Mana

by John A. Broussard

  The pieces began to fit together. Control of crimes, which had once been petty but had now become major, had slipped into the hands of a group of Chinese. Lehua had broken the name of the group in her most recent article, the Angel Tong. She still needed to fit in the faces.

  She had asked Bill for help. He had grinned and said,

  “Don’t ask me. I couldn’t name you three other Chinese on this whole island. Remember? I’m from Milwaukee. In the three years I’ve been here, I’ve spent most of my time climbing over lava flows. I haven’t even eaten in a Chinese restaurant since I got off the plane. Come to think of it, I can’t remember the last time I ate in one anywhere. Deliver me from Chinese food.”

  “You’re sure a big help.”

  Bill smiled, and then his face turned serious. “You know, if I were you I wouldn’t go fooling around with this mob, whoever they are, and especially if they’re Chinese. I’ve heard how their organizations scared the Mafia out of some of the major West Coast cities. They aren’t the kind of people you want to go making enemies of.”

  “Not to worry. This isn’t New York City, or even San Francisco. Gangsters don’t pick off reporters just because they’re writing stories about them.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Anyway, don’t go taking chances. Why don’t you investigate something innocuous like the county council or something?”

  “I’m not so sure some of those characters aren’t just as dangerous,” Lehua said with a laugh. “But if it’ll make you happy, I promise. Two more articles on the Angel Tong and I’ll move on to Big Island politics.”

  * * *

  As the information had come in, the articles had grown in size and number. Where she had originally planned a total of three, it now looked like the figure would be five, perhaps more. She hoped that, with luck, she’d be able to keep her promise to Bill. The installment she had to have in by the following morning was a crucial one, just short of naming names, but hinting at who they were. With more luck, the next article after that would fulfill the promise. Captain Silva had guaranteed police protection for one of her informants. Now, all that was needed was a smidgen more of courage on that person’s part. That would come later. There was still tomorrow’s article to write.

  With the outline now sketched out in her mind, Lehua threw off the bed sheet and headed for the shower. By the time she had reheated the coffee left over from their quick breakfast, she knew she could finish the article that morning and then move on to something of even greater interest.

  I’ve got to listen to that tape again, she thought. Maybe I’ll take it over to the University and listen to it with Tessa. She glanced up at the clock. Nine-thirty. OK. Done by twelve-thirty, then I’ll call Tessa. We can have lunch on campus. Maybe by then she’ll have heard from the guy she sent the rubbing to.

  The article did not shape itself up so easily. The first phone call to fill in a blank merely annoyed her. “No. I’m sorry,” the female voice said, “but Mr. Matsuo is gone for the day. No, I’m sorry I can’t help you. He didn’t say where he was going.”

  Matsuo had said he would be in for sure. As head of a major insurance company on the island, he seemed hardly likely to leave in the middle of the week without telling his secretary where he was off to.

  It was the second call that really aroused her suspicions. Tom Wiley was a giant of a man, a big contractor who had a reputation for lifting hundred-pound bags of cement under each arm and tossing them up on the back of a flatbed. A missing front tooth, which he had never bothered to have replaced, along with a broken nose, seemed to tell the world he had taken a lot and had given back in good measure. Today the voice on the phone did not match the looks that went with it. There was no question but that fear was the chief component weaving through the sounds coming from the earpiece. Lehua found it hard to believe.

  “You told me definitely that you saw Wai Chu Drayage trucks dumping that waste along the Steinback highway.”

  “I made a mistake. It was getting dark, and I can’t be sure.”

  The uncertainty soon became certainty, certainty that he could not identify the trucks. It had not been getting dark. Lehua knew that for sure, but Tom’s sight had gotten dim. There was no point in pushing any further. The source had dried up—with considerable outside help.

  Three more calls produced only one confirmation for a major point in her article. I suppose I should be glad I’ve got even one.

