Shards (12 page)

Early on in vice, I was assigned to work surveillance with one of my partners, Maliko, assisting the FBI in an important case. I was a little nervous about working with him. He was an okay cop, but
he was one of Keawe's best friends, and one of the few people who knew about our affair.

On our first night doing surveillance together, he brought his PlayStation Portable with him.

“Anything special you want to watch, Alli?” he asked me.

“No, but is now the time to be watching movies?”

“Now is definitely the time. We can't do anything yet anyway.”

We were waiting for a call from command post to tell us where they wanted us staged, but sometimes unexpected things happen during surveillance—a third party shows up, for example, or there are lookouts. You really have to be on point.

“But—” I started to say.

“Trust me on this, Officer Moore. I've been around awhile.”

I was pissed when Maliko started staring at his PSP. I felt we needed to be on our A game when working with the feds. I later found out all the other vice guys had PSPs.

“I can put something else on if you tell me what you want to watch.”

“I don't care what you watch,” I said.

“You're a cool chick,” he said.

A minute or two later, bored, I looked over to see what he was watching.

Porn.

Jesus.

My mind started racing, and I didn't know what I was going to do. Instead of kicking his ass or telling him what a fucker he was being, I just laughed and said, “You're a riot, Maliko.”

I felt so uncomfortable. He didn't make a move on me or anything, but he continued watching for about an hour until we got the call from the feds.

Later that week, Maliko told me jokingly, “I think I'm addicted to porn.”

I should have said,
You think? Get some help, you fucker.
But I wanted to be cool, so I said, “There's nothing wrong with watching two people make love, but you should probably talk to your wife about what's going on with you.”

“Are you kidding?” he said. “I could never talk to her about this. She's a conservative type. Not like you, Moore. I can talk to you about anything. That must be why Keawe likes you so much.”

I was concerned that Maliko was hitting on me, but at the same time I took pride in the fact that I was
one of the boys
. In that situation, I thought agreeing with Maliko, making him feel comfortable with a somewhat serious problem at the cost of my feelings and morals, was what made me fit in.

I made men feel that they could be themselves around me, that I would be cool with it. I did the same thing with Keawe. He told me that at home he was stifled, but that he loved being around me because I was accepting of everything he did. I made the mistake of thinking I was showing him true love. In reality, I was confusing being a yes-man with unconditional love.

•  •  •

Now that I was in vice, I was finally doing what I had always wanted to do: focusing on narcotics, getting them out of the community. My career had become less about the law and more about community, and I remembered what had drawn me to MPD in the first place—my love for the island and its friendly, welcoming atmosphere. Vice only made me more of an advocate for the community I loved. I still believed that narcotics were the root of so much crime in Hawaii—property crime, domestic violence, theft—and
I still wanted to eradicate drugs from the islands. I just wanted enough left for me.

I understood what a hypocrite I was being, but I didn't care.

In one of my first assignments for vice, I got to be part of the marijuana eradication team (ERAD). Off Piilani Highway there was a military airfield hidden in the cane fields. Everyone knew about it, but it was rarely used except by MPD. We had to coordinate with the DEA and helicopter pilots from Maui and Oahu to send out helicopters over Maui, Molokai, and Lanai.

First up was being fitted for my flight suit. That was one of the best days ever, all
Top Gun
with MPD vice patches and flight patches all over the suit. Because they had never had a female vice officer before, they had to scramble to find a suit small enough to fit me. I felt like such a badass.

We worked out of three helicopters—two large military DEA helicopters and one smaller model that ran interference for us, checking for any dangers on the ground or in the air. Armed men, for example, or telephone wires.

We flew all over the three islands to harvest marijuana from the cane fields and lava fields below. It was gorgeous. The islands looked so lush and green, the ocean lively and blue. I almost forgot we were on a mission. I got caught up in the view until one of my partners yelled, “I've got something!”

