Murder Pro Bono

by Don Porter

  “You got it half right. O'Malley saw two guys dump the body, and he recognized one of them from a newspaper picture. These are some possibilities that he might identify, only he doesn't seem to be here. Did you chase him away again?”

  “Probably. We check this place pretty often. It's not exactly a desirable address, in case you hadn't noticed.”

  “So, how come it's still open then?”

  “Likely somebody is paying off somebody. Your problem is to produce O'Malley, the sooner the better, and don't stash him again, or I will arrest you.” Cochran got up, tossed the scrapbook onto the bed beside me, and stalked out.

  I just sat there wondering if there are other jobs available besides detecting. I also wondered how many bridges there are on Oahu, and whether I could check them all in a year. Then it occurred to me that O'Malley now had a haircut, so I wouldn't recognize him, unless he was still wearing one tennis shoe and one brogan. The last time I'd seen him he was converted from a dust mop to an Afro, but he still had a Santa Claus beard, and Dallas was still whacking away with her little scissors.

  Chapter 8

  When I got back to the office, my first reaction was that there was a cockroach on George's desk. On closer inspection, it was an electronic bug. One end was a microphone the size of a pea, and George had crisscrossed Band Aids over it like a gag.

  “Where was it?” I asked. He pointed to the fax machine, then carefully picked up the bug, pulled the paper tray out of the machine, and set the bug under the tray. He'd been brooding about the dent in his car, and he seemed to blame me for the dents.

  “I hope you're happy.” He was sitting at his desk, feet up, coffee in hand, and wearing what was becoming a permanent scowl. “So far, your pro bono escapade has cost us …” He put his feet down so he could hold up his fingers to enumerate, “Three hundred dollars for the hotel, fifty dollars for lunch at the drive in, eight hundred dollars to get the convertible fixed, a hundred-fifty for the tow, ten dollars for Maggie's Coke, and a fifty dollar bond to get us out of jail.” He gave up on totaling the expenses. That's usually my job. I noticed Maggie pull out the petty cash drawer and toss some change into it.

  George wasn't through haranguing me yet; he took his coffee with him and stomped over to look out the window. “Now, we're right back where we started-no client, only now we have a well-heeled gang stalking us, and Cochran wants to put us in jail. What is your next brilliant idea?”

  “Enter the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes?” I suggested. He waved me off as beneath contempt, and frankly, that is how I was feeling. Maggie went to the hall tree and collected her purse. I checked the clock; it was still thirty minutes before pau hana. She came into the office, digging in the purse, and pulled out a pocket mirror, which she carefully handed to me. The lipstick smudges on the mirror were actually numbers and letters. When I reflected the light just right, I could read: ECN-353.

  “That's the license number of the Honda,” she explained. “I thought it might be helpful.” She took the mirror back to her desk and swiped at the lipstick with a Kleenex. I picked up the phone and dialed the license bureau. They're supposed to release information only to authorized persons, like cops, for instance. However, lots of times, if you sound businesslike, they'll assume that you know what you're doing. I got lucky. The girl at the bureau took the number and rattled off: Ernest Chong, and an address in Kailua.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Have a nice day.”

  “I need your badge number for the record.”

  “Oh, yeah …” I gave her Cochran's badge number. I'd been staring at it for what seemed like most of the day. She hung up, so I did, too.

  “Want to take a drive over to Kailua?” I asked.

  “Might as well. Monica is auditioning for a movie tonight.”

  I didn't press that subject. George was just a little sensitive about Monica. The two of them had been cohabiting in the company beach house for several months now, and I could understand why George was smitten. Monica was the tall, slender, busty, overly blonde type who gushes sex appeal like a waterfall. I had serious doubts about the sort of movies she made, but that was none of my business.

  We left Maggie to monitor the clock until five, and braved the rush-hour traffic on the Pali Highway. Detective School 101, lesson four: “It is impossible to follow a car in rush-hour traffic.” That was the only good thing about it. One hour and twenty minutes later, we had made the fifteen-mile drive. That's up the side of the Ko'olau Mountain Range, through the tunnel, and down the windward slope to Kailua, one car length at a time. We were surrounded by thousands of people who make that commute every day. The very thought made my overpriced apartment in Waikiki seem reasonable.