  Now the article would have to be rewritten, and she would have to go to the office to tap the files. There was still plenty of material, but the emphasis would be different. Her anger decided her to make it even more hard hitting than she had intended. Maybe that will give others the courage to speak up.

  It was almost five before she had the completed article, less a few figures to be checked out, on the monitor in front of her. Two key taps and the information transferred itself to a floppy. She stretched and got up.

  The contents of the refrigerator looked unappetizing, but she managed to scrape together a passable supper. The remains of a loaf of rye bread that had been lost behind the pickle jar for several days provided the basis for an open-face sandwich. A slice of frozen ham thawed in the microwave, a tomato fresh from the landlady’s garden, a thin slice of onion, several slightly limp lettuce leaves, along with mayonnaise, mustard, and one of the pickles from the jar that had hidden the bread, completed the meal.

  Lehua briefly admired her culinary achievement, poured herself a glass of two-percent, pulled the recorder over next to her plate, rewound the tape, and depressed the play button as she began to eat her sandwich. With the board in front of her, she tried to make some connection between the words from the machine and the mysterious symbols.

  If anything, Annie’s voice seemed even stranger as it took on the tinny overtones of the recorder, though now the language sounded somewhat more akin to Hawaiian. Checking the clock on her coffee maker, Lehua estimated the whole recital had taken just under two minutes. None of it made sense. She rewound and pressed the play button again.

  The K’s, she thought. There don’t seem to be any. Listening closely she became convinced there were no K sounds in what Annie was saying. Hawaiians wouldn’t be able to talk if they couldn’t use K’s, she decided. There was something else there, a D sound or something close to it that seemed to recur again and again. Maybe it’s the equivalent of a K? Again she rewound the tape and played it through from the beginning.

  This third time, the words, if they were words, seemed much clearer. They seemed to be telling her something, but they were like the voices she had heard in the Wailuku River one night when she and her mother and father and sister had tented out on its banks. The voices had talked, and sung, and stayed just beyond the edge of understanding.

  Annie’s falsetto ended abruptly, and she heard her own voice asking Annie to read it again. The answer, “No! One time. Only one time,” came through sharp and clear. Lehua sighed, popped the stop button, took her glass, silverware and plate to the sink, scraped off the crumbs and turned on the tap. That was when she had her first inkling something strange had happened.

  The bearer of the tidings was an annoying one. A mosquito buzzed by her ear. Bill was always amused at Lehua’s love-hate relationship with mosquitoes. They loved her. She hated them. Since they never bothered him, it was easy for him to be amused. Somehow, they took special pleasure in searching Lehua out. In bed with the lights out, if there was one mosquito in the house, it would find her, just about to doze off, and would take special delight in making strafing runs only inches above her ear.

  This evening, as this mosquito flew in ever-tightening circles above her arm, she decided she was lucky to have had the creature emerge before bedtime. Tensing, and waiting for the small insect to alight and establish itself so she could be sure to demolish it with a well-placed blow, Lehua saw it settle and start to probe. She was about to make her own move when the mosquito suddenly blew aside and fell into the dishwater.

  Windo
ws were open, but no breeze stirred in the house. Puzzled, Lehua looked around, but the first sign had made only a scant impression on her. The clock on the coffeemaker caught her eye and distracted her. She decided it was time to go to the office and finish the article. The mosquito and its fate were forgotten. More pressing matters intruded. Cy wanted to set the story first thing in the morning, and she had promised it would be on his desk when he arrived.

  * * *

  The Kona News Building was an anachronism, even by the standards of a long-established town. Built in the prosperous years after the economy had recovered from the post World War II recession, the six-story hotel had been completed too late to share in the prosperity. It soon failed, and simply looked out of place in the small village sheltering behind the sea wall on the west coast of the Big Island. By the time tourists discovered the area, it was too late for the old edifice. Purchased by the publisher at a forced sale, it seemed particularly unsuited to be a newspaper office, especially for a paper with the limited circulation of the Kona News.

