Silversword (11 page)

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Authors: Charles Knief

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“Howard Hayes. With an e,” said Kimo.
“Haole?”
“Like yourself, Mr. Caine.”
“So what do you want me to do? Exactly?”
“We want you to look into Professor Hayes's past and find out the identity of the other students he has wrongfully cheated. If he will do it once, he will do it many times. If you look into his past you will find a pattern. A thief will continue to steal as long as he
can get away with it. We are looking at getting him removed. It is difficult with tenure. But it is not impossible. This time the stakes are too important, and we know the student in question. We know that she did the work on her own because Tutu Mae was the one she confided in, the one who confirmed her suspicions, who talked over the clues with her as she carefully proceeded.”
“Only her sisters know about this?”
“They're the ones who helped her in the field.”
Keep it in the family. Very Chinese. Trust only family.
“And in the meantime?”
“You can serve the papers on him. There will be an injunction against publication some time within the next ten days.”
“Why me?”
Tutu Mae looked around the suite, the crystal chandeliers catching rays from the bright sun pouring in through open windows, the sound of the Waikiki surf a mellow background. “We heard you were sick,” she said. “We didn't want you to get depressed.”
Kimo smiled. “You had some time on your hands. This looked like a project that you could do without straining yourself.” He looked at my sandy feet, dry now, but evidence of my inability to stay in the sick bed. “And it won't get in the way of your beach walking.”
“All right,” I said. “The guy's a college professor? I'll look into his background. If he's anything like you described him I'm sure there are people out there who will be happy to talk about him.”
“What will you charge for your time?”
Suddenly the entry door opened and Felix walked in.
Donna Wong leaned forward and covered the photographs, gathering them into a stack and shoving them back into her briefcase.
“Sorry,” said Felix. “I didn't mean to interrupt.”
“We're done here,” I said to him, knowing he was harmless to Donna Wong and her precious treasure. “I'll charge dinner. A big dinner. At your place, Kimo, complete with the pig.” Kimo and Neolani gave a luau that was difficult to forget.
He nodded. “Can do. Whenever you say.”
“I'm moving back onto the boat in a few days. I should have what you need by then. It will be good to get out of here.”
Kimo smiled, looking around the suite. “Yeah. It's kind of depressing. This isn't your style, Caine.”
“What is my style?”
He shrugged off the answer, but I knew it as well as he did.
“I know this isn't your kind of case, either, but it's a start.”
“Hey, the guy's a university professor. He shouldn't be any threat. And I've been injured. I've got to start on the easy ones and work up from there.”
T
he telephone rang while I was taking the sun on the lanai. I lay there dozing, my eyes half-closed against a tropical sun. I was content on my perch overlooking the deep green lawn and the white sandy beach with Diamond Head off to my left, looking exactly as it had looked for a hundred thousand years. The Pacific was there, too, not so much a part of the background as it was the dominant feature of existence. The silvery blue surface stretched all the way to the ends of the earth in one vast plain, meeting the distant horizon in a sharply defined, but slightly curved line, one blue blending into another, the sky a pale reflection of the sea.
I heard one of the girls inside running across the hardwood floor, flying to the phone to answer it.
“
Wei
?” She answered in the Hong Kong fashion. She listened intently, and then began screaming something in Mandarin to the other girls. Whatever she said was very loud and very fast and very Chinese.
“Angelica!”
I understood that part.
“Angelica!”
My head nurse answered from the other room, and now I could hear her short, choppy footsteps as her shoes rang against the oak. The one who had answered said something earnestly and quietly to Angelica, and she spoke into the telephone, her voice
and manner bespeaking great respect. She spoke for a short time, and then replaced the handset.
“Chawlie called,” I told her when she stepped out onto the lanai.
“How you know?”
“I'm a detective.”
“He is coming. He wants to see you. Now.”
“Where is he?”
“In the car. He will be here soon.”
Girls were running all over the suite, speaking in a high-pitched, nervous chatter, picking up imaginary debris and straightening furniture and pillows that were, by my reckoning, pristine.
“Should I dress?”
“You look fine.” She regarded me for a moment. “Put on a shirt.”
“I can do that,” I said, sitting up in the lounge chair and reaching for my tee shirt. “He say what he wanted?”
“He wants to see you. Something has happened.”
That didn't sound good, but I could wait for bad news. I shaded my eyes and gazed across the sand to the perfect waves of Waikiki. Only a few people were riding them, probably because they were so small. When the weather is fine this side of the island doesn't get much surf. Today the Pacific Ocean was almost a lake.
“Where's Felix?”
“In his room.”
