CHAPTER 66

“It was originally Jansen’s idea,” I said to Turi in the darkness. “So I can’t take all the credit. If you remember, this was how he and Boyd planned on taking down Masonet.”

We stood on the runway of a small, rarely used airfield in front of a jet owned by the rap star M.C. WMD. While I was still at the Queen’s Medical Center, I’d called in a favor from Milt Cashman. When Milt heard the plan, he said, “Kev, you’re fucking crazier than I am. I like that in a lawyer. Give me ten minutes to call Mr. Fucking M.C. WMD and you’ve got yourself a jet.”

“We all cool inside,” WMD called from the plane. “Whenever y’all motherfuckers are ready, let’s jetty.”

“Hey, WMD,” I said over the roar of the idling engines, “you ever been shot?”

“Nah, man,” he said, revealing a mouthful of gold teeth.

“You ever been stabbed?”

WMD removed his sunglasses. “Nope.”

“Ever been arrested?”

“Nah, but there was this one time, man, I came real close. Hey, whatchu getting at?”

“And you call yourself a gangster,” I said, smiling.

WMD shook his head while smiling back at me. “Not Guilty Milty told me alls about you, Corvelli. A lawyer out there doing gangsta shit. But lemme tell you something, Counselor. Doing gangsta shit don’t make you a gangsta.”

“No? What does?”

He pulled out a wad of green the size of his head and said, “M-O-N-E-Y, money.”

I thanked him again for the favor, then turned back to Turi.

“How ’bout you, brah?” Turi said. “You gonna be awright?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Mindy, with Ema held tightly in her arms, said, “We could never thank you enough, Kevin.”

“It’s the other way around,” I said. “Now go get on that plane before M.C. WMD changes that platinum heart of his.”

When Turi and I were alone, we shared a brief hug. No more bear hugs, not for me. My chest was all stapled up and couldn’t take it.

“Mistah C, before I leave, I wanna clear the air, yeah?”

A cold dread suddenly crawled up my spine. What Slauson had begun to tell me outside Tam’s bar had been tugging at me ever since the verdict.

In that moment, I was sure Turi was going to tell me that the five large the cops had found on him was cash he’d picked up before entering Pearl City. That it was advance payment from Masonet for the hit on Kanoa Bristol.

My lips parted but I couldn’t speak. I wanted to hit rewind, to say goodbye and put Turi on the plane without ever having to hear him say he wanted to clear the air.

But it was too late.

Was Bristol the dirty cop who’d decided to come clean and back Tatupu’s allegations? Had I risked a good man’s life to save that of an assassin?

I thought about Dana Bristol and her two children. About Ray Irvine and his ex-wife and son. I thought about the hole in my own chest.

If I’d been deceived, it was by my own strategy. I had put the words in Turi’s mouth. I was the one who’d suggested to him that Bristol was going to put a hit on him that fateful night in Pearl City.

I stared over Turi’s shoulder at the plane. I had the power to stop this right now with a single phone call. Turi could still do twenty-five to life on the federal drug and racketeering charges if he remained in Hawaii. Why should I put my ass on the line for someone who lied to me? For someone who killed in cold blood.

Sometimes life just grabs you by the throat, I thought. Grabs you by the throat and chokes you and leaves you for dead on the floor.

I searched Turi’s wide, watering eyes and decided. I wouldn’t turn back now. Whether he’d lied to me or told the truth, Turi Ahina had once saved my life. And when it came right down to it, all I’d really done during the trial was my job. I’d fulfilled my duty. I’d won an acquittal. That was all I was ever supposed to do.

“I was scared,” Turi said finally. “I didn’t wanna tell you during the trial ’cause I didn’t wanna seem soft. But now I wanna clear the air. I was scared, Mistah C.”

I immediately felt my chest deflate and realized I’d been holding my breath. “That all?” I said above the sound of the engines.

Turi cleared his face of tears and managed one of the legendary smiles I would forever remember him for. “That’s all, Mistah C.”

I nodded. “For a moment there I was scared, too.”

“Well, I guess this is it, Mistah C,” Turi said as he backed into the darkness. “So say goodnight to the bad guy. Unless you wanna come, too. I’m sure WMD’s got an extra seat.”

It was tempting, of course. Running always is. But if I’d come to any realization at all during my mend in that Honolulu hospital bed, it was that I was through running. Hawaii was, and would always be, my home.

When I shook my head, the big guy acknowledged me with a grin, turned, and started his way up the ladder into the airplane, shrinking from my sight.

“Aloha,” I said softly.

When he finally disappeared into the jet, I knew I would never see my friend Turi Ahina again.