My destination is the northern island, the only island that is visitable. The southern island is a bird sanctuary. The current is strong and against me, and I consider giving up and heading back. Mother Ocean is fierce around these islands. It seems every day I am reading in the Honolulu Advertiser a story about someone swallowed whole by the sea. Experienced surfers and swimmers and kayakers, even people standing on rocks waiting to have their picture snapped, are sometimes snatched away by a hungry, ferocious wave. And here I am, a novice with no life vest, paddling out to sea.
In the midst of my great struggle, I am passed by a giant native sea turtle, half the size of my kayak, gliding effortlessly toward the Mokulua isles. I remember seeing a sign somewhere prohibiting riding these animals, and only now can I see how the temptation can arise. I name my new friend Sammy and flash him the shaka. When he doesn’t reciprocate, I flip him the bird.
An hour after launch I wash ashore. I am proud of myself, yet sickened by the thought of traveling back. My arms are tired, my neck and back stiff and sore. I drop like a rock onto the sand and leave myself to bake under the sun.
After only ten minutes, I observe another kayak coming in, its occupant a deep bronze, his paddling fluid and clean. I try to look nonchalant, not like the crazy son of a bitch who nearly killed himself coming here. Just another avid kayaker come to soak up the sun and solitude.
As he lands, I acknowledge him with a slight nod of the head. His face is youthful, even for twenty-eight, and he’s blessed with the symmetry of good looks. He tosses his gear onto the sand and plops down next to it, approximately forty feet from where I sit. I am grateful that he seems at least somewhat winded, though not nearly as close to puking up a lung as I was. He removes his wet T-shirt, revealing a muscled frame and a small tattoo of a weeping tiki god just above his left pectoral muscle. He sees me acknowledge him, yet much like the sea turtle, doesn’t acknowledge me at all. It’s all I can do to keep from flipping him the bird, too.
I know little about Palani other than that he speaks pidgin and curses a lot. Pidgin is spoken by hundreds of thousands of people all over the Hawaiian Islands. It is a different language, although most of the vocabulary is borrowed from English. English speakers first referred to it as pidgin English and considered it a simplified or broken form of English. I bought a book on pidgin along with the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Conversational Japanese when I first moved to the islands, but I haven’t opened either book. When trying to gain someone’s trust, it helps tremendously to speak, or at least understand, their language. To that end, I did take a crash course on pidgin on the Internet when I looked up kayaking. I can only hope I’ll fare better at the former than I did at the latter. At least I can’t drown trying to understand Palani’s pidgin. Besides, although I can’t speak pidgin, I sure as shit can curse.
“Fucking strong current today, yeah?” I shout over to him, making my way slowly toward a dollar bill I let fly in his direction.
He nods without looking at me.
“Fucking near capsized paddling out here,” I say. I don’t mention I capsized six times.
“I seen. You paddle like a wahine.”
“A wahine?”
“A woman, brah. Just like a girl.”
“Well, mahalo,” I say, proud of my advanced Hawaiian.
“Why mahalo? Mahalo is tourist talk for ‘t’anks,’ eh?”
“I’m malihini. I’m still learning. My name is Kevin.” I extend my hand. “You’re kama’aina, a local?”
He grudgingly takes my hand, as if he just saw me reach into a stopped-up toilet and forget to wash.
“Howzit, Kevin? I am Palani. But kama’aina is tourist talk, too.”
Sometimes the Internet just has it all wrong.
“I just moved here,” I say. “This is my first time on Mokulua.”
“This here is Moku Nui,” he corrects me again. Palani cuts off his r’s and his th’s are really d’s so that it sounds like Dis heah is Moku Nui.
“First time, eh?” he says. “Well, welcome to my island, brah.”
“Your island? Shit, I didn’t know. Am I supposed to pay you admission?”
“No, that’s okay, no need. That’s how I get you hooked. Just like this.”
Palani pulls from his dry bag a Ziploc filled with green herb and a pipe. He evidently neglected to mention the marijuana to police when he told them about his little morning excursions.
