The radio hissed and spit the usual cop stuff.
Lo had donned John Lennon shades. Now and then I peeked his way.
Apparently, my curiosity wasn’t all that subtle.
“Norwegian mother, Vietnamese father.”
My eyes snapped front and center.
“A blessing I got the old man’s height.”
I glanced back at Lo.
“Scares the crap out of people.” Deadpan.
“I’d have guessed it was the shirt.”
“Icing on the cake.”
Silence filled the car for another mile. Then, “Ryan seems like good people.”
“He’s a prince.”
“He explained how you two roll.”
I didn’t reply.
“He says you’re OK.”
Though incapable of arranging my own transport home. I bit back a pithy retort.
Truth be told, I was more annoyed with myself for contacting Ryan than I was with Ryan for taking over. I knew the man’s style. I called anyway. My bad. But what the hell? Though hiding it, I was actually pretty shaken up.
“You disappointed me,” Lo said.
“I disappointed you?”
“Ryan swore the ‘little lady’ tag would bring a boatload of feces down on my head.”
“Did he.”
“The ‘ride-along’ bit was strictly mine.”
“Icing on the cake.”
“As it were.”
“You should go into comedy, Detective Lo. Maybe get a job writing for Tina Fey.”
“Yeah, that could work.” Lo nodded slowly, as though seriously considering the suggestion. “First I’ll nail the dogball who sent your car into orbit.”
“You think it was deliberate?”
“I intend to find out.” Lo flicked a glance my way. “You want, I could take you up to Lanikai.”
“I feel much better than I look.” Not true, but I’d have eaten pigeon droppings rather than admit to weakness.
Lo shrugged. “Your call.”
“Tell me about Francis Kealoha.”
“The kid’s sister lives over by Kalihi Valley. KPT. A lovely chunk of real estate.”
Kuhio Park Terrace is the largest of Hawaii’s public housing projects. Kalihi Valley Homes, another big gorilla, isn’t far away. Small wonder that most of the state’s new immigrants start out near Kalihi Valley. I’d read that upward of eighty percent of the area’s population is Asian and Pacific Islander, that probably half is under the age of twenty.
“Gloria. A fine young lady.” Lo killed the radio with a jab of his thumb. “We’ll drop in on Sis, then have a chat with my CI. Ryan will hook up with us there.”
“Your CI will be cool with outsiders present?”
“He’ll do what I tell him.”
“What if Gloria’s not home?”
“She’s home. And by the way, you’re a potted palm when I talk to these wits.”
Thirty minutes later Lo parked near a high-rise complex that looked like a nightmare straight out of the seventies. Built in an era when the goal in public housing was to isolate and stack, KPT has all the warmth and charm of a barracks in the gulag.
Following a ten-minute wait, during which Lo stood calmly, arms crossed, and I paced, mourning the loss of my BlackBerry, we rode an overcrowded freight elevator to the fifteenth floor. A concrete balcony led past trash chutes jammed with ruptured supermarket and pharmacy bags. Insects swarmed the overflow—aluminum cans, bottles, soiled diapers, chicken bones, rotten produce, bunched tissues.
Lo stopped at unit 1522 and pounded with the heel of one hand.
No sound but the buzzing of flies.
He banged again, louder. “Honolulu PD. We know you’re in there, Gloria.”
