“ This the way Shakespeare's being taught nowadays?” asked Parry rhetorically as he made for the door, anxious to be rid of Dr. Claxton.
“ It's a fucking introductory level course.” Claxton pursued them, as if it were important for them to understand him better. “It's bottom-line, product-centered, factory mentality in the bloody womb of academia, thanks to the bureaucratic assholes in administration whose primary concern is to suck every cent out of their pockets! Whataya want from me?” Claxton bellowed as the door slammed in his face.
At the car, Gagliano began a coughing and spitting jag. Parry asked him if he was okay, his right hand pounding Tony's back in mock concern. “Come on, it wasn't that bad.”
“ I'd rather deal with the rats on the wharves than a puke like that. Guy turns my stomach.”
“ You carry Rolaids; use 'em. For now we'll split the lists into four evenly divided, Tony. I'm getting additional manpower and if the Trade Winds Killer is on that list, I intend to get to know him up close and personal.”
Parry then took the list from Gagliano and ripped off the first of the four sections.
“ You've got to be dead on your feet, Boss,” offered Tony. “What can you do tonight?”
“ Narrow the list to all Caucasians first. It's a good bet our killer is white; also look for the killer to be older, a good deal older than Oniiwah, upper twenties to middle age marks the kind of organized, controlled killer we're dealing with here, if the statistics mean anything. It's unlikely this guy's a kid. He's too deliberate, too careful to be a kid strung out on drugs, or some hot-tempered punk who'd leave a trail any idiot could follow.”
“ Given the deliberateness of his remaining in the shadows, the fact he's left no crime scene for us to work, yeah, I got to agree on that score.”
“ He seems to know enough to cover his ass, all right. Tomorrow, start with the registrar's office, get every bit of vital information on every male on the list their damned computer has, and have it play kiss-face with our mainframe, got that?”
“ It's called in-your-face, Boss.”
“ You mean innerface.”
“ Who'll you be recruiting?”
“ Haley's expressed an interest and so has Terri Reno.”
“ Kalvin Haley, that big Aussie?”
“ He's had experience with serials, and he was practically born here, part Hawaiian even if he won't admit it. Could really be of help to us.”
Tony remained skeptical. “Yeah, but Reno, a mainlander?”
'Tony, you're going to have to work with her, all right?”
“ Whatever you say, Jim.”
“ She's got to get experience somewhere, and who knows more than you, Tone?”
“ Whatever you say, Jimbo.”
“ I say don't call me Jimbo, okay?”
“ Whatever you say,” he repeated.
“ I say get me back to my unit so I can take myself home. Tomorrow noon, I want to feed the computer the breakdowns on these names-sex, age, height, color of eyes, nationality of each person on the list. Run 'em all through the Honolulu Police I.D. files, our own files… see if we get lucky.”
“ Whatever you say, Jim.”
Tony sensed the foul mood Jim Parry had fallen under, and so he wisely fell silent. The drive back to the street where the Kahala house stood didn't improve either of their moods as they looked past the lifeless, darkened house to where Jim's car stood stripped and smashed. It looked as if there'd been a block party, everyone issued a sledgehammer and given a license to attack Parry's car. But first the more prudent had ripped out the radio, popped the trunk and made off with a pair of expensive Kevlar bullet-proof vests along with several boxes of ammunition for his. 38 and an expensive Remington 12-gauge shotgun; his tires had been punctured, the moon hubcaps gone, every window smashed, the street littered with the raining pellets. The hood and top of the vehicle were destroyed beyond recognition, and beneath the hood expensive necessary parts had been stripped away. A siphon hose extended from out of the gas tank, likely the only reason the car hadn't gone up in flames, as several bullet holes had cut paths through the metal.
Parry was stunned. “That call we heard,” he said, the words tumbling out as hard round marbles, Parry not feeling his throat muscles, tongue or lips moving.
“ You sons of bitches,” Tony bellowed to the night.
Parry cursed the street as well and gained as much response as Tony had. The two FBI men felt eyes on them, imagined the glee in the hearts of those watching, and in a moment began to feel vulnerable. “Where were the city cops when my wagon was being annihilated? It must've taken twenty or thirty minutes at least to do this kind of damage, damn!”
“ We can't do squat about it now, Jim,” said Tony.
“ The hell we can't!”
“ Come on. We'll send a wrecker for it tomorrow.”
“ Gutless bastards!” shouted Parry, shaking his fist.
“ Jim, standing here and shouting at the pavement's not going to get us anywhere.”
“ Where are you now?” Parry continued to shout, venting his anger.
The dark little street responded with a few lights going on here and there, but no one came outdoors to claim any victory. Parry scanned the windows, Tony tugging at him.
“ Forget it, Jim. Come on.”
“ Don't take it so personal, huh, Tony? Well, fuck that!”
“ Jim, these people're frustrated. They struck out at what we stand for, not who we are.”
Parry paced around the hulk of his destroyed vehicle, gritting his teeth over the sight of its stripped interior and slashed seats, mutilated with machetes and knives. He realized it was just over a century ago that native sovereignty had been wrested from Queen Liliuokalani in a bloodless takeover backed by 162 sailors and Marines from the U.S. Boston, then docked in Honolulu Harbor. It was on January 17, 1893 that a group of powerful white businessmen and plantation owners took up arms, calling themselves the Hawaiian Rifle Militia. They forced the queen to abdicate, and soon after Hawaii became a U.S. Territory, and in 1959 the fiftieth state in the Union. To a sizeable number of Hawaiians this was not ancient history, and although the white mind could not conceive of ever rending the intricate tapestry of economic, industrial, technological and cultural fabric woven out of this tortured paradise by returning Hawaii to its sovereign status, as Hong Kong was slated to be returned to China, there were many prominent Hawaiians actively seeking just that, along with ten billion dollars in reparations, an apology and a return of their lands used as U.S. government holdings, including Pearl Harbor.
Now the grand and long-standing debate between the U.S. and Hawaiian nationals, coupled with the recent spate of disappearances and probable murders of Hawaiian women, seemed to have all congealed here on this street tonight and the frustrations of several generations had come down heavily on Parry's unfortunate vehicle.
“ The unit's ruined.”
“ It can be repaired.”
“ I've had that car since I became bureau chief.”
“ I know… I know…”
Tony managed to dance him back to his own car and Parry got inside. “Where the hell you suppose the police were?”
“ Probably no one called it in, Jim.”
“ We heard a disturbance call, remember? Christ, should have responded ourselves.”
“ The disturbance call was a 10-6, remember? No big deal, but this-this had to've happened after the cops came and went, is all I can figure, unless-”
“ Isn't this sector routinely patrolled by Hawaiian cops? Right, and all they saw was a block party, right?”
Tony, who had pulled from the curb only to hit the opposite curb with his wide U-tum, drove away now. He was trying on a smile when he said, “Hey, Chief, it could've been worse.”
“ Oh, how so?”
“ You could've been in the frigging car when it happened… or worse…”
