“Why?”
“The Pierces and I go way back.”
“Really? I just know one of them—Josiah Pierce, Junior. Is he the one who’s your pal?”
“What’s your interest in me?” His breath, so close to my face I could feel its warmth, smelled of tobacco and booze.
I shrugged, as if none of this was rattling me. “It’s not you; it’s that my teenage cousin Braden was charged with arson, when we both know he was only out in the mountains gathering lava rock for you.”
He shook his head. “You’re not related to that boy. In fact, if you’re not a mainlander, I’m not Chinese.”
“I’m a mainlander, yes, but my relatives live here. My cousin is Braden Shimura, the kid who’s going to be charged with setting the fire, and everything bad that came out of it. Imagine what you’d feel like if your own child was in the wrong place doing a part- time job at the order of adults, and wound up getting railroaded for arson.”
“My kid don’t work. I won’t let him; he’s on honor roll at Punahou.” He shook his head at me. “So, who you thinking should be blamed for the fire?”
Remembering the wire on me, I decided to go for broke, as Uncle Yoshitsune might say. “Well, I suppose some people might think the fire was ordered by you.”
“I go back with the Pierces, remember.” He tapped my forehead with a hard finger. “Why would I set fire to their property?”
“The same reason you’d take rocks from it.”
He shook his head. “You know nothing about this island, the way things work.”
“Tell me then.”
“Nobody gives Gerry Liang orders. But I’m warning you, Rei Shimura, I got a closet in a room upstairs for people who talk too much. It’s kind of like a holding site until two of my boys can swing by, and you know, drop you off at a work site where we might be laying cement…”
“I don’t want to go upstairs,” I said for the benefit of my colleagues, who were feeling awfully distant at that moment. “I have a lunch appointment a few blocks downtown, and I need to get on the road.”
“Three o’clock?” he scoffed. “This is Honolulu. Nobody eats lunch at three.”
“Early dinner?” My back was against the glass door, but unfortunately it wasn’t the kind that simply pushed out. There was no easy escape.
“Get moving.” He slapped my face then, so hard that I was too stunned for a few seconds to do anything. But then, I maneuvered my free hand behind my back to turn the doorknob. To my horror, it didn’t move.
He’d locked me in.
“Did you know the door’s locked?” I asked, for the benefit of my hidden listeners, all the while striving to sound nonchalant.
He laughed and reached his other hand into a pants pocket to extricate a key ring. But instead of opening the door for me to get out, he unlocked the door to the upstairs floors. He fished into his pocket again and pointed a small, black gun straight at my face.
Never go anywhere that the guy with the gun tells you to go. This rule of life, drilled into me ever since I was a child in San Francisco, came to me now. As adrenaline surged, I yelled and I kicked as hard as I could at his groin.
The door to the room where I’d left Kainoa had opened, but through my grappling with Liang, it was pushed shut again. I heard glass shatter behind me, felt shards bounce on my bare shoulders like hail. Now I was being pulled backwards, the left shoulder strap of my sundress breaking. From the crack in the other doorway, Kainoa stared as I tripped backwards out of the opened front door into the muggy, welcoming Chinatown air. And from the familiar smell, and the wiry strength of the arms and body, I knew who’d gotten hold of me: Michael.
“Stay there,” Michael snapped at Kainoa, who stepped back a pace and nodded.
“He’s not the bad guy,” I said to Michael, my heart still jack-hammering under the corselet.
“I know,” Michael said to me, and as Vang and Fujioka crowded into the foyer, he said to his colleagues in a voice as relaxed as if he was continuing the restaurant discussion, “Liang’s gone upstairs, and he’s armed.”
Now that I was safe, I was flooded with feelings: relief at being in Michael’s arms and not upstairs with Liang, anxiety for Kainoa, and some embarrassment that I’d had to be rescued. I said to Michael in a low voice, ‘I didn’t mean to blow my cover. It just sort of happened.”
