Terran Times 18 - Emerald Envisage (34 page)

His face reddened. He was a professional
luau
man. He catered parties for everything from weddings, anniversaries, the all-important First Year Baby
luau, Yakudoshis
and the let’s-impress-the-mainland-visitors
luau
. His boats were his fortune, he must have been going crazy without them.

“The
IRS
seized them. They went through my truck—”

“So you said.”

“They say they saw me in my garage at home putting something in plastic bags into it.” He shook his head, his eyes glittering with anger like shards of firelight. “They say they found traces of cocaine on money from my wallet. They say there were traces of cocaine in the back of my truck. And traces of Tylenol.”

“Tylenol is not illegal.” I made a note, hoping he couldn’t read upside down.

“Look, I may be an idiot to gamble with cops, but I am not a drug dealer and I am
not
a crook.”

 
I tapped my notepad. “Cocaine traces on money means nothing. Ninety percent of the world’s currency has traces of cocaine on it. I’ve proven that in a few criminal cases.”

He smiled. “My lawyer said you were good.”

I leaned forward. “If we’re going to proceed, I do need to know how you’ve been paying your bills.”

“No.”

“Then I can’t help you.”

The words stood between us like an angry umpire.

“Why? Why do you need to know?”

“It’s obviously an issue. The
IRS
is looking hard at you. It can remain our secret, but I don’t like nasty surprises.” I looked him right in the eye. “As you may recall…” The memory of walking into our house and finding him in bed with Andy, one of our closest friends, still ranked up there as the worst experience of my life.

He looked worried. “Jesus, McCloud. You are such a bastard.”

“Plenty of other fish in the accounting sea.”

“Not in
Honolulu
.”
No, not in Honolulu
. I worked hard to hide my giddy smile. That’s why I’d come home.

He sighed. “The goddam friggin’ money. I wish to God I’d never gotten it now.”

“Tell me about it.” I’d heard a lot of weird stories in my time. Couldn’t wait to hear this one.

He spread his hands. “My Aunty died. You remember Lucy? The one that owned the three
lei
stores down on Merchant Street?”

I did remember her and felt peculiarly desolate to know she’d passed.

“She liked you, too, Mingo.” His voice went tender for a moment. “She sold two of the stores and left me the one opposite the fruit market. It was her favorite.”

“The one where she slept upstairs in the storeroom?”

He smiled. “You remember it.”

How could I forget? He’d fucked me up there, the overwhelming smell of flowers adding to our wild, illicit fusing on his aunty’s floor as she went down the street for milk. We were so hot for each other we’d torn upstairs, his hands reaching for my more than willing ass. He was still coming inside me when she came back, barking our names.

“Yeah, I remember.”

“I do, too.” His cheeks reddened and in a whoosh of white-hot feelings, I knew it was all still there.

Shuffling papers, I waited for the sensation to subside. He was looking at me and I knew his marriage was in trouble. He might be able to make love to a man or a woman, but his real passion was men. He had made careful detours around the subject of his marriage. I waited and he blew out a warm gust of breath.

“The money. Jesus. There was a box. She left it in the basement for me. Had it there for years. She didn’t believe in banks and practically every last dime she ever made is in there. She told me to use it as needed and let me tell you, business has been down for about two years and I needed. I kept dipping into it.”

“Business was bad before all this started? How is that possible?” I couldn’t help myself. I knew the tourism industry was only getting bigger and better in the islands.

“I married a woman who lets money run through her fingers like sand…” He licked his lips again. “She’s also made enemies of some of my old vendors and I had to find new ones. Some months I didn’t make a profit because of the costs of fuels for the boats.” He slipped into a momentary funk.

“How much of this money is left?”

He grimaced. “A lot. Somehow, I’ve managed to keep it from the Feds or they would have taken it. Without my boats, I’m not the same
luau
guy. Mingo, I’m in big trouble.”

“Back to the money. If you’ve been dipping into it for what, two years? How is it that there’s still a lot left?”

“She left it all in thousand-dollar bills.”

I stared at him.
Thousand-dollar bills
? “I’ve seen a few of those.” I thought quickly. This would be an easy case to prove. “You can’t get a one thousand dollar bill without paying a fee on it, usually twenty, twenty five dollars. Any bank in town would remember you coming in and buying those. If this is how you’ve been paying off your bills…”

He nodded. “It is.”

“Where is the box now?”

“I’m not telling you. That box is my security blanket.”

“So I take it the wife doesn’t know about it?”

“Hell, no.”

“Okay.” I tapped my notebook again. “All right. I’ll look at the case files. I’ll talk to your attorney. I believe you and I will help you.”

He looked relieved. “I can pay you a retainer.”

“You bet you will. But I prefer to work through your attorney.”

“He doesn’t know about the box. Nobody does. Except you.”

“Your secret is safe with me, I promise you. We will need to talk again after I’ve read the case files. But I don’t want you to worry. That’s my job now.”

He smiled and this time, I saw it almost meet his big, dark eyes. “I’ll wait to hear from you then.”

When he stood, I went to shake his hand, but he grabbed me, giving me a huge hug. I felt his cock harden at my waist and we both parted, looking anywhere but at each other. After he left, I stared for a long time at his attorney’s business card. Benny Leonard. Kaolin really had reached back into the future for help when he needed it most. Benny had been his lover before I came along.

Benny Leonard was an unusual guy, even by island standards. He was Chinese by birth, but had been adopted by an Orthodox Jewish couple and he remained devout to the faith and close to his parents, observing the Sabbath. I checked my cell phone for the time. It was
noon
and I did not want to risk missing Benny who would be racing home well before sundown and therefore unavailable to me until Monday.

