by Toby Neal
Maui’s airport was being expanded—a huge new parking garage was being built along with an extended runway, so it was a confusing welter of crisscrossing roads for Stevens to find parking, and then getting his boarding pass and ticket for Hawaiian Airlines. Sitting in the waiting area at last, Stevens called Soga’s hospital room.
“Soga, this is Michael, Lei’s husband,” he said, when the older man’s tremulous voice answered the phone.
“I know who you are,” Soga said. “Coming to help me get out of here?”
“That’s exactly what I’m doing.” Stevens had been prepared for resistance to his help, and smiled involuntarily. “Any excuse to ditch my dad duties for a couple of days and come visit you.”
“You don’t have to lie,” Soga said with asperity. “I know this is hard for you. It is also hard for me. But we must make the best of things, so I thank you.”
Sobered, Stevens pushed a hand through his hair. “I’m happy to come, Grandfather—that is all I meant to say. Wayne and Ellen are caring for the children. Lei would want to come, but she is tied up with a serious case that’s eaten up her time. I’ll meet you at the hospital at discharge, which your doctor told me is eleven tomorrow morning. I am working on finding someone to come in to help you at home.”
“We can talk later.” Soga hung up.
Clearly, he didn’t like that part of the plan.
After the quick half hour flight, Stevens took a ride-share to Soga’s house near Punchbowl as evening began to drain the heat from the day, replacing it with the sherbet-colored sky of a Honolulu sunset. The peaceful neighborhood of older homes tucked into a little cul-de-sac calmed his heart rate after the busy drive through Honolulu and Waikiki.
He walked up Soga’s driveway in front of the closed garage door. Soga had a car inside, a sensible older Toyota Corolla that he’d driven until the fall that had put him in the hospital, and Stevens knew where the house keys and a spare door key were stashed.
He found the keys under a certain rock in the zen garden Soga had created beside the entry to the front door, a carefully raked plot the size of a dining room table, with three elegant black stones holding down one end of it. The middle stone hid the keys, and Stevens squatted outside of the area’s carefully raked lines, reached in, tipped the stone and removed the keys.
He unlocked the front door, immediately frowning at the smell of something ripe and rotting, and several large, lazy buzzing flies. “Phew.” He walked through the sparely furnished front room, done in classic Japanese tradition, and opened the window over the kitchen sink to bring in some fresh air.
Guilt tugged at him—neither he nor Lei had been able to find the time to fly over and deal with the house. Soga had fallen in his backyard workshop and called a friend, who got an ambulance to take the elderly man to the hospital.
Finally, he found the source of the smell—the trash under the sink had taken on a pungent odor, and flies had discovered it.
Airing out the house, cleaning spoiled food out of the refrigerator, changing the bed linens, and making a list of food and supplies, Stevens was grateful he’d come over now, and not on the morning of Soga’s discharge as he’d considered doing.
And he still needed help.
Fortunately, Lei had a friend who might be able to help him find the needed caregiver. He took the ripe trash out, hauled the big can to the curb, and then scrolled to a number on his phone. “Hello? Marcella? It’s Stevens. I’m in Honolulu, and I need a favor.”
Chapter Thirty
Fogarty opened Nisake’s hospital room door to Lei and Torufu. “We want to see your offer in writing.”
“Good. Because the reason we took a while getting back here is that we swung by the DA’s office and got it written up.” Lei handed the agreement over to Fogarty. As the lawyer skimmed over the paperwork attached to a clipboard, Lei approached Nisake’s bed and resumed her seat on the plastic chair beside him. Torufu took up a less-threatening position behind her on a rollaway chair. “How are you feeling, Mr. Nisake?”
“A little better, now that I’ve had some legal counsel.” The man’s color and composure had improved.
“That’s good. Do you mind if I record this interview? Saves going over things again later.” Lei took out her phone and set it on the edge of the bed.
Fogarty handed the contract and a pen to Nisake. “It seems aboveboard to me, but please read through and ask us any questions you might have.”
Moments later, the interview got underway after Lei had stated the place, time, and people present for the recording. “Tell us about the man who hired you.”
Nisake glanced at Fogarty, who answered for him. “My client wants to go into Witness Protection.”
Lei threw up her hands and turned to address Torufu. “Can you believe this guy? Who does he work for, anyway? One of the Changs?” The notorious crime family seemed to have fingers in every pie.
Torufu lifted his brows and chin. Lei turned back to Nisake, who was smoothing the sheet in his fingers and nodding. “I can’t say anything or they’ll kill me.”
If she had a dollar for every witness who thought their testimony was that valuable . . . “I can call the Marshals Service for you, but it’s going to slow everything down. They will want to interview you, assess the situation, and make their own decision based on how prosecutable the information is. It could take up to a week, and you’ll have to talk to them first, anyway. Tell them what you’re going to end up telling us.” Lei tried to keep her impatience in check. She couldn’t afford to spook the guy—if they found out who was behind the rumored human trafficking activity out of Kahului Harbor, it would be a major bonus.
Fogarty tapped the contract. “I think you’re okay to share some of the information you told me, Mr. Nisake. We can save specifics for the Marshals and see what they say.”
