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Terri returned a couple of minutes later. “Come on, let’s get moving.”
“What?” I asked.
“We’re going out to that warehouse and see if we can find this kid, and then we’ll bring him back here. On Monday I can start the official paperwork.”
Terri called a neighbor, who agreed Danny could spend the night at her house. Then we took off toward Lagoon Drive, Mike and me in my Jeep, Terri and Levi following in her SUV.
Mike and I didn’t talk until I was getting onto the H1 freeway. “What did Terri say about us having kids?” he asked.
“How do you know I asked her advice?”
“Because I know you and how you operate. What did she tell you to do?”
“She’s like a therapist. She asks a lot of questions.” I looked over at him. “The biggest one she asked was how I would feel if you went ahead and donated sperm on your own. Would I be jealous or resentful.”
Mike didn’t say anything.
I took a deep breath. I knew that what I was about to say would change everything between us, forever.
Then my cell phone rang. It was a number I didn’t recognize, and I was tempted to let it go to voice mail. But old habits die hard, and so I answered.
“Kimo? This is Dakota.”
I tilted the phone so that Mike could hear. “Hey, Dakota, howzit?”
“I saw one of those guys,” he said. “Those bodybuilders, the ones who brought that old man and old woman to the warehouse that burned.”
“You did? Where? When?”
“A couple of minutes ago. On this little street in Waikiki called Tusitala. You know where that is?”
“I used to live right near there. I’m in my Jeep right now and I’m not far from Waikiki. Can I meet you there and have you show me where the guy is?”
He hesitated.
“I’d really appreciate it, Dakota. I can buy you another dinner, if you want.”
I looked over at Mike. He nodded.
“All right. I’ll be waiting outside the ABC Store at the corner of Kuhio and Lili’uokalani.”
I hung up and dialed Terri. “Change of plans.” I explained what I knew. “Why don’t we all park near my old apartment, and then Mike and I will get Dakota?”
We got there first, and I parked a block from where we were to meet Dakota. Mike and I walked quickly to the ABC Store—but he wasn’t there. “Shit,” Mike said.
I saw a pay phone, one of the few left in town, and checked out the number posted on the dial. It matched the one that had come through on my cell. “At least we know he was here,” I said. “Let’s split up and see if we can find him. Maybe the bodybuilder took off and Dakota’s following him.”
“Or he got cold feet and took off.”
“Ever the optimist,” I said. “You go a couple of blocks Diamond Head and I’ll go the other way, and we’ll circle back and meet here.”
I had lived on Lili’uokalani Street for years, and I knew the sidewalks, storefronts and alleys of that part of town by heart. I prowled along, keeping in the shadows, looking for Dakota’s distinctive long ponytail.
“Kimo!”
I turned at the sound of the whisper. Dakota was standing between two buildings. “He’s in that Chinese restaurant over there,” he said, pointing across the street.
As we watched, a black limousine turned off Kuhio Avenue and glided down the street. “That’s the car!” Dakota said.
“You can’t be sure,” I said. “There must be dozens of those on the island.”
“But still.” Dakota shifted into the light and I got a good look at him. He was a handsome kid, about five-seven, with his dark hair pulled straight back from his forehead and knotted into a ponytail. He had a slim, aquiline nose and just the faintest trace of a mustache on his upper lip. He was wearing a ratty T-shirt, baggy board shorts and dark green rubber slippers.
I held up my index finger as the restaurant door opened and a muscle-bound guy stepped out, carrying a takeout bag. I pulled out my cell phone and flipped to the camera app. He walked across the sidewalk and I took a couple of quick shots of him. I got a good one of his face under the street light.
Then I hurried out into the street as the car pulled away, taking a picture of the license plate. It was one of the special ones in support of the Bishop Museum, and I pulled out my wallet and scribbled the number down, just in case I’d jiggled the phone and the number didn’t come through clearly.
“Why didn’t you stop him?” Dakota demanded.
“On what grounds? Illegal restaurant take-out? I’ve got his picture and I’ve got his license plate number. Now I can track him down and see who he is and what kind of connection he has to this case.”
Mike rounded the corner and I waved at him.
“I gotta go,” Dakota said.
He turned away from me but I grabbed his arm. “Hold on, Dakota. What about that dinner I promised you?”
“I already ate.”
“How about a coffee or something? A Frappuccino? We want to talk to you.”
Mike came up to us then. “Hey, Dakota. What’s going on?”
Dakota shrugged. “Nothing much. Just hanging.”
“Well, come hang with us,” Mike said. “We’re meeting a couple of friends. Relaxing and chilling.”
Dakota looked from Mike to me, and I smiled.
“You’re not mad, are you?” he asked. “That I ran out of Denny’s?”
