“ Christ,” moaned Parry. Things were fast getting out of hand.
A half hour later he was sound asleep, but rudely awakened by the insistent phone ringing at his bedside. This time it was the melodic, whiskey-voiced Dr. Coran, her tone tinged with an icicle of agitation as she told him about her earlier meeting with Joseph Kaniola.
He was instantly angry with her. “But why'd you tell him anything, Dr. Coran? It should have occurred to you that you were talking to the most irresponsible newspaperman on the island. One of the most vocal lobbyists for Hawaiian sovereignty, a leader in the nationalist party here.”
“ He promised it wouldn't be used in the paper.”
“ It'll be all over the island tomorrow. I've already had calls on it. Damnit.”
“ I'm sorry, but he is the father. He had a right to know as next of kin, and he promised what we spoke of was off the record.”
“ And you believed him?”
“ I did, at the time.”
“ The man must've been following your movements the whole time and you trusted him?”
“ I did what I felt best, under the circumstances.”
“ Well now the circumstances have changed, drastically.”
“ Thanks to me,” she replied.
He softened his tone. “Look, I suppose it would've had to have come out in another twenty-four hours or so anyway. Don't lose anymore sleep over it.”
“ Did you have any luck at the college?”
“ We have a lead, but it's going to take time to pursue, learned a few details about the last days of Lina… Linda Kahala's life.”
“ I see.”
“ Funny, I'd hoped to hear from you,” he managed to say, “but not about this.”
“ Oh? And what had you hoped to hear about?”
“ About how you enjoyed spending the late afternoon with me, that's all. Listen, you said you used to go deer hunting often with your father?”
“ Well, yes,” she said. “I did.”
“ I know a place in the islands where deer season is just opening.”
“ Here, in Hawaii? You have deer?”
“ Imported, but yes, real live deer. On the island of Molokai.”
“ Sounds like a great trip. Have you hunted on the island?”
“ Yeah, once. I have to warn you: It's a wilderness section.”
“ No problem. I love the wilderness.”
“ I mean, it might be difficult getting around.”
By her silence, he knew that she understood his concern was with her bad leg and the cane. Finally, she said, “Don't worry. If you can arrange it, nothing'll stop my accompanying you to Molokai. Well, I'd best say good night now. Let us both get some rest.”
“ Expect to read about our case in the papers tomorrow,” he warned her.
“ I hope I haven't completely ruined things.”
“ I hope we don't have a race war on our hands.”Silence for a moment. “Do you really think it could get so… out of control as to-”
“ Like L.A., we have our minority held pretty much in economic bondage; these people are very close, very strong in their family ties; it's really all they have. I've already seen evidence of their frustration and anger played out on my car tonight.”
“ Oh, no,” she gasped into the phone. “You weren't hurt, were you?”
“ My car was totally dismantled and destroyed while I wasn't looking, but otherwise, I'm unhurt.”
“ You think that some of Kaniola's well-meaning friends may've been behind it?”
“ No, not likely, although who knows for sure…”
“ Christ, I wish I'd kept my mouth shut around the man. I hope I haven't screwed things up to the point-”
“ I don't fault you, Jessica,” he said. “You couldn't know the depth of feeling between the whites and non- whites here in paradise.”
“ Shoulda known better.”
Her deep, breathy voice alone made it all worthwhile, he thought, listening to her every word.
“ Forget it. We go on from here.”
“ Dammit, Parry, you're being too goddamned nice. I just fried you and all you can say is-”
“ Night, Jess.”
He hung up, not allowing her another word, glad to have the last word, pleased to have heard the sound of her voice again, and totally frustrated on learning that the leak Scanlon referred to had indeed come home to roust at his doorstep. As upset as Scanlon was, he knew there'd be a great deal more hell to pay come sunup.
Suddenly, he could no longer sleep. He got up, fixed himself a cup of steaming-hot tea and switched on a tape player that'd remained on his table all week. Once more he listened to the voices of Thom Hilani and Alan Kaniola from the moment Kaniola picked up the “suspicious”-looking, dark or maroon Buick sedan barreling up toward Koko Head at a fairly high rate of speed at 1:43 A.M.
“ HPD 12, this is Hilani, Unit 2E, Sector Bravo. I have you and the sedan in sight. Can I be of assistance, since you're such a fucklick?”
“ This is Dispatch Officer A312. No can make dat kine talk on dis frequency, Officer Hilani.”
“ Friendlies're hard to fine out heah,” replies Thom Hilani.
“ Fall in behind me, 2E.” Kaniola's invitation gives no sign of agitation until his next words. “Shit, Dispatch I've lost sight of him off the hairpin just before the Blow Hole.”
Hilani's reply is clipped and angry, a blaring motorcycle horn providing a backdrop to his curses. “Damnit, brah! Whataya doing backin' into me fo'? Almost run my ass over!”
“ Call in our position, Hilani.”
“ No readin' this mother by no book. HQ, this is HPD 12 and 2E, leaving unit to investigate abandoned suspect vehicle. Our location is the Blow Hole, over.”
“ Roger that,” replies Dispatch.
Neither man mentions why he fails to call in a DMV check on the plates. The transmissions simply end. After an uncomfortable amount of time Dispatch tries to hail the two dead cops. There was already much criticism circulating about how Hilani and Kaniola didn't properly execute procedures, that they should have secured the area around the car, got that license plate, called it in, and called for reinforcements up there. But Parry, who'd now listened to the tape sixteen times, was convinced that these two men had not been given an opportunity to respond and had had good reason for their every action, because the plate was intentionally obscured. “No readin' this mother by no book,” Hilani had said.
Hilani, Kaniola and Lina Kahala's deaths were all linked as closely with their Hawaiian blood as with anything else. Hawaiians, by nature, were open and honest to a fault, like the Eskimos, inviting terror into their lives without even recognizing it for what it was, he thought. For now he allowed the tape to replay, but his attention floated away to the book lying next to him on the table, Lina Kahala's book of sonnets.
He lifted it, felt its heft in his hands, squeezed it in a fantastic hope that in doing so some clue would ooze from the damned thing, but the book remained as silent as ever.
In the still of the Hawaiian night, he feels time slow to a crawling, halting stop. He opens the pages and reads as he has each night from the dark passages the young woman, now beyond this life, had once marked for him to find.
Shakespeare's words… her words flow off the tongue easily, like a timeless riddle, and he wonders anew if he hasn't been placed on this earth to unite Lina with her prophet, Shakespeare, whom Jim Parry has never before thought of as a poet of darkness and despair. He wonders, too, what he has missed, what has escaped his eye and his consciousness.
He keenly feels that he is being haunted by Lina, that she pleads with him from every crevice and dark corner
