Spider Bones: A Novel

by Kathy Reichs

  Atoa ran a hand across his face and threw back his head. His windpipe bulged like a corrugated tube.

  Lô and Hung looked at each other, expressions tense. The kid’s first utterance would indicate if they’d won or lost.

  At last Atoa sat forward. He looked at Hung a long moment, then, “I talk to you, not him.”

  “No problem. But he stays here.”

  “All I did was drive.”

  “If true, that will work in your favor.” Hung kept her voice neutral.

  “You’ll look out for my dog?”

  “I’m going to read you your rights now, Pinky.”

  “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  Hung read from a small card. When she’d finished, “Do you understand what I just told you?”

  “Yeah,” Atoa said. “I’m fucked.”

  “Do you still want to talk to us?”

  “Like I got a choice?”

  “Yes, Pinky. You do. And you have the right to counsel.”

  “What the fuck. Let’s go.”

  “Tell me about Kealoha and Faalogo,” Hung said.

  “Guys were sleeved.” Atoa used the prison term for tattoo-covered arms.

  “Why the hit?”

  “All I know is shit I overheard.”

  Hung gestured “give it to me” with one hand.

  “L’il Bud told Ted he wanted to lay it on hard.”

  “Ted Pukui.”

  Atoa nodded.

  “You’re saying T’eo was sending a message?”

  “You deaf or something? Yeah, that’s what I’m saying I heard.”

  “What message?”

  “It ain’t healthy dealing in another man’s mix.”

  “Who was this message for?”

  “The guy sent Kealoha and Logo here.”

  “And that would be?”

  Atoa appeared as though he were undergoing a change of mind about cooperating. Hung repeated her question.

  “Some guy in California.”

  “Got a name?”

  I was certain static distorted Atoa’s answer.

  But Lô and Hung’s shock was obvious.

  “Spell that, please,” Hung said.

  Atoa did.

  My face went hot as the room shrank around me.

  I FELT A HAND ON MY SHOULDER.

  Looked up.

  Two blue eyes mirrored the confusion in mine.

  “Did he say Al Lapasa?” Ryan asked.

  “That’s what I heard.”

  Voices continued buzzing through the speaker.

  “Wasn’t the guy in the box at JPAC named Alexander Lapasa?”

  I nodded glumly.

  “The guy wearing Spider Lowery’s dog tag.”

  “It has to be a coincidence.”

  “A coincidence the size of Sierra Leone.”

  “There must be dozens of Al Lapasas,” I said. “Besides, Atoa is talking about a Samoan from California. Lapasa was Italian, and from Honolulu.”

  Ryan and I refocused on the interview. Hung was now asking about L’il Bud T’eo.

  “L’il Bud’s one bad dog.” Atoa shifted in his seat. “People cross him, they pay.”

  “People cross me they pay.” Even with poor transmission, Lô’s voice sounded cold. “But I don’t have them shot.”

  “This is bullshit.” Atoa again rubbed his face.

  “Talk about Al Lapasa,” Hung said.

  “All I know is what I heard.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “Lapasa’s an OG. Owns a bar in Oakland.”

  I felt my stomach clench. OG. Original gansta. Did that mean Lapasa was older than your average banger?

  “SOS?” Hung asked.

  Atoa nodded. Two vertical lines now burrowed up the bridge of his nose.

  “Go on,” Hung said.

  “Kealoha and Faalogo were tipped up with Lapasa.”

  “And?”

  “That’s all I heard.”

  “You’ve got what I’d call selective hearing.”

  Atoa’s gaze slid to Lô. Held. The detective stared back, face and body perfectly still.

  Atoa’s mouth drew sideways in a half smile that suggested not a hint of humor. “I thought cops had height requirements.”

  “I’m an exception.”

  “Yeah? Why’s that?”

  “Because I’m such a mean sonofabitch.”

  Atoa slumped back and crossed his arms. “I got nothing more to say.”

  “Here’s something to think about.” Lô leaned forward and laced his fingers on the tabletop. “Ever hear of Nickie Lapasa?”

  Atoa pushed out his lips and looked at the ceiling.

