“I’m…I’m sorry,” Braden said. “It’s just, when I saw where we were going, I didn’t know who we’d meet there.”
“Well, you were right to be wary. We met him,” I said, and as Braden’s eyes popped, I clarified, ‘I mean, we saw Kainoa. He didn’t see us and wound up leaving with a load of lava rock about five minutes before you returned.”
“A tremendously lucky circumstance,” my father said.
“Well, it’s my beiju,” Uncle Yoshitsune said. “A lucky year.”
But not for everyone. As I showed Braden the way home, I thought about how the first thing I would do, once I got back to civilization, would be make Kainoa pay for what he’d done.
IT WASN’T THAT easy. Later that evening, sitting in the Kapolei police station with my father, Uncle Yosh, and Michael, a Kapolei police detective called Bill Vang told us he was interested, but needed much more to arrest Kainoa. They even pointed out that I hadn’t positively identified him at the scene, just on the basis of the truck and Courtney and Yosh’s physical description.
“Can’t you just put out a call to all police on the island to look out for his truck, and once they stop it, check under the tarps?”
“It’s five hours since you saw him. He probably already unloaded it at whatever construction site he’s working at,” said Lieutenant Vang. “And if there’s rock dust in his truck’s payload, well, that’s no big deal. On the Leeward Side, there’s dust from rock and ashes from fire and red earth everywhere you look and touch. Of course that payload’s gonna be dirty. My truck’s dirty, too.”
“What about a wire?” Michael suggested.
“Huh?” Vang responded.
“I could confront Kainoa, wearing a wire, and get him to admit he was the one who ordered Braden to work.”
“You think he’s going to talk about all of this to a haole? He’s either gonna think you’re a cop, or stupid. Better for the kid to face him, and get the direct instructions to hush up, or whatever. Yeah, tell you what, Braden wears a wire, and it turns out there is truth to this business about Kainoa Stevens’ sideline, I’ll talk to the arson investigator about it.”
“It’s too dangerous for him,” Michael answered shortly, as Uncle Yosh, my father and I all nodded in agreement. He continued, ‘Braden was too scared to come with us to see you this evening. How’s he going to be effective with Kainoa and successfully hide the fact he’s recording their conversation? You need someone with experience doing that kind of thing.”
“I could do it,” I volunteered, because the thought had come to me a few minutes earlier. “It makes perfect sense. Kainoa considers me a friend. He gave me his card, and wrote down his phone number another time. Obviously, he’ll meet me if I call him.”
“Rei, that’s nice of you to want to help your cousin, but like Mike said, there’s a lot to this kind of operation.” Vang sounded patronizing.
“I not only know how to wear a wire, I can set up a listening station,” I protested. “Tell them, Michael!”
In a few minutes, Michael had laid out my few accomplishments at OCI in a way that left my father looking dazed and Uncle Yosh quite approving.
“You willing to do something, then, day after tomorrow maybe?” Vang asked.
“Tomorrow,” Michael said firmly. “It has to be tomorrow. I’m leaving the day after that, and I want to be part of this operation.”
BUT BACK AT Pineapple Plantation that evening, I learned that my job was harder than I anticipated. My father was distraught and had to be reassured constantly that the police would be waiting moments away, ready to take over at the slightest indication of trouble. He enlisted Tom and Uncle Hiroshi in the effort to get me to change my mind, but I knew what I had to do.
“I couldn’t do squat for our family, in regards to the cottage property,” I said. “But you know, this is more important. How can I not try to save their child?”
After a while I left Michael to talk to them, and I went into my bedroom, where after fifteen minutes of scavenging through my messy underwear drawer came up with the card with Kainoa’s various phone numbers. I rang every number, and either got no response, or a chipper voicemail message: ‘It’s Kainoa. Leave it at the beep, brah.”
He might be fast asleep in bed, but I doubted it. I left messages on the phones that allowed me the chance. My request was simple-and, I hoped, intriguingly vague. I wanted him to call me back because I wanted to see him before leaving the island.
