The next morning, Thursday, I stopped off at Harry’s apartment, where he had downloaded new copies of the photos of Derek and Wayne for me from the Yale website and printed them on his color printer. He wanted to come to Wailupe with me, but he had a class at UH to teach.
“I have to give a pop quiz this morning, which I already know is a bad idea. Then I’ll have twenty-five quizzes to correct.”
“What you need to do,” I said, “is give multiple choice tests. Then you just make a guide with the right answers on it, and stick it over the papers and then check, check, check, you’re done.”
“How’d you know that?”
“Wahine I dated once, teacher from Wisconsin,” I said. “She told me.”
“You dated a vahine from Visconsin?” he asked, giving both words the Hawaiian pronunciation.
I laughed and headed out the H1 toward Wailupe with the pictures and the Polaroids I’d taken of Derek’s and Wayne’s cars. I parked in Terri’s driveway and knocked on her door. Though it was still early, the sun shone strongly in a cloudless sky, and it was already getting hot.
Danny answered. “Kimo!” He put his arms around my leg.
Terri came up behind him. “I guess you can see he missed you. He kept asking me when you were coming back.” She sighed. “I still can’t get him to go back to school. Maybe next week.”
I leaned down and picked him up. “You missed me, huh? I wish I could be here more, pal, but I’ve got lots of stuff to do. I’ll come and see you as often as I can, okay?”
He nodded. I put him down and explained to Terri what I was going to do. “Why don’t I come with you?” she asked. “I know the neighbors, and they’re more likely to talk to you if I’m around.”
“I don’t know. They may feel awkward, seeing you, thinking Evan killed himself.”
“You’re not a cop anymore, Kimo. You don’t have any authority to go poking around out here. If I’m with you, nobody will complain.”
She made a quick phone call and arranged for Danny to go over to the next door neighbor’s. Unfortunately, the woman had been away the previous week, and couldn’t help us. Danny argued a little but I promised we would go surfing again, and he relented.
It was a mixed neighborhood, some stay-at-home moms and some working ones, and some older couples as well. We started to the left of Terri’s house and worked our way down the street, up and down driveways, past manicured lawns, basketball hoops, and sport fishing boats up on trailers, until we came to the Kalaniana’ole Highway. Then we crossed the street and started working our way back down. We didn’t have much luck until we came to an older house across from hers and two down.
An elderly woman answered the door. “Hello, Mrs. Ianello,” Terri said. “This is my friend Kimo. I wonder if we could ask you a couple of questions about last Friday?”
“Oh, dear,” she said. “I saw all the police cars. I’m so sorry for you, dear.”
“Thank you,” Terri said, looking at the ground for a minute. She had perfected her response over the last week, driven by necessity and years of training to be a Clark, with all that entailed.
“Were you home that morning, ma’am?” I asked.
“I was,” Mrs. Ianello said. “Why don’t you come inside. I have some iced tea.”
“That would be nice,” Terri said. As the sun climbed the day had gotten hotter, and for a change there were no trade winds sweeping down her street from the ocean.
Mrs. Ianello was tiny and mouse-like, with short brown hair going gray and quick movements. As we walked into her living room I saw a comfortable arm chair positioned with a nice view of the front window. A good sign. She had a pair of small, expensive binoculars on the table next to the chair. An even better sign.
We sat in the living room and she brought us both tall glasses of iced tea with paper-thin lemon slices and long-handled spoons. Her furniture was very formal, some kind of French style, I think, tassels on the lampshades and fancy handles on drawers. “You mentioned you saw the police cars at the Gonsalves house that morning, ma’am,” I said, after taking a long sip of my tea. “Did you see anything happen before that?”
Terri and I sat side by side on the sofa, and Mrs. Ianello faced us from her armchair, sitting forward, her hands on her knees. She thought for a minute. “Let’s see, Thursday was garbage day. I always watch to make sure they take everything away.” She looked over at Terri. “You know, sometimes they leave a bag behind, or a bag comes open and they don’t pick everything up.”
Terri nodded encouragingly. “They probably came around seven,” Mrs. Ianello said. “Then I watched to make sure all the kids got on the school bus okay.” This time she looked at me. “You read about terrible things that happen to little children. I just want to do my part to help.”