  Chong's place on Lanipo Drive is actually in Lanikai, which would be a suburb if Kailua itself weren't a suburb. We followed Kailua Road through the town to the beach, turned right and followed the beach to Lanikai. The demarcation point is the bridge over Kaaelepulu Stream. The road along the beach, Mokulua Drive, tapers off and comes to a screeching halt at Poo Poo Gulch. If you could go any farther, you'd be on the backside of Bellows AFS, but you can't because the road stops at a bluff. From there you turn up the gulch on Lanipo Drive and forget that you're on a populated island.

  Chong's mailbox was beside a gravel drive that disappeared up the hill into the jungle.

  “What do you think?” I asked. “Shall we storm the Bastille, go in with guns blazing?”

  “Bound to be safe,” George agreed. “All of the bad guys are stuck in traffic. Can't be more than a hundred or so protecting the home front and holding O'Malley and his family hostage.”

  We parked the Jag under a powder puff tree that was sagging under the weight of pink blossoms. We hiked a hundred yards farther up the gulch and struck out, guns in hand, through the jungle toward a level spot where we thought Chong's driveway might end. It didn't. Twenty minutes of being scratched and slapped by brambles and bushes, alternately smelling tropical flowers and decaying detritus, and jerking our guns up and ducking each time that a pheasant whirred away, brought us to the driveway. A fifty-foot-long level spot made a shelf, but the driveway was still going up and disappeared over the hill.

  We abandoned our stealth approach, at least for the time being, and walked up the drive. We couldn't hear sounds from the city. Mostly, it was so quiet that our gravel-crunching footsteps seemed to echo, interspersed with deafening thunder when a plane took off from Bellows, just over the next hill.

  When the slope finally crested, we took to grass on the sides of the lane, guns in hand again, and crept over the top. We were looking down on a scene of pastoral tranquility. A tiny, unpainted clapboard house was set in the middle of a postage-stamp lawn, surrounded by papaya trees. One ancient Chrysler New Yorker was parked at the end of the drive. We were still taking in the scene, when an old guy wearing dungarees and no shirt, and carrying a basket, came out of the papaya trees. He turned backward to shove the cabin door open with his rump.

  “Reckon we can take him?” I asked.

  “Better than facing Cochran,” George agreed. We stuffed the guns into our pockets and walked down the driveway. George's Glock doesn't fit in a pocket. It goes in his belt, but the idea is the same.

  George knocked on the door. That caused some shuffling inside. “Wha-cha want?”

  “Detectives,” George called. “May we talk to you for a moment?” George had his badge in his left hand, ready to show, but his right hand was behind him, gripping the Glock.

  The old guy opened the door, still shirtless, but didn't invite us in. “Find my license plates, did ye?”

  “No, sorry.” George stammered.

  “Well, I didn't think ye would. I knew I shouldn't have gone to Sin City.” By that, he meant Waikiki. “Park in a mall for fifteen minutes, and poof, my license plates are gone. Well, keep lookin’.” He slammed the door.

  It only took twenty minutes to walk back to the car by way of driveway and road. It was getting dark by the t
ime we wound through Kailua and started climbing up the windward side of the Pali. Pali means cliff, and the windward side of those mountains is sheer, and vertical, for a thousand feet. They're fluted where waterfalls have gored them, so the effect is like a hanging curtain. There's been a road in that spot since the early 1900s, because crossing the Pali makes the trip from Kailua to Honolulu fifteen miles instead of fifty. The original road was one lane wide and went right over the top with a stone altar dug into the rock at the peak. I think if you were coming up the hill from Kailua, you stopped there to give thanks and rest your horses, or add water to the radiator on your Model T. If you were starting down the switchbacks along the precipice toward Kailua, you probably left sacrifices to the gods in the hope that you might survive.

  Nowadays, the highway is one broad sweep with a tunnel through the last five hundred feet, but there is a tourist turnoff so you can drive up to the original crossing. The place where the original highway tops the Pali is also the place where King Kamehameha's horde shoved Oahu's army over the cliff and united the islands into one kingdom. There are plaques and pictures on the lookout, so if there is no vertigo in your family, drive up and check it out.

