Mahu Blood

by Alex Beecroft

  “If there’s money laundering going on, you’d think someone at the store level might know about it,” Ray said, drumming his fingers on his desk.

  “I don’t know. Usually the baristas are teenagers. But there was that older woman we talked to. What was her name? Mili? We could go look her up again.”

  “Sounds like a good place to start.”

  I called the Kope Bean store and found out that Mili no longer worked there. “You know her last name?” I asked.

  The girl put me on hold. I got to listen to Israel Kamakawiwo’ole while I waited, but by the third song I was ready to reach through the phone, grab his ukulele, and use it to bludgeon the clerk who’d left me on hold for so long.

  When the girl came back, she said, “France.”

  “Excuse me? She went to France?”

  “No, it’s her last name,” the girl said. “Mili France. Listen, I got customers. I gotta go.”

  160 Neil S. Plakcy

  She hung up on me, which didn’t improve my disposition toward her. But at least we had a last name on Mili, and it wasn’t Peed or Meter. I looked Mili France up in the phone book, and found an address in Kaneohe, a few blocks from the Kope Bean.

  I called the number, but there was no answer and no machine.

  My cell rang. “I couldn’t get hold of Pua until now,” my mother said. “She has a new boyfriend.” The ice in her voice could have chilled Kilauea.

  “And?”

  “Your cousin Ben is at Pua’s till tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, Mom. Love to Dad.”

  I hung up and dialed my Aunt Pua’s condo. Ben had just gotten in from surfing; he said he could hang around and wait for us to stop by.

  “Change of plan,” I told Ray. “Let’s swing out to Hawai’i Kai before we look for Mili, see if my cousin can read any of the Japanese stuff Harry found.”

  My aunt’s condo was in a two-story building on a canal with a lanai overlooking the water. I figured aromatherapy must pay well, or else she had some good alimony coming in from one or more of her previous husbands.

  Ben greeted us at the door. He’s good-looking, in a scrawny, surfer way, but he had a soul patch on his chin that made me want to hand him a razor. There didn’t look like an ounce of fat on his six-foot something body, and he wore his black hair loose, down to his shoulders. His father was a haole Aunt Pua married and divorced in Vegas, and none of us ever met him. Like me, Ben looks a little Asian around his eyes, and his skin takes a tan well.

  He offered us beers, which sadly we had to decline, though he indulged. He led us out to the lanai, where we sat down amid a forest of purple and white Vanda orchids, the music of the current in the waterway behind us.

  “Can you read some Japanese stuff for us?” I asked.

  “I can try.”

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  I showed him the printouts Harry had found online.

  Ben scanned them for a couple of minutes, as I leaned back in the comfortable armchair and looked at the water. A hedge of yellow hibiscus ran alongside the bank, and its blossoms were like a scattering of tiny suns. The orchids perfumed the air, and somewhere in the distance wind chimes tinkled.

  Pua had owned the place for years, buying in long before prices rose to the stratosphere. If one of us won the lottery, I could see Mike and me living in a place like that someday. I wondered if the homeowner’s association allowed dogs. Roby, after all, had become part of our family.

  Ben looked up. “Where did you get this stuff?”

  “Tell us what it is.”

  “As near as I can tell, it’s a report about yakuza action in Yokohama,” he said. “From some official agency with a long title.”

  “Any mention of a guy named Jun Tanaka?” Ray asked.

  Ben nodded. “It looks like they knew he was involved in gambling and something else I can’t understand, but they had no way to prosecute him.”

  He pushed the pages back to me. “I studied business Japanese.

  Sorry, there’s a lot there I don’t understand.”

  “Thanks, brah, I appreciate it. So where’s the surf good these days?”

  “I got back from the Billabong Pro in J Bay. Surf was awesome.”

  “Jeffreys Bay is in South Africa,” I said to Ray. “Some of the most consistent waves on the planet.”

  “And how,” Ben said. “It’s a pain to get to—you’ve got to fly to Cape Town and then go another couple hundred miles to Eastern Cape Province.”

