Livin' Lahaina Loca (22 page)

We
hugged as we parted. Ono left me with orders to call him after I’d thoroughly
debriefed Beni.

I
went upstairs to my shop. The message light on my landline was blinking, but it
showed only one message. That was okay, the only person I wanted to hear from
was Trish.

CHAPTER 21

But
it wasn’t Trish, it was Steve.
Hey Pali, you better get back up here. That
stray dog you brought home is tearing the place apart
. In the background I
could hear scraping furniture.
Stop it, dude
, yelled Steve. Then the
message cut off.

Oh
well. I wasn’t prepared to explain my situation to Trish anyway, so I hopped in
my car and drove back across the island to Hali’imaile. When I came through the
back door, everything looked fine in the kitchen. No broken windows, no stuff
strewn around or bloody footprints. But as I pushed through the swinging door
into the main living area, I stopped. It didn’t even resemble my house. The
dining table had been upended and shoved up against the picture window that
looked out on the street and my six-foot long sofa was blocking the front door.
The place looked like it was under siege—like a movie set from
Straw Dogs
.

“What’s
going on here?” I yelled, even though there was no one around.

Steve
came bounding down the stairs. “Looks like your buddy Beni’s over his DTs. I’m
pretty sure I liked him better when he was messed up.”

“Where
is he?”

“Don’t
know. He shoved all this stuff around and then he ducked out back. I tried to
stop him and he knocked me into a wall. Check this out.” He lifted his arm,
displaying a vicious-looking lump on his elbow.

“I’m
sorry. We’ve got to find him. He thinks a bunch of nasty guys are after him.”

“Nastier
than him? No thanks, I’m staying out of it.” He turned to go back upstairs.

“Steve,
I need your help. I promise once we find him I’ll do the heavy lifting. But
right now I could really use another pair of eyes looking for him.”

He
smacked the banister. “Is that all I am to you? Another pair of eyes?”

I
stared him down—literally.

 We
got outside and I directed Steve to go left while I went right. The detached
garage was on my side, so I quietly pulled the man door open and peered inside.
Steve’s immaculate black Jetta was parked squarely in the middle of the space.
The tidy shelves he’d built for me lined the walls on either side, and there
were cardboard boxes stacked three high on each shelf.

“Beni?
It’s me, Pali. Are you in here?”

Only
the sound of the wind whistling through the cracks in the old plank walls
disturbed the silence.

“Beni,
if you’re in here, please say something. I believe you about those guys being
after you. We need to find you a better place to hide.”

There
was a
click
and the passenger door of Steve’s car opened a crack. The
interior light blinked on, and then the door quickly closed again. I went over
to that side of the car.

“Beni,
come out. I’m serious. I don’t think it’s safe for you here. If you’ll come out
and talk with me, I promise I’ll try and find you a better hiding place.”

By
now Steve must have heard me, because he was standing in the doorway of the
garage.

“Is
he in my car?” he shrieked. “Oh my god. I’ve got the King of Stink undoing two
years of carefully maintaining that new car smell. Of all my five senses,
olfactory’s my favorite! Get him out of there.”

I
opened the passenger door, and found Beni huddled on the floorboard between the
seat and the dashboard. He was folded in thirds, which made him look about six
years old. When he turned his face to me, there were tear tracks down his
cheeks.

“Beni,
did something happen?”

He
nodded.

“What?”

“I
remembered.”

“We
need to get back in the house. Steve will watch and make sure nobody’s coming.
You’re going to tell me everything, and then we’ll find you a safer place to
hide. Okay?”

“No,
I like it here in the car.”

“Beni,
we don’t have time for this. If you don’t come out right now, I’m going to pull
your ass out. And, don’t worry, I’m more than capable—just ask your cousin
Doug.”

I
reached in to grab him but he unfolded his arms and hoisted himself up onto the
seat before I could get a firm grip.

As
soon as Beni was upright and out of the car, Steve rushed over to survey the
damage.

“Leave
it,” I said. “We’ll open all the doors and let it air out. I need you to keep
watch at the house while I grill Beni about what he remembers.”

Steve
made a grunting noise—not agreeing, but not disagreeing either.

I
popped the car doors open while Beni slinked toward the outside door. He waited
for me to join him before venturing outside.

“You
got a gun?” he said.

“No,
but I’ve trained with your cousin for seven years now. I’ve got a couple of
black belts and I’ve kicked major ass in a ton of tournaments.”

He
snorted. “Big whoop. What you gonna do, karate chop a bullet coming at me?”

“Get
in the house, Beni. The quicker you start talking, the quicker I’m gonna begin
caring about what happens to you.”

***

Beni
insisted we talk in my bedroom. He said he thought it was safer in there, with
the window shades down and Steve standing sentry at the front door.

“Okay,
dude,” I said. “I need to know everything.”

“Can
you get me something to eat? I’m real hungry.”

“First
you talk, then you eat. I doubt if the cockroaches holding Crystal Wilson are
ringing up room service every time her stomach growls.”

He
mumbled something I couldn’t make out.

“What’d
you say?”

“Nothin’.”

“Beni,
I’m totally serious. Talk—now.”

“Okay.”
He picked at the chenille tufts on my bedspread.

I
waited.

“From
the get-go it was this guy named Slam’s idea. Seems he got a call from some
honcho on the mainland. The way he told it, this mainland guy had a beef with
your wedding dude. So Slam comes up with the idea of snatching one of the girls
from your guy’s wedding and making him pay a big ransom to get her back. After
he picked her up, he cut off her hair and had me put it in your car, like I
tol’ you before.”

“Did
he tell you to put it in my car? I thought you dreamed that up on your own.”