Angel's eyes widened. “I thought he was gone. He told me he didn't want him here.” She put her hand to her mouth and ran to Felix's room.
I sat back and waited. I was getting good at waiting. It could easily become my new occupation.
Someone knocked on the door. One of the girls went to answer it, and Daniel came through and looked through the French doors at my lounge chair. I smiled and waved. He nodded and disappeared.
Felix's voice, sounding apologetic, said something I couldn't quite catch. Daniel answered him. I heard a door open and close, and Daniel said something harsh and vicious. Angel apologized. The door opened and closed again, and then I heard nothing more. I waited, doing what I was good at.
Ten minutes later Daniel reappeared and beckoned me into the cool interior of the living room.
Chawlie sat in an armchair, his hands in his lap. Daniel and another Chinese man I recognized, but whose name escaped me, flanked him, sitting in straight-backed chairs. The old man smiled when he saw me.
“John Caine. You're looking better.”
“Feel a little better, too. Your nurses are doing wonders for me.”
“That is good. Have some bad news for you. Better sit down.”
I did, taking a seat in the big silk sofa across from him.
“I talk with haole lawyer in San Francisco. Police there are not going to leave this alone. They want to charge you with murder.”
I felt hollow inside. We had been almost expecting this, but it shocked me to actually hear the words. I struggled to keep calm and to listen. What Chawlie had to say would be important.
“The grand jury is looking at it right now. May be some time before they do it, but it looks as if they will indict you.”
“And what do we do?”
“What do you want?”
“What I want doesn't have any meaning in this,” I said. What I wanted was for all this to go away. I wanted to be left alone. I didn't want some group of faceless, nameless people who had never heard of me to be presented with a body of evidence that demonstrated that I was criminally responsible for the death of one Jackie Chang, an innocent bystander in a gangland shooting on the streets of San Francisco.
“Are you feeling better?”
“I'm getting there. Tomorrow they're removing the drains.”
“You going to the hospital?”
“Yes.”
He sat still and looked at me.
“Chawlie, I'd like to go home.”
“Of course.”
“This has been wonderful, but I think I need to be alone.”
“Nurses not doing good things for you?”
“They're terrific, but without the drains I think I'll be fine without them.”
“Tomorrow, after the hospital, you come back here, spend the night. If you are feeling well after a night here, you go home the next day. How's that?”
“That's fair,” I said.
“I can get nurses to come visit you after you move back onto the boat.”
“That won't be necessary.”
“But they will be available, if you need nursing,” he said, deadpan. “If you go to prison you won't see a woman for a long time.”
“Thank you, Chawlie. I hadn't thought of that.”
“But do not worry, John Caine. Chawlie will take care of everything.”
“Even then?”
He looked at me and shook his head. “Especially then.”
“So tomorrow?”
“Day after. You stay two more nights. You will not feel like going anyplace after operation.”
He had a point.
“Okay,” I said. “Day after tomorrow.”
Chawlie smiled warmly, and I knew that I'd pleased him. He was a very odd old duck, and his attentiveness to my needs was touching, but what I needed now was time alone, on my boat, in my own bolt-hole, where I could be with my thoughts and where I could figure what I would do with the time remaining.
If Chawlie's information was correct, the next several months would be more than challenging.
“How is Felix?” asked Chawlie.
“Bored. He'd like to go home.” I noticed that Daniel didn't want Felix around when Chawlie came by.
Chawlie nodded. “We need him for special project. Daniel will contact him.”
“I'll tell him.”
Chawlie raised his hand. “No need. Daniel can do it.”
I understood. This was another level of Chawlie's schemes. I was tired of the gaming, but then I rarely tolerated it.
Olympia
called to me from her mooring at Pearl Harbor. I had the urge to go to her, to loosen her lines, and sail to some other country. Get all my cash from Chawlie's vault and sail to whatever port would take me. I had the urge to flee the country, to become a fugitive. I knew I would never do it, but underneath the urge was the terror of enforced confinement and the horrors of prison. It wasn't right that they would do that to me. Why was this woman pursuing me? Why did she make it her business to see that someone paid for the death of that poor old Chinese grandmother?
There were no answers. There would be no answers. I knew that I would stand and face the charges when they came, and that Chawlie would stand by me the whole way, using his power and his wealth to whatever advantage it would lend me.
I would remain here, with my happy little nurses, and I would go home in two more days, after the doctors had removed my surgical drains.
A couple more nights in this mink-lined prison and I'd be home.
H
ow does it feel to be home?”
I sat propped against cushions at
Olympia'
s aft deck railing, relaxing in the gentle warmth of the afternoon sun. As plush as the Royal Hawaiian had been it felt damned good to be home at last.
