Authors: Charles Knief

Silversword (34 page)

BOOK: Silversword

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“An old friend. Does he know about us?”

“No.”

“He won't hear it from me.”

She smiled, nodded, and left the room and my life.

Smart woman.

I
sneaked out of the hospital without telling anyone but Angel. I kissed her good-bye, squeezed her hand and promised to come back for her when she was ready to travel, slipped past my bodyguard, and flew a commercial jet to Honolulu. I'd had enough of California, and I'd had enough of that beautiful, but cold and clammy, city by the Bay. I'd had enough loss and enough hurt. I'd had enough of the state's problems and its weird laws, and the cold burning anger that seemed to permeate my experience there.

Finally, I'd had enough of hospitals. Assured that I was out of danger, Dr. McDevitt wasn't quite certain she wanted to let me go.

“We'd like to keep you here for a few more weeks just to make certain that you will not relapse,” she said.

Relapse, hell, I'd had enough of their advice and their treatments. They would keep me there until I died of old age before they would be absolutely certain that I wouldn't relapse. Chawlie's mandate, I believed, had been very strong, indeed. So, free from consultation or prescription, I took myself out of the hospital, signed waiver after waiver, releasing them from all liability, including one that I particularly liked, a smart piece of legalese that indemnified the hospital “until the end of time.” I kept that one, wondering at the mind that could have produced it, and tossed the rest.

I wasn't suing anyone.

That wasn't the way I settled my disputes.

I flew first class, the only grade that was tolerable in my condition, and slept for most of the six-and-a-half-hour interval of suspended animation, waking only at the last minute to fill out and sign the little paper that reminded me I was a returning resident.

A returning resident.
I liked what it said. I was a resident. Returning. I liked the word. I had been gone. And now I was home.

But back in Honolulu I found I had nowhere to go. Without
Olympia
I could not do as I normally did when recovering from trauma. For some reason I didn't want to seek Chawlie's help. Not yet. I was sick of depending on others and I needed time to heal and lick my wounds without the benefit of well-meaning friends. And I didn't want or need another nurse. Angelica was still in the hospital. I didn't want a replacement.

Feeling physically ill, weak and exhausted, I checked myself into one of the anonymous tourist hotels along the Waikiki shoreline and hid among the tall buildings and the sandy playgrounds. In a week I began to feel better. Solitude gave me time to reflect, and to heal some of the emotional wounds as well as the physical ones. I still had my nightmare. The young soldier came to visit nearly every other night and I would wake with the memory of a scream and the taste of copper in my mouth. I had no one to rub my back and comfort me in my terror, and no one to chase the adrenaline shakes away with her warmth and her tenderness. I was forced to confront my fear, exactly as I had confronted that soldier on that hill so many years before.

Someone had harmed my Angel, and someone would pay.

Someone had wanted me dead and had harmed an innocent, just as they had wanted Chawlie dead and had killed an innocent.

I was glad to quit their town and come home.

The question, it seemed, was home to what?

F
ew secrets remain so for very long, and in Honolulu, where everyone works at least two jobs and has an interconnecting web of contacts and alliances, my secret remained so for only a week. A week was enough. I had started once more to venture out for sunset excursions along the shore, once again beginning the all-too-familiar process of recovering my health.

The timing was eerie, the knock coming when it did. I'd been given a week. The only conclusion I could reach was that Chawlie had known of my whereabouts as soon as I had checked into the hotel, and had granted me the illusion of independence out of mere compassion.

I peered through the peephole, saw Daniel's impassive face, and opened the door.

“Caine.” Daniel's voice was a roughened gargle.

“Daniel.”

He stood at my doorway, his shoulders filling the frame. He made no move to enter and I had no inclination to invite him in. Despite my gratitude to the family for allowing me my self-imposed isolation, I instantly resented the imposition.

“Chawlie wants to see me?” I asked.

“You worry him. He wants to know that you're all right.”

“I owe you both an apology.”

“You owe nothing, Caine. You got a right to go where you want to go. Where's your bodyguard?”

“California. I didn't tell him I was going, either. I just left.”

“He still had a duty to tell me.”

“Felix was getting bored with the assignment.”

“Doesn't matter. He still had it.”

“You'll have to talk to him.”

Daniel nodded, and I knew that he'd planned on it. “Your boat's still off Kona. You know that?”

“I saw it on television.” A local station had run a story on Hualalai's sedulous progression toward the sea. They showed the lava flow blocking the road. They made it look like the end of the world. One of the long shots showed
Olympia
's black hull riding at anchor, a little closer to the volcanic flow than I would have wished.

“Tomorrow at six. Be at our hangar. We'll fly you to Kona. You'll feel better once you're back on your boat.”

“You'll fly me over?”

Daniel nodded.

“I'm grateful.”