“We throw one party, yeah?” Palani says, as he pulls the pipe from the Ziploc and packs the bowl. He pulls a lighter from his pocket and cups his hand to thwart the breeze from ruining his fun. A plume of smoke wafts overhead. “You want some pakalolo?” he asks, reaching to hand it off.
It was one of Milt Cashman’s ten commandments. Thou shalt get high with neither client nor witness. But the commandment was something like number eight. The latter commandments couldn’t be nearly as important, right? Besides, it is another opportunity to help me gain his trust. And get high. Anything for a client.
I take the pipe from him and he tosses me the lighter. I light the bowl and take a hit.
“That’s Maui Wowie,” he says. “Heavy-duty Valley Isle smokes.”
I hold it in my lungs, blow it out, choking like a seventh grader on his first cigarette.
“You like or what?”
I nod, coughing, handing him back the pipe. I was hoping the weed would loosen his tongue, get him to talking. But I can’t ask him any questions if I can’t stop coughing. My eyes are watering, my throat burns. Finally, I catch my breath.
“So,” I say, “is running this island a full-time job, or do you work for a living?”
“I work, brah. I’m a doorman over at the Winds in Waikiki.”
“No shit,” I say, watching him take another hit. “You wouldn’t happen to know a guy works over there with the last name Kanno, would you?”
He exhales. Hands me the pipe with an incredulous smile. “That’s my name, brah.”
“You’re shitting me!”
“No, brah. Palani Kanno.” He nods his head in celebration of the fact. Nodding like a bobblehead doll in a hurricane. Boy, those bobblehead dolls must be fun when you’re high.
“The funniest fucking thing,” I say, lighting the bowl. “I was going to come see you at the hotel, ask you some questions.”
I take a hit, watching him stare at me from the corner of my eye. His smile is gone. Suddenly he’s unsure whether to celebrate that his name is Palani Kanno.
“For what?”
“Oh, no big deal,” I say, handing off the pipe. “I’m a lawyer. I represent the guy who got picked up by the cops in connection with that girl in Waikiki.” I avoid the words murder, killing, and death, acting as if the whole discussion were to be about nothing more than a local beach-volleyball competition. “I just want to talk to you about a few things.”
“I don’t think so. I don’t want no pilikia. No trouble.”
“Palani, you’re not in any trouble. You’re a free man. My client is the one in trouble. I just want to find out a little about that night, a little about the girl, about what she might have said to you.”
“You think you’re one sly mongoose, eh? One clever bugger, yeah? I already told the police everything.”
I hold my hand out for the pipe, reminding him that we’re still friends. Reminding him that I’m not a cop. That I’m on his side. The side that’s not the law.
“I’m sure you did, but they don’t always write everything down. And even when they do, they don’t always share it with the defendant’s lawyer. You know how it is, how the cops operate.”
He takes a hit, hands off the pipe. He stares off into the distance at the bright blue ocean, as if a sea turtle, Sammy maybe, might just pop its head out of the water and tell him what to say. If Palani is half as high as I am right now, perhaps he’s seeing and hearing just that. Finally he shakes his head. Sammy has spoken.
“Whatevahs. I don’t have to talk to you.”
“How you figure?”
“If you don’t speak to me now, I’ll have to subpoena you, bring you to court, have you testify under oath before the judge. If you do talk to me now, help me out, I won’t have to do that. In other words, you can testify in court before a judge or you can do your talking here on an isolated beach while smoking some Maui Wowie with me, basking in the sun. The choice is yours.”
The beach clearly sounds more agreeable to him than court. What I don’t tell him is that the prosecuting attorney will inevitably call him to testify at the time of trial anyway. And even if by some miracle the prosecuting attorney doesn’t call him to testify, I certainly will.
“What you wanna know?”
“Tell me about that night, how you met Shannon Douglas.”
“That night I go holoholo. To the Bleu Sharq. I saw one sharkbait. That’s one with really white skin. That’s this girl, Shannon, eh?”
“What was she doing when you first saw her?”
