by Toby Neal
“I don’t know anything!”
“MPD seems to think you do. We’re investigating who’s behind the gambling and cockfights and hear you know a little something about betting against the House. You have a little bit of your own thing going, don’t you?”
Silva’s pallor went gray, and he sat abruptly in the remaining steel chair, clutching the back of it for support. Lei glanced at the guys. “What’s she talking about?”
“Don’t know,” Bunuelos said. The captain shook his head.
“How did you know?” Back in the hot seat, Silva scratched under the toupee, which slid to the left.
“You can bet that if we know, the House knows. You might as well help us take him down.”
“I just do a few local fights on my own. No threat to his operation. He won’t bother with me.”
“How do you know? We can help you. Protect you. He’s already put a contract out on a police officer who’s investigating.”
Lei flinched, and her hand crept up to fiddle with the bandage on her head. The guys swiveled to look at her.
“Yeah. Someone’s trying to kill me,” she said to Bunuelos and Torufu, who looked at her wide-eyed. “Don’t know if it’s the House, though. Seems like the Feds sure have a lot of intel.”
“The Feds have a lot of confidential informants. They’re in a position to pay them a lot more than we can,” Captain Corpuz said.
In the interview room, Silva appeared motivated by this information. “Okay, I’ll tell you what I know—but only if I can have protection.”
“Done.” Marcella pushed a pad and paper over to Silva. “Who does the House run over here? Names and contact numbers.”
Over the next hour, they pried much more information out of Silva than Lei had imagined the man could possibly know. Apparently, he was running his own small-time cockfights and resented and feared the stranglehold the House had on the underground industry.
“What do you know about the House and guns?” Marcella asked.
“I know he brings them in. Supplies several pawnshops and dealers with whatever people want. That’s another reason I want to take him down,” Silva said, sucking in his paunch in righteous indignation. “Guns and drugs are bad for our community.”
They pried more names out of him—local gun and drug distributors. Captain Corpuz looked satisfied as Lei glanced over at him, and Lei knew Rogers and Marcella were doing this for their benefit—the information was exchange for pulling Silva in and using their facilities. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, the secret to interagency cooperation.
Silva finally left, half-moons of sweat darkening his shirt under the arms, and Bunuelos met him in the hall to tell him police protection was going to be a patrol car doing hourly sweeps by his house.
Lei, whose head had begun to throb in earnest, could hear him yelling that it wasn’t enough all the way down the hall as they escorted him to the front of the building. She rested her head on her arms as the interview room light went out and waited for Marcella to be done.
Stevens woke her with a hand on her shoulder.
“What’re you doing here?” His voice was cold. “You’re supposed to be home in bed.”
“Waiting for Marcella and Rogers. They did an awesome interview with that slime ball Silva. The FBI thing scared intel right out him like shit from a goose.” Lei got up with a boost under her arm from Stevens.
Marcella appeared in the doorway.
“There you are. Hey, Stevens.” They embraced. “Sorry, I had to borrow your girlfriend.”
“Some day off. She’s supposed to be resting,” he grumbled.
“Well, you know how she is—refused to be left home, and I figured I could keep an eye on her.” Marcella poked him in the chest. “Getting pretty attached, I see.”
“It’s a sickness,” he said, and gave Lei a little swat on the butt. “Get home and rest.”
Chapter Twenty
Lei lay in the dark beside Stevens, listening to his even breathing. It annoyed her how, no matter how mad they were at each other, he could always just get in bed and go to sleep like flicking a light switch, while she tossed and turned. They’d gone through a whole evening without saying much to each other.
For the first time, Lei wondered if it was a good idea for them to live together. Back when they had their own places, they’d just take a few days apart, start missing each other, and come back together. Now she felt trapped in an orbit, circling him, circling, circling, unable to get away when she needed to, unable to stop disappointing and irritating him, and vice versa. No point in talking about it anymore—this was the same fight they’d had a dozen times.
