by Neil Plakcy
Most of the numbers on the next sheet were in red. “I’m betting that these are the real numbers,” she said. “They’re bleeding money. If they let these numbers get out, they’d be out of business fast.”
“Can you figure out anything about the company?” I asked. “Aren’t there hidden thingies that tell you who created the sheet, or where they worked?”
Selena hit a couple of keys. “The file was created by Zoë Greenfield,” she said. “She works for the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.”
“Worked,” I said. “As in past tense. She’s the woman whose murder we’re investigating.”
Selena jerked back from her keyboard, as if Zoë’s dead body might pop out if she got too close.
“Nothing about which company she was investigating?” Ray asked.
Selena shook her head. “I don’t know enough about alternative energy projects to speculate. Nobody at her office can tell you anything?’
“We had a contact,” I said. “We gave her the spreadsheet, and she told me she’d figured something out. Then her car ran off the Pali Highway.”
Selena closed the windows on her computer and popped the drive out. “Sorry, Kimo. I can’t tell you anything more about this.”
GO FLY A KITE
Friday evening I was fiddling around on my netbook and checked my email. There was a message from Terri. “We had lots of fun skiing in Squaw Valley,” I read. “Danny fell in love with snow. I’ll tell you all about the trip when I see you. Danny has a kite entered in the Ko’olau Kite Fest tomorrow—any chance you guys can come up and cheer him on? He’d love to see you.”
I flashed back to the last time I’d seen Terri, when Levi had taken us out on his boat to show off his investment in Wave Power Technologies. Now that Levi was back from Squaw Valley, maybe he could tell us which company the spreadsheet represented. I emailed her back that we would be there. “Tell Levi I have some questions for him,” I added at the end. “Love you.”
On Saturday afternoon Mike and I met them up on a grassy slope in the Ko’olau mountains for the kite-flying festival. I hoped to pull Levi aside for a few minutes to ask him about the mysterious spreadsheets we’d found in Zoë Greenfield’s online storage.
Kites are a real Japanese obsession, and March is the month for many kite flying festivals in cities like Nagasaki. For the kids, there were two competitions, a demonstration of kite making, and even a candy drop, sending them scrambling as candy fell from the skies, released from special kites. But we got there an hour before Danny’s competition, and after establishing that Levi, Terry and Danny hadn’t arrived yet, Mike and I were drawn to the fighting kites.
From nosing around, we learned that the tradition had come from India, where special lines coated with ground glass were used to try and slice your competitors out of the air. The Nagasaki fighting kite was different from the traditional Japanese kites I’d seen as a kid. It was square, light, and flown diagonally, as opposed to the traditional Japanese form.
It was fascinating to watch the kites battle each other in the sky to the beat of fat, barrel-like Japanese taiko drums. The crowd cheered when one kite cut another’s string, and I wished all our violent and destructive impulses could take place in a way like that, with no one getting hurt or killed.
We strolled around, watching a Japanese kite master showing off his works, until I spotted Terri across from us. We called and waved and she came over to us.
I marveled again at how much better she looked than she had almost four years before, when she was married to a cop who had gotten in trouble, and the worry had started to etch lines on her oval face, on skin that had been clear and fresh ever since we had met as kids at Punahou.
Her brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she wore khaki Capri pants and a dark green T-shirt from Squaw Valley. “Danny will be so glad you came,” she said, kissing my cheek and then leaning up to do the same to Mike. “He and Levi are getting their kite ready for the competition.”
“How was the skiing?” I asked. “Not too cold for you?”
“Levi and Danny did most of the skiing. I’m too much of an island girl. I spent most of the time by the fire in the lodge. But Danny took to it. And of course he loves Ilana.”
Ilana was Levi’s daughter from his previous marriage, a beautiful twenty-something I’d only met once or twice. She was getting her MBA at Harvard. “I’m surprised she could get away for skiing,” I said.
