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Authors: Charles Knief

BOOK: Diamond Head
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“Local boys?”
“The report we got was that they were minding their own business when a man matching your description went berserk and beat the hell out of them. You wouldn't know anything about any of that, would you?”
“No, ma'am.”
“I didn't think so.”
“They didn't have records of arrests and convictions, did they? These local boys?”
“You mean, did they have a history of car theft? Stuff like that?”
“Yeah. Stuff like that.”
“They have arrest records that go back to the fourth grade. And yes, they specialized in stolen cars. Are you psychic, Mr. Caine?”
“Just a lucky guess, Detective Alapai,” I said.
 
 
I
left the coffee shop and drove directly back to the marina. From what I'd learned the file warranted another reading.
The sun fell behind the Waianae Mountains as I headed home, a bright glare shining directly into the eyes. Smoky haze hovered over the far cane fields as the harvest continued. In a few years the final curtain will be dropped on the plantation era in Hawaii. Lanai shut down its pineapple fields a few years ago, that quiet island converting to expensive hotels, golf courses and luxury homes. Every year Oahu loses more and more agricultural acreage to suburbia, while Dole and C&H flee to the cheap land and cheaper labor of the Philippines, far away from labor unions, EPA and OSHA.
I'm not lamenting a lost way of life. From what I understand the plantation existence was not a good one. But transitions are always hard on those going through them. Displacement is never agreeable. Hawaii will be forever changed. But then it has changed every year since Captain Cook saw mountain peaks rising over the horizon and thought he'd better take a look. I'd like to think we've made improvements, but that lie is exposed each time I anchor
Duchess
in a pristine cove where development has yet to reach, where coconut palms line pristine white
beaches and the only sound is the gentle roaring of the distant surf far out on the reef.
I found a parking place close to the dock and unlocked my boat. Her electronic detection system told me
Duchess
had been undisturbed during my absence. I went below and retrieved the file from its hiding place and set up a bank of cushions on the aft deck against the cabin facing the sun. An opened bottle of Kendall-Jackson provided me with a chilled glass of chardonnay. I set up the file and read through it again, sipping the wine and letting the Kona winds riffle my hair. Pearl Harbor's surface was luminous from the slanting rays of the sun.
Finding another body in this mess was an unpleasant surprise. There were questions, too, about the people I was stalking, but they had to slide for the moment. I didn't yet know enough to know what those questions were, let alone know how to answer them. I contented myself with the file.
Detective Alapai had mentioned the man Mary MacGruder lived with in Haleiwa. She'd hinted he might be the starting point for my search, and that she knew something she wanted me to confirm. But I'd come across him before. He'd been in the file and in my conversation with the cocktail waitress, and from Chawlie. Thompson was almost certainly the man Louise had seen with Mary and the other girl. A big man, she had said. Bigger than me. Broader. A freak.
Katherine Alapai knew something I didn't and she wanted independent corroboration. Chawlie wanted information about him, too, and had sent his little woman-toy Jasmine to become a spy in the enemy camp. He'd also recruited me. Did Chawlie know something about Thompson that he wasn't telling me? Of course. That was Chawlie's style. Even if it were easier to be direct, Chawlie would take the interesting course.
All lines of logical progression crossed at Thompson. It wasn't a stretch to conclude that he had something to do with Mary's murder and possibly something to do with Souza's. I
needed an approach. Everyone has a vulnerability, a handle to use to get to them. Once I found that, access was easy. Even the president of the United States will pick up the telephone if you have the right number. It all comes down to information. Finding that handle would be easier if the guy was dirty, and both Chawlie and Katherine Alapai were sure that he was.
What was a girl that reminded people of Princess Grace doing living with a man like Thompson? People attract for the strangest of reasons, but this pairing made Fay Wray and King Kong seem like Ozzie and Harriet. What had Mary MacGruder been getting out of this man? Drugs? I'd heard of coke whores before who'd sell their bodies and their souls for the white powder and there was evidence that she might have had a problem with the stuff. Sex? With the face and figure she possessed she could have had any man, if it were only a man she wanted.