She studied the ceiling. The house, built in the thirties, had tongue-and-groove wood covered with plaster lining the ceiling. It was raining lightly outside as it often did in `Iao Valley, and the patter of water on the tin roof was a song she’d learned to love in Hanalei on Kaua`i, a place with more rainfall than most anywhere in the world.
Keiki slept at the foot of the king-sized bed she’d hauled to three islands, on her ratty old quilt. She’d been agitated when Marcella dropped Lei off that evening, running the fence and barking at nothing, but when Stevens got home and played with her a bit she’d finally settled down.
He was even stealing her dog.
Now Lei could hear a doggie version of a snore fluttering past Keiki’s wide black nose, and she couldn’t help smiling and giving the dog a little prod with her toe. Keiki sat up and looked around.
“Come here, baby.” Lei patted the comforter and Keiki belly crawled over, stretching out beside her. Lei stroked the big wide head, remembering the terrifying moment she’d almost lost the Rottweiler, shot on the Big Island. Lei stroked the deep groove of the scar where a bullet had exited Keiki’s shoulder and scored down her side, leaving a hairless line that would always remind Lei of how close she’d come to losing her companion.
Keiki whipped her head up and growled deep in her chest, a bass rumble.
“What’s the matter, girl?” Lei whispered, patting the dog as the animal’s ruff rose under her hand.
The big Rottweiler leapt out of bed. Lei heard a muffled whump! that sucked at her eardrums.
The dog ran into the living room, barking, as Lei reached over, shaking Stevens.
“Wake up! Something’s wrong!”
She grabbed her Glock out of the bedside table as he rolled up, reaching for his gun as well. The smell of smoke hit their nostrils.
Lei looked at Stevens. “Fire!”
They ran out of the bedroom into the living room, where Keiki stood, barking stiff-legged at the wall of flame engulfing the front door.
“Shit!” Lei ran to the phone on the kitchen counter and lifted it. Dead. She fumbled in her backpack for her cell phone, flipped it open. No signal.
Lei snapped her fingers and Keiki retreated to stand beside her, trembling and whimpering, ears flattened.
“Phone’s out. Cell signal must be jammed,” she yelled at Stevens, who had gone to the back door and was wrestling with the handle.
“Something’s wrong. It’s not opening,” he yelled back over the roar of flames that moved in a sheet, unbelievably fast, across the ceiling. “There must be some sort of accelerant. This shouldn’t be spreading so fast. Let’s get in the bedroom and break a window!”
They chased the dog back into the bedroom as the kitchen filled with choking smoke and billowing flame, glass bursting from the heat with shattering pops.
Lei shut the bedroom door to buy a few more minutes as Stevens yanked the comforter off the bed. She stuffed the rag rug into the crack under the door.
“Old house—it’s a tinderbox even on a rainy day,” she yelled back. “I don’t like that the cell phones are jammed. Think he’s still out there? Whoever set the fire?”
“Only one way to find out.” Stevens wrapped the comforter over the straight chair from the desk and swung it up to hit the bedroom window, a plate-glass insert above a lower set
of louvers for circulation.
The glass shattering was drowned out by the roar of the fire in the other room. He wrapped his fist in the comforter and knocked remaining shards of glass outside. They still had to get up to the chest-high window and jump out, a drop of ten feet or so with the elevation of the house. Stevens put the chair back down in front to use as a step to climb into the frame.
“Let’s put Keiki out first. Maybe she can flush him if he’s out there.” The dog was whimpering with terror and had crawled under the bed, so they wasted valuable minutes coaxing and dragging her out. By the time they got her onto the chair, the paint on the door was blistering and fingers of smoke had worked their way under the door, weaving a hypnotic spell against the bubbling paint. The fire was moving so fast there wasn’t much smoke, but breaking the window caused a sucking draft of oxygen that only fed the beast roaring in the other room.
“Hurry!” Lei screamed. They forced the big dog onto the sill by hauling her up by the scruff, boosting her haunches, and shoving her out. The framed picture on the wall behind Stevens seemed to explode and they both ducked.
