Fire Knife Dancing (Jungle Beat)

by John Enright

  “House girl,” Apelu said. “Watch her.” And he brushed past the assistant commissioner to follow the others. He could hear footsteps on the floor above, the sound of doors opening and closing. When Apelu reached the hallway inside the front door, the two CID guys were coming out of separate downstairs rooms.

  “Leai,” they said. Nothing.

  Asia appeared at the top of the curving stairs to the second floor and said, “No one up here either.”

  “Damn,” Apelu said as Asia came back down the stairs, still holding her forty-five up and away from her body. “You can stash your federal artillery,” he told her.

  “You found someone,” Asia said.

  “Just the house girl. I’ll go question her.” Apelu turned to the CID guys. “Go check what vehicles are still out front.” Asia went out the front door with them.

  Apelu had just turned to go back to the kitchen when he heard from outside a loud, if squeaky, command to freeze and the sound of multiple weapons being cocked.

  “Freeze” was a really dumb command to give to a Samoan, Apelu thought as he turned back toward the front door. What he found outside was like one of those diorama things—a freeze frame, after all. In front of him on the porch was Asia, arrested in her forward motion, her automatic still in her hand, but pointed skyward. In front of her, already standing down on the driveway, the two CID guys were similarly halted and motionless. Beyond them, half obscured by bushes and walls, were Dwayne and all of his boys scattered along the front of the property, each with his own federal handgun, identical to Asia’s, leveled and held in the same two-handed, hunch-shouldered pose.

  Apelu put his hands way above his head, palms out and stepped forward. “Yo, Dwayne,” he called, and just as he did the third CID guy popped up out of a hedge to the right of the house, and all the FBI guys swiveled on him. Asia dropped to one knee and took aim on Dwayne.

  “No!” Apelu bellowed. “You federal fuckheads!” And everybody froze again, in a fresh diorama.

  After all the good American hardware had been uncocked and put away, Apelu made the introductions. It would seem interdepartmental communication was not a federal priority. Asia hadn’t known that Dwayne and his crew were on-island, and vice versa. The assistant commissioner had been kept in the dark completely until Asia had been told to enlist his help in finding Tia.

  Dwayne explained that after Apelu hadn’t shown up at the Laundromat, they had gotten direction to the Woos’ house from the Korean guy who ran the place, and they were just scoping out the house when the two Samoan males and a woman brandishing a handgun came bursting out the front door at them, and they reacted the way they had been trained to react.

  The house girl wasn’t much help. She only knew that everyone had left about an hour before, after she had made them all lunch. There were “many” people. Yes, two Chinese men. Yes, a young Samoan woman. When they left, all Mrs. Woo had told her was to take care of the house and not answer the phone. No, she had no idea where they were going, but they took luggage like they would be gone for a while. Yes, there was a man named Werner with them. He liked giving orders, the house girl said.

  “Who’s this Werner guy?” Dwayne asked, after Apelu had translated for him what the house girl had said.

  “Western Samoan, businessman. I happened to see him arrive at the airport this morning and followed him back here. He must be involved somehow, on the other end.”

  They could hear a small airplane taking off on the runway on the other side of the fence out front. They all turned and looked, with the same thought.

  Apelu looked at his watch—4:05. “That would be the last Polynesian flight to Apia. I don’t think they’re on it.”

  “Why do you think that?” Asia asked.

  “Because I checked the manifests. The flights were all overbooked, and none of our group had reservations.”

  “Different names?” Dwayne asked.

  “No. International flight, got to have passport or photo letter of identity to match your ticket. No, they’re on the run, no time for anything that fancy, and Werner’s too smart to risk trying to get all of his eggs through two customs in one basket.”

  “Options?” Dwayne again.

  “Boat. We’re dealing with smugglers, remember? They’d probably leave from somewhere in the harbor where there are a lot of docks to load from, but there is also the harbor patrol. Maybe some place more out of notice like Auasi, Leone, or Fagasa. Assistant Commissioner, would you mind calling harbor patrol and asking them to stay on duty tonight—like on the water—and stop all boats leaving?”

  “It’s after four,” the assistant commissioner said. “The harbor patrol is off duty.”

