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The next morning I called Ray as I was on my way down to Lagoon Drive with Dakota. “I’m taking Dakota past the warehouse for a look around,” I said.
“I’ll start checking the landowners who felt like they got ripped off,” Ray said. “See you when I see you.”
I pulled up in front of the warehouse where Dakota had been staying. “There’s a flashlight in the glove compartment,” I said to him.
“There’s pretty good light inside during the day,” Dakota said.
I opened the door. “If you say so.” The wind was blowing off the ocean, a fresh, salty smell that lay over the fading aroma of the burned building a block away.
“I can go in by myself,” he said, hopping out. “You can wait here.”
I shook my head. “You don’t know who’s in there. I’m not letting you go in alone.”
“Kimo. I lived there and I survived.”
“Yeah, but now you’re my responsibility.” I held up my hand. “No argument.”
I pulled the plank aside and Dakota slipped in the window, and I followed him. He was right; there was a lot of light inside. “It’s me,” he called into the big, echoing room. There was no answer.
I sniffed the air. The fried chicken smell was gone, and there was nothing fresh or new to replace it. Just a musty mildew smell. Dakota led me to the office where the fried chicken had been. It was gone, and so was the sleeping bag he’d been using. “Mother fuckers,” he said.
He collected the couple of pieces of clothing he had left there, along with a book with a couple of old pictures inside, of him and his mom. “That’s it,” he said. “Let’s roll.”
We went back out the window. “I want you to show me where you were when you saw the limousine pull up,” I said.
He shrugged. “Sure.” We walked around the corner of the warehouse and he stopped. “I was here when the limo turned the corner and the headlights swept around. I hung back until I was sure no one could see me.”
“Think back. Tell me again what you saw.”
“I already did.”
“People often remember things later,” I said.
He described again how the two bodybuilders had gotten out of the front of the limo. “I thought at first the one guy was helping the old man, but then I realized he was pushing the old man along.”
“How about the woman? Was she being pushed, too?”
He shook his head. “She was really short and she had these high heels, but she walked on her own. Didn’t even stumble once.”
“You remember anything about what they were wearing?” I asked. “The old lady with the high heels—was she dressed up, like she was going out?”
He closed his eyes and concentrated. “Kind of. Not in a ball gown or anything. But just, you know, fancy. This really colorful jacket and black pants. I think maybe she was Chinese or something—I can’t say exactly, but she had black hair piled up on her head and there was something about the way she walked.”
He opened his eyes and looked at me. “Sorry I can’t remember anything more.”
“No, you’ve been real helpful,” I said, and we walked back toward the Jeep.
“Do you think you could drop me at HCC?” Dakota asked. “I could study in the library there, maybe hook up with Frankie.”
“Sure. But you know, we need to get you a phone.” Back on Nimitz, I pulled into an office supply store and got him a prepaid cell. “For starters,” I said. “Once we have all the paperwork settled we’ll look into something more permanent.”
“This is so cool,” he said. “I really wanted a phone but there was no way I was getting one.”
I gave him Frankie’s number, and Pua’s, and Mike’s and mine, and wrote down his. Then I gave him a twenty-dollar bill. “So you can get some lunch,” I said. “I’ll call you when I’m leaving work and I’ll pick you up.”
I left him outside the HCC library and drove to headquarters.
“Find anything out at the site?” Ray asked, when I slid into my desk.
“Dakota remembered a few more details about the old woman who was with Fields and the two bodybuilders. He thinks maybe she was Chinese. But since he’s pretty much a malihini, I don’t know that he could tell Chinese from Korean from Filipina.” A malihini was a newcomer to the islands; it took a long time to become a kama’aina, a long-time resident. After nearly four years, I’d begun to think of Ray that way. “How are you coming?”
“Nothing good. Those land deals went down so long ago that nobody is around who knows anything about the people who got cheated.”
“I think that’s going to be the trouble the farther back we go.” We worked through the afternoon; one of the secretaries went out for lunch and brought us sandwiches on her way back.
