evidence, for a long time. At first I’d been reluctant to consider that he was involved because I had such strong feelings about him—I worried that they were coloring my judgment. I didn’t want to wait any longer for Ruiz and Kawamoto to come up with a link to The Next Wave through the District 2 vice cops. It was time for me to get over my personal feelings and do the digging I had to.
I rationalized it by the nature of being undercover. If I was in Ruiz’s position, or Kawamoto’s, I could get a subpoena for these records. I could ask them to do that, and then wait. And wait. Or I could get over those scruples and set Harry loose.
“With pleasure.” He leaned over the keyboard again. I noticed that his dark hair, which usually fell into his eyes, didn’t any more; probably Arleen’s influence. Harry had met Dario a few times in the past, and they’d never gotten along. He had always suspected that Dario had something to do with my decision to quit surfing and go to the police academy.
His dislike of Dario had been cemented when I had finally confessed, not too long before, the story of what had happened between Dario and me. “I can’t believe you’re still willing to be friends with that guy,” he said, as he tapped the keys. “I’ve been telling you for years there’s something not quite right about him.”
“He has his good points. He got me this house, didn’t he?”
“Your friend Ari is the one who arranged the house. Dario only made a phone call.”
“But he didn’t have to make it. And he stuck up for Rich Sarkissian over that punching incident.”
“Saving his own neck,” Harry said, continuing to talk while he hunched over his laptop. “Protecting his store from a lawsuit. Hello!”
I looked over his shoulder. We were looking at Dario’s bank account, and the balance wasn’t that much bigger than Rich’s. “He must have more accounts,” I said. “How about the store?”
“All his accounts are linked.” Harry pulled up a summary page. There was an account for the store, and then a joint account with America Fonseca. “Who’s that, his mom?”
“Probably his wife,” I said.
Harry looked up, and his mouth was open like a fish’s. “Yeah, that’s the way I reacted the first time I heard he was married.”
“But I thought he was… you know.”
“Gay. Turns out he’s bi. Or, as Ari says, omnisexual. That Dario will fuck anything that doesn’t run away.”
“Jesus.” Harry shook his head.
“Him, too, probably,” I said. “Hard to run when you’re nailed to a cross.”
“That’s just sacrilegious,” Harry said.
“You’re a Buddhist.”
“Yeah, a Buddhist with good manners.”
“Back to Dario,” I said. “How can he be so short of cash?”
“Give me Ari’s full name,” Harry said. I spelled it for him.
“Hold on a minute,” he said. “I recognize that name. Remember that guy you asked me to look up, Harry Pincus?”
I nodded. Harry applied himself to the laptop again. “I think it’s the same guy. In 1999 Harry Pincus was arrested in Minneapolis on federal charges—for a bunch of financial crimes relating to the viatical business.” He looked up at me. “You know what that is?”
I shook my head. “It’s wh
en a terminally ill person sells his insurance policy death benefits, at less than face value, to a third party. Now, that’s not illegal—but there are lots of scams. Our Mr. Pincus was accused of recruiting AIDS patients in Minneapolis, getting them to sign up for life insurance with companies that didn’t require a physical exam, then buying their benefits.”
“That’s creepy. And illegal?”
“Well, signing up for insurance under false pretenses is. But see what happened is that these patients weren’t dying, and Pincus couldn’t cash in. He couldn’t pay his investors—the people who put up the cash to buy those benefits—because the patients weren’t dying. That’s when he started fiddling with the money, and attracted the attention of the Feds. Eventually he filed for bankruptcy and the Feds realized they couldn’t make a case, so they dropped the charges.”
“Somehow Lucie found out about Ari’s past,” I said. “She did some work for him, and we know she was nosy. But was she blackmailing him? Or was she just holding the information for future use?”
“Perhaps his bank account will tell us.”
Ari, at least, had some money in his account, although there was a lot of money flowing in and out. “He’s trying to put together a deal for Bishop Clark’s land,” I said. “So he’s probably paying architects and lawyers. I know Dario is one of his investors.”
“If that’s the case, then we should be able to match the transactions,” Harry said. I went to the kitchen and got us another couple of beers while Harry went back and forth between the two accounts. While I drank and occasionally peered over his shoulder, he punched keys and made notes on a pad. Finally he was done.
“Okay, I was able to see a pattern here,” he said, showing me the pad. “Starting about six months ago, Ari started getting deposits into this account from what looks like three different sources. Each source puts in $25,000 at a time.”
“That’s a nice chunk of change.”
Mahu Box Set Page 54