  Traffic was still bunched up coming out of Honolulu, but we had the town-bound lanes to ourselves. I wondered if all of those people knew something that we didn't know, and maybe the old papaya farmer was right about not going into Waikiki.

  Chapter 9

  “Psst, hey, Payne.” I was just stepping through the door at 8 Fat Fat 8. When I looked around, I saw a shadow pressed against the building. I didn't recognize him until I noticed that he was wearing one tennis shoe and one brogan. I jerked my head for him to follow, but didn't pause.

  I wasn't sure that I didn't have a tail, and if I did have, it was best for us to go inside separately. Cy saw me come in and started mixing, but I veered off and took one of the corner booths that are lighted for clandestine lovers. O'Malley followed me and slid into the booth across the table from me.

  “What will you have?” I asked.

  “Nothing for me, thanks.”

  “Hey,” I said, “we're conspicuous enough. Don't make it worse by not at least pretending to drink.”

  “Okay, okay, mineral water on the rocks.” O'Malley had scrunched down into the corner in such an obvious attempt to be inconspicuous that anyone would have been suspicious.

  Floralita came over to the table with my drink on her tray, and looked O'Malley over pretty hard. I could read the mind that was buzzing under her snoodful of ebony tresses; she was wondering what we were hiding from. It's unusual for me to notice Floralita's mind because I'm usually distracted by her tiny waist and the delightful curves on either side of it, although I do pay attention to her perpetual bright smile. She wasn't smiling.

  “Hi, Floralita, thank you. Mineral water on the rocks for Mr.— Brogan here.” I boomed that out, loud enough to be heard by all the adjacent tables in a desperate attempt to appear normal. She nodded and looked a little less suspicious when she glided back to the bar.

  O'Malley looked pretty good. He was clean-shaven, and Dallas had given him a respectable haircut. I saw what Maggie meant about his eyes. In fact, except for a prison-pallor where the hair had blocked the sun, he looked a little too good, almost pretty instead of handsome. He didn't look like the sort of guy that I'd be apt to meet in a bar, and maybe that's why he had grown the bush.

  “Why the devil did you take off?” I asked.

  “Too many cops. They were on a regular route to that place.”

  “Okay, and maybe you shouldn't tell me where you're staying now, because I'm under serious pressure to rat you out. But, I do have a book full of pictures for you to look at—only they're in the office at the moment.”

  I didn't think it was necessary to tell O'Malley that Cochran had followed me to their hideout. I wonder how Cochran did that?

  “Can we meet someplace tomorrow?” O'Malley asked.

  “Not such a good idea. George and I are being followed most of the time. There's probably an escort waiting outside for me now.”

  I had spoken too soon. A bruiser came in the door, looking around until he spotted me. He carefully did not look at me, and took a booth by the door. O'Malley had his back to the door and I didn't want him to bolt, so I didn't enlighten him. I wondered if O'Malley would recognize the bruiser, but it didn't matter. He was not the type to get his picture in the paper—unless it was through bars.

  Floralita came back with the mineral water. I decided to bluff, or maybe live dangerously.

  “See the guy who just came in, over by the door?” I pointed; she nodded. “I'd like to buy him a drink. Would you tell him that I'm with a client at the moment, but I'd like him to join me when we finish here?” She nodded again and marched into the lion's den. The bruiser not only declined my drink, he got up and stalked out. She turned to me and shrugged. I waved my thanks.

  “What was that about?” O'Malley did have a suspicious nature.

  “Just another client. Now, about those pictures, Dallas and my secretary know each other. Supposing that Maggie, that's my secretary, eats lunch in the Fort Street Mall tomorrow and leaves a newspaper on the table?”

  “No problem. If I recognize a picture, I'll call you?”

  “Bad idea. Apparently our office is bugged. We'll sweep it tomorrow, but let's not take chances. How about calling me here, about this time tomorrow night?”

  “Can do. I'd better go.”

  “No, you'd better not. Sit right there, finish your drink and have one more. Give me plenty of time to lead the tail away.”

