No Bill? Then she would turn to Tessa Kaholakula. Somehow, Tessa seemed to be an especially appropriate confidante. Something was happening that the police could do nothing about. Of course, there was really no reason for thinking Tessa could do anything about it either.
* * *
Lehua decided to walk part way to the University. She had forgotten to call her cousin, but then decided he must be at work and would not be able to look at the car until five anyway. She needed the walk, and knew at least one of Kailua’s roving fleet of cabs would soon come within hailing distance, once she got down to tourist-crowded Alii Drive.
Cutting across the civic playground, she was only half aware of the young players vying to drop the ball into the basket and, for the most part, failing dismally to do so. One over-ardent thrower bounced the ball off the backboard and it came toward her. As she raised her hands to intercept it, it stopped in mid-air, flew back above the heads of the children and arched over the hoop, plopping in without touching the rim. The young heads followed the path of the ball, then turned as one to look at her, while she hastily retreated toward the street to find a taxi. The ten minute ride to the University barely gave her time to collect her thoughts.
The greeting was the usual one. “Clear off a chair and sit down,” Tessa said, accepting back the board Lehua had brought along in a grocery sack. “How’d your interview with Anuenue go?”
“I guess I should have brought along the tape I made too, but there have been some distractions.” Lehua could not resist smiling at her own understatement. Tessa lifted two heavy dark eyebrows in question. Lehua obliged her with a graphic description of the attempted rape.
“His arm seemed to be completely out of its socket,” Lehua said.
“You mean he started to attack you and then fell apart?”
Lehua shook her head. “I mean something knocked him apart. At least that’s what it looked like.”
The dark brown face looked skeptical, and Lehua could feel her own annoyance growing as she caught the expression.
“Are you sure that’s what happened?” Tessa asked. “It must have been pretty dark along that alleyway.”
“Not so dark I couldn’t see what he was planning to do, and not so dark I couldn’t see something prevented him from doing it.”
Tessa shook her head, and Lehua’s annoyance began to change to anger. Tessa’s next words completed the change.
“Could you have imagined all that?”
Lehua pointed to a pen on Tessa’s desk. “Toss me that pen!”
Surprised at the sudden shift of topic, Tessa nevertheless reached for the pen and threw it with an underhand motion across the desk. Lehua made no move to catch it as the pen stopped in mid air, then flew off at a right angle across the room.
Tessa’s eyes opened wide in astonishment. “How did you do that?”
“I didn’t, and that’s the point. I have no idea what’s going on. I’m grateful whatever happened last night happened, but I’m also terrified at what’s going on. There’s some kind of force around me that strikes out against anything approaching me.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“I know you can’t. I couldn’t believe it either. Now I have to believe it, because whatever it is, it’s real.”
“Why did you come to me?”
“I don’t know, except I had the feeling you might have an explanation. Maybe that was just wishful thinking.”
Tessa furrowed her brow in thought. “Maybe I do have an explanation, but it’s pretty farfetched.”
Lehua shrugged. “A farfetched explanation is a big improvement over none.”
“Have you ever heard of mana?”
“Mana? I think so. Wasn’t that one of the old Polynesian gods. No! It’s the Hawaiian word for power or strength, or some such thing.”
“It’s not a god, but the gods were supposed to possess it. I guess you could call it some kind of divine quality. Later, the word came to apply to almost any kind of ability. Traditionally, it was something that, among living beings, only alii were supposed to have. That was why there were so many taboos surrounding them. They convinced everyone else it was much too dangerous a force for the average person to fool around with, and they claimed it protected them from being attacked. It was a good ploy, if nothing else, a good way of maintaining fear and respect, if not actual loyalty.”
“How did a chief get this mana?”
“I don’t remember, if I ever knew. I’ll have to do some research and see what I can find out. Tell me more. Do you feel any different? Has this, whatever it is, done anything else?
“No to the first question, except I feel pretty eerie when these things happen. It swats mosquitoes, by the way.”
“That makes sense. After all, mosquitoes are attacking you.”
“I guess it has a sense of humor too.” Lehua described the basketball incident.
Tessa laughed. “You’d be a sensation in the NBA.”
Lehua gave a wry laugh in return. “And me who couldn’t even hit the backboard in high school gym classes.”
“I wouldn’t count on mana having a sense of humor,” Tessa said, after a pause. “So far as I know, it’s always represented as being completely impersonal, like electricity. I can’t quite picture an electric generator doing anything for laughs. Is there anything else you noticed about it?”
“No. Except I don’t know what I’ll do if someone tries to shake hands with me. I took a chance with that pen trick. It could have flung it right back into your face for all I know about how it’s going to act.”
“There does seem to be intelligence behind it, some kind of decision-making process. Maybe it’s more like a programmed computer than an electric generator.”
“Yes, but there’s no guarantee the decisions will be the right ones. The purpose behind an upraised tire iron is pretty clear, but I’m not sure what will happen if someone waves at me.” She paused, then added, “Right now I’m hoping it will just go away.”
“You need to go to the police.”
