Primitive Secrets

by Deborah Turrell Atkinson

  “Sure.” Storm nodded. “Thanks for all your help, Hamlin.” She looked back at Rick, who was scrutinizing a bruise on her cheekbone. “Leila can give me a lift, Rick.

  I’ll call you tomorrow.” Rick looked a bit disappointed, but Storm wanted the comfort of being with Leila and Robbie, who, unlike Rick, never commented on makeup or designer handbags. Right now she didn’t want to worry that she looked a wreck. Heck, Robbie even seemed to admire it.

  Leila avoided potholes and made all her turns slowly on the way home. She and Robbie tried to talk Storm into spending the night at their house, but Storm convinced Leila that all she wanted to do was go straight to her own bed.

  Storm waved at them through her screen door, let in the cat, and marveled again at how Fang drooled a puddle on the floor at the mere sound of the can opener. When the cat was purring over her dish, she filled a glass at the sink and took a Tylenol with codeine, pondered but decided not to take two, then barely made it to her bedroom to pass out with an ice pack on her face.

  When her radio alarm went off, she hauled herself upright and opened her gritty eyes. She felt as if weights had pressed her into the mattress during the entire night, but then maybe it was Fang. She was sitting on Storm’s chest, rumbling like a ‘67 Corvette.

  Storm let the cat out and stumbled back to the bathroom, where she moaned at the apparition in the mirror. Makeup wasn’t going to fix this problem. Her nose was fat, her lips were scabby, and her dark eyes were highlighted in upside down arcs of fuchsia and violet. They gazed back with a hurt wonder that reminded Storm, with a pang, of her mother. She looked away quickly and took a very long shower.

  Chapter 5

  When Hamlin knocked on her door, Storm swung it open and grappled for her computer case, shoes, and keys, which were still scattered from last night. He looked right at her fat nose. “Remind me never to argue with you, counselor.”

  “Yeah, right.” How in the world was she supposed to face people this morning? She wished she had at least pulled off the attacker’s stocking mask. Then she’d have had a chance of hurting him in the courtroom and of taking him off the street.

  “From what I saw, he forfeited fatherhood.”

  Storm started to grin at him, then grabbed at her split lip. “Ow, don’t make me laugh.”

  Once at work, she crawled into the privacy of her office, closed the door and fired up the espresso machine. If she’d driven herself, she would have stopped at Leila’s popular downtown bakery and bought a couple of scones, maybe even a wonderful, sugary Portuguese malassada or two to soothe her battered soul. She wished she’d never looked in the mirror this morning.

  When Edwin Wang knocked on her door and it swung open, his jaw dropped. “Oh!”

  “Don’t worry, I look worse than I feel. Luckily, I don’t have to see anyone today. Thought I’d go through Hamasaki’s office like you suggested.”

  “Good idea. Glad to hear you’re not hurt too badly.” Wang took off his glasses and wiped them, probably to avoid looking at her face. “Did you bring in those papers we talked about?”

  “I forgot! I’m sorry.”

  A little tic twitched under Wang’s right eye. “Please have them tomorrow.” He smoothed the front of his perfectly tailored Hong Kong suit and marched out the door.

  Storm wilted in her chair and shook her head at her forgetfulness. She’d had a tough week, but it was time to stop letting it affect her work. She drained her coffee cup and was bracing herself to head down the hall to Hamasaki’s office when Meredith Wo, the youngest of the partners, popped her head around the corner. Her eyes opened wide.

  “Wow! What happened to you?” Meredith exclaimed.

  “I got mugged in the parking lot,” Storm said. “You picked a good week to be gone. When did you get back?”

  “Last night. I’m lagged.” Meredith’s perfectly lined almond eyes became somber for a moment. “I’m going to miss Hamasaki. Geez, I couldn’t believe it when Lorraine called me in Sydney.”

  Storm didn’t feel up to commenting on Meredith’s important travels for the firm. “Yeah. We just have to live every day with gusto.”

