Mahu

by Neil S. Plakcy

  She turned and walked away fast, dodging a party of six with two babies, and two busboys carrying infant seats behind them. The waiter was right on Treasure’s heels with our dinners. We started to eat. “That Luz Maria’s got to be the same one from the black tar bust,” I said.

  “Got to be. That would mean Tommy was behind the drug deal. You think she was mad that things didn’t go as planned, maybe blamed Tommy?”

  It was my turn to shrug. “It’s a possibility. Maybe this Dong Shi-Dao will know something useful.”

  Akoni was about to answer me when the restaurant erupted into song. It was someone’s birthday at the next table, and we had to wait while the waiters sang a Chinese-accented Happy Birthday to him.

  “We’ll put him at the top of our list tomorrow,” Akoni said. He bent over his teacup, and I couldn’t help noticing the way his black hair stood up in stiff bristles at the top of his head, falling into spiky bangs on his forehead. Funny, I thought, you can work with somebody for years and never really look at him.

  I thought about the way Norma had been able to look at me and see who I was, see something others hadn’t seen, or at least that I’d tried to hide for years. I wondered what Akoni was hiding, and if it would change my opinion of him.

  I picked up my fortune cookie and cracked it open. None of the numbers looked particularly lucky to me, but then I wasn’t feeling very lucky. I flipped it over to read the fortune. “Your future will be very interesting,” it said.

  I read it out loud to Akoni. “I’ll bet.” His read, “You are talented in many fields.” He said, “Be nice if investigation was one of them,” and threw it in the ashtray.

  * * *

  The next morning I called Harry at six. “Hey, brah, you want surf?”

  “Shit, Kimo what time is it?”

  “Come on. I’ll meet you at the park in fifteen minutes.”

  “Asshole,” he said, and hung up. But he was there, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The sky was gray and there were still street lights on, and the water was cold when you first stepped into it. But I felt connected, and peaceful. Happy, almost.

  We didn’t speak much, just paddled out beyond the waves and then surfed back in, and passed at least an hour that way. By then the sun was up and I was feeling great. There was a little tightness in my thighs and my lower back, but it was a good feeling, reminding me I had muscles. I watched Harry off and on, saw that he was starting to gain his confidence again. It reminded me of the endless hours we’d spent as kids at that very beach, surfing waves that had seemed so much bigger then. Energy seemed to flow back and forth between us, rising up out of the salty water and the trade winds.

  We walked back through the streets of Waikīkī together when we were finished. We passed a man with a bulldog on a leash. The dog was wearing a flowered hat, and two Japanese women stopped to take its picture.

  An elderly woman wearing headphones and towing a shopping cart stopped in front of us, in the middle of the sidewalk, and began to do a little dance. “Waikīkī,” Harry said. “You gotta love it.”

  I picked up coffee for myself and Akoni on the way into the station, and we arrived at the same time. “Just to let you know, I’ve got a doctor’s appointment at nine,” Akoni said. “You’ll have to keep things together here for an hour or so.”

  “How about we try for an appointment with Dong Shi-Dao,” I said, picking up the phone. Just to show that luck comes when you don’t particularly need it, I got through to him right away and scheduled a meeting for eleven a.m.

  I called Peggy and left a message for her, letting her know we were going to need a subpoena for Tommy Pang’s cell phone records. Akoni left a little later, and I got caught up in a bunch of Internet articles on tongs, not noticing the clock until it was almost too late. I had just enough time to make it to Dong Shi-Dao’s office downtown. I sprinted home for my truck, racing past eager families on their way to or from the beach. It was a nice day, and sprinkled among the commuters on the drive downtown were bunches of tourists, driving rented convertibles with the top down or strolling along Fort Street gawking at the high-rise office buildings. I could almost hear them commenting how our business district looks just like home, only with palm trees.

  My favorite thing is when mainland tourists ask dumb questions, like if I ever get over to the States, or if we accept all the regular U.S. coins, or wonder if they have to dial any special telephone codes to call back home.