“She had work to do every night,” Terri said. “It was wonderful to see her huddled up with Levi. I didn’t understand half of what they talked about, but he loved getting into her course work with her. You know he went to Harvard, too.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said. “I assumed he’d gone somewhere in the northwest.”
It didn’t surprise me. Levi was a high-powered guy, and had a high-powered, Ivy League sort of vibe—Brooks Brothers clothes, a nose for good wine, and a sharp intelligence.
He joined us at the start of the competition. “Danny’s kite is made of mulberry bark paper from Japan,” he said. “We painted his dad’s name on it. He says he wants to let it go when the competition is over, so it can go up to heaven and his dad can see it.”
My eyes stung when he said that. Evan Gonsalves had been a good guy, and a good cop. We’d been friends mostly because he was married to Terri, but I liked him, and knew that he loved his son. It was good to know that his son still remembered him.
There were prizes for biggest and smallest kite, funniest kite and ugliest kite. In the competition, there were prizes for the highest flight, the angle of flight, and the sound that their hummers made in flight. Danny didn’t win anything, but he looked like he had a lot of fun. When the competition was over, the four of us took him off to the side of the site, where the hill was steep and looked out over the Pacific.
“You ready to let it go, sport?” Levi asked, kneeling down to Danny’s level.
Danny nodded.
“Well, let’s give it a good run, okay?” He took Danny’s hand in his and they ran across the grass, the kite gaining altitude behind them. Eventually Levi let go, and Danny kept running, the kite soaring behind him. “Let it go whenever you want,” Levi called.
We watched as Danny released his grasp on the kite string, and the wind currents made the kite soar and dip. Danny stopped running and waved as the kite climbed higher and higher, and then took a turn out over the mountain. Mike and I hung back as Terri and Levi caught up with Danny, each taking one of his hands, all three of them watching the kite soar to heaven.
Terri took Danny off after that to get a shave ice, and I pulled Levi aside. “Can I get together with you on Monday?” I asked. “I’ve got this spreadsheet that relates to power companies somehow, and I need some help interpreting it.”
“Sure,” Levi said. We made a plan to meet up at his office late on Monday morning. We all went out for an early dinner, and then Mike and I went home and walked Roby.
“You still thinking about having kids?” Mike asked, as Roby sniffed around a succulent hinahina plant, blossoming with white flowers.
“Seems like everyone we know has them, huh?” Roby began licking the grass and I said, “Roby, that’s gross,” and jerked on his leash.
Mike appeared to be waiting for me to answer his question. “I had lunch with Sandra Guarino on Monday.”
“What does that… oh.”
“Yeah. Oh. She asked me if I’d consider being their sperm donor. Not now, but sometime in the future.”
“What did you say?”
“I avoided the question. That’s not something you can answer off the cuff.”
“Who would be the mom?”
“Sandra. Cathy has some female problem.”
“I used to work with this female fire captain,” Mike said. “She was a ball-buster—tougher than most of the guys. Then she had a baby. She was still tough afterwards—but man, you should have seen her with her daughter. A totally diff
erent woman.”
“You think Sandra would turn out that way?”
“Wouldn’t be surprised.” Mike picked up a stick from the ground and started twirling it in his hands. “Did she say how she wanted you to donate?”
“What do you mean?” I looked at him and then I knew. “I’m not interested in doing that anymore.” I grimaced. “Especially not with Sandra. I’m sure we’d do it the civilized way—some kind of clinic.”
Roby squatted, and I pulled a plastic bag from my pocket. “What if we both did?” I asked, not looking at Mike. “Then we wouldn’t know whose sperm it was, and we’d both be the dads.”
“Can they do that?”
“I’m sure.”
“We’d have to think about it,” Mike said. “Even being part-time dads, it’s a huge commitment and it changes your life forever.”
I stood up. “Yeah. I’ve seen that with my brothers.”