  “How’d you do?” I was already jealous; I’d never been a good enough surfer to get invited to a foreign tournament, and Jeffreys 162 Neil S. Plakcy

  Bay was one of those sites I’d always wanted to surf.

  “I came in fifth. Kelly Slater and Mick Fanning were both on fire.”

  We talked surf for a while. Ben was leaving for Mundaka, on the Basque coast of Spain, for another Billabong tournament. I was glad for him, but I still wanted to knock him on the head, grab his board and take his place.

  We left Ben starting to wax his board before the afternoon’s surfing. As we walked back to the Jeep, I said, “I can see Tanaka putting out a hit on Stuart McKinney because he talked too much about the money at the Kope Bean warehouse. He’s got the connections.”

  “But how can we tie him to Edith Kapana’s shooting?”

  “Not sure. But I feel in my bones that he’s involved in it somehow.”

  From Hawai’i Kai I drove us up to Kaneohe to look for Mili France. We parked in front of her apartment building and rang the bell. She was home by then, and after we’d identified ourselves, she buzzed us inside.

  She wore khaki shorts and a white cotton shirt with capped sleeves. She was apprehensive when she answered the door, worry etching lines in her forehead. With her close-cropped gray hair, though, she exuded a no-nonsense air.

  “What can I do for you, Detectives? Are you still asking questions about Ezekiel?”

  “If we could come in?” I asked.

  Hesitantly, she stepped back and ushered us into the living room. The furniture was simple, but good quality, solid wood chairs and a sofa covered in a tropical floral pattern, hibiscus and bird of paradise against a green background. A galley kitchen took up the back wall.

  “We’d like to ask you a few questions about the Kope Bean.

  You’re not working there anymore?”

  She shook her head. “I was let go on Friday. No notice. No MAhu BLood 163

  reason. Just so long, sayonara and aloha.” There was a bitterness in her tone that I hadn’t heard when we spoke before.

  “I’ll be frank with you, Mili,” I said. “We’re looking into some unorthodox business practices there, and we were hoping you could fill in some details.”

  “With pleasure. I’ve been around the block a few times, Detective. I know when something stinks, and it’s not rotting coffee beans.” She paused. “Did you ever know the Kaplans?”

  she asked, and we shook our heads. “Lovely people. Hyman and Sara Kaplan. They started the Kope Bean with a single store in downtown Honolulu. They had twelve locations by the time they sold to Mr. Tanaka.”

  I pulled out my notebook and started writing. “About five years ago, things started to change. Little things, at first. New machines that brewed with fewer beans. The coffee was weaker, but nobody noticed except some of the regulars. Then we started hiring from the Ohana.”

  She looked at us. “Where are my manners?” she asked. “I never even offered you something to drink. I still have a stash of good beans.”

  I looked at Ray. “I could use a cup of coffee,” I said, and he nodded.

  She stepped over to the galley kitchen and pulled a bag of the Kope Bean’s signature blend of arabica beans and macadamia nut flavors from her freezer. I remembered a similar situation with Maile Kanuha at her office, when she brewed coffee for us from beans she swore by. I hoped Mili’s beans were better.

  We didn’t talk while she ground the beans, but once the coffee was brewing s
he came back to us. “I have nothing against the handicapped,” she said. “Some of the staff we hired were lovely people. Sometimes a little slow, to be sure, and a couple did have anger management problems and had to be let go. But…”

  “But what?” Ray asked.

  “Mr. Tanaka got federal funds for hiring the disabled. And I know for a fact that he fudged some of the numbers. I didn’t 164 Neil S. Plakcy

  like that.”

  “But you stayed,” I said.

  “I’m sixty-two years old, Detective. My husband dumped me ten years ago, and I hadn’t held a job in twenty years. The Kaplans gave me a chance, and I felt I owed it to them to stay at the Kope Bean. I didn’t want to see everything they worked for go down the drain.”

  She turned to the coffee pot and began to pour. “And at my age, I’m not the most employable person. You’d be surprised at what people turn a blind eye to when it means keeping a paycheck.”

