Her captors pushed her through what sounded like a small gate with a spring, the gate snapping shut behind them. Still no clucking or other animal noises, only wings flapping and leaves rustling as birds took flight from nearby trees.
“Sorry, boys, but I’m not hearing any chickens,” Kaipo said, her breath short. She was now doing more walking but still being pulled forward. Some hutzpah with sarcasm, meant to hide her fear while eliciting information.
“You won’t. Shut up.”
They stopped. Someone searched through keys on a chain, and a minute later she went from overhead daylight to darkness, the air in the space a lot cooler.
Inside a building. A door opened, metal. No, not a door, another gate, this one sounding like chain link fencing. Once inside, the space they’d entered felt large, open. “Hello?” she called, a test, her voice raised. It came back in a short echo, but she did hear it, followed by a cawing crow. Her intuition was right, it was a large, open space, with a ceiling tall enough for birds to gain entrance and find interesting, but with abysmal acoustics.
“Quiet. Let’s go.”
A second entry opened, not a gate, a door, and after they pulled her through, this was where her journey ended. They sat her in a creaky chair with wobbly legs in a room of unknown size with a smell she couldn’t put her finger on, but it was penetrating, pervasive, and gag-inducing.
Then she had it: the stink of death. Her days as a cleaner-fixer for Ka Hui had given her the nose for recognizing it. Rooms large and small, living quarters, kitchens, basements, hot tubs, commercial and industrial buildings, garages, any number of closed spaces where someone or something had died or been murdered and she’d been tasked with cleaning up after the mess. But a very large number of somethings had died in this space, her intuition said, here and throughout the building.
“Hold still, I’ll undo your hood,” the larger thug said, reaching under her chin. “It will feel like it’s just in time, because I’m sure you’ll be losing your stomach momentarily. There’s a bucket in here. Use it when you puke. The restraints will come off later. Don’t get too comfortable.” Her light-deprived eyes adjusted to the change, his sarcastic smile greeting them. “You won’t be here long.”
With the hood off she could see her surroundings. The two unremarkable men in suits who brought her in; a long room, concrete blocks for walls; a smooth cement floor. A three-story ceiling crisscrossed by metal air ducts and the vestiges of electrical lighting, the low-hanging light bulbs on. This was the front end of an assembly line, with sinks, heavy tables, and a rubber conveyor belt. The floor was filthy, splotched black in spots and caked with small, scattered piles of unidentified hardened content that ruined its otherwise smooth surface.
She felt a slight rush of air against her ankles from under the door they’d used, which was heavy, industrial, and metal. The draft entered when another door in the building had opened and closed, stimulating the airflow and providing momentary relief from the accumulated stench. It also lifted dust and detritus off the floor, making it temporarily airborne.
Mixed in with the detritus, feathers. A closer look at the corners of the room, the rafters, the ductwork: more feathers. She was in an abandoned chicken slaughterhouse. How long abandoned? Long enough for desiccated chicken organs and parts to outlast maggots and other insects staining the floor, the piles of detritus way past hardening, on their way to fossilization. But where were they on Kauai? Not a clue.
And the moment that her one abductor had said would come, did: she needed the bucket for two jolting releases of her stomach contents. She’d seen and smelled much worse, knew much worse, some that had come by her own hand. But here, it was less the stench, more her nerves. She was finally getting the picture. The true embodiment of bait for Wally: the potential execution of a promise to gut her, maybe hang her body on a hook somewhere inside this slaughterhouse.
The door to her prison opened. One, two, three, four men entered, filling up the space on both sides of the entry, then a fifth. Mr. Yabuki.
“Ms. Mawpaw,” he said. “I trust your accommodations are quite… discomforting. Such is the nature of things. This is what you should expect going forward. But do not despair. You’ll be here only through the evening hours, until a certain contest is decided. Would you like some breakfast?”
“I want these chains off. I want to know where I am.”
“Nothing to eat, then?”
“Look at this place. You think I’d keep anything else down?”
“Gentlemen.” He was addressing his men but stayed focused on her. “Bring her some jug water. For drinking and washing. Bring two more empty buckets so she can wash and toilet herself. You will be hungry, Ms. Mawpaw. They will bring you something to eat later. Fruits and vegetables, something your stomach should be able to handle. Regarding where you are…”
Yabuki maintained his tunnel vision, which was still directed at Kaipo.
“I can’t bring myself to look at this place. This… prison. It is unholy. A grotesque affront to the Japanese people by your wartime United States of America. That is where you are. Gentlemen, remove her leg irons but keep her handcuffed, and keep her confined to this room. Ms. Mawpaw, I bid you sayonara until this evening.”
31
“Snacks. Where’s the cooler and the bag of snacks, sir?” Patrick said.
“The kitchenette,” Philo said.
The afternoon of the fight. After sixty-five bareknuckle bouts in venues around the country ranging from abandoned grain elevators to parking garages to school basements to closed malls, Philo knew to travel light. He’d arrive in his fighting clothes—jeans, cutoff tee, sneakers; steel cup; multiple mouthguards. Bottles of water for the cooler, plus Gatorade, oranges, bars
