1 Murder on Moloka'i (17 page)

four

(1998 draft, revised)

My Impala crawled along the waterfront on choked Ala Moana Boulevard past the soaring Aloha Tower. Both long white hands of the tower’s Big Ben-like clock, a dozen stories above the harbor, pointed to a black Roman nine.

Beneath the Aloha Tower the nautical flags of a Norwegian cruise ship–crimson, mustard yellow, and navy blue–barely rippled in the slack trades. My clothes dripped like wet laundry begging for the spin cycle. The beach towel I always carry for surfing lay under me drenched, not doing much to keep the driver’s seat beneath it from growing soggier by the minute. Blood trickled from my stinging ankle.
Damn that Souza!

I wasn’t too happy about the salt water and blood dripping in my Impala. It’s sort of a classic.

I bought the teal blue ‘69 Chevy from a widow whose late husband purchased it new at Aloha Motors, a defunct dealership formerly on the site of the Hawai‘i Convention Center. With less than 50,000 original miles, the Impala’s three hundred horse V–8 still really rocks. And with the back seat removed, my longboard slides right in.

Wheeling the Impala downtown between steel and mirror office towers that hid all but a sliver of the grass green Ko‘olau Range, I wondered again about the woman from Boston. What did Harry mean: “If she shows, you’ll be damn glad she did”? Despite my six years in the business I still feel a little queasy when meeting new clients. You never know what you’ll get.

I turned onto Maunakea Street, a slice of old Honolulu bordering Chinatown’s teeming, mismatched buildings and pungent aromas. Along the half mile the two-lane drag runs
makai,
or seaward, from Foster Botanical Gardens to the harbor, Maunakea intersects notorious Hotel Street–a strip of raunchy bars, porno houses, flea bag hotels, prostitutes, and drug dealers.

The boys in blue at the HPD sub-station try occasionally to weed out these bad elements, but they always spring back like the flamboyant night-blooming cereus up the street at the botanical gardens. Me, I don’t mind. You’d be surprised how helpful these neighbors can be on certain cases.

Maunakea Street’s hodgepodge of crumbling buildings brought to mind that young “Ecofeminist” attorney who had tragically lost her life on Moloka‘i.
What would she have thought of my funky digs?
This is not the part of town where you’d expect to find a P.I. with ambitions. Truth is, a half dozen years back when I was just starting out I had higher expectations. My first office in a swankier part of town–Bishop Street, no less–cost me most of what I could make. But that’s another story. When I figured out I was giving up too much wave riding just to keep an address, I moved here to Maunakea.

Things are simpler now. These days I maintain only two rules for business: don’t starve and don’t get drilled. Oh, and a third rule for pleasure:
Plenny time fo’ surf!

At five minutes to nine I pulled into my garage, then hobbled shoeless and dripping along the crumbling sidewalk toward my office. Not wanting to keep a prospective client waiting, I started to jog.
Ouch!
My ankle stung. I slowed again to a hobble. Given the stares of passersby, I must have been a sight–even in this neighborhood. A homeless man curled on yellowed newspapers by a bankrupt cigar shop peered at me, rubbed his pink eyes, then spit in my direction. The urine reek of his grimy clothes quickened my halting pace up Maunakea.

My office is easy to find above the corner shop called Fujiyama’s Flower Leis. Mrs. Fujiyama owns a decaying pre-war building at Maunakea and Beretania Streets that boasts dazzling ornaments of an Oriental cast–two-headed dragons, serpents, wild boars, and ancient Chinese characters spelling some (to me) mysterious message in red. The walls are riddled with enough cracks to keep a journeyman plasterer busy for months. The second, or top floor is divided into five tiny offices. Mine, the roomiest of the bunch, is a twelve-by-twelve cubicle with a window overlooking Maunakea Street.

Trailing drops of sea water into the flower shop, I searched among the refrigerated display cases for the woman from Boston. Plenty of ginger, plumeria, tuberose,
pīkake
, and orchid leis, but no sign of her. The vivid floral scent of the shop raised the hair on the back of my neck
–
making me feel sort of spiritual, or just plain
lōlō.

Mrs. Fujiyama’s establishment offers my clients both wonderful fragrances and a degree of anonymity. They can browse leisurely among the perfumy leis, then slip unnoticed upstairs. If detected, they can pretend to be patronizing one of the four other tenants: a free-lance editor, bookkeeper (who’s never in), passport photographer, or Madame Zenobia, a psychic. I wonder sometimes if any of these businesses are fronts, though I’ve never bothered to check.

Fortunately, Mrs. Fujiyama didn’t see me trail sea water across her scuffed brown linoleum. But her youngest lei girl, a Filipino college student named Chastity, did.

