by Michael Lion
Everything in the room was red. Velvet drapes bathed in maroon light spilled from the ceiling in every direction. All the dancers had red spotlights on them. Color was sucked from all clothing, so the room was full of red-faced men wearing black suits. There was none of the fevered jeering and money throwing that went on in the front room—not so much as a smile to be seen among the patrons or the dancers. Men quietly laid out their money and stared. It was a funeral for morals. The men were paying their respects in crudity.
She chose a black enamel-topped table snuggled against a far wall. It had a small copper lamp and an ashtray and an atmosphere all its own, far removed from the desperation only a few feet away. Cassandra appeared with two more drinks and I gave her another ten-spot. When she left she looked at me as if I were special, or interesting, or maybe just wondering why Beverly was giving me the time of day. Beverly wrapped cheap lips around her straw and looked at me obscurely while she drank. I sat and smoked and matched her silence. I finally said, “So what, you bored or something?”
She didn’t know quite how to take that, so she didn’t. “How’d you get in?” This with a motion toward my clothing.
“Same way I got to meet you,” I said, pulling a rolled up bunch of bills from my pocket. She looked at it dully. Something told me it was the same facial expression she wore during sex. With her boyfriend.
“Ooohhhh, big spender,” she cooed obscenely. “Throw enough around and you will get noticed by Beverly.”
“Good.”
She laughed lightly. It was a shrill, bothersome sound that wouldn’t leave my mind for several hours. “So how did you hear of Beverly?”
“A friend of mine in Los Angeles. Old guy named Cain. Said you were good and discreet.” I tried not to smile. The way she was dressed, ‘discreet’ wasn’t the first word that jumped to mind.
“This Mr. Cain...what does he do?”
“He’s a pimp.”
She crinkled her nose. “Beverly has no pimp. She does not need one.”
“Yeah, he told me that, too. Says you pretty much get around by word of mouth.”
She leaned back and pushed her breasts out, watching me for a reaction. She didn’t get one, and her eyes clouded over. She pushed her glass around in front of her, leaving little moisture prints. It was empty. She put another smoke in her pincers and lit up and smiled at me through the cloud. “You’re fun,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Before I could get wary she was up and walking to the rear of the room. Eyes in dark suits followed me through red and smoke. I thought she was taking me to a changing room or something, but a final door emptied out into an alley and that onto a side street lined with apartments. “Where are we going?”
She turned on the stoop and said, “Dancing. I like to go dancing after my shift, especially with good-looking men who don’t want to fuck me. But I have a man-problem, you might notice, and if I leave by a back door, nobody follows me.” She looked at me meaningfully. “You’re very privileged.” She traced the outline of my jaw with the tip of a two-inch fingernail. It was the only time a woman’s touch has made my skin crawl. “Now, you buy me drinks. Then I dance. Then maybe we talk some more.” She swished down the stairs and said over her shoulder, “Later, you will change your mind about fucking me.”
The Pink Cadillac is set up as a place for tourists to ditch their bored and worthless offspring while they go to watch Don Ho and Danny Kaleikini sing “Pearly Shells” in lavender-lit hotel lounges. The tiny, fiercely dedicated alternative music movement in Honolulu hovers around it in a swarm. Inside, the Cadillac is like any gothic bar in L.A., with black lights and smoke machines and an in-your-face effort not to look like any gothic bar in L.A. Everyone in the place looks like they see club photos in the groupie mags and emulate them, wearing black and smoking like industrial chimneys.
The doorman saw Beverly and waved us past the cashier without a second look at me. The cashier, a waif wearing black and red lipstick in a harlequin pattern, gave me a glance that said she knew I must have to pay for it. The joint was air-conditioned to the point that, even stuffed to the gills, it felt like a meat locker. I bought Beverly drinks and let her dance and think she was dominating me. She finally sank into a booth downstairs and said, “OK, haole, talk.” As I sat down she drew a red lacquered nail along her cleavage, then licked the perspiration from it with a smile.
I ignored it and said, “Let’s say a guy rolls into town with some money, wants a little action. How hard would it be to find you?”