  I parked in a garage and cut across King Street to Smith, where the office was, in a small one-story building sandwiched between high-rises. There was a nice trade wind coming off the ocean, and the sky was a deep blue dotted with small white clouds. I had a moment of real longing, wanting to chuck this case and go back to the beach. Then I ran into Akoni.

  Just as we met, I saw a woman come out of Dong Shi-Dao’s office. She looked both ways, then set off in the direction opposite us.

  “She looks familiar, doesn’t she?” I asked. Akoni and I walked a little faster, trying to catch up to her.

  “We’ve seen her before,” he agreed.

  She stopped at the corner of Smith and Hotel to let a bus pass, and turned her profile toward us. “I know,” I said, stopping short. “It’s Luz Maria.”

  NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK

  Without any communication between us, we both took off after her, but she was already a block away, heading mauka on Smith Street. We got stuck at a traffic light, and by the time we got across she had disappeared in a crowd of tourists.

  We split up and circled the block in opposite directions, but neither of us could pick her up again. “She was Tommy’s mistress,” I said. “You think maybe now she’s moved over to his friend?”

  “We’ll find out,” Akoni said as we headed back to Dong Shi-Dao’s office, where we entered a small reception area, painted white with a few simple watercolors on the wall. A very attractive Vietnamese woman in her early twenties was sitting behind a small desk typing from a handwritten page. She looked up as we came in.

  We explained our business, and she got up from her desk and knocked at a door behind her. Then she opened the door, stuck her head in and announced us. “Please come in,” she said, turning back to us. “Would you like coffee? Tea?”

  We both declined. Dong Shi-Dao was a Vietnamese man in his mid-forties, wearing a khaki-colored Armani suit and a black turtleneck. He stood up to shake our hands. His grip was solid and firm and his voice carried echoes of some kind of untraceable accent. “Let me say I want to do everything I can to help you solve this terrible crime. Tommy Pang was a dear friend of mine. I was horrified to hear that he had been murdered.”

  “How did you know Tommy?” I asked, as Akoni and I sat down in chairs across from Dong’s broad mahogany desk. The office was decorated with classic Chinese antiques, Persian rugs and exquisite calligraphy. It was hard to imagine Tommy Pang in these surroundings.

  “We met in Hong Kong,” Dong said. “My family left Vietnam shortly before the Communist takeover and relocated there. Tommy was already a successful businessman. We were introduced and did some business together, and gradually became friends. In 1984 his father sent for him and Tommy moved here. We continued to do business together across the Pacific until I relocated my family here. I could not consider staying in Hong Kong under Communist rule.”

  “When you say business,” Akoni asked, “Can you be more specific? What kind of business do you do?”

  “I am a trader. I find someone who wants something, and then find someone who has it. Sometimes I match them up and collect a fee; sometimes I buy the needed good and then resell it.”

  “Do you know anyone who might have had a reason to kill Tommy?”

  He shook his head emphatically. “No one at all. He was respected in the community and loved by his family.”

  “Did he ever express any anxiety to you?” I asked. “Any business deals that might not be going right, any person he had problems with?”

  Dong steepled his ha
nds, and looked down at them for a minute, then looked up at us. “How can I put this diplomatically?” he asked, not really expecting an answer from us. “Tommy was a good businessman. To be good, sometimes you have to be strong. Other people can see that as hardness. There were people Tommy dealt with who were not happy with the outcome of their dealings. But that happens to any businessman from time to time. I don’t know of anyone who felt strongly enough against him to kill him.”

  I looked at Akoni. It was obvious we weren’t going to get much more of Dong Shi-Dao. As we stood, though, I said, “By the way, I think I saw someone I knew coming out of your office as we were coming in. A young woman?”

  Dong stood with us. “Ah, yes, a friend of Tommy’s. She was looking for financial backing for a business enterprise. Sadly, I was unable to help her.”

  “That young woman was arrested in a drug deal in Waikīkī,” I said. “She and an accomplice were about to sell me a pound of heroin before someone warned them off. I know she was Tommy’s mistress, as well. Was he her backer?”

  Dong tried to look horrified. “I don’t know anything about this.”