  “Then get them back on duty,” Dwayne barked.

  “I don’t take my orders from you,” the assistant commissioner said, again only moving his lips, but he did take a cell phone out of the pocket of his lavalava and call downtown. He walked away from the rest of them and spoke softly into the phone in Samoan. When he came back, he said, “That’s done. The harbor is closed for the night. Nobody leaves.”

  “The other places you mentioned?” Dwayne asked.

  “Best split up,” Apelu said. “Three teams, CID and FBI on each team. So you can find the places, Dwayne. The assistant commissioner has a cell phone, so we can all get back to him to report in. What’s the number, chief?”

  “I’m not giving out my private cell phone number.”

  “It’s 358-2840,” Asia said, “and mine is 352-1117.”

  “How did you…?” The assistant commissioner asked.

  “You called me back from your cell phone this morning. I saved your number. And what is your problem? Lack of communication just almost got all of us shot.”

  One of the CID officers volunteered that he also had his cell phone with him, so they’d put one of the people with cell phones on each team.

  “So, chief, do we take Sergeant Soifua in according to your directive, or what?” one of the CID guys asked.

  “No. You did not see Sergeant Soifua today. Sergeant Soifua is still a fugitive,” the assistant commissioner said in a voice even smaller than usual. “In fact, Sergeant, I am cutting you out of the rest of the operation. We will drop you back at Agent Bowman’s house on our way to Leone, where you can man her phone and remain hidden for the time being.”

  “But I—” Apelu began to protest.

  “You will do what I say,” the short guy said.

  Well, either they catch them tonight or they don’t, Apelu thought as he walked up the gravel path from Asia’s driveway to her back door. He had argued a bit but had lost. The plan now was that the separate teams would report back to him at Asia’s. It was getting on dusk, abetted by a low and heavy sky. He was angry and tense, once again forced into inactivity. He walked through Asia’s house to the porch, where he had stashed the fire knives, and took them out to the edge of the cliff. He could at least practice at being a warrior if he couldn’t be one. As if either shaming or affirming his resolve, the white heron was circling above the surf at the end of the cove, its left wing tucked down into the thermal, holding it there in a ghostly orbit. Then across the lava he heard Nick and Nora tag-team barking.

  Back in the house he exchanged the fire knives for the shotgun, then headed up the pandanus trail to Ezra’s house. From the end of the trail he could see two vehicles parked on the lawn, the Woos’ black SUV and the white van that the Fijian girl had used when she emptied the containers. The house was all lit up. Voices came from inside. Apelu paused, debating whether to return to Asia’s and try to call back the teams headed out to their different destinations—assuming their quarry were here to stay in the house for the night—or to wait to see what transpired. Maybe he could get close enough to eavesdrop. The last daylight was fading, Nick and Nora were barking. They were hungry. He started to move forward toward the kitchen window when the front door opened, and he darted back into the shadows.

  CHAPTER 19

  WHEN THEY
CAME out of the house, they came all at once—first the two Chinese men with their two pieces of luggage each, then Atalena Woo, holding Tia by the arm, and Mr. Woo, who had to make two trips with their luggage, then Werner and the Fijian girl, and finally the AG, pulling a suitcase on wheels and talking into a cell phone. They all got into the white van, and it pulled away cautiously into the rocky lane. Nick and Nora barked them good-bye. They had left a back-door light and a kitchen light on.

  If ever there was a scramble time this was it. The tail lights of the van disappeared, bouncing away up the driveway. Instead of spending the five to ten minutes it would take him in the accelerating darkness to get back to Asia’s, Apelu decided to see if he could get into the house and use Ezra’s phone to call Asia and the assistant commissioner. The kitchen door was locked, but the first sliding glass door on the patio was unlocked as before. Apelu leaned the shotgun against the doorjamb of Ezra’s bunker and went in there to use the phone. He was dialing Asia’s number when Leilani came into the room with the shotgun pointed at him.

  “No, Apelu. Hang up the phone,” Leilani said. “I really wouldn’t want to have to shoot you, but I will.”

  Apelu hung up the phone. “Auntie Leilani, I didn’t know you were home.”

