Mahu Blood (10 page)

We had a long way to go before our lives were fully integrated, before I could anticipate how he’d react to something as simple as dinner with friends. I could only hope we’d make it to that point without breaking up or killing each other.

diNNeR iN chiNAtowN

Mike was taking a nap when I got home, so I padded around the kitchen and the living room, cleaning up and then reading. He woke around 6:30 and came out of the bedroom in his underwear.

Even after all the time that has passed between us, a sight like that still makes me hard. I love the way his white briefs contrasted with his tanned skin and black hair, the way I can see the muscles in his abdomen ripple as he walked. He yawned and scratched his balls. “What time do we have to leave for dinner?”

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

“What time?”

“Soon. You going to get dressed?”

“No, I thought I’d go in my shorts.” He stroked his crotch a couple of times. “You like that?”

I got up from the couch and walked over to him. Then I dropped to my knees, grabbed his ass and started licking his dick through his briefs.

He groaned. “We’re going to be late for dinner if you keep that up.”

I stopped licking for a minute to say, “You’re the one who has to keep it up.” He laughed and grabbed my head. The shorts came down, and his dick went into my mouth. An appetizer before dinner.

As we drove down to Chinatown in my Jeep, I told him how frustrated I was that the investigation into Edith’s death was stalled.

“I know, it happens. But that doesn’t make it any easier.”

“It’ll come together when it’s time,” Mike said. “You know that. You just keep your head down, keep following your leads and something will break.”

“I hope so. How was your day?”

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“Fire out in Waipahu last night. Mother, father, six kids living in this wood-framed bungalow must have been built fifty years ago. Place went up like tinder. They’ve been overloading the wiring, and last night the dryer shorted out while everybody was asleep.”

“Anybody make it out?”

“They all did. The dog woke them up, you believe it? Golden retriever saved the whole family. Started barking like crazy, ran around the house grabbing them and tugging.”

“That’s sweet. My brother’s station will get a lot of mileage out of a story like that.” My oldest brother, Lui, was the manager of KVOL, “Your Volcano Alert Station, Erupting News All The Time,” the scrabbling independent in Honolulu. KVOL

concentrated on the most inflammatory stories, but I knew they’d love a heroic dog.

“So I was talking to the dad today, as I’m poking through the ashes. He’s trying to save anything he can, a picture, a kid’s toy, because they’ve got nothing. And he’s totally bummed because he and his wife had a fight before they went to bed, and he feels like it was that bad karma that brought the fire down on them.”

He looked over at me. “When we argue, you think you can make everything better by sucking my dick.”

“It’s worked so far. Seriously, it’s better than fighting, isn’t it?”

He had a devilish grin on his face. “Sometimes fighting can be fun.”

I pulled into a parking spot a block from the restaurant. “Hold that thought, tiger,” I said. “We’ll get back to it later.”

We ran into Terri and Levi on the street in front of the restaurant, and we all went in together. They made a nice couple.

Terri was tall, slim and tanned, wearing a floral print dress with a strand of pearls—you might take her for a pampered wife, if you didn’t know that she’d been trained since birth for a life of public service.

Levi was about ten years older, a couple of inches taller, with MAhu BLood
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the bearing of a corporate executive. His face was deeply tanned from hours spent on his sailboat, and he’d given up suits in favor of striped shirts and khakis.

The Golden Dragon’s plate glass windows were cluttered with menus and posters of local events. The inside wasn’t much, either, just a big aquarium with tropical fish, a bunch of rundown booths and rice paper calendars and pictures of China on the walls. But the food was terrific; my friends and I had been going there since high school. Some of the elderly waiters and waitresses had been there that long, and sometimes I thought they’d still be there long after we had passed on.

After we’d been seated, made some conversation and had our orders taken, Terri asked, “So, what did you want to know?”

“You’re on the board of the Ohana Ola Kino, right? What kind of place is it?”

“It’s a halfway house for men and women transitioning back to the community after treatment in a residential mental health facility,” Terri said. “Mostly the Hawai’i State Hospital. Patients who don’t have a support system go to the Ohana for a place to live, job training and so on. They have residential space for thirty clients and serve another hundred or so with counseling and programs.”

“What’s your interest?” Levi asked.

“Do you know a man named Ezekiel Kapuāiwa? He lived at the Ohana for a while a couple of years ago?”

The waitress brought out a platter of crab rangoon and bowls of won ton soup, and we dug in. Terri said, “I joined the board of the Ohana about five or six years ago. I spent a lot of time there at first, getting to know the staff and some of the clients. I met Ezekiel then.”

