Since I was going out, I might as well see whether Harris wanted something. Through her apartment window, I spotted her staring dejectedly at the TV. She smiled when she saw me and waved me in. A crumpled-up bag of potato chips lay on the floor next to her empty glass. “Hey, McKenna. What’s up?”
“How’s the head?”
“Still there.”
Okay, let’s try food. ”I was just going out for some Chinese and wondered if you’d like me to bring you something.”
“Man, I’m so chipped out. I’d love some.”
“How about an order of McKay chicken, some garlic shrimp, and a box of rice?”
“McKay chicken?”
“It’s a dish they named after me. After I’d become a regular, I got’em to try doing something similar to fried chicken, but with rice flour instead of wheat. Mr. Ching liked it so much he named it after me. It’s a big seller.”
“As long as I don’t have to eat another potato chip.”
I phoned in my order and began the walk to the restaurant. The stars shined through scattered clouds, streetlights glinted on the still-wet sidewalks, and traffic remained light, making the walk quiet and serene. The air smelled fresh and clean, as though it had taken only a few raindrops to remove the sins of the day.
When I entered the restaurant, Mr. Ching greeted me and guided me to a seat on the side. “Your order ready in just a few minutes, Mr. McKay. Your Mr. McKay chicken very popular.”
The restaurant was, as usual, busy. His two daughters hustled between tables, wiping them clean, setting up, and then taking and delivering orders. One of their husbands was tonight’s chef; another took the day shift. I noticed a new sign on the wall, which said that they reserved the right to refuse service to anyone. This struck me as odd because to my knowledge, each customer was like a welcome guest. When Ching’s oldest daughter brought my order, I handed her a twenty and nodded at the sign. “Lily, how come you got the new sign?”
She rolled her eyes and replied in the perfect English of a third-generation Chinese. “My dad’s lawyer got him to do that.”
I grumbled, “Why’s your dad need a lawyer?”
“We’re incorporating. So the lawyer says we should protect ourselves in case we ever need to refuse service.”
“I can’t imagine your dad refusing service to anyone. You serve me.”
She winked. “You’re more like family, so we put up with you.” She leaned forward, then lowered her voice. “It did happen once when a customer got drunk and my dad yelled at me for not being able to deal with him. I got so ticked off that I walked out. Dad went out to the table to apologize and the fat slob threw up all over him, the table, and the next table where one of our best customers was just finishing up.”
“Ouch, vomit in a restaurant.”
She shook her head, “My dad might not have gotten angry, but at that point, the customer yelled that there was a cockroach in his beer.” She hid her mouth as she giggled, “My dad lost it and yelled back that the only cockroach he’d seen that night was drunk and had thrown up all over the Chief of Police.”
Lily cocked her head to one side. I presumed that meant her dad was coming. She continued, “The drunk ran out like he’d seen a ghost. My dad apologized to the entire restaurant and said that entertainment would no longer be provided. He comped the rest of the tables with a free dessert, gave his broker a free meal, and told him he’d pay for the cleaning bill. He even apologized to me and that’s never happened before.”
A man and woman in their early thirties strolled in. Mr. Ching greeted them. He saw Lily and me talking and waved. I waved back and smiled. “Well, thanks for the story. I guess I’d better let you get back to work.”
“I get a laugh out of that every time I think about it.” She leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Take care. I’ll get your change.”
I said, “You keep it. I think I forgot to tip the last time I was in.”
She winked again. “I don’t recall.”
For some reason, my face felt hot. “I’ll try to do better in the future.”
As I left the restaurant, I thought about Lily’s story. Free dessert. I wish I’d have been there that night. I wondered if I should find a gluten-free dessert for Ching’s. Maybe they’d try that, just as they had the chicken? I was less than a block from home and considering different types of desserts when I heard the rain coming. I stepped up the pace and made it to shelter just as a wall of water swooped in. To me, each raindrop looked to be the size of a glass of water. In no time, gutters gushed, palms shed waterfalls and storm drains swallowed almost as fast as the skies dumped. Almost.