“Don’t worry about that. What I want to know is why you didn’t follow our instructions to vacate immediately when Liang walked into the room?” Michael demanded.
“I never heard it because my earpiece fell off.” The rest of what Michael was saying became drowned out by the sirens of three arriving police cars. At Michael’s urging, Kainoa explained the layout of the building, including a back exit. Two men headed to the back of the building and the others went up the stairs to join their colleagues.
By now, a curious crowd of people had assembled—a few panhandlers, Asian merchants, and tourists with their camcorders. I tried to ignore the spectacle as best I could, but imagined I was going to wind up in a few home movies, broken dress strap and all.
“But this is so fast. Don’t they need a warrant to go in?” I asked Michael.
“Honey, we all witnessed an attempted armed kidnapping. There’s plenty of reason to go after the bastard.”
“I suppose so. But that’s completely different from the reason I went in there—to get him to say something about Braden.” I turned, and spoke directly to Kainoa. “I just wanted you to tell the truth.”
“If Liang wants the judge to knock a few years off his sentence, he’s going to have to talk about his operation, sending minors out to steal rocks,” Michael said.
“You really think Liang’s going down? He’s got a lot of power behind him, if you catch my meaning,” Kainoa said. He no longer looked shaken; the mask of island cool was back.
“He’ll go down for what just happened to Rei,” Michael said. “Anything else you can help the cops with would be much appreciated. And it would help you, too.”
MICHAEL AND I drove back to the Leeward Side of the island with the Sebring’s top down, a hot, dry wind whipping my hair across my face. I consciously avoided staring at the blackened fields on either side of us, focusing instead on the ocean shimmering in the mid-afternoon sun. My exultation at having completed the operation with success beyond our expectations was fading. I glanced at Michael, silently counting how many hours we had left before he flew to Washington.
I could have a lot more time with him, if we got married. But could it work? I knew what I loved about Michael, but I wasn’t sure if he had a realistic picture of me. Would he wake up one morning, realize I wasn’t going to be around forever, and feel the need to run?
Work was another problem. Michael had blithely mentioned giving up OCI, his life’s passion, to avoid impropriety and give me a chance to continue. On the other hand, I was just a freelance contractor to the Japan Bureau, and while there were things about spy work I enjoyed, I couldn’t see myself growing old taping wires in my lingerie.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said aloud.
“I don’t either,” Michael said. “Do you think we should go to Braden’s family first, or your own?”
“My father was pretty worried about the operation, so I want to see him first,” I said firmly.
“Let’s not forget about Braden, though,” Michael said. “Think how relieved he’ll be to know Liang is in custody. Maybe this is all he needs to step forward and tell the truth about what was happening with the rocks.”
“Braden was scared of retaliation. He still might be, because of Liang’s gang ties.”
Michael was silent for a moment, and then said, “If it’s all right with Edwin and Margaret, and the judge, Braden could come back with me to the mainland. There’s a boys’ boarding school in central Virginia I have in mind.”
“A surfer at an east-coast prep school?” I sputtered. “Braden would hate it, and they’d never admit him anyway!”
> “They’re used to wild boys, Rei; it’s their specialty, and I know there are generous scholarships for under-represented minorities.”
“Why do you know so much about this place?”
“I’m a trustee.” Michael shrugged, as if this was the most normal thing in the world.
“It just might work,” I said, wheels turning. “If he agreed to go, and you did all the paperwork.”
“Everything will work out. I’ve got a gut feeling about this.” Michael slowed the car to stop at the traffic light and turned to me. I put my head on his shoulder for a minute, until the car beyond us honked, letting me know the light had changed.
When we pulled up to the townhouse, we were met by the now familiar sight of Edwin’s car in our driveway. Well, maybe it was all for the better: I could tell them that Braden’s terrible boss was now behind bars.
But when I got inside, nothing was what I expected. Edwin and Margaret were crouched next to the sofa, where someone lay motionless, with a blanket over him.
My father.