She speared a piece of crab with her chopsticks and lifted it to her mouth. When she finished chewing, she said, “You have to understand, the clients at the Ohana all have problems. So Ezekiel didn’t stand out. But then one day, we were having a benefit lunch, and I happened to sit at a table with him and a man
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named Jun Tanaka, who we were cultivating to join the board.”

“I don’t trust Tanaka,” Levi said. “There’s something shady about him.”

“Levi is determined that Jun Tanaka has some devious interest in the Ohana,” Terri said.

I finished my soup and pushed the bowl away. “If you think he’s involved in something criminal, I want to hear about it. But first, I need to focus on my case.”

Terri continued. “At this lunch, with Jun Tanaka, Ezekiel started bragging about being descended from King Kamehameha, and honestly, I wasn’t paying him any mind. Delusions of grandeur, you know. I figured it was part of whatever was wrong with him.

But Jun was fascinated. He kept Ezekiel talking, and then a week later Jun agreed to join the board. I didn’t make the connection until I heard that Ezekiel had started the Kingdom of Hawai’i, and Jun was one of his backers.”

The busboy took away the empty dishes, and on his heels the waitress brought platters of honey garlic chicken, pepper steak, sizzling shrimp, and big metal bowls of white rice. When we’d finished serving ourselves, Terri picked up the story.

“Jun Tanaka is a Japanese businessman. His grandfather came here before the Second World War and then was interned at Honouliuli.”

“There were internment camps in Hawai’i?” Mike asked, between bites of chicken. “I thought the camps were all on the mainland.”

“Most of them were,” I said. “They couldn’t intern all the Japanese-Americans in the islands because there were too many of them, and the economy would have fallen apart. I think they only locked up the people they thought were dangerous.”

“My point exactly,” Levi said.

“You can’t blame Jun for something his grandfather may or may not have done,” Terri said. “Look at all the things people accused my grandfather of.”

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Terri’s grandfather had built Clark’s from a single store in Honolulu to a chain throughout the islands. I knew there were stories about other merchants he forced out of business, landowners he bought from cheaply. But I also knew that he had fought against statehood because he wanted the islands to retain their independence, started the Sandwich Islands Trust and challenged his family to do good works.

“Jun’s father was born in Honouliuli, and then the family was deported to Japan after the war,” she said. “His father became a successful businessman in Japan, but he held onto his US

citizenship. He arranged for Jun to be born in Honolulu, and then he sent Jun here to expand the family’s business interests.”

“I think the man’s a crook,” Levi said.

“How do you know him? And why do you think he’s a crook?”

I asked.

“Terri asked me to help out,” he said. “I’m not on the board officially, but I go to meetings and look over the financial statements. And I get a bad feeling from Tanaka. He’s shady about where his money comes from. Maybe it’s that Ezekiel is so patently crazy that I think there’s got to be something behind Jun’s backing him.”

Levi didn’t have any evidence to support his accusations, but I promised I’d look into Tanaka, and we moved on to coffee and dessert. “Do you know why Ezekiel left the Ohana?” I asked Terri.

“It’s not supposed to be a lifelong residence,” she said. “He had a job, at a coffeehouse, and eventually he found an apartment.

There are always new clients ready to take any places that come open.”

The conversation shifted to more social topics, and the evening became a fun dinner with friends. I was glad to see that Terri and I had been able to integrate Levi and Mike into our friendship without anything changing between us.

I insisted on paying for dinner, even though Terri and Levi could have bought and sold Mike and me a dozen times over.

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They’d taken us out many times, at more expensive restaurants.

“Get what you needed?” Mike asked, as we drove home.

“You know the drill. You don’t know what’s important until you put all the pieces together.”

“I’ve seen this Ezekiel guy on TV a couple of times. Now I understand why he sounds nuts. I mean, come on. Hawai’i secede from the US?”

“Just because he’s crazy doesn’t mean he doesn’t make some good points. The US took down a sovereign government so that some American businessmen could make money.”

“And the US hasn’t been good to Hawai’i?”

“You ever go out to Papakolea?” I asked. “To the Hawaiian homestead land? You think those people are benefiting from the way the land was stolen from their ancestors?”

“Don’t tell me you believe that crap.”

“It’s not crap. My people were here for centuries before the missionaries got here and everything started.”

“Your people? Wasn’t your dad’s mother a haole teacher from Montana?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Yeah, it is the point. You’re full of shit.”

I pulled the Jeep into the driveway. “Yeah. Thanks for your opinion.” I slammed the door and stalked in the house.

MoRNiNg stoNeRs

There was a well-defined space between Mike and me in bed that night. In the morning, we kissed and wished each other a good day, but I felt the residue of our arguments simmering under the surface.

