CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The taxi dropped me at the corner of Merchant and Bethel Streets.

The sun shone brightly in the noonday sky as I walked, but I felt only a trace of humidity emanating from the rain clouds that had wrapped themselves around the shoulders of the pali. I took my time making my way into the heart of Chinatown.

The buildings dated back to the mid-1800s, constructed mainly of wood or brick, with facades ornamented with the faint remnants of hand lettering that had existed when some of the first Chinese immigrants had worked off their five-year labor contracts and had elected to stay in Hawaii rather than to return home. The place had been known to them as Tan Heung Shan, the Country of the Fragrant Tree.

I looked into the faces of their descendents now, still laboring inside the shops I passed, generations that stretched all the way back to the earliest survivors of the punishing fifty-five-day sailing passage they endured for the promise of food, clothing and thirty-six dollars a year. Many of them returned to China with whatever little money they’d managed to save, but those who remained in the islands quietly and efficiently set up shops, married local women, and indelibly placed their chop on Hawaii’s consciousness.

Drifts of sandalwood incense, fresh flowers, and cigarette smoke floated across the busy sidewalk as I made my way up to Smith Street, where the racket from the mah-jongg parlors tumbled down from second-story windows. A half block later, I found what I was looking for.

I ducked into a crowded restaurant that specialized in dim sum, ordered a Tsingtao beer and waited for the food carts to make their rounds. I was the only round-eye in the place, which I considered to be a good sign. I sipped at my cold beer and sampled a selection of manapua, boiled shrimp, steamed rice and bok choy, while I looked out the window and watched the passersby. Except for the automobile traffic, there was an almost timeless quality that made it easy for me to imagine a young Sun Yat-sen and his schoolmate Ho Fon meeting together on these very streets, plotting the formation of the secret Kuomintang society that would set the foundation for China’s revolution.

When I finally finished lunch, I paid the tab, left a few bills on the table, and wandered down King, past the sidewalk vendors, fruit stands and lei shops, all the way to River Street, where I turned and headed mauka, up toward Vineyard and the shrine that occupied a quiet, tree-shaded corner of the square. I purchased a handful of joss sticks from a peddler at a stall outside the gates and worked my way to the foot of the stone statue of Kwan Yin, the goddess of mercy. One by one, I lit the sticks of incense and placed them on the altar to take their places among the hundreds of others that had come before. One for safe passage; one for Lani; another for my lost partner, Reginald Carter. I lit one for Hans, and one for Mie, and so on until, finally, my bundle was gone.

I stood in silence for what seemed a long time, in the shade cast by the image of Kwan Yin, and I watched the strands of thin gray smoke, together with my prayers, tangle skyward and disappear into the wind.

It was quarter after two when I stepped back into the conference room at Dunross, Frankel & Wood. I figured I had time enough to speak with Valden before Hans was due to call. This time, I got right through.

“I’ve been checking into the ownership structure of the Mandalay Plaza,” I told him.

“Okay.” His voice sounded tentative, wary.

“But I’m running into walls.”

“Such as?”

“The whole thing is a series of corporate shells, many of which are registered offshore.”

My brother cleared his throat, and I could almost see him sitting straighter behind his custom desk. “Can’t help you.”

“You haven’t heard my question yet.”

“Don’t need to.”

“I want to know if VGC had any part in the financing or construction of that hotel.”

He gave me a dry chuckle, like if I’d been there in person he’d be ruffling my hair like a kid who’d asked where babies came from. “I didn’t need to hear the question. I don’t do business with offshore corporations. No ifs, ands, or buts.”

“Why not?”

“Because they stink to high heaven, that’s why not.”

It looked like my first instincts had been correct.

“Money laundering, tax evasion?” I asked.

“You name it, they’re a potential shield for it. I’m not saying they’re all being used for those purposes, mind you. It’s just that VGC doesn’t need the business badly enough to risk it.”

But you’ll risk it all to dip your quill into the company inkwell on a fairly regular basis. I thought it, but I didn’t say it.

“Phillip Lennox is one of the partners,” I said.

“He is?”

“Yes.”

“Funny.”

“Funny in what way?”

“It doesn’t sound like something Phil Lennox would be involved in.”

“He seemed pretty slick to me.”

“Maybe so,” he said. “But getting into an arrangement involving offshore entities can get sticky, Mike. Just doesn’t sound like him, that’s all. But I suppose you never know.”

No, you don’t ever know. That’s for goddamned sure.

“Thanks, Valden,” I said, and killed the line.

I paced the room some more and considered what I knew about Phillip Lennox. In a sense, Valden was right: Lennox had a reputation as a hard-nosed businessman, with a political agenda that backed it up. Lennox Biomedical was an enormous company in its own right, not to mention the holdings that Lennox Senior owned personally, outside of the parent corporation. Nevertheless, it appeared that, at least on the Mandalay Plaza deal, Lennox had become involved with something that could have a taint on it. I wondered why.

I walked down the hall to Patricia Dunross’s office, found her door was open, but knocked anyway.

She looked up from what she’d been reading and smiled. “Come in.”

