CHAPTER 13

On the sidewalk outside the Federal Detention Center, I inadvertently stepped on a long brown slug, squashing it beneath the hard sole of my shoe. I felt it wriggle and die beneath my foot. I looked down at the length of ooze and wondered briefly how old the slug was, how long slugs were expected to live. The hand of grief reached out and grabbed me by the throat, and for a moment I thought I might vomit on the sidewalk in the blush of the setting sun.

Turi’s wide smile spared me any further despair. He peered up and down the boulevard before finally staring straight at me. Being released from federal prison is typically an invigorating experience, but not when far darker forces are likely waiting for you on the outside.

“Thanks for going along with all this, Mistah C,” Turi said immediately after greeting me. “Ya know, you’re going to heaven for this, brah.”

I started down the street without saying anything.

Turi followed me in the direction of the garage where I’d parked my Jeep. We took the elevator up to the third floor, then walked briskly toward my white Wrangler. Turi waited until we were both inside, then said, “I need one favor, yeah? I need you to come with me tonight around midnight to meet up with Tam in Chinatown, eh?”

“Tam?” I said, turning the ignition with no small amount of trepidation. “Who’s Tam?”

“He’s one Vietnamese guy I know. If anybody can get one message to Masonet, it’s Tam, brah.”

I backed slowly out of the tight space, then threw the transmission into drive and rolled forward. “Why me? Why tonight?”

“Because, brah, I might not make it till dawn. And I need you with me or else no one’s gonna buy my story that I got one haole lawyer gonna help me out by helping the big boss. I go to Tam’s bar with that shit, and I’m not coming out, eh?”

I pulled the Jeep onto Ala Moana Boulevard. “All right. But for now we’re headed up to my home in Ko Olina. We can hang low there until it’s time to take off for Chinatown.”

“We need to make one stop first, brah.”

“One stop where?”

“Kailua, yeah? We gotta stop by my house.”

“What for?”

“I need something.”

“Anything you need—clothes, toiletries, snacks—we can buy at the ABC Store near my villa. I’ll pay or you can borrow some of my things.”

Turi twisted his thick neck to look at me, then shook his head. “No offense, Mistah C, but you don’t got what I need.”

“What’s that then, Turi?” I asked, checking my rearview to make sure we weren’t being followed.

“If we’re going to Chinatown, we’re going strapped. So I gotta get my gun.”

*   *   *

By the time we drove to Kailua and picked up Turi’s .44 Glock, it was already dark, so we grabbed some steak sandwiches at Buzz’s in Lanikai and waited. Then we waited some more. Few words were said; even fewer were necessary. We both knew we had our backs against the wall. One wrong move and the two of us were fish food.

At a quarter past eleven we finally began the anxious drive from Lanikai to Chinatown.

Once Honolulu’s red light district, Chinatown had undergone a recent face-lift. The area was now more known for its cutting-edge art and world-class cuisine than for its violent drug gangs and dilapidated buildings. But Turi and I weren’t heading into Chinatown to admire its oil paintings and sculptures or to dine at one of its four-star Asian eateries. We were making for Nuuanu Street and one of its relics—a dive bar that few knew about and even fewer entered, a place where you could go in the front whole and come out the back in pieces.

We parked in the business district and walked. I knew we’d hit Chinatown once the street names were accompanied by Chinese symbols. The moon offered the only light, and from the corner of my eye I caught more than a few of the district’s nocturnal denizens lurking in the shadows. Not too many of the men looked Chinese, but plenty looked plenty tough. Face-lift or not, Chinatown wasn’t a place where you wanted to walk the streets after dark.

“There it is,” Turi said, motioning toward a nook between two abandoned storefronts.

The joint had no sign, the door was hidden in shadows, and I thought, not for the first time, There’s nothing more indecent than a dive bar that doesn’t want to be discovered.

“All right,” I said. “What’s the play?”

“We go inside, brah. And we try not to get killed.”

Sounded like a plan. I’d passed through Chinatown plenty of times before but only once spent any length of time here—for the Chinese New Year back when I was dating Nikki Kapua. We’d stood on crowded sidewalks and watched colorful dancing lions snake through the streets while sipping baijiu, welcoming—now ironically—the Year of the Rat.

We crossed the street and ducked into the nook, then Turi rapped on the door.

Nothing like a bar where you’ve got to knock.

When the door finally opened, an Asian man the width of Turi with twice the height prevented us from seeing inside.

“Ahina?” the giant said, glowering at Turi. “The fuck you doin’ here?”

“I need to see Tam, brah. I got one message for him, yeah?”

“Nah.” The giant shook his head. “No can.” He looked at me. “And who’s the fucking haole, eh?”

“That’s Mistah C. He’s my lawyer, yeah?”