“YOU HERE AT last!” Edwin shot a glare at me, filled with what looked like a mixture of relief and anger. “Your dad’s not feeling good at all.”
“How long has this been going on?” I was already at the couch, looking at my father’s closed eyes and sweating forehead, despite the full-force air-conditioning. He was alive, but he needed a doctor. “Has Tom examined him?”
“Tom and Hiroshi are still playing golf on the other side of the island, we think,” Margaret said. “We think we got Tom’s voicemail, but we’re not positive, because the message was in Japanese.”
“Yeah, fat lot of good your lawyer’s done, taking away the family doctor when we need him. I sent Braden and Courtney to get that Calvin who lives with the Kikuchis,” Edwin said.
My father’s eyes flickered open as I leaned over him. I whispered, ‘What’s going on?”
My father’s eyes remained closed, but he muttered, ‘Headache. The worst I’ve ever had.”
The night before, I’d worried that my working with the police might raise my father’s blood pressure. Now I knew that the worry had been valid, and blood pressure was the least of it. I held my father tightly, willing him to live as I prayed. No. Don’t let this happen. It’s not fair!
“We should call an ambulance.” Michael’s voice cut through my desperate prayers.
“Ambulance ride around here starts at six hundred dollars,” Edwin said. “If you don’t call the insurance first, they won’t pay. And you better find out if the hospital’s pre-approved.”
“Enough,” Michael snapped; he’d already made it to the kitchen, and the telephone on the counter.
The ambulance came within fifteen minutes, the slowest quarter of an hour that I’d ever passed. But in this time, I learned from Margaret that about thirty minutes had passed since my father had telephoned them, asking if they’d heard from me and then admitting he had a headache he was worried about. Now, I calculated, it would be around forty minutes to Queen’s Medical Center, even in an ambulance speeding along the shoulder. And that could be too long, from what I’d read in all my stroke books.
Honolulu was too distant, but there was another option. I remembered Michael mentioning an emergency clinic in the other direction, up the coast.
“Can they treat stroke at the Waianae Comprehensive Health Care Center? And how far is it?” I asked the lead paramedic as they shifted my father from the couch to a gurney.
“Sure they can treat it. And it’s ten miles away, a third of the distance to Queen’s.”
“Well, that’s where my father’s going, then.” I said.
I rode along in the ambulance, an experience in itself with all the paraphernalia on the walls of the small van—tubes, canisters, pumps and paddles—all the things that could continue life. My father had an oxygen mask over his face and a paramedic at his side monitoring blood pressure and heartbeat.
The ambulance made a sharp right and began climbing a curving road up to the clinic. The land around the clinic was scrubby and rocky, and its small parking lot was filled with a mix of late-model cars and shabby older vehicles, some of them with surfboards strapped on top.
As the paramedics started unloading my father on his stretcher, Michael pulled up in the Sebring. He handed me my father’s wallet. “I found this. It’s got his insurance card in it.”
“Thanks.” I hugged him for a long moment, thinking how odd it was that responsibility, and sexiness, seemed to be part of Michael in equal measures.
Michael kept his arm around me as I filled out my father’s paperwork in the waiting room, and a few minutes after I’d handed it back to the nurse at the desk, the attending physician, Dr. Yamashiro, emerged to get me. I waved to Michael and went off, shoulders squared and preparing for the worst.
“You are his daughter, right?”
I nodded, preparing for the worst. “It’s not another stroke. His brain looks good. Heart, too. But did your father have…psychiatric problems?”
“No, he didn’t. Why do you ask that?”
“He’s overdosed on lithium. We asked him for his list of regular medications and he didn’t mention it, but sometimes, people are ashamed—”
“He was poisoned. I know for sure, because the same thing happened to me.”
“What do you mean?” The doctor looked at me with concern.
“Someone tampered with my food, sticking in a mixture of lithium and Motrin. I had more than my dad, because it sent me into a kind of psychosis. I had to undergo hemodialysis at Queen’s.”
“You mean…you didn’t accidentally take these medicines together?” the doctor pushed.
