CHAPTER 56

“You are bringing the police here?” Iryna said, dressed again in her tight black skirt and blouse, which I’d thrown in the washer and dryer and shrunk overnight.

“Not the police,” I explained. “A sketch artist. And an agent with the DEA.”

“What is DEA?”

“Drug Enforcement Administration.”

“Oh my God,” she shouted, running across my living room in bare feet. She grabbed her purse, opened it, stuffed her hand inside, and came out with four vials of white powder. “Quick, you hide these for me!”

“No one is going to go through your purse, Iryna.”

“I have no documents,” she yelled at me. “They will send me back to Odessa!”

I put up my hands, palms out. “No one’s going to Odessa.”

“Do you know how fucking cold it is there?” Iryna reached into her purse again.

I walked toward her to try to calm her. “Listen, as soon as the sketch is finished, I’ll send my receptionist to Ala Moana Center to buy you some new clothes. Her name is Hoshi and—”

Before I could finish the sentence, Iryna’s arm was extended, and I was rewarded with a faceful of pepper spray.

I experienced immediate agony. My eyes shut instantly, and when I tried to open them, it was as though I were attempting to gaze directly into the sun. The pain was burning and intense and I didn’t dare try to open my eyes again. Meanwhile, my nose ran, I coughed and coughed, and I could barely breathe. I sank to the floor and rubbed at my eyes with my hands, only spreading the chemicals.

As for Iryna, I shouted her name over and over, though it was no use. I heard her shoes clop toward the stairs, then down them, then I heard the front door open and close with a slam.

I felt around the floor for my phone, then felt the bed. Blind and sick, I pushed myself to my feet, moved across the room, and ran my hands across the surface of the kitchen counter, knocking over empty beer bottles, a small black-silver globe, and a number of file folders from the Turi Ahina trial.

I went to the sink and tried flushing my eyes with water, to no effect. Blinking vigorously helped, but not much.

I dropped to the floor again and pushed myself along the cool tiles until I could prop myself up against the refrigerator.

My cell phone finally sounded from the left pocket of my shorts. I ripped the phone out, opened it, and held it to my ear.

“Who’s this?” I shouted, coughing violently.

“It’s Scott. What the fuck happened to you?”

“I just got pepper-sprayed. What do I do?”

“Nothing to do but wait it out. At least thirty to forty-five minutes. Longer, depending on how much of that shit you were hit with.”

“Great,” I muttered between hacks.

“Who pepper-sprayed you? The hooker?”

“Yeah.”

“Christ. What kind of kinky shit are you into, Kevin?”

“Just get over here. We need to find her. I’ve got a sketch artist showing up here at eight, along with a DEA agent expecting his first glimpse of Orlando Masonet.”

I ended the call. Tried opening my eyes. Too soon. I needed to get out of the kitchen, so I crawled back into the living room. Used the coffee table to push myself to my feet. Still coughing, still unable to breathe.

Blindly I moved toward the bedroom, made a left into the bathroom. I opened the medicine cabinet and knocked dozens of pill bottles down until I thought I had the right one. I sat on the bathroom floor inches from the toilet and popped the top on the bottle. I stuck my fingers inside. They were the Percocet all right. I needed to get them in me and fast to ease the unbearable pain, to hopefully dull my sensitivity to light—a truly intolerable sensation in a well-lit villa in Hawaii.

I lined four pills up on the floor and started to crush them beneath my can of Gillette shaving cream. It took five minutes, maybe ten, but I soon had a nice fine powder on the tiled bathroom floor. But all the work had caused me to sweat. So I took off my T-shirt and shorts and threw them out into the bedroom, after removing a pen from my pocket. I broke the pen and used it as a straw, placing one end into my left nostril and holding the other end to the pile of powdered Percocet. When I snorted, my nose and eyes and throat burned even worse and I howled in pain.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” I suddenly heard a voice say.

I swung around, startled. Tried opening my eyes again. The image was fuzzy, but I could just make him out. Special Agent Michael Jansen of the DEA.

“I have a valid prescription,” I said.