Mahu Blood (19 page)

“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.

MAhu BLood
165

“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.

Even so, it felt like a burden had been lifted from my shoulders, and I hoped, for Greg’s sake, that he felt the same way.

As we left, Ray said, “Do I say ‘I told you so’ now or later?”

“You have disturbingly accurate gaydar for a straight guy.” We waited at a light as a dirty white pickup with a bumper sticker that read “I’d rather be pillaging” made a turn on red.

“The attorney Greg mentioned. He’s the same one whose business card we found at Edith Kapana’s?” Ray asked, when we started moving again.

“Yup. I called his office, and the secretary said he was on a case on the mainland. I’ll call again.”

O’Malley was back in Honolulu, I discovered, when I reached him later that afternoon, Ray listening in on the other phone.

“Sorry I didn’t get a chance to call you back, Detective,” he said.

“I just got back in town last night.”

I said, “Greg Oshiro suggested I should talk to you about Kingdom of Hawai’i. You’re their attorney?”

“Fields and Yamato handled the incorporation for Kingdom of Hawai’i. We’ve consulted with them on a couple of issues, but I wouldn’t characterize myself as their attorney, per se.”

God save me from lawyers. “Can we get together and talk?”

He didn’t say anything for a minute. “There are some things you should know. But like I said, I got back from the mainland MAhu BLood
171

yesterday, and I’m swamped. I have depositions scheduled later today, and all day tomorrow, but I’m taking a personal day Friday.

I know it’s irregular, but I’d rather not have you come to my office, if you don’t mind. Could you come over to my apartment around ten?”

I wondered how closeted Adam O’Malley was. Did he want me to come to his apartment because he was afraid to have a gay detective show up at his office?

Yeah, maybe I’m paranoid, but I still get crap from other officers, three years after coming out myself. And I know a lot of professional men who don’t want their sexual orientation to be public knowledge. O’Malley was probably one of those.

“Maybe I should have Detective Donne meet you. He’s straight.”

“It’s not that.” O’Malley lowered his voice. “I don’t parade my sex life around the office, but it’s not like we’re dating, Detective.

It’s just—I feel like there is some illegal stuff going on with Kingdom of Hawai’i, and as an officer of the court I’m obliged to report it, as long as I’m not violating any client confidences.

Which I’m not, because like I said, I’m not the attorney of record. I don’t want you to come to the office because there are people behind this thing that might not take kindly to my talking to the cops.”

I felt dumb, projecting my own issues. So I agreed to come to his apartment on Friday, and he gave me the address, in a high rise near Ala Moana Mall.

“That was awkward,” Ray said, when I hung up. “I ever tell you about this girl I interviewed, in my first case as a detective?

Her name was Teresa Ambrosino, and she was a beauty. Like Julie, but with curves like the Indianapolis Speedway. The whole time I’m talking to her, I’m thinking she’s coming on to me. She’s leaning toward me, she’s fluttering her eyebrows, pursing her lips.”

“And she wasn’t?”

“Nope, she was after my partner, sixty-year-old guy with
172 Neil S. Plakcy

breath like dog shit. I almost asked her out, right there, but fortunately I remembered my ethics class. My partner saw me slobbering, though, and it took me months to live it down.”

“Well, you’ll go with me Friday. We can see which of us O’Malley makes a play for. Since you have such great gaydar and all.”

“What are partners for?” he asked.

ALA MoANA coNfessioNALs

As we were packing up for the day, my cell phone rang. From the display I saw it was Lui calling. “Hey, brah, what’s up?”

“I have to talk to you,” he said.

“We’re talking now.”

“Not on the phone,” Lui said. “Please, Kimo? I’ve got to get out of the office. Meet me at Ala Moana Mall, outside Shirokiya?”

“I’m about to head for home. Ala Moana’s out of my way, but I can be there in fifteen.”

He was standing in front of the store, looking in the windows like they contained treasure, when I walked up. “What was so urgent, brah?” I asked.

Lui looked around, lowered his voice. “He called me today.

Tung. From the pai gow game.”

“Yeah?”

“He’s putting together a high-stakes game for Friday night.