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Wednesday morning I called Terri and she agreed to make arrangements to meet Wilma Chow at the end of the day. After a flurry of text messages back and forth everything was set. I’d drop Dakota at the offices of the Sandwich Islands Trust, the family non-profit that Terri ran, on my way to work. He’d spend the day with her, and then they would join Levi, Mike and me at Wilma’s office at four.
“You’re okay with this?” I asked him, as we walked out to my Jeep.
He shrugged. “I don’t have much choice, do I?”
“Sure you do. I can drop you at Wilma’s office right now and she’ll place you in a foster home. Easier for me, Mike, Terri and Levi.”
Dakota turned to look at me. “You wouldn’t do that, would you?”
“Only if that’s what you wanted.”
“I want to stay with you and Mike.”
“We’re going to do our best to make that happen. But one of the things you learn as a grownup is that sometimes you have to play by the rules.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah, sometimes it does.”
Ironic, I thought, as I drove us toward downtown. Me lecturing Dakota about being a grown-up when it seemed like everybody around me thought I needed to hear the same words.
I couldn’t find a place to park near the high-rise where Terri’s office was, so I pulled up in front of the building and put my flashers on. “This is a two-way deal, Dakota,” I said, before he got out. “I’m trusting you to go up to Terri’s office and be cooperative. In return you trust all of us to look after you.”
“I used to trust my mom for that.”
I nodded. “And I’m sure that down somewhere, under the addiction, she loves you and wants the best for you. But just because one person lets you down doesn’t mean you stop trusting.”
“I know.” He opened the car door and slid out. “See you later.”
By the time I got to headquarters, Ray was already at his desk. “New homicide just came in,” he said. “I looked it over and said that we’d take it.”
“Why?” I asked, sliding into my desk.
“Because a witness saw two body-builder types leaving the scene in a black limousine,” Ray said. “And the victim’s an elderly woman.”
I swiveled over to his desk to look at the report, which had been called in a few minutes before. The victim’s name was Bernice Fong, with an address in the Kalihi Valley, in the hills above the Bishop Museum. Something about the name struck me as familiar, but I couldn’t place it. That is, until I ran a quick background check on Bernice Fong, and discovered she was the widow of Judge Howard Fong—my father’s mentor.
She was ninety years old, which struck me as pretty old to be out orchestrating murder. But you never know; I believe that as you get older you become a more and more concentrated version of yourself. If you’re a jerk, you get meaner and nastier; if you’re a nice person, you end up even sweeter. What would I be? Still acting on impulse when I reached that four score years Mike had mentioned the night before?
“She’s got to be connected to Fields,” Ray said. “Same two guys, same limo. But how?”
I thought back to my conversation with my father. “I know back in the fifties, Fields went to the Fongs’ house, because my father remembers that.”
It was my turn to drive, so we got in the Jeep and climbed up the Likelike Highway to Bernice Fong’s house in Kalihi. It was a low ranch, backing up against a wooded slope of the Ko’olaus. A cruiser was parked in front of the house, its blue lights flashing, Lidia Portuondo, the uniformed cop the medical examiner was dating, stood next to it, talking to a woman in a bright blue muumuu.
The Fong house was halfway down the street, and I drove past, made U turn, and parked behind Lidia’s cruiser. It was a cool, breezy morning, the sun playing hide and seek with a bunch of fluffy clouds. The Ko’olaus loomed behind us in verdant green.
Lidia introduced us to the woman with her. “Mrs. Isabelle Gray lives across the street,” she said. The woman was in her late sixties, a haole with pale skin and flyaway brown hair. She was slim and tall for a woman of her age, nearly six feet.
“It’s just awful,” Mrs. Gray said. “I’ve known Bernice for years. I’d never expect such a thing.”
The Medical Examiner’s van turned the corner up ahead, and Lidia walked over to direct it into place. I assumed Doc Takayama himself would be inside, because of his connection to Lidia.
“Can you tell us what happened?” Ray asked Mrs. Gray.
“I don’t sleep well,” Mrs. Gray said. “I have this pain in my left hip and it wakes me up every time I turn on it.”
We smiled politely.
“I got up around two, and I was sitting in my front window in the dark, waiting for the ibuprofen to kick in. I saw lights on at Bernice’s and I thought that was strange; she usually goes to sleep so early.”
She fiddled with the large diamond engagement ring on her right hand. “There was a big black limousine parked in her driveway and I assumed she had been at some charity event and come home late. Bernice and the Judge were always very social people, and even at her age the poor thing used to get herself made up like a little China doll and go out.”