“It’s very good of you,” I said.
She nodded approvingly. “I think so.” She put her index finger up to her mouth, then took it away. “Mrs. Yamanaka’s mother came to baby-sit while she went to the grocery. That was about ten. She came back around eleven-thirty, and I remember she had to drive very slowly down the street because there was a big black car in front of her cruising down the street slow, like they were looking for house numbers.”
A big black car, I thought. That sounded promising. “Mrs. Yamanaka has a tendency to drive a little too fast,” Mrs. Ianello said. “After all, this isn’t the Indianapolis 500 around here.”
I wanted her to get on with it, but it was clear there was no rushing her. She said, “The big black car stopped down the street, at the corner of Wailupe Circle. I thought it was funny that they parked there and then walked back up to your house, dear. I wondered why they didn’t just park in your driveway?”
“You said they, ma’am,” I said. “Could you describe the people who got out of the car?”
“Certainly. A tall, broad-shouldered man wearing shorts, with sandy blond hair, and a shorter man, Asian I think from his build, with black hair. He was dressed very nicely, like for business. I remember thinking maybe the Asian man was the boss and the other man was like a bodyguard.”
I could see Terri getting more and more upset. If I’d have been her, I’d have wanted to scream something like “You saw the men who killed my husband and you didn’t do anything?” but she seemed to be struggling for control.
“They went up to the front door, and then they went inside,” Mrs. Ianello continued. “I saw them leave about half an hour later, and then I went in and fixed myself some lunch, and then the next thing that happened was when several police cars pulled up.” She peered at me. “Are you a policeman?”
“I’m a detective, ma’am.”
“I thought so,” she said, nodding. “I thought I recognized you. I may be getting old but I still have my eyesight.”
And high-powered binoculars, I thought. I brought out the pictures of Wayne’s car, and of Wayne and Derek. “I don’t know much about cars,” she said. “I suppose it could have been this one. But I couldn’t be sure.”
She was even less help with the photos of Wayne and Derek. “I’m sorry, I didn’t really see their faces, just their general build. Without seeing them in person, I couldn’t really tell.” She looked at me somewhat eagerly. “Do you want me to come down to your station for a lineup?”
“We probably will, ma’am,” I said. “But we have more information to gather. We’ll be in touch with you.” We thanked Mrs. Ianello for the tea and stood up. It was a good start, I thought, and it placed Derek and Wayne at the scene. It wasn’t enough to make the case, but it was the first step.
No one else was home until we came to Mrs. Yamanaka, who was busy with twin girls, two years old. Her house was a dramatic change from Mrs. Ianello’s, very spare and Japanese, paper-thin shoji-screens and low cushions on the floor. Terri and I slipped off our shoes at the front door and stepped down into a sunken living room.
Terri thankfully sat on the floor and played with the twins so that Mrs. Yamanaka could concentrate on my questions. She was a Nisei, first generation American, and she periodically threw Japanese comments at the little girls as they played.
She always shopped on Thursdays, she said, because that was the day her mother could come and stay with the babies. “Do you remember anything unusual when you came home?” I asked. “Strange cars in the neighborhood, strangers walking around?”
“This is a quiet area. Sometimes we get tourists looking for a way to the beach. But usually not.” She thought. “I remember I had bought ice cream,” she said, “And I was afraid it was going to melt, because it was such a hot day. So I was hurrying to get home, and just when I got here there was a car going so slowly in front of me I nearly hit it. I was annoyed. I almost blew my horn, but I only had a block to go and I was afraid they would go even slower.”
“Did you see the car stop anywhere?”
She shook her head. “As soon as I got home I started carrying in the groceries. And you know, the twins, they make a fuss, so I couldn’t pay attention to anything else.”
“You’ve been very helpful,” I said, only telling a small lie. She had indeed corroborated Mrs. Ianello’s story, which was important.
No one else in the neighborhood had seen anything. It was eleven-thirty by then, and I had to hurry to meet Lui at noon downtown. “Danny will be disappointed he missed you again,” Terri said.
“You tell him we’ll have another picnic. Soon.”