  “I just came in on the last flight. Werner has told me what a bad boy you have been—not just putting poor Ezra in jail, but sticking your nose into a lot of things that really weren’t any of your business. Now, I guess you’ve been spying on us too.”

  “Auntie Leilani, I don’t think you know about what’s really been going on. It’s not just about Ezra’s little smuggling game. There’s more. There are people dead.”

  “Bad things happen when people don’t mind their own business, but we don’t have anything to do with dead people. We were just running a little business, a little service, not hurting anyone, until you butted in.”

  “It wasn’t just me butting in.”

  “Now Werner is going to have to shut down our businesses here, and my stupid nephew has got himself caught up in some sort of FBI investigation, Werner says, and has to move back to Apia to avoid something, and now you’re spying on us here, which means I should probably go back to Apia too now to get you out of my hair, and poor Ezra in jail, and you probably haven’t been getting his cranberry juice to him, have you, and someone has been sleeping in, bleeding in my bed—screwing in my bed—strangers screwing in my bed. And now you. What to do with you?”

  “I’m just going to make one phone call, Auntie, and then I’ll leave. Or, if you like, I’ll leave without making the phone call.”

  “No, you won’t do either,” she said and emptied one barrel of the shotgun into the ceiling. “You ungrateful boy, causing all this trouble. Why, I gave you a job when you were just a kid and couldn’t speak proper English, and your family was hungry, and you never were that great a fire knife dancer. You didn’t have the body for it. You didn’t turn on the girls, or the guys either, for that matter. You wouldn’t learn new routines. All you knew how to do was that traditional shit you picked up from that crippled faggot teacher of yours, and you were always hurting yourself, and I would have to send you home to that bush-stupid mother of yours with burns or cuts or whatever, and then I’d have to listen to her bitch at me in Samoan over the phone. Oh, I remember you well—Apelu, the purist prick. You were always more trouble than you were worth. You knocked up one of my best dancers in Tahoe one winter. I lost her. You and your family’s self-righteous fa`asamoa shit. You were a real pill, Apelu. You still are. Now march.” Leilani stepped aside and motioned with the shotgun for Apelu to leave the room. He did.

  “I think I’ll just lock you up with the dogs and take Mrs. Woo’s car to the airport, get on Werner’s plane with everyone else, and go back to Apia—thank god I haven’t unpacked, and I couldn’t sleep in that bed—where I’ll be safely away from you and your infernal meddling. I don’t know why I agreed to come back in the first place, just to get out of Werner’s way.” She stopped in the kitchen to take a ring of keys from a hook by the door and marched him back out to the patio and toward the back of the house.

  Apelu stopped. He thought about doing something, anything besides obey her—try to get the gun away from her, make a dash for it.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Apelu, but I will shoot you, if only in the legs. One thing I have to say for you as a dancer, you did have nice legs.”

  “Auntie Leilani,” Apelu said as he continued walking toward the kennel, “there are no more planes to Apia tonight.”

  “Oh, Werner had them add a special flight, just for us. He’s on the airline’s board of directors, you know. Werner runs a lot of things in Apia.”

  Like young lawyers who ask too many questions off cliffs, Apelu thought.

  “Werner had to cancel a couple of important meetings today just to come over here and sort things out after my stupid nephew screwed things up, and after Werner got him that job as attorney general and everything. I don’t know about you young people. You can’t seem to get things right.”

  They had reached the kennel, and Nick and Nora were going wild. Just like the first time Apelu had met them, they were foaming at the mouth.

  “Now, I don’t know about these dogs, Apelu. They’re Ezra’s. I don’t think they’ve ever killed anybody, but they scare the bejezus out of me. You’re a man, though, so maybe you can deal with them. In any case, it’s the only place I have to lock you up, and I’d rather lock you up than shoot you. Now, don’t do anything stupid,” she said as she held the shotgun on him with one hand and searched through the ring of keys for the right key with the other.

  “Auntie Leilani, you are making a big mistake going with Werner. For the time being you may be safe, but too many people have died, both here and over there. It will catch up with you.”