Sometimes people were really slow. “No. I was poisoned. Call the people at Queen’s, compare what happened to me to what’s going on with him.”
“Yes, you can release your medical records to us, if you’d like.” The doctor was already signaling to the nurse. “Did you ever find the substance containing the drugs?”
“No. But if you let me talk to my father, maybe I will finally be able to find it.”
MY FATHER HAD two IV lines running in his arm, but was sitting up on the gurney when I was allowed back behind the curtains. I embraced him, and told him what a scare he’d given everyone. He told me that the doctors had already spoken to him about the charcoal, and he was prepared to undergo two days of what I’d been through.
“The good thing is you never went as nuts as I did—and you can help me figure out what you ate that did this.”
“I have an idea, but I’m afraid to tell you.” My father’s voice was weak. “The last time I went to Safeway, to buy new food to replace that which was taken for examination, I bought a few Japanese-brand instant noodle bowls. Today, I couldn’t resist the temptation.”
“It couldn’t be the noodles. What did you drink today?”
“I made one cup of green tea with a new tea bag, and drank water the rest of the day. Bottled water, the Fiji brand.”
“You had nothing extra? You didn’t add anything to the noodle bowl?”
“I chopped green onions and stirred them in to make it a little healthier.” He shook his head. “You know, I feel bad about preparing the noodles, because I felt quite fine until about an hour after eating. Now I understand that kind of processed food isn’t nearly as good as homemade.”
My father’s propensity to tinker made me think he might not have stopped at green onions. I asked, ‘Was there anything else you added to the noodle soup?”
“Well, I would have liked to add Sriracha sauce, but we don’t have the bottle anymore, so I used a pinch of wasabi.” He made a pinching gesture with his finger.
“Wasabi? Did you order sushi for dinner last night?” By the time Michael and I had arrived home, the kitchen had all been cleaned up; I had no idea what they’d eaten.
“No, I grilled an ahi tuna and ears of corn. Tom steamed brown rice, too.”
“But where did the wasabi come from?”
&n
bsp; “The fridge—a small container.” At my shocked expression, he said, “I believe it must be something that Hiroshi and Tom brought back from the pool concession stand. They serve sushi there, you know. I found it in a corner of the refrigerator’s door.”
“What did the wasabi look like?” I asked.
“Quite pale; it’s the fresh wasabi without an artificial color. It came in a small, covered plastic cup.”
“That sounds like the condiment Calvin brought along with the restaurant sushi, earlier in the week.” My thoughts were racing faster than the words could come out. “I must have taken the wasabi container out of the sushi box, when I was fixing my own plate, and put it down somewhere else in the fridge, where it was missed by the police inspectors.”
“I can’t believe it.” My father sounded as dazed as I felt.
“Why would Calvin do it?” I asked, then moved on to something more important. “Dad, what did you do with the wasabi container after you were finished seasoning the soup?”
“I returned it to the refrigerator, but this time on the top shelf.”
I recalled Calvin’s most recent, annoying visit. Uninvited, he’d opened our fridge to get himself a drink. Perhaps that had been his intent; to check that the wasabi was gone—or had he intended to add more poison to it?
“Dad, if it’s OK with you, I’m going home for a while. I have to find that wasabi.” I stood up.
“Just wait. I’m thinking, Rei-chan,” my father said. “Don’t jump to conclusions about Calvin’s behavior. There’s a chance he’s suffering an illness.”
“What do you mean?”
“To behave like this makes me think of one disease in particular: Munchausen’s-by-proxy.”
“I don’t think so. He’s super-fit; he didn’t look like he had any kind of disease, let alone a German-sounding one.”
“Munchausen’s is a psychiatric disorder, named for a German doctor who studied a woman who intentionally made herself very ill, repeatedly, because she craved the attention of a physician. In Munchausen’s-by-proxy, some people—often the parents of helpless children—intentionally sicken or disable someone.”
Shimura Trouble Page 23