“Just a second,” Stevens said, as Lei started to climb into the window. He pushed her back and grabbed a dark shirt out of the closet, throwing it over one of the pillows. He moved it up into the window and waved it.
The shot couldn’t be heard over the roar of the fire, but there was no mistaking the puff of back-blown feathers that floated down on them as he tossed the pillow out.
“Shit!” Lei cried, coughing. They hunkered down below the sill. Lei’s lungs burned. Every breath felt like she was sucking in fire. She reached up to yank a sheet off the bed, but she was getting too weak to rip it. Instead, she pulled down the other pillow and handed Stevens the pillowcase. They wrapped makeshift masks over their faces.
“What do we do now? He’s going to keep us in here until we burn!” Her voice was muffled but frantic. Stevens’s eyes tracked around the room as he looked for a solution.
“I doubt there are two of them. Let’s try the other side.”
They could hear Keiki’s frantic barking as they crawled across the floor to the opposite, mountain-side window and, staying out of sight, removed the glass louvers and one final barrier, the screen on the lower window.
Lei’s throat was so raw that she couldn’t speak. They used the comforter again, to beat out flames that had burned through the rag rug stuffed under the door. They wadded it against the door, but the roar was all encompassing and the heat blistered. The air was so hot it seemed like it would spontaneously combust.
Stevens yanked open the closet and shoved the clothes aside. Bolted to the back wall was what he called his “weapons locker,” where he stored spare guns and a collection of early American pistols. For a second, his eyes flashed blue mischief above the cloth mask as he spun the combination and took out three pistols, tossing her a Glock. He stuck a full clip of extra ammo into his waistband.
“Let’s get out over here and distract him.” He gestured to the mountain-side window, away from where the shooter had fired.
Lei got in position beside the window as he ripped the sheet off the bed, dropped it over the straight chair, and heaved it through the front-side window, just as the entire bedroom door burst into flame with a roar.
They were out of time.
Lei clutched a pistol in each hand and jumped out the back window.
Chapter Twenty-One
Lei landed and rolled, forcing rubbery legs to carry her to cover behind the white propane tank that was surely too close to the fiercely burning house. Stevens was right behind her as she ducked behind the metal tank. She could hear the wail of oncoming sirens.
Her ears rang; her eyes burned. She scanned the yard lit by the fiercely burning house for her dog. She heard Keiki barking somewhere to the front.
“Let’s look for the shooter,” Stevens croaked. His eyes gleamed with a fierce warrior light—maybe it was just the reflected flame—but Lei nodded, energized by his confidence though still unable to speak. They circled the pyre of the house, covering each other and keeping to the clumps of banana and plumeria trees at the edge of the fenced yard.
Keiki stood barking at the north corner of the yard, where a stand of guava trees leaned out over the six-foot fence. Stevens got there first and used one of the guava saplings to boost himself over, setting off down the road. Lei ran to the front gate and unlatched it, following him.
She heard the roar of an engine, and muscle memory tightened her whole body with the traumatic threat of an oncoming car. Her heart thudded as Stevens stepped into the road and shot out the windshield of the speeding sedan, throwing himself to the side as the vehicle barely missed him. Lei got off a few shots at the passenger-side window and the tires. The sedan kept going, weaving wildly, and swerved to avoid hitting an oncoming yellow fire truck, plummeting off the shoulder and into a ditch.
Stevens and Lei ran over, weapons drawn. The car, a tan rental Taurus, was hubcap deep in the irrigation ditch, the shooter slumped against the steering wheel. The airbags had failed to deploy.
Stevens hauled the unresisting suspect out by the armpits, laying the stocking-capped man in a black coverall in the road. He patted down the body and removed a Glock and a couple of knives as one of the firemen approached.
“This man need first aid?”
“Eventually. This man set our house on fire and tried to gun us down. Police on the way?” Lei asked, as Stevens scooped up a little ditch water and splashed it on the man’s camouflage-painted face, slapping him briskly. No response.