“I assume the question's rhetorical?”
“Oh, yeah,” Felix said.
“Then you already know the answer.” I stretched and turned my face so the sun could baste me. Doctors tell us we can get too much sunshine for our own good, that sunburn gives us basal cell carcinoma, melanoma and other horrors. But at the same time they're forced to admit that people commit suicide in countries where the sun goes dark for months at a time. But with my sun-lined old rugged hide, I don't worry about too much sun. And right now it felt good to feel the rays gently touching my face.
“How's the house guest?”
“David? He's fine. What a bundle of energy.”
“That's something, coming from you.”
“He loves this place. He's diving the
Mahi
tomorrow.”
I smiled, remembering that's where I had met the young man in the first place. “He's been there before. He wants to meet Bowser?”
Felix nodded. “He likes that eel.” Bowser is a twelve-foot
moray that lives in a hole in the bow of the old wreck, about a hundred feet down off the Waianae Coast of Oahu. He's different from most sea monsters you'd ever meet. This one eats out of your hand and loves to be petted vigorously behind the ears, or what passes for ears on an eel, just the way you would pet a faithful retriever. That's why he's called Bowser. He reminds you of a big old dog. Except he's green and slimy and he has huge orange eyes and nightmare fangs.
“You going along?”
Felix nodded. “I'd like to see this thing.”
“Be careful.”
“He told me about how you saved his butt.”
“I don't think he'll do that again.”
Felix shook his head. “I'll guarantee it. He said he had never been so scared in his life. And then you came and got him when he had all but given up hope.”
“I just did that to meet his mother.”
“She's one nice-looking lady.”
“I didn't think you'd notice.”
“Beauty is truth and truth is beauty.”
“Keats?”
“I forget.”
“I thought you were a literature student.”
“Was. Forgot it all now.” He shifted his haunches and peered across bright water toward Ford Island. “I'd like to go out there to see the
Missouri
and the
Arizona
. And the one on the other side, the
Utah
? All that happened here so many years ago. It's like, it's so peaceful here it just seems impossible.”
“Yeah. I've had those same thoughts. Why don't you and David go out there?”
“He, ah, doesn't want to spend too much time with me.”
“Oh. I thought you guys were getting along.” That wasn't true. I don't know why I said it. From the beginning they had entered into some kind of cosmic competition. I'd seen the beginning of something even more serious.
“I didn't do anything to make him shy. Somebody told him
that I was gay and now he acts like he's uncomfortable around me.”
“I thought all you kids were nonjudgmental these days.”
“Nonjudgmental is different from uncomfortable. I respect him for it. David's a nice kid. For a kid. He's very smart, and he's very keen on Hawaii, and he thinks the world of you. I try not to violate his space much. You know what I mean?”
“I don't know much about you, Felix. You got a steady, a friend?”
“A friend?”
“A boyfriend.”
“Someone sensitive would call such a being a lover.”
“Okay, you got a lover?”
“See? Even you get squeamish about it. No. Not at the moment. I used to, but he's gone.”
“It happens.” From the way he said it I wasn't sure if gone meant “gone,” or “dead.” I decided that if he were dead, Felix would have said so. I decided that I'd play it light. I was enjoying my time at home and didn't want to do or say anything that would drag it down.
“Nothing lasts forever, is that what you're trying to say?”
“Nothing does.”
“I'll go along with that. We were very happy until he died.”
“I'm sorry. I thought … never mind. Was it AIDS?”
He shook his head. “Funny, but that's the first thing you'd think of, isn't it? A young man in the prime of his life? Why else would he die? Of course you'd think it was AIDS because he was gay. No, it was an accident.”
“Terrible.”
Felix nodded, his eyes fixed on a place far away from the Rainbow Marina.
“I'm sorry. I feel as if I intruded.”
“No, you didn't. I'm a little sensitive about it. But I'll get over it eventually. I'll grow cold and calloused, and I can forget him, given enough time.”
“Wow.”
“Sorry, John. I get carried away.”
“Can you hand over my pack?”
He reached behind him and handed over my new North Face climber's pack where I kept my cellular telephone. Kimo and Tutu Mae had given me an assignment to track down former students of Professor Hayes. I had to talk to some of them by then. Talking to them I didn't mind, but finding them was the challenge.
Fortunately I knew a young man who knew everything there was to know about computers and the Internet. I knew about finding people. If he could locate the names of the students I'd do the digging and plowing. The best thing about the set-up was that I could complete my investigation without ever leaving the deck of the
Olympia
.
I punched in the numbers for Petersoft, gave my name to the receptionist, and was put right through to the office of the president.
