Spider Bones (19 page)

A
S WE DROVE FROM KUHIO PARK TERRACE TO A MCDONALD’S
across from the Kapalama Shopping Center, Lô sketched some background on the man we were about to meet. I didn’t ask, wasn’t sure why he felt compelled to share the information.

The CI, Fitch, was a street rat that Lô had once saved from arrest. A junkie who threatened no one, Fitch moved invisibly among the bangers, base heads, pimps, pushers, hookers, and stoners inhabiting Honolulu’s underbelly. In exchange for food and money, he provided Lô with the occasional tip or insider perspective.

At four in the afternoon, the McDonald’s lot held only a handful of cars.

As we crossed the asphalt, a figure in a faded yellow tee and LL Cool J rolled-up sweats crossed our path and pushed through the door before us. The brim of a way-too-large cap hid the person’s face, but hairy calves suggested male gender.

My instincts told me we’d connected with Fitch.

Glancing left, then right, the CI disappeared into a booth at the rear of the restaurant. Like Lô, he was short and wiry. I guessed his age at midtwenties.

Lô went to the counter. I followed.

Lô ordered a Big Mac, fries, and two Cokes.

I ordered a Diet Coke. The girl looked at me oddly, but said nothing.

Lô paid. As we waited, the smell of frying fat kicked my nausea up a notch.

When our food was ready, Lô carried the tray to the rear booth. I sat down and slid to the wall. Lô dropped into the space beside me.

The CI’s eyes rolled up below their bill, checked the restaurant, me, then settled on Lô. The irises were brown-black, the whites the same dull yellow as the tee.

“Who’s the chick?”

“Myrna Loy.”

“What’s she doing here?”

“Don’t worry about it, Fitch.”

“What the fuck happened to her?”

“Ninjas.”

Lô removed two drinks, gave me one, then pushed the tray forward. Using both hands, Fitch yanked it to his chest.

“I don’t like it.” The table edge started tapping the wall. Under it, Fitch’s left knee was bouncing like a piston.

“Tough,” Lô said.

“This isn’t our deal.” Fitch’s eyes did another sweep. He ran a hand along his jawline.

“My party.” Lô pointed to the wall. “Move over. I’m expecting more guests.”

Fitch opened his mouth, reconsidered, lurched left. All the man’s movements were quick and jerky, like those of a crab caught in a net.

Lô and I sipped.

Fitch dived into his burger.

Lô pulled a small spiral from his pocket and flipped the cover. Clicked a ballpoint to readiness.

As Fitch ate, wilted shreds of lettuce dropped to the burger’s discarded wrapper. A hunk of tomato. A glob of cheese.

“It’s my health we’re risking here.” As Fitch spoke, chewed hunks of beef tumbled in his mouth.

“You’re the one eats that garbage,” Lô said.

“You know what I mean.” Grease coated the CI’s lips and chin.

“How about finishing that? Watching you’s not doing my gut no favors.”

Fitch was squeezing a third packet of ketchup onto his fries when something caught his attention behind our backs.

Lô and I turned.

Ryan was walking in our direction.

“Who the hell’s this?” Fitch hissed.

“William Powell.”

“He a cop?” Fitch either missed or ignored Lô’s second Walk of Fame joke.

“Yeah, Fitch. He’s a cop.”

“A nark?” The left knee was pumping gangbusters.

“Aloha,” Ryan said.

“Aloha,” Lô and I answered.

Ryan tensed on seeing my face. He made no comment.

Scowling, Fitch shrank farther left.

Ryan slid into the booth.

Eyes down, Fitch jerked the tray sideways and continued shoving fries into his mouth.

Lô tested the ballpoint with sharp, quick strokes.

“So what have you got?” he asked.

Fitch swallowed, sucked his soda, snatched up and bunched a paper napkin. His eyes crawled to Ryan, to me, to Lô.

“This is fucked-up, man.”

Lô didn’t answer.

“Word gets out—”

“It won’t.”

