20
It's like a lion at the door; And when the door begins to crack. It's like a stick across your back; And when your back begins to smart. It's like a penknife in your heart; And when your heart begins to bleed, You're dead and dead and dead indeed
July 19, Honolulu
Dawn this side of the great island of Oahu was different from dawn in other places around the globe, and this was especially true in Honolulu. Here dawn meant a sensual softening and gradual lightening in the eastern sky while La-the sun itself-remained in hiding, invisible during this long twilight period since it rose from the windward side of the four-thousand-foot pinnacle of the Koolau Mountains, a natural border which rimmed the city on the east, and into which most people now believed Lopaka “Robert” Kowona had escaped.
It was to this sunless gray dawn light, seeping in and wending its way into his bed, that Parry awoke. He was helped along from his slumber by the shrill cry of his telephone, which he desperately wanted to ignore. And he did so until he could stand it no more. “Parry!” he barked. “This better be good!”
“ It's me, Gag.”
'Tony? What's up?”
“ We're in position and near ready with the search teams at the location where we think Lopaka Kowona might've gone in. Chief. Thought you'd want to be alerted.”
“ Where've you set up?”
Tony described the location of the command post.
“ Yeah, I know 'bout where that is.”
“ We've been under way since before daybreak. Come join us. Should be fun.” Tony's tone and emphasis on the word fun dripped with sarcasm.
“ Dr. Coran been alerted, Tony?”
He hesitated. “I can call her after we hang up.”
“ Do that. Keep her fully apprised; you got that, Tony? Tony?”
“ If you say so, Chief.”
“ I say so. Don't forget, we asked her in on this case, pal, and without her we'd still be blowing smoke.”
“ All right, all right. She's just…”
“ Just what, Tony? Out with it.”
Tony hesitated before saying, “Distracting.”
“ Distracting? Why, Tony, I didn't notice you noticed.”
He grunted and said, “I noticed you two together are distracting for one another. Chief.”
“ Good! I'm glad your eyesight's not fully gone, buddy. Now mind your own goddamned business, okay? Just do your job, okay?”
Parry grimaced into the phone, angry with himself for losing it, half understanding Tony's concern. But the big Italiano angered him, too. Tony could be so damned stubborn, he thought. “Just concentrate for the time being on the manhunt, okay, Gag?”
“ Every man and dog knows what he's looking for,” Gagliano continued, wanting to add, Do you? but thinking better of it.
“ So, what's the problem, Tony?”
“ No problem… not really, sir.”
The use of “sir” was a sure sign there was a problem. “Damnit, Tony, I got no time, and I'm in no mood for twenty fucking questions.”
“ Hey, I just thought you'd like to know about the word on Bethel at Hotel, and on River Street.”
Parry knew each comer gathering place with its tavem row, a hot bed of street information representing the entire rainbow from truth to gossip to pure fabrication, a gauntlet for the detective to run. What Joe Citizen thought and what he knew often broke a case wide open. River Street ran through the slum areas just northwest of downtown Honolulu.
“ I'm hearing the same story all over, Chief, down in Chinatown, too, and I get the same word from the wharf rats.”
“ Really?” Parry was instantly curious. The wharf rats were Hawaiians and half-Hawaiians who worked as stevedores and mechanics and hands along the wharves. They routinely hung about Aala Park when relaxing with a beer and a smoke. Their talk was never guarded or encumbered by fears that anyone might care enough about what they said to pay any attention. It was a far cry from the mentality of the Oahu Country Club set.
“ What's the word around, Tony?” he asked, wondering if it might jibe with the information he had himself picked up on Kukui Street where local sailors and “homeboys” hung out, frequently settling differences of opinion loudly and violently. But the word he'd been hearing on the street had been directly countered by Joe Kaniola the evening before.
“ Spill it, Tony. What're you hearing?”
“ That Lopaka got a boat out.”
“ Really? Out of where?”
“ Other side of the island, Mokapu Point, Kaneohe Bay.”
It was one of the old ports, used by innumerable small fishing vessels, by many native fishermen who skirted the law in Hawaii with both abandon and finesse. “You think there's any truth to it?”
“ If there is… a search of the mountainside's a really stupid idea. And you know the kanakas. They'd go to the mainland and back if they thought they could make a haole-especially one in a position of authority-look stupid, Boss.”
“ So people've told you he got a boat out of Kaneohe Bay and so-”
“ Possibly Heeia Kea Boat Harbor, Boss.”
“ What kind of a boat, Tony? Did you get a fix on it?”
“ Fishing vessel, in ill repair.”
“ Wow, that really narrows it down.” Now it was Parry who was sarcastic. “What about its call numbers, its goddamn name, the captain?”
“ Sony, Boss… couldn't get anything specific on it, except that it sailed for Molokai.”
“ Molokai, huh?” Parry's thoughts came in a plethora of recall and questions. Molokai had been home to Lopaka Kowona in his childhood. It would follow that he'd race for some safe place, somewhere he felt comfortable. On the other hand, he'd been banished from that place by his chieftain father. And people like Kaniola were sending messages that were going counter to one another…
Tony kept talking. “Even the wharf rats were guarded about it, but I loosened some tongues with a few greenbacks and, well…”
“ And well what?” Parry threw his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up.
“ Sounds possible that whoever boarded Lopaka was maybe a family member or members.”
This gave Parry pause, recalling how deftly Kaniola and Lopaka's aunt and cousin had played him. Wouldn't touch Lopaka with a ten-foot pole, huh? But why would Kaniola aid and abet his son's killer? How could he? For the cause of native rights maybe, all that self-determination crap? An order handed down by the PKO? Possibly, for some more fanatical members had already proven that they could be dangerous when they had George Oniiwah abducted, and Kaniola did have his grandchildren to think of, not to mention his wife.
“ Destination Molokai confirmed by more than one?” Parry now asked.
“ One or two said Maui… but the consensus was the closer island, yeah.”
“ Really?”
'That's what everybody's saying.”
“ Everybody?”