Daniel almost smiled. My secret exposed, I ate alone at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, in the elegant restaurant fronting the sea. I was the only single in the room and I ate sparingly. Since the last injury, my taste for wine and coffee had vanished. Food was little more than fuel. My time and money wasted, I dropped some bills on the table and started to rise when a familiar figure sat down across the table from me.

“Kimo,” I said. “How are things? Or should I ask?”

“Ask. They're better than they should be.”

I waited. He had come to talk story, most likely about James. I had an investment in the kid and wanted to know how he fared. Kimo glanced at the ocean, just across the white sand, but said nothing.

“Should I ask about the family?”

“James pleaded guilty to reduced felonies for his cooperation
and testimony. The judge gave him five years, then released him on probation. He's a cop's kid. Prison could be fatal, you know?”

“It would have been harsh.”

“It's bad enough. He's home now. Electronically monitored. He hasn't realized yet how good he's got it.”

“Still want to throw us haoles off the island?”

“That's part of it. He won't admit that it was wrong. He did it. He admitted that he did it. But he insists it was the right thing to do. He's proud, that's all.”

“He'll grow up someday.”

Kimo looked sad. “I hope so.”

Suddenly I was grateful that I had no children. It couldn't be easy dealing with the little ones. It must be impossible trying to deal with proto-adults, full of wants and wishes, desires and fears, topped by a lack of knowledge and judgment.

Children, it seemed to me, were as much a curse as they were a blessing.

“How is Tutu Mae?”

“She sends her love. She and Chawlie spend a lot of time together. They seem to have joint interests.”

“Romance?”

“Geez, Caine, you're lolo sometimes. No. The Islands!”

The thought rattled around my skull for a few brief moments. Then I thought, why the hell not?

“Someone told you I was back?”

“Got an anonymous e-mail. Said you were going to the Big Island tomorrow morning to join Donna. Just wanted to stop by to thank you.”

“For a moment I thought you'd come to arrest me again.”

“You know that wasn't my idea.”

“Want some coffee?”

“Thought you were leaving.”

“Not if you have something to say.”

He looked at me, his huge black eyes regarding me with sadness and suspicion, mulling his options. “You remember Ricky
Lee? He's making noise about James. Says he's going to kill him if he testifies against the group.”

“Saying this out loud?”

“Couple of informants reported it this week. He's hot. Blames James. Blames you.”

“He blames me?”

“You were with him. Come to give you this.” He shoved over my passport and gun license, the documents that had been surrendered to the judge so many weeks before. “Could have given them to Tala, but I thought you might want them tonight.”

I picked up my license. “This permit only covers my .45 Colt.”

“So?”

“I don't have it.”

“Give Chawlie a call. I'm sure he could find it if you asked him.”

“You think I'm in trouble? What about James?”

“James is safe. It's you I worry about.”

“Ricky Lee is here in Waikiki?”

Kimo shook his head. “Not sure where he is. Since the informant report he's vanished. We're looking for him, and he knows it. We can bring him in on terroristic threats, another felony, and void out his bail. Just wanted to let you know. Wanted to make sure you watched your back.”

“Ricky Lee did Professor Hayes.”

“We don't have evidence to support that one, but it's likely, it fits. There are others. We're waiting. He'll slip up. We'll find him. You can do something for me.”

“Name it.”

“You're flying over to Kona tomorrow morning. Can you take James and Tutu Mae with you?”

“We're leaving at six.”

“I know. Tutu Mae wants to see the site before it's too late. And she can bless the volcano. It would be important to her and important to me.”

“What about James?”

“Be good for him to see that all haoles aren't so bad.”

“And he could see something that he'll never forget. What about his probation?”

“I'll handle it. He's working with his great grandmother as a community service project.”

“Does James know what's supposed to be in the tomb?”

“We haven't told him. We did talk about the treasure. But nobody talks about the bones except the group.”

“And Tutu Mae wants to dive the site.”

“And she's ninety-two now.”

“She wants to dive the site at ninety-two. Have them meet me at Chawlie's hangar in the morning.”

“They'll be there.”

“You going, too?”

“Can't. I'm hunting.”

He got up. “And Caine?”

“Yes?”

“Watch yourself tonight.”

W
atch yourself tonight,” said Kimo, leaving the restaurant and stalking off toward the koi ponds and the lushly landscaped gardens of the Village. I watched his brightly colored shirt disappear into the darkness and sank down into an overstuffed chair in the lounge, choosing a vacant spot next to one of the white Chinese temple dogs.

Watch myself. That had many meanings. It could be a warning and it could be a threat. In this case it was both. Kimo provided the warning. Little Ricky posed the threat.

The dog snarled its own silent marble threat. What would you do? I asked the beast, ugly enough to take care of itself regardless of the circumstances. I knew what it would do. It was the only thing I could do, too. Watching my back was not something I enjoyed or wanted to adapt to as normal behavior. And in this case the cause was just.

