Mahu Blood

by Alex Beecroft

  duty guard said. “He gave me the envelope and then ran away when I tried to ask him who he was or where he was from.”

  “Age?”

  “Maybe six or seven. Dirty.” He shook his head. “Can’t say anything more than that. We had a tour group coming through, and he slipped out.”

  About the lady shot at the rally was printed in block letters on the outside of the envelope. Back at my desk I slit the flap with a letter opener with a miniature surfboard at the end. Ray leaned over as I unfolded the paper inside.

  It was a flyer for a group called Ka Leo Hawai’i, the Voice of Hawai’i. The tag line was “The Voice of the Hawaiian People, Silent Since 1893.” I’d seen similar flyers on display at the Papakolea community center the day before, though someone had scrawled “Killers!” on this one in red marker.

  “Be nice if they’d given us some more detail,” Ray said.

  “Informants. Can’t control ‘em.” I turned to the computer and Googled the group. The leader was a guy named Bunchy Parker. “Bunchy’s in the news a lot,” I said to Ray, pointing at the search results.

  I’d known about Bunchy since I was a kid. He protested against everything from the Navy’s use of Kahoolawe for target practice to genetically modified taro plants to the Superferry. I had a tendency to think of him as an unreformed hippie time had forgotten.

  But there was danger in writing Bunchy off, I realized, as I watched a YouTube video of Bunchy standing on a makeshift platform next to the Wizard Stones, four basalt boulders on the beach at Waikīkī. They are said to contain the mana, or spiritual healing power, of four mysterious and powerful ancient healers, and as such are sacred to the Hawaiian people. Though there isn’t much room for a big demonstration, the boulders made a meaningful backdrop for a rally based on Hawaiian national identity.

  Bunchy was in his sixties, straight black hair cut short and MAhu BLood 43

  graying at the temples. He was a big tough-looking guy, like my brother Haoa, the kind who would have made a great villain on Hawaii Five-O.

  “We are the only true representatives of the people of Hawai’i,” he said in the video, shaking his fist.

  The crowd cheered.

  “We’re here to set our people free from the oppression of the state of Hawai’i. It’s time for our young people to stand up and fight for their inheritance. We ask all our kanaka and non-kanaka supporters to fight for what is truth and what is justice.”

  Kanaka was the traditional word for a Hawaiian of native or Polynesian descent. It was certainly polite of Bunchy to use the term non-kanaka rather than the more pejorative haole for Caucasian, pake for Chinese, katonk for Japanese and so on.

  When Bunchy finished, the crowd cheered and waved flags and chanted, “Fight, fight!” in Hawaiian. I found a lot of similar videos related to the sovereignty movement and the various events at the Iolani Palace. Seeing them all in sequence made me take the movement a lot more seriously than I had in the past.

  Running Bunchy through the police department computer, I pulled up quite a record, from malicious mischief to trespassing to tax evasion to assault. The last charge had landed him in the Halawa Correctional Facility. He was still on parole after serving part of his sentence for that offense. “What do you think of this?” I asked Ray, turning my computer screen to face him.

  I called Bunchy’s parole officer, a young woman named Kalia Rogers. She said we could come over and talk about him if we wanted, so we walked to her office at the Hawai’i Paroling Authority on Alakea Street.

  Kalia means beautiful in Hawaiian, which was an unfortunate name for her, considering she had a lumpy figure and a port-wine stain on her right cheek. “He’s not in trouble again, is he?” She led us into a small conference room. “He swore to me the last time I saw him that he was going to stay clean.”

  “What’s his problem?”

  44 Neil S. Plakcy

  “He’s a sweetheart. And he’s very charismatic, so he gets all these people to follow him.”

  “I saw him on YouTube,” I said, as we sat down at a small round table. There wasn’t much in the room besides the table, four chairs and a couple of posters tacked to the walls from the Honolulu Festival, which happens every March and celebrates our connection to the various cultures of Asia. “A demonstration at the Wizard Stones. He didn’t look like a sweetheart there.”

  “I admit, when he gets going he says some things he shouldn’t,” she said. “He doesn’t have much impulse control.”

