“Yah. How you know that?”
I was going to get nowhere, if I didn’t reveal some of my hand. “I know about the rocks you’ve been stockpiling in my family’s old cottage.”
“That what Braden told you?” Kainoa’s voice remained calm, but his expression was deadly.
“No, I drove out and saw the rocks myself. Braden didn’t say anything; he was too scared, said the boss would kill him if he gave him away.”
“He said that about me?” Kainoa’s voice cracked. “What a liar-and you, too. I thought you were here out of compassion, or some bullshit thing like that.”
“Kainoa, just tell me what happened. You could save my cousin, if you’d just admit you sent him to get the rocks that morning.”
“But I didn’t! I mean, not exactly.”
I wondered if ‘not exactly’ was going to be enough to satisfy the cops-somehow, I doubted it. I tried again. “It was a case of bad timing, wasn’t it?”
“Who’s the girl?” A new voice cut through my concentration, and I saw Kainoa was no longer focused on me, but somebody else.
I turned and saw a short, scowling Asian man in his early forties. He wore a baggy green and white print aloha shirt and black shorts that revealed solid, muscular legs with tattoos like Kainoa had. But while Kainoa’s tattoos were geometric Polynesian designs, Liang’s were quite different; one leg was marked by the kanji characters for moon, power, and aggression, and the other bore the emblem of a Sino-Japanese mafia group, the Night Runners, which I recognized from a book of Michael’s.
“My name is Rei Shimura,” I said. “Are you Gerald Liang?”
“See if you can get him on the record,” Vang whispered into my ear.
No way, I said to myself. After reading the fine print on Liang’s legs, I intended to separate from him as fast as possible.
“Yes, I’m Mr. Liang. Has Kainoa been talking about his friends?”
“Not at all, Mr. Liang,” Kainoa said hastily.
My mind was working overtime as the men exchanged tense looks. The cottage with the rocks piled up was still rented by the Liangs, according to Josiah Pierce. Maybe my original assumption that Kainoa had seized a forgotten property for his own purposes was wrong. Gerald Liang might have known about the cottage’s uses for storage of illegally gathered lava rock-in fact, he might have been the one to decide to use the abandoned cottage to warehouse rock.
Belatedly, I realized both men were looking at me. I said, “I was just catching up with Kainoa before I left the island.”
“You know how the mainland chicks are, Gerry.”
I glanced at Kainoa, who seemed to be trying to help with my cover. Why? Was Gerald Liang that dangerous? Yes, I thought, and perhaps he, and not Kainoa, was the actual big boss that Braden feared.
“You work for me a long time, Kainoa. You should understand by now to keep your social life off this jobsite.” Now Liang was scowling at Kainoa.
“Got it, boss. You go, babe. But first, this.” Kainoa grabbed me at an awkward angle for a hug that filled my nose filled with his musky body scent and my ear with his hot breath. As he kissed my mouth, and then moved to my ear, he whispered one word: ‘Careful.”
And as I pulled apart from him, shocked by both the intimate touch and the warning, my earpiece dislodged. It bounced off my shoulder and landed on the floor with a soft click. Kainoa glanced at the earpiece lying between us, but, instead of picking up the tiny, peach-colored piece of plastic, he moved his foot over it. His eyes held mine for a second, as if to intensify his warning.
32
WITHOUT MY EARPIECE, I had no idea what Vang and Fujioka and even Michael might be advising me to do. I could only hope they’d shut up, because if voices started coming from the floor, it would surely alert Gerald Liang.
My instinct told me to leave. Fortunately, Gerald Liang seemed to think the same, because he grabbed me by my right elbow and started walking me to the door.
“How kind of you to walk me out, Mr. Liang,” I said as we passed through the papered-over door into the grimy vestibule I’d entered only five minutes earlier.
Hawaii was a place of courtesy, so I thought my words would ease things, but Liang reached for my other arm. Instinctively, I brought one elbow up to free myself, hitting his nose on the way.
“I’m sorry,” I lied, turning toward the grimy glass door that was the only barrier between the building and the street. I was doing my best not to sound scared in front of Gerald Liang.
“You’re not one of Kainoa’s girls.”
I looked toward the brown-papered door and considered raising my voice to call for help. But I doubted Kainoa would be suicidal enough to battle his gang-member boss.
“I heard you, when I came into the room the back way.” Liang’s voice was silky, and dangerous. “You’re trying to incriminate me.”
“What do you mean?” Resolutely, I turned away from the door. Now that it appeared he might say something worthy of the wire, I couldn’t duck out.
“Well, you may not know that the penalty for taking lava rock is maybe a thousand bucks-chump change. I also gotta let you know that kind of charge would never be made.”
“Why?”
“The Pierces and I go way back.”
“Really? I just know one of them-Josiah Pierce, Junior. Is he the one who’s your pal?”
“What’s your interest in me?” His breath, so close to my face I could feel its warmth, smelled of tobacco and booze.
I shrugged, as if none of this was rattling me. “It’s not you; it’s that my teenage cousin Braden was charged with arson, when we both know he was only out in the mountains gathering lava rock for you.”
He shook his head. “You’re not related to that boy. In fact, if you’re not a mainlander, I’m not Chinese.”
“I’m a mainlander, yes, but my relatives live here. My cousin is Braden Shimura, the kid who’s going to be charged with setting the fire, and everything bad that came out of it. Imagine what you’d feel like if your own child was in the wrong place doing a part- time job at the order of adults, and wound up getting railroaded for arson.”
“My kid don’t work. I won’t let him; he’s on honor roll at Punahou.” He shook his head at me. “So, who you thinking should be blamed for the fire?”
Remembering the wire on me, I decided to go for broke, as Uncle Yoshitsune might say. “Well, I suppose some people might think the fire was ordered by you.”
“I go back with the Pierces, remember.” He tapped my forehead with a hard finger. “Why would I set fire to their property?”
“The same reason you’d take rocks from it.”
He shook his head. “You know nothing about this island, the way things work.”
“Tell me then.”
“Nobody gives Gerry Liang orders. But I’m warning you, Rei Shimura, I got a closet in a room upstairs for people who talk too much. It’s kind of like a holding site until two of my boys can swing by, and you know, drop you off at a work site where we might be laying cement…”
“I don’t want to go upstairs,” I said for the benefit of my colleagues, who were feeling awfully distant at that moment. “I have a lunch appointment a few blocks downtown, and I need to get on the road.”
“Three o’clock?” he scoffed. “This is Honolulu. Nobody eats lunch at three.”
“Early dinner?” My back was against the glass door, but unfortunately it wasn’t the kind that simply pushed out. There was no easy escape.
“Get moving.” He slapped my face then, so hard that I was too stunned for a few seconds to do anything. But then, I maneuvered my free hand behind my back to turn the doorknob. To my horror, it didn’t move.
He’d locked me in.
“Did you know the door’s locked?” I asked, for the benefit of my hidden listeners, all the while striving to sound nonchalant.