I reminded myself why I was involved. Max had given me this mission to find her murderer and to protect her father. I'd become so focused in tracking down her killers I'd nearly overlooked the fact that protecting her reputation, and her father's, was the more important of the two goals. There were some nasty stories floating around about her but she was dead, a murder victim, and those stories would taper off in time unless there was some hard evidence to back them up, or unless they surfaced again in a murder trial. That's what I was afraid I'd find at the end of the trail. That is what Max feared when he'd handed me this quest.
The best way to find out seemed to be through Thompson.
There was little data in the police notes about the man. There was just his name and a short statement he'd given the police, saying he had not seen Mary for a month, that he did not monitor her whereabouts. Other than his short statement there were few facts about him. He listed his occupation as an entertainment producer. That could mean anything from a
producer of feature-length motion pictures to a street-hustling pimp.
Forensic evidence put another man at the scene, an Asian. My own conclusion was that more than one man had to be involved. Did Thompson have a partner? And if so, was he a left-handed, AB-positive Asian? Laughter bubbled from deep in my chest. All I needed now was a severe British fellow in a deerstalker, waving his meerschaum, sagely telling me it was all quite elementary, my dear Caine.
This was beyond my experience. My training had been to plan and perform high-risk, high-reward operations using a small team of similarly trained specialists, each of us capable of extreme violence. Get in, get done and get out. Be gone before the smoke cleared and the dust settled. As a civilian my jobs tended to be similar but were more of a protective nature, preventing others from achieving what my own teams could have done. Imagine the worst scenario and plan for it. Protect the executive and his family from harm, make certain his stay in the Islands would be a pleasant one. With that kind of problem I was in my element. But in this arena I was the amateur, stalking the grizzled gladiator, armed only with my wooden sword.
I closed the file and locked it away again. I washed out the glass in the galley and put on my Nikes for my evening run.
This time I ran the bike path all the way to Pearl City. It's a ten-mile round trip from my slip in the marina to the Monkey Bar and back. The sun had already gone down when I returned. It was pitch black under the canopy of kiawe trees near the end of the run and I felt a little uneasy padding through there. If someone had ill feelings toward me this would be where they would have the best advantage. But this path was the only access to the base on foot. There was no way around it. Thinking that I was retracing Souza's path, I felt patches of ice from my neck to my shoulder blades. I increased my pace
until I reached the well-lighted parking lot near the Marina Restaurant.
An empty
Duchess
welcomed me home, creaking a lonely tune through her rigging. I'd managed to convince myself that Thompson was somehow connected to Mary's murder and I was committed to finding the leverage to reach him, regardless of what it took.
After changing, I spent a quiet hour on deck smoking a Cuban Romeo y Julietta and thinking of a way to gain access, reflecting on what I'd learned about Thompson from Louise, from Katherine Alapai, and from Chawlie.
It took about that long to reach a decision. Sometimes the direct approach is the best one. In this case it looked like the only one.
 
 
A
t nine o'clock the next morning I was sitting at a sidewalk cafe in the shadow of the Pacific Tower waiting for CAT Productions, Inc., to begin its business day. All I'd managed to deduce so far was that “CAT” was Carter Allen Thompson's initials.
I'd already visited CAT's floor twice and found the entire floor locked off the elevator. For the past twenty minutes I'd entertained myself in the open-air pastry shop with a morning paper, a cup of coffee and a bear claw. The paper told me things I didn't want to know about people for whom I cared little or nothing. Someone in the Middle East had done something unforgivable. Congress had done something unprintable. The president had done something unpardonable. A hurricane was thrashing Guam and a tropical storm was forming off the coast of South America, gaining strength as it pushed its way into the Pacific. It wasn't a problem yet, but it was causing concern to the local weather people who were paid to be concerned about such things.
I was dressed in my best Hawaiian business sincere, in a raw silk sport coat, a white Oxford-cloth shirt with an open collar and tropical-weight wool trousers. Both the jacket and the pants were natural colored, offsetting my deep-water tan. I
carried an aluminum Haliburton briefcase. It was a prop designed to make me look like a successful businessman from Kahala. The briefcase was filled with Sunday's
Advertiser.