“Imagine my parents as grandparents,” Mike said, laughing. “My dad would be giving the kid junior doctor kits before he could read.”
“Well, being a grandparent is a chance for our parents to redo all the things they did wrong with us.”
Roby looked up at Mike and tried to take the stick from him. I reached down and unhooked his leash. “You gonna throw that thing or what?” I asked.
Mike threw it, and Roby went bounding ahead. I wanted to take Mike’s hand, but I had that bag of poop to get rid of. So instead we just chased the dog together.
≈≈≈
Sunday afternoon, Greg Oshiro called my cell. “I heard from Anna,” he said. “She won’t tell me where she is, or why she’s hiding, but at least she’s okay.”
“Did you get a phone number?”
“Nope. She said she was calling from a pay phone. I asked her about her cell but she just said she had it shut off.”
“Okay. Let me know if you hear from her again. See if you can get her to meet you somewhere to see the girls.”
“I don’t want to use the girls as bait,” he said. “Not now. Not ever.”
We went over to Lui’s that afternoon for a barbecue, and surrounded by all my nieces and nephews, I kept thinking about the conversations I’d had with Sandra and with Mike. I could see us bringing Sandra and Cathy into our family circle—what we call ohana in Hawaiian. There would be a new baby or two for my parents to fuss over.
But what would it mean for Mike and me? I’d heard my brothers complain about feeling ignored by their wives. What if Mike and I got so caught up in taking care of our kid, or kids, that we lost the connection that we had?
It was just too complicated a question. But no matter how I tried to ignore it, every time one of the kids ran past, with a scrape or an empty plate or a ball to play with, I kept coming back to it. It was a relief when we finally left and returned home, just Mike and me and Roby.
Monday morning, Ray and I got roped into helping round up a guy suspected of robbing one of the downtown branches of the Bank of Hawai’i. He lived in a crappy apartment in Mo’ili’ili, and we were lucky to get out of there just in time to make it to Wave Power Technologies for our eleven o’clock appointment.
It was the first time I’d been to Levi’s office, which was filled with bits and pieces from his past life—framed diplomas, including the one from Harvard Business School; photos of him at conferences and groundbreaking ceremonies; a gold CD that seemed to represent a million copies sold of some software product.
I was happy to see that along with the photos of his daughters, Ilana and Susan, there was a candid shot of him with Terri and Danny. Ray and I sat down across from his desk. “You’ve got some questions about alternative energy?” he asked.
I gave him a quick rundown of the case so far, and what Selena had suggested. He pursed his lips and twined his fingers together while I spoke.
“I hate to hear this kind of thing,” he said. “Not just because two women lost their lives. But because these kind of shenanigans give the industry a bad name. Can I see the spreadsheets?”
I gave him the flash drive, which was certainly getting a lot of use. I’d have to thank Harry again for it.
Levi’s secretary stuck her head in the door and asked if we wanted anything to drink.
“Try the pineapple coconut smoothies with açai berries,” Levi said, still facing his computer. “Another one of my little investments. Lots of antioxidants.”
I looked at Ray and we both shrugged. “Sure,” I said. “Is there anything trendy you don’t have your fingers in?”
“Nope,” he said.
The secretary returned with a pair of round bottles for us. There was a nice sort of berry and chocolate aftertaste once you got past the coconut and pineapple flavors. “Not bad,” I said.
We were about halfway through the smoothies by the time Levi turned back to us. “Your cousin was right,” he said. “These numbers represent about a year’s worth of energy production from a prototype system. And if the bad numbers are correct, the project is tanking.”
He shook his head. “It’s incredibly expensive to put together a prototype and test it. It takes a few years before a company can make money from one of these technologies. That’s where Uncle Sam comes in.” He leaned back in his chair. “The government has all these programs to encourage the development of alternative energy technology. Wave power is just a small part of it. You’ve got wind power, biomass, alternative fuels… the list goes on and on. Eventually the industry’s going to shake out, and there will be a couple of major players. The downstream potential is huge.”