“I don’t think you’re going to get Witness Protection, Nisake. You’re just a grunt,” Torufu rumbled from his position. “You won’t know anything good enough to merit that level of security. I guarantee it.”
“I do know something! I know the first name of the man who rents the warehouse where they stashed the girls!” Nisake exclaimed.
Torufu yawned. “We have that information from a computer search. Along with his last name, too, by the way. Tell us something we don’t know.”
“Detective Torufu is right. We are your best bet for protection right now unless you have evidence and names of people in a high level of involvement with the human trafficking operation.” Lei leaned forward, modulating her voice to make it soft and appealing. It wasn’t often that she was in the position to play “good cop,” but Torufu had her beat as far as muscle and menace. “If you tell us what you know and we think it will put you in danger, we’ll take steps to keep you safe. You’ll go to an isolation unit at the jail, for instance.”
“I have to agree with the detectives in this instance,” Fogarty told her client. “I’ve tried to have my clients placed in Witness Protection before, and it’s not an easy process.”
Nisake sighed and his shoulders slumped. “Okay, then. I work for a dude named Felipe Chang. He’s in charge of the containers and shipping of the people that come through this harbor.”
Lei’s pulse picked up as he described how young women and some teen boys, usually runaways who congregated on the streets of Lahaina for panhandling and partying, were lured with a promise of shelter and meals by a recruiter they had, a charismatic young man from the Big Island. “A guy named Keo talks the kids up. I never got his last name. Gives them free pakalolo, tells them there’s a party they’re going to love. They get in his car—he has a red Viper.” Nisake’s mouth tightened a little in an expression of either disgust or regret. “Stupid kids. He drives them to one of the containers. We keep them in there, take care of them until the container’s full. Then we ship it out.”
“Wow. This sounds like quite the operation. How did you get involved, and what’s your role exactly?” Lei hoped her ton
e sounded admiring.
“Me and Greg Steele were a team. It was like you guys.” Nisake gestured with his chin. “Good cop, bad cop. I was the good cop. People needed anything, I got it. I’d calm them down. We had a line that they were going to go be cruise ship waiters and waitresses, that we needed them to stay hidden since they were underage. You’d be surprised how many of them believed it all the way until the container was put on the ship, still locked. But by then, whether or not they believed it didn’t matter.” Nisake stared down at his hands. “I’m glad to be out of it, to tell the truth. I couldn’t find a way to get out.”
Torufu snorted. “We’re supposed to feel sorry for you.”
Lei touched Torufu’s arm. “Abe. Please. Can’t you see how Mr. Nisake got caught in the life?”
“And I’m still trapped!” Nisake’s eyes had gone wide, ringed with white. “I tried to quit, but Steele came after me. Roughed me up. Said once you work for the Changs, you always work for the Changs. Some partner he was!”
“Nice guy, Greg Steele,” Torufu said. “Glad he’s on a slab right now.”
“Me too,” Nisake said fervently. “He really enjoyed his job. Not in a good way, if you get my meaning.”
Fogarty scrunched her over-plucked brows. “As you can see, my client is taking a considerable risk in cooperating with you.”
“And we thank you for it.” Lei addressed Nisake. “But right now, we need to know more about the pirates and the women that ended up causing your capture. Tell us about that.”
“I don’t know much about that. Just that my partner got a call to go pick the women up in our company van from where they’d been brought into a bay on the West Side.”
“Where was this?”
“One a.m. down at the pier at Mala Wharf. No one’s ever around down there at that time of night. My partner and I brought the van down. We met a beefed-up Zodiac with the five women in it at the wharf. They were tied up and wearing blindfolds. Seemed pretty upset.” Nisake had begun plucking at the coverlet again. “We moved them into the van. Took them to our overnight warehouse. The next day, we brought them to the container for shipping. Well, you know how that went.”
“Yes, we do.” Lei got eye contact with the young man. “We were surprised at how ready and willing Steele was to be aggressive and take lives. Can you tell us more about that?”
“He’s a Chang. Not by name, but by marriage.” Nisake described the convoluted relationship linking Greg Steele to the Chang crime family. “He told me right off once we realized that cops were onto us that he didn’t care if he had to kill all of the women. We were either escaping or going out feetfirst.”
“And you knew you were in danger at that point,” Lei said.
“Totally. The women knew it too; they were crying. It was awful. I tried to talk him down, but . . .” Nisake shook his head. “Turns out, he was right. He went out feetfirst.”
“Back to the men in the Zodiac. Did you know any of them?”
“No. Steele said they were new customers, but that they’d offered Felipe a great percentage of the sale on the women. You have to understand.” Nisake sought eye contact with Lei. “The women were really valuable. The younger and prettier the better, and especially if they were virgins. Dudes overseas pay a lot for that.” He named a figure that made Lei’s eyebrows rise. “That kind of money does things to people.”
“In more ways than one. Are you sure there’s nothing more you can tell us about the pirates? They’ve attacked another ship and taken more people prisoner.”