We delved farther and farther back in Fields’ case histories, and came up blank every time. The farmer who had sued the factory owner had sold his property to a developer a few years later, and died a wealthy man. The recovering alcoholic woman who broke her hips at the hotel owned by Fields’ client died in the hospital and left no heirs behind to continue her suit or hold a grudge against Fields. The native Hawaiians who had sued Emile Gardiner over development rights in the Kalama Valley had all died out or moved away.
“Emile Gardiner,” I said. “Any relation to Shepard Fields’ friend Andy Gardiner?”
I heard his fingers on the keyboard. “Son,” he said a moment later. “Not surprising, though, if their fathers did business together.”
I tried Pika Campbell again, and got the same voice mail recording. I opened the department database, and found that Pika had a couple of misdemeanor arrests—drunk and disorderly, possession of a small amount of marijuana, and so on. He’d never gone to trial, and the address in the system was the same one he’d given the limo company, the Iolani Palace. There was no information about any known associates, and nothing that would help us find him.
I called my old friend Karen Gold at Social Security and asked her to run his report. “You have his number?” she asked.
“Just the name.”
“Hold on.” She put me on hold, but at least this time I got some jazzy background music instead of incessant advertising. When she returned she said, “You’re in luck. There’s only one Pika Campbell in the system. I saved his file as a PDF and emailed it to you.”
I thanked her and I switched over to email, drumming my fingertips on the desktop as I waited for the file to sail through cyberspace. When it did arrive, there wasn’t much in it. Campbell was twenty-four and had a spotty work record. His last known employment had been with Rascals Gym, a low-end spot favored by those who were serious about working out, not checking out the rest of the clientele. And once again, he’d put down the Iolani Palace as his address.
“How come nobody ever noticed that?” I grumbled. “I mean, if I put 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue down as my address on the mainland, someone would catch it.”
“This isn’t the mainland,” Ray said. “And I’ve never heard anybody here refer to the Palace by its street address, the way people do with the White House.”
We decided to check out the gym. It was a gorgeous, sunny day, with only a few scraps of cirrus clouds overhead, and hardly a whisper of a breeze. It was a day to be lounging at the beach, sun tanning or surfing, and there were thousands of tourists out there doing that. Ray drove, and we put the windows down and enjoyed the late afternoon.
Rascals Gym was at one end of a run-down shopping center, the kind my father could have bought in his heyday, spruced up, and made successful. But my father was retired by then, and whoever owned that center didn’t care much about it. The grass in the strip between parking lanes was dead, and crumpled coffee cups and empty power bar wrappers littered the lot.
There was no fancy reception desk, no inspirational posters on the walls or gleaming mirrors. Just a series of different machines in rows, and what looked like the door to a locker room along the far wall.
A muscular haole in an orange Y-back tank top let go of the lat-pull down machine he was working out with and stood up. “Help you?” he asked.
We showed our IDs. “You are?” Ray asked.
“Randall Buck. I own the gym.”
“We’re looking for Pika Campbell,” Ray said. “You know where we could find him?”
“What’s this about?”
“Police business,” I said.
Mr. Muscles looked from Ray to me. “Don’t know.”
“He used to work here?” Ray asked.
“Yeah. But he got fired about a year ago. He was juicing, and I don’t put up with that.”
“Just using steroids?” Ray asked. “Or selling them, too?”
“I run a clean gym. And unless you’ve got some grounds I think you should leave. Right now.” Buck squared his shoulders in a muscle-man pose, as if his tattooed deltoids and biceps were going to scare us away.
Instead of laughing I looked over his shoulder to a series of photos on the wall, from a celebration of the gym’s tenth anniversary. I saw Gunter’s smiling face, and beside him a guy with a Mohawk who looked familiar as well. Why waste time with Buck, when we could talk to the most gossipy queen on the island?
“Let’s go,” I said to Ray. “We’re done here.”
“I’m not.” He turned back to Buck. “You have an address for Campbell?”
“Had one. Tried to send him his tax forms at the end of the year and they came back. Turns out he gave me the address of the Iolani Palace.”
I could smell the testosterone rising between Ray and the bodybuilder. “We’ve got an appointment,” I said. “Come on, we’ll be late.”
