By ten o’clock I was on my way to Aloha Security, the company where Ronnie had worked. His boss, a haole named Pierre Lewin, was a reformed hippie with a French accent and brown hair in a ponytail halfway down his back. His office was filled with posters, half of them from rock concerts and the other half advertising computer software.
I gave him the same story, that I’d been asked to look into Ronnie’s death, and he didn’t question me. “Ronnie was a gifted hacker,” Lewin said. “You know what that is?”
“Somebody who breaks into computer systems?”
Lewin nodded. “And what we do here is consult with folks who don’t want anyone to break into their systems. Ronnie’s job was to do his best to exploit all the weaknesses in customer systems. Then we’d come up with ways to block those holes, and he’d test again. We have a lot of very big clients-none of whom I can mention because of security issues.”
“That’s fine. So Ronnie could probably break into any system he wanted to?” Even the one tabulating the scores at a surfing competition, I wanted to add.
“Anyone other than one of our established clients,” he said, leaning forward.
“That’s a pretty dangerous skill, isn’t it?”
He laughed. “We’re not talking about Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, dangling from a wire into somebody’s computer bank. Ronnie mostly worked from his apartment in Hale’iwa.”
“You ever have the idea that he was breaking into other systems-ones you weren’t paying him to test?”
“Our employees have to undergo rigorous background checks. They’re bonded, and they know there are dire consequences for anybody who circumvents the law.”
Yeah, right, I was thinking. We talked some more about computer security and hacking, and then I left. I wondered how seriously Ronnie had taken those consequences. Clearly, he hadn’t recognized how bad they might be.
I decided I’d swing past the Prince Kuhio, the hotel on Waikiki where Lucie’s mother worked, and see if I could talk to her. I knew the Kuhio well; it was only a couple of blocks from my apartment, so I stopped back at my place for a few minutes, to read through the file on Lucie one more time.
The investigating detectives had talked to Mrs. Zamora, and to her son, Frankie. Neither of them had any idea why someone would want to kill Lucie-she was such a sweet, kind girl. She went to church every Sunday, her mother said.
Knowing what Ronnie Chang had told his parents about Lucie-that she was his fiancee-I wanted to know if she had told her mother about the engagement. She hadn’t, I discovered. Mrs. Zamora, a petite, trim woman in a gray and white uniform, was able to meet me on her break, in a garden just off the hotel’s lobby.
She’d never even heard Ronnie’s name. The investigating detectives hadn’t mentioned him or his murder, and Lucie had never told her mother they were engaged. “You’re sure my Lucie knew him?”
I nodded. “They had friends in common. And he spoke of her to his parents.”
“He was a good boy, this Ronnie?”
“I think so,” I said. “He had a good job. Their friends say he took Lucie out, and bought her gifts.”
“She no tell me anything after she move to Hale’iwa,” Mrs. Zamora said sadly. “She only say what she know I want to hear. Yes, Mama, I go to church. Yes, Mama, I marry nice Filipino boy. Yes, Mama, I make you proud of me.” Tears welled up in the corners of her eyes, and she dabbed at them with a tissue. “She give me money so her brother can go to college. Every week, she send me an envelope with a hundred dollars, cash money. I tell her no send cash through the mail, but my Lucie, she so honest. She say no one steal the money. She say she make lots of money soon, she buy me a house, let me stop work.”
I told Mrs. Zamora that I would do my best to find out who killed her daughter, and she smiled sadly. “My Lucie with the angels now. She sit at Jesus’s right hand.”
Frank Talk
I headed back north after that, driving straight to The Next Wave. I ordered an extra-large raspberry mocha, turned on my laptop and started going through my notes. I had spoken to a lot of people in a short time, and I needed to make some connections between them. Reviewing my conversations with Victor Texeira, the Changs, Will Wong, Michel Lewin and Mrs. Zamora, I began to get a clearer picture of the three surfers.
Lucie Zamora was the connection between Mike Pratt and Ronnie Chang. All three needed money; Mike and Lucie for surfing, Ronnie for dating Lucie. Somehow, Mexico, the Mexpipe competition, and Ronnie’s hacking skills had to be connected.
I had to learn more about Lucie. But how? I turned to the Internet, and began sifting through hundreds of Zamoras. I had just about given up, though I still had Lucie’s name on the screen when a skinny twenty-something guy with a goofy little patch of goatee on his chin flopped down next to me. “Hey, dude, you knew Lucie?” he asked.
My sensors went on alert. I shrugged nonchalantly. “A little. You?”
“Used to date her. Man, I am wiped.” He took a long drink of his cappuccino. “Need a caffeine fix something mad.”
“I hear you,” I said, holding up my own cup.
He took a deep sip, and then sighed. “You look really familiar. Were you at Mexpipe?”
I shook my head. “Never been.” I stuck out my hand. “Kimo.”
“Frank.” He looked at me again. “Pipeline?”
I nodded. “Just came up here two weeks ago, but I’ve been there pretty much every day.”
“Cool.”
“How was Mexpipe?” I asked.
“Pretty radical. I got some awesome waves. Didn’t finish in the money but I met Lucie. Man, she was a great chick.” I noticed his hangdog expression. “We were really grooving together, then we got back here and she got shot.”
“Shot?” I asked. “How bad?”
“Like dead, man.”
“Where did this happen?” I asked. “Up here in Hale’iwa?”
He nodded. “Right outside Club Zinc, about a month ago. She was wearing this pink dress that she loved, and it made her look so hot that all the guys were hitting on her. So I got mad and walked out. And somebody shot her as she was leaving. Probably to come look for me.”
I stared but he kept on going. “I keep thinking like, maybe if I had been with her, it wouldn’t have happened, you know? Like somehow it was my fault. But she had her secrets, you know?” He sighed and started tearing his coffee cup into small pieces. “I guess we all do.”
He lapsed into silence, just as I was hoping to hear what kind of secrets Lucie Zamora had. But I’ve interrogated a lot of people, and I had a feeling that if I waited, Frank would have more to say. “It’s tough,” I said. “I mean, you just start to get to know somebody, and then she’s gone. Makes you think.”
“Totally. I mean, I had a feeling she was into something funny.” He stopped tearing and leaned toward me. “For a chick who supposedly came from nothing, and who wasn’t earning anything on the circuit, she lived pretty large.”
“Surfing’s an expensive hobby.”
“Tell me about it. But this chick, she had all these designer dresses, and expensive jewelry and all. I mean, she was fine. And when we got back from Mexpipe, the first place she went was this store, Butterfly, to buy some more stuff.”
So like Mike and Ronnie, Lucie had come back from Mexico with money. Frank lapsed back into silence, so I said, “Where did you think she got the money?”
He shrugged. “She didn’t like to give out information. I just figured she had some kind of scam going. But I didn’t want to know what it was. I just want to surf, man. I’m not some kind of detective or anything. She wanted the bling bling, that’s okay by me. I’m just bummed it got her killed.”
“You think that’s what it was? A dangerous taste for the high life?”
“And doing the things you gotta do to keep that taste satisfied.” Frank crumpled the last shreds of his coffee cup. “Gotta go,” he said. “I tend bar over at the Drainpipe. Come by sometime, dude.”