  He shrugged and tasted his mineral water. I sauntered to the bar, ordered another for O'Malley and paid our bill. I tipped Floralita a five for delivering the message. I kept an eye on O'Malley until I passed the booth. He seemed to be doing what I'd told him, for a change.

  Outside, the street was parked solid, including my Jag. I pretended to fumble with the door lock while I looked around for the tail. It wouldn't hurt if they thought I was drunk. It was the same blue Ford that had tried to follow us before George accidentally lost it during our suicidal plunge through traffic. It was parked across the street, blocking a drive-through cash machine, but the bank was closed so no one was making a fuss.

  There is something irritating about having a tail. There was really no reason why he shouldn't follow me home, and I didn't doubt that they knew where I lived. I live alone, so I wasn't worried about a possible hostage situation. It was good that Betty was off island visiting her parents in Des Moines at the moment. But when she's here, she lives next door with my eighty-year-old neighbor, Maude. Betty and I probably spend as much time together as most married couples do, and we have every intention of getting married someday; we just haven't set a date yet.

  I think it was Francis Bacon who said, “Wives and children are hostages to fortune,” or something like that. With people wanting to put pressure on me, it was good that there was no obvious target for a real hostage. Maybe I was just ticked off at the tail because I had been looking forward to having a few drinks at Fat Fat and they had screwed that up.

  I put on a pretty good drunk act getting into the Jag, and wove my way down Beretania. The main cop shop has underground parking that runs clear through the block. I ducked in there, never mind the One Way and Exit Only signs. I clipped a stand-up ashtray at the entrance for good measure. The instant I was out of sight I stomped the throttle, ripped through the garage, and exited on the street behind. I was using the same route that O'Malley had taken when Pendergast had bailed him out, but in reverse. Let the tail decide whether or not to pull into the police station. I don't think they did, but I wouldn't know because if they obeyed the five-mile-per-hour limit in the garage, I was three blocks away when they came out.

  I drove back to the apartment house, half expecting the Ford to be there waiting for me, but I didn't see it. When I passed Maude's apartment on the third-floor walkway, she was seated at her table in front of he
r picture window. She was the essence of gentility; wearing a housecoat and curlers, sipping wine, and studying National Geographic. She raised her wineglass in an offering gesture. I put my clasped hands beside my head to pantomime sleep. She nodded and smiled; her sweet, but gracefully aging, Irish face beaming like sunshine. We both blew kisses, and I let myself into my apartment, wondering why I had turned down the invitation.

  Maybe I was being noble, not wanting to underscore my relationship with Maude at the moment, just in case someone else got the hostage idea that was starting to nag at me. More likely, I was pouting for having missed a couple more rum and Cokes, and didn't want to be pacified with wine.

  Chapter 10

  Our bug sweeper is called a Whisk Broom and it's a good one, because we sometimes perform that service for clients. One of its features is that you can shut off the beeper and locate a bug by watching the meter. That's handy in case you don't want the person listening to hear you find the bug. George had the beeper off.

  He got a reading from Maggie's phone, and then almost pegged the meter when he pointed it at a ceiling tile in our office. We have one of those textured drop ceilings, two-foot-by-four-foot tiles, that fit into a metal grid. They hide all the wiring and plumbing that's above them, and if a tile gets damaged, you just fit a new one into the grid.

  The hallway has the same type of tile. I stood on a client chair to take down a tile in the hall. I brought that one into the office and picked up the morning paper that I'd bought on the way to work. I stood under the tile that had the bug.

  “Hey, George,” I said, “listen to this.” The lead story was about the proposed smoking ban on Oahu. I read it aloud while George carefully took down the bugged tile, then I followed along, still reading, out into the hall and stood under the tile again while George installed it in the hallway. It is an amazing story. Our economy is a shambles, with half a dozen bankruptcies every week. Our infrastructure is falling apart, and crime is rampant, but our city council is protecting us against secondhand smoke. I stayed in the hallway and finished the story, for the edification of whomever was listening. Personally, I think the Oahu smoking ban is being pushed by the islands of Maui and Kauai. Most of our tourists are from Japan, most Japanese smoke, so if a ban goes into effect here, the tourists will flock to other islands by the thousands.