It might even have been right.

I just wished I wasn't so tired.

I sat in the brightly lit lounge, listening to the music, trying to find reasons why I shouldn't just go back to my hotel, crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head.

But I kept seeing Kimo's son in handcuffs, and I kept seeing the misery on the father's face, and I kept picturing the snarling face of Ricky Lee, the enforcer. And I knew that the little punk
was more than capable of killing anyone. He was a prime suspect in the murder of Professor Hayes. Just because Donna had not seen him that morning Hayes pulled her into his living room didn't mean he wasn't there. He would have had the other man visible, a front man. Ricky would have been the one unseenâthe silent figure in the kitchen, almost a ghost. Like the specter I saw in the alley.

Ricky Lee would know how to get away with it. He was an experienced criminal. He would have an alibi for his deeds, including killing James, including killing me.

Word I got from Kimo was that the killing of people was Ricky's business. Off guard, James would receive a call from Lee, and he would sneak out to meet him. James would not tell his family, and he would find some way of getting around the electronic collar, or whatever the hell they had on him, and nobody would know where he went, or even when. Lee would specify the middle of the night, or early in the morning. Some time when the boy's brain was foggy. They would meet in a secluded place, and only one of them would walk away from the rendezvous.

The more I thought about it the greater the expectation I had that Ricky Lee was more than just a loudmouthed little punk. He was as mean as they came. And he was not afraid of putting people to death, not particularly picky about who he killed, or why.

In this case he had his excuse. He perceived that Kimo's son, in going over to the prosecution in his plea bargain, was going to sell him down the river. He was right. And he would kill the young Kahanamoku as soon as he could corner him.

Then he would come after the private eye, the one who had come with the boy's father. He could not come after a cop directly. That would be suicide. But if you already were a sociopath, and if you had put enough people away that one or two more or less wouldn't create a problem for you, killing the PI would be just tidying up. Nothing to think about. Just a minor problem.

Ricky Lee was going to kill me unless I stopped him.

There was but one solution.

I heaved myself out of the chair and wandered through the
koi ponds and landscaped pathways until I came to the public street where I found a taxi, which took me to River Street on the edge of Chinatown. There was a man there I had to see. And a pistol there I had to retrieve.

And a score left that I had to settle.

Gilbert met me at the door, congratulated me on my freedom, and escorted me into Chawlie's presence. Usually a cold fish, the young man was unusually warm. Strange behavior. I hadn't been gone that long, and I knew he didn't like me all that much.

Chawlie waited until I had lowered myself to a seated position across from him in his private quarters. Instead of the two girls who normally kept him company, he was caring for another tiny bonsai tree, this one a perfect miniature of a Japanese elm. Even the leaves were diminutive.

“That's a beauty,” I said.

He nodded. “This you can control,” he said. “If you care for tree it will outlive you, perhaps outlive your children. And it will grow the way you have intended it to grow.”

Chawlie was feeling introspective.

“You did not come see Chawlie when you returned to the Islands. I know, John Caine, that you needed your time alone. Every man needs his private thoughts. But the world cannot wait for you to feel sorry for yourself, so I sent Daniel before your thoughts became too menacing.”

“You sent for me.”

“I am worried. Your policeman friend is worried. You have had a bad time. Now it is over. No murder charge hangs over your head. And your wound, is it finally healing?”

“That last operation slowed me down some,” I said, “but I'm on my feet.”

“It takes a great deal to slow you down. And this is a time of great upheaval.” He took a midget clipper and pruned a tiny piece of one miniature branch. Then he sat back and admired his creation. “We have a common enemy,” he said.

“Ricky Lee.”

“Your policeman friend spoke with you, I see. Ricky Lee is a mad dog.”

“He told me that Ricky is out on bail, and that he made threats against me and Kimo's son.”

“That is true. He also wants to unseat me, to take over Chawlie's poor business interests. It would be remarkable if he could achieve that, but Chawlie knows more than Ricky Lee knows, and Ricky Lee has someone in Chawlie's family who helps him.”

“Someone in your organization?”

“Someone in my
family.”
His fingers caressed the mossy base of the bonsai where tiny tree roots sprung from the trunk. “Everything is related to the shooting in San Francisco.”

“How?”

“Someone wants to take my business. Who would do that? Who
could
do that?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “Did someone want to kill you?”

“Not me. I was not the target. It was Daniel.”

“Ricky Lee was behind the shooting in San Francisco?”

“And others. I have not yet learned everything that I am going to learn, but you must be aware that this is not about you. It is not even just about me.”

“It is a power grab.”

“Power shift. Nobody can grab for power. It must be shifted delicately from one shoulder to another. When someone grabs for it the balance is lost, and nobody has it.”

“You're starting to talk like a fortune cookie, Chawlie.”