  Meredith raised a curved eyebrow. “Maybe you should take it easy on the gusto for a few days. Hey, have you found Hamasaki’s briefcase yet? You know if there were any cases in there for me?”

  “No, but he would have given any medical cases to you,” Storm said. All the malpractice cases in the firm went to Meredith. Hamasaki hated them. He always said he couldn’t tell the good guys from the bad and that everybody except the insurance companies and the lawyers lost. He preferred finding shelters for people’s money by discovering loopholes in tax and estate laws. The IRS was a worthy opponent and his clients were mostly happy, healthy, and wealthy.

  “Keep looking, okay?” Meredith tried to hide a glance at her watch. She squared her thin shoulders and strode from the room.

  “Right.” Storm stared at the doorway for a minute, then drew a deep breath and stood. She headed down the corridor to Hamasaki’s office.

  She forced herself to turn the doorknob and push open the door. Just inside, she stopped and let her eyes rove over the room. The police, who had come when she called the ambulance, had moved some things around, but the office looked essentially the same. She felt her neck relax. The worst was over. The room brought good memories instead of the bad one she’d feared. It felt different, though. Deserted. The mug he’d gripped was tipped over on the desktop. A pen lay in a dried stain that spread across the blotter.

  Storm walked over to the desk and picked up the mug. He had a set of four in brightly painted ceramic from a trip to Tuscany. She wouldn’t mind having those; they brought back happy memories. They’d shared his favorite teas together on many a late afternoon.

  She wandered over to the glass-fronted antique bookcase that glinted in the sunlight streaming through the picture window. He treasured his old books, for their contents more than the fact that many of them were valuable first editions. She’d love to have some of his Mark Twain and Ogden Nash volumes, the ones they’d chuckled over together. Tears blurred her vision and she reached out for the back of a nearby chair. She needed more time. It would be better to look through the office with Aunt Bitsy when her grief was not so raw.

  Storm wrote some notes down for Wang’s sake and went to his office. “I’d like to go through some of his things when the family can get together, if you don’t mind. Maybe next week?” she asked.

  “Next week’s fine. We won’t start moving things around until then anyway,” Wang said.

  His secretary popped her head in the door. “Senator Maehara is here.”

  “See you at the meeting later, Storm,” Wang said.

  Storm walked away and once in her own office, closed the door and slumped at her desk. Hamasaki’s office felt empty of his presence, the way a house does when the realtor shows it after the family has moved away. Dust motes were already dancing in his absence.

  A few minutes later, Storm blotted at her eyes and took a deep breath. She walked back down the carpeted hall to Hamasaki’s office where she gathered up the four gaudy mugs and took them back to a cluttered corner of her own domain. She closed the door, picked out a clean one, and made herself a cup of Hamasaki’s favorite tea from his stash in the office kitchenette. With her feet up on her desk, she gazed at the back of the door and felt incredibly alone.

  Chapter 6

  The telephone interrupted her contemplation. “Hello,”

  Storm mumbled.

  “I called to see if we could cheer each other up.”

  “Martin! Can you get away for lunch?”

  “That’s why I called. David can drop me at the office in a half hour if you’ll give me a lift home.”

  Martin was just what she needed. In the past, they had always been able to bring each other out of a slump or get one another out of trouble. When Martin was a junior in high
school, he got suspended for designing book jackets that were funny as hell, and usually obscene. It was a huge family crisis: shame, shame. Hamasaki nearly sent Martin to military school. But Storm loved Martin’s clever, raunchy sense of hilarity and she had finally been able to point out the humor in the situation to the distraught father.

  It was the least she could do for Martin; she hadn’t told Hamlin what happened after she got the tattoo. She never revealed to anyone that she had hidden a bottle of narcotic painkillers from her dad’s long illness in her underwear drawer. The day after her sixteenth birthday, when she’d cut her hair a half-inch long and dyed it purple, Martin had burst into her new bedroom. He’d marched right by the unpacked boxes and tipped the glass of water she held over the pile of pills she held in her hand.

