Frank Kimaio waited at the lip of the kīpuka. Relieved, Kawika followed him down into the forest, an island of vegetation in a sea of stone. They sat in the shade of native trees, an overstory of koa and others. Kimaio shushed Kawika so they could hear the hidden songbirds.
“You know about the avian malaria, right?” Kimaio asked. “Wiped out the native birds except at altitudes too high for the mosquito, like this place. That’s why we hear the birds. Honeycreepers, probably.”
“Can’t see ’em, though.”
“No.” Kimaio laughed. “They survive by keeping out of sight. Like most things Hawaiian, yeah?” Kimaio’s voice had acquired a Hawaiian lilt. He looked older than Kawika expected, still fit but sinewy and almost gaunt. His aged appearance reminded Kawika of Jarvis’s often-stated belief: “If you retire, you die.”
Kimaio opened a backpack full of convenience-store sandwiches, chips, soft drinks. “No tablecloth,” Kimaio joked. “But I got paper napkins. And lots of lunch.”
They ate, and Kawika felt reassured in Kimaio’s company, even though Kimaio claimed he couldn’t help much. “I don’t know about Ralph in Hawaii,” he said. “I’m an expert on Ralph in Washington, up to a point.”
“Okay,” said Kawika. “That’s what I’d really like to know about.”
“Then I’ll start with Fortunato 101,” Kimaio began. “Italian name, obviously. Great-grandpa came from Italy, caught gold fever, went to Alaska. Didn’t find gold but found a Native woman—Athabascan, not an Aleut. Ralph made a point of that.”
“Fortunato was part Native American?”
“Part Native Alaskan, yeah. One-eighth. It’s nothing, except it mattered later.”
“If it mattered later, it’s not nothing,” Kawika observed.
“Good point,” Kimaio admitted. “Okay, so bride and groom moved down to Washington, homesteaded in the San Juan Islands.”
“I know the place. I grew up in Seattle mostly.”
“Well, good. So you can imagine the isolation of those islands back then. Great-grandpa and his Native bride probably wanted isolation, an interracial marriage in those days. Ralph’s granddad was born there. Roman Fortunato. Roman fought in World War I, survived, got back to the islands, and became a crook.”
“What kind of crook?”
“Small-time. Smuggling during Prohibition, rum-running from Canada. Small boats, fast boats at night—no lights. That sort of thing. But he killed a man once.”
“Killed a man?”
“Yeah. Guy called him a half-breed. Roman would have hanged, but an appeals court reduced the murder conviction to involuntary manslaughter. Racial insults are ‘fighting words,’ the court said. Use racial insults, people will fight back. Still, Roman did time. He got out, Prohibition was over, so he made money grading roads, public contract things. Probably padded and fiddled every contract he ever had. That’s what Ralph learned, growing up.”
“Fortunato grew up with his grandfather?”
“Pretty much. Seems Ralph’s daddy couldn’t stand Roman. Got married, had a kid, then he and his wife split for the mainland—Tacoma, I think. The kid was Ralph, who got left behind with grandpa. So Fortunato was raised by a crook with a bad temper.”
“And inherited that somehow?” Kawika asked. Kimaio smiled, then shrugged.
“Okay, fast forward,” Kimaio went on. “Ralph’s working with his granddad, only now he’s doing construction: foundations, driveways, docks, putting in septic tanks. Yuppies are beginning to come to the San Juans, building summer homes. Ralph makes money off ’em. Sells some land, pours some concrete.”
“I’m starting to see where this is going,” Kawika said.
“I’m sure you are,” said Kimaio. “Ralph learned the game, but the San Juans—that’s small-stakes poker. No big real estate developments, just one house at a time. So when granddad dies, in the 1980s, Ralph moves to the Methow Valley. You know the Methow?
“I visited a few times, like most Seattle folks.”
“Okay. So Ralph leaves the islands, takes a boat to the mainland, and then it’s Highway 20 all the way.”
Highway 20 to the Methow, Highway 19 to the Mauna Lani, Kawika thought. North Cascades to the Queen K.
“If you’ve been to the Methow, you probably know about the ski resort that never got built?”
“Heard about it,” Kawika replied. “Big controversy, yeah?”
“Yup. Well, Ralph gets a job with the ski resort company. They’d been trying for years to get permits, hoped to make it another Sun Valley. They put Ralph in charge of heavy equipment: bulldozers, earth movers. No buildings going up yet; the resort’s still on hold. But he’s down in the dirt doing infrastructure, running a crew. And he marries a local woman—his first wife. She came from pioneers. Big break for Ralph because now he’s a local by marriage. Drinking with the boys, starting to get ideas. Eventually he decides to develop a resort himself. Which is how our paths happen to cross.”
“You investigated him for fraud, right? And destruction of the wintering shelter?”
“Right,” Kimaio said. “Here’s what happened. First, Ralph gets an option on a big spread—Rattlesnake Ranch, about fifteen hundred acres. He doesn’t need his own ski area. His idea is to piggyback on the other resort. Folks buy a place at Rattlesnake Ranch, they get wilderness, they get killer mountain and valley views, and they’re minutes from the slopes—he hopes.”
“Sounds familiar,” Kawika said. “At KKL they’re minutes from the beach.”
Kimaio smiled. “That’s our Ralphie. Of course, he changes the name to Fawn Ridge. Cute, eh? There actually is a ridge, and there are deer on it.”
“So where’s the fraud?” Kawika asked.
“Well, first, Ralph paid a fancy price for the land—to a buddy. Raises eyebrows locally, once folks learn about it. Ralph just explains, hey, money’s rolling into the Methow; wait till you see what the Microsoft crowd will pay. That just about killed Methow land sales for a few years, the locals believing Ralph. They put property on the market at ridiculous prices. No one had Ralph’s advantage, though. Because secretly, Ralph and his buddy split the proceeds