At headquarters later, I told Ray what I’d learned from Terri.

“Yeah, it’s all interesting,” he said. “But how does it relate to Edith Kapana’s death?”

“I just have a feeling. Levi thinks there’s something illicit going on with Jun Tanaka. And I keep thinking that there’s some correlation between the Ohana and Edith’s death.”

We pulled out the case files and started thumbing through the pages. “Remember that woman at the community center who told us Edith was making trouble for pakalolo dealers?” I asked.

“You want to go downstairs with me? Maybe Vice can tell us something.”

We took the elevator down to the B1 level, the first of two levels below ground. The photo lab, narcotics and the special investigations section, where they do research on evidence, are down there, along with Vice.

Lieutenant Kee’s secretary, Juanita Lum, is a heavyset, no-nonsense Filipina, with lustrous black hair and skin so smooth she could do soap ads. From her wedding picture, which sat in a heart-shaped frame on her desk, you could see she’d been a real looker when she was younger.

“Howzit, Kimo?” she asked. “Morning, Ray.”

I explained what we were looking for.

“Let me see what I can dig up for you.” She turned to her computer, and her fingers, with their long pink nails, flew across the keyboard. Pages started spewing out of the printer next to her desk. “I pulled up everybody with intent to sell in that area.”

She grabbed a half-dozen pages from the printer and handed
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them to me.

Juanita had provided us with eight guys who had a history of dealing on Hawaiian homestead land. Back at our desks, we spent an hour looking into them. Two of the guys on the list were dead, and another three had been penal guests of the state of Hawai’i since well before Aunty Edith’s murder. With a few phone calls, we knocked one more out—he was a student at U.H. who’d been buying some Maui Wowie to distribute to friends back at the dorm.

That left us with two brothers who lived in Papakolea. It was barely ten a.m., an hour when all serious potheads are tucked up in bed. We drove up to their address in the Jeep, with the side flaps rolled up, the fresh morning air cooling as we climbed uphill through the curving streets.

“I thought you knew your way around this whole island,” Ray said, as another street turned out to be a cul-de-sac that didn’t go through where I wanted it to.

I made a U-turn and said, “You like this neighborhood?

Because I can drop you anywhere around here you want.”

“I’m just saying.”

Two more U-turns later, I found the narrow street off Tantalus Drive where Leroy and Larry Campbell lived in a beat-up shack. Weeds grew around the foundation of the shack; it had once been white, but the tropical sun had faded it to the color of dried spit. One of the windows was broken and covered over with cardboard.

Ray rapped on the door and called out, “Mr. Campbell. Police.

Open up.”

We waited, and Ray was about to knock again when the door opened. A fat Hawaiian guy with dark dreadlocks stuck his head out. “Help you?”

“Mr. Campbell?” Ray showed him his ID. “Honolulu Police.

Can you step outside?”

We heard someone call out from inside the shack, and the fat MAhu BLood
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guy turned to answer. “It’s da kine police.”

“That your brother in there?” Ray asked. “We’d like to talk to him, too.”

I saw curtains flicking across the street, some nosy old kupuna keeping tabs on the brothers. After another minute or two, both of them came outside. They were both big guys, though Leroy was bald, and Larry was the one with the dreadlocks.

They were typical stoners, slow to wake up and even slower to process our questions. They knew Aunty Edith, because of the trouble she’d been causing for them, but when Ray asked if they knew who had killed her, they laughed.

“Yeah, man, we climb up on da roof and shoot her,” Leroy said, making a gun with his thumb and index finger. “Bang, bang!”

He and his brother laughed like Santa Claus, their big bellies shaking. They pretend shot each other, each grabbing his chest and staggering around as if dying. “Yo, dude, a lady’s dead,” Ray said. “Have some respect.”

They sobered for a minute, then started giggling again. I looked at Ray. I couldn’t imagine either of these idiots getting it together enough to come up with a plan to shoot Edith Kapana—no less carry it out. But I had to ask. “Where were you last Friday morning?”

Leroy opened his hands like he had a pretend datebook in them and flipped the pages. “Last Friday. Dat da day we was knocking back beers wid da mayor?” he asked his brother. “Or wuz we climbing Diamond Head fo’ admire the view?”

“Nah, bruddah, dat the day we wuz practicing da hula,” Larry said, waving his hands and swaying his hips.

Both of them dissolved into laughter again.

“Listen, jerkwads, you don’t have a good alibi, we take you downtown,” Ray said.

Leroy sobered up. “What you want us tell you?” he asked. “We no wake up until noon any day. Only alibi I got is my bruddah.