“Alvin Toffler does not write fortune cookies,” said Chawlie, looking pained. “You are a good friend, John Caine. I can trust you with what I know. But I do not know everything yet. You must learn for yourself, if you can. Then come and talk to Chawlie again. And be careful of Ricky Lee.”

“If Ricky Lee were to have an accident, would that upset your plans?”

Chawlie grinned. “I am counting on his having an accident.”
He reached behind his seat and took a cloth-wrapped object and pushed it across the table toward me. “You lost this,” he said.

I took the package and found my Colt .45. It had been recently cleaned and loaded. It had the sweet smell of Hoppes No. 9 and glistened with gun oil.

“Thank you,” I said, “for everything.”

“Just in case you run across a mad dog. Mad dogs must be shot down where you find them.”

“Just in case a mad dog doesn't have an accident.”

“The mad dog you speak of will never die an old man. Or in bed. He threatens everybody. The justice system took him to jail and then let him out. It makes no sense.”

“They let me out, too.”

“That made no sense, either. But in your case I was grateful.” He put the potted tree aside. “Be aware that things are not what they seem,” he said. “And be aware of those who walk behind you.”

“As in San Francisco.”

He nodded.

I sat in the front seat of my old Jeep and watched the parking lot of the old worker's bar in Waialua. The night was warm enough, even with the onshore breezes skipping across the dirt surface of the lot, and I was comfortable in my dark sweatshirt and black sweatpants, recent acquisitions from the K-Mart in Iwilei, around the corner from Chinatown.

It was late, nearly three. The crowd was breaking up and heading for whatever passed as home. Nobody saw me sitting across the parking lot, my primer gray Jeep just another worker's truck. I didn't see my man, and I didn't expect that I would until well after the bar closed. This was when Silversword did business. This was when Ricky Lee would inform his associates of his plan to kill the haole PI and the young boy who had once been their constituent.

Ricky's car was there, the red Corvette snugged up tight against the building, surrounded by plastic trash cans. I wondered if he brought the cans with him, or made them a requirement of his presence.

The lot emptied, the crowd dwindling to only three or four pick-up trucks and an Isuzu Trooper that had seen better days. When the lot was deserted, I slipped out of the driver's seat and padded quickly across it, not running, just a hurrying trot, my body still fragile. But even when you're injured there are things that must be done.

Taking the new Buck Strider I had purchased earlier, I went to work on the front tires, carving into the sidewalls, careful to leave the thinnest margin of rubber and steel, so that they would hold the pressurized air until he hit a bump at speed. Then one or both tires would blow, leaving him running along on his expensive rims. The roads near the bar were not in the best repair. Cane roads, surrounded on both sides by vegetation, they were largely deserted at this time of night. Lee would not get far once he left the lot and then I would have him. I did not want to confront him while I was carving his Corvette, so I finished my chore and scuttled back to my Jeep and waited.

Three o'clock in the morning, the constellations ranged across the sky. I was tired and would have felt sleepy but for the urgency of my self-assigned mission. I drank no coffee. I took no painkillers either, the discomfort from my injuries all that I required to stay alert. I glanced at my watch at regular intervals. Time was running out. If Ricky Lee did not come out of the tavern soon I would have to resort to other means.

While I waited, I eased the blade of the Buck Strider back and forth, wearing in the new metal. Buck's new folder was bigger than my old Folding Hunter, and I liked it as soon as I saw it. The Strider had a different mechanism to open the blade, and I would have to spend hours practicing with it to master the technique, but the blade was thicker and longer than my old Hunter, and had a sharp tanto point.

But it was stiff, as all new knives are stiff, and I spent the waiting time moving the blade back and forth, letting the parts and pieces of the knife get to know one another.

I sat for over an hour, working the blade, watching the bar empty, waiting for Ricky Lee to leave. I was about to try something else when a dark-colored SUV entered the parking lot and parked directly in front of the bar. The doors opened and four men got out, quickly climbed the stairs, and hurried inside. Each man held something long and wicked in his right hand, holding it down by his leg as he filed through the door.

Almost immediately a staccato sound like firecrackers rolled across the parking lot and disappeared into the night.

The four men were inside for less than a minute before they sauntered empty-handed from the building, casually climbed back into the SUV, did a slow circle of the dirt lot, and disappeared down the lonely cane road.

A dull flickering light appeared through the painted windows of the bar. As the flickering light became brighter my cellular telephone buzzed.

“Caine.”

“Get out of there.” Daniel's voice rasped briefly in my ear and the carrier went dead.

Despite his warning, I waited in the lot until fire speared through the old rotten roof. I glanced through the entry door and saw only solid conflagration.

No one had come out after the men from the SUV. Whoever was in there when they went inside remained inside.

As I drove away I watched in my rearview mirror as a blazing section of roof fell away and covered the Corvette with flame.

BOOK: Silversword

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