the biker pulled in front of him on Kuhio. Ray pulled his gun but didn’t fire. I jumped out of the van. As I slammed the door behind me, I said, “Go after him!”
Frank’s driver pulled out onto Kuhio, nearly sideswiping a tourist couple in an open convertible, and took off after the biker.
I dialed 911 on my cell phone and gave our information to the dispatcher as I ran to Sergei, who was lying on the sidewalk clutching his side. Ray was already leaning over him. “Too many tourists and cars to get a clean shot,” he said to me.
“Where were you shot?” I asked Sergei, leaning down next to Ray.
“My side. It hurts.”
“I called an ambulance, brah,” I said. “You’ll be okay.”
“You said you’d look out for me, Kimo.” He winced from the pain.
I grabbed his hand and squeezed. “I will.” I stood up and stepped away, dialing Haoa’s house, and when my niece Ashley answered I said, “I need to talk to your mom. Right away.”
“I’m on a call, Uncle Kimo.”
“Get off it, then. This is an emergency, and I need your Mom.”
My ear reverberated as she slammed the phone down onto some hard surface, and then I heard her call for Tatiana. “What is it?” Tatiana said, when she answered. “Is everything okay?”
Ray pulled off his shirt and tore it into strips, trying to staunch the bleeding from Sergei’s stomach.
“Sergei’s been shot.” I handed him the phone.
“I’m sorry, sis,” he panted. “I screwed up.”
Squatting there on the sidewalk next to Sergei, I could hear Tatiana through the phone. “Don’t you dare die on me, Sergei. Don’t you dare.”
People clustered around us, and I motioned to them to back away. “Police. Everything’s under control.”
The ambulance siren grew. Ray was sweating as he leaned over Sergei, shirtless, applying pressure to the gunshot wound. “Don’t hate me, sis,” Sergei rasped. “I didn’t meant to hurt you or Howie.”
Tatiana was crying when I took the phone from Sergei. The ambulance pulled up and a couple of EMTs jumped out. A patrol car arrived, sirens blasting, and a uniform from the Waikiki station started cordoning off the area.
“The ambulance is here, Tatiana,” I said. “I’ll go with Sergei to Queen’s.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she said.
The EMTs leaned down to where Sergei lay. One took his vital signs while the other took over from Ray, who leaned back, breathing heavily.
My cell rang and I learned that Frank O’Connor’s driver had lost the motorcyclist in the crowded streets, unable to get a license plate number. Though I thought the assailant was Stan LoCicero, we couldn’t be certain of anything. It could have been either a man or a woman under all that leather, and the bike could have been anything from a Kawasaki to a Triumph.
“Had to be LoCicero, though,” Frank said. “He’s the only one who knew about the meeting.”
“Unless he told somebody else, or hired somebody,” I said.
We promised to compare notes in the morning.
Within a couple of minutes, the EMTs had Sergei bandaged up and loaded into the ambulance. “I’ll go with him,” I said to Ray. “You all right?”
“Yeah. Just shook up.”
“Go home and let Julie pamper you. I’ll call you from the hospital.”
The ambulance ride was bumpy, and the driver had to swerve a couple of times to get around clueless drivers who didn’t get out of the way.
“It hurts, Kimo,” Sergei moaned.
I looked at the female EMT.
She shook her head. “Can’t give him anything for the pain till we get him into a bed and stabilized.”
“Hold on, Sergei.” I squeezed his hand. “It’s gonna get better. I promise.”
When the ambulance pulled in at Queen’s, the crew loaded Sergei onto a gurney and wheeled him away. I went into the waiting room.
Only a few minutes later, Mike burst in. “I was monitoring the police band. I heard somebody got shot and I was worried it was you.”
“I’m okay.” We hugged in the waiting room and I explained about Sergei. As I was finishing, Haoa and Tatiana arrived and I had to through the whole thing again.
“I shouldn’t have pressured him to go to that meeting,” Tatiana said. “He said he was scared.”
“He’s a tough guy,” I said, wrapping my arm around her. “I’m sure he’s going to pull through.”
They took Sergei up to the operating room and we all moved to the waiting room there. Eventually the doctor came out and told us that though Sergei had lost a lot of blood, they were able to stabilize him then remove the bullet and close up the entry wound.
“I want to wait here for him,” Tatiana said. “I can’t believe it. I was supposed to look after him.”
“He’s a grown man, Tatiana,” I said. “You can’t look after him forever.”
“Of course I can. He’s my brother.”
I knew how she felt. My brothers had looked after me plenty.
Mike drove me over to the Rod and Reel Club, parking his truck in the alley behind the club. Ray was still there, standing under a streetlight with Julie. He was wearing a clean shirt and talking to Lieutenant Sampson. Tourists moved past us, and I could hear the back beat coming from the club. Life went on in Waikiki. It was hot and humid, and a mosquito kept buzzing around my head.
“You okay, brah?” I asked him as Mike and I walked up.
“Yeah. How’s Sergei?”
“He’ll be all right.”
I turned to Lieutenant Sampson. “You remember Mike Riccardi, from HFD? He’s been working the arson side of the investigation.”
Sampson raised a single eyebrow but didn’t comment on Mike’s presence. “I don’t like it when anyone takes pot shots at my people,” he said. “Let’s meet tomorrow morning and recap where you are on this. Let’s get the ADA involved, too. We’ll see if we’ve got enough evidence to get a search warrant for the gun. If we can get a ballistics match we’ll have something to hold this guy on.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m going to make it my personal mission to arrest Stan LoCicero and make sure he goes to jail for a long, long time.”
Sampson looked at his watch. “I’ve got to roll. Call me if you need anything.” He strode away down the street, and I turned to Ray and Julie.
“You guys want to get a drink?” I asked, only too late realizing that was the wrong thing to say around Mike.
Ray shook his head. “Julie and I are going to have dinner,” he said, holding her around the waist. “I’ll be okay.”
“Any chance that could have been Treasure Chen on the bike?” I asked.
Ray shook his head. “I was talking to Treasure last night at dinner. She told me she had a boyfriend who rode a bike when she was in high school and she hated it. Always afraid she was going to fall off. Could it have been Richard Hu?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose.”
Ray and Julie left, and Mike and I went to talk to Larry Solas, the crime scene tech, who was just finishing up. “I recovered two bullets from the tree over there. I’ll swing past the hospital on my way back to the lab and pick up the bullet they pulled out of your victim. I’m on duty till midnight. I’ll see if I can get you anything on ballistics.”
“Thanks, brah.”
As Larry packed up his big arc lights, the uniform on duty pulled up the plastic cones and let the traffic flow on Kuhio again.
“You want some dinner?” I asked Mike.
“Sure. But what do you say we pick up a pizza and take it to my place?”