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Plus, we ain’t got no car. You think we take guns on da Bus?”

Ray and I looked at each other. “We may have more questions for you,” I said. “Don’t leave town.”

Leroy pulled his shorts up on his thigh, kicked his leg and stuck his thumb out as if he was hitching a ride. He and his brother collapsed into laughter once more, and they were pretend shooting each other again as we walked away.

We went across the street, and the nosy neighbor confirmed that the Campbell brothers rarely, if ever, woke before noon.

They were lazy, no-account pakalolo dealers, she said, and she thought we should lock them up just on general principles.

“I wish we could,” Ray said. We thanked her for her help and went back to the Highlander. By then Leroy and Larry had gone back in the shack, and I could sniff the pungent aroma of Maui Wowie wafting out of the front window.

“I think you had the right idea yesterday,” I said, as I backed down the driveway. “Going over to the Ohana Ola Kino. Even without a subpoena for medical records, we could nose around the facility, see what we can find out.”

“Can’t work out any less useful than this was.”

We took a couple of winding roads over the mountains and into Kaneohe. The Ohana was a one-story building that hugged a hillside a few blocks from the Windward Mall, just down the street from the Kope Bean branch we’d visited the day before.

It looked like a nursing home—a central foyer with a reception desk and an office, and two wings of client rooms on either side.

A couple of strip shopping centers and an empty lot were its closest neighbors.

The receptionist was an elderly Japanese woman. Ray and I showed our IDs and asked if we could talk to someone about the facility.

That flustered her. She muddled and dithered for a while, then called a tall, slim haole from the office behind her. “I’m David Currie,” he said. “I’m the administrator here. How can I help you?”

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He led us into his office, which was cluttered with books and papers and photos and certificates on the walls. “We’re here about Ezekiel Kapuāiwa,” I said. “I understand he was a client here?”

“I can’t give you any information about our clients without a warrant. All our records are confidential.”

“We don’t have a reason to get a warrant,” Ray said. “We want to learn about Ezekiel. Whatever you feel you can tell us without compromising his privacy.”

Currie pursed his lips and thought for a while. Then he said,

“Ezekiel is one of our success stories. He reintegrated with the mainstream very well, and indeed, he’s become a community leader. I’d like to think that whatever is in his past should stay in the past.”

“I’d like that, too. But sometimes the past has a way of catching up to us.”

He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell us anything about Ezekiel’s diagnosis or hospitalization. “I can tell you, though, that you’re not the first person to come up here asking about Ezekiel’s mental health.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “An elderly woman was here last week. She said they came from the same town on the Big Island. She was worried about him.”

“You get a name for her?” Ray asked.

He looked around on his desk. “I told her I couldn’t say anything, but she insisted on leaving me her phone number in case I changed my mind.” He pulled a piece of paper out and handed it to me. “I recognized the name when I saw it on the news the other day.”

The name was Edith Kapana.

I showed it to Ray, trying not to give away anything in front of Currie.

I picked up the questioning then, following up on Levi’s suspicions the night before. If Tanaka was a backer of KOH,
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he could be connected to the case. “How about Jun Tanaka?” I asked. “What can you tell us about him?”

“Mr. Tanaka is one of our board members.”

“How about his relationship with Mr. Kapuāiwa? Would you call them friends? Business associates? I understand Mr. Tanaka is one of the backers of Kingdom of Hawai’i.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Currie said. “It’s not uncommon for a board member to take a special interest in the rehabilitation of a client. Many of our board members provide jobs, housing or other assistance to clients. That’s why they get involved with us in the first place. So they can help people.”

“But you don’t know what kind of help Mr. Tanaka has provided?”

“We have twenty-five to thirty clients living here at any one time,” Currie said. “The average stay is anywhere from six months to two years. We also provide outpatient services to another hundred clients. That’s a lot of people for me to keep track of.”

Because of all the laws about privacy, health care and education are the hardest places to get information from without a subpoena, so we knew that there wasn’t much else we could get from David Currie. We gave him our cards and asked him to call if he recalled anything we should know.

“Well, that was a useful visit,” Ray said, as we walked out. “Too bad we can’t subpoena his ass and look at the records ourselves.”

“But we did find a connection to Edith Kapana. Why do you think she was interested in Ezekiel’s mental health?”

“She was volunteering for the KOH,” Ray said. “Maybe she saw Ezekiel acting crazy, and she wanted to know what was wrong with him. People said she was a nosy old woman.”

We stopped in front of the Jeep, in the small parking lot in front of the Ohana. Flat cirrus clouds hung over the horizon, and there wasn’t even a hint of a breeze.