By nine-thirty most of the office workers had been busy for over an hour. I'd read all there was to read in the paper and I didn't want another cup of coffee. I walked around the block, pausing outside the Honolulu Book Shop to look in the window. The new Stephen Hawking book seemed interesting and I went in for a sample read. By the time I'd made my purchase I decided it was time that even pornographers should be at their desks, beginning a busy day of photographing blondes with their legs open, or whatever they did that passed as work. I walked back to the elevator lobby on the harbor side of the building.
Two approaches to Thompson were possible. Neither was foolproof, but the first was the weaker. It had the advantage of not having to work for any length of time, just long enough to get me in the door. I wasn't worried about the receptionist, Chawlie's girl, who had been briefed, but I had to be in the presence of the man before I decided to try the second scheme.
The second scheme, the big con, had been approved by Chawlie. I'd gone back to Chinatown last night to seek his approval and advice. After I'd sketched out my approach, he offered refinements of his own.
Chawlie told me more about his son Garrick, the good boy who liked blondes and gambling but was not effective with either. This time he told me the truth—or part of the truth. I was never sure with Chawlie. Garrick had been working for Thompson until this week, when Chawlie's people swept him off the streets and got him into hiding. Now he wanted me to pretend to sell the boy to Thompson, to use him as a Judas goat to get Thompson out in the open. I thought Chawlie's plan risky, but he insisted. It was his son, after all, and he was confident he had the resources to protect him.
My first approach was my cover story to get in to see Thompson. I was Harold Jenkins, senior insurance adjuster for the Fidelity Casualty & Life Insurance Company of Seattle, and I was looking into the death of one Mary MacGruder. I was fussy, anal-retentive and committed to trivia. I was the bureaucrat personified. I even had a business card. Several of them. I expected Mr. Thompson to be suspicious of a cold call from Mr. Jenkins, but the receptionist would cover by calling the company and checking my bona fides. It's a real company and Mr. Jenkins is a highly regarded employee. I'd met him once and he gave me a handful of his cards, and for just this kind of occasion I decided to keep them.
Once in Thompson's presence I'd play it by ear. My aim was to get into his confidence. The police would have played it too cute, would have tried too hard to look like criminals to get inside. Once that lie is exposed, the rest of the charade would soon tumble. I decided to play it straight once I was inside his guard, abandon the little con for the bigger one.
Maybe Chawlie was right. Maybe I am a crook.
I rode an empty elevator nonstop to the thirtieth floor. This time the elevator doors opened into a reception room that could only be described as Japanese Modern Severe. Hardwood floors were offset by stark, nearly naked white walls. What little furniture there was was black lacquered enamel. Very chic. Very expensive. A teak and ebony wood representation of a black cat entwining itself around a pole dominated the far wall, CAT Productions' logo. I got it. The cat was acting sensually, the pole a phallic symbol. That cat was no ordinary cat. It was a pussy cat.
I recognized the girl behind the desk immediately, but covered it. There was amusement in her eyes, telling me she was in on the joke.
“Hello,” she said. “How may I help you?” She made it sound as if it would be surprising indeed if I might actually have some
legitimate business with the company. And her English had suddenly improved. She had a British accent that bespoke upper-class origins and the best preparatory schools. Chawlie, you old dog, I thought, bringing in an accomplished actress for the part. She was so good it was difficult to believe it was the same woman as the little China Girl whore who had visited my boat. But those were the same eyes, eyes a man could fall into and drown.
“Good morning. My name is Harold Jenkins from the Fidelity Casualty and Life Insurance Company of Seattle. Would Mr. Thompson be in, by any chance?” I handed her one of Jenkins's business cards, letting her see the others behind it.
“You don't have an appointment, do you?” she knew her lines and performed them flawlessly.