Fitch jabbed his chest. “It’s my ass—”

“If this is too much for you, I’ve got things to do.”

“I know how cops work.” Fitch’s tone had gone high and whiny. “Use people and leave ’em on the street like gum.”

The balled napkin hit the tray and bounced toward Lô.

“Calm the fuck down, Fitch.”

The CI slumped back and crossed his arms. “Shit.”

A woman nosed a stroller to the table beside our booth. She looked about sixty. I couldn’t see the baby, wondered if it was hers. Weird, but I did.

Fitch’s eyes jumped to the woman. Again circled the restaurant.

“I don’t want to be celebrating a birthday here.” Lô made no effort to mask his impatience. “You got something for me or not?”

“Cash?” Fitch asked.

Lô nodded.

Leaning forward, the CI placed both forearms on the tabletop and began worrying the sides of the tray with his thumbs.

“OK. About six months back your guy shows up—”

“Francis Kealoha?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Shows up from where?”

“California. San Fran, I think. Maybe LA. That part I’m not sure.”

“This better be solid.”

“Yeah, yeah. Kealoha shows up with this dude called Logo.”

“You know Logo’s real name?”

Fitch shook his head.

Lô made a note in his spiral. Then, “You’re sure this was Francis Kealoha?”

“Yeah, yeah. We grew up together at KPT. It was him.”

“Go on.”

Fitch’s thumbs flipped up, dropped. “That’s it. Frankie and Logo show up together. A few months later both drop off the radar.”

“Give me some dates.”

“I look like their travel agent?”

Lô’s glare could have reversed global warming.

“OK. I’m thinking I stopped seeing them maybe three, four weeks ago.”

Lô turned to me. The time frame worked, given the condition of the remains from Halona Cove. I nodded.

“Where was Kealoha living?”

“I heard up at Waipahu.”

Lô made a note on his pad. Then, “Go on.”

“That’s it.”

“Then your bony ass pays for that burger.”

Seconds passed. A full minute.

Fitch’s thumbs made soft, scratchy sounds against the edge of the tray.

“What I got’s worth more than a nifty.”

“Don’t you read the papers? It’s a bad year for bonuses.”

Fitch cocked his chin at me, then Ryan.

“I got risk here.”

Lô considered a moment. Then, “If it’s good, we’ll see.”

Beside us, the baby began to cry.

Fitch’s eyes again danced his surroundings.

“Word is Kealoha was doing business where he shouldn’t have.”

“Dealing what?”

“Coke, weed. The usual.”

“Who’d he cut in on?”

“L’il Bud.”

Lô’s nod indicated familiarity with the name. “Go on.”

Fitch inhaled. Exhaled. Pulled his nose. Leaned even closer to Lô.

“Street says L’il Bud ordered a hit.”

“Street naming a doer?”

“Pinky Atoa. Ted Pukui.”

Lô scribbled the names. Again, his demeanor suggested knowledge of the players.

“How’d it go down?”

“I heard they got shot up at Makapu’u Point.”

I pictured the craggy outcrop. The shark-ravaged flesh recovered from Halona Cove.

I remembered Perry’s tale of the suicidal poet from Perth.

Cold fingers tickled my spine.

“You got questions, Doc?”

I realized Lô was addressing me. For the first time, I spoke to his CI.

“How old was Logo?”

Fitch regarded me blankly.

“Roughly. Twenty? Forty? Sixty?”

“Shit, I don’t know. Maybe a little older than Kealoha.”

“Describe him.”

“Dark hair, dark eyes. Body by beluga.”

“Meaning?”

“The guy was big.”

“How big?”

“Six feet, maybe three hundred pounds. Typical Hamo. That’s why they hung together. Those guys are thick.”

It took a minute for the comment to register.

“Kealoha is a Hawaiian name,” I said.

“That got changed.”

“Changed?” An idea began to materialize in my mind.

“When Kealoha’s old lady come here.”

“Came here from where?”

“Tafuna.”