  As Cy had said, “The publisher’s got more money than he knows what to do with, so let’s make the most of it.” The ample basement became the site for the presses which now filled in the hours between editions with advertising brochures, calendars, and even vanity publications. The first floor became the editorial offices, the second a warehouse for everything from extra newsprint to a badly-kept morgue of old copies, the third the art and photo department, the fourth the advertising department, the fifth and sixth provided offices for reporters and other personnel, with empty rooms left over.

  Lehua found herself happily located alone in one of the top-floor rooms overlooking Kona Bay. “The same floor and view at Waikiki would cost me five hundred a night,” she had said to Bill the first time he visited her in her office.

  * * *

  Tonight, the building was quiet. Julie, the afternoon receptionist, was just going off duty when Lehua came in. “Be sure to let the janitor know when you’re pau, Lehua. Someone went out without telling him last night and tripped the burglar alarm. Cy went into a snit because of it. He said he has enough to do around here without having to apologize to the police for his employees’ screw-ups.”

  Lehua smiled. “OK. I promise to have Joe let me out. I don’t want Cy to go into a snit because of me.”

  Settling down in her office, Lehua swiveled around to look out at Kona Village and its harbor. For the hundredth time, she told herself she would have to call the maintenance crew about having the outside of the window washed. It was a shame not to have the full benefits of the view. Sighing, she swiveled back to her desk, unloaded her briefcase, found the floppy and slipped it into the computer’s drive. In a few moments, she was scrolling the article up on the monitor.

  Again there were stumbling blocks. Data she had been sure were in her files, just were not there. Information she had been certain was specific, turned out on re-examination to be far more vague than she had remembered. Her final paragraph lacked punch. Tiring of corrections on the screen that needed even more corrections, she ran off a hard copy and sat down with a red-tipped felt pen. By eleven she was, if not pleased at the results of her labor, at least satisfied. She knew it would flush out more information from nooks and crannies she had not yet explored. It would make whoever it was that was running the clandestine and criminal show uncomfortable and perhaps even nervous.

  Slipping the final copy into an envelope, she picked up her briefcase and walked along the deserted hall to the elevator. Still working the article over in her mind, she dropped the envelope into the slot in Cy’s door, and started for the front door of the building, remembering at the last moment her promise to Julie.

  Punching ninety-nine on the receptionist’s phone brought a sleepy “Hallo” in answer to her call. “Yeah, yeah. Dis is Joe. Be up in jus’ a minute.”

  It was actually five, but the grey-haired janitor did not seem to be especially disturbed at having his routine broken.

  “Have a good night, Joe.”

  A smile spread over the dark face behind the stubble of beard, as he held the door open for her. “You too.”

  The parking lot was badly lit, but Lehua had left her old two-door near the entrance under the brightest of the lights. She had purchased the ‘72 Ford for a trifling sum when she had taken her job with the paper, and had immediately christened it “Louie.” It suited her fine. “I never have to lock it,” she told her mother, “because no one would ever expect an old clunker like that to have anything worth stealing in it. Anyway, neither of the locks work.” The theory seemed to have proven out, since nothing had ever turned up missing from her car. With help from one of her cousins, who had considerable mechanical skills, the ancient vehicle had proven to be surprisingly dependable. Lehua slipped behind the wheel. The starter churned, but nothing else happened. She gave a sigh of disgust. That was not like Louie. Sometimes his battery got weak, but he would always let her know about it well ahead of time, and she had always humored him by replacing it for him. Now…nothing but a brisk whir from the starter motor, which meant it wasn’t Louie’s battery that was bothering him.

  Getting out, she did not bother to reach behind the seat for the wooden prop she used to hold up the hood, because she knew in advance she would probably not be able to cure Louie’s illness. She shook her head as she surveyed the mute and grease-covered block of metal. No loose wires, no obvious explanation for Louie’s reluctance. She dropped the hood, toyed with the idea of rousing Joe again and calling for a taxi, then decided it would not be worth the half-hour wait Kona Kabs inevitably imposed upon its customers at this hour of the night.