I had to drive hell-for-leather to make it into downtown in time. My brother, the big executive, values his time, and refuses to wait more than five minutes for anyone. Anyone, that is, with the exception of his wife and our mother. Once, about six years ago, our parents were supposed to take him out to dinner to celebrate his promotion to assistant station manager. Our father got tied up on a project, and our parents were about twenty minutes late to meet him. He’d already left and gone on to something else. Between his mother and his wife, I think he got blistered enough to burn off a complete layer of skin. So he’s a little more patient with them.
I’ve seen Lui at the office. He’s totally in control, and people literally cower when he yells. He can reduce a secretary or a cameraman to tears or inarticulate rage and then turn on his heel like nothing has happened. Yet his wife Liliha rules their home. To a great degree, Haoa’s wife Tatiana is the same way. It made me wonder, as I dodged and darted through downtown traffic, if I would break the pattern. Would I end up with a man like my mother, who would control my life? Or would I choose a man like my father, who would be content to sit back and hand me the reins?
Or, and here was a revolutionary suggestion, maybe I could find a partner. Somebody who’d share the duties of the drive through life with me. Unfortunately, I didn’t think it was really a matter of conscious choice. We don’t have much control over who attracts us. The rules of attraction, it seems, are stacked against individual choice. So I could be attracted to Tim, to Gunter and to Wayne Gallagher at the same time, for different reasons, and though I could fight against those attractions I couldn’t, fundamentally, do anything to change them.
I made it. Lui and I approached the coffee shop from different directions at just the same time. From a slight distance, I could watch him as he came up to me. He’s the shortest of the three of us, the one with the most pronounced Asian features. For this, I think, he was always our maternal grandfather’s favorite.
Our mother’s father lived out beyond Pearl City in an old shack, and refused to move even when my father could have built him a new house. He was crotchety and strong-willed, and Haoa and I were always a little frightened of him. Lui, as the first grandson, had a different relationship. They would get together and talk in low tones, and in his mutual rejection of us was the only unity I knew with Haoa as a child.
Lui was also an impeccable dresser. Very Brooks Brothers, always perfectly pressed. I didn’t think I’d seen him wear an aloha shirt since his teens. He even wore ties on the weekends, because, as he said, you never know who you might meet and the impression you might need to make.
I knew the impression I would make. I was wearing cargo shorts with big pockets and a purple polo shirt, with black and brown deck shoes and no socks. Usually Lui stopped a few feet away from me and shook his head in disdain at my appearance. Today, though, he surprised me by coming right up to me and hugging me.
I hugged him back. It was strange. He and Haoa were so different from each other, and from me, and yet they were my brothers, and I loved them deeply and fiercely, with a love I only recognized in surprise.
We ordered bentos, Japanese-style box lunches, and chatted about his family, then sat down to eat. “So what can I do for you?” Lui asked. “You need money?”
I shook my head. “A lawyer, then? Somebody to represent you?”
“I don’t need a lawyer, and I don’t need any money. I do need something, though.”
I told him what I thought had happened to Evan Gonsalves. “I need a confession out of this. I’m going to try and get one out of Wayne Gallagher tomorrow night. But I need a wire, and I can’t go to the police because I’m suspended, and I’m supposed to stay out of this case, and besides, Lieutenant Yumuri would never believe me.”
“We might have some of the equipment at the station.”
“Here’s the list Harry gave me,” I said. “He can put it all together.”
Lui looked at the list. I expected he’d have to pass it on to one of his technicians, but he said, “We have this, and this, and this, three of these, I can get you the wire, okay. We have all of this. But where are you going to put it? You’ll need some kind of panel truck.” Before I could speak he said, “I can’t lend you one of the station’s trucks. They’re too visible.” He thought for a minute. “You can use one of Haoa’s trucks. I’ll call him and work it out.”
“Haoa may not want to get into this. He doesn’t exactly approve of what’s going on with me at the moment.”
“Haoa will do what I tell him to do,” Lui said. I looked at him. “He’s your brother, too, Kimo. He’ll want to help you.”
“If you say so.”
“Give me Harry’s phone number. I’ll call him when I have everything together.”
I gave him Harry’s phone and cell numbers and then said, “I appreciate this, Lui. I don’t quite know how it happened, but all of a sudden I’m dragging more and more people into my problems.”
“We’re your family,” he said. “That’s what we’re here for.”