“Eh, Mr. Cooke,” said Chastity, stringing a pale yellow plumeria lei, “You’re so wet!”

“Dawn-patrol surfah.”
I winked and headed up the orange shag stairs past the glass bead curtain and locked door at Madame Zenobia’s, who seldom does readings before noon.

The smoky veneer hallway was empty by my door that says “SURFING DETECTIVE” beneath the graceful longboard rider hanging ten–as on my business cards. I unlocked the two dead bolts and the heavy mahogany door creaked open. I put in this solid wood door and the dead bolts myself because Mr. Fujiyama, when he built these offices, used hollow-core doors with cheap knob-locks. The locks were a joke. A common kitchen knife could spring them. As for the hollow-core doors, a little
keiki
–a mere child–could easily punch a fist through.

The musty smell of the office floated through the opened door even before I stepped inside. But after my morning’s swim, the familiar whiff and disorder of the place felt reassuring. Atop a filing cabinet across from my battleship grey desk stood a tarnished trophy: THIRD PLACE–CLASSIC LONG BOARD– MĀKAHA. My faded glory.

When I was twenty-five, nearly a decade ago, I won this trophy in a local contest at Mākaha. The infamous Mākaha “bowls” were cranking up in the final round to fifteen feet.
And higher.
Boards were snapping like toothpicks. I got lucky. One teeth-rattling ride positioned me to win it all. Then on the wave of the day–the wave
of my life
–I kicked out to help a fellow surfer hit by his board going over the falls. Neither of us took home first prize that day. But the third-place trophy, tarnished now by the years, still sits above my filing cabinet.

I checked my watch again.
Five after nine.
Maybe the woman from Boston would be a few minutes late? I opened my lone office window, releasing the stale air, and took a quick look for her down on Maunakea Street. The sharp, competing smells of kim chee, espresso, rancid garbage, hot malasadas, and ginger leis wafted in.

Across from the flower shop stood an old porno theater, recently converted to a Christian radio station. Last week I’d watched the new owners take down from the marquee two spicy titles–“Hot Rackets” and “Debbie Does It Again”– replacing them with “JESUS COMING SOON.” Nearby an old porno buff, unaware of the theater’s conversion, hustled to the ticket booth with visions in his X-rated mind of the man from Nazareth I shudder to contemplate. Whatever the faithful inside told him, the porno buff stalked away dejected with fists thrust in his pockets like lead weights. He was upset.
Plenny
upset.

Now by this converted theater I saw no cab and no woman who looked like she came from Boston. I surveyed the surrounding businesses: Leong’s Dry Cleaning, Taka’s Antiques, and C & K Diner, where a buck fifty buys you a Spam
musubi
plate lunch. Near C & K’s take-out window I spotted two more homeless men leaning on grocery carts piled high like container ships with worldly belongings, but no client.

Unlocking the filing cabinet that displays my tarnished longboard trophy, I pulled from the bottom drawer a pair of old Levi’s I wear for dirty work and a Town & County Surf t-shirt. My soaked clothes–underwear and all–I shed into a heap on the dusty linoleum. From the back of the file drawer I reached for a moldy hand towel and dried myself, hoping the woman from Boston didn’t show while I was stark naked.

Three taps sounded at my door.

IV: Chapter Three: Paniolo Johnny Kaluna

I would be remiss if I did not provide at least one example of how editors can enormously improve a book. My wife, Charlene, read and commented on every draft. And Kirsten Whatley tightened the book into its final form. The finished product is much better because of their efforts, and those of specialist editors. Ku‘ualoha Ho‘omanawanui, Puhi Adams, Rodney Morales, and Scott Burlington, as mentioned in the acknowledgements, played a significant role in giving
Murder on Moloka‘i
an authentic island feel. Ku‘ualoha, an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa who holds the only faculty position dedicated to Hawaiian literature anywhere in the world, transformed the character of Johnny Kaluna. In chapter three when Kai meets Johnny, we are introduced to a genuine
paniolo,
or Hawaiian cowboy, who looks, speaks, and acts the part. It was not so in the first draft, before Ku‘ualoha’s magic touch. As can be seen in the excerpt below, the
panilolo’s
name was originally Moreno, not Kaluna, he spoke in “proper” mainland English, rather than island pidgin sprinkled with Hawaiian phrases, and though he looked like a cowboy, he lacked such island touches as a red
palaka
shirt and skin tanned reddish brown like
koa.
Notice too that Kai himself spoke in formal English, rather than responding in kind to Kaluna’s pidgin. The result was a formal and stilted exchange between the two men that Ku‘ualoha helped to make more authentic.
Mahalo!