As Harris and I ate, I filled her in on what I’d learned. She seemed genuinely interested and devoid of the concussion symptoms she’d mentioned earlier.
At one point, she said, “You know, my sister loves Chinese food. She could eat it every day, morning, noon, and night.”
“How’s she doing?”
“We’re still trying to find funding for the operation. We have maybe a month.” Then, she said, “What about that Mr. Herschel?”
“What about him?”
“You don’t suppose that they’ll try to kill him, do you?”
“Crap. I forgot about him. I was going to call him back.” I pulled out my phone and punched in Meyer’s number. As before, it rang through to the answering machine. “No answer. He’ll be okay, probably just has the phone turned off so he doesn’t get tenant calls.”
Harris nodded, but she didn’t look convinced. For that matter, neither was I.
“Well, um, I guess I’d better go.”
“Sorry, I’m not very good company. When you get more information—maybe tomorrow, if I’m feeling better, we could file an update on that tip report. You’re making such good progress that you’ll have this wrapped up in another couple of days.”
Not sure how to leave gracefully, I gave her a kiss on the forehead and headed for the door. My hand was on the knob when she said, “McKenna?”
“Yah?” My heart was pounding. My throat was dry. I had all the symptoms of a moron in love.
“Maybe tomorrow. I’m sure I’ll be feeling better by then.”
I did my best leading-man swagger and headed out the door. Outside, I breathed in the fresh air. Was I glad to be outside or not? I didn’t know. Tomorrow. Gulp. Tomorrow? Yikes? I wasn’t ready. I made a hasty retreat to my apartment. Time to do something that would distract me from dwelling on Legs. The records.
Since Shapiro had acquired the new plane recently, I assumed that the partnership had been created at the same time. If that was the case, I should start at the back of the ledger and work my way forward. I opened Shapiro’s little book to the last page and looked at the final entry.
“Daniels, $100 deposit, canceled, refund $100, DD has negatives in LL file, M.”
What the hell did that mean? I looked for other cancellations. In the entire ledger, there were just three others. Each was marked, “canceled by customer” and had a reason like “illness” or “scheduling conflict.” In the case of the illnesses, Shapiro had returned the deposit, for the scheduling conflict, he’d marked the entry “no refund.” Why had Shapiro just marked this one “canceled”? Had he gotten sloppy? I doubted it. This entry had to mean something. I kept looking.
I went back three months, then six, then a year. Other than the four cancellations, every entry showed a flight completed, payment made, and occasionally, a short note like “good people,” “big tipper,” and even one, “jackass—never again.”
It was after ten when I decided I was going in circles and put the ledger back into its box. I still hadn’t come across the partnership agreement and still didn’t know if Meyer Herschel was okay. Maybe I should call again? But, if nothing had happened, he’d be upset that I woke him. If something had, it was too late. It was a lose-lose situation for me. Probably for Meyer also.
I brushed my teeth and did the other usual personal business to get read
y for bed, then read from the latest issue of National Geographic. I usually read for about four minutes, then nodded off. Tonight, I read for forty and still hadn’t wound down.
At 11:10 PM, the phone rang. Ordinarily, at this hour, I’d let the machine pick up, but Caller ID said that it was M. Herschel. I grabbed the handset immediately and hit the connect button. “McKenna.”
A weak voice on the other end responded. “I had two visitors.”
Chapter 20
Meyer’s voice was raspy and frightened—his visitors obviously weren’t friends. Without thinking, I whispered back, “Are you okay? Who was it?”
“What? Speak up, you know I’m half deaf.”
Uh, yeah, and the other half obstinate. “What visitors?” I bellowed. Shit! Now I’d probably wake up the next-door tenant, an 87-year-old Japanese ex-schoolteacher who kept strict hours and guarded her quiet time by calling me whenever other tenants got the least bit noisy.
