Mahu Surfer m-2

by Neil S. Plakcy

  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 when 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.”

  “Especially because each source has put in about $225,000 so far. I can match up Dario’s withdrawals with Ari’s deposits in each case. Now, every month for the last six months, Dario has transferred $25,000 to Ari. And each time, he makes five cash deposits of $5,000 each just before the transfer.”

  “Why not just one deposit in the right amount?”

  “Remember what I said earlier? Because the bank has to report transactions greater than or equal to $10,000. And by the way, making small deposits like this is also illegal. It’s called structuring.”

  “Who ever expected you’d be the one telling me what’s illegal.”

  “Since Dario doesn’t want to show w
here he got that cash, he makes deposits into his account that go under the radar.” He showed me a number of other big deposits Dario had made in cash, all of them under $10,000. “Now where do you think he gets all that cash from? Selling surfboards and cappuccinos?”

  The wheels were turning in my head, and I didn’t like the direction they were going. “Back at the station, when we see somebody making large cash deposits, we figure that money usually comes from drugs.”

  “It’s hard for me to imagine Dario standing out in the parking lot of The Next Wave peddling nickel bags.”

  “Dario doesn’t do retail. He must be the middleman. The contact Lucie had at The Next Wave who supplied her with merchandise. He may even be the one who commissioned her to go to Mexpipe and bring drugs back. I’ll bet he’s got a whole lot of Lucie Zamoras out selling.”

  “Selling what? Dope? Heroin?”

  “Ice,” I said. “That’s what Rik said Lucie was selling. And I know they make crystal meth in Mexico, which is where the first three victims all went a little while before they died. There’s probably a lab somewhere here on the North Shore that converts the crystal into ice.”

  “There’s no way the cash just comes from the store?” Harry asked.

  I shook my head. “I’ve been in and out of that store a lot over the last couple of weeks, and most of the big transactions I’ve seen are on credit cards. Sure, people buy lattes for cash, but I’m guessing most of his sales are plastic.”

  I sat back and thought. “Rik said Lucie’s source was at the store. I suppose it could be Dario. But I just don’t like it.”

  “You don’t like it because Dario’s your friend,” Harry said.

  “No, I don’t like it because I don’t like Dario. I’m scared that I’m trying to pin something on him just because he raped me ten years ago.”

  Harry shook his head. “I think the numbers show it’s got to be him.”

  “What are these numbers over here?” I asked, pointing to a different column of figures.

  “About four months ago, Dario took out an equity line against the store. He’s already drawn down nearly a hundred thousand on that line.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. And it’s all going into Ari’s account. Have they been running up extra expenses?”

  “I know they’ve run into zoning problems, and deed restrictions on Bishop’s land. Maybe that’s why they’ve needed extra cash.”

  “Dario’s about to run into a big problem,” Harry said. “See here, these are the store revenues. With business taking such a steep dive, there’s no way he’ll be able to afford the expense of running the store, paying for merchandise, paying his help, and paying the debt service on this equity loan. He must be sweating bullets right now.”

  I got up and started walking around the living room. “I’m trying to get my head around this,” I said. “If Dario’s selling ice out of The Next Wave, why isn’t he rolling in cash?”

  “Because he’s pumping it all into Ari’s real estate deal.”

  “Why would he do that, though? Ice’s a profitable business. Why risk all his capital?”

  “To make himself legit?” Harry asked. “Nobody arrests you for building condos these days.”

  “Or it’s a place to put a lot of spare cash,” I said. “Until the deal with Bishop started running into trouble, and then suddenly Dario’s business dried up.”

  “The ice business is probably sucking now, too,” Harry said. “With everybody leaving the North Shore.”

  “Both his businesses are going south, to coin a phrase.”

  I sat down on the sofa. Harry turned toward me and we both just sat there looking at each other for a long time.

  Sharpshooter

  The idea that Dario was dealing ice out of The Next Wave, and had been doing so literally under my nose for the last couple of weeks, threw me for a loop, and I was having trouble processing the information. Or maybe it was the beer. Either way, the best I could do was suggest we get some sleep, and try to think more about the problem in the morning.

  Harry was suitably impressed with the guest room, and he was still asleep when I woke at first light on Saturday. I didn’t feel rested at all; I had spent most of the evening rolling around in bed, trying to get comfortable, thoughts about Dario moving back and forth across my brain.

  “There’s something I think is really scary about Dario as a suspect,” I said, as I made pancakes for us for breakfast. “I had this weird idea the other day-which isn’t seeming so weird any more-that whoever killed the first three got scared when he or she found out I was investigating these murders.”

  “Kimo, do you really think it’s possible a woman is the killer?”

  I shrugged. “Probably not.”

  “Then stopping being so English major on me. You don’t have to be politically and grammatically correct all the time.”

  “Point taken. So I had this idea that maybe the killer shot Brad and Tommy Singer to throw me off the track.”