  Forty minutes after his call, Martin pushed open the door. She dropped her pen, stood up, and threw her arms around him without the restraint they’d had to show at the memorial service. They held each other tighter than usual, then both stepped back, stifling tears.

  He pressed on his eyes with a thumb and forefinger and punched her in the arm with the other fist. “Stop it. Dad wouldn’t want us to be morose. He’d be happy to precipitate a family reunion. By the way, you look like shit.”

  “Gee, thanks. You don’t. Where’d you get that tan? Has Aunt Bitsy scolded you about it?”

  As teenagers who liked to surf, Storm got very brown and Martin got freckles, which was unusual for a person of Japanese ancestry. The Nisei, or second generation Japanese in Hawai’i, still prided themselves on pure, white complexions. Even before the data was out on skin cancer, Bitsy had followed her children around with bottles of sunscreen.

  He waved off her question with a self-conscious chuckle. “Hey, Chicago has beaches, too.”

  “I’m glad you’ve got time to enjoy them.”

  Martin took her arm. “How long do you have for lunch?”

  “I can get away with an hour or so. The whole place is still moving in slow motion.”

  “Me, too.”

  A note in Martin’s voice made Storm examine him more carefully. Though he was tan and healthy, his eyes seemed sad, preoccupied. His hair was short and neat. Hamasaki would have approved; he probably would have liked the tailored black kidskin vest, even over the neat black jeans. But he wouldn’t have liked the two small gold rings in Martin’s ear. She, however, smiled with approval. “I thought you’d be in a pin-striped suit.”

  “I am, sometimes. But a lot of our work is done by computer or phone.” Martin marched her through the reception area. “Can we get outta here and find someplace near the ocean? Damn, I can’t get enough of it.”

  “Let’s walk down to Aloha Tower Marketplace. We can find a good sandwich there.” She paused along with him when he stalled to take in the busy downtown square, with its people bustling about or perched eating their lunches beside the sculptures and fountains.

  “I left for a couple of years and everything’s bigger,” Martin said.

  “Yeah, the city’s growing.” They strolled down the bustling sidewalk toward the piers. In a few blocks, the aquamarine promise of water shone through a gap in the skyscrapers.

  Arm in arm, they trotted across Ala Moana Boulevard at a crosswalk and entered a shaded parking lot overlooked by the old Aloha Tower. Martin looked up at the landmark, whose clocks on the square edifice gazed in four directions. “Can you believe this used to be the tallest building in the state? It’s ten stories.”

  “No kidding. Last century?” Storm pulled him toward a line of eating establishments, all perched within twenty feet of the azure water that sucked at concrete pilings.

  “No, only seventy years ago.” He took a deep breath. “God, I’ve missed that salt smell.”

  Storm led him to an open sandwich shop and they took seats, which looked directly onto a shipping lane. A Coast Guard cutter glided by, lean and graceful.

  “What about your beaches on Lake Michigan?” Storm squinted across the harbor.

  “It’s not the same. Smells, looks, tastes different. Look, there’s a Chinese freighter—and a Russian one. In Chicago, the cargo ships are huge, named for big men who, like the ships, look a lot the same. Their sailors wear heavy black wool and the dark, cold aura of the North.” He leaned back in his chair and let the sun bathe his face.

  “How’s work going?” Storm asked.

  Martin sat up. “It’s exciting. Certain industries are changing so fast, fortunes are being made in days.”

  “Yeah? You getting in on any of it?”

  He shrugged. “Takes a lot of money, but there are opportunities out there. Dad and I were discussing one of the new health management organizations, which has a big branch here. They’re diversifying into medical equipment sales. You know, PET scanners, dialysis machines. Megabucks stuff.”

  Storm straightened in her chair. “Is that Unimed?”

  “Yeah, you know it?”

  “I was there last night.” She pointed to her black eyes. “They’re the biggest game in town, and advertising everywhere.” Storm cocked an eyebrow at him. “So he was looking into investing in them?”

  Martin looked out at the water. “He wanted me to check on what kind of equipment Unimed was going to broker and where it was made. Things like that.”