“That was fast.” He came on the phone after an impressive barricade of female voices finally let me through to him.

We chit chatted minimally. “I’d like to come by and pick up the case files, if that’s okay.”

“Sure. The office closes at three.”

“I’ll walk over, I’ll be there twenty minutes, tops.” He was about to disconnect and I cut in again. “Benny, how did Kaolin pay you the retainer?”

He paused. “Erm…cash, I think.”

“You wouldn’t happen to remember the denominations of it, would you?”

“Of course not.”

“And you wouldn’t still have it in the office, would you?”

“No. Long gone, I’m afraid.”

“Who processes your incoming cash?”

“My sister,” he admitted, sounding reluctant.

“Do you mind asking her about the retainer?”

“I’m sure she doesn’t remember.” He was talking to somebody else and it sounded like Yiddish. “Gotta go, Mingo. See you when you get here.” He ended the call. So much for my efforts at respectability. I would never be able to get anybody to call me Michael. I was Mingo. Like it or not.

Benny’s office was in the stunning Pioneer Plaza on Fort Street Mall. This historic area is home to some of the most significant legal and regal buildings in the islands and the United States as a whole.
Iolani
Palace, the only palace on American soil, the
Ali’iolani Hale
, home of the Supreme Court and the rousing statue of King
Kamehameha
the Great, all sit in emerald splendor in one of the prettiest city parks you’ll ever see. The grounds are immaculately kept and even men in business suits will sit on the grass to eat their lunch, their socks and shoes carefully lined up beside them. A big sign in the middle reads
Have Fun
. Anyplace else it would be
Keep off the Grass
.

I stood outside the Pioneer Plaza for a moment, the sound of children’s laughter raising my spirits. The wording across the top of the building read
Equal Justice Under Law
. A sobering reminder that it wasn’t always so for the gentle people of our island heritage. I took the elevator to the fifteenth floor and remained impressed even after I was granted entry through the pneumatically-sealed door. Benny came toward me, his yarmulke on his head, his prayer threads poking from under his suit coat.

We shook hands and he passed me the files in a legal box. He tapped the envelope on top. “You’ll never guess. I asked my sister and she did remember the money. It was all one thousand dollar bills. The bank said they were legit, but she photocopied them because she said they made her nervous. She’d never seen one before.”

I put the box down, unsnapped the envelope and grinned. The photocopy was dated and time stamped. I would be able to trace how old the bills were easily enough via their serial numbers.

“You look happy, Mingo.”

“I’m very happy. You just did big things for our case.” We shook hands. Two men betrayed. Two men anxious to save the man who’d thrown us both under fast moving buses.

“Shabbat Shalom, Benny.”

He nodded appreciatively. “We’ll talk on Monday. You’ll let me know about a retainer, we’ll work out our game plan. He’s due in court in two weeks.”

“No problem.”

He leaned toward me. “In case he didn’t tell you, his wife left him. For the cop who started all this.” Benny’s brows wiggled in an expressive way. “He’s gonna be on the prowl.”

I was surprised that Benny would say this. I had no intention of letting Kaolin anywhere near me…then I was aware how desolate that thought made me feel. “He come after you, did he?” I couldn’t resist the words, even though they were mean.

 
“No.” His lips curled into a strange smile. “I’m not the one that got away. I have no idea how his marriage lasted as long as it did with three of you in the bed.” I tried to protest, but he held up his hand. “The worst thing in this world is to be without the love of your life. Love is like
hula
, you know. It’s the perfect dance, the perfect form of self-expression until you make one wrong step. Sometimes you get it back and it’s this beautiful, sublime thing. Like the bad misstep never happened.” He looked at me. “Sometimes you just don’t.”

I stumbled into daylight, hefting the box back to my office. What had I done coming back here? What had I done accepting this job? What if I allowed my emotions to goof up my case for him? I was unaware of little except my breathing until I unlocked my office door. I put the box on my desk and went to the chair Kaolin had used during our meeting. I stretched a hand toward the seat and touched it. Christ. He still had a sickening hold on me.

 
I glanced out the window, wanting to be a part of the nature out there. I wanted to be outdoors where the world was a beautiful place, not alone in my office with misery, pain and corruption. I knew of a place that would allow me the freedom to relax and read and still enjoy the lush green mountains and the feel of wet grass under my feet.

My mom was home when I drove up. “What are you doing here?” she glanced in my backseat, saw the box and her expression brightened. “You got a job already?”

“Yep, Kaolin Grace.”

“Oh…he called here…” Her voice trailed away. “You know his mama’s plenty worried about that boy.”
Boy
. I had to grin. Kaolin and I were both thirty-five, but we were still our mamas’ boys. “I gotta run, sugar. I’m late for my shift.”

My mom worked in the dialysis unit at Queen’s Hospital. It was her calling in life to care for the truly sick and her loving patience had poured over into her kids. I gave her a hug and she drove off in her old BMW with the rainbow hand-painted license plate the cops never stopped her for and I headed to the backyard with my bento box lunch. I worked through the afternoon, into the evening, certain there was something in the files I’d missed, some clue that would help me unravel the case.

Around eight o’clock, as I was heading back to my apartment, my phone rang. It was Kaolin.

“Meet me for a drink.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” My hand gripped the wheel. Sweat began beading on my forehead and the back of my neck.

“But I want to talk to you, discuss my case.”

“We can do that over coffee on Monday.”

He chuckled. “I don’t want to wait until Monday.”

“You’re being watched you know. You shouldn’t be meeting other men for cocktails. It might affect your case.”