  “Not such a weird idea.”

  “No, I guess not. But suppose it gets weirder. Dario told me the other day that he likes me.”

  “Yo, dude, the guy got you drunk and had sex with you ten years ago, and he’s been coming on to you ever since you got up here. I’d say he likes you.”

  “Suppose he was jealous, though. Suppose he killed Brad and Tommy, and stripped them down and all, out of some weird jealous rage?”

  Harry shook his head. “I don’t know why anybody does anything, brah. You want the touchy-feely, you’ve got to talk to Terri. You have any more hacking, you ask me.”

  “How bout we just go surf, then,” I said, and we did. Since it was Saturday I knew it wouldn’t be easy to get hold of Ruiz or Kawamoto, so I thought I’d let my ideas about Dario gestate for a few days. He’d been around the North Shore for a long time, and he wasn’t going anywhere. Plus I had to practice restraining myself from telling the world about my long history with Dario Fonseca-or even about what had happened between us in his office a few days before. I didn’t want it to start looking like I’d had sex with every victim and villain on the North Shore.

  The beaches were less empty than they’d been. Human beings have short memories, and surfers are only human. I could see from the number of cars on Ke Nui Road and the number of boards out in the water that people were starting to come back, even if there was a crazed killer out there. Good for business, if nothing else; The Next Wave would be buzzing again like it had before.

  We surfed, with breaks, for a couple of hours. I saw people I knew-my cousin Ben; Frank, the bartender from the Drainpipe; even Tepano, the Hawaiian guy from the outrigger club. Everybody was delighted that the beach was so uncrowded, and nobody was particularly worried about a crazed killer on the loose. Harry and I went to Rosie’s Cantina for lunch, stopped at The Next Wave for our caffeine fixes, and then went back to Pipeline to surf some more.

  From the top of a wave, you can often get a clear view of the shore, if you’re not too busy struggling to maintain your balance or place your next turn. I was surfing smoothly, so I had a chance to look up at the beach. I just had enough time to make out the barrel of a rifle pointing out at me before the wave dipped unexpectedly and I went down.

  I’d like to say I heard the rifle, but since I was tumbling head over heels into the center of a wave, there’s no way I could have. But as soon as I surfaced, I walked the last couple of feet in to shore dragging my board, trying to figure out if what I’d seen was an optical illusion.

  There are a number of palm trees up along Ke Nui Road, and some have various kinds of underbrush around them. I saw the rifle barrel protruding from a stand of pili grass, which grows naturally in two or three foot lengths-thick enough and tall enough to hide someone laying flat.

  I stuck my board in the sand and trudged up to the road. The pili grass had been broken and pushed flat in one area, big enough for a person to lay down. The kicker was finding a spent shell, and then another an
d another, in the sand just in front of the grass.

  I didn’t have anything resembling an evidence bag, but I did have an empty water bottle. I waved Harry in, and yelled for him to bring me the bottle.

  “What did you find?” he asked, as he came up with it.

  “Shell casings.” I pointed down. “Somebody’s been shooting at us, brah.”

  Neither of us had much interest in going back in the water at that point, even though the waves were running high and the beach was still mostly empty. The idea of somebody pointing a rifle at you can wreck even the simplest pleasures, I guess. So we packed up and went back to Cane Landing around three o’clock, where I looked up Kevin Ruiz’s card. No beeper or cell number on it, which wasn’t surprising. After all, he’d given me the card when he considered me an informant.

  I called the Wahiawa station to try and track him down. But because I couldn’t say I was still an on-duty officer, I got a run-around, the opportunity to leave a message on his voice mail. I did, though I didn’t expect him to check it til Monday morning.

  I emailed Sampson, and told him I was holding the shells for ballistics. I knew, though, that they would match the gun that had shot Mike Pratt off his board, the one that had killed Lucie Zamora as she exited Club Zinc. Even if they didn’t match, I knew it had to be the same shooter.

  “So what do we do now, brah?” Harry asked, as we lounged on the leather sofas in the living room at Cane Landing.

  “Damned if I know. But I’m sure a beer would help me think.” I’d stocked up on Konas in anticipation of Harry’s visit, and we each had one and sipped in silence. We ended up grilling some gourmet burgers-a mix of ground beef, pork and lamb, topped with prosciutto and brie-on the major-league barbecue in the yard, and if we hadn’t been worried that the shooter might somehow find his way into Cane Landing, it would have been a near-perfect evening.

  Sunday morning my cell phone rang as I was scrambling eggs with the leftover ham and cheese and we were debating whether to risk surfing again. It was Sampson. “I got your email,” he said. “I want to see you at nine tomorrow morning in my office. Let’s go over what you’ve got and regroup. I want to know everything about this surf shop owner. And bring those casings you found-you can run them downstairs to ballistics while you’re here.”