“Adrian here.”
“John Caine calling.”
“How are you doing? Are you here in town?”
“I'm sitting on the aft deck of
Olympia
, floating here in Pearl Harbor, catching some rays. There's a rainbow over the Ko'olaus, but not a cloud in the sky over my head.”
“Break some more eggs, will you? Why'd you have to tell me that? I haven't seen the sun in three weeks.”
“Busy?”
“Like you wouldn't believe.”
“How's my stock?”
“Solid, man. What can I do for you?”
“Can you run a search for graduate students who have had a certain professor? You'll have to go back to every school this man taught, and then run a cross-check on—”
“I know how to do it. Do you have the schools? Or do I have to check every institution in the country?”
“I've got the schools.” Tala had supplied the professor's bio and resume. It covered every institution where the man taught.
“That's easy. When do you want it?”
“How soon can you run it?”
“This evening soon enough? I've got a meeting in a few minutes. A new product line. Too bad you're not here. The geniuses in R&D have really come up with something.”
“Will my stock go up?”
“Like a skyrocket.”
“Keep up the good work, Adrian.”
“So this evening is okay?”
“This evening is terrific.” I could start my phone calls this afternoon.
“Give me the name of the schools and the professor. If you have the years it would make it simpler, but I really don't need it.”
“I've got everything.” I read him the list of schools and the years in question and spelled the professor's name slowly, making Adrian repeat it twice. No sense running the search more than once.
“I'll tell Claire you called. Are you going to her wedding?”
“I wasn't invited.”
“Do you want me to tell Claire that you called?”
“It's okay with me. Who is she marrying?”
“You don't know him. I don't think. He's her new lawyer. This one's a good one. I think.”
If I knew Claire, he would have to be a guy who would obediently march to her tune. She would keep him on a short leash. But I didn't say any of that to Adrian. He knew it better than I did.
“She ever come in anymore?”
“Hardly ever. No reason to. I'm running the store.”
“Don't be so modest.”
“Yeah, well.” There was a moment of silence, an uncomfortable lapse when we both ran out of things to say. “Can I e-mail that to you?” he asked, finally.
“Sure. You've got my address?”
“I set up the account.”
“Oh.” I had forgotten that. Adrian had also given me my first lesson in computers. I used my laptop for many things now, searching for obscure information that could never have been
found without the Net. I would not have had the time. “I appreciate this, Adrian.”
“My pleasure, John. If you'll excuse me.”
“Sure. Take care.”
“Call me anytime.”
We both hung up.
“He'll have that list by this evening,” I told Felix.
“What?” He leaned against his forearms, watching a pale sun slowly descend over Ford Island. The vog, or volcanic smog, was thick with the sulfur from Kileaua, the young volcano going through a particularly active phase. Spectacular sunsets were the result of all that natural pollution. But could it be pollution if it was natural?
“Nothing. Why don't you take some time off and go to Waikiki tonight? I'll be all right. Busy, in fact. I'm not going anywhere.”
“You noticed?”
“Noticed what?”
“That I'm restless?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Only if you're sure you're okay.”
“I'm fine.”
“I'm supposed to be your shadow.”
“Just don't get in trouble.”
“No trouble. Not me. Not Felix.” He smiled a grim little smile and got up and climbed down the ladder to the lounge, a young man living his life a day at a time, without roots, without a partner, and without a feeling of where his life should be going. In many ways he reminded me of me.
He reminded me of me except he was much, much younger. A man my age should have grown out of this by now, should have settled down decades ago, should have had children, should be concerned for their college education, all of it. Somehow I had missed all that, the American dream. Now I was incapable of it. It would be laughable to try. While I had been otherwise occupied the chances had flown by.
I couldn't be happier.
I waited in the cockpit until Felix returned, dressed for the city. He said nothing, but held up the Jeep's keys. I nodded as he leaped over the side and jogged up to the parking lot of the Marina Restaurant, happy once again to be on his own.
When he was gone I felt a heaviness pass. I no longer needed a companion or a bodyguard, or whatever the hell he was. Chawlie's gift now weighed on me. I would tell him the next time I saw him. I would thank him profusely, and I would tell him that I was feeling fairly good. I could even jog a little. I could not swim until all the wounds and the incisions completely healed, but I generally felt okay. And I would then ask Chawlie to send the boy home. Have him join the little nurses as a pleasant part of my life that was no more.
More than ever I was now a solitary man.
I headed down the ladder to the lounge to fire up my new computer and see if I had any e-mail.
I had an assignment. It wasn't much of one, but it was something. It would keep my mind busy for a few days.
Just what I needed.

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