Alexander said, “You ever gonna tell me how you got hurt?”
“Huh?” I realized that I should thank Alexander for interrupting my moronic musings. I was about to embarrass myself like a teenage-boy seeing his first porno flick. I said, “I suppose, someday.” Like never. Because one simple question led to more complicated ones. Questions like, why hadn’t I fixed my life? I didn’t know the answer. Maybe I never would.
Harris seemed to sense my discomfort. “Is this Lau’s house?”
Alexander nodded. “Cousin Roger’s.”
It was a classic older Hawaiian hale. The home sat up on blocks, which kept the wood from touching the ground and eliminated issues like wood-rot, termites, or possible flooding when Lono decided it was time to rain for ten or twenty days straight. Panels on the sides had been painted a pale green and reddish tiles that are popular here in the islands covered the roof. Plumeria, ginger, palms and giant hibiscus filled the well-kept yard, which seemed no more than the size of a postage stamp. It reminded me of a middle-class family; two parents, kids, a dog, and a mortgage.
I said, “This is the maintenance man’s home?”
“No look so much like drug dealer, yah?”
Low spots in the graveled driveway created perfect conditions for the water to pond during the slightest downpour. But there, sitting in the driveway, was a brand-new Toyota pickup, much like Alexander’s. Funny, this one didn’t have permanent plates.
I said, “Looks to me like Roger Lau just recently came into some serious money.” We had our bad guy, time to call the cops.
Chapter 14
My comment about Roger coming into money drew a glare from Alexander. I didn’t want to lose his friendship, but he seemed to have blinders on.
He snapped, “Maybe I was wrong about you, you just like the others.”
Harris gave my arm a gentle tug. “Come on, you two, you’re friends. McKenna, looks can be deceiving. I think Alexander’s right. We shouldn’t just convict this guy because he’s got a new truck.” She pointed at a few of the other homes. “Look over there. And there. There’s several new cars around here. Let’s check it out. Hon, you need to work from the facts, not your emotions.”
Legs, too? Why couldn’t these two see how obvious this was? Maybe because I’d dealt with scumbags before and they hadn’t? No matter. I could close the deal on this mess without the rookies. Alexander was already at the front door. He knocked. The screen door rattled and shook with each tap. We joined him and waited.
The inside door opened, and a heavyset woman in a faded, flowered muumuu greeted us. “Yes?”
The rookies in our little band of investigators seemed to be waiting for me to take the lead. “Aloha. Mrs. Lau? My name is McKenna. This is Harris Galvin and Alexander Kapono. We were friends of Bob Shapiro. Your husband maintained Mr. Shapiro’s plane and we’d just like to ask him, uh, your husband, a few questions.”
Tears welled in her eyes, and she dabbed at her cheek with a tissue. “Roger not here.”
“When will he be back?”
“I don’t know. Kapono? You related to Sunny Kapono?”
“Yah, yah, he’s a cousin. I haven’t talked to him in long time. You okay?”
I said, “Can we come in?” Maybe we could get a look around and see whether there were other signs of sudden wealth besides the truck—art work, hand-cut crystal, new furniture. Things I couldn’t afford.
She glanced at Alexander. “You Sunny’s cousin, you must be okay. I’m Emma.” She opened the screen door, and we stepped in.
The living room was small and square, not more than fifteen feet on a side. With the exception of a Koa-wood rocker in one corner, most of the furniture looked like it had come from a discount furniture store. “That’s a beautiful piece.” I gestured towards the rocker. The dark wood appeared to be as smooth as glass. The joints were perfectly matched and the back had a gentle contour that, I was sure, conformed closely to the natural shape of the spine.
“Mahalo. Roger just bought it for our anniversary.”
“How long have you two been married?” It sounded like a good icebreaker to me.
“Almost twenty years. We married right out of high school, and I had Eric couple years later. Mr. Shapiro, he a good man. Roger work for him since he start his business. He really liked that new plane Mr. Shapiro got.”