  “Jails are full of people like that,” Ray said. “How’s he doing on parole?”

  “He comes in like clockwork. Shows me pictures of his grandkids. He cares about the legacy he’s leaving for them.”

  All that was sweet, but the Bunchy I’d seen on YouTube could have masterminded the death of an old woman in service to his cause. “You hear about the shooting at the rally on Friday?” I asked.

  “You aren’t looking at Bunchy for that, are you?” she asked, her mouth opening in horror. “Because it’s not like him at all.”

  “What about the assault charges?” Ray asked. “He sounds like a loose cannon.”

  “I’ve worked his case for the last four years.” Kalia pushed a few strands of dark hair over her ear. “I know his record inside out. Every time he got in trouble, it was always impulsive. Pushing a guard away, punching somebody trying to drag protesters, that kind of thing. Bunchy isn’t the kind of guy who’d shoot an old woman.”

  “But what about the people who follow him?” I asked, leaning forward. “You said he’s charismatic. What if somebody in his group showed some initiative?”

  She sighed. “I guess it’s possible.” She gave us Bunchy’s address, which not surprisingly was back in Papakolea. As we stood up, she said, “In this job, you see a lot of people who still MAhu BLood 45

  ought to be in jail. Some of them, you can almost hold your breath until they do something stupid, something that violates their parole or gets them in trouble all over again.”

  She opened the door to the conference room, then turned back to us. “Bunchy, he always seemed like one of the good guys, you know? Like you might have a problem with some of the things he did, but his heart was in the right place.” She looked like she might cry. “I saw the news about that woman who was killed.

  I hate to think Bunchy could be behind it.”

  It was Ray’s turn to drive, so we climbed into his Highlander and drove mauka. In Hawai’i, we don’t use north, south, east and west; our directions are all rooted in our island geography. Makai means toward the ocean, while mauka means the other direction, toward the mountains. Going Diamond Head means toward the extinct volcano which looms over part of the island, while Ewa means in the other direction, toward the city of the same name.

  Bunchy lived in a small ranch house off Tantalus Drive, and when we parked in front of it, he appeared in the doorway. He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days, and he was barefoot, wearing a plain white T-shirt, with reading glasses perched on his nose.

  “That da kine police car you guys use these days?” he asked.

  I didn’t ask how he knew we were police. We’d been at the community center the day before, and I was sure the coconut wireless had spread the word throughout the neighborhood.

  “Howzit, Uncle.” I walked up to the door and showed him my ID. “Can we ask you a couple questions?”

  He looked us up and down. I was in my standard work clothes: aloha shirt and khaki pants, deck shoes without socks. Ray was about the same, though the print on his shirt was louder than mine, and he wore reflective sunglasses that reminded me of the highway patrol on CHiPs.

  Bunchy shrugged and stepped back, inviting us into the house. He motioned us to the sofa, and as I sat down I scanned the room. The walls and surfaces were decorated with Hawaiian artifacts—an old quilt, tattered at the edges; an anthurium flower 46 Neil S. Plakcy

  made of koa wood with a blossom of whalebone; a collection of stone and ivory fishhooks.


  Bunchy’s collection was valuable. Had it come down to him from his ancestors? Or was somebody with big bucks funding him?

  “Talk to us about this group you run. Ka Leo. Been getting into any trouble lately?”

  “What, you think I go round killing old ladies now?”

  I held my hands out, palms up. “Did I ask you that, Bunchy? I grew up watching you on TV. The stuff you did for Kahoolawe, Uncle, that’s history.”

  “But you asking around about Aunty Edith,” Bunchy said.

  “You know her?” Ray asked.

  “Shoot, everybody in Papakolea know Aunty Edith. She real kahiko lady, she know everything about these islands, about the history of our people. She talk story lots, about old days, Big Island. She like the record keeper for her town. She have all kine stuff in her room. She say one day she make a book out of it.”

  I remembered the piles of papers and photos we had seen in Edith’s room. They had seemed like ordinary memorabilia, but maybe we should have looked closer at them.