  Storm sat back and crossed her legs. “Doing research before he bought the stock?”

  Martin grunted. “Yeah, you know Dad. Wanted to check all the angles, first.”

  “What’s the rush?” Storm asked.

  Martin pressed his lips into a thin line. “Money is made and lost in seconds.”

  “And it’s legal for you to invest in something like this?”

  “Depends on who you get the scoop from. In this case, it’s legit. You interested?”

  “I’d like to take a look at some of the data.”

  “You sound like Dad.” Martin chuckled.

  “Without the money. I’m still paying off school loans.”

  A waiter cast his shadow over them and recited a list of seafood specials that made Storm decide she’d rediscovered her appetite. The food came quickly and they devoured mahi mahi sandwiches on Portuguese sweetbread buns with homemade garlic basil mayonnaise.

  The time passed too quickly. “ I’d better take you home,” Storm said. “I’ve got to get back to the office.”

  They strolled back to the office parking lot. When she drove into the sunlight from the dark underground ramp, Martin looked around her car and grinned. “Some things haven’t changed. You not only have the same car that you had years ago, you have the same stuff in it.” He craned his neck over the back of his seat. “Did you realize that you’ve got two tennis racquets, three tennis shoes…and what year is that Time Magazine—”

  Storm threw a sock that had been on the front seat at him. “Now you sound like your dad.”

  She pulled to the front of Hamasaki’s house and when Martin opened the door to the car, he threw the sock back at her. “You may be a slob, but I still love you. What are you doing for dinner? Michelle and David invited us to the restaurant.”

  Storm’s smile faded. “You need time to yourselves.”

  “Come, now.” Martin narrowed his eyes at her. “This is not the time to get aloof on me. I’ll call you this afternoon.”

  Storm examined a hangnail on her thumb. “Okay, I’ll talk to you later.”

  She backed out of the driveway. Sometimes the chattering of the Hamasaki family members, the intra-family bickering, the layered conversations without a rest between topics, tired her. She’d had too many years of solitude after her mother died. Her dad, already a quiet man, had grown more reticent in his grief and the pain of his illness and had left her to herself for long periods of time.

  When Storm got back to the office, the receptionist handed her a message that Rick had called. “Call before two,” it said.

  Not a b
ad idea. She’d like to talk to someone not so close to the events of Hamasaki’s death. Rick could give her some perspective and a strong shoulder to lean against.

  She also had another motive. Rick was chief of physical therapy at Unimed. It was a new job; a few months ago, he’d been lured away from another Honolulu hospital. She’d like to hear his thoughts on patient care and the operation of the HMO. He’d have some insight into how fast the organization was growing, what the future plans of the place might be. Maybe she could get some inside information to share with Martin.

  It was one-fifty and his answering machine picked up. No matter, he’d get the message when he got off the afternoon shift. “Hi Rick,” she said to the tape recorder. “I just got your message. How ‘bout if I come over tonight and grill? I’ll bring a good wine and whatever the fresh catch is.” She hung up and dug into some paper work on her desk.

  At three o’clock, Storm went to the conference room. Ed Wang sat at the end of the long table. Meredith Wo, to his left, was reading through work she wouldn’t set aside until the meeting began. She dug into an elegant tin candy box that sat next to her briefcase and popped a mint into her mouth without taking her eyes from the page. Wang ran his eyes over notes, but without Meredith’s level of concentration. Sometimes when a meeting began, someone would have to nudge Meredith to drag her from whatever vivid personal injury scenario she visualized on those dry sheets of paper.

  Meredith was probably the most disciplined person Storm had ever met. She was only a few years older than Storm and was the firm’s youngest partner and possibly its highest biller. Storm admired her, but wasn’t sure if she would have sacrificed her own adventures for the same professional advancement.

  Cyril Cunningham, the other senior partner, had draped his suit coat across the back of the chair to Wang’s right, yet he stood, leaning against the windowsill. The afternoon light gleamed in his silver hair and intensified his tanned, craggy face. He smiled at Storm when she entered the room.