“Dunno. Two guys I ain’t seen before. They said they were police. They were no more police than you’re a newspaperman. Besides, the police would’ve had a warrant. And they wouldn’t be stopping around in the middle of the night for an apartment tour.”
“Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”
“I thought at one point they might try something funny, but they didn’t do anything they weren’t supposed to do, unless you count showing up here in the middle of the night.”
“So they acted like police?”
“They weren’t cops.”
I sat straight up in bed. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. Could it have been that guy whose flight Shapiro canceled? What was his name? That’s right, Daniels. “What did you tell them?” And there it was, the banging on the wall. Tomorrow, Mrs. Nakamura would give me hell for waking her up. I got out of bed and trotted off to the living room.
“Exactly what we discussed, that I destroyed the records by accident because I didn’t know no better. I’ve got to say, I was pretty good. I begged them not to report me to the Department of Landlord Monitoring and Corrections for messing up with the records.”
“There’s no—” I stopped and did a quick check of all the windows. I was standing there, stark naked and hadn’t thought to check the blinds, which I occasionally leave open on hot nights. Thank goodness they were all closed.
“Exactly. Cops would have known that was horse pucky.”
I shook my head in amazement. In a normal tone, I said, “You’ve got guts.” Who would think of lying to a couple of thugs when they visited you in the middle of the night?
“What? Speak up.”
“I said—never mind. Did you look at the photos before you packed them up?”
“Some.”
“Did you see the partnership photo?”
“Yup.”
“Did you recognize anyone? Were those the guys who visited you tonight?”
“Nope. These were a couple of big, intimidating looking bozos. I never saw these two before.”
Okay, what about the other guy? “There was an entry in Shapiro’s flight listing about someone named Daniels. Do you know anything about that?” Laughter and voices from outside broke the night silence, the clickety-clack of a woman’s high heels came, then went. It was probably the young woman from 18 with her newest boyfriend. Big hair, lots of makeup and a parade of men that made me wonder if maybe she had a sideline.
“Yup.”
“Okay, what do you know?”
Meyer stopped whispering and was speaking in a low, but more normal tone. “Thought you’d never ask. I was talking to Bob one day when he mentioned that he had this flight coming up with a guy he’d known in high school. The guy kept telling Shapiro he was a licensed pilot and wanted to take the plane out on his own. Guy wouldn’t let up.”
“Why wouldn’t the guy just rent a plane?”
“Bob thought maybe he’d gotten into drugs or something and couldn’t go the normal route. I volunteered to check for public records on him. I know I shouldn’t have done that, but Bob was pretty conflicted. Anyway, Daniels had been arrested and even evicted a few times because of suspicious activities. Bob told me he wanted to cancel the flight.”
I recalled the entry in Shapiro’s ledger. “He did. Do you suppose this Daniels could be tied to Bob’s death?”
“Maybe. He beat up one of his landlords for kicking him out.”
“So if somebody blew a drug deal for him, he might want revenge.”
“He had a prison record too.”
Daniels had been in jail? That might move him to the top of my suspect list. “Are you okay?”
“They just spooked me, that’s all. I’m fine now.”
Exhaustion sapped my remaining energy. With Meyer’s little drama over, my brain was going into the stupid-me state. I needed rest before I did something that I’d regret later, like walking out the front door into the courtyard instead of into the bedroom. I said, “What was he in prison for?”
“Drugs. Assault.”
“Revenge is a great motive.”
“You got that right.”
I said, “You sound beat.” That was about all it took. Thirty seconds later I’d hung up the phone, climbed back into bed and turned off the light. Tomorrow looked like it would be a helluva day.
Tired or not, I was wired. For nearly two hours, I dwelled on the day’s events and kept coming to the same conclusions. Somebody wanted Shapiro dead and somebody wanted to use his plane. How’s that for profound? Woo-hoo. When sleep finally did come, it was fitful and filled with bad men who wanted to do bad things to anyone who got in their way.