I shrugged. “I’m glad you got a good meal. And that you know you can call me if you need anything.”
“Can I have a mocha coconut Frappuccino?” he asked. “They’re my favorite.”
“Mine, too,” Mike said. They walked a few feet ahead of me, and I called Terri and told her to meet us at the Starbucks on Kuhio, just a couple of blocks away.
They joined us as we reached the restaurant, and I introduced them to Dakota. “Terri and I have been friends since we were your age,” I said.
“Kimo,” Terri said. “Never say anything to a teenager that has ‘when I was your age’ in it.” She smiled and reached for Dakota’s hand. “Besides, maybe I don’t want Dakota to know that I’m as old as you are.”
“You look a lot younger than my mom,” Dakota said. “And she’s old, like thirty-five.”
I didn’t want to tell Dakota that we were all older than that, at least by a couple of years.
“See, he’s a gentleman,” Terri said. “You could learn some manners from him, Kimo.”
We walked inside and got in line, behind a posse of Japanese tourists and a drag queen in six-inch stilettos. “I don’t see how you can walk in those, Coco,” I said.
Coco Nutz was an occasional emcee at drag nights at the Rod and Reel Club, a gay bar on Waikiki that had been my regular hangout before I moved in with Mike.
“It’s all about the balance.” She looked the five of us up and down. “Aren’t you a mixed bag tonight?”
I introduced Coco to Mike, Terri, Levi and Dakota. “You’re a cutie pie,” she said to him. “Isn’t it past your bedtime, though?”
“Isn’t it past your sell-by date?” he asked her.
We howled with laughter, and the Japanese tourists all turned around to stare. “This one’s got spunk,” she said, then she turned on an imitation of Ed Asner in the Mary Tyler Moore show. “I hate spunk.”
Dakota looked confused as the rest of us laughed. “It’s an old-folks joke,” I said to him.
Coco stepped up and ordered her drink, then Levi said, “Put it all on one tab.”
She turned to him. “Where have you been all my life, handsome?”
“Obviously hanging out in all the wrong places,” Levi said.
We continued to banter as we waited for our drinks. Then Coco teetered off to a gig, and the five of us settled in a group of comfy chairs in the back corner.
“You strike me as a pretty smart kid, Dakota,” I said.
“I know how to take care of myself.”
“Yeah, but you’re also smart enough to see you can’t stay in that warehouse on Lagoon Drive forever. You need a stable place to live, food on the table, a chance to go to school and have fun, like any other teenager. Without having to worry about the cops or criminals or people who prey on kids.”
He shifted uncomfortably in his chair and it looked like he was trying to see a way out of the coffee shop.
“What Kimo’s saying is that you need to go back into foster care,” Terri said, leaning toward him.
“No.”
“It doesn’t have to be bad,” Terri said. “Levi and I were thinking you might come stay with us for a few days, to see how we all get along. I’ve already been approved as a foster mother. Levi and I live in a house in Wailupe, just outside Honolulu, with my son Danny, who’s almost ten.”
“I don’t want to,” Dakota said, looking down.
“You’ve probably had adults disappoint you,” Levi said. “I know how that is. My dad died suddenly when I was twelve. My mom didn’t know how to pay a bill or fix anything around the house. She was completely lost, and my older sisters and I felt like we’d been abandoned.”
I didn’t know much about Levi’s life before he had become a corporate mogul, then ditched it all to gunkhole around the islands in his sailboat. He’d come into our lives when he met Terri, and though I’d been introduced to his two daughters and learned about his business career, he’d never talked before about his youth.
“I never had a dad,” Dakota said. “I think he was some one-night stand of my mom’s. She would never tell me anything about him.”
“That’s tough,” Levi said. “At least I have memories of my dad, and of my mom when things were good. After he died my mom started dating this real jerk, and he and I butted heads for a long time.”
He leaned forward. “The thing is, you have to let people help you. As soon as they could, my sisters moved out of the house, and they helped me get a scholarship to a boarding school. The teachers there really cared about helping me succeed. Without all of them, I don’t know where I’d be.”
“I don’t need any help,” Dakota said.
I thought maybe Dakota needed some tough love. “That’s stupid,” I said. “And you know it. You’re just scared. Right?” I shook my head. “I never thought you were a wimp, Dakota. I thought you had balls.”
“Kimo!” Terri said.
Mike glared at me.
Dakota sat up straighter. “I’m not scared. But I’m not going anywhere with a stranger. Can I come stay with you and Mike?”
“We aren’t—” I started to say, but Mike interrupted me.
“Of course. We’ve got a spare bedroom where you can stay. But it’s not a hotel. You’ll have to help out with walking the dog, keep your room clean, that kind of thing.”
Dakota nodded. “All right. I can do that.”