Not ready to stop talking, they ordered dessert and coffee.
“Fortunato had enemies,” Kawika continued. “The Murphys hated him, Peter Pukui and HHH hated him. Maybe his Japanese investors hated him—we think they were pretty concerned, at least. He may have been a fraudster.”
Kawika told her about Fortunato on the mainland. “The Feds charged him for desecrating the Indian site. A retired FBI agent who investigated him, a guy named Frank Kimaio, lives in Waimea now.”
“Kimaio?” she asked. “Hawaiian?”
“No, mainland haole, it seems. My Waimea cop partner talked to him today. This Agent Kimaio says the Feds were actually trying to nail Fortunato for real estate fraud. They just used the desecration stuff to put pressure on him.”
“What happened?”
“Prosecution fell apart. Have to talk to Kimaio myself, get more details. But Fortunato’s development went bankrupt. Had a close shave on the mainland, came here, started over. Somehow he convinced the Japanese to back him. There’s definitely something fishy about it.”
“Fishy how?”
“I don’t know yet. But the Japanese are unhappy. I’m guessing he was ripping them off somehow. You know what Dad said about Fortunato? ‘He pretends to be nice, but he’s not.’ New enemies popping up all the time. But still.”
“What?”
“Like you said before, why wouldn’t they just throw him off a cliff?”
Carolyn paused for a moment. “Maybe framing HHH was what they wanted,” she replied.
“That actually looks like a reasonable guess right now,” he said gently.
Pleased with that possibility, Carolyn nodded. “This has been fascinating,” she said, pushing back from the table. “Thank you for letting me in on it. Seriously.”
“Not at all,” he said. “Thank you for helping. Terry said you could, and he was right.”
“It’s your biggest case yet, right?” Carolyn turned to face him directly. “Well, let’s go take your mind off it. My place—it’s closer.”
“Also cleaner,” he added. And there’s no danger of Patience calling me there.
She held his arm as they walked, her body warm and coconut fragrant beside him. His feet carried him toward a familiar destination. Perhaps nothing had really changed—nothing important anyway. Maybe the thing with Patience had just been an accident, an aberration. The thought made him swell with hope: Maybe the god of love allows us a grace period for mistakes and indecision.
Carolyn, however, apparently couldn’t stop thinking about the case.
“It looks bad for Peter Pukui because he ran away, right?”
“No one’s seen him or his girlfriend since before the murder. She belongs to HHH too. Although she’s Maori, apparently. Melanie Munu.”
“Oh, shit,” Carolyn said.
“What? Is she bad?”
“Not bad as in ‘criminal’ or ‘violent.’ Bad as in ‘political.’ She’s with S&R, Kawika—Sovereignty & Reparations, the Native group. She’s one of the founders. It’s not like other cultural groups. Not at all.”
“They’re radicals?”
“Very radical,” Carolyn said. “Not so much their goals. It’s their methods, Kawika. They’re always outraged, always going for publicity. Damn. If Melanie is part of this, you’re gonna be in Chinatown all over again.”
“This is one mean tong we’re talking about? Is that it?”
“Truly, Kawika. One very mean tong. Shit.”
22Hilo
In the room at the station with the big whiteboard, Carolyn, Kawika, and Tanaka held copies of a press release Sovereignty & Reparations had issued that morning.
“We original Hawaiians may or may not still exist,” Carolyn said. “Either way, we’re incredibly angry. But nothing justifies this. Nothing.” She picked up the press release and began reading it again.
Sovereignty & Reparations Condemns Racist Probe of Big Island Native Rights Group, Demands Investigation by Native Authorities
Sovereignty & Reparations (S&R), Hawai‘i’s most active Native rights organization, today condemned a racist Hilo police investigation—led by Captain Teruo Tanaka and Detective Wong, without any Native Hawaiian supervision or participation—that unjustly seeks to blame Big Island activist and heiau preservation leader Peter Pukui for the alleged “homicide” of Ralph Fortunato, a colonialist real estate developer whose pillaging of sacred Hawaiian religious sites and denial of traditional hoa‘āina rights to ahupua‘a tenants Pukui has courageously organized Hawaiians throughout Kohala to resist.
“Alleged homicide,” Tanaka said. “How can they say that?”
“Maybe we’re looking at it wrong,” Kawika replied in disgust. “Maybe Fortunato planted the spear, cuffed his hands behind his back, got a running start and threw himself on it, then flopped over with it stuck in his chest.”
“Doesn’t explain the divot,” said Tanaka.
“Guys,” Carolyn admonished. “Cut it out. You’re missing what’s going on. They’re trying to make you targets. Racial targets. Both of you. Notice they use your full name, Terry, because it’s Japanese. Kawika they just call ‘Detective Wong.’”
“We noticed,” Tanaka assured her.
“And what’s this about Fortunato denying hoa‘āina rights to ahupua‘a tenants?” she asked. “You ever hear that before?”
“Don’t even know what that is,” Kawika answered. “Do you, Terry?”
Carolyn rolled her eyes. “Guys, you’ve really got to get ready for this meeting,” she said.
“This is why we need you here,” Kawika said.
Carolyn sighed, then leaned forward, arms on the table. Native Hawaiians whose families once lived in a particular subdistrict, or ahupua‘a, she explained, still retain rights to use the land, or ‘āina. “They can take plants and animals,” she said, “or use the land for cultural or religious purposes. That’s what S&R is talking about. The courts have upheld those rights, and in a Big Island real estate case too. So S&R is saying there’s more here than just a bulldozed heiau.”
S&R demands that County authorities immediately remove the Tanaka-Wong cabal and empower a team of Native Hawaiians to investigate the case, including Tanaka’s and Wong’s baseless persecution of Peter Pukui.
“Detective Wong has a miserable record of racial insensitivity,” declared S&R spokesperson Mele Kawena Smith. “He washed up in Hilo after being fired in Seattle, where he badly bungled a routine robbery investigation in that city’s International District and grossly offended ethnic minorities, precipitating a notorious civic crisis.”
“Detective Wong has no business leading a homicide investigation anywhere,” Mele Kawena Smith insisted. “Much less should he lead an investigation among indigenous Hawaiian peoples.”
Mele Kawena Smith pointed out that two Hawaiian residents of Waikoloa Village, Kai