I awoke with a start at 6:30 AM, having just been thrown from a plane flying through a massive rainstorm by a masked man with a snake tattooed on one arm and “I heart Mom” on the other. I plummeted towards the ground, the flooded streets of Honolulu ready to engulf me when I hit bottom. Ala Moana Blvd. had turned into a raging, white-water river from the downpour. I was seconds away from plunging headfirst into the torrent when I saw the old surfer again. He waved his arm as if he were inviting me to join him. I put my hands over my face just before smashing into the wave being ridden by the man in green board shorts. I stared at the bedroom ceiling, listening to my heart hammer. When it slowed to a normal rate, I got out of bed and peered through the blinds.
Outside, everything dripped and drained as the rain came down, but there was no standing water, no raging rapids. Taking a shower struck me as tempting fate; not taking one was an even worse option.
After getting cleaned up, I went into the kitchen and rounded up breakfast, which consisted of the usual oh-so-yummy cardboard cereal, then went to the rent drop box and peeked inside. So far, three checks. By the end of the day, there should be a half dozen more. By tomorrow, everyone should be paid up. I put the checks into the envelope I used for rent collections and settled in at the dining room table with high hopes of getting through the rest of Shapiro’s records today.
Maybe I could find out more about my primary suspect, this ex-con Daniels. But, what about the partners? It wouldn’t be the first time that a partnership went sour, but the fact of the matter is that business partners seldom go around killing each other just for kicks. That brought me back to Daniels. I still needed to find the partnership agreement, that should help clear up my dilemma.
I opened the second business box. At the top of this heap was a folder labeled “Paradise Private Charters, LLC.” Inside the folder, I found the partnership agreement, dated February 15, 2011. Using the standard blah-ditty-blah-blah legal mumbo jumbo, it spelled out the terms of the partnership and included the names I was looking for: Robert M. Shapiro, Jr., Roger Lau, James Stone and Frank Willows.
The agreement called for sharing of profits. Shapiro would receive 70%, Lau, Stone and Willows, ten percent each. Interestingly, payments to Stone and Willows were not necessarily to be paid in cash. Instead, they were to receive “inter-island transportation services.” Basically, the better Paradise did, the mor
e the partners received in services. So, Stone and Willows must have their own businesses that required inter-island transportation on a regular basis. Another interesting note—there didn’t appear to be any cap on services, which could be bad for Shapiro. There was no mention in this agreement as to what business Stone and Willows were in.
I went through the rest of the documents in the Business #2 box and found nothing that would help me figure out what Stone and Willows did for a living. All the documents had been prepared and filed by an Oahu attorney. Calling him would be a waste of time because even I knew the words attorney-client privilege. Yeah, a call like that would definitely qualify me as fodder for happy-hour jokes with his lawyer friends. No thanks.
Box #2 also yielded a Bill of Sale for $159,500 for Shapiro’s old airplane to James Markesas. The plane had been sold on February 14th, one day before the partnership agreement was signed. The escrow company that closed the deal paid off Shapiro’s old loan of $54,289.32, which left Shapiro with just over $100,000 net on the deal. The box also coughed up a sales agreement for the purchase of one new, Cessna 206H dated January 4, 2011, for $543,216. I thought my eyes might bug out at the number, convinced that adventurers would still be donning feathered wings and throwing themselves from bridges if Orville and Wilbur Wright had needed even a fraction of that amount to build the first airplane.
After I’d recovered from the sticker-shock issue, I reviewed the next piece of paper. It was a letter from Cessna indicating that they were delighted to have Shapiro want to buy one of their planes, but that there were problems with his financing options. To be blunt, they were telling him, “You don’t have enough money so get lost or get help.” Now I knew why he’d taken on partners. He’d been unable to close that last financial gap on his own and been so close to having a new plane that he just couldn’t give it up; he’d chosen help instead of waiting.
Photo Finish Page 13