“Dancing. Dancing all up against some guys. She was keke, all drunk, loaded.”
“You were single?” I ask, trying to make it more conversation than interrogation.
“I just broke up with my girl one week before. I just wanted to trip, but she wanted to go steady, like. She got real huhu, real upset. Then she told me she hapai, knocked up.”
“So what did you do when you saw Sharkbait Shannon?”
“I went for broke. I rolled up, told her, ‘You like dance with me or what?’ She told me she has one boyfriend, back on the mainland, like. I told her, since he not here, it no matter to any of us. So she danced with me, real close like, eh? I became mane’o, real turned on.”
“What happened after the dance?”
“Then I went to the bathroom to smoke one joint. When I walked out, one haole gave me the stink-eye. I told him, ‘I owe you money or what? You like beef?’ Then he bagged, he split. I go look for her, but no can find. I figured some moke cockroach her.”
The Hawaiian term haole (pronounced HOW-lee) once meant “foreigner,” but today is reserved for Caucasians. It’s as often endearing as it is disparaging, and I don’t take offense.
“But you found her before you left?” I ask.
“Just before closing time. She told me, ‘You wanna go for one walk?’ I told her, ‘Hell yeah.’ ”
“Where did you go?”
“Down Kalakaua along the beach. No one was round, so we sucked face. Then when we were going at it, we heard one sound. She got all crazy, started hitting me, like. I hit back just to get her off. But she was alive after that when I left her there on the beach.”
“Back up just a bit,” I say.
Palani slides his ass up the incline on the sand.
“No, I mean in your story. What was it that you heard?”
“Some kine noise, like one clank.”
“Where did it come from?”
“No idea,” he says. “I was just trying get my nut off, eh?”
“Was there anything strange or unusual that she said to you that night that sticks out in your mind? Maybe something you forgot to tell the police?”
“Nah. Nah, not really,” he says. “Oh, she did say something funny kine.”
“What was that?”
“Early on she said she no can gimme her number at the hotel. She told me she was meeting one guy next day, one haole from New York. She told me she’d be with him for the rest of her trip.”
“What did you say?”
“I told her, fuck him. Call him, tell him he no need come. Tell him stay fucking mainland, yeah?”
“How did she respond to that?”
“Funny kine, I tell you. She told me, ‘That be bad for my grades.’ ”
CHAPTER 11
Exhausted from this morning’s kayaking adventure, I sit tonight alone at the bar of the Bleu Sharq, my arms barely able to lift the pint glass to my lips. My head, finally clear of marijuana, is now being bombarded with beer as I wait for Nikole Kapua to find some spare moments to speak to me. It seems each time four drunken tourists exit the bar, five new ones walk in. Nikole steps over to the newest band of brothers and asks them what they want. Then, she produces a tray of carved-out pineapples and coconuts, fills them with rum and fruit juice, and sticks in crazy straws and tiny umbrellas for good measure. The guy who ordered for the group hands her some money. She smiles her smile, and he hands her some more.
The music is loud, the bass high, such that I can feel it in my stomach, a not-so-good vibration made that much worse by the shoulders I take in the back, as people who shouldn’t be dancing dance.
“I’m really sorry, Mr. Corvelli,” Nikole shouts above the music. “It looks like I won’t be free to talk until closing time. It’s just too busy. Will you wait?”
I raise my glass and nod. As I watch her bend over to scoop some ice, I feel fortunate I chose not to send Flan on this interview. Nikole is a picture postcard, a perfect representation of my Hawaiian-girl fantasy. At first look, my mind undressed her of her tight T and shorts and put her in a grass skirt and coconut bra, a lei around her neck, and laid her on a white-sand beach in the bliss of sundown. Yeah, I’ll wait. I’ll wait until she tells me to wait no more.
Like the drink Nikole is mixing up, the Bleu Sharq is a unique blend: Hollywood meets Hawaii. There are the token tikis, surfboards, hula girls, and Polynesian plants. But among them are the Fonz, the A-Team, Charlie’s Angels, and the Incredible Hulk. Signed pictures from Sinatra, Ray Charles, and the Duke. The décor is busy but in a fun sort of way. The Sharq would be fun, I’m sure, if only it were a little bit bigger and a lot less crowded.
