The waiter told us that the door into the office was locked and visitors had to go around to the alley side. The Rod and Reel Club occupied a square at the corner of Kuhio Avenue and Launiu Street. A group of tall trees sat at the corner, behind a wooden fence, and shaded a large open patio. The bar itself wrapped around the patio as an L, with one side facing Kuhio and the other Launiu. Roll-down grilles sealed off the bar area from the patio when the club was closed.
An alley ran parallel to Kuhio Avenue; it was narrow but cars often parallel-parked back there. The waiter pointed down the hallway where I’d seen guys coming and going the night before and said there was a door back there that led to the office, but it was locked, and we’d have to go out to Launiu and then up the alley to the first door on the left.
At the entrance to the alley I stopped. “I heard the guy dragging the body as I was standing in the shadows over there, by the patio entrance.” I remembered the giraffe following me out the door, making eye contact with him and shaking my head. “He’d just dumped the body over there, by that kiawe tree, when I came around the corner. I saw him run up to the Cherokee, which was parallel-parked up there, facing this way. He jumped in, and zoom down the alley toward me.”
“Where were you standing then?”
I pointed to the left about ten feet. “Under those trees over there. It wasn’t until the Cherokee had passed me that I walked over to the kiawe and saw Tommy Pang’s body.”
We walked down the alley to the office door, and I buzzed the intercom. “Who is it?” a woman’s voice said.
We identified ourselves, and the door buzzed. We walked right into an open reception area, where a young Japanese woman stood behind a desk. The room was slightly dingy and not very attractive-nothing on the walls, the furniture older, kind of crappy. A little boy, about five, sat on the floor in the corner, coloring. On the desk there was a little nameplate that read Arleen Nakamura. “Can I help you?”
“Are you Arleen?” I asked.
“Uh huh. What’s this about?”
I told her Tommy Pang had been killed, and she said, “Oh, wow. I wondered why he wasn’t answering his cell phone, why he didn’t call me.”
“What’s your job here?”
“I’m Mr. Pang’s personal assistant. I answer the phones, order the supplies, you know, that kind of thing.” She sat down in her chair and motioned me to her visitor’s chair. Akoni leaned up against the wall.
“What kind of business did Mr. Pang do besides run the bar?”
She held her hands out, palms up, in a gesture of defeat. “I have no idea,” she said. “Nobody ever comes by. It’s like totally boring, but my little boy goes to school around the corner, and I can bring him over here when he’s done.” She motioned to the boy in the corner, still absorbed in his coloring book. “So mostly I surf the internet and talk on the phone.”
Just then the phone rang and she answered it. I noticed she just said hello. Then she quickly switched into Japanese. It was her mother, so that was probably a natural kind of thing, but I always think it’s rude to switch languages in front of someone. Makes it sound like you want to hide something.
Because my family is so mixed up, I don’t look too much like anything, so she probably figured I didn’t speak Japanese. But then, she didn’t know that my mother’s maiden name was Kitamura. I couldn’t help listening in, though my Japanese was a little rusty and I missed some nuances. She sounded almost gleeful in explaining that Tommy was dead, which I thought was ghoulish. After a couple of minutes she switched back to English and said, “Listen, Mom, I have to go. The cops are still here. I’ll call you later.”
She smiled at me as she hung up. “My mother.”
She toyed with the rings on her fingers, and I noticed there was no wedding band, though there was a picture of her with her little boy in a silver frame on her desk. At first I’d thought she was barely twenty-one, but looking closer I saw the fine lines that had started around her mouth and eyes, and refined my estimate upward at least five years.
“Kind of strange to have a secretary when there’s no business going on,” I said.
“Oh, he was doing business. Faxes and phone calls and deliveries, but he never let me see anything. The fax is in there-” she motioned to his office “-And he always locks it when he leaves.”
“Was it locked this morning?”
“Yup. And before you ask, I don’t have the key, so you’ll need a locksmith.”
“How about that other office?” Akoni motioned to the open door.
“We used to have a bar manager, but he quit a couple of weeks ago and moved back to the mainland. I was supposed to put an ad in, but Mr. Pang’s son told me not to. I think he wanted the job for his boyfriend.”
“Tell us about them,” I said. “The son’s name is Derek, right?”
“Yeah. He’s a pretty nice guy. He’s opening an art gallery, so I’ve been helping him with paperwork, like licenses and stuff.” She leaned over to me, lowered her voice. “I don’t think his father knows he’s gay.”
Suddenly she sat back. “Guess I don’t have to whisper that anymore.”
“How about the boyfriend. What’s his name?”
“Wayne. I don’t know him that well. He’s only come by a couple of times. He’s really big, though, doesn’t look gay at all.”
I wondered if Arleen thought I looked gay, but I didn’t say anything. “Mr. Pang didn’t have a watch, wallet or keys on him when he was found,” Akoni said, stepping into the breach. “Did he usually?”
“Oh, yeah, he had this gold Rolex, and a thick gold and diamond bracelet, and a diamond pinky ring. He told me once he was born in April, it was his birthstone, the diamond.”
Akoni took notes. “And he always carried a wallet, a money clip, and a key ring,” Arleen continued. “Oh yeah, and his Palm Pilot.”
“Really,” I said. “You know what kind of stuff he kept on there?”
“Not a clue.” The phone rang, and Arleen said, “Mom, I’ll talk to you tonight, okay? The police are still here.”
“I don’t want to hold you up much longer,” I said, looking at the clock. It was almost five, beyond the end of our shift, and I figured Arleen would be closing up soon anyway. “We’ll have to get a locksmith in and come back tomorrow.”
“Don’t you need a search warrant?”
“Not if we have the approval of the person in control of the office,” I said. “That would be you, right?” She nodded. “And you want to do what you can to help us find out who killed Mr. Pang, don’t you?”
“Sure.” She thought for a minute. “I come in around nine, after I drop my son off at school. Then I go out at 2:30 to pick him up and get some lunch, but I’m usually back by three.”
Akoni and I walked out into the alley. “I’ll call the locksmith first thing tomorrow,” I said. “That’s about all we can do. You think the same person who bashed him in the head stole his jewelry?”
“Awful big coincidence if it wasn’t,” Akoni said. “E, you see any jewelry first time you see him?”
I tried to remember but couldn’t.
“How long you think the body was alone?”
“Ten, maybe fifteen minutes.”
“Enough time for somebody to see him, think he’s drunk, and roll him.” Akoni shook his head.
I didn’t think it was possible for me to feel worse about what I’d done, but ways just seemed to keep cropping up.
I didn’t feel like going home yet, so I got my truck, put an old Springsteen CD on and just started to drive. I ended up way up the Pali Highway, driving fast and singing along with Bruce. I wanted to wipe everything out of my brain, give it a chance to cool down. I kept thinking about my confession to Akoni at the mall, trying to figure out what it meant for my future. It seemed like it had happened so long before, but it had really only been hours.
Eventually I pulled off at a switchback that gave me a view of the city and the Pacific below, and I got out of the truck. It was almost dusk and Waikiki glowed against the dark ocean. It seemed to me like some fantastic golden city, the place where all my dreams could come true, if only they didn’t shut me out of it.
There was a rustling in the brush across the road from me, and somewhere an owl hooted. I stood there for a while longer, people in cars passing on their way home to their families, me just standing there outside the city, wondering.
I didn’t realize how exhausted I was until I pulled up in front of my apartment building. Then it hit me, and I barely made it up the stairs and into bed before I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.