Michael retreated to the Hale Koa by midnight and we all went to bed, but I barely slept, turning over thoughts of how the operation would work and how I could best lead Kainoa into an incriminating conversation-that is, if I could locate him. In the wee hours of the morning, I remembered the second time Kainoa had given me a phone number; it was on a takeout menu, tucked into the pocket of some running shorts. I located the shorts lying neat, clean and folded, with an empty pocket, in my drawers. As soon as I judged it late enough in the morning not to disturb anyone, I went upstairs to the washing machine and dryer, and found the takeout menu crumpled in the wastebasket there. Tom must have tossed it when he was washing the clothes during my illness, I thought, looking with gratitude at the number. Maybe, just maybe, this would work.
I waited until seven to call, and it was answered by a young woman.
“Who’s calling?” she demanded after I asked for Kainoa Stevens.
“This is Rei, a friend. I had a question about a building project.” I decided I had to say something, in case I was speaking with a girlfriend or wife.
“I’m Kainoa’s cousin, Carrie. I could take a message for him.”
“Oh, are you the one who makes the crocheted bikinis?”
“Yah. Why?”
“Your work is amazing.”
“For real?” She sounded warmer. “Kainoa left for work around six this morning. Probably won’t be back till dinner. He works a lot now, you know, because he lost everything in the fire.”
“Yes, it’s terrible about Aloha Morning, not to mention Charisse. Could you tell Kainoa to call me?” I gave both my local number and the cell phone.
“I’ll do that, but like I said, he isn’t really a building expert. He helps my brother-in-law Gerry with labor sometimes, is all.”
“Oh, do you think I should talk to Gerry, then-is he based in Waikiki?”
“Gerry doesn’t have a lot of time for talk. And no, he doesn’t live in Waikiki. He’s lives in Lanikai and got an office in Chinatown. Unless he’s on site, that’s where you’ll find him”
“Lanikai the island?” I was trying to recall the geography of the Hawaiian chain.
“No, not Lanai! Lanikai is a neighborhood near Kailua. Where you from?”
“California. And what was Gerry’s last name again?” I asked, although she’d never said it in the first place.
“Liang. They’re Chinese. My sister Randy married a Chinese guy called Chin, and his sister Millie married Gerry. That’s the connection.”
It was almost too much to follow, but there was one thing I had to verify. “Is that Liang with an I?”
“Yep. How did you guess?”
THE WIRE AND microphone were undetectable, once I’d gotten it all inside the strapless bra I was wearing under a sundress with a tightly smocked bodice. I had friendly, hands-on assistance from Michael in a police station ladies’ room with Vang and another police officer, Jose Fujioka, standing outside. I also had a tiny speaker in my ear that would permit all of them to secretly communicate with me in the duration of the time I was talking with Kainoa. But the first step was tracking him down, and since he still wasn’t answering his cell phone, it seemed the likeliest place to start was with Gerald Liang.
Lanikai, the town that Carrie had told me about, was on the windward side of the island-the green, picture-postcard Hawaii. I drove Michael’s Sebring by myself through Kailua, a charming small town with huge old trees hanging over streets lined with simple, mostly 1950s houses; Lanikai was smaller, a neighborhood, really. As I drove along, Vang and the others were in a police van two blocks behind, but never seemed far, keeping up a steady travelogue in my ear. Apparently Lanikai had once been as unpretentious as Kailua, but now, the rich had torn down the old bungalows and replaced them with the elegant mansions that sat cheek-to-jowl. Almost every Lanikai home was surrounded by a wall and had a fancy gate, many of them crafted out of copper, just like the Kikuchi mansion back at Kainani. The wall around Gerald Liang’s house had been built beautifully out of irregularly shaped green, gold and gray rocks. Lieutenant Vang confirmed my suspicion that this was a lava rock wall. I parked, watching their Escalade go by and take a left on the next street, where they’d wait for me.