Ray and I finished our smoothies, and Levi took the empty bottles from us and tossed them into a recycle bin next to his desk. “Let’s get to your numbers,” he said. “Every company has to demonstrate that their technology is successful in order to keep getting more money from the government. But not every project is going to be a winner. Sometimes the science just doesn’t work, or it doesn’t work well enough to justify the expense.”
“Somebody’s fudging the numbers,” I said.
“Exactly. Harry was on the right track when he said these looked like two sets of books.”
“Do you know which company we’re looking at?” I asked.
“I can’t tell—but I’ll bet you can.”
“How?”
He flipped to another spreadsheet. “These are the true records of what they spend,” he said. “See this? If I’m not mistaken, that’s a VIN number. It looks like these are lease payments on a car. Track the VIN number, you know who’s using the car. And then you figure out where that person works.”
He read the number out, and I wrote it down. I used my cell to call a friend at the DMV, who checked the number out for me and promised to text it back to me.
While we waited, Levi said, “The Business, Economic Development and Tourism department is responsible for monitoring these projects. The company I invest in sends them quarterly reports. Based on how we’re doing, they disburse additional grant money, and monitor what we’re using the money for.”
My phone buzzed with the incoming text. “What a surprise,” I said. “Néng Yuán.” I explained to Levi who Wyatt was.
“I know a little about Néng Yuán,” he said. “I’ve met Dr. Zenshen a couple of times. She’s even smarter than she is beautiful.”
“What do you know about the company?”
“The company I invest in uses point absorbers.” He clicked a couple of keys and brought up a PowerPoint presentation. “Watch this for a minute.”
We looked at the animation, which showed the way a farm of buoys captured the wave energy and transferred it to a generator.
“Néng Yuán has a different approach,” Levi said, when the presentation was over. “They use what are called attenuators.” He showed us another clip, in which long, worm-like segments moved with the waves, and as they flexed, the energy moved into a hydraulic pump.
“Nobody knows which technology is going to be the best,” Levi continued. “We’re still takin
g baby steps. Néng Yuán’s approach to attenuators is based on research Dr. Zenshen did in China. She moved here a couple of years ago to take advantage of the offshore waves. She has big plans for an attenuator project on the North Shore. You know what the waves are like there.”
I did. They were among the best in the world for surfing. “What happens to Pipeline or Sunset if something’s offshore catching the waves?” I asked.
“They did a study in England. A company wants to put in this project called the Wave Hub off the Cornwall coast. Some reports say that waves will be cut by up to eleven percent.”
“That could screw a lot of people. Look how much money comes in from surf competitions and surf touring on the North Shore. And if the project does knock down the waves, it could be bad news for a lot of other places, too.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Levi said. “No one has built anything on the scale Néng Yuán is proposing yet, so no one knows what the true effect will be on the waves.”
“Would somebody kill over a surf beach?” Ray asked. “Don’t you think this is all about the money? How can we figure out how much money we’re talking about here?”
“Let me run the numbers. I’ll call you when I’ve had a chance to fiddle around.”
“Remember, whoever is behind this has already killed two women. Don’t tell anyone that you have this data, all right? Don’t call anyone at the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. Don’t call anyone at Néng Yuán, or any other company.”
“I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck,” Levi said. “I’ll be careful.”
HELEN WHEELS
Ray and I grabbed lunch on our way back to headquarters at a Chinese cafeteria around the corner from Levi’s office. “I feel like we’re making progress,” Ray said, pushing his tray through the line, serving himself white rice and honey chicken. “I just hope this doesn’t turn into another dead end.”
“It’s possible that we’re on the wrong track,” I said. “Zoë’s death still could have been a result of a home invasion gone wrong, and Miriam’s just a traffic accident. But I think they’re connected, and that means we’re going in the right direction.”