We rappelled from the helicopter down a thick yellow cord into the marijuana fields. With machetes, we cut away the marijuana plants. It was hard work, really hot, and we got covered with marijuana tar. Once we'd harvested the field, we wrapped the plants in ropes and hoisted them up to the helicopters, stuffing them inside the cab so we could fly back to the military airport to burn them.

I was the last one left on the ground, and just when I was expecting
to be pulled back into the helicopter, they let me hang there in my harness, dragging me lightly over the tops of the trees.

“Welcome to vice, Officer Moore!” the guys yelled down at me, laughing. It was my initiation onto the team.

“Woohoo!” I yelled, waving one arm at them while holding on for dear life with my other.

Marijuana eradication team was an amazing experience for an adrenaline junkie like me. It should have been the time of my life, but all I kept thinking was,
How can I fit in a hit while I'm up here?

By this point, all my
money was going to ice. All of it. The flight to Oahu was $200, renting a car was another $100, and I would pay Angel $200 for my dope and $60 to $100 for hers. I didn't have $600 to spend every two weeks, and my bills were falling behind. I was broke. I pawned a video camera I had and would have pawned other things but I didn't have much to begin with. I was always working and wasn't a very materialistic person. Before I knew it I was calling my mom to help me pay the rent.

Finally, I was left with only one choice: I was going to have to stop paying for my dope.

Being in vice made that easy.

I turned to my CIs. After they made a buy with a drug dealer, they'd bring me back the dope. Before sending it to the evidence locker, I would skim a bit off the top, then weigh and submit what was left. No one was any the wiser.

Skimming off the top of my CIs' buys was a new low for me. By using, I was breaking the law every day, but in my mind I was maintaining some degree of morality until I started tampering with department evidence.

My using was getting heavy. If I got up at midnight, I would do a hit, go see Keawe, then do a hit in my car before work. After work I would do another hit so I could drive home without falling asleep at the wheel. I also kept ice in my pocket to smoke in the bathroom of the station. I had carefully undone the stitching of my tennis shoes, and that was where I kept my pipe.

As my using progressed, so did my efforts to hide it. I had an ice bump on my thumb from holding down my lighter to light a pipe. I wore a Band-Aid over the bump and told everyone I had a hangnail. I wore colored contacts to conceal the size of my pupils, which got so wide my eyes looked black. I chewed gum all the time—even though ice has no smell, I was paranoid that Keawe would somehow taste it when he kissed me or get some sort of residual high.

There wasn't a lot of room for Keawe in my life at this point. He came third after the drug and the job, and though he didn't know about the drug, he was pissed when I ignored him. He wanted me available whenever he was and called me way too often. I would set my phone to vibrate, and often the phone would ring off the desk when I didn't answer it after his many calls.

I was terribly, terribly thin, but I wasn't getting the face-of-meth look like you saw on the posters hanging on bus stops all over Maui. I wasn't a picker, I didn't have sores, my teeth weren't falling out. I was lucky. Lucky, or unlucky? Maybe if I had showed some of those outward signs earlier, someone would have figured out what was going on with me. I could have gotten some help.

Later, I found it hard to believe that no one suspected I was using. My family was so far away, but how could Keawe not know?
Or Dina? Or Erin? They saw me every day. All my MPD colleagues were trained to recognize drug use—why didn't they recognize it in me? Looking back on this time later, I sometimes found myself angry at them for not seeing what I was taking such great pains to conceal.

Why didn't one of my goddamned drug tests come back positive? How was I able to pass every single one?

A couple of months into vice, there was rumor of another drug test coming and I tried to flush the dope out of my system. Withdrawals took me down hard and fast this time. I was supposed to meet Keawe at work at midnight, as usual. He called all night, but I didn't hear the phone. I slept for twenty-four hours straight, and when I woke up I discovered that I was two hours late for my shift. I had never missed work before, and I was scared.

I called Wilkes immediately.

“Moore!” he said. “Where the hell are you? We've been calling and calling.”

“You were?” I asked. “I didn't hear.”