I made a mental note; Shapiro’s plane was new. “Yah, it’s quite a plane. And it’s missing.”
“Missing?” She got a stunned look on her face. “Since when?”
“Yesterday, we think.”
“Mr. Shapiro so proud of that plane. He took us up in it right after he got it. He even let Roger fly it once. Roger is good pilot. It missing?”
I glanced at Alexander and he grimaced. Harris had blended into the background, but was scanning the room. It seemed inevitable to me that even my trainees would all soon arrive at the inevitable conclusion about Roger and the missing plane. Alexander said, “How old are your boys? They must be ready for college, yah?”
I noticed that she wasn’t looking at us, but at a corner table next to the couch where a framed photo of her, a man and two boys held prominence. The men all wore brightly colored Hawaiian shirts; she wore a muumuu with a decorated neckline. The photo had obviously been taken at some sort of family event.
Alexander said, “Nice looking boys.”
She sniffled and dabbed at her cheek again. She did a quick visual check on Harris, then turned her attention back to Alexander. “I hope they get to go.”
“How come maybe no college?”
She choked back a sob. “Because I think my husband left me.”
Alexander wrapped his arms around her and gave her a huge hug. I gave her a huge stare. This woman was either the best actress on the island or the most naive. I scanned the room while they seemed to relish their relative-bonding experience. I’d never realized how emotional Alexander was until the past couple of days. He was a regular Mother Teresa, compassion for all.
He said, “It gonna be okay. He wouldn’t leave you, Sunny would kill him.”
She chuckled and wiped away the smears on her cheeks. “Yah. Sunny find him, Roger gonna be in big trouble.”
From the background, we heard Harris say, “Mrs. Lau, when did your husband buy the truck out front?”
“Couple weeks ago. He waited for years.” She puffed up her chest and shoulders a bit, “Paid cash.”
I saw Alexander wince. I, myself, suppressed a smirk, but made another mental note, told you so. Even a rank beginner could see where this was going by now.
Alexander said, “Well, there you go. He not gonna leave his new truck behind.”
Mrs. Lau seemed to ponder that for a minute and then nodded. “He waited too long for that truck.”
Alexander smiled. “See? Nothing to worry about.”
“He not gonna get to drive it for a month when he get back.”
We all half-laughed and that seemed to perk her up. I said, “Mrs. Lau, did your husband have any business dealings that you might not have known about?”
Her thin eyebrows knitted together. “That make no sense.”
Good answer. The old how-would-I-know-what-I-don’t-know defense. “Let me ask it another way. How much do you know about your husband’s business?”
“I do the books.”
Now, we were getting somewhere; watch and learn, rookies. “Any large influxes of cash lately?”
Her reaction came about two seconds later as she realized what direction I was going. Her eyes bulged in their sockets, and she shook her head from side to side. She stammered, “Get—get out! You said you—you had—questions for Roger. He not here—and now you accusing him of stealing! How dare you!”
She backed me towards the door, a pudgy index finger stabbing me in the chest. “How dare you come into my house and accuse us of something! Roger, he an honest man.”
I thought I might fall over backwards, but then the wall saved me.
&
nbsp; Alexander put his hand on Mrs. Lau’s shoulder and spoke in a soft tone. “Emma. Mr. McKenna didn’t mean that how it sounded.”
“And how dare you come here with these haoles. You should know betta than trust them. You welcome back anytime—without him.” She jabbed her finger in my direction again. “Or her, she checking out all my things.”
“I meant no disrespect.” Harris’s contrite tone seemed to appease Mrs. Lau, but only until I opened my mouth again.
I said, “Mrs. Lau, I’m just trying to find out—”
She opened the door and grabbed my shirt. I was sure she was about to throw me into the driveway when Alexander came between us. “I’ll take care of him, Emma. I apologize for his behavior.”
With that, he guided us out the door and to his truck. He put us inside, got in, and we left. Mrs. Lau stood on the porch watching until we were on the road. Alexander finally said, “Why you act like a haole in there? You know betta than that.”