  “Nickie Lapasa’s connected, Pinky. I’m not talking Facebook or My fucking Space. I’m talking real mean men with real bad attitude. And you know what you did, you dumb shit? You messed with Nickie’s life.”

  Atoa’s eyes stayed up, but the jittery feet belied his fear.

  Lô cut a glance to his partner, then tipped his head toward the door.

  Hung reached over and flicked a switch.

  The screen went blank.

  Ryan and I met Hung and Lô in the hall.

  “Well played,” Ryan said.

  Lô and Hung both smiled.

  “You think there’s a link between Al Lapasa in Oakland and Nickie Lapasa in Honolulu?” Ryan asked.

  Lô shrugged. “Maybe yes, maybe no. Can’t hurt to let Pinky think about it.”

  “Is he aware who Nickie is?”

  “Who knows?”

  “Now what?” Ryan asked.

  “Now we let the little bastard sweat for a while,” Lô said.

  “Will it take long to background Al Lapasa?” I asked.

  Hung checked her watch.

  “You guys get coffee. I’ll call Oakland.”

  When we got to her desk Hung was drawing stick figures and shoulder-cradling the phone, obviously on hold. Lô placed a Styrofoam cup on her blotter. She started to say thanks, instead spoke into the mouthpiece.

  “Yeah, I’m here.” She readied her pen. “Shoot.”

  Lô, Ryan, and I sat and removed the lids from our containers.

  I sipped. The swill tasted like mud puddle runoff. Or at least how I imagined mud puddle runoff would taste.

  Hung said “Uh-huh” and “OK,” asked a few questions. Finally, “That’s it?”

  Pause.

  Hung thanked the person on the other end and disconnected.

  “This is what I got.” Clicking and reclicking the pen. “The guy’s full name is Alexander Emanuel Lapasa.”

  Again, the world receded. This couldn’t be happening. First Spider. Now Lapasa.

  “—U.S. citizen, born twelve fourteen forty-one right here in the lovely metropolis of Honolulu.”

  I blinked. Blinked again.

  “Lapasa’s got no sheet, but the Oakland cops have been watching him for several years. He owns a dive called the Savaii. An SOS hangout. They think he runs drugs out of the bar.”

  “The locals can’t nail him?” Lô sounded disgusted.

  “Lapasa maintains a low profile, keeps layers between himself and the street.”

  “How long has he been in Oakland?” My voice sounded wrong, high and strained.

  “Lapasa’s name started popping up in the midnineties, when he bought the bar. But they think by then he’d been in the area awhile.”

  “Did you get a Social Security number?”

  Hung looked at me oddly, but read from her notes. I jotted the digits.

  “He’s SOS?” Ryan asked.

  “Yeah, but the guy’s in his sixties now.”

  Lô snorted. “A model citizen with a schnauzer and a lawn.”

  “Don’t know about the dog,” Hung said. “But Lapasa paid cash for both the bar and his condo.”

  “Now what?” Ryan asked.

  “Now we get Al hauled across the ocean and booked in a cage,” Hung said.

  “Based on the statement of an eighteen-year-old j
unkie looking to save his ass?” Lô tipped back in his chair and planted one foot on an open desk drawer. “We won’t get a warrant and there’s no way Lapasa’s going to budge.”

  “I may have an idea,” I said.

  All eyes turned to me.

  “May I use your phone?” I asked Ryan.

  I called Danny from the hall. Speaking in hushed tones, I explained where I was and what had happened.

  “Son of a friggin’ gun. Do you have a DOB and SSN?”

  I read them off, waited while Danny checked Xander Lapasa’s file. It didn’t take long.

  “It’s him.”

  Then who was 1968-979, the corpse found wearing Spider Lowery’s dog tag? Neither Danny nor I posed the question aloud.

  One thing troubled me. I’d laid it on Ryan, but where had I gotten the notion?

  “Wasn’t Xander Lapasa Italian?” I asked.

  “What made you think that?”

  “You said there were rumors Alex Senior was mobbed up.”

  “I meant that in a general sense. Organized crime. Not the Italian Mafia.”