“Nah,
you’re right. He said to make sure the guy saw it. I told him you were doing
the guy’s wedding and I knew you’d tell him ‘bout it. Then when Slam didn’t
hear nothing from that Jackson dude, he took off her fingernails. He said
that’s the kind of stuff his boss does on the mainland—you know, take body parts.
Anyway, he wanted Jackson to know he had the girl and he was
da kine
serious.”

“Beni,
you’re plowing old ground here. Get to the part about what you remembered just
now.”

“When
Slam didn’t hear back nothin’ from the fingernails, he got
beef
–you
know, what
haoles
call ‘pissed off’. He call me up and said I messed up.
Said we weren’t square and if I wanna get square I gotta do one more job.”

He’d
picked an entire tuft of chenille off my bedspread. I was itching to slap his
hand and tell him to knock it off, but I didn’t want to stop the story.

“So
anyway, I went up there where he was and he—”

“Wait
a minute, where was he?”

“Up
at ‘Iao Valley. Way past the parking lot, up on the hill. He musta been some
kind of Boy Scout or somethin’ cuz he was running all kinda crazy up through
there, jumpin’ over rocks and bushes and stuff. It was
pa’akiki
keeping
up with that dude.”

Another
tuft of chenille bit the dust.

“So
anyways, we get way up in there, and he’s got this girl in a blue tent. She had
hardly any hair on her head, but she was still a looker. They had her all tied
up. She wasn’t freaking out or nothin’, though. I gotta say, either she was
real doped up and or she didn’t realize what was going down. She wasn’t
screaming or cryin’—nothin’ like that. She just sat there, watching us. Never
once made a sound.” He stared down at the bare spots he’d made on my bedspread.

I
waited. After a half-minute of silence, I nudged him on. “So, what’d you do?”

“Whaddaya
mean? What’d
I
do? I followed orders, man. When that Jackson dude took
off and didn’t give them their money Slam got real pissed off. But I didn’t
have nothin’ to do with snatchin’ that girl or any of that.”

“Okay,
so why do you think the police are after you? Seems to me if you’d tell them
what you know about this kidnapping, you’d be a hero.”

“Jeez,
are you stupid? It’s not like that. They’re gunnin’ for me.”

“Are
you saying the police might be somehow involved in it?”

“Well,
duh. Give the lady a prize.” He snorted and leaped up from the bed. “I need a
lawyer, man. No offense or nothin’, but you’re lame. I need to get off this
rock, maybe go over to Kauai and see some friends I got there. Lay low for a
while. But first I gotta find me a lawyer who can cut a deal with the cops.”

***

When
I pulled in
behind the Palace of Pain,
Sifu Doug’s Jeep was the
only car in the alley. So far, so good. I just needed three minutes of
one-on-one time.

I
went inside and he was in the far corner, sitting cross-legged on the mat,
apparently deep in meditation. Under normal circumstances, I’d have tip-toed to
the changing room and quietly put on my uniform. Unfortunately for me, normal
circumstances had gone AWOL ten days ago.

“Sifu?
Sorry to interrupt, but I need to talk to you.”

He
opened one eye and gave me the look I’m sure cinched him getting picked for
Special Forces a decade earlier. “I was meditating. You know the rules.”

“Yes,
and I know the punishment, but this can’t wait, Sifu. It’s about your cousin.”

He
shot me a wry smile.

“He’s
in huge trouble,” I went on, “and not just with those drug dealers. Now he
thinks the police are after him too.”

“Pali,
the dude’s done hard time. He’s a drug user and a well-known dealer. I can’t
think of a time when the cops
weren’t
after him.”

“No,
this time it’s different. He’s scared and he wants to turn himself in, but he’s
convinced the police are involved in Crystal’s disappearance. He wants someone
to go talk to them on his behalf. I thought about your brother James, the
lawyer. He did a good job for us last time. Do you think you could put in a
good word and see if he’ll help Beni?”

“You
know how many times James has pulled Beni’s sorry butt outta the fire? Ten,
maybe twelve times now.  James is getting a rep down at the courthouse for
doing more
pro bono
work for his dumb-ass cousin than he does for actual
paying clients.”

I
gave him my
I’m begging you
face.

“Okay,
okay. I’ll call James and see what he says. But he’s not gonna be happy about
it.”

“Tell
him it’s an emergency. Beni’s got solid information on a kidnapping that he’s
willing to trade for leniency and safe passage to Kauai. He’s gone up to where
they’re holding my missing girl, Crystal Wilson. She’s up in ‘Iao Valley. If we
move fast enough we can probably find her.”

Doug
shook his head. “She’s been gone for what—ten days—now? I think you better
prepare yourself for a worst case scenario, Pali.”

“You,
of all people, are telling me to give up?”

“Look,
you grew up here, but your auntie sheltered you from the kind of scum Beni hangs
out with. I’ve seen what those bottom feeders will do for a snort or a hit. And
I’m sorry to say, but I got a bad vibe about your missing girl’s chances.”

“But
you’ll call James?”

“It’s
a done deal, Pali.”

I
bowed deeply from the waist. “
Mahalo,
Sifu. And with all due respect, I
think you’re wrong about Crystal. Beni said she was acting very calm—not trying
to escape or give the kidnappers any grief. I’m hoping that now they know the
ransom isn’t going to get paid they’ll just abandon her. But she won’t last
long up there in that valley all by herself. We need to get moving.”

CHAPTER 22

I
stopped by Farrah’s on my way home from Palace of Pain. She was in the store,
dusting bottles of expensive balsamic vinegar that’d been there for months and
would probably never find a home. In traditional Hawaiian-style cooking we use
a lot more Spam than prosciutto, and we go heavy on the mayo, but pass up the
extra virgin olive oil.