“Hell, yes. I was about to send a patrolman out.”

“I'm so sorry, sir,” I said. “I overslept. I can't believe it. I was just so tired, I've been working so hard—”

“We all know that,” he said. “Jesus. The hours you keep, I'm amazed this is your first no-call/no-show.”

“I understand there will be disciplinary action,” I said. “But I'm on my way right now, and I'll finish out my shift.”

“Of course. Listen, I'll go easy on you since this is your first time.” He was teasing me, I could hear it in his voice. He wasn't going to do anything. “Just don't let it happen again,” he said, sounding like some teenager's dad.

“Got it, sir.”

I scrambled to get ready, knowing I wasn't in real trouble—yet.
Everybody knew how hard I worked, how strong my arrest record was. They weren't about to come down on me for something like this. I knew cops who routinely had to be called in after late nights and parties, but I did not have that reputation. I would be fine.

When I hung up the phone, I realized I was trembling. I reached for my ice pipe. I couldn't function without the stuff. Damn any drug tests—there was no way I could justify stopping.

•  •  •

Meanwhile, I had a new CI, a huge Samoan dealer named Kal who I'd gotten through working with Oscar. I'd carried Oscar into vice with me as an informant, and we had been working our way up the drug tree together for a while until we got to Kal. I executed a search warrant on Kal's house and car and found about an eight ball of cocaine. An eight ball isn't very much, but it turns out that Kal was a big-time player and also involved in the organized crime on Maui. I managed to flip him, and he was about to introduce us to a big dealer in Kihei who was moving pounds, but for now he was still doing buys for us.

One buy that Kal did brought in a huge packet of ice. When I took it from him he shook his head sadly and said, “I'm sorry to see this go. This is the best, purest shit you'll ever get.”

I couldn't wait to smoke it.

I didn't want to bother fitting work around my dope schedule, so I made up the lie that my mother had died and I had to go back to Albuquerque to her funeral. MPD had been so nice when my granddad died that I knew they would give me the time off.

I called my sergeant to tell him. “Jesus, Alli, that's horrible. Take all the time you need.”

“I'm sorry,” Keawe said when I called him. “You must be feeling terrible. Can you come see me before you leave?”

“No, I have to leave right away,” I said. “This afternoon. I'll call you when I get back.”

Erin was off that day and came over as soon as she heard the news. With a cake. A
cake
.

“I'm so sorry,” she said, hugging me. “Do you want me to come with you? I've got some time off coming. You shouldn't make a trip like this on your own. Jesus! Your
mother
.”

“No,” I said. “I mean, thanks, but I'll be okay. My family is really supportive.”

“Take care of yourself, okay? You look awful. Which is understandable.”

There was no reason for anyone at MPD to disbelieve me. No one knew a thing about my family—that's how isolated and secretive my life had been. It was an easy, easy lie.

I took five days' bereavement leave. Everyone thought I was in New Mexico, but I never left my apartment. For five days, I didn't drive my car or open the blinds or leave to buy food. I ate Erin's cake and some Ritz crackers and yogurt and whatever else I had in my cabinets, which wasn't much.

I did nothing but sit there and smoke meth for the entire five days.

Best five days of my life.

My ability to lie is
a skill I wish upon no one. I am a chameleon in the worst way: I can slither and adapt to suit the needs of anyone I want something from. This is what made me a good cop. I was able to appeal to anyone I came in contact with—my superiors, my CIs, my worst criminal offenders—and build a rapport with them almost immediately. Everything about me is inviting, trustworthy. I appear innocent.

I placed a lot of faith in lies. They could save me, sustain me, keep me shielded from anything that threatened me.

Even myself. Especially myself.

And they came to me as easy as breathing.

When I was fifteen and came to in the helicopter after driving myself off the cliff in Tijeras Canyon, the first thing anyone asked me was whether I had tried to kill myself. My lie, automatic, was:
It was an accident, I was driving too fast.