  She brought us the coffee, and I noticed she wasn’t above bringing home cups and napkins from the Kope Bean, too.

  “What else did you have to turn a blind eye to?” Ray asked, as she sat back down.

  “We were instructed to exaggerate any shortages from suppliers, lose the occasional shipment if the driver ever got careless. Most of the staff, they’re kids, they don’t keep good track of their time cards. If Brittany forgot to clock in, she didn’t get paid for the time. When Devin quit, his time card mysteriously disappeared, and he didn’t get paid for his last week.”

  She stopped to drink her coffee, and so did we. It was pretty damn good, better than you could get at most coffee shops, the Kope Bean included. Without the steamed milk, the coffee and macadamia flavors were even richer.

  “The Kope Bean is a chain,” she said, putting her cup down on the table. “But not big enough to have much of a central office staff. Mr. Tanaka handled everything from payroll to depositing store receipts. He’s a slimy snake, and I don’t trust him a bit.” She frowned at some memory. “As the store manager, I closed out the tills at the end of the day and bundled up the cash for the bank. With the Kaplans, I made the night deposit myself, but Mr.

  Tanaka started sending a runner every night to collect the cash instead.”

  She ran her fingers up and down along the side of her cup.

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  “About two years ago, I had to go to the bank to resolve a dispute, and the manager handed me a printout of deposits from our store. I was astonished to see they were sometimes three or four thousand dollars more than we took in.”

  “Did you do anything about it?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “The manager at the Chinatown store asked me one day if I’d noticed anything funny, and that’s when I figured out it was happening at his branch, too. We both knew we couldn’t say anything.”

  She finished her coffee. The anger seemed to radiate from her. “My ex-husband handled all the finances. When we split up I didn’t even know how to pay a bill. So I don’t understand what was going on. But I’m sure it was something funny.”

  “And you never complained or told anyone?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Any idea why they fired you?”

  “They had me training this young girl. A friend of Mr. Tanaka’s.

  Once he saw she could do the job, it was goodbye, Mili.”

  We stood up. “Thanks for your time,” I said. “I wish you a lot of luck in the future.”

  “We could subpoena the store’s cash deposits and its register tapes, and compare them, documenting any discrepancies,” Ray said, when we were back in the car. “But that will tip our hand.

  We need to nail somebody on a murder charge.”

  “Fraud may be all we can prove,” I said, but I didn’t like the idea at all.

  i toLd you so

  From the Jeep, Ray called Greg Oshiro. “You know anything about a guy named Jun Tanaka?” He held the phone out so I could hear.

  “Depends on what you want to know,” Greg said. “You buy me coffee, I might spill some beans.”

  “Meet you in half an hour?” Ray asked.

  “We just had coffee with Mili, brah,” I groaned when Ray hung up. “I need food, not more caffeine.”

  “We’ll get Mickey D’s on the way.”

  We scarfed a couple of burgers and some fries and met Greg at the Kope Bean near the Star-Advertiser office on Kapiolani Boulevard. At least this time he was polite to me, and we made some chit-chat while we waited for Ray to fetch yet another round of macadamia lattes.

  “You still working with that gay teen group?” Greg asked.

  “Once a month. I’m going over there tomorrow night. A bunch of us rotate so the kids get a variety of voices.”

  “I might be willing to come over sometime, if you could use me.”

  Well, well. “Sure. I don’t think most of them read the paper, but you could talk to them about how the media shapes our ideas about sexual orientation. That sort of thing.”

  He nodded, and Ray returned. “It takes a lot of cash to keep a movement going,” Greg said, pulling out his notebook. “About a month ago, I started to look into where the money for KOH

  comes from.”

  He pulled out a sheet of paper. “It’s a 501(c)(4) organization, a charitable non-profit,” he said. “So that means individuals and corporations can make tax-deductible contributions. The last time we met I told you that the biggest donors were a bunch 168 Neil S. Plakcy

  of corporations, including the Kope Bean. I could tell that they were interconnected, but I didn’t know who was behind it all. I kept digging, and eventually I found out that it’s a guy named Jun Tanaka. He has yakuza ties in Japan, and a lot of his businesses here are pretty shady-looking, too.”

