in attendance.
They located George Oniiwah, pudgy and smug, squatting in a rat's nest called Paniolo's, a cave into which the patron had to climb down and in, sheltered from any street light or noise. From the sign outside it was ostensibly a bar and grill that existed just off campus as a place for students to get a pizza and a beer, to shoot some pool and hang out. To Parry's trained eye it was much more than this.
Oniiwah sat in the gloom far to the rear and close to the pounding jukebox, which was blaring out the most recent death- metal tune, an ear-shattering mix of high-tech guitar, screams about sex with corpses and a pretty fair drum section. The lyrics would make any maniac proud.
Everyone in the place had marked the FBI men as exactly what they were the moment they'd entered the dark entrance to this lair: cops. Still, George feigned indifference and simply continued to sip his Hawaiian homeboy brew, a beer called Kona, with a girl at his side and another couple across from him.
An amorphous spirit floated about the place, going in and out of what little light was afforded by a Schlitz beer sign, cigarette smoke that'd been trapped there forever. Paniolo's, or Cowboy's, was outwardly a typical Hawaiian watering hole, its patrons' faces all dark-skinned and leathery. Tony knew a little bit about the owner, who had been a Hawaiian cowboy for years over on the island of Maui, working with free-range-fed cattle and horses there until he got tired of eating dirt. Before establishing himself here, he had been arrested on drug- trafficking, but he'd not served time due to technicalities brought about by an improperly obtained search-and- seizure warrant with probable-cause violations and violations against his civil rights. Since then, his lawyer, a man looking for places to invest, had set him up with the tavern.
The disreputable owner, a full-blood Hawaiian, went by the name of Halole, Hal to his friends, better known to police as Harold Ewelo. It looked to Parry that the “Cowboy” was still eating dirt, only of another kind, as the place was an obvious front for drug-dealing, with Hal set up to run the operation from both the front and the back door. Somewhere in the bowels of this underground labyrinth where not even the trade winds could penetrate, Parry had no doubt you could get just about anything on your mind.
Tony needn't have pointed out George Oniiwah. Something about the kid called out to Parry. He looked out of place, a child among thieves. “Thought you said he was squeaky clean,” Parry shouted, having no need to whisper over the roar of the music.
“ I'm tellin' you he is.”
“ Then what's he doing here?”
“ His crowd comes for pizza, the jukebox, the beer, I tell ya. They're not what you'd call heavily into drugs.”
What about prostitution? Is Georgie above that? Parry wondered. And what possible reason was there to attract Linda Kahala to this turkey? As Parry approached the young people at the table, he could believe Tony's assessment. They were all clear-eyed and intelligent and quite aware of the two cops bearing down on them, their nervous necks twitching, eyes casting about at one another like ping-pong balls, hands alternately opening and closing, stock defensive gestures. In fact, Oniiwah's thumbs were closed over by his clenched fists, a sure sign of more than just nerves. Even the girls gave off body language that told the cops they were guilty of something. So did the man behind the bar, and another at the grill, each eyeing the other until the first one disappeared into a back room.
“ Hello, young people,” said Gagliano to the group in a mock show of grandfatherly concern.
At the back door Parry caught a glimpse of a pair of onyx eyes that had followed the bartender back in; the eyes now stared out at the FBI men. The owner whom Tony had described to him? Jim wondered.
Parry let the jet black eyes know, with his own gaze, that he knew that they knew. As soon as the onyx eyes disappeared, a commotion could be heard in the rear, the music having died.
George Oniiwah recognized Tony Gagliano from their earlier talk. Now George stood, making a show of it, saying, “Awww, man, haven't you pigs got anything better to do? Damnit, I'm sorry 'bout wha' happen' to Lina, sorry as all hell, but I didn't do it, and I don't fuck-king know who did! You cops're like maggots. I've got you crawling all over my ass. First you, den the Honolulu cops, now you again? Shit, man!”
“ Beat it,” Parry told the other young people.
“ Hey, man, you don't tell my friends what to do.”
“ Get out,” Parry shouted, and the three others vacated without a word.
“ Now, Georgie boy, we're going to talk.”
From one corner of his eye, Parry saw the bartender return with a heavy carton and begin to refill shelves already stocked to overflowing. He heard Tony belatedly introducing him to Oniiwah. “This here is Chief Parry, George.”
“ I already told this FBI mother-”
“ Watch your mouth!” ordered Parry, his eyes burning into the kid.
“ I… ah, already tol' Agent Gagliano all I know.”
Parry instinctively disliked Oniiwah, knowing him for a selfish, priggish type of islander who had spent his entire life trying to be cool and to put on a good show, to look, speak and act Western in the MTV sense, and to pretend he had some political leanings that didn't show him for the sapling-blowing-in-the-wind that he was.
“ Search your soul, Georgie,” Parry said, realizing this kid didn't have much of a search ahead of him. “Search it and tell me about this.” Parry handed the book of sonnets across a blackened wood table that'd been carved with the names of hundreds of students who'd sat here before George Oniiwah. “Check out the marked pages,” continued Parry. “I think- no-I know that Linda was trading poetry with someone. She mailed letters almost every day. Was she sending these to you?”
George Oniiwah was a thickly built young man with a handsome face; he wore the most expensive designer clothing. His father was a merchant, doing extremely well on the strip. “No, she never sent nothing like this to me, man. She never talked like this, ever. She… this isn't the Lina I knew, man, no way.”
“ She had her dark side,” Parry began. “Least she was interested in the darkness, death maybe, maybe had suicidal tendencies, maybe?”
Oniiwah sat before him like a stone, expressionless.
“ Well, damnit, did she?”
“ No, she didn't ever talk that way round me, man, never.”
“ All right then, who do you know that might've encouraged her in this?”
He set his teeth, understanding where Parry was going, grateful that Parry's questions didn't center on him self. “I don't know. Kia was like that sometimes, depressed, you know. Maybe it was her.”
“ But she disappeared, too.”
Kia Wailea, the other university student who'd disappeared and who was the subject of another of Parry's case files, continued to be listed as a missing person.
“ George, you've got to see why we are suspicious of you; the fact you knew two of the victims? That kind of news gets around.”
“ Hey, man! If people think I killed those girls… Geez, I could find myself in a body bag. Why don't you guys leave me alone?”
“ Killed? Who used the word killed? Did you say anything about these girls having been killed. Agent Gagliano?”
“ No, not once,” replied Gagliano.
“ That's bullshit,” cried Oniiwah over the sound of the heavy metal of Poison coming out of the box now. The guy at the bar, trying to appear busy by wiping it down, leaned in to try to hear more of the conversation between the government men and Oniiwah, who continued to protest.
“ Everybody knows them girls gotta be killed. They been missing too long, and nobody was fooled about that business at the Blow Hole, about that leg being a store dummy's.”
“ Leg? Who said anything about a leg? Tony?”
“ No, Boss, not a word. Besides-” Besides, it was an arm, Georgie boy,” continued Parry. “Supposing it was Linda's arm, you want to tell me about it?”
“ What?” he nervously blurted out. “I don't know what you want.”
“ Know anything about something missing from her arm, Georgie? Something you keep in your little fridge in the dorm?”