  “I heard she was a nosy old lady, sticking her two cents in all over the place,” I said. “Somebody told me she was hanai tūtū

  to Ezekiel Kapuāiwa. If she could prove what he says about his family background, that could make KOH come out on top, and Ka Leo the loser. That would piss you off, wouldn’t it?”

  “What you trying to say?” Bunchy frowned and clenched one fist. “You want make beef with me?”

  The harmless old fut had fallen away, and I saw a man who could lead a movement by the force of his personality. Behind him, I noticed a group of photographs, Bunchy with young people at various rallies.

  “She talking stink about Ka Leo?” I asked. “Trying to get people to support her hanai grandson instead?”

  MAhu BLood 47

  I guessed Bunchy was composing his thoughts, trying to rein in those impulses Kalia Rogers had talked about, the undercurrent of violence I’d seen in his behavior at the Wizard Stones rally.

  “Aunty Edith, she not the type to talk stink. These groups, they just names. Everybody want same thing. Hawai’i for Hawaiian people.”

  I didn’t believe him for a minute. The Bunchy I grew up watching on TV and reading about in the paper wasn’t the kind to give up so easily. He didn’t claim, like Ezekiel did, to be a direct descendant of the Hawaiian royal family, which put Ka Leo at a disadvantage when it came to who might rule an independent Hawai’i. Discrediting Ezekiel and destroying his movement could position Ka Leo to gain a lot of power, money and land. That was a good motive for murder.

  Bunchy wouldn’t say much more, though we tried asking the same questions in different ways. Aunty Edith was a talkative old woman, there wasn’t any harm in her and he couldn’t see anybody wanting to kill her. There was some rivalry between groups, but nothing worth killing over.

  “I kill anybody, it be some haole okole,” he said. “Not a kupuna.”

  We were back in the Highlander when Ray asked, “What’s an okole? You think that was some kind of jab at me?”

  “Okole means butt. And no, I don’t think he meant you. More like some haole who wants to stand in the way of his goals.”

  “And the police don’t?”

  “Not if he stays within the law,” I said.

  BReAk-iN

  “Long as we’re out here,” Ray said. “Suppose we stop by Aunty Edith’s house again, make sure Leelee’s doing OK? I’m worried about her and that kid.”

  “You have a soft heart,” I said. “But you’re driving. Go to town.”

  Leelee answered the door and said, “I was just gone call you.

  You must be psychic or something, like on the TV.”

  “Yeah?” Ray asked. “What’s up?”

  “Somebody buss up Aunty Edith’s room.”

  Leelee was once again balancing that dirty little boy on her hip. “I went into Aunty Edith’s room this morning, ‘cause she had some toys for baby. It all buss up. I couldn’t call you till Dex left for work, though. He don’t like no pilikia, ‘specially not with police.”

  “Can we take a look?”

  She shrugged. As we walked alongside the house to Aunty Edith’s door, we established that the break-in had to have occurred sometime between Saturday afternoon, when we’d looked at the room, and six that morning, when the baby began crying.

  Leelee pulled a faded plastic card from her pocket and slid it between the door and the jamb. “We lost the key long time ago,”

  she said, as the door popped open. “Old credit card work just as well. Ain’t got no credit anyway.”

  Edith’s mattress had been taken off the bed and sliced open; the same for her pillows. Her clothes were strewn on the floor, along with cheap paper fans, plastic leis and stuffed animals she must have used to amuse the baby.

  Her small desk had been loaded with papers on Saturday, but most of them were gone. All the pictures had been taken down 50 Neil S. Plakcy

  from the walls, and the photo albums were gone, too.

  “Dat ice,” Leelee said. “Da kine ice head always breaking in places. Somebody knew Aunt Edith wen maki, they come steal anything she left.” The baby started crying again, and she jiggled him on her hip as she headed back to her own door.

  “You think it was ice?” Ray asked when she was gone. We saw lots of crimes committed by people hooked on ice, the smokable form of crystal meth, but it didn’t look like an addict had broken into Aunty Edith’s. I shook my head.