  Interesting, I thought. He’d found out what we had—without having Harry on his team.

  “What makes them shady?” Ray asked, raising his coffee to his lips.

  “For example, he owns a malasada shop in a warehouse district near the airport,” Greg said, looking back at his paper.

  A malasada is a kind of Portuguese donut popular in the islands. As my dad scaled back his construction business, he’d built a few dozen of those shops around the island, because they were small and simple.

  “I’ve been out there a couple of times,” Greg continued.

  “It took me a while to find it because there’s no sign. There’s just one old lady, behind a counter with a single tray of donuts.

  But corporate records show it takes in nearly five grand a day in receipts. At least that’s what Tanaka reports for tax purposes.”

  “Can you give us copies of what you’ve got, or should we be taking our own notes?”

  He pushed some papers over to me. “Already made copies for you.”

  I started to get suspicious. Until we started this investigation, Greg Oshiro wouldn’t have pissed on me if I was on fire.

  Suddenly he wanted to be my best friend, offering me documents and volunteering to meet with the gay teen group. Something was very strange.

  He went over the details on the paperwork he’d given us.

  “How’d you put all these details about Tanaka together?” I asked.

  “A friend who’s an attorney pointed me in the right direction.”

  My suspicions got the better of me. “Why are you being so cooperative?”

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  For a minute it looked like he might argue, but he said, “The Star-Advertiser’s cutting back, like papers everywhere. I’m forty, I’m fat, I’ve got high blood pressure and high cholesterol. I’ve got two kids in Kaneohe. I can’t pick up and move someplace else. So I’ve got to do what I can to hold on to my job. I figure if I break a major exposé on KOH, or Tanaka, that gives me some job security.”

  Two kids in Kaneohe? I was confused. Yeah, a lot of gay guys, and couples, are having kids; it’s not that unusual. But my first reaction when a guy told me that he had kids was that he was straight. Maybe, despite
Ray’s gaydar, Greg wasn’t gay after all—just sucking up to me over the youth group so I could help him keep his job.

  I looked back at the paperwork. “KOH brings in a lot of contributions in cash,” I said. “You think Tanaka is washing money through them?”

  He nodded. “What I don’t know is where the cash comes from. I have an unverified report that he has a pakalolo operation up in the hills somewhere. I figure he’s selling dope, maybe ice, and he needs a place to put that cash.”

  It was time for us to share with Greg. I looked at Ray, who said, “Tanaka’s running at least one pai gow game. A lot of cash comes in that way.”

  Greg took a couple of notes. “You can’t print anything about it yet,” I said. “We’ll let you know when it all comes together, give you an exclusive in exchange for your help.”

  He smiled, then slid one more piece of paper across the table.

  “You might want to talk to this guy. He’s the attorney for KOH.”

  I looked down at the page. He’d scrawled Adam O’Malley’s name, along with his office number. I remembered his card stuck in Aunty Edith’s desk and that his firm represented KOH. “How do you know him?” I asked.

  Greg blushed. “We dated a couple of times. He wanted to see somebody look into KOH, so he passed this stuff on to me.”

  Okay, I know I shouldn’t be so focused on somebody’s sexual 170 Neil S. Plakcy

  orientation. But I’d bounced back and forth so much about Greg during that conversation that I had to laugh. “I didn’t know O’Malley was gay,” I said. “Guess you and he are two of the few guys on O’ahu I didn’t fool around with when I was single.”

  All three of us got a chuckle out of that. I thought I could detect relief in Greg’s laughter, that he felt better now that he’d stuck his toe out of the closet and gotten a positive response.

  I remembered the first few times I’d come out. How much relief I’d felt that I wasn’t keeping secrets any more. Akoni was the first person I told, because I had to confess that I’d been at a gay bar when I found a dead body, and he hadn’t taken it well.