“Why didn’t he get in touch with me sooner? Why wait so long?”
“I believe he was actually in contact with your father, at least occasionally. Your mother may be able to verify that, but maybe not. Now that your father is dead, Uncle Chin would like to continue the relationship with you.”
“And you’re the matchmaker?” he asked.
I nodded. “Like I said, he’s an old friend of my family, probably my father’s best friend. He was embarrassed to come see you himself.”
“He ought to be.” Derek thought for a minute. “This old man, is he rich? Powerful?”
“I haven’t seen his bankbook. But he seems to live well.”
“Other children?”
“None.”
He stroked his chin. “So I might stand to inherit something.”
I stood up. “I can see I read you wrong. I thought maybe the loss of your father might motivate you to seek a connection with somebody else, with your grandfather. Uncle Chin is a good man, and I don’t want to see him hurt.”
“Hold on, hold on,” Derek said petulantly. “How can you deny an old man’s wish to know his grandson? We Chinese value family highly, you know. Why don’t you give me his phone number and I’ll give him a call?”
I thought that was probably the first time Derek Pang had used “we” and “Chinese” in the same sentence. “I’ll tell him about our meeting and he can decide if he wants to contact you,” I said. “And anyway, you know his name, you’ve met him before. If you really want to talk to him you can track him down.”
I turned and walked out, bumping right into Wayne Gallagher in the reception area. His hand immediately reached for my crotch, and I felt myself stiffen in his grasp. “I know what you like,” Wayne whispered into my ear.
I smiled at him and managed to pull away. “See you soon, Detective,” he called as I walked back toward the front door.
As I walked back to my apartment, I wondered what I’d expected. I’d already decided Derek was a shit and that he might have murdered Evan Gonsalves; why did I think he’d react differently to news of Uncle Chin?
By the time I got home it was almost four and I decided to go surfing for a while. After all, I might as well take advantage of this enforced leisure time, with pay. After my suspension hearing, I might be just another washed-up cop looking for security work. Maybe I’d stop by the Rod and Reel and see Gunter, see if they needed extra guards at the condo where he worked. There might be fringe benefits, if we worked the same shift.
It was overcast and blustery, but still warm. The palm trees along Kalakaua Avenue bent in the wind, and thick clouds clustered over the tops of the rocky Ko‘olau Mountains. A piece of newspaper rolled over and over down the brick pavement, past the games tables, where two elderly Chinese men huddled over a game of chess. The beach was sparsely populated, just the occasional tourist on hotel towels, struggling to get a tan before going back to the mainland.
I took my big board with me and dragged it out into the surf past the orange lifeguard station, where there were flags posted warning against the heavy wind. The surf was cresting at four to six feet, high for Waikiki, and I plunged into the water with enthusiasm. At least, I thought, as I ducked and paddled my way through the breakers, I was getting some good surfing in, at the North Shore, at Makapu’u Point, and now here.
I forgot everything that waited for me back on shore and concentrated on the waves, and it was, as always, a magnificent release. Every time I thought of Wayne Gallagher’s hand on my butt, or Derek’s greediness, or all the dead or the living people I’d hurt, I willed myself into focusing on the surf.
The rough water gave me a beating, knocking me down over and over, but the struggle was exhilarating. By the time I was finished I ached in a dozen places, but they were good aches, the result of pushing myself to my limits. I finally gave up and dragged my board through the surf and up over the sand. As I was waiting for the light to change so I could cross Kalakaua, I looked Ewa and saw Akoni coming towards me.
“Hey, brah,” I said as he approached. “Am I allowed to talk to you in public?”
“It’s okay. I’m on a mission from Yumuri. You free for happy hour?”
“Give me a chance to shower and change,” I said. “What’s up?”
“I’ll tell you at the Canoe Club, all right?”
“Sure.” He turned back to the station and I crossed Kalakaua. I wondered what was up, but couldn’t figure it out. I took a quick shower and pulled on a pair of jeans and a polo shirt, and walked over to the Canoe Club, where I found Akoni at the bar, sipping slowly on a draft beer.
I stepped up next to him, ordered a draft for myself, and said, “So what’s up?”
He nodded toward the outdoor patio. “We’ll get a table.”
“Not at happy hour,” I said, as the bartender slid my beer across the bar and I dropped a couple of singles on the wood. “Look around.”
Inside the bar was crowded, but outside you could hardly move. We struggled through the crowd on the porch, and went down the stairs to the beach level. Businessmen in aloha shirts talked in small clusters, some smoking cigarettes, a few with fat cigars. Yuppies in polo shirts cracked wise with each other and made eyes at their female counterparts, sizing up opportunities for later in the evening. Small clusters of office friends sat at the tables comparing war stories or gossiping about absent coworkers.
Akoni led the way down toward the beach, and the farther we got from the lights and music the less crowded it was. Finally we found a sheltered spot and pulled two lounge chairs together. “So what gives?” I asked as we sat down.
“We had a meeting today,” he said. “Preliminary for your hearing. Me, Yumuri, Hiram Lin, and your girlfriend from the DA’s office.”
“I’m not sure she’s exactly my girlfriend anymore.”
“We went over every line in the file on Tommy Pang’s murder and Evan Gonsalves’s suicide,” he said. Akoni smiled at me. “They didn’t find a single thing wrong beyond your first mistake.”
“Not calling the body in under my shield number?”
He nodded. “And even Yumuri had to concede that wasn’t a big deal.”
“So?”
“So the ADA wouldn’t accept it. She kept saying there had to be something else in the file we could hang you on.”
“I haven’t treated her very well,” I said. “I should have called her from the very start and told her what was going on. But I wasn’t sure myself for a long time.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if she was the one who called the media on you. Just something she said. She mixed it up pretty good with old Hiram, too. I was surprised to see the guy had a backbone. He told her it was his mission to root out bad cops. You believe that, his mission? But he also said it was his mission to protect the good ones. And as far as he could see, you were a good one.”
I nodded. “Nice of him.”
“You bet. Even Yumuri had to admit we’d done everything by the book, and that the worst he could see doing was placing a mark on your sheet.”
“So the hearing’s off? I’ve got my job back?”
Akoni looked down at his glass of beer, which was almost empty. “There’s still the gay thing.” He looked back up at me. “Yumuri doesn’t want you back. He wants you to resign and then you can avoid all the scandal of the hearing. Your record will be clean. You can get a job somewhere else, maybe even join a force on the mainland.”
“But you just said they had no grounds to dismiss me. Why should I resign?”
He looked sheepish. “Actually I wasn’t supposed to tell you they didn’t have grounds,” he said. “Yumuri wanted me to come out here, as your friend, and give you some kind of snow job, get you to back off before the hearing. I couldn’t do that.”