House of the Sun (17 page)
He didn't come over immediately—that wouldn't have been chill, of course, and chill is all. He stretched it out for a good fifteen minutes before he jandered on over to glare at me from closer range. I glanced meaningfully at the chair across from me, but he didn't take it. The silence stretched, then he grunted, "Maletina say you wanna talk."
"Kia
ora,
Te Purewa," I responded. "What are you drinking?"
He hesitated, then he shrugged his burly shoulders. "Vodka."
I nodded at the waitress, Maletina, who'd been hanging close, probably to catch the fun if the big pseudo-Maori decided to beat the drek out of the
haole
. She gave me anther dose of stink-eye, but she did cruise off in the general direction of the bar.
"We got off on the wrong foot yesterday," I said levelly as we waited for the drink to arrive. "I had no intention of insulting you." I gave him my best disarming smile. "Us dumb-hooped tourists don't know any better,
neh!
"
"Dumb-hooped tourists get heads broke in," he rumbled. But despite his hard-assed act I saw he actually wanted to smile. For the first time in a long while, I allowed myself to feel a little hope.
Maletina showed up about then with the quasi-Maori's drink. It looked like a triple, easy ice. Maletina was obviously playing "soak the
haole
," but I wasn't about to complain. I raised my glass of dog and struggled to remember Scott's toast. "
Okolemaluna."
I said at last.
Te Purewa hoisted his own glass. "Li' dat." He polished off about half the vodka in one pull, then puffed out his cheeks with a satisfied
pah
sound. His hard glare had softened a little.
"You've known Scott for a while, have you?" I asked after a reasonable interval.
The Maori wannabe shrugged. "Some time, yah," he agreed. He smiled. "Get drunk, raise
pilikia
—raise trouble—and I is dat.
Aikane
—friend." His eyes suddenly narrowed suspiciously. "Where Scott at,
ule,
huh? Where?"
There wasn't any really smooth way of breaking the news—not that would get me the overall result I wanted, at least. "Dead," I told him flatly. "Some guy called Tokudaiji had him killed."
He was half out of his chair, his hand reaching for a bulge under his leather coat. I rapped the barrel of my Browning on the underside of the table—I'd pulled the heat from my waistband while he was busy with his vodka—and when I knew I'd got his attention I thumbed the safety off. The way his eyes widened at the metallic
snick,
I knew he recognized the sound. Slowly, he moved his hand away from his heat, and he settled back into his chair. His eyes didn't leave my face though, and I could
feel
the rage he was fighting back.
"Haole,
you dead," he whispered. "You
pau,
all over, no moh, yah? Not now, maybe. Sometime, you
pau
."
It was hard to pretend that much hatred didn't faze me, but I managed to shrug unconcernedly. "You're right about that, Te Purewa," I said evenly. "I was with Scott when he was geeked. You think Tokudaiji's not going to have me aced too. to finish the job? Of
course
I'm fragging dead, brah. But you think I'm scared of
you
when I've got yakuza samurai on my hoop?"
That got through to him as I'd hoped it would. "Yak?" He blinked. "
That
Tokudaiji? He
da
kine
... he
oyabun
.
Nui
big yak."
"You've got
that
right," I confirmed.
"Yak kill Scott? Tokudaiji kill my
aikanel"
"That's what happened," I paused. "I don't know any of the background, Te Purewa. I came to Hawai'i to deliver a message—Scott knew who I was supposed to deliver it to, I didn't. I never heard of Ekei Tokudaiji before today. I need to know more. What can you tell me about him?"
It had worked, I saw. The multiple shocks—Scott's death, the identity of his "killer" (the way I was telling the story, at least), then the straightforward admission that I needed his help—had done their job. Te Purewa didn't know quite how to take me. Eventually, he might decide the
haole
had to die. But for the moment, I'd broken down his resistance.