  “Have you ever noticed what beautiful clothes Werner wears? How he carries himself? Things don’t catch up with Werner. Werner catches up with them. He owns Apia, you know, just about. He practically runs that country, from behind the scenes. He gave me this outfit, in fact—Dior, from New York, pure silk, wonderfully lined. It’s perfect, isn’t it? Everything he does is perfect. No, I have nothing to worry about if I’m with Werner and Gigi, and I much prefer it over there, actually, away from poor Ezra, and I’m not going to kill you or maim you, Apelu. I’m just putting you in with the dogs.”

  Leilani had found the right key and unlocked the Yale lock. Nick and Nora stopped barking and backed off a ways from the gate, as they did when they thought they were about to be fed. With the shotgun still aimed at Apelu, she opened the gate a crack and said, “Get in there.”

  Apelu went into the cage, and Leilani quickly latched it behind him and snapped the Yale into place. Nick barked three times. Nora growled. Leilani quickly split.

  “So, this is what it feels like to be locked up, hey guys?” Apelu said. Nick came over and nudged Apelu in the thigh with his huge forehead.

  “Watch the legs, guy. They’re my sole asset as a dancer, and besides, the food’s out there. Let’s make some noise for the lady’s benefit.” Apelu made a low growling sound in his throat, then a louder growl.

  “Come on, you guys, bark,” he whispered, then gave his best imitation of Nick’s angry bark. Nora just looked at him with a sort of pitying look, but Nick caught on and answered him. Apelu growled back, and then Nora decided to join in and growled too. Soon all three of them were barking and growling, having a good time.

  There was a three-inch gap between the top of the gate and its frame that Apelu got his hand through. He could just feel along the two-by-four ledge on the outside. Apelu figured that if Leilani had known the other key was there she would have used it or taken it. His fingers found it and very carefully pushed it back into his palm. He heard the SUV leaving.

  Nick had stopped barking and was now watching Apelu intently. Nora was still barking, but at something or nothing at the other end of the kennel. It was tricky through the chain-link f
encing on the gate, but Apelu eventually managed to get the key properly inserted into the lock and turn it. Then the three of them were free. Nick went over and head-butted the dry dog food garbage can, which went down with a crash and a spill. As Apelu headed toward the house, Nora joined Nick for a free meal.

  All the doors, including the patio door, were now locked. Apelu picked up one of the cast-iron patio chairs and threw it through the glass door, then knocked out the jagged pieces before entering. From the phone in Ezra’s room he reached Asia’s number.

  “Where are you?” he asked without even saying hello.

  “Leone, watching nothing. What’s up?”

  “Airport,” he said. “They’re all leaving tonight on a special flight. Contact the others. Get there as fast as you can.”

  Asia had her car, so Apelu had no transportation. He let himself out the back kitchen door and started to run.

  The weather had changed again, the moon breaking through the thinning clouds. Under the three-quarters-full moon the clouds were like an extension of the island, pulling it skyward from its ridgelines, and the silhouettes of the ghostly tallest palm trees somehow anchored, owned all the moonlit cumulus even as they moved, eclipsing stars.

  There was no way Apelu could run the several miles around the fenced perimeter of the airport and get to the terminal at the end of the opposite side in any sort of good time. He was way too out of shape for that, but he had to go for it, hoping the others would get there first. He wondered how late Werner’s special flight would be. Apelu knew the routines at the airport—the customs officers would all have gone home after the last scheduled flight departed. The terminal would be shut down. Even the tower would be unmanned. The pilots on the Polynesian flights could turn on the runway landing lights automatically by radio from the cockpit—an emergency measure that had become public knowledge one night when it failed to work.

  On this side of the airport there was a rudimentary gravel road that ran along the outside of the perimeter fence. Apelu cut to that, off the paved road. As he ran, Apelu thought about Tracey with her smashed-in drowned face, Mati with his face blown off, Lisa with no one to push her glasses back up her corpse’s nose—cold, callous murders, not acts of passion or defense or happenstance, acts for which he could sometimes find sympathy, even forgiveness, if that wasn’t too loaded a word for a cop to use. He didn’t know Werner, but he despised his smugness, his assumed distance above what he had wrought.