“But you didn’t see her?” Ray asked.
Mrs. Gray shook her head. “I saw two men leave her house, get in the limousine, and drive away. At the time I didn’t think anything of it. I assumed they were her drivers. I’ve seen her take that kind of limousine before.”
“Can you describe the men you saw?” Ray asked.
“It was dark and I wasn’t paying much attention. They looked young, and very muscular.”
“Haole?” It was a mark of how long Ray had been in Hawai’i that he’d started talking like a real native.
“I couldn’t tell.” She looked from Ray to me. “Should I have called the police then?”
“You had no reason to think anything was wrong, ma’am,” I said. “But you did call this morning?”
She nodded. “Bernice is always an early riser. She gets up and brings in her paper and feeds her birds. When I saw she hadn’t gotten the paper this morning I got nervous. So I took my key and went over there to check on her.”
She began to cry. “The poor thing.”
“Thank you for your time,” Ray said. “If we have any more questions, will you be around today?”
“Yes. I don’t think I can go out. I’d be too nervous.”
She went back to her house and Ray and I walked up the driveway to Bernice Fong’s open front door. We were greeted by the frantic chirping of a pair of small lovebirds in an elaborate bamboo cage near the entrance to the kitchen. The interior was done in the Chinese style, with black lacquer furniture, Oriental rugs, and pen and ink watercolors on the walls. It reminded me of the house where my father’s best friend, Uncle Chin, had lived.
A diminutive woman in a black silk dressing gown sat on the carved wooden sofa, leaning back against the black cushions, her sightless eyes staring up. A single gunshot wound scarred her forehead. Bernice Fong looked enough like my petite, dark-haired mother that I felt a momentary shock.
Doc was standing to one side of the body, talking with one of his techs. “Single gunshot wound to the frontal bone. Most likely a hollow point.”
“How come there’s no blood?” Ray asked. “I thought head wounds were big bleeders.”
“Position of the head meant the blood drained inside,” Doc said.
“This look like the same kind of wound you found on Alexander Fields?” I asked.
“You think the cases are connected?”
I nodded. “Fields was seen getting out of a black limousine with an elderly woman and two bodybuilders outside the warehouse where he died. The woman across the street saw two bodybuilders leave this house last night around two, driving a black limousine.”
“I’d say the chances are very good,” Doc said. “I’ll see what kind of fragments I can dig out—if I can get enough for a ballistics comparison.”
While Doc and his techs prepared the body for transport, Ray and I prowled around the house. There was no sign of forced entry. It appeared that Bernice Fong had already been in bed when her guests arrived; the sheets were tousled. There was little evidence that her guests had stayed long—no indentations in the sofa cushions, no empty beverage glasses.
The crime scene techs arrived and began their work. We looked through the papers in Bernice Fong’s study, but couldn’t find anything that looked relevant to the case.
It was after eleven by the time the body was gone and the techs had finished. Mrs. Fong had no immediate survivors and hadn’t left instructions for her birds, so we had to call Animal Control to take them.
We took a quick walk around the outside of the house before we left. The back yard was immaculately manicured, the trees carefully trimmed, and I remembered that my father had worked in this very yard when he was a young man. It was good to see that his work was still maintained after all these years.
“We should find Pika Campbell,” Ray said. “See if he has an alibi for last night.”
“And last Tuesday night,” I said.
We’d first run across Pika’s stoner cousins, Leroy and Larry Campbell, when we were investigating a case two years before. I looked up their address on my netbook and we took the Likelike Highway downhill, past towering trees with vistas of the surrounding mountains. As we got closer to the H1 houses sprouted up around us under the lowering skies. “Going to rain,” Ray said.
“We’ll be long gone before it starts.” I took the exit for the highway and headed Diamond Head, and as I predicted the skies cleared and the sun came out as we climbed back up into the hills on Puowaina Drive. The road was narrow and full of switchbacks, lined at first with expensive homes with valley and ocean views and a profusion of hibiscus and plumeria.
As we zigzagged into the Hawaiian homelands on the sides of Mount Tantalus though, the poverty in which many native Hawaiians lived became evident. Barefoot kids played in weedy yards and decrepit cars littered driveways. Most of the houses could use a good coat of paint; some showed damage from long-gone tropical storms or hurricanes.
The Campbell brothers, two-bit dope dealers, lived in a beat-up shack with weeds growing around its foundation. The walls had once been white, but the tropical sun had faded them to the color of dried spit. One of the windows was broken and covered over with cardboard.