“Not very.” She was struggling with the fact that her coyness was rolling off me. She scooted around in the booth. “I am known.”
At the edge of my vision I watched a wiry Asian guy get attentive. Beverly’s hand slid up my thigh and across my stomach, and my skin started to crawl again. Even over the cigarette and sweat and booze stink in the place, I could smell her as she got close. I let her fumble around in my lap and watched the guy at the bar.
“What are you known for?” I asked, smiling woodenly. Another Asian man, this one shorter and stockier, stepped up behind the first and joined in the observation.
With a sickening purr Beverly said, “I will show you.” She dropped her hand down into my crotch and started rubbing, frustration wrinkling her face when I wasn’t hard.
She had her breasts squished against my arm, and I had to kink my neck to talk to her and keep an eye on the heavies. She squirmed to remind me that her breasts were big and I said, “How much?”
She grabbed my crotch so it hurt. Both men were standing now. “A thousand dollars.”
I reached down and wrapped my hand over hers, crimping her thumb-knuckle between my palm and fingers. She let out a squeak. People glanced, then stared. The two goons paused, waiting. I brought her arm up between us and pushed her away with it. She was biting her bottom lip and trying not to glance at the staring people. Her face was crushed with anger and embarrassment. “Being with women is not something I pay for,” I said too loudly, releasing her thumb.
Her eyes flashed and her hand went to the shot glass in front of me. Alcohol burned my eyes and stained my shirt. People moved on. I slowly reached a cocktail napkin and sponged my face. When my vision cleared she was still there, looking confused. Her two big brothers had backed off a little, unsure of what to do. “You’re a son of a bitch,” she growled.
“Yeah. That makes you my mother.” I pushed the table away and took two long steps over to the two watchful Asians. They were caught off guard and shuffled back against each other as I stepped up to the bar. I gave the bartender a fifty and said, “Anything else that little whore drinks tonight is on me.” He took the fifty slowly, nervous glances at the two goons next to me. He nodded. I followed his gaze and turned to face the two thugs, as if I hadn’t noticed them until now.
As soon as we locked eyes Beverly started spitting, “Why you not take him, Tuan? Huh? You see what he did? You see how he treat me! What, you not a man?” Her voice was filled with venom, her accent suddenly deeper, and Tuan stood there wondering whether to try it or not. I had him and his friend by eight inches and forty pounds.
I leaned into them and said, “Who are you, the juice? You been following me?” I flipped my head at Beverly, still taunting them. “You protect that little bitch?”
They nodded in unison. The chunky one leaned over and I could see the butt of an automatic behind the lapel of his coat. My feet went cold, but I played it out. “Why you treat her like that?” said the skinny one.
I kept half an eye on the gun and said, “Look, little man, I’ll treat whores any goddamn way I please. And tell your buddy that if he goes for the piece, he’ll be shitting through a tube for the rest of his life.” I got a little more in his face. “I am Big Fucking Trouble, Tuan. Remember that.” Then I pushed past them and left Beverly under the watchful eyes of three hundred vampires.
On the way out I winked at the bouncer. He knew he was looking at a lunatic, and let me by.
I figured
it would take a day, maybe two, for word to get around that there was a crazy haole in town looking for trouble. Eventually it would get to ears that would know it could only be one person.
And they would come looking.
Chapter 18
I woke up with my face in the pillow and my tongue glued to the roof of my mouth. I was still wearing all my night-before clothes, reeking of perfume, cologne, booze and cigarettes. A small tapping came from outside the door. Then it stopped. A few seconds later it started again.
I rolled over and let the tapper wait. He got neither louder nor more hurried. He just tapped. I looked around futilely for a weapon, settling on a brass letter opener atop the desk blotter next to some hotel stationery. I went to the door.
More tapping greeted me. I wrapped the letter opener in a tight fist behind my back and turned the knob.
We stood and blinked at each other. When it looked to him like my eyes had gotten used to the fluorescents, he said, “I’m lookin’ for a hundred bucks. You got a hundred bucks?”