“Whatevahs. You bettah get from here before you and this muff get your heads blown off.” The giant started closing the door.

Turi stopped it with one mammoth sandaled foot. Then he pulled his piece. Held the business end flat against the giant’s temple.

“Oh, fuck,” I muttered. This plan had just gone from bad idea to suicide in under sixty seconds.

“Easy, brah!” the giant said. “No huhu, brah. No get upset.”

Turi didn’t flinch. “Feel that chicken skin, eh?” he said calmly. “Them goose bumps telling you to open that door and no make ass. One funny kine move and I make you parallel fo’ real, eh?”

“Easy, brah,” the giant said quietly. “No need.”

Behind the giant I detected movement.

“Quickly, Turi,” I whispered.

Turi got the message. “You got three seconds, moke, then I cut you down peanut-size.”

“Oh, wow, like that, eh?” the giant said, raising his voice. “’Kay, fine then!”

The giant moved out of the doorframe and Turi aimed his pistol at the bartender, who was rising from behind the bar with a shotgun.

“No act!” Turi shouted.

The bartender lowered his weapon and Turi led the way inside, gun still raised.

A half dozen people were in the bar, counting the giant and bartender. Two men—one Asian, one Caucasian—sat at the bar, their eyes trained on Turi’s weapon. In the rear of the cramped space, a scarred man sat on an old maroon velvet couch, a young woman straddling his lap. Her back was completely bare, displaying a torso-length tattoo of a rare bird escaping its cage.

The scarred man dumped the girl off his lap and rose.

“What the fuck you think you’re doing?” he said to Turi in near-perfect English.

From the side of his mouth Turi said to me, “This here is Tam. He no like Americans. They kill his whole ‘ohana back in ’Nam.”

“You might have mentioned that sooner,” I said through clenched teeth.

Turi shrugged. “You no ask.”

I stole a glance at the Caucasian idling at the bar; he suddenly appeared very European. I swallowed hard and vowed to keep my lips shut. Until we left this shithole—if we left this shithole—I was 100 percent Canadian. Je suis de Québec, amigo.

“I no want no beef, Tam,” Turi said evenly. “I just come to bring you one message.”

“And what’s that message, Ahina?” Tam sounded as though he’d just swallowed a mouthful of gravel. “That you have one death wish or something?”

“No get wise, Tam.” Turi glanced over at the bartender, shouted at him to keep his fucking hands raised, then he looked back at the giant and ordered him to stand in the far corner where we could keep our eyes on him. Then he turned back to Tam. “Your wahine speak English, yeah?”

The young Asian girl with the uncaged-bird tattoo nodded. “I speak English.”

“Good,” Turi said. “You come here, eh?”

“What are you doing?” I whispered to Turi. “Why not go back there and tell Tam himself?”

“In case you no notice,” Turi whispered back, “I’m a big guy and I no move too fast. I get close to Tam, and he’ll stick me like a pig.”

The girl—she couldn’t have been more than eighteen—swayed forward slowly. When she was just a little more than an arm’s length away, Turi ordered her to stop.

In a hushed voice Turi said to her, “You tell Tam I have one way for big boss man to get off the island. My lawyer here, he owe me one favor, and he have one jet ready to take off for anywhere big boss man wanna go. No need file flight plan.” He motioned with his head to Tam. “Now go.”

My fingers tingled, and the stagnant air of the bar was causing me to sweat through my shirt and suit jacket.

Tam listened to the message then pushed the girl away hard enough to drop her to the floor.

“Big boss is gonna ask how the fuck you got out of the FDC,” Tam said.

As the girl uneasily got to her feet, Turi motioned her over again. But I didn’t want her involved, and I didn’t think I’d make it through another round of telephone.

“I bailed him out,” I said aloud.

“And why would you do that for a half-ton bag of shit like Turi Ahina?”

“Hit the archives of the Advertiser,” I said, my voice surprisingly steady. “Go back three years and you’ll find out why.”

Tam smiled, the long, jagged scar stretching across his face. “Alika Kapua.”

Small island, I thought. Too damn small.

I ignored the name and said, “Bottom line is, I have the means and the motive. Turi remains untouched, and I send your boss anywhere on the planet that doesn’t share reciprocity with the United States.”

Tam scratched at his scar, which ran like the Kaukonahua River from his brow all the way down to his chin. “I will deliver the message. How does he get in touch with you?”

“No need. I’ll get in touch with him through you in forty-eight hours. That should give him enough time to check me out and confirm everything I just told you.”

I turned around and went for the door while Turi backed out slowly.

“Lawyer!” Tam called just as my fingers grazed the door handle. “What’s your name?”

I turned back to him. “Kevin Corvelli.”

“Corvelli. You are an American?”

“Worse. I’m a New Yorker.”