“You do that last night?”
“Sure, just like always.” A light bulb seemed to go on over Fred’s head. “Say, there were a lot of police out there last night, when I was closing up. You have anything to do with that?”
“They were out there because your Mr. Pang’s body was out there.”
“Shit,” Fred said. “He’s dead?”
I nodded. “You have any idea who might have wanted him dead?”
Fred shook his head. “Not a clue. I said maybe five words to the guy on a daily basis, usually just a greeting.” He grabbed a rag and started wiping down the bar. “So who’s gonna take over here?” he asked. “Not that peckerwood kid of his?”
“Peckerwood?” I asked. “That some kind of tree?”
“Where I come from it means jerk,” Fred said. “That pretty much sums up Derek.”
“So Derek comes around here?”
“With his boyfriend. Usually when his dad’s not here.”
I started taking notes. “Got a description?”
“Derek’s a kid, just out of college. Chinese, about five-seven, hundred fifty pounds soaking wet. Black hair down to his shoulders. Sometimes he wears it pulled back into a ponytail, he looks like a gangster. Beautiful clothes-silk shirts, linen pants. Italian shoes. Guy has a thing for Italian shoes. Skinny. Moves like a dancer. Cute butt.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “So we get him in a lineup, we gotta turn him around so you can see his butt?”
Fred smirked. “You asked, I told.”
“Know the boyfriend’s name?”
“Wayne Gallagher. Six-four, I think. Maybe two fifty, maybe a little more or less. Hard to judge at that size. Curly hair, kind of halfway between blond and brown, cut just to the neck. He’s much looser than Derek. You know, sometimes he does the Ralph Lauren polo look, oxford cloth button down shirts and khakis, but sometimes he wears big aloha shirts and tight jeans. Caucasian, in case the name didn’t tell you that. Big hands, big feet. Dick the size of a beer can.”
I put my pen down. “I’m not even going to ask how you know.”
Fred held up his hand. “I was pissing next to the guy one night. ’Course I had to look.”
“’Course. Anything else?”
Fred shrugged again, and the party of boy toys called for him.
“One last thing,” I said. “Anybody else work back in the office there?”
“Arleen,” he said. “Secretary.” He looked at his watch. “She’s still there, at least another few minutes.”
I let him go, and went back to Akoni, where I told him almost everything I’d heard, leaving out the part about Derek’s butt and his boyfriend’s dick.
I drained the last of my beer. “You want to head back and say hello to this Arleen?”
“Why not,” Akoni said. “Though I got to tell you, Arleen’s a guy in drag, you do all the talking.”
BORN TO RUN
The waiter told us that the door into the office was locked and visitors had to go around to the alley side. The Rod and Reel Club occupied a square at the corner of Kuhio Avenue and Launiu Street. A group of tall trees sat at the corner, behind a wooden fence, and shaded a large open patio. The bar itself wrapped around the patio as an L, with one side facing Kuhio and the other Launiu. Roll-down grilles sealed off the bar area from the patio when the club was closed.
An alley ran parallel to Kuhio Avenue; it was narrow but cars often parallel-parked back there. The waiter pointed down the hallway where I’d seen guys coming and going the night before and said there was a door back there that led to the office, but it was locked, and we’d have to go out to Launiu and then up the alley to the first door on the left.
At the entrance to the alley I stopped. “I heard the guy dragging the body as I was standing in the shadows over there, by the patio entrance.” I remembered the giraffe following me out the door, making eye contact with him and shaking my head. “He’d just dumped the body over there, by that kiawe tree, when I came around the corner. I saw him run up to the Cherokee, which was parallel-parked up there, facing this way. He jumped in, and zoom down the alley toward me.”
“Where were you standing then?”
I pointed to the left about ten feet. “Under those trees over there. It wasn’t until the Cherokee had passed me that I walked over to the kiawe and saw Tommy Pang’s body.”
We walked down the alley to the office door, and I buzzed the intercom. “Who is it?” a woman’s voice said.
We identified ourselves, and the door buzzed. We walked right into an open reception area, where a young Japanese woman stood behind a desk. The room was slightly dingy and not very attractive-nothing on the walls, the furniture older, kind of crappy. A little boy, about five, sat on the floor in the corner, coloring. On the desk there was a little nameplate that read Arleen Nakamura. “Can I help you?”
“Are you Arleen?” I asked.
“Uh huh. What’s this about?”
I told her Tommy Pang had been killed, and she said, “Oh, wow. I wondered why he wasn’t answering his cell phone, why he didn’t call me.”
“What’s your job here?”
“I’m Mr. Pang’s personal assistant. I answer the phones, order the supplies, you know, that kind of thing.” She sat down in her chair and motioned me to her visitor’s chair. Akoni leaned up against the wall.
“What kind of business did Mr. Pang do besides run the bar?”
She held her hands out, palms up, in a gesture of defeat. “I have no idea,” she said. “Nobody ever comes by. It’s like totally boring, but my little boy goes to school around the corner, and I can bring him over here when he’s done.” She motioned to the boy in the corner, still absorbed in his coloring book. “So mostly I surf the internet and talk on the phone.”
Just then the phone rang and she answered it. I noticed she just said hello. Then she quickly switched into Japanese. It was her mother, so that was probably a natural kind of thing, but I always think it’s rude to switch languages in front of someone. Makes it sound like you want to hide something.
Because my family is so mixed up, I don’t look too much like anything, so she probably figured I didn’t speak Japanese. But then, she didn’t know that my mother’s maiden name was Kitamura. I couldn’t help listening in, though my Japanese was a little rusty and I missed some nuances. She sounded almost gleeful in explaining that Tommy was dead, which I thought was ghoulish. After a couple of minutes she switched back to English and said, “Listen, Mom, I have to go. The cops are still here. I’ll call you later.”
She smiled at me as she hung up. “My mother.”
She toyed with the rings on her fingers, and I noticed there was no wedding band, though there was a picture of her with her little boy in a silver frame on her desk. At first I’d thought she was barely twenty-one, but looking closer I saw the fine lines that had started around her mouth and eyes, and refined my estimate upward at least five years.
“Kind of strange to have a secretary when there’s no business going on,” I said.
“Oh, he was doing business. Faxes and phone calls and deliveries, but he never let me see anything. The fax is in there-” she motioned to his office “-And he always locks it when he leaves.”
“Was it locked this morning?”
“Yup. And before you ask, I don’t have the key, so you’ll need a locksmith.”
“How about that other office?” Akoni motioned to the open door.
“We used to have a bar manager, but he quit a couple of weeks ago and moved back to the mainland. I was supposed to put an ad in, but Mr. Pang’s son told me not to. I think he wanted the job for his boyfriend.”
“Tell us about them,” I said. “The son’s name is Derek, right?”
“Yeah. He’s a pretty nice guy. He’s opening an art gallery, so I’ve been helping him with paperwork, like licenses and stuff.” She leaned over to me, lowered her voice. “I don’t think his father knows he’s gay.”
Suddenly she sat back. “Guess I don’t have to whisper that anymore.”