  “We may be back with more questions,” I said. I handed him my card, which he took as if it was contaminated. “If you think of anything else you want to tell us, about Tommy or his mistress or a pound of Mexican heroin, you’ll know where to find us.”

  Dong closed his office door sharply behind us. “You think he was telling the truth?” I asked as we walked toward the garage where we had both parked.

  “About what?”

  I shrugged. “Anything?”

  “I think he probably doesn’t know who killed Tommy,” Akoni said. “And that means we’re no closer to figuring it out either.”

  “If Luz Maria was Tommy’s mistress, then he was behind the drug deal. I wonder if Dong was in it with them.”

  “You think he might have killed Tommy to take over the business?”

  “I don’t know,” I said as we reached the garage where we’d both parked. “There are a lot of pieces floating around and most of them don’t seem to fit together yet.”

  Akoni and I met up at the station, where we ate lunch at our desks, take-out sandwiches from the deli across Kalākaua Avenue, and tracked Luz Maria through the system. She and Pedro had been processed at the main station, but without any evidence, no charges had been filed. I checked my city directory for the address they’d both given, and big surprise, it didn’t exist.

  “I think we need to sit down and go over what we’ve found,” I said, leaning back in my chair.

  “Agreed.”

  “According to their accounts, Derek Pang and Wayne Gallagher were with Tommy Pang at the Rod and Reel Club around midnight.”

  “Wait a minute,” Akoni said. “What time did Treasure Chen say she left Tommy?”

  I looked at my notes. “She just says she met him at ten, when she got off her shift, and they were together for a couple of hours. That could put him back at the club at midnight.”

  “All right. Go on.”

  “Derek and Wayne say Tommy met with a cop. If that’s true, then the meeting was probably related to the deal that failed.”

  “Maybe this mystery cop is the one who tipped off Luz Maria and Pedro, and Tommy was showing his appreciation.”

  A light bulb clicked on. “Derek said he saw his father give this cop a jewelry box, the kind you’d put a bracelet or a necklace in. That could have been the thanks.”

  There was something else rattling around in my brain about a jewelry box, but I couldn’t pin it down. Finally I gave up. “Derek and Wayne say when they left, the cop and Tommy were together. Wayne says they went to the Boardwalk bar; Derek says they went up to Mount Tantalus and parked and made out for a while.”

  “Lies,” Akoni said. He reached for his coffee cup, found it was empty, and got up to refill it.

  “Well, we have to clear that up,” I said. “And we have to see if we can find the cop Tommy was with.”

  “If there was a cop, and not just the two fags blowing smoke up our asses.” He looked at me. “You’re not going to get pissed off if I use the word fag, are you?”

  “Did I ever get pissed off before? I don’t want you to change anything because of me. That’s what being partners is about. I accept you, you accept me.”

  “Deal,” he said. He took a long drink of his coffee. “So you believe that there really is a cop somewhere in this story.”

  “Too many independent sources,” I said. “Melvin Ah Wong says Tommy had a haole cop with a Portuguese name on his payroll. Derek and Wayne say there was a cop at the office that night. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.”

  “Quack, quack.”

  “Going on,” I said. “Tommy Pang was bashed in the back of the head between 1:30 and 2:30, by person or persons unknown. The event undoubtedly took place in the back alley behind the Rod and Reel Club, adjacent to the door to Tommy’s office.”

  “And our suspects would be…?”

  I started ticking them off on my fingers. “Derek Pang. Wayne Gallagher. They alibi each other, but their alibis are weak. Treasure Chen, Luz Maria, and Genevieve Pang. He’d just broken up with Treasure; she could be lying to us. Maybe they actually broke up at the office, and she got mad and whacked him.”

  Akoni shook his head. “I checked her out. Didn’t have the upper body strength.”

  “So she has a brother. I’m leaving her on the list. Maybe he and Luz Maria argued over the drug deal that didn’t work and she killed him.” I looked at Akoni. “You check out her upper body?”

  “She could do it. But Genevieve Pang couldn’t.”

  “Genevieve Pang could have hired someone. Final suspect is the mystery cop. We need to do something to try and track him down.”