The almost-Maori blinked again. Then, "Lots of Japanese in the islands," he began. I noticed that the intensity of his accent and his pidgin dialect were a lot less, as though in the effort of remembering he'd forgotten to be
quite
so Polynesian. "You know about the yakuza, yah? Traditionally, they always been the 'defenders of the people.' When some lord causes too much
pilikia,
the people can go to the yaks, say 'help us out with this
ule,'
and the yaks do it. Even today. No lords no moh, but corps and cops and politicians and li' dat, yah?
"So yaks, they got
nui
respect from the Japanese, the common folk, like, yah?" he went on. "Tell 'em no worry, no
huhu
when they get riled up. Settle 'em down, like. "Happen wi'
Na
Kama'aina,
happen wid ALOHA . .."
I raised a hand, asking for a time-out. "Hold the phone.
What
happened with
Na
Kama'aina
and ALOHA?"
Te Purewa snorted. "Corps out,
haoles
out, yah? All that
kanike,
li' dat." He hesitated and frowned again. "Scott didn't tell you 'bout that? Scotty, he got big hard-on for ALOHA
kanike
."
My turn to blink.
He
did,
did
he?
But now wasn't the time. "Yeah, he told me some of it," I said reassuringly, "but he didn't give me much in the way of details. Dumb-hooped
haole,
remember?"
He chuckled, and I knew I'd set his suspicions to rest again ... for the moment. "ALOHA, they try to stir up big
pilikia
," Te Purewa continued, "big trouble, everybody
huhu,
yah? Some yaks say, 'So what? Not
my
problem, Jack.' "
I thought I was starting to understand—some of it, at least. "But not Tokudaiji?"
"You got
dat
,
hoa
," he agreed vehemently. "Tokudaiji say ALOHA stuff all
kanike,
make no sense, yah? Hawai'i
need
corps. Hawai'i need
haoles
—some, maybe." He snorted again. "Hawai'i need money, bruddah, I know
dat
for true. No corps, where we get money, huh? Where we get food? Can't eat scenery."
I nodded slowly. "So ALOHA and
Na
Kama'aina
tried to get the people up in arms against the corps, is that right? And Tokudaiji calmed them down again?"
"Calmed
Japs
down," Te Purewa corrected. "Japs only people really listened to him." The Maori wannabe paused, and his face set. I thought I knew what he was going to ask next.
I was right. "What Scotty do to get whacked, huh?" he asked me quietly. "Step on
oyabun
's toes? Spout ALOHA crap? Get
oyabun
all
pupule
—all pissed off, yah?"
What the frag, I'd have to tell him sometime. "You could say that," I agreed.
"What Scotty do to
oyabun,
huh?"
"He killed him," I said.
* * *
I'd been here before, and I hated it.
Well, not
here
precisely, but enough places just like it that the surroundings were depressingiy familiar. After a while, one single-room rundown squat is just like another—they all kind of blend together in the memory. Granted, there were differences—cockroaches replaced rats in this one, and it was air-conditioning I craved instead of central heating. Other than that, though, little enough difference.
I lay on the mistreated mattress, shifting around to find a position where as few springs as possible dug into my flesh. I stared at the ceiling.
What the frag had I gotten myself into here? (That question was depressingiy familiar, too.) I thought I'd gotten a handle on it; I thought I'd gotten at least part of the story
chipped. Suddenly, it didn't look like I knew
squat
about
what was really going down. I sighed.
At least I had a resource now; I had a sometime ally. Te Purewa, of course. I couldn't depend on him too far. At some point he might notice some of the inconsistencies in the story I'd told him and come on by with some of his overgrown friends to ask me hard questions. Better not to push my luck.
For the moment, though, he'd come through in spades. I needed a doss—he'd gotten me a doss, a squat in a trashed-out rooming house on the fringe of downtown Ewa. I needed wheels—he'd gotten me wheels, a fifteen-year-old 250cc Suzuki Custom motorbike. I needed cold iron—he'd gotten me cold iron, a Colt Manhunter that he swore up and down wasn't registered and wasn't in anyone's ballistic database. And I needed sleep. I was on my own for that one.