“Mr. Moreno?” I called.

No answer.

I looked at my watch. It was 7:30, the time we had appointed for our meeting. I heard a vehicle and walked back outside. It was a Jeep pickup, the bed filled with hay bails. A mustached man in a cowboy hat climbed out, skin tanned deeply like cherry wood. His jeans were worn white around the thighs–not fashionable faded, but really worn. A pair of riding boots and a western shirt with pearl buttons rounded out the effect. This man looked like a
paniolo
. We stood in the mist and introduced ourselves.

“Mr. Cooke?” He extended his right hand, his dark brown hair curling under the brim of his cowboy hat.

“Mr. Moreno, where are your mules?” I shook his hand.

“Gone to a west Moloka‘i ranch,” he said. “Gone until the lawyers draw up new papers.”

“New papers?”

“Liability waivers for our mule riders to sign.” His almond eyes looked wary. “Ever since that accident we’ve been temporarily shut down.”

“Too bad,” I said.

“Are you a lawyer, Mr. Cooke?”

“No, I’m a private investigator,” I replied. “Don’t worry, my client has no interest in suing your tour company.”

Moreno seemed relieved. “There’s not much work for me while we’re shut down, except driving to the ranch twice a day to feed and water the mules”

“Tell me about the accident.”

“It was the worst day of my life,” Moreno said. “The young lady, Sara, she fell about three hundred feet into a gorge. There was a doctor in the party, but he couldn’t do a thing. Not even help Coco.”

“Who’s Coco?

“A mule.” Moreno’s eyes glistened. “A damn good mule. Not like him to stumble. I buried him right by the trailhead. You’ll see the wooden cross when we hike down.”

“You buried the mule yourself?”

“He was my favorite.” Moreno blinked, then rubbed his moist eyes. “Come on in.” He motioned me toward the barn. “I’ll get you the doctor’s name and the others.”

We walked into the tack room with the saddles and blankets and harnesses hanging on the wall. From the drawer of a small, dusty desk Moreno pulled out a guest book and opened it to a date in early September.

“This is the day,” he said. “There were four riders besides the young lady who died. None of them seemed to know the others. One was the doctor. And there were two more men and a woman.”

“May I copy their names and addresses?”

“Sure.” He handed me the dusty book. The doctor whose name was Benjamin Ganjo kept his office in Honolulu. The woman, Heather Linborg, lived on Maui. The second man, Milton Yu, gave an address on the Hāmākua Coast of the Big Island. And the third man, Emery Archibald, listed only “Island Fantasy Holidays, Glendale, CA.”

“What can you tell me about these four people?” I asked Moreno.

“That was a month ago,” he said. “Usually I forget customers’ faces after that long, but the accident, you know, kind of riveted me.”

“I understand.”

“The woman, Heather, was a nice-looking blond. Very nice. And young. In her twenties.”

“Did she talk much with Sara?”

“Not that I recall,” Moreno said. “Heather talked mostly with the local Chinese man, Milton Yu.”

“What about this Archibald? Did he talk with Sara, or act strangely around her?”

“Oh, he talked with her, I’m sure. But no differently than anybody does on a mule ride. Just visited with her, if you know what I mean.”

“And the doctor?” I asked.

“Same thing,” Moreno said. “That Dr. Ganjo was on the heavy side. I gave him my biggest mule.”

“Did the doctor make any attempt to help Sara when she fell?”

“There was no use,” the mule guide said. “We couldn’t reach her in the gorge.”

I pulled out the photo Adrienne had given me of J. Gregory Parke and showed it to Moreno. “Have you ever seen this man?”

Moreno’s almond eyes squinted. He twitched his mustache. “Yeah, I’ve seen him.”

“You have?” I was stunned, but tried not to show it.

“He rode to Kalaupapa a day or two before the accident.”

“Can you verify that?”

“By the guest book.” He turned back one page to the day before Sara’s fatal ride. “Here are the names. You can look for yourself.”

Sure enough, on the list was “J.G. Parke.” Could Adrienne have a case after all?

“Can you remember anything about Parke?” I asked Moreno.

“He’s in his fifties, I’d say. Turning grey. Quiet. He seemed preoccupied,” the mule guide said. “Didn’t take much interest in the tour.”

I put away the photo. “Can we hike down the trail now to see where Sara fell?”

“Sure.” He took out a cash box. “Do you want to pay now or later?”

“Now is fine.” I pulled out my wallet and handed him some bills.

“Sorry, I have to ask,” Moreno said, “but I’ve got few customers since the accident, except hikers.”

“No Problem.”