CHAPTER 14

When I opened the door to our offices late the next morning, I found AUSA Audra Levy sitting in our reception area reading the latest issue of Time. I ignored Hoshi’s good morning and turned to the assistant US attorney. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Excuse me?” she said, looking up from the magazine.

“You heard me. Are you trying to get me and my client killed by coming here to check up on things, or are you and William F. Boyd just plain stupid?”

“Kevin—,” Hoshi said, rising from behind her desk.

I held up a palm and told her to keep quiet.

Audra Levy stood and tossed the magazine onto an empty chair. “I didn’t even know this was your office,” she said with indignation.

“Then just what the hell are you doing here?”

Hoshi’s voice rang out from behind me. “Ms. Levy is here to see Jake.”

“Jake?”

“I’m purchasing a condominium in Kakaako,” Audra said. “I’m retaining Mr. Harper to review the contract.”

“We don’t handle real estate matters.”

“We don’t.” Jake suddenly emerged from the conference room. “But I do.”

I dipped my hand into the right pocket of my suit jacket and fondled my pill bottle. “What are you talking about, Jake?”

“We dissolved our partnership, son. Or have you forgotten already?”

“So now you’re handling real estate matters?” I said incredulously.

“Real estate, wills and probate, divorce, adoption. I’m coming up on seventy, son. I can’t be chasing after iceheads and gangbangers during my sunset years. I’m resuming a general practice, something I did in the old days back in Houston when the judges weren’t being generous with criminal assignments.” He smiled at Audra. “I’ll be right with you, young lady.”

“Do you not know who she is, Jake?”

“Pardon?”

“This is AUSA Audra Levy. She’s working the Turi Ahina case with our friend Billy F. Boyd. So there might—just might—be a bit of a conflict involved.”

“I apologize, Mr. Harper,” Audra said, shaking her head. “I didn’t know you worked with Mr. Corvelli or even shared office space. He’s right; this would present a tremendous conflict of interest.” She retrieved her handbag from the chair.

Then she turned to me. “I’m sorry, Kevin. I received a referral from my real estate agent. The Ahina case is Boyd’s. I never saw a copy of your letterhead or I never would have shown up here.”

Audra appeared distressed, and I immediately regretted raising my voice and barking accusations at her. I realized that my outburst was at least partly due to its being past time for my pills.

“You’re Audra Karras, aren’t you?”

She half-smiled. “So you do remember me from high school.”

“I thought I did, but I didn’t see a ring, so I wasn’t sure.”

She raised her hand, knuckles out, palm facing her. “No ring. I’m divorced.”

I motioned down the hallway. “Why don’t you take a seat in my office? Since you’re already here, we might as well take the opportunity to talk.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“No, please. I’d like to discuss the case and I don’t trust the phones. And I’m sure as hell not stopping by DEA headquarters until this case is concluded.”

Audra finally agreed, leaving me and Jake alone in the reception area with Hoshi.

“Sorry, son. I had no idea.”

“I realize that. I never mentioned her name.”

Just then the conference-room door swung open, and I heard a small boy’s voice. “Miss Hoshi, do you have any more of those gummi bears?”

My heart nearly melted in my chest.

Jake stepped aside, and for the first time since shortly after Erin Simms slit her wrists, I saw Josh, a child I pulled from the Kupulupulu Beach Resort fire a long twelve months ago.

“Kevin?” Josh said. “I knew I was right. I knew this was where you worked!”

The boy ran toward me as fast as he could, and as I lowered myself on my haunches, he jumped into my arms.

I looked over the boy’s shoulder past Jake, at a kind-looking couple in their late thirties, smiling deeply as they exited the conference room.

Jake shrugged at me, then smiled himself.

“An adoption I’m handling,” he said. “Guess I’m just full of surprises today, son.”

*   *   *

After meeting Josh’s new family and assuring the kid we were still friends and that we’d see each other again real soon, I moved down the hallway to my private office, where I sat at my desk across from Audra. I began to tell her about my relationship with the boy, about the fire and the criminal trial that followed, but she stopped me midsentence by saying, “I read the book.”