Alexander had never called me a haole in that tone before, it had always been more of a joke. This time, the disdain in his voice telegraphed a strong message. I’d crossed an important line and become a traitor. I’d been sure that as soon as he saw I was right, he’d drop the indignation routine. Instead, this was going the other direction.
I thought about his reaction. What shocked me most was the way I felt. I didn’t know why, but being right about Roger Lau now seemed less important than my relationship with Alexander.
“I gotta live on this island. Maybe you gonna leave someday, but me, this is my home.”
“It’s my home too.” The words sounded artificial and barely made it past the knot in my throat. Tears welled in my eyes as I remembered the empty rooms when I’d arrived home after my night in jail. I couldn’t go through that again. Not with my best friend.
“Then you betta start acting like it. Stop pissing people off or maybe all my cousins put you in a canoe and set you out to sea.”
I put on my best Happy McKenna mask. “They wouldn’t do that, would they? You guys are all about peace and love, that aloha spirit.”
“Haoles don’t always get same treatment. You said wrong thing to the wrong person.”
“Her? Why’s she special?”
“She’s a relative.”
“Oh, that.”
“And she part Hawaiian.”
“I knew that.”
“That’s just it, McKenna, you know it, but you don’t feel it. You betta start paying attention to people’s feelings. Practice some aloha spirit yourself.”
I sulked in silence as we drove along, contemplating Alexander’s words. I’d irritated him two or three times now in the last day or so. I had no friends left. No place left to run. Was I bound to repeat the same mistakes yet again? I did what I should have done with Jenny and Michael. “Alexander, I’m sorry.”
He shook his head and smiled, “Emma, she gonna call Auntie Loni. She’ll call Cousin Sunny and about five others. Me, I’d be surprised if she don’t call Cousin Eddie. If you lucky, they get you booked on a freighter bound for someplace nasty by tonight. That mo betta than a canoe to nowhere.”
“Doesn’t sound very ‘mo betta’ to me.”
“You rather have Cousin Eddie find you in a dark alley?”
Harris leaned forward from the back seat. In a voice soft as silk, she said, “Boys, I think we have a bigger problem. Alexander, you’re right about your cousin. That’s not the house of someone with lots of money. And why would he disappear now? If he had killed Shapiro, that’s the worst thing he could do. Something must have happened to him, just like Shapiro. You should talk to Emma and have her report Roger as missing. And we still don’t know where the plane is located.”
Oh, crap, I felt another airport visit coming on.
Chapter 15
If I had to cruise a few airports with Alexander to keep his friendship, I could do that. If it meant not insulting his relatives, I could probably do that, too. As long as I didn’t have to look the other way when we had the proof, things would work out. They had to.
Fortunately, the traffic on H-2, another of our interstate highways, moved quickly. Later in the day it would be packed with cars like ants in a string returning to the nest with something sweet. Harris was asleep in the back seat, her head cocked to one side, her mouth open and her expression one of tranquillity only achievable by a Buddhist monk or someone zonked out. To pass the time, I stared out the side window of Alexander’s truck watching landscape drift by. I guess I appeared deep in thought because Alexander finally broke the silence.
“So what you thinking about?”
“I never meant to hurt anybody’s feelings.”
“Deep down, inside, where it counts, you’re okay. You just got something big making you crazy. You like a choppy ocean, you need let it go, your life smooth out. You hung onto it for a long time.”
I wondered how he knew that. I hadn’t even realized it until he’d gotten mad at me. Alexander flipped on his wipers. The front windshield got hit with a heavy mist that drifted up from the roadway. The rain began a second later. Our forward view did a continuous blurry-clear cycle as the wipers swiped fruitlessly across the windshield. Cars slowed a bit, but not enough to keep them from hydroplaning on the wet pavement.
