“The hood of your car, boss… someone left something on it…”
Magpie blasted through the entrance door with enough bad intent it should have left its hinges, his handgun out of its shoulder holster. His head swiveled as he scanned the perimeter, soon resettling his focus on what sat on the car’s hood: a cheap white Styrofoam cooler.
Wally and Dr. Rakoso followed him outside, the three of them staring the cooler down. Magpie holstered his gun, then pulled the cooler off the car. They surrounded it on the blacktop. Wally grunted an order at Magpie. “Open it.”
The loose lid aside, inside was pretty much what Wally expected would piss him off: dry ice, chunks of it, enough to protect its contents. The edge of a clear plastic zip-lock bag poked through the top layer, the contents submerged. Magpie lifted the bag out with a bare hand, quickly laid it on top of the dry ice. They leaned in.
“A human liver,” Dr. Rakoso said. “Complete, not a partial.”
Magpie drew his handgun again, used the barrel to check through the dry ice chunks to see if there were any other gifts inside. He found a yellow envelope clasped shut against the side, nothing else.
“Give me the envelope,” Wally said.
Magpie complied. Wally slid out a single piece of paper and read the message aloud. “TYPE O. UNIVERSAL DONOR. TWO HOURS FRESH. HAVE A NICE DAY — Y.”
This secret-admirer-organ-donation bullshit had run its course for Wally, with him being a beneficiary now two times over. “Who the fuck is ‘Y,’ goddamn it!”
On cue his phone chirped. He read what was on the screen in silence.
“What is it, boss?” Magpie asked.
“A news story and a text. This SOB took out someone in Kapaa,” Wally said. “This is his liver. The bastard’s taunting me, Magpie. He’s got my phone number and is playing me…”
Magpie pulled up the news story on his own phone. “A street performer. The story’s an hour old. Someone tossed his body out of a moving car”—Magpie paused—“outside a restaurant. The report says he’s a native islander from—”
“Miakamii,” Wally said. “The text says he’s Miakamiian.” He exploded, throwing his phone with severe malice against the asphalt, its plastic frame splintering. When it stopped bouncing he jammed his heel into it, crushing what was left.
Magpie read more of the story. “Already the news people are making a connection, boss. ‘Second Miakamiian murder in three days.’ ‘Miakamii bodies are piling up…’”
“Get me the transplant list, damn it. Pull it up and give your phone to me…”
“But promise me you won’t—”
“Give me your fucking phone!”
Wally scrolled down a list of potential recipients on Magpie’s iPhone, looking for their proximity to Wally’s chop house. He found one name, then a second. One full liver could accommodate two patients. “Her. Get Shirley M.’s people on the phone. She just finished a play and is in town. And she’s AB. Do it.”
“Type O donor, Type AB recipient,” Dr. Rakoso said, interjecting. “The donor’s liver can go anywhere, the recipient’s liver can come from anyone. You’re lucky she’s on your list.”
“Screw luck, I know my shit, Doctor.” Wally drilled a questioning look into his prospective freelancer, then addressed his unsolicited comments. “What the hell is it to you anyway, Doc, unless…?”
“If your secret admirer is telling the truth,” his guest said, “you’ve got maybe nine, ten hours to find homes for that liver.” Dr. Rakoso retrieved his own phone, scrolled through it, and checked his calendar.
“Breakthrough medicine appeals to me. If you find a patient, I’ll scrub in.”
10
Kaipo deplaned at Lihue Airport in sunglasses and a different baseball cap, this one University of Hawaii green. She exited baggage claim and found her way to a short line of airport limos waiting curbside, her destination a friend’s house in Pakala Village on the southwestern shore of Kauai. Thirty minutes later the limo stopped at the end of her friend’s driveway. “We’re here, miss.”
A newer-looking ranch home with vertical wood siding in pastel yellow, the small three-bedroom occupied no more than a quarter acre. A rental, her native Hawaiian friend Vena had told her. “A single career girl can afford only so much on these islands.” True that, Kaipo knew, even for someone like Vena, whose resume included current full-time employment as a contractor at the Navy’s Kauai missile outpost and dual degrees in maritime and military sciences from the University of Hawaii.
Kaipo handed the driver the fare plus a healthy tip. “Give me a moment,” she told him.
Her sunglasses off, she scanned the surroundings. The street was empty of traffic, a residential neighborhood of single-story homes on small lots under a cottony blue sky unobstructed in all directions. Kaipo powered down both windows, their tinted glass disappearing, the afternoon’s hazy heat creeping inside. Two neighbors in their front yards tended their lawns, their flowers, their porches, each with no more than a glance at her idling airport limo. A plane soared overhead, and a bubbly Vena waited for her inside her home, framed by the house’s front picture window, barely able to contain herself. Yet contain herself she did, told not to leave the house until Kaipo texted her an all-clear.
“Are we good, miss?” the driver said, a polite attempt to hustle her up. He popped open the trunk.
She reacted, her tone sharp. “No. Close the trunk.” She supplemented her bark with, “I need a moment, please. This will be a tough visit.” That sounded good as an excuse and it was true, but for reasons more consequential than it implied.
A car turned onto the street a few corners past Vena’s house. Black BMW. It slowed to a stop one house away, parked curbside across the street, facing the limo. Kaipo focused