“Hey!” the fireman exclaimed. “Don’t hit a man with a head injury!”
More sirens, and a couple of uniforms approached on the run, recognizing Stevens. Amid exclamations and a heated exchange with the emergency medical technician, Lei felt her wobbly knees give way. She folded up onto the side of the road, reaching to feel her singed head. She tried to breathe in the fresh air and ignore the crackling roar of the burning house, but coughed uncontrollably instead. Moments later, she was in the back of the ambulance wrapped in a blanket, an oxygen mask over her face.
“Good thing you already had short hair.” Stevens hopped up into the ambulance, reaching over to give her a hug.
“You don’t have any eyebrows,” Lei said, touching his reddened skin with a gentle forefinger. He winced.
“At least we’re alive—but on that note, I talked to the captain. He’s going to put it out that we’re dead. That might buy us some time to interview the gunman and see who put him up to it. Suspect wasn’t looking too good, though.”
As if to punctuate this, they heard the wail of the other ambulance pulling away.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lei huddled on the corner of the sofa in the police safe house, wrapped in the green army surplus blanket she’d arrived in. She should get in the shower, wash off the smoke and grime, but she didn’t have anything to put on afterward—no clothes but the filthy boxers and tank top she’d worn to bed the night before.
Her hand crept down to caress Keiki’s head, playing with the triangular silky ears as the big Rottweiler slept curled on the floor. She might not have anything else, but she still had her dog. Keiki could easily have been shot or perished in the flames.
Voices in the kitchen—Stevens retelling the tale to Rogers and Marcella. Lei was too exhausted to go through it again and had opted out. Having repeated the story several times, she just didn’t think she had the energy to deal with the agents’ machine-gun questions. Lei felt profound gratitude covering her as warmly as the blanket. “Thank you, God,” she whispered, and closed her sore eyes to rest them. The voices went on out in the kitchen, a low rumble punctuated by laughter. Lei found herself smiling as she sank lower into the couch, her hand on Keiki’s ruff as the Vicodin she’d taken carried her off into darkness.
Lei woke up to instant coffee, a peanut-butter sandwich, and a bag of clothes Pono had brought over—some of his and Tiare’s castoffs. After
a shower and dressing in an outsized muumuu, she felt strangely disembodied but at least clean.
“Sorry—Tiare thought it would fit because it says one size fits all,” Pono said, eying the way the tent-like dress hung on Lei’s slim frame.
“It’s fine. Thanks, Pono. I’m in disguise anyway.”
“Yeah, on that note, I picked up this wig for you.” He handed her a long red wig. “The kids had it left over from Halloween.”
She set it on her head and heard Stevens snickering.
“Shut up, Eyebrow Boy,” she said to him. Stevens’s dark hair had singed patches and his eyebrows were completely gone, his face red. “I’m never gonna live this down.”
“Actually, everyone feels really bad for you,” Pono said. He came over, gave her an awkward side hug. “Nobody’s going to say a word.”
They turned Keiki loose in the fenced yard and piled into the purple truck. He drove them to Kahului Station for a debrief meeting. The air-conditioning was turned up high in the conference room, and seated around the long table were Lieutenant Omura, Pono, Bunuelos and Torufu, and Captain Corpuz. Lei adjusted the wig on her singed head, reaching up to scratch her scalp with a pencil. Stevens wore one of Pono’s Hawaiian-print shirts and sat kitty-corner to her.
“You two definitely have made an impression on someone,” Captain Corpuz said. “The fire investigation team said there was some sort of incendiary device set in your house, probably on a timer or with a detonator.”
“Maybe that’s why Keiki was so agitated,” Lei said. “She was all riled up that evening. Wonder how the guy got past her.”
Stevens’s reddened face looked odd without eyebrows. He rolled his Styrofoam coffee cup back and forth in his hands. “Any news on our hit man?”
“Still in a coma. We want to keep you two on the downlow and put out the story that you’re dead. That’ll buy us some time to figure out who’s behind this,” Captain Corpuz said.
