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Authors: Charles Knief

BOOK: Diamond Head
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D
uchess
wallowed in a slight chop, a stray trade wind ruffling the calm surface of Pearl Harbor, the breeze banging the rigging against the wooden mast. I checked the lines and went below.
Duchess
is all wood. There's no fiberglass, no aluminum, no plastic on her. She is not a Tupperware boat. In a deliberate contravention of the notion that lighter is better, she has the only wooden stick in the marina. She's an anachronism, like her owner.
Duchess
contains everything I own. She has complete stores of food and full tanks of water and diesel. To leave in a hurry it would only be necessary to slip the dock lines and motor out of the channel. I'm a confirmed nomad and I like it that way.
Like water, food and fuel, I keep all my cash on board, a fact no one is privy to. I removed the five thousand dollars from my backpack and went forward to the chain locker. Inside, at the forward peak behind a false panel in the bulkheads, is my bank. There was nearly two hundred thousand dollars in hundreds and fifties stored there in neat, banded piles. My retirement fund. It's a big space, and the stacks of bills looked small, considering what they would buy.
Short term, the money would purchase a lot of shiny, pretty toys, but for the long term it wouldn't buy much. I needed at
least five times that amount before I was satisfied. I didn't want to spend my declining years scrambling for enough change to buy dog food. And that is a vast improvement over the ideas of the future I'd previously held. There had been a time when retirement was not a consideration. The possibility of living that long never crossed my mind. From an actuarial standpoint I'd exceeded my life expectancy several times and I'd lived my life accordingly.
I felt ragged from too little sleep, too much alcohol and caffeine and too much pointless conversation. Chawlie's request was an unwelcome burden and took me out of focus, whether Thompson had anything to do with Mary MacGruder's death or not. The fight with the two local boys depressed me. My shoulder hurt. I didn't know where to go or what to do next and I was almost too tired to care.
A warm shower relaxed me and I headed to my bunk in the forward cabin. Something about the air disturbed me, the humidity insinuating itself around every inch of flesh the way it does when a hurricane is near.
It didn't have to be a hurricane. What I'd learned about Mary MacGruder was making my skin crawl of its own accord. I pulled the
Atlas of Asia
down from the bookshelves that lined my bunk and opened it to my favorite passage. Nestled inside a cutout was my Colt .45 1911A Gold Cup automatic pistol. I checked the load and slipped it under my pillow before I crawled naked between the percale.
 
