***
Gina almost forgot the umbrella she’d left outside the door. She did her best not to hurry as she went down the sidewalk to where she’d last seen Detective Kona park. When she got there, he was nowhere around, nor was his SUV. She walked around the block, watching for him in alleys or driveways. When she heard a siren come down the street in the direction of Bunzo’s, it wasn’t Kona’s SUV, but his sedan with a flashing blue light on the top. He was driving.
“What the heck? How’d he swap cars so fast? Did he even listen to what I got from Chuck?”
Just as he skidded to a stop on the wet street in front of Bunzo’s, a squad car arrived. Kona and the two officers exchanged a few words and ducked into the front door of the bar, their weapons drawn.
Gina backed into the shadow of a nearby doorway to watch the bar. Even if she was stuck outside, she wanted dearly to be inside to witness what went down in Honolulu bars when there was a bust. She still wasn’t sure if it was a raid, or if police had been called to manage the fight in the back hallway. If it had come to a bartender with a billy club facing off against a pissed off hooker with a knife, her money was on Candy.
Ten minutes later, Kona came out with Candy in handcuffs, put her in the backseat of his sedan, and drove off. That meant either Candy had got into Chuck and he was dead on the floor waiting for a trip to the morgue, or the two uniformed officers were giving him a lecture. So far, paramedics hadn’t shown up. With nothing else better to do, she watched until the officers came out, got in their squad car, and left.
“Just another evening at Bunzo’s,” she said while walking away. “Now I just need to find a taxi.”
***
The taxi driver refused to take Gina across the little bridge onto the estate, and insisted on being paid in cash. Doing her best with two inch wedges on the gravel driveway, and a belt of whisky in her stomach, she went back to her house. She stopped when she saw Detective Kona’s sedan parked at the side in its usual place. She had to go around back to find him at the picnic table. The rain had stopped falling by then, leaving the air fresh and crisp.
“What happened at the bar?” Gina asked.
“That’s what I’m still trying to figure out.”
“Why did you arrest Candy? It was Chuck that was causing the trouble, pushing his girls around.”
“Didn’t arrest her.”
“I saw you take her out in cuffs. That sure looked like an arrest.”
“I just needed to get her out of there before Chuck found the wire on her,” he said. “Where’d you go?”
“Once the face-off between a dirty pimp and his girls started to break up, I came looking for you, but you were long gone.”
“Probably best, in the long run.”
“Where is she now?” Gina asked.
“I dropped her off downtown. The rest of the night is hers.”
“What about Chuck?”
“He didn’t want to file a complaint, and nobody got hurt.”
“Nobody got hurt? He gave one of them a smack across her face hard enough to knock her to the floor! That’s not getting hurt?”
“She never came forward to file a complaint. By the time I got there, it was only Candy flashing a knife in the general direction of Chuck.”
“What about the sting? Did you get anything from that?” she asked.
“You did good on that, Santoro. He admitted that he knew the approximate date and manner of death, and tried to shift the blame onto someone else, a common trick made by perps. As hard as they try to cover and dream up an alibi, they always slip up on pointing a finger at someone else. The more people they point at, the more they’re guilty. That’s how I see it, anyway.”
“What you got was good? It was solid?”
“Not admissible, but good enough to get him into an interrogation room tomorrow.”
“Why not tonight?”
“He needs to think about what happened in the bar this evening. I planted a few ideas in his mind, something for him to think about all night.”
“Crafty,” she muttered. “What if he tries to run?”
“To where? We’re on an island.”
“Yeah, I forgot. Either way, I’d love to be in that room tomorrow.”
“Forget it, Santoro. Your part of this deal is done. Stakeout complete, got it?”
“Got it. You think he had something to do with Danny’s death?”
“I’ll know tomorrow. Still don’t want to divulge your informant?”
“Sorry.” Gina smiled. “What I want to know is how you got your sedan so quickly after you dropped me at the bar in an SUV?”
“Trick of the trade. You’ll figure it out.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
In the morning, Gina wanted to work off some anxiety left over from her little sting operation the night before, so she joined the team that was digging out the old pond. They worked in half hour stretches, trading shovels back and forth for bottles of water. She was just wiping sweat and dirt from her face when she saw Detective Kona’s sedan drive onto the estate. He didn’t wait for her to come to him, walking directly to her instead.
“We need to talk,” he said, leading her off to the side to talk privately.
“I’m not giving up my informant, if that’s why you’re here.”
“I’m not here about that, but I’d still like to know, even more since last night.”
“Why since last night?”
“My investigation was turned upside down.”
Gina scratched her head. “Detective, you’re usually more to the point than this. What happened?”
“Your new boss, Chuck the bartender, died last night.”
“What?”
He nodded. “His body was found in the bar this morning by the dayshift bartender that opened the place.”
“Hughes was the day shift bartender, and he was found floating in the marina,”