“Sometimes,” I said thickly. “What time is it?”
“Nine-thirty.”
“A .M.?”
“Yeah. A.M.”
I squinted like the information had given me a headache. His nametag said Kalani, but he was an ethnic mix who would have passed for white anywhere. He wore a busboy’s apron over the hotel uniform, and had apparently bathed in cheap cologne before coming to work. I said through the squint, “You look like a man who can get coffee. Go get some and I’ll see if there’s a loose C-note lying around.”
He shot down the hallway and around the corner. He came back with an entire pot and a cup. No coffee for Kalani. I had a cigarette lit and ready, and out of reflex he poured me a cup and set it up nicely with cream and sugar. I took it and enjoyed the view of Ala Moana Park through the window. Then I sat down on the edge of the bed and gave him a sleep-worn glare.
His sharp little eyes darted back and forth, trying to decide which one of my eyes to look at. He was short, but not a stump, with wrestler’s shoulders and the narrow, gently muscled legs of a surfer—the kind of guy you can never quite get a good hold on in a fight. His right cheek was twitching, and he stood there like he needed to take a piss and was waiting for me to excuse him.
I said, “Have a seat,” and introduced him to one of the assembly-line-plush chairs.
“No thanks.”
“Sit down,” I said. “I’m not going to ask again.”
He picked up an ashtray from the dresser by the door and carried it with him to the chair. “Geez, you’re a nervous son of a bitch. ’Course, I would be, too, if I’d pulled what you did last night.”
“Oh yeah? What do you know about where I was last night?”
“Some. I know some other stuff, too. Put it together the right way and maybe it’s worth a little something.”
I sipped and tried to look serious. All I could manage was tired. I yawned and said, “Look, kid, I tossed a lot of money right down the toilet’s throat last night, so a bill buys a lot of information with me right now. But if you just came in to sit there and be tough and scare me, you did it, OK? Go tell your girlfriend what a man you are before she gets bored.”
He took out a pack of the world-famous Kools and popped a black and ivory scrimshaw Zippo to one. “Funny you should mention my girlfriend,” he said flatly, letting smoke dribble out between his lips while he talked. “She’s the cashier down at the Cadillac. She came home last night and we did our usual thing, and when we’re finished she tells me about this crazy motherfucker that came in the bar and pissed all over Bev from Platinum.”
I remembered the girlfriend. She had been sitting doe-eyed in the booth next to the bouncer that didn’t want to mess with me. She’d given me a look that made me feel cheap. “What’s it to you?”
“Nothin’ maybe. Maybe somethin’. I didn’t think anything about it except me and you almost crashed into each other last night coming in to the hotel. My shift starts at four. Before that, me and the lady were shootin’ the shit as I got ready for work and she describes you. When we almost knock heads, I flash that this dude she was talkin’ ’bout looks like you. I figured it was worth checking out. So far so good.”
I got up and opened a window and let some ocean in. The breeze was cool and moist and did more for me than the coffee. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Kalani, and I’ll be sure to say hello to your girl. I’ll probably be back there tonight. After that I’ll come back here for another night, eat some, hopefully get that little local girl’s phone number, and then I’ll switch hotels.” I picked up a pen and grabbed a blank bit of stationery so I could file some thoughts. “Now beat it. I’ve got sleep to get and work to do.”
“I came up here after a C, man. I’m gonna earn it.”
I lifted an eyebrow at him.
“You don’t seem to realize what kind of shit you started last night. There’s a whole bunch of people lookin’ for you, I think, and I know a couple of ’em.”
I was doodling on the sheet, trying to think. “You don’t know squat about me, Kalani, or where I came from, or why I’m here. How do you know folks are looking for me?”
“Not true. I know something big’s gonna happen, and I know that as soon as word got around that some haole was makin’ a nuisance of himself, a certain group got very excited, and a few got very nervous. One in particular, guy name of Sonny T. He does some business with big boys once in a while.”
“What kind of business?”