Nisake shook his head. “I guess you’re right. I’m just a foot soldier, like you said. I don’t know anything but what I’ve told you.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Stevens pushed Soga’s wheelchair out of the hospital at eleven a.m. the next day. The older man seemed unbelievably light to Stevens as he navigated the sidewalk—it was like pushing a basket of laundry, nothing more. He rolled the chair over to where he’d parked Soga’s Corolla at the drop-off zone outside of the hospital.
“I told you I can walk,” Soga muttered grumpily.
“I know you can, Soga. It’s part of the discharge requirements for your operation. But it’s also hospital regulations that everyone being discharged has to ride in one of these chariots—so just enjoy, okay?” Stevens made his voice as humorous as possible, but the truth was, he was alarmed at how tiny and frail his octogenarian grandfather-in-law seemed.
Stevens helped Soga from the chair into the front seat, and then ran the chair back into the lee of the building. He jogged back and got into the Corolla, glancing at Soga as he lowered the windows. “Thought you might want some fresh air after being shut up in that building.”
“Thank you.” Soga turned his lined face toward the sun and shut his eyes, clearly savoring the warm breeze, as they left the area of the hospital and wended their way through downtown. His crepey skin was almost translucent.
Stevens had been able to get a housecleaner to go over the house before Soga’s arrival. He’d restocked the groceries, and met with Marcus Kamuela’s young niece. Sabrina Kamuela, a nursing student, was bright and sweet. She seemed motivated and outgoing, so Stevens had hired her and shown her around the place, guessing at Soga’s needs.
He’d gone early to the hospital with some downloaded forms, and prior to Soga’s discharge, Soga had signed Power of Attorney papers naming Stevens and Lei as his health care representatives. He’d also added Stevens to his bank account, allowing Stevens to pay for the various items needed, as well as a signing bonus for Sabrina. Soga had dealt with the hospital bill himself.
They got underway, and all of these details were still fresh and worrisome on Stevens’s mind. “You sure you’re okay for money, Soga?”
“I live frugally. Always have.” Soga’s eyes were still closed and he rested his head against the seat back, apparently enjoying the bright sunshine and breeze coming through the window. “I had good investments from my work.” Soga had retired as a county employee, a planner for the city of Honolulu, many years before. “I will not be a burden to you and Lei—at least, not in that way.” His mouth closed, a tight seam of pain.
Stevens patted Soga’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about that. Just think about healing up. But while we’re talking about all of this, I want to bring up something Lei and I have talked about. We searched long and hard for a facility for you on Maui, and couldn’t find anything we thought was appropriate—but we don’t like having you so far away.” He glanced over at the older man, but Soga remained turned away. “We’d like you to consider moving to Maui and living with us. We have a big property with plenty of room, and we’ve checked out the regulations. If you sell your house, you’d have plenty of money for us to buy or build you a ‘tiny house’ on our property.”
Still no response from Soga.
Stevens frowned, focusing on the road. “Maybe I should have waited until Lei was here to talk with you about this, but I’m concerned about leaving you, even with the caregiver situation I set up. I know you’re involved with your work for the Shinnyo Temple, making those beautiful floating lanterns . . . but I have a workshop at our place, too. I’d be happy to share it with you. I already contacted the Temple and asked if the work could be done long distance; they assured me of how much they value you, and that they’d make any accommodations needed, like setting up and paying for shipping.”
Soga finally turned. His dark eyes, set in pleated folds of wrinkles, were unreadable—but emotion was revealed in the soft tremble of his mouth.
“I would be honored to spend my last years with my family,” he said. “Now get me home and into bed, please.”
“Yes, sir,” Stevens said. “You got it.” He pressed down harder on the gas.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Lei’s brow knit as she listened to Stevens’s message. Maui Memorial Hospital had notoriously poor reception, and his voicemail had been left hours before. Stevens was already on O`ahu, dealing with her grandfather and
his situation.
A rush of love and gratitude brought warmth to Lei’s cheeks. This guy. He just stepped in and did whatever needed doing, and so did her dad and Ellen, helping out with the kids!
Lei’s finger was moving to call Stevens back, when her phone rang. She frowned—Aina Thomas’s number had appeared in the little window. Something new on the case? “Texeira here.”
“Lei, we’ve got a lead on the pirate location. Several Coast Guard craft are going to raid it. We’re leaving from Ma`alaea Harbor in half an hour. Can you get here with your team?”
Lei, Gerry Bunuelos, and Abe Torufu hurried up the short, narrow gangplank onto the Defender craft still tied at Ma`alaea Harbor, brisk wind tugging at their hair and clothing. Thomas met them, along with Decker, his commanding officer.
“This is a Coast Guard operation, so you are not to get involved,” Decker said. “You can stay up on deck, especially if you have any seasick issues, until we approach the back side of Kaho`olawe, where we’ve identified a possible sea cave matching your witnesses’ description.”
“Kaho`olawe!” Bunuelos exclaimed. “That bombed-out rock?”
The atoll of Kaho`olawe, off the southwestern shore of Maui, had first been used by US armed forces in World War II, and later by the Navy, for target practice. The federal government had cleaned up the debris and ordnance littering the little island and returned it to the Hawaiian people in 2003, and now only cultural and restoration practices were allowed on the island.