I remembered Gloria’s crack about the American dream. I thought she’d been referring to Honolulu. She’d meant the United States.

“Before that it was something else,” Fitch said.

I looked from one detective to the other.

Lô’s expression suggested his brain was connecting the same dots as mine.

A subtle angling of the brows told me Ryan was not. To his credit, he asked no questions.

“May I see Perry’s autopsy photo?” I managed to keep my voice calm.

Lô pulled the five-by-seven from his pocket and laid it on the table.

I studied the image.

There were the black and red swirls within the half-sickle form. There were the filigreed strips extending outward from the sickle’s two sides, converting the whole into a
tapuvae,
an ankle bracelet tattoo.

And there were the three loopy things riding the bracelet’s upper edge. The elements possibly added later. The two backward C’s flanking a U.

I knew what they were.

“Paper and pen?” I felt totally jazzed.

Lô passed me his ballpoint and a page from his notebook.

Positioning the paper’s lower edge along the truncated upper border of the little loopy things, I continued the line of each C upward and to the left, then swooped each right, converting the backward C’s to S’s.

Lô watched without comment.

I closed the top of the U, converting it to an O. SOS.

Lô regarded my handiwork a moment, then reached for his phone.

I rotated the photo and drawing so Ryan could see.

“Tabarnac,”
he said.

P
HONE TO HIS EAR, Lô HURRIED OUTSIDE. FITCH TRACKED HIM
like a puppy hoping for a treat.

We waited.

I sensed Ryan assessing my injuries.

Three middle school girls giggled and elbow-shoved their way to the bathroom, each carrying a shoulder-slung pack.

The woman beside us finished eating and rolled off with her baby.

Fitch watched in fidgety silence.

Finally, Ryan nodded to someone over my shoulder.

“He’s back.”

We rose and joined Lô in the parking lot.

“My partner’s going to contact California, see what they’ve got on Kealoha, have them run the street name Logo through their database on gangs.”

“Remember, no blowback on me.”

Lô ignored his CI.

“Later Hung and I will haul Atoa and Pukui to the bag.”

“Look, I gotta go.” Fitch was shifting his weight from foot to foot. There wasn’t much to shift.

Yanking his wallet from a back pocket, Lô counted out five twenties.

Fitch grabbed for the bills.

Lô pulled them back. “Keep in touch?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Lô extended his hand.

Fitch snatched the money and skittered out of sight.

“Weird dude,” Ryan said.

“Guy’s a tweaker.”

“It’s all about the intel.”

“Yeah.” Lô bounced a glance off me. “SOS. Sons of Samoa.” The faintest smile played his mouth. “You’re right. The little lady’s not bad.”

“She has her moments,” Ryan said.

No way the little lady was getting sucked into that. I said nothing.

“A gang tat.” Lô slowly wagged his head. “I missed it.”

“Honolulu having problems?” Ryan asked.

“Until recently I’d have said no. We’ve got gangs, sure. The Samoans run together, sure. Everyone acts bad-ass, sure. But mostly the violence is Jets and Sharks type of crap.” Lô slid the John Lennons onto his nose. “Lately things have escalated.”

“How?” I asked.

“Not long ago a street tough named Lingo got capped in Chinatown. A week later, there’s a stabbing.”

“Retaliation?”

Lô nodded. “Both vics were Samoan. A witness to the stabbing claimed one of the doers shouted ‘KPT SOS.’ ”

“Kuhio Park Terrace. Sons of Samoa,” I translated for Ryan.

“Could be a turf war,” Ryan said.

“Two punks from Oakland are going down for the shooting,” Lô said. “We suspect West Coast traffickers are heading this way.”

“And the locals are opposed,” Ryan said.

“And not rolling over.”

“If that’s the case, Fitch’s intel skews pretty good.”

“Yeah,” Lô said. “It does.”

At six, Ryan and I were still threading through traffic. Slogging, really.

I’d used Ryan’s phone to call Katy, explained about the accident, and told her that we were on our way home.