“Couple different things. Known for guns. Does some blood work once in long while. I don’t know him super well, but he’ll talk to me if I buy him a drink or two and show him a little respect. Sometimes he’ll even remember it for more than five minutes. I send people to him once in a while, and he treats me a little better than most of the folks he doesn’t consider friends. And that’s comforting when a guy is Ohana.” He looked at me like that in itself was worth a hundred bucks.
“What’s Ohana?” I asked innocently, but I had a pretty good idea.
“Hawaiian mob. Don’t fuck with them. There, don’t say I never gave you any advice.”
I was getting impatient, so I had some more joe. “So you know some minor league player. Congratulations.”
“He’s minor league for a reason,” Kalani continued, brushing off the jab. “He’s got a big mouth. And when he’s nervous, he’s like a shrink’s dream. Dumps on the nearest available person. Couple nights ago that person was me.”
There was some more quiet, and Kalani’s eyes got narrow through the smoke. I toyed with the paper and then fiddled with the ashtray. He won the waiting contest.
“And what revelations did this Sonny T person give you?” I asked through a sigh.
“You willing to front for it?”
“Look, kid, if the shit is good, I’ll pay for it. That’s as good as you’re going to get, so either spill or get the fuck out and let me get some sleep.”
“Fine. Here’s a hundred dollars worth of shit. Turns out Sonny’s a little freaked ’cause he doesn’t know how to keep his allies straight. He’s a little bit Ohana and to the Ohana that means a lot Ohana. So this nobody comes up to him one night and says he needs some guns for a big job. Lots of ’em. Sonny sets him up with some pieces, mostly big handguns, and the next thing happens is some sushi bar gets decorated with little pieces of Danny Ohana, a high level punk who’s just waiting for old relatives to die off so he can become the Big Man. Anyway, it’s a real clean job, in and out, twenty seconds tops—surgical gloves, no descriptions of anybody, and they toss the pieces on the body and split. Cops throw a fuckin’ party, write it off as inter-gang hostilities, case closed.
“So now Sonny’s up to his neck ’cause the pieces have his name all over them, and he’s afraid that Papa-san Ohana is gonna put two and two together and come after him.”
I took a long drag on the cigarette and sat back. “But he’s not going to, is he?” I asked.
Kalani shook
his head, smiling almost to himself. He got up and went into the bathroom and got a water glass so he could put some coffee in it. He sipped it black. “Kona,” he said, smiling and licking his lips. “Better than any mainland sludge, huh?”
I shrugged and glanced in my cup. “I don’t know, Kalani, so far you’ve brought me a page-three headline and a good story. You’ve earned a little extra tip for the coffee. What gives?”
“Aren’t you a little curious about why Sonny T is freakin’ out and I think he shouldn’t be?”
“Not really. And I for sure don’t see a hundred bucks in it. I don’t know this Sonny T guy from dirt, and he doesn’t know me either. Tie it all up and maybe I’ll pay out.”
“How about if I told you that Sonny’s got a big connection to a couple of families?”
“You did already. These Ohana people.”
“That’s just the mob. They’re customers. But in the Ohana, one of the families is named Nguyen. Ever heard of them? Would you hand over a hundred bucks for what Sonny’s doing with them?”
He finally had my attention. I sat silently across from him and tried to keep some blood in my face. My throat creaked out a dry, “Yeah. I’d pay for that.”
“Where’s the bread?”
“Information. First.”
Kalani shrugged. “The nobody that came to him for backup just before the job on Danny was a kid named Tran Nguyen, but Sonny didn’t recognize him.” Kalani paused and gave me a look that said I should be impressed by this last bit. I wasn’t. Being named Nguyen in Vietnamese is like being named Smith in English. Maintaining the expression, he said, “The reason he didn’t recognize him was because Tran Nguyen died in a car wreck four years ago, along with his two sisters.”
I got up very slowly and grabbed a wad of cash out of my pants. I gave Kalani a hundred-dollar bill. He took it, folded it very carefully twice, and stuck it in his shirt pocket. I stood there staring at a speck of dust on the table until Kalani got nervous. “Any questions?” he asked gently.