I awoke the next morning full of purpose. Since everything seemed to be a dead end and I still didn't have anything to take to the police I decided to find the private investigator who had visited the hotel, and see where that would take me.
The yellow pages had only one private investigator whose name ended in A. Robert W. Souza had an address listed in Waikiki, beneath the western flank of Diamond Head. It wasn't
an impressive location. Behind the glitz and glitter of the thirty-story hotels along the beach, Waikiki is the home of the worst urban slums on the island. The streets are narrow, the apartments filled to overflowing. Crime is an everyday occurrence. The predators prey on the tourists and on each other. Along McCulley Avenue the iteration of the food chain is out in the open.
Parking is another problem. There isn't any. And due to the high crime rate there are police everywhere. They don't put a dent in the crime rate, but they do notice illegal parking. The Honolulu PD doesn't write parking tickets, it tows your car. I didn't want to pay the mandatory two-hundred-dollar fine for towing so I searched for a legal parking spot, got lucky and found one two blocks away.
The morning sun had neared its zenith and was blazing on my back as I trotted along. By the time I reached the detective's office sweat was pouring down the back of my shirt and dripping into my eyes.
The building was a small strip center with storefront businesses and enough parking for only the tenants. A Chinese CPA had the space nearest the street, a hair salon and an upholstery shop occupied the next two. Unit D, the address listed in the yellow pages for Robert W. Souza, Private Investigator, was vacant.
The door was locked so I peered through the glass. The office wore the shabby look of a place that had been unoccupied for weeks. There was no furniture. A white telephone rested on its side, the handset flung against the dark, soiled carpet like a broken arm. Letters, newspapers and business cards were piled beneath the mail slot. The one envelope I could read through the glass was addressed to Souza.
I went to the CPA's office. The interior was shaded from the morning sun by miniblinds and chilled by powerful air conditioning. It was so cool my back felt cold immediately. I stood in a small waiting room that was dominated by an unoccupied
secretary's desk. There was a sign that said w. WONG, CPA over a blue door.
I noticed a bell on the desk, the kind you hit with your palm. I touched it gently. The bell produced a ring that carried a nostalgic trace of childhood school days with it. A man came out of the back room. He was of average height with a slender build. He had coal black hair and a thin mustache.
“Hello?” he said. There was some caution in his manner, as if he expected violence.
“I'm looking for Robert Souza,” I said. “I thought his office was here.”
“Unit D, yah?”
“Yes. Robert Souza, the private detective.”
“I understand he moved out about a month ago.”
“Did he leave a forwarding address?”
“No. Not that I know of. Why don't you contact the leasing agent?”
“Do you have his name?”
“Yah. Let me check. Wait here, please.” He held out his hand, palm down, as if warding off my advance.
He disappeared behind the blue door again and closed it behind him. I heard the lock click shut. I waited a full five minutes before he returned.
“Her name is Nagada. Laurie Nagada. Here's her telephone number.” He handed me one of his cards with the name and number of the leasing agent scrawled across the back.
“Thank you,” I said.
He went back through the blue door and closed it without acknowledgment.
I let myself out.
Back out in the heat I took my cellular phone from my pack and tried the number. It was busy. I walked back to my parking space, hitting send over and over again, trying to get through. Her line was busy until after I'd found my Jeep,
stowed the backpack away and pulled out into traffic. On impulse I tried it again. It rang.
I shifted the phone to my left shoulder as I steered and shifted my way through heavy traffic on McCulley while I waited for Ms. Nagada to answer. When she did she sounded harried.
“Hello?” Her voice was on the edge of hysteria.
“Hello, Ms. Nagada? My name is Caine. John Caine. I'm looking for—”
“I'm not interested,” she said. “And it's Miss Nagada.”
“I'm not selling and I'm sorry about the ‘Miss.' “
“So am I, brother. What did you say your name was? What's that noise in the background? Are you on a car phone?”
“Sort of. My name is John Caine and I'm looking for one of your tenants, Robert Souza. He used to be at—”
“Old Magnum PI. I know where he used to be, that asshole. He left in the middle of the night. Took all his stuff and just moved out. He left owing, too. All that damage to the place, his deposit didn't even begin to cover it.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“I can't find him. It's possible he left the island.”
“Certified letters with return receipt requested?”
“No forwarding address. And the other tenants are going crazy because strange people keep stopping by looking for this character.”
“I understand. Mr. Wong gave me your name and number.”
“Then you must be nice. He runs most of them off.”
“What kind of damage to his place?”
“Oh, you know. Papers strewn all over, holes in the walls and ceilings. Holes kicked in the doors. The medicine cabinet on the bathroom floor. There was even a hole in the ceiling big enough to crawl up to the attic space. Why he'd do that is beyond me, too. But who can figure? That's the last time I'll rent to a private eye.”
What she'd described was a thoroughly professional search.
“When did this happen?”
“About a month ago. Right when he disappeared. He didn't pay his rent and I went around to collect or post the notice and I found his office that way. It's been vacant ever since.”
I thanked Miss Nagada and hit the End button. Someone had moved Mr. Souza out. All the way out. Someone had also gone through his office, including the walls and ceilings, and they hadn't wasted any time doing so. I made a bet with myself that Mr. Souza was feeding the fish somewhere offshore.
I called information and got a residential listing for a Souza, Robert W. The prefix was for Makiki, an old section of town not far from Waikiki and even more run-down. I phoned the number given and was told by the recorded message that it was disconnected and no longer in service.
If it was listed, the address would be in the directory. I spotted a phone booth with a directory hanging below on a chain and pulled in beside it. I found his address. It was on Young Street, near the old police station. I knew the area well. Souza's place was within three blocks of the phone booth. I decided to walk.
His apartment was on the third floor of a concrete-block building that looked as if it might survive a hundred hurricanes. It had all the charm and architectural appeal of a bomb shelter. There was a small hand-lettered sign that said the manager was in the back apartment, second floor, no vacancy. I went up a set of concrete steps and found her.
She was an ancient, bent Japanese woman wrapped in layers of sweaters despite the midsummer heat, the kind of wonderful, revered creature the Hawaiians call
kapuna.
Her brown, wizened face peered up at me through thick lenses, making me think of an apple left too long in the sun. She wore a quizzical expression.
“Hello?” Her voice was tremulous and uncertain.
“Hello, Auntie,” I said, dropping into the Islander′s habit of
referring to any woman over sixty. “I am looking for one of your tenants. Mr. Souza?”
A curious calm came over her and she straightened, staring at me through the clear lenses of her glasses, her eyes magnified to twice their normal size. Her gaze was intense.
“He is dead,” she declared.
“I'm sorry.” It was all I could think of to say. Her response had not been one I'd anticipated.
“He kill himself, they say, but I know different. They come for him, that's why. In the middle of the night. Two men. They knock on his door. He let them in. They go inside. Hour later, they go out. Next morning, he dead.”
Wondering at her narrative, I nodded.
“They say he call police and tell them he going to kill himself. And that he did. Overdose of da kine drug. Bad ‘ting, that. He leave a note. They say he kill himself. Two men, they kill him. They did it and blame him, that's why.”
“Who said he killed himself?”
“The police. I tell them what I saw. They don't believe me. I'm an old woman, but I watch. I don't sleep. So I watch. I know my building.”
“How long ago was this?”
“One month. Just before rent due.”
“Have you rented the apartment?”
She shook her head. “He leave big mess. Police make even bigger mess. Have to paint, that's why. Move out his stuff. It takes me long time to paint da kine apartment. My fingers hurt, that's why.”
“May I see the apartment?”
She studied me again, her scrutiny extending from the top of my haole head to my sandaled feet. I was dressed as a local in shorts and T-shirt. “I give you key, you bring it back?”
“Of course, Auntie.”
She went inside and brought out a ring of brass keys that must have weighed ten pounds. “This here every key. His was
eight, on top floor in the back. I can't see that key but it's here.” She handed me the cluster of keys, the means of entry to every door in the building.
“You bring it back, you hear?”
“I will, Auntie,” I said. I had not even told her why I wanted to find Souza. This lady remembered Hawaii as it used to be.
The third floor was a repetition of the second. Eight was in the back, concrete block walls interrupted only by a window and a door. I found a key with “8” stamped in the brass and tried it.

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