She’d demanded details. Sidestepping most questions, I’d assured her that I was fine. She’d offered to throw something together for dinner.

I’d then given Ryan an overview of Lô’s conversation with Gloria Kealoha.

“But, until Fitch, you never made the Samoa connection,” he said.

“No.”

“What pulled the trigger?”

“Hamo. Tafuna. Waipahu,” I said.

“Klaatu. Barada. Nikto,” he said.

“What?”

“
The Day the Earth Stood Still
?”

I was lost.

“Buttercup.” Feigned disappointment. “Nineteen fifty-one? Michael Rennie and Patricia Neal? Neal said those three words to Gort and the Earth was saved. Never mind. You’re probably distracted by my good looks and charm. How’d you get Sons of Samoa out of Fitch’s account?”

“Three things. First, he used the term
Hamo.
That’s slang for Samoan.”

“I thought it was a lunch meat that paired well with cheese.”

I ignored that.

“Samoan is a member of the Polynesian language family. Some of the other dialects substitute the letter
h
for the Samoan
s.
So Samoa becomes Hamoa.”

“Thus Hamo. I didn’t know that.”

“Second, Tafuna is a city in American Samoa. Fitch said that’s where the Kealohas came from.”

“Except back home they weren’t the Kealohas.” Ryan was quiet a moment. “How was a woman with two minor dependents and no job or job skills allowed to immigrate to the U.S.?”

“Though not citizens, people born in American Samoa are American nationals, free to travel throughout the United States and its territories.”

“OK. Third?”

“Waipahu. There are a couple of fairly good-sized Samoan communities on Oahu, one near Kalihi Valley, another up at Waipahu.”

“Kealoha lived at Waipahu.”

“VoilÁ.”

“But how’d you make the leap to Sons of Samoa?”

“Remember that kid I ID’ed about a year and a half back? The one with the full-body tattoos?”

“The Latin King stabbed outside the bar in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue?”

“Yes. I spent hours researching gang tattoos for that case.”

“Gold star, Brennan.”

Before I could say thanks, Ryan executed one of his head-spinning topic swaps.

“Tell me about the crash.”

“I did that.”

“Do it again.”

“A car pulled to my bumper, tapped me once, tapped me a second time, went to pass, and swerved into my left rear. I cut the wheel—”

“What kind of car?”

“A black SUV.”

“Year? Make?”

“It happened too fast.”

“How many occupants?”

“Two. I think. The glass was tinted. I couldn’t really see.”

“Male or female?”

“Yes.”

Ryan gave me a look that said he wasn’t amused.

“The passenger was definitely male,” I said.

“How do you know?”

“He waved.”

Ryan let a few beats pass. Then, “Lô doesn’t think it was an accident.”

Nor did I. But I hadn’t wanted to consider the implications.

“What’s his thinking?” I asked.

“That it was done on purpose.” Sarcastic.

“Fine,” I said. “Devil’s advocate. Who would want to hurt me or at least frighten me?”

“Let’s start with the improbable and work our way in.”

Ryan drummed agitated fingers on the wheel.

“Here’s one. You angered a local mafioso by insisting he submit a sample of his DNA.”

“Nickie Lapasa? That’s ridiculous.”

“Really? How did Lapasa’s old man kick-start his career?”

“No one ever proved the hit-and-run—”

“OK. How about this one? A wacko anthropologist thinks you cost him his job.”

“Dimitriadus may be nuts but I doubt he’s violent.”

“He threw an elbow at you.”

Remembering the scene at JPAC, I had to admit, Dimitriadus was upset.

“And, call me crazy, but you’re about to ID two people murdered in a drug war.”

“Allegedly murdered.”

Again, Ryan’s look was withering.

“Besides, no one knows that,” I added.

“Right. Street gangs are notorious for their lousy communication networks.”

“Here’s one.” It came out more snappish than I’d intended. Or not. “I crossed paths with a couple of drunks.”

“Uh-huh,” Ryan said.