“To tell Sam Silva what I told you? C’mon, Tessa! He thinks I’m pretty wacky already doing all this investigative reporting. If I come up with a weird story like this one, he’ll lock me up.”
“You still have to tell him about the attempted rape. That creep will be threatening someone else soon, someone not as well protected as you.”
“I doubt it, not in the condition he was in when I last saw him. But I will drop by the station.”
“In the meantime, I’m going to find out all I can about mana.”
* * *
Captain Silva had always seemed best at relaxing. Today, his two-hundred-and-fifty-pound bulk overflowed the armless swivel chair he occupied behind his desk, and he was doing what he did best.
“So you’ve got a crime to report? Well you’ve come to the right place. What form of corruption are you unveiling these days?”
Lehua had known the Silvas since her early childhood. Her closest friend had been Sam’s daughter, up to the day she married and moved to the Mainland with her engineer husband, and they still corresponded regularly. The friendship and early acquaintance with Sam Silva had paid off in Lehua’s reporting, and she had been careful to avoid abusing the relationship. She always made sure that, for what information and help she gained, her own findings would be made available to him whenever possible.
Skeptical as he had been of the usefulness of her work, the Captain had eventually grown to respect the perseverance that went into the investigations and, increasingly, to value the material they uncovered.
“This is more personal. It’s an attempted rape.”
Sam slowly shifted forward in his chair. “You? Where? When?”
“I was just leaving the newspaper office, late last night. My car wouldn’t start, so I decided to walk home. I’d just started down the alley behind Alii Drive when this guy wearing a mask jumped out from behind the bushes with a tire iron in his hand. There wasn’t much question
about what he had in mind. He said something like, ‘I’ll kill you, if you scream.’ Just about then he stumbled, and I think he must have broken his arm, because he turned and ran off toward Alii with it hanging down by his side.”
As she spoke, Sam flicked on the intercom. “Bring me the personals we found on that body last night.”
Instead of going back to her description, Lehua asked, “Body?”
Sam nodded. “I think you’ve cleared up a mystery for us. We found a body lying face down in the gutter in an alley connecting Alii to the parking lots. He was unzipped, though he didn’t much look like he was ready for any action. He was wearing a stocking mask, had a badly broken arm and a face that looked like hamburger when we finally managed to peel the mask off and look at it.
“Someone must have stomped the bastard after he ran away from you, though I can’t see why. Robbery obviously wasn’t the motive. The pm isn’t in on him yet, but the pathologist’s guess is he bled to death from an artery that was torn to shreds in his arm and another that was ruptured in his neck.”
At that moment a clerk brought in a plastic bag and handed it to the Captain. Sam snapped open the ziplock. “Did you recognize him?”
“No. It was pretty dark back there. The hedge blocks the light from the neighboring lamps. Besides, how could I recognize him when he was wearing a mask?”
A faint smile crossed Sam’s face. “You’d recognize me wouldn’t you, even if I was wearing a mask?”
Lehua could not suppress a smile in return, as she tried to picture Sam’s formidable bulk topped by a mask. “You have to admit you’re different, Sam. Anyway, there was nothing familiar about him.”
Sam opened the wallet which had been one of the bag’s contents. “His name was Martin Reveille, a haole. Came from the Mainland about a year ago and worked for the Kona News. I’ve already checked with Cy, and he says Reveille worked in the press room and on the loading dock, mostly in clean-up and as a gofer. Are you sure you didn’t know him?”
“The name doesn’t ring a bell. I suppose I must have seen him around if he’s been working there that long.”
“Sure as hell he saw you around.” Sam reached into the bag and pulled out a three-inch piece of plastic molded around metal arms. “Your story is an explanation for this. It’s the rotor out of your car. It’s not too hard to piece things together. He saw you come to work late, figured this was his chance, popped the hood, took off the distributor cap and yanked the rotor. Then he snapped the cap back on. It’s an old stunt. Easiest way to disable a car without leaving a lot of wires hanging around loose. Once he had everything else back in place he hid in the bushes, waiting for you to come out, assuming if you couldn’t start that old Ford of yours you’d walk home by the straightest path, right past those bushes.”
Lehua shuddered. “That means he may have been watching me for months, just waiting and planning.”
“That’s likely, but there’s one thing for sure.”
“What’s that?”
“His watching and waiting and planning days are over for good.”
* * *
“As long as I’m here, there’s something else I should tell you about.” Lehua shifted uneasily in her seat, knowing what Sam’s response would be. After a moment, she continued. “I got a call this morning. A warning call. Someone—it was a male voice—said if I didn’t stop writing about the Angel Tong I’d have acid thrown in my face.” Lehua watched Sam, waiting for the explosion which was only a moment in coming.
“Dammit! How many times have I told you you’re playing with fire? I don’t have enough men to give you twenty-four-hour-a-day protection, but I’ll see to it the patrol checks through your neighborhood regularly. Can’t you switch to the society pages or something?”
Lehua did not bother to show her anger. She knew Sam would do what he could, and he certainly would not change his view about what she was doing or what she should be doing.