By the time we’d merged onto H-1, we’d been through several rain showers. Each was a small cell that left everything in its wake—streets, houses, plants and people—soaking. At full speed on the freeway, the cells lasted no more than a couple of minutes. When you emerged on the other side of the rain, the sky was blue, the sun shone and, if you were looking in the right direction, a rainbow, maybe even a double, painted stripes on the sky. Despite the sun-rain cycle and the increased potential for an inattentive driver to do something stupid, like pay more attention to his cell phone than driving, we didn’t have an accident and the traffic didn’t snarl. What more could we ask for? Lunch? I was hungry.
Alexander interrupted my thoughts. “This whole west end full of construction.”
“I had no idea.” Houses, offices and shopping cropped up everywhere.
“Course not, you never get out here. You may read about it, but can’t see how big Kalaeloa getting.”
Until July 1990, Kalaeloa Airport had been Barbers Point Naval Air Station, named in honor of Captain Henry Barber of the British Navy, who ran his 100-foot brigantine Arthur aground off a nearby coastal point in 1796. I loved the trivia, but had no concept about the magnitude of change surrounding, and including, what had once been the largest naval air station in the Pacific theater. Hell, I thought it was doomed to be another former-military-base ghost town once the resurrection had been left to local government.
As we drove, I couldn’t help but be struck by the street names: Langley, Midway, Bunker Hill. All reflected the proud military history of the area. Many base buildings had historical significance, which meant that if a landlord needed to change a light bulb, he’d need an act of Congress. And if he wanted to repaint, well, he’d have to go higher than that. Way higher.
As we entered the base, I recognized the entrance style of a controlled facility—a split in the road funneled outgoing traffic away from the incoming, but the former guard station had been transformed into a welcoming monument. Off to one side, I saw National Guard buildings. “Wow, they’re here?”
Alexander shrugged. “Along with the Coast Guard. They both have hangars here.”
From the back seat, I heard Harris. “Ooh, men in uniform. You can let me off.”
Alexander and I exchanged a glance, from the back seat I heard a chuckle. What I had to put up with to find a little Cessna. Jeez. At the airport itself I expected traffic and people and TSA screening; what we got instead was a control tower and administration complex. I was used to places like LAX or Honolulu where you had amenities, like food. I couldn’t usually eat ninety-eight percent of what most travelers grazed on in those places, but my stomach still growled like an angry dog.
Harris
said, “Sounds like thunder.”
“Shut up.”
Alexander almost seemed to delight in my misery. We pulled into the lot, which had about a half-dozen cars in it and parked, then made our way through the double front doors. The interior walls were white, the floor an alternating pattern of beige and gray linoleum squares. Large, framed photographs of Naval aircraft decorated the wall in front of us.
“Can I help you?” The voice came from a man behind a counter to our left. He was medium height, medium build, medium complexion. I thought maybe he’d been produced in a blender and poured into an average mold so he could suffer through a normal life constrained by the bonds of mediocrity. I supposed it was possible that Mr. Average had married Mrs. Average and they had 1.8 Little Averages. I wondered what that last kid looked like.
I was about to introduce myself as O’Brien from the Advertiser when another man burst through the front doors and slapped Alexander on the back. “Cousin! Howzit?”
“Cousin Joey? Hey, I haven’t seen you since—what was it? Graduation?”
“The night you stole my date. How is she, anyway?”
“Kira’s doing good. We got two little ones now. She wants a third, gonna be the death of me.”
“Couldn’t get a better way to go, yah?” Cousin Joey must have just noticed the cut over Alexander’s eye because he said, “What happened to your face?”
Alexander fingered the cut. “Bad experience at someplace I shouldn’t have been.”
“Brah, you didn’t hit the wrong bar, did you?”
“That might’ve been better.”
Cousin Joey winced. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. I caught him wink at Harris. She smiled, he responded, I bristled. Cousin Joey then ignored Harris as he and Alexander exchanged manly chuckles and pats on the shoulder. Harris dropped in a few demur glances at the floor. Everyone was having a grand old time. The camaraderie and cheer were so catchy it almost made me want to jump in and hug them all.
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