  The station was particularly busy, with a pack of skateboarders in receiving. They all seemed to have streaked hair, baggy clothes and body piercings, and they all wanted to talk at once. The desk sergeant was having a hard time keeping them in line.

  “That’s a needle in a haystack, Kimo. We got thousands of cops on the force.”

  The desk sergeant was yelling at the skateboarders by then and Akoni had to move closer to my desk so he could hear me. “Yeah, but not every one has information Tommy can use,” I said. “You think we can look up Tommy’s past beefs, maybe find somebody he might have crossed paths with?”

  “Still a needle in a haystack.” Akoni was not getting convinced.

  “We could start with the black tar bust,” I said. “We know Tommy was behind that, because we’ve got a connection between him and Luz Maria. We also know somebody tipped off Luz Maria at the last minute. That could have come from a leak.”

  I finally got Akoni to nod. “All right. Let’s look at who knew about that bust.”

  The station returned to its normal buzz, voices on phones and radio traffic and the occasional siren passing outside. Sunlight came in the big window facing Diamond Head and played on my desk, illuminating the dust motes in the air. The list took a while to put together. It had been an inter-agency cooperation, after all, with information going up and down the chain of command in two different departments.

  One name jumped out at me. Evan Gonsalves, Terri’s husband. I’d known him for years and never doubted his integrity, but I remembered what Terri had said when I’d gone out to her house. How there was something wrong with Evan. I didn’t want to tell Akoni until I had time to think about it, though. We divided up the list and spent the rest of the afternoon working on it, trying to connect anyone on that list to any other investigation concerning Tommy Pang. When I couldn’t find anything that linked him to Evan, I still didn’t feel as relieved as I wished I did. Was Evan really clean, or just smart enough to cover his tracks?

  We had a list of about two dozen haole cops with Portuguese names who had all crossed paths with Tommy Pang at some point. Evan’s was there, halfway down, but I still didn’t tell Akoni about Terri’s suspici
ons. Somehow I just couldn’t break that confidence yet.

  I looked out through the big glass window that faces Kalākaua Avenue. Two teenaged surfers with Clairol-blond streaks and pants down below their hips jaywalked diagonally across the street and I shook my head, hoping there was a beat cop out front but knowing there probably wasn’t.

  “Now that we have this list, I’m damned if I know what we should do with it,” Akoni asked. “I hate like hell the idea of turning it over to internal affairs without any real evidence.”

  “We’re not giving that list to anybody yet,” I said. “We’re going to wait for a break. In the meantime, we go back to Tommy’s tong connections. Maybe there’s something there we missed. And I’d really like to know what Derek and Wayne were putting in those boxes at the Pack and Ship.”

  “I think it’s time to see those assholes again,” Akoni said.

  “Not yet. I want to wait until I’ve got something to hit them with.” I had to admit, too, I wasn’t too eager to see Wayne Gallagher again, his casually open robe or his beefy thigh. Or maybe I was eager to see him again, and that’s what worried me.

  We worked on paperwork for a couple of hours, clearing up old cases, until it was time to go home. Part of me wanted to go back to the beach and see if Tim was there again, and part of me was scared to. Once I realized I was scared, though, I knew I had to go through with it. I stood in front of the mirror fussing, thinking I needed a haircut, checking my teeth, flexing my arms once or twice. Finally I said, “The hell with it. I am who I am,” and walked out the door in my Speedos, carrying my towel.

  It was almost seven and there was still a lot of light, but I didn’t see Tim. I dropped my towel and went in for a swim, out beyond the waves and then parallel to shore, like I usually do. Coming back past the breakwater, I recognized his head, and stopped, treading water. “Hey, Tim.”

  “Hey, Kimo. Good to see you.” We shook wet hands. “You swimming?”

  “Towards the stadium.”

  “Come on.” We matched strokes down toward the stadium, then turned and swam back. By the time we got out the sun was on its way down and the sunset sails were just leaving Waikīkī. There was a little breeze and I shivered a bit as we got out of the water. “Are you nervous?” Tim asked.