  “Me neither,” Ray said. “The burglar was looking for something.”

  “Something we should have found when we were here Saturday.” I remembered the piles of papers and photos. What had been valuable there? What would someone be willing to kill for?

  “Maybe, maybe not.” Ray pulled out a pair of rubber gloves.

  “Let’s see if there’s anything left.”

  The folders Edith had kept next to the desk were gone, along with all the newspaper clippings and copies of official documents.

  The only papers left were a scattering of grocery coupons and some pages from a child’s story book.

  “Let’s analyze this,” Ray said. “The thief took all her pictures, all that paperwork she had saved. And then went looking for something more. What do you think it was?”

  “No idea.”

  “Why take all those photographs?” Ray asked. “You know this place, this culture. You remember any of them?”

  I closed my eyes and concentrated. “I thought they were family pictures. Some were those square, sepia-toned ones like we have of my parents as kids.”

  “So somebody wanted those pictures,” Ray said. “Why?”

  “Because of who’s in them?”

  “Any way those old pictures could be valuable?”

  MAhu BLood 51

  “I suppose you could take them out to the Aloha Bowl flea market and sell them for a nickel or a dime apiece,” I said.

  “Somebody decorating a restaurant or looking for instant ancestors. Not really a motive for robbery, much less murder.”

  I walked over and looked at the wall. Most of the thumbtacks were still there, along with torn bits that showed the pictures hadn’t been removed carefully.

  “Whoever took these was either angry or in a hurry. Maybe she had some newer pictures of those drug dealers she was making trouble for.”

  “How about the documents? You remember what they were?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t look that closely. I think a lot of them were from the Big Island. I remember there were photocopies of some property deeds. But they weren’t originals, so it’s not like you could use them to transfer ownership.”

  We gave up thinking and went back to searching. Under a pile of Edith’s clothes I found three large koa wood bowls, and I only recognized that they might be valuable because my mother collected them. I had a feeling they were worth a few thousand bucks apiece.

  Stuck in a corner of the desk, where it might have been overlooked, was a business card for Adam O�
��Malley, an attorney from the law firm of Fields and Yamato in downtown Honolulu.

  Why did Aunty Edith have his business card? Was she a defendant in a law suit, or a plaintiff? Perhaps O’Malley had written her will or was handling some property transfer. I slid the card into my pocket.

  Ray called for a crime scene tech. With luck, the burglar had left behind a fingerprint that might give us a lead on Aunty Edith’s killer. Leelee came by to check on us while we waited, the baby still crying. Ray said, “You need a hand changing him?”

  Leelee looked at him like he was crazy. Ray put his fingers up and squeezed his nose, and Leelee said, “Oh.”

  “I did a lot of babysitting as a kid,” he said. “Come on, show 52 Neil S. Plakcy

  me the diapers.”

  “Better you than me, brah,” I said under my breath, as Leelee led Ray back to her part of the house. Ryan Kainoa, a vampire-pale crime scene tech with long black hair pulled into a ponytail and shoved under a baseball cap, showed up while they were gone, and I explained what we were looking for.

  Ray returned as Ryan was dusting for fingerprints. “That girl needs help,” Ray said. “She had the wrong kind of diapers, and she didn’t even know how to change them right.”

  I didn’t know what to say. As a cop, I can do a lot of things, but changing diapers is outside my realm of expertise.

  Ryan found a lot of fingerprints, but most of them looked the same, probably Aunty Edith’s or Leelee’s. Before we left, Leelee came back into Aunty Edith’s room, this time without the baby, and asked if there was any kind of victims’ fund that might compensate the family for Edith’s loss.

  “She give us her Social Security every month for food and diapers,” Leelee said. “Now we got none.”

  “You talk to the Department of Human Services?” I asked.

  “They have programs to help people with kids.”

  “They say Dex make too much money. But he don’t give me hardly anything for the house or the baby, playing pai gow. That where most of the money goes.”

  Pai gow is a Chinese gambling game played with dice, popular in unsanctioned casinos in Chinese communities. I was surprised that a haole like Dex played pai gow but figured his money was good as anyone’s.