  “You said he looked like some guy on The Sopranos.”

  “In that snapshot he did.”

  I’d been guilty of buying into an ethnic stereotype. I’d made an assumption based on Xander’s looks, the sound of his name, and rumors of Mafia ties.

  “Remember the story about old Alex coming to Hawaii, inheriting the gas station, going into real estate?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “He came to Honolulu from Samoa.”

  I took a moment to let the new reality sink in. Then, “May I tell the cops what we know about Xander Lapasa and the remains at JPAC?”

  “You trust them to keep it confidential?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I don’t see a problem. Why? What are you thinking?”

  I outlined my plan.

  “Could work,” Danny said.

  “We may need your help in securing Nickie’s cooperation,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah. I’m Mr. Persuasive. I was just shot down again by Plato Lowery.”

  “Does he know about the path slides Beasley found and submitted?”

  “No.”

  “Anyway, will you phone Nickie?”

  “Yeah. Why not.”

  “It’s all gone to hell, hasn’t it, Danny?”

  “Yeah. It has.”

  “Does Merkel know?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’ll keep you in the loop. And, Tempe.”

  “Yes.”

  “Be careful.”

  The others were as I’d left them. So were the cups. I’m convinced no one drinks squad room coffee. You pour the stuff, let it cool, then toss it out.

  I explained the situation at JPAC. The unidentified bones in the box. The ID of 1968-979 as Xander Lapasa. Nickie Lapasa’s refusal to allow family members to submit DNA. The detectives listened without interrupting.

  When I’d finished Lô spoke first.

  “So you think Al Lapasa could be this guy who went missing in Vietnam forty years ago?”

  “His date of birth and Social Security number match those on file for Xander Lapasa.”

  “How’d he get from Nam to California?”

  “I don’t know. But that’s usually where the planes landed.”

  “What do you propose?” Hung asked.

  “We all want Al Lapasa in Honolulu, right?”

  Nods all around.

  “You can’t get a warrant for extradition based solely on Atoa’s statement, and it’s unlikely he’ll make the trip voluntarily.”

  More nods.

  “So we trick him.”

  “The guy’s shrewd.” Hung sounded skeptical. “If he is expanding his distribution into Hawaii, why would he come here and place himself at risk?”

  “Double that if he’s been living quasi-undercover for forty years.” Lô sounded as dubious as his partner.

  “Could Lapasa know Kealoha and Faalogo are dead?” Ryan asked.

  “Unlikely,” I said. “The media reported nothing about the remains. And Perry hasn’t verified the IDs.”

  “But if Lô’s CI knew, wouldn’t SOS?” Ryan pressed.

  “L’il Bud T’eo and his buddies are USO,” Lô said. “Lapasa and his crew are SOS Crips. Word might not travel across gang lines all that fast.”

  “What’s your plan?” Hung asked.

  “We have Nickie Lapasa’s lawyer call Al Lapasa and say he has a client who’s been searching for him for years. He’ll say that Al is mentioned in Theresa-Sophia’s will.”

  “Why would Nickie go along with something like that?”

  “We tell him Al could be his long-lost brother.”

  “You just told him his long-lost brother is lying on a shelf at the CIL.”

  “We say that since Danny talked to him, researchers at the CIL discovered they could be wrong, that Xander could be this man living in Oakland. We play to Nickie’s ego. Tell him he was probably right all along.”

  “What makes you think Nickie isn’t already hip? If he does have drug connections, and Al Lapasa is in the game, why wouldn’t Nickie be aware of who Al really is?” Lô asked.

  “Because Xander didn’t want Nickie to know. For whatever reason, he’s been lying low for forty years. JPAC queries spanning that entire time have obtained not a single hint to suggest any family member suspected Xander was alive. And I doubt Nickie knows the story on every drug dealer up and down the West Coast.”

  “In this little fantasy, how’d Nickie finally track Al down?” Lô.

  “The administrator of Theresa-Sophia’s estate has had lost heirs investigators searching off and on for years. They finally found him. Look, it’s worth a shot. Al may believe that he has to come to Honolulu, meet with the executor of the will, and prove his identity in person. I’m sure the attorney can come up with legal jargon that sounds convincing.”