“No. Sorry I didn't call first. I need to speak with Mr. Thompson about his former tenant, Mary MacGruder. I don't mean to inconvenience Mr. Thompson in any way, but if I could speak with him it would help to clear up some final details. I'd like to close the file.” I managed to include both a conspiratorial and a slightly suggestive tone to the last sentence.
“Please wait here, Mr. Jenkins,” said Jasmine, the joy of the game unmistakable. She winked at me as she got up and pranced back to the inner office with the enthusiasm of a young colt. There was no trace of her other role. I suddenly worried for her. She was enjoying it too much. So much so that it showed. Chawlie would have to rein her in. People were dying. She was a little too headstrong to play this game with those kinds of risks.
“Mr. Thompson can see you right now but he asked me to tell you that it can only be for a few minutes. He is a very busy man.” Jasmine was standing at the door, holding it slightly ajar.
It was not surprising Thompson would see me, if only for a few minutes. Anything even vaguely related to the death of
Mary MacGruder would be of interest to him. He either had some sentiments about the girl, or he had some involvement and would want to see if he could learn what other people knew about the investigation. The insurance con had been the perfect approach because it was both innocuous and believable. I hoped it wouldn't be wasted. There would not be another chance.
“Thank you,” I said.
She stepped out of the way as I went through the door, giving me a wide berth.
Carter Allen Thompson stood behind a marble slab that served as a desk, allowing me to get the full sense of the man. He was big, and he was tall, a bodybuilder with a lot of free weights and chemical muscle development in his past. Dark, with an almost perfect machine tan. In his midthirties, he seemed bursting with health and power, yet there was little life in him. His eyes were small and dark, devoid of expression and just a little too close together for the broad brown face. I could read nothing in those eyes. He had a square jaw filled with square white teeth. Everything about him was blunt. I got the impression of a chunk of lava.
Dai-sho
hung on the wall behind him, a matched pair of samurai swords that would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars if they were authentic.
“Mr. Jenkins.” Thompson's voice was surprisingly high and thin for a man his size, and unmistakably Australian. He extended his hand to me and I shook it, recognizing the calluses I felt as the hand of a serious
karate-ka,
evidence of thousands of hours of work at the craft. Combined with the weightlifting, I understood that I was in the presence of a man who worshiped at the altar of the body. On another level my mind began planning how I could make this work against him.
“As my secretary told you I only have a couple of minutes, but I want to do anything I can to help. Sit down, please.” He
pointed me toward an overstuffed leather chair in front of the desk, one of a pair.
I decided to abandon my pretense and go for the big lie.
“My name isn't Jenkins and I have nothing to do with insurance,” I said, watching his response. When none came I continued. “My name is John Caine. I needed to see you and I thought that pretending to be an insurance agent would allow me access to you. It worked.” I studied his expression as I was talking and was astounded to see absolutely no trace of a reaction. His expression could have been carved from stone.
“You have a young man named Garrick Choy working for you,” I continued, launching into the carefully written script. “He's into a bookie and a loan shark and he can't get them off his back. He's trying to pay the loan shark by skimming off your take of an operation he's overseeing for you in Chinatown. The word is that he's been skimming for months, and he's into you for over a quarter million dollars so far. I know he's disappeared. And I know where to find him.”
The bluntness of my statement, made without preamble, shook Thompson. He was not good enough to hide it when it finally hit home.
“What do you want?” He had taken the mental leap over the fact that I was not here to talk about Mary MacGruder.
“Parity. Check out what I told you about Choy. It's golden. Call me. Then we'll talk.” I gave him a white business card containing only my name and cellular telephone number and got up to leave.
“Wait. How do you know about Choy?”
“Think of me kindly. You won't find him on the streets. Call me when you've audited your books.”
I wasn't sure but I thought I saw him reaching for the telephone on his desk as I left his office.
Jasmine had one foot on her chair and was inspecting her toenails when I came through the reception room. For a second
time in several days I was treated to the sight of lovely thighs. She smiled and winked at me. Harold Jenkins would have chastely averted his gaze, but John Caine looked her straight in the eye and winked back.

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