I turn my chair to watch the dance floor. I try to picture the scene Palani so vaguely described. I see not a single local, only tourists complete with their Hawaiian shirts, Bermuda shorts, digital cameras, and third-degree sunburns. I try to picture Shannon dancing provocatively, rubbing up against drunk guys, sucking down daiquiris and mai tais as if they were going out of style. I picture him going to the bathroom, smoking a joint. That part is easy. The rest doesn’t seem to make much sense.
A few minutes after last call, as a sea of open aloha shirts makes for the door, Nikole steps over to me with a small handbag draped over her left shoulder, a white flower tucked behind one ear. “Are you ready to go?” she asks me.
“Yes,” I say. “Let me just settle up.”
I pay the tab and hand each of the bartenders a generous tip, courtesy of Joseph Gianforte Sr. Each of the other two women give me funny little smiles, looks that tell me Nikole has let them in on why I’m here. I already know that neither of these women were working the night Shannon was slain.
We walk outside and sidestep the human tide. We slip past a bearded panhandler asking for spare change, then past a familiar prostitute seemingly glued to the street. Past men and women from the mainland and Japan, energized by the light tropical air. Past the rows of tiki torches that help the moon light up the night.
Nikole, who asked me to call her Nikki, steps into the crosswalk and waits for the light. As soon as it changes, she crosses Kalakaua and I follow like a puppy dog chasing treats. I trail her to the beach, where she kicks off her sandals, her bare feet hitting the sand. She keeps going until her toes are touching the surf.
“Is this a good spot for us to talk?” I say.
“Depends on what you want to talk about.”
I drop down onto the sand and she drops down to her knees beside me.
“I want to talk about Shannon Douglas. About the night she was murdered,” I say in my best Joe Friday voice. I’m all business, yes, I am. I’m looking for the facts, ma’am, just the facts. I don’t even notice that your taut, nicely tanned knee is touching my leg.
“That’s the girl from New York, right? I saw her picture in the paper,” she says. “I served her drinks Sunday night.”
“What was she drinking? Do you re
member?”
“Yeah, she was downing zombies like there was no tomorrow.”
Her hand flutters to her mouth as she catches her faux pas.
“That’s okay,” I say. “I didn’t know her personally. Besides, there’s no padding the fact that for her there was no tomorrow. Do you remember how many zombies you served her?”
“Not exactly. I cut her off toward the end of the night, but I think someone else was buying her drinks by then.”
“Did you see that someone else?”
I’ve lost my Joe Friday voice. I think I saw it swim out to sea. Yes, I want more than just the facts. I shift in my khakis. Luckily, it’s pitch-black out here, or else Nikki would be asking me if there is a palm tree in my pocket, or if I just get a really big kick out of doing my job.
“Yeah, I saw her talking up some local guy,” she says.
“Did you see her talking to anyone else that night?”
“Not that I remember. But we were pretty busy for a Sunday night. I wasn’t really paying attention.”
“How did she react to your cutting her off for the night?”
“Not well. Tourists particularly don’t like to get cut off. They figure they are here on vacation, they can do whatevah they please.”
It’s the first hint of Hawaiian I hear in her singsong voice. I wonder if she’s watching her words, trying to speak American English for my benefit. I wonder if it’s because she likes me. Little does she know, she could speak to me in gibberish and I’d sit here and listen all night.
I am trying to think of more questions, to extend the conversation in any way that I can. Although this will be billed to the Gianfortes as a witness interview, it is difficult right now to see it as such. What would I say to this girl if she were just a girl and not a witness? I’m drawing a complete blank.
Back in New York, I would no doubt tell her lies when it suited me, the truth when it would help get her into bed. What should be so different here? Why has the cat taken my tongue? She is sitting here, staring at me, waiting for my words to come. But I have nothing, not a single, solitary one. Even the beer is silent. And the beer seldom is. This interview is over.
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