Ray and Buck glared at each other, but Ray turned and walked out. I followed him.
“What was that all about?” I asked when we got outside.
“What?”
“You nearly bit that guy’s head off.”
Ray’s shoulders eased, and he beeped the Highlander open. “I hate that kind of guy. Those muscle-bound jerks were the kind who picked on Joey.”
Joey was Ray’s cousin, and his childhood best friend. He was gay, and got himself killed doing something stupid.
“Well, we got something from our visit,” I said. “Gunter’s picture is up on that wall. It’s almost three, and he’ll be starting his shift in a couple of minutes. Let’s go over to Waikiki and talk to him, see if he knew Pika Campbell.”
Ray lucked into a metered spot a block away from the Kuhio Regent and we walked over there, climbing up the curving driveway to the two-story marble and glass lobby.
Gunter was behind the concierge desk talking on the phone. He wore his standard pseudo-military uniform, a white shirt with epaulets and button-flap pockets, a puka shell necklace and dark slacks.
“Don’t tell me I missed some bail appointment,” he said, when he got off the phone.
“Nope. Something different. You know anything about Rascals Gym?”
He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “What about it?”
“We’re looking for a guy named Pika Campbell, who used to work there.”
Gunter relaxed. “Oh, him. I don’t know him that well, just met him a couple of times.”
“You know where he lives?” I asked.
“Nope. Cinco might, but...” He stopped.
“Cinco?” I asked.
“A guy I know. He works out there. That’s how I met Pika.”
“You know Cinco’s last name? Or he just a random visitor?”
“Fuck you, Kimo.”
“I thought you already had,” Ray said.
Gunter swiveled his head toward Ray, but my partner appeared immune to the death-ray queen stare. I laughed. “My bad. I shouldn’t have said that,” Ray said.
“For your information, I know a lot more about him than just his last name,” Gunter said, regally. “His real name is Eddie DiMaio, but everybody calls him Cinco, after the holiday. He and I have been dating since New Year’s. Monogamously.”
I didn’t think Gunter knew the meaning of that word, but I wasn’t going to antagonize him any further. “You want to give him a call, then?” I asked. “Make an introduction, see when we could talk to him?”
“He’s working now,” Gunter said. “But I can try.”
He picked up his cell phone and turned away from us. While he spoke I looked at Ray. “We’re both on edge today. I’m stressing over the baby thing with Mike. You?”
“Lack of sleep. Vinnie’s got a pair of lungs on him like some operatic soprano. I swear he could break glass. It hurts my ears to hear him.”
Gunter turned back to us. “He can meet you at the Hawksbill Bar near the Aloha Bowl at four.”
“How will we recognize him?” I asked.
“He’s got a Mohawk,” Gunter said.
The penny dropped. “He was in the convertible with you, water gunning those Boy Scouts.”
Ray looked at me, and I realized I hadn’t told him about Gunter’s escapade. “That was you?” he said, turning to Gunter. “Somebody sent me the YouTube video. You’re a bad boy.” He wagged his index finger at Gunter.
“Ray was a Boy Scout,” I said to Gunter.
Ray laughed. “Even so, I got a hoot out of seeing that. Those kids were falling over like dominoes.”
Gunter laughed with him. “Don’t encourage him,” I said. “I had to bail him out.” I turned to Gunter. “Which reminds me. You owe me two hundred fifty bucks.”
“Won’t you get it back when I show up for my hearing?”
“I’m not waiting that long.”
“Fine.” Gunter dug in his pocket. “I’ve had it for you. I was just waiting to see you.”
As Gunter handed me the cash, I said to Ray, “Get a picture of this, will you? If Cinco won’t talk to us we can make it sound like Gunter’s paying me for sex.”
“As if,” Gunter said, but his desk phone rang and he answered with his other hand. “Kuhio Regent Concierge desk, this is Gunter. How may I help you?” The message he was sending with his eyes was much less welcoming, though. I took the money and gave him a shaka, extending my thumb and pinkie while keeping my other fingers curled down, a traditional island greeting.
He replied with another kind of greeting, the one with only one finger extended, as Ray and I laughed again and walked out the door.