Ray rapped on the door and called out, “Mr. Campbell. Police. Open up.”
We waited, and Ray was about to knock again when the door opened. Larry, a fat Hawaiian guy with dark dreadlocks, stuck his head out. “Hey, Leroy, it’s da kine police,” he said. “Long time no see, bruddas.”
Larry yawned and stepped outside, and big, bald Leroy followed him. “How about your cousin Pika?” Ray asked. “He in there, too?”
“Nah, he wen bag two days ago.”
“But he was living with you before he left?” I asked.
“Sometimes he moi moi wid us, sometimes wid his buddy,” Leroy said.
To Ray’s credit, he seemed to be following the conversation, which meant he was learning our island pidgin. Pika slept at their place sometimes, but had left two days before.
“Tacky?” I asked.
Larry nodded. “Yeah. Bodybuilder dude. Dumb as two rocks in a box.”
That could describe the Campbell brothers, too. “You know where we can find him?” I asked.
“Try gym,” Leroy said. “Ho brah, he alla time workin out.”
“Which gym?” I asked. “Rascals?”
Larry shook his head, his dreadlocks, which were entwined with cowry shells, swinging like he was Stevie Wonder. “No, brah, he got fired from there.” He turned to his bald brother. “You know what gym he go?”
Larry mimed thought, tilting his head to the side and putting a finger up to his chin. “No,” he said, laughing.
“You know Tacky’s last name?” Ray asked.
“Maybe Tiki,” Larry said, his dreadlocks shaking. “Ha! Tacky Tiki!”
The brothers dissolved in pakalolo-induced laughter, grabbing their big bellies and throwing their heads back. I pulled out a card, though I knew it was probably useless. “You see Paki, you give us a call, all right?” I said, handing it to Larry.
“Yeah, brah, I make fo’ call you,” he said, making a shaka and holding it up to his head, so his thumb was at his ear and his pinky at his mouth.
He and his brother started giggling again, and we walked back to my Jeep. As we drove away, I said, “I need to talk to my father.”
“And those guys need a couple of slaps upside the head,” Ray said.
I called the house, and I’d almost given up when my father finally answered. “Howzit, Dad,” I said. “You on your own today?”
“I told your mother to leave me the phone before she left but she never listens.”
“Uh-huh. How about I pick you up and buy you a plate lunch?”
“What’s up?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you. Ray and I are in Papakolea, so it’ll take us a few minutes.”
I could have made my way through the hills and narrow streets to St. Louis Heights; I had learned to drive in those mountains and knew the dead ends to avoid and the shortcuts to take. But it was easier to go back down to the highway, passing those glimpsed vistas of the Ko’olaus and a rainbow rising over Kalihi, where Bernice Fong’s house had become a crime scene.
I got off at University Avenue, which led up to the UH campus, and took Dole Street past block after block of student housing in the shelter of the mountains. “How’s Julie’s dissertation coming?” I asked Ray.
“She’d get more done if Vinnie let us sleep through the night,” he grumbled. “But there’s this mama-san down the hall, sweet little old Japanese lady, and Julie takes Vinnie down there for a couple of hours a day so she can concentrate. She’s got the revisions back from her advisor and she’s hoping the next run will be the last one and she can schedule her defense.”
“So she might be graduating this May?”
He shrugged. “Probably not, because her committee will undoubtedly want some changes, and then it’s a bear to put the final manuscript together. So maybe she’ll finish in August, maybe December.”
I turned onto St. Louis Drive and began the climb up to my parents’ house. “We’ve been up and down more mountains today than the last month,” Ray said.
“You want flat, you go to Iowa,” I said.
“Hey, Iowa’s not flat, it’s rolling,” Ray said. “Or so I’ve been told.”
“Never been,” I said as I pulled up in my parents’ driveway. My father appeared in the doorway, with a cane in his right hand. I jumped out of the Jeep and hurried over to him as he fumbled to lock the front door.
“What’s with the cane, Dad?”
“Your mother insists. She says I’m having trouble with my balance.”
Ray got out of the front seat and held the door open for my father. “Hey, Mr. K,” he said. “Howzit?”
“This one gets more Hawaiian every time I see him,” my father said. “You have a little keiki now, huh? A Hawaiian baby.”
“Yup. He’s gonna grow up speaking pidgin like a native.”
That is, I thought, if Ray and Julie stayed in the islands.