  Leaving the balky car behind, she started off on the three-quarter-mile uphill hike to her apartment. Walking quickly along the badly-lit alley behind Alii Drive, she was lost in thought when the figure jumped out from the tall plumbago hedge. There was no question of his intentions. With what looked like a tire iron brandished in one hand, his face covered by a stocking, his pants unzipped and his penis erect, his words—only half understood—were, “If you scream, I’ll kill you.”

  Chapter 4

  The remarkable thing was the clarity of the visions which flashed across her mind, a mind powerless to make her move. Fixed to the spot, she suddenly saw the battered body of a rape victim she had written about months before. The spell broke only enough for her to raise her hands to ward off the inevitable blow of the upraised iron bar, and then she heard a crack like the sound of a breaking branch. A scream of pain came from behind the mask, the iron clattered to the concrete walk, the menacing figure flew backwards like a scarecrow caught in a wild gust of wind, smashed to the ground, struggled to get up and tumbled over backwards again.

  Crawling along the alley, somehow managing to get upright but tripping again against the building flanking the left side of the path, the now-moaning form got once more to its feet and managed to run unsteadily, one arm hanging uselessly. Stumbling, falling, getting up, the creature managed to make it down between the buildings almost to the neighboring street before collapsing. The light of the lone lamp revealed a trail of blood following the battered figure.

  While the memory of the scene remained clear in her mind, the time between then and when she got to her apartment was almost a blank. The fear, the need to explain to herself the terrifying and extraordinary event, the sheer physical exhaustion from her dash home overwhelmed her. Her hand shook as she locked the door. She looked at the flimsy chain, then propped a chair under the doorknob as an additional barrier. From there she went to the back door and checked the dead bolt, which was still firmly in place.

  Convinced she would be unable to sleep, she considered taking a sleeping pill, something she seldom did and always disliked doing. There was no need. Strangely, sleep came quickly, a dreamless soothing sleep. She knew she would have slept until noon if the phone hadn’t roused her shortly before ten. The befuddlement of sleep was difficult to dispel. The voice did nothing to help her gropi
ngs toward reality.

  In answer to the question, she said, “Yes, this is Lehua Watanabe.”

  “You’ve gone far enough. No more articles on the Angel Tong.”

  “What?”

  “Remember Victor Reisel.” The connection broke. Now she was awake.

  Victor Reisel. Vaguely, she remembered hearing about him. A columnist from somewhere in the distant past who had written articles on racketeering. Where was it? Detroit? Someplace like that. Then one day someone threw acid in his face, blinding him. The connection was easy to make. She reached for the phone again and dialed Cy’s number, but in the few moments it took to make the connection, she had changed her mind about what she planned to tell him. She would not leave it up to him to decide what to do.

  “Hi, Lehua. Great story. It’s being set up right now. What’s up?”

  Instead of breaking the news about the phone call, she told Cy about the rape attempt.

  “Jeezus! I wondered why your car was still in the lot when I got here this morning. You want me to have someone look at it?

  “No. I’ll have my cousin come by.”

  “Have you told the police?”

  “Uh-uh. I just woke up.”

  “There was a fire down at Captain Cook last night I wanted you to look into, but I can have Lenny do that. Christ, but I’m sorry about what happened. Take your time about getting back to work, and call the police!”

  Lehua laughed. “You’re the kind of boss all workers should have. I’ll use the time for my next article on the Tong. When do you think we should run it?”

  “The sooner the better.”

  The sooner the better, Lehua thought, as she put down the receiver and swiveled her feet to the floor. Would there be another early-morning call when the current article hit the streets? Or would there be an attempt to carry out the threat? It was time to talk to Captain Silva, to tell him about the phone call, and perhaps about the attempted rape. Why “perhaps?” Lehua was not certain who it should be, but knew it was time to confide in someone other than the Captain, and she wished Bill were there.