“The book?” I said, trying to regain my train of thought. It was now well past time for my Percocet and my mind was choked with fog.

“Paradise on Fire by Sherry Beagan. About the Erin Simms trial. The boy Josh was one of the main characters.”

“Oh.”

I didn’t know what else to say, couldn’t seem to figure a way to move on. Audra had read a nonfiction account of one of the most challenging and painful periods of my life, a story that depicted me as a cad, as a callous and calculating lawyer whose scheming didn’t cease once he left the courtroom. It was more or less the portrait of a modern-day monster.

A sharp pain suddenly struck me like a fist in the gut. Perspiration formed at my temples. I needed my pills and fast. “Would you excuse me for a moment?”

I shot across the hall and entered Jake’s office, quickly scanning the top of his desk. Empty as usual. I moved behind the desk and searched the drawers. No way I could wait forty minutes for the pills to kick in. I needed something to crush them. In Jake’s bottom right-hand drawer I found a paperweight—an elaborate piece of glass art with a solid bottom. I fished the pill bottle from my jacket pocket, opened it, and spilled four pills onto the desk. I crushed them one at a time, keeping my eyes on the closed door. Then I reached into my back pants pocket, removed my wallet, and snatched out a $20 bill. I rolled the bill tightly then held it to my right nostril. I leaned over the desk and snorted the dust, cursing yet savoring the burn.

After cleaning up, I returned to my office, the drip still traveling down the back of my throat.

“Sorry about that,” I said, sniffling. I felt like a racehorse, felt like grabbing a gun and running down to Chinatown to show Tam and the giant the type of haole I really was. “Now, where were we?”My fingers absently played with the file folders cluttering my desk.

“We were about to discuss your client Turi Ahina. And Orlando Masonet.”

“Yes!” I said, slapping my desk. “Phase two of the plan is complete. We delivered the message to Masonet.”

“How did you do that?”

I shook my head, pointed at the ceiling, and shook my finger, too. “No, no. That’s something I don’t share with you. Suffice it to say, we’ll know if we can move onto phase three within forty-eight fours.” I glanced at my watch. “Thirty-six hours to be exact.”

“Boyd will be pleased.”

The mere mention of Boyd’s name caused me to deflate, to think of the last lawyer to truly get under my skin: a young state prosecutor named Luke Maddox. Maddox had made the Erin Simms trial personal, and somehow every matter I’d handled since felt the same way. That feeling could destroy a trial lawyer, could burn him into nothingness at a young age.

“How did you wind up with the US Attorney’s Office anyhow?” I said, wondering briefly just how well and in what capacity she knew William F. Boyd.

“I clerked for a federal criminal court judge in the Eastern District right out of law school, and I guess I fell in love with the practice and wanted to be on the side of right.”

I smiled, taking the jab in the spirit in which it was intended. She smiled back, but hers was more difficult to read. Whether it was friendly or flirty, from that moment on I couldn’t take my eyes off her. With a mere twitch of her lips she’d gone from US attorney to human—a transformation I wouldn’t have thought possible just an hour ago.

“I suppose that even the Justice Department finds itself on the side of right every once in a while,” I said.

Audra shook her head but maintained a grin. “Sixteen years since high school and you haven’t changed a bit, Kevin.”

“Oh, I’ve changed. I’ve got the scars to prove it.”

“Well,” she said, rising out of my client chair, “let’s save them for another time.”

Abruptly I said, “How about tonight?”

“No. I have plans tonight. Besides, it is not a good idea for us to see each other socially.”

“Who said anything about socially? We’re going to have to communicate these next few days, and I already told you I have no intention of using the phones or going anywhere near your office building.”

“Then let’s discuss phase three of the plan now,” she suggested, sitting herself back down.

“No can do.” I stared at my watch. “I have a press conference scheduled in twenty minutes. Thanks to a strange twist of fate, I’m representing the governor of Hawaii in a murder investigation.”