I helped my father into the front seat, all the time worrying about how much older and more fragile he got every time I saw him. Ray climbed in the back, and we drove down the hill to one of my father’s favorite lunch spots.
“So why does my son call me for lunch?” he asked, as we pulled into the parking lot. “You must need something.”
“Dad, I’m offended,” I said, smiling. “I can’t take my old man out for lunch sometime?”
“Give it up, Kimo,” Ray said, hopping out of the back and extending an arm to my father. “He’s your dad. He knows you.”
We walked into the restaurant, my father moving slower than I’d seen before, and sat at a table by the window. We all ordered the plate lunch, an island tradition, developed to serve to plantation workers who needed to keep up their strength through long days. A main course, usually fish or chicken, two scoops of rice, a scoop of macaroni salad, and some shredded lettuce. My dad went for the fish; just to be contrary I got the chicken. Ray took chicken, too, but I don’t know his motivation.
“I have some bad news, Dad,” I said, after the elderly Chinese waitress had taken our order. I was pretty sure she’d been working there my whole life. Or else there was an interchangeable supply of old women with the same apron and the same faded lace handkerchief in her breast pocket. “We got called to a homicide this morning, and it’s someone you knew. Bernice Fong.”
“Homicide? You’re sure she didn’t just die? She was very old. Even older than me.”
I was about to mouth off to him, mentioning the bullet hole in her forehead, but I controlled my tongue. “We’re sure, Dad. And we’re thinking it’s connected to Alexander Fields’ murder.”
“I told you I knew him, didn’t I?” he asked. “I used to see him around Judge Fong’s when I was working on the landscaping. I always went by Al, you know, ever since I was a little kid. But one day Mr. Fields asked me what my full name was. I told him Alexander, and he said that was his name, too, and it was one I should be proud of. Remember Alexander the Great,” he said.
He picked up a puffy roll and then tried to unwrap a pat of butter. I couldn’t stand to watch him fumble with it so I opened one and handed it to him.
“Who killed Mrs. Fong?” he asked.
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” I said. The waitress brought our platters and set them in front of us. “You know what might have connected her to Fields?”
“Wouldn’t have been her,” my father said. “Just him, old Judge Fong. They were very traditional people. The men used to meet in the Judge’s living room, and Mrs. Fong would bring them coffee and tea and fried dumplings she made herself.” He smiled. “They were so ono, those dumplings. Best I ever had.”
Well, someone didn’t kill Bernice Fong because of good dumplings, I thought. “When you say ‘the men,’ who do you mean?”
“Group of them,” my father said, between bites of fish. “The Judge. Fields. Bennie Gomez, who owned a marina and a boat repair business. Matthew Clark, your friend Terri’s grandfather. And Emile Gardiner, the real estate developer.”
“That must be the same Gardiner Fields defended in that land-grab lawsuit,” Ray said. “I remember that name Emile.”
“His father was British and his mother was French,” my father said. “Born in Tahiti, came to Hawai’i when he was a young man.” As I ate, I couldn’t help noticing how his hand shook as he tried to scoop some rice. Crap. My dad was a proud man, and I couldn’t see him consenting to be spoon-fed.
While I was worrying about my dad’s health, Ray was focused on the case. “You ever listen in to what they talked about, Mr. K?”
“They used to argue about statehood, back then. But a lot of people did.”
“They were all in favor of it?” Ray asked.
“All but Matthew Clark. Eventually he stopped going to the meetings. And then Mr. Gardiner offered me a job and I stopped working for the Judge.”
“Gardiner?” I asked. “I thought you worked for Amfac?” Amfac was one of the “big five,” the Hawaiian companies that had started out in sugarcane processing and came to control a lot of the territory before statehood.
“That was later. Mr. Gardiner bought a piece of land, and he was going to build houses for ordinary people. I was almost finished my degree in business at UH and he said I could work for him full-time and still go to school. When I graduated he gave me my first superintendent’s job. Gardiner Properties went on to develop Aiea. Maybe even built that house where you and Mike live.”
“Can you think of any reason why someone would want to kill Bernice Fong and Alexander Fields?” I asked, pushing my empty plate away from me.
My father shook his head. “Maybe something in the Judge’s safe would tell you.”
“He had a safe?” I looked at Ray. “Did we find that?”
He shook his head.
“Behind the picture of Chinatown on his office wall,” my father said. “What kind of maka’i are you?”
Maka’i is the Hawaiian word for police. “Not the thorough kind, I guess,” I said.