“Maybe we should arrange some kind of a signal,” he said. “Got anything you can put in the window if you need help? A picture or something?”
Lehua thought a moment. “Yes. I’ve got a big photo of a cat against a red background. That should show up. I’ll be careful. I’ll lock my doors and all that.”
“Put the picture upside down in the window if you need help.” Sam paused. “Put it on its side if you just want us to watch the place and tail someone who comes out. The main thing is for you to stay off the streets at night. Your next attacker may not have the bad luck of stumbling and breaking an arm. Better yet, why don’t you move in with us until all this blows over? Jennie figures you’re one of the family anyway. Laverne can sleep on the couch, and you can have her bedroom.”
“No way. It’s one thing for me to stick out my neck, but I’m not about to endanger you and the rest of the family. I’ll settle for the police protection, and I will be careful.”
“We’ll put a tap on your phone, tape any messages, and put someone to monitoring it. If there’s another threat, they can call in for a trace. Not that the phone company is ever much good at tracing a call, but maybe we’ll luck out. If you get another call, keep them talking. At least we should be able to get a voice print.”
Chapter 5
Walking back to the apartment house in the bright sunshine was a pleasant antidote to the confused thoughts which had been running through her mind. The sky was such a clear blue it was hard to look at, and the white puffs of clouds drifting down from the slopes out to the ocean sent shadows racing across the landscape. There was only enough wind to stir up the mild perfume from the plumeria planted along the street.
Lehua stopped at a newspaper box, dropped in a couple of coins and removed the day’s edition. Her article began at the bottom of page one and picked up again on page six. So far as she could see, Cy hadn’t blue-penciled a thing. Steering carefully around the few pedestrians—mainly tourists going by in pairs—she walked up the three steps to her small apartment house and used her key to let herself into the long hallway leading to the stairs up to her rooms.
At the foot of the stairs she stepped back to allow someone coming down to pass by. He didn’t. Instead, reaching a rubber-gloved hand into his pocket, he pulled out a wide-mouth jar, snapped off the lid and threw the contents at her face. The liquid arched out, curved around in mid-air, and ribboned back at the attacker. In a moment his screams of terror and pain changed to a hoarse gurgling sound. Clutching at his face in agony, he doubled up and rolled down the last few steps, only to be thrown violently aside. Crashing against the wall, he then fell a few feet away from Lehua. A door opened at the top of the stairs, another from the landlady’s ground-floor rooms. Mystified faces watched the writhing form, hands tearing at the liquid already turning the skin a fiery red.
The hoarse screaming continued, but the voice was no longer human. For a fleeting moment, Lehua remembered the one and only pig hunt she had gone on with her brother. A wounded and dying boar had made the same rasping noises.
No one moved toward the squirming figure at the foot of the stairs. The landlady ran back to her room to call the police.
It occurred to Lehua water might help to dilute the acid, and she ran after the landlady to fill a container at her kitchen sink. By the time she returned, several people were standing around the man, who was now retching and coughing. The water seemed to do little. More people came in from the street. Finally, a patrolman arrived.
Later, at the station, Captain Silva shook his head in amazement as he surveyed the petite figure of the intended victim. “To say the least, you’ve been damn lucky. If he hadn’t tripped on the stairs, you’d have had a pint of hydrochloric acid running down your face.”
“How is he? Who is he?” Lehua marveled at the tone of her own voice. How can I possibly sound so calm? She wondered.
“The answer to the second question is we don’t know. He wasn’t carrying any ID. We’ve taken his prints, but it will be a while before we get a report back on them. The
answer to the first question is ‘bad.’ He’ll never see again. His face is a mess, and he must have opened his mouth to scream when it happened, because the inside of his mouth and tongue are so badly burnt he can’t talk and never will. Some even got to his lungs.”
“Can he communicate at all?”
“Yeah. He’s been writing notes, and guess what? He started off by saying you threw the acid at him. Unfortunately for his story, we’ve already located where he got it, at that ornamental fence shop in the industrial district where they make stuff to order. They reported a break-in last night, and the acid was the only thing missing.”
A faint smile flickered across Sam Silva’s broad features. “I can’t quite picture you smashing through a skylight at eleven-thirty and dropping fifteen feet to the floor to steal some acid, especially since that was right around the time you were having a run-in with another attacker of a different sort. The fact he was wearing rubber gloves doesn’t exactly fit well with his version of what happened, either.”
“What’s he saying now?”
“He’s hacking and coughing a lot, so the doctor kicked us out before we could find out much more. I have a man standing by to question him again as soon as he can get an OK from the doc. In any case, he’s not saying who hired him to do the acid bit. Did you recognize him?”
Lehua shook her head. “I saw he was Asian, that he had something in his hand he was about to throw at me, and then the next thing I knew he was writhing and screaming on the floor.”
“Anyway, that settles it. Whoever’s behind it isn’t fooling. I’ll see to it you have someone with you twenty four hours a day.”
Mana Page 4