But I
couldn't
sleep, of course. I was still stoked up from the hit and its aftermath, and my mind was racing like a high-speed flywheel. I kept going over things again and again, trying to slide the puzzle pieces around into their proper places, so everything would make sense. Fat fragging chance.
It had all looked so simple, for a couple of hours there. Corporate hit against Tokudaiji—orchestrated by Barnard—using me as camouflage and Scott as the hitter—both expendable, of course, and to
be
expended via belly-bomb. About as straightforward as anything ever is, these days,
neh!
But there had to be more to it than that. For one thing, Tokudaiji the
oyabun
seemed to be a major corp supporter ... if I could trust Te Purewa on that point. When ALOHA and the other hotheads tried to stir up the population against the megacorps, it was Tokudaiji who worked to calm them down again. Surely then, it would be in Barnard's best interest—in Yamatetsu's best interest, and in the best interest of
all
megacorps making big cred out of Hawai'i—to keep Tokudaiji breathing. With him gone ...
Well, Te Purewa's reading on the situation—and I had to agree with him—was that there'd be some major backlash. The hit would be seen as a megacorp operation. Rumors to that effect had already been buzzing down the streets while I was still sipping dog with the quasi-Maori. How would the general populace—particularly, the numerous (and quite influential)
Japanese
populace—read that? The evil, wicked, mean, and nasty megacorps had just whacked an important "defender of the people." Suddenly, ALOHA and
Na
Kama'aina
would find it a frag of a lot easier to stir up the populace against the corps, right? I could easily imagine retaliation against corporate facilities and personnel.
So why—why, and again
why
—would Barnard arrange to off the
oyabun
? Unless he was
trying
to stir up the locals against the corps.
How did
that
hang together? Pretty well, actually.
Cack the
oyabun
. Provoke the locals. Lose some megacorp resources. Then—more in sorrow than in anger, of course—move in corporate security personnel, private armies to "pacify" the islands. While they're at it, remove the government that had proven itself incapable of protecting megacorporate interests within its jurisdiction. Frag, drek like this had gone down before successfully. Ask any historian.
Was
that
it, then? Was I involved in a plot—
another
plot, for frag's sake—to oust the sovereign government of the fragging Hawai'ian islands and put a plutocrat on the throne? Sanford B. Dole in the nineteenth century, Jacques Barnard in the twenty-first . . . ?
All the facts fit—or I could
make
them fit—but I had to admit it was all circumstantial evidence at best. Frag it, like I do all too often, I was getting my exercise by jumping to conclusions. The "corp coup" theory answered some questions, but it left a couple of puzzling queries unanswered. Those queries continued to nag at me as the rusty bedsprings creaked under my back. Specifically, I couldn't stop thinking about the wide discrepancy between how Te Purewa had described his friend's political outlook and the way Scott had presented himself to me. When we'd seen the protesters outside Government House, he'd expressed no sympathy, no solidarity with them.
Why
, when according to Te Purewa he was a staunch
Na
Kama'ainal
ALOHA supporter?
Could Barnard and Yamatetsu be in bed with ALOHA in some way?
I rolled over on the bed, and something prodded me in the hip. Not another bedspring, something else ...
And with a bellow of "You're a fragging
idiot!"
I jolted bolt upright in bed and dug in my pocket. There it was, where I'd stuffed it unconsciously when the first Roomsweeper shot had pummeled my ear.
The message chip that Barnard had given me to pass to Tokudaiji.
My fingers were trembling slightly as I slipped the optical chip into the reader slot of the doss's ancient telecom. Trying not to let myself hope too hard, I ran a directory of the chip's contents. A single file—BARNARD.TXT. Pretty fragging self-descriptive,
neh!
I rattled in the command to copy the file under another name—in case there was some kind of protective virus that would delete the original if someone jacked with it—then tried to open the copy, not the original.
The screen filled with a flurry of graphical symbols—happy-faces, Greek characters, and such drek—and the speaker fired off a fusillade of beeps. Well,
that
wasn't so hard to predict, was it? The file was encrypted, encoded so a curious third party—like me—couldn't read it.