  A few moments passed while everyone considered my idea.

  “Al was born in Honolulu,” Hung said. “Even if he’s not your long-lost Xander, he might figure he’s got relatives here he knows nothing about.”

  “He’ll hit the Internet, learn the Honolulu Lapasas are loaded, get greedy, get sloppy.” Lô was coming around.

  “And if he is Xander Lapasa, it’s even more likely he’ll buy into the story,” I said.

  Lô and Hung exchanged glances. I knew what they were thinking.

  “If you want to try selling this guy a line, we’ve got no objection,” Lô said. “But we can’t compromise the Kealoha-Faalogo investigation. If this falls apart without Al ever leaving Oakland, this is strictly a CIL inquiry. My partner and I never heard any of this.”

  “Any of what?” I asked.

  “So,” Ryan said. “Who calls Nickie?”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  I retraced my steps to the hall.

  DANNY INSISTED ON RECIPROCITY. THOUGH HE DOUBTED THE scheme would succeed, he’d call Nickie if I’d take one more run at Plato.

  I agreed.

  Back in the squad room, I gave Lô and Hung a thumbs-up.

  We chatted a moment, then Ryan and I left. Everyone said they’d keep in touch.

  Little did we know how quickly we’d reconvene.

  Ryan and I stopped for dim sum at the Chinatown Cultural Plaza Shopping Center. As Ryan made selections from an armada of carts, I called Plato Lowery.

  “When will you people give up? I told that French guy and I told that army guy. No. N. O. This is harassment.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, sir.”

  “I do.”

  “We don’t mean to offend. We’re just puzzled by your refusal to cooperate in a small way.”

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  “My colleagues and I want to get it right.”

  “Then send my boy home and leave us be.”

  Conversation hummed around me. Glassware clinked.

  “Mr. Lowery, may I ask why you
won’t submit a sample for DNA testing?”

  “No. You may not.”

  Through a window I looked across at the statue of Sun Yat-sen. He looked as unbending as Plato sounded.

  “The process isn’t painful,” I said.

  “Painful? I’ll tell you what’s painful. Having someone tell you your boy ain’t your boy. That’s painful. That’s painful as hell.”

  “Sir, that’s not—”

  “You people got no idea the hurt you can cause.”

  Lowery was growing more strident with every word.

  “All these years I’ve been telling myself the past is past. Those doctors and nurses with their needles and probes and fancy words. It was crazy. They were crazy. Those fools and their tests nearly cost me my family.”

  The old man’s voice sizzled through the handset pressed to my ear.

  “And the damndest part? They all died anyway. Spider. Tom. Harriet. In the end, all that science didn’t make one spit of difference.”

  I looked over to see Ryan studying my face.

  “Now the army comes along wanting to churn the whole mess up again. I didn’t believe nothing then, and I don’t believe nothing now. It’s done. Spider was my boy. He died in the war. That’s it. Done. You got it?”

  I found myself listening to empty air.

  “He sounded a bit overwrought.” Ryan placed a dumpling on my plate.

  “A bit. That’s the largest number of words I’ve ever heard him connect.”

  “Why so distressed?”

  “I’m not really sure.” I set Ryan’s phone on the table. “Half of what he said didn’t make sense.”

  “Like what?”

  I tried to reconstruct Plato’s outburst in my mind.

  “Basically, he doesn’t trust doctors or science.”

  “I gather he won’t be submitting a swab.”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Now what?”

  I raised frustrated hands. “We work with what we’ve got.”

  Danny rang as Ryan was paying the bill.

  His task had gone far better than mine.

  Nickie Lapasa wanted answers concerning his brother. He and his attorney would concoct a convincing scenario. The attorney would contact Al Lapasa. Nickie would phone when he had news.

  I was pleased. But stunned.

  So was Ryan. Did Nickie have reasons other than closure on Xander?

  That night the clouds and mist gave way to rain. Rivulets ran down the glass doors opening onto my balcony. Now and then a gust snuck in and rattled the frame.