“I’ve got another question,” I said. “I’m having a hard time digesting this offshore corporation thing.”

“How so?”

“I just got off the phone with Valden and he pretty much echoed your sentiments.”

Patricia Dunross placed a bound document on her desk, rested her chin on steepled fingers as she studied my face. “And you’re wondering why anyone bothers with them at all.”

“Yes.”

“First off, they’re not illegal,” she said. “Quite the contrary, there are perfectly justifiable reasons for doing business in an offshore shell. Plenty of legitimate businesses do.”

“But?”

“But, historically, they’ve been used to shield one’s assets from seizure.”

“Seizure by whom?”

“By lawful governmental agencies: the DEA, IRS, the FBI, Homeland Security. You see, Mike, when we’re talking ‘offshore corporations,’ we’re not talking about places like Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Japan . . . places with first-world economies, industrialized countries.

“What we are talking about are places like the Cayman Islands, the Turks and Caicos, the Cook Islands, Mauritius. You get the idea. These are tiny little dots on the map, little third-world havens that base an enormous portion of their economies on the registration of ‘dummy’ corporations—corporations that have no real assets, don’t own anything tangible, yet move millions of dollars through their accounts. The banking and disclosure laws that exist in places like those make it almost impossible to track the identities of the people behind the dummy corps, nor where the money comes from—whether it’s drug money, arms dealing, or genuine business income.”

“And in a post-September 11 world . . .”

She nodded. “And a post-Enron world, yes, doing business with companies registered in places where bad people can easily move millions of dollars in secret smacks of having something to hide.”

“But it’s not illegal,” I repeated. “And what if such a business predated terrorist or Enron concerns?”

“There’s very little to prevent a legitimate business from insisting on a restructure,” she said, though her voice was laced with skepticism. “However, if I were an investor in that hotel deal you showed me, I’d insist they collapse the whole structure and transfer it into something else. A structure that eradicated the offshore corporations, for instance. It’s certainly not all that difficult, and not that expensive.”

“Unless you couldn’t,” I said.

She leaned into her chair again, crossed her arms and nodded. “Correct. Unless, for some reason, you simply could not.”

“Like what?”

“Like the real owner of that offshore corporation is flatly unwilling to do so.”

“Because they actually are hiding something,” I said.

“I believe you may have cracked the code, Mike.”

When I returned to the conference room, the phone was ringing. I glanced at my watch and saw I was ten minutes late for Hans’s call.

“Where the hell have you been?” Hans said once I picked up. “This is the third time I’ve tried this number.”

There was traffic in the background that told me Hans was at another pay phone. “What do you need?”

“Two things,” I said. “First, I haven’t heard from you in a few days. I want to know what’s happening on your end. I’m not going to keep sailing forever and leave you hanging out in the breeze.”

“My IAD hearing’s tomorrow,” he said. “You need to stay off the screen until it’s over.”

“What do they have?”

Hans’s laugh was empty. “Kemp’s been on me like stink on shit. Gaines and Johnston can’t be seen anywhere near me.”

“So you don’t know what they’ve come up with on the murders?”

“I’ll know tomorrow, sure as hell. One way or the other.”

I thought about the joss sticks at Kwan Yin’s feet, silver smoke twisting like rope, disappearing into nothing.

“What’s the second thing?” Hans asked.

“I’m working on a lead,” I said. “I might need somebody to look into some white-collar stuff.”

There was a moment’s hesitation. “I don’t think I know anybody over there anymore,” he said. “Besides; I got a cloud around me like that kid from the Peanuts cartoons. My hearing’s tomorrow. I’ll know where we’re at by the end of the day. At least, I’ll have an idea of what they’re going for. In the meantime, keep a low profile.”

“Listen, Hans, I’m—”

“Forget it, pard,” Hans said. “I already told you. I knew I’d hit the wall the minute Kemp put that Texas rip on me. I’ll call you tomorrow. Same number. I don’t know what time.”

And he was gone.

It was late afternoon when I decided to call it a day. Thel’s paralegals were digging further into the ownership of the Mandalay Plaza, Hans was preparing for his hearing, and I was outside the investigative loop until it was over. In short, I was left in that place I hate the most: the one where there’s nothing left to do but wait. I left a message with Patricia Dun ross’s secretary thanking her for the use of the conference room, and told her I’d need it again tomorrow.

Outside, I looked across the boulevard past the wide greenbelt, and off toward the beach. People walked aimlessly through the park, dozed beneath the shady spread of palm fronds and poinciana, or read dog-eared paperbacks while they reclined in beach chairs on the white sand. The sun cast a muted rainbow beneath the clouds that had finally delivered on their promise of rain, the air still sweet and heavy with moisture.

I turned back toward downtown, toward the high-rises of Waikiki, feeling coiled and tight from a day spent indoors. As I walked back in the direction of the boat harbor and Kehau, I figured I had two options for relieving the tension that was gnawing my insides: either take a long jog through Ala Moana Beach Park, or settle in for happy hour at the first bar I encountered that possessed a working television set and space for my ass on a stool.