I expected the usual snarkfest from our daughters. To my surprise, Katy and Lily were together in the kitchen. Tool was blasting from the sound system and both were singing “Vicarious” into wooden spoon mikes.

On seeing us, Katy rushed me.

“Oh my God!”

Lily stared, mouth open, spoon frozen before it.

“You should see the other guy,” I said, disengaging from my daughter’s embrace.

No one laughed.

“What’s for dinner?” I asked, perky as Gidget.

“You said it was a glorified fender bender.” Katy’s tone was stern. “A fluke that the car got wrecked.”

“I’m fine,” I said. For the umpteenth time that day.

“If you were fine you wouldn’t be wearing that shirt.”

“I like birds.”

“Your hair is wet. Your face is a train wreck.”

“What’s that fabulous smell?”

“We made marinara sauce,” Lily said. “And shrimp.”

“Allow me to change, feed me pasta, and I’ll tell you anything.” I raised both hands like a spy ready to crack.

Katy watched with suspicion as I climbed the stairs.

Minutes later I was back in a clean shirt and shorts.

I provided the bare essentials. Sans mention of Lô’s theory. Swerve. Bump. Plunge. Rescue. In this version the water was two feet deep.

When I finished, Katy commenced one of her typical cross-examinations.

“I thought you were going to JPAC.”

“I did. Happily, everything’s wrapped up there. What did you do today?”

“What were you doing on the southern end of the island?”

“After JPAC I met with the medical examiner.”

“About the guys eaten by sharks?”

“Sharks?” Lily’s eyes went wide.

I glanced a question at Ryan.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Definitely tell her.”

“A few days back, body parts were recovered from a cove on the southern end of the island. The ME asked me for help. I think we’ve established who the two men were.”

“You can share a little more detail than that.” Ryan’s eyes were hard on his daughter.

“The victims were probably members of a gang called Sons of Samoa. They may have been murdered and thrown off a cliff.”

“For dealing drugs,” Ryan added.

“Who were they?” Katy asked, tone a bit gentler.

“Sorry, sweetie. I can’t tell you that.”

“How old were these men?” Now and then Lily’s island childhood sounds in the lilt of her speech. It did so in that question.

“Your age.” Again, Ryan spoke straight to his daughter.

“It happened at the southern end of the island?” Katy guessed.

“Makapu’u Point. I finished early with the ME, and decided to take the scenic route home.” Rueful smile. It hurt. “Bad choice.”

Katy’s eyes met Lily’s. I was clueless as to the message that passed between them.

“Hey, this sauce is great,” I said. “Whose recipe?”

“It came from a jar,” Lily said.

“Then, hats off to the shoppers.” I raised my glass.

Only Ryan tapped my drink with his.

“Listen,” I said. “Look at the upside. We’ll get a better set of wheels.”

Katy opined that the Cobalt was a piece of crap. Lily agreed.

Lily said I should soak in a hot bath. Katy seconded her suggestion.

Katy volunteered to do the dishes. Lily said she’d help.

Lily offered to drive Katy to her surfing lesson in the morning. Katy accepted.

Ryan and I exchanged glances. Huh?

I did take the bath.

While submerged in wisteria-scented bubbles up to my chin, I reviewed my efforts since arriving in Honolulu.

I’d wrecked a car. Fine. Point against me.

I’d determined that Spider Lowery hadn’t been killed in Vietnam. The news would shatter Plato Lowery’s world, but a wrong would be righted.

I’d identified the man buried in Lumberton, North Carolina. Forty years after dying in a chopper crash, Luis Alvarez would finally go home.

I’d located the remains of Xander Lapasa. Though not exactly gracious, the Lapasa family would also get closure.

I’d helped Hadley Perry close the Halona Cove cases. And open a beach. Perhaps Logo’s and Kealoha’s killers would be brought to justice.

And Lily and Katy were getting along.

Lily was right. The hydroaromatherapy relaxed my muscles and calmed my nerves. I emerged from the tub feeling pretty damn good.