Broken Ferns (Lei Crime ) (21 page)

“He sure knew about that.” She gestured toward the beach. “And a quad can move pretty fast on sand.”

“I see you found a friend. I wondered what happened to the dog.”

“She seems to have nine lives.” Lei picked Angel back up.

“Well, this isn’t good. We’ve gone from burglaries with redistribution of goods to the poor to rampant destruction and murder.”

“This. This must be the Smiley Mafia at work,” Lei said. “It seems like Consuelo and Rezents were trying to make a statement, but I’m not sure this is what they were trying to start—it’s such a different level and type of violence. Homeland is going to come down on this like an avalanche.”

“We’ll be lucky to pick up what’s left of the case,” Ken said glumly, returning with Rogers. Both agents were sweating and disheveled. “He got away. We did a BOLO already.”

“Well, go put that dog in the SUV before Waxman sees it and makes you take it to the Humane Society,” Marcella said as they reached the door of the barn and she spotted their boss and Gundersohn approaching. “We’ll head him off.”

Marcella, Ken, and Rogers strode toward Waxman, and Lei trotted in the other direction, going around the back side of the barn and back to the SUV. She set the little dog in the backseat and gave her a piece of what must have been Ken’s breakfast burrito to keep her quiet, cracked the windows, and turned back to face whatever came next.

Chapter 24

Lei sat on her little couch many hours of a long, sad day later, the marble notebook in front of her. They’d gotten on the road, combing the neighborhood on foot and in their vehicles for the unsub on the quad—with no further trace after the vehicle’s tracks disappeared up off the beach. She’d been able to come home and take a shower, washing off the stink of smoke and death, and the relief to smell nothing but Ivory soap on her hands was tremendous.

Their team needed to get to whatever information the diary held as soon as possible.

Still, she took a moment to eat the burrito she’d picked up at Taco Bell on the way home. The body was a machine, and hers had been running on empty for hours. Angel, also freshly washed, shivered beside her in an old beach towel Lei had wrapped her in. Lei had opened the sliders, and warm evening air blew over them, a natural hair dryer, scented with a little plumeria from the tree out back—an antidote to the smell of anarchy.

Time to find out whatever Consuelo had chosen to write down about the Smiley Mafia. She opened the notebook and picked up the camera from her crime kit to photograph each page for the briefing that would doubtless come later.

Dear Diary,

We buried my father today.

I think he would have liked the funeral. My aunty cried a lot, and at least ten people came from work. There was good music from his favorite ukulele band. Father Sing was really articulate, talked a lot about how hardworking he was, what a kind, generous man and a loving father.

All true. At one time.

I blame the cancer, drunken drivers, and the airline for all that wasn’t said in the eulogy—like how he got to be ninety-seven pounds and how he started hitting me and Aunty. How he called me a bitch and a whore when I tried to take care of his bedsores and change the ileostomy bag. How he cried at night and it sounded like cats fighting on a fence, and I started wearing earplugs because I was in the room with him, trying to sleep on a futon.

The room smelled like urine and rotten fruit that I never could find to get rid of. I wanted to just shoot him up with the morphine a dozen times, but when I loaded the syringe, I just couldn’t do it.

The only time he was a little bit okay was when we watched movies.
Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
was his favorite, the old version with the funny-looking Oompa Loompas. Like Charlie’s grandparents in the movie, he made me get in bed with him to watch.

And I could do it, because for a little while we both forgot how sick he was. We watched that movie twenty-seven times.

I know. I counted.

Dying can change people. It’s changed me, that’s for sure.

Lei photographed the entry on the last page, her heart aching for the young girl in the oversized scrubs she knew was lying on a molded plastic bed with no hard corners.

Dear Diary,

Something people don’t seem to realize is how many of us it takes to make Hawaii paradise. An army of invisible people with vacuums, and hedge trimmers, and chef hats.

I’m a foot soldier in that army.

Daddy’s funeral was three days ago and I’m back at work. I wear Carhartts. Even in the lightest fabric they make, it’s hot, and I’m a sexless little Oompa Loompa in them, with my tool belt and billed hat. Lucky to have the job—even I know that. And thanks to Daddy, I know my way around both a splitter and a spanner.

It’s the only thing he left me.

Maintenance Department pays about three times what being a maid would, another reason to sweat in my coverall. Aunty offered to get me in at the Sheraton doing rooms—she has cousins who work there—but I like maintenance better. Even the Carhartt is better than their outfits.

Oompa Loompas? Oh yeah. Only, the maids aren’t sexless. They wear little fitted white dresses. Somehow, even when on a schedule of fifteen minutes per room (twenty max, if there’s been puke and parties), they’re supposed to look cute and keep that outfit clean. It’s part of the “ambiance” of the hotel, Aunty says.

They get $8.50 an hour and work like dogs.

I’ll take my hot Carhartts any day.

Dear Diary,

The Boyfriend tried to cheer me up after work today. It’s been two weeks since Daddy died, and I’m apparently still not a happy camper. He picked me up in his truck, took me to the beach. We went to Waikiki, the part just past the dragon boats where locals like to surf.

“You need to remember the good times.” He gave me blue-eye sincerity along with some carnations from Foodland—Mainland flowers. I gave him some stink-eye in return.

I unzipped out of the Carhartts in the passenger seat of his truck. I just wear a jog bra and a pair of bike shorts under it, and I could see by the way he was breathing that it was getting to him. Good. I like to get to him. I wriggled out of the Carhartts. He was looking out the window, but I could tell by his lap something was going on down there.

“I want a cold drink. Get one for me.”

“What do you mean?” He blinked. He’s adorable, really cute for a haole boy, but not that bright.

“Go to the store and get me one. Steal it if you have to.” I took down my hair. I keep it in a braid wound up in a bun under my hat, but it’s long, goes past my butt. I undo the braid, pull my fingers through it, fluff it over my body like I don’t know what I’m doing.

Black, shiny, and full of ripples, it’s pretty. He got kind of glazed looking, watching me, and got out of the truck and headed back toward the hotels. I kept busy getting myself in the mood. When he got back, he had my favorite drink, an ice-cold Monster, the sixteen-ounce size with the lid.

“Yay!” I drained half of it and then rewarded both of us. Beach towels rolled up into the tops of windows make a nice privacy tent.

I didn’t feel invisible, at least for a little while. We’ll see how long it lasts.

Dear Diary,

Called in sick and lay in bed all day. I’m sick all right—sick of life.

I could die back here and no one would notice. If I hold my hands up, I can see the veins in them, shadows under the skin hinting of the rivers inside. There are rivers inside me, black flowing passages leading to my heart.

How many days would it take for anyone to miss me? I imagine my blood filling the bed as I let that river out, soaking the mattress like a giant tampon. The smell, that fresh tingly iron smell, becoming a hot, sweet stink. Me swelling and turning colors and maggots filling my eyes.

Probably, with my luck, it would be my baby cousin coming in here that would find me, and the poor kid would be in therapy for life. I can’t do that to the family. But this can’t go on.

I need something to DO.

I want to be like the guy in Fight Club who woke up to have everything taste amazing, like after Tyler held the gun to his head.

It all tastes like sawdust now.

Dear Diary,

I’m spending more and more time at the Boyfriend’s house. We lie on his mattress on the floor and watch Fight Club. I think I have most of the lines memorized by now. This scene still stands out, where Tyler’s steering down the wrong side of the road into traffic and says, “What did you want to do with your life?”

Jack doesn’t know, and as they are blazing into the headlights, he admits he doesn’t know and he doesn’t feel good about it.

Yeah. That’s me. That’s my life. I don’t feel anything good about it.

I tried speed the other day; Sheila stole it from her ADHD brother and swore it would make me feel better. I just got hyper and cleaned the Boyfriend’s whole damn place, and then I was pissed off because that was all I could think of to do with all that energy—clean that place.

So I took one of the Boyfriend’s hoodies and went out and stole some shit from a store. But I didn’t want it for myself. I don’t need anything. All that energy, I went down to Ala Moana Park with a nice T-shirt and a pair of Reeboks I’d stuck in my pockets.

I gave the stuff to this homeless guy, and he smiled, and I wished I’d got him a toothbrush too. Maybe I’ll do that next time. It felt a lot better than housecleaning made me feel, even than sex with the Boyfriend makes me feel.

Fight Club is my gospel—and right now I’m redistributing wealth. Maybe that’s what I need to do with my stupid little meaningless Oompa-Loompa life.

Something big. Something amazing. Something totally fucked up.

Here’s my symbol:

*smiley face with hooked mouth*

So that’s where the smiley face came from. Lei got up and got a glass of water, staring sightlessly out the window at the lackluster view off her deck, absorbing what she’d read. Then she went back and took pictures of pages filled with smiley faces with their distinctive twisted mouth.

Consuelo had found her mission and her signature.

Dear Diary,

Daddy used to let me into the hangar when he was working on the planes. Under their swelling white bellies were secret panels that opened. I was reminded of the tonton in that Star Wars movie. All these guts are in there, and I was so small, he could boost me up inside and then, on his ladder, he’d show me everything he was doing as we checked all the parts and did a replacement of anything frayed, or broken, or burned out. He was on the Scheduled Maintenance crew, and after every three hundred hours of flight time, the plane would come in for a thorough work over.

If people knew how seriously Daddy took his job, how he’d hold up even a little fuse and frown at it like it committed a crime if it burnt out—they’d feel safer.

Mr. Smiley was always trying to get him to speed up, do more, fudge on replacement parts. The FAA had a quality-assurance list, and Daddy showed it to me—all the things on each model of plane that could be replaced to keep the plane in tiptop shape. But Mr. Smiley thought it was too “conservative” and told him to lie.

He wouldn’t.

In the end, that’s why I think Mr. Smiley wouldn’t give him leave when he got sick. He’d already been writing him up for every little thing, trying to fire him. It makes me so mad when I think about it—that man, with so much, wouldn’t let Daddy keep so little—his health care and his job.

Dear Diary,

The Boyfriend and I drove out to Max Smiley’s Kaneohe estate—I’d found out the address by hanging around with that bigmouthed bitch Reynalda, who seems to feel guilty for what happened to Daddy. It wasn’t hard to park the truck and walk down the beach through the public access. The Boyfriend wondered why I wanted to go to that particular beach, why I insisted even.

I made him haul the towels, radio, and cooler all the way down the beach, and we set up on the beach in front of the Smileys’ great big mansion.

I didn’t tell him why, because I don’t quite know why. Yet. But I think Tyler Durden would know. I wish he were real and would tell me what to do.

After the Boyfriend fell asleep in the sunshine, I sneaked up onto the grounds. Nobody around, no security to speak of, and the door open on the most glorious storage barn I’d ever seen.

I don’t have my driver’s license yet, but there are a number of vehicles I wouldn’t mind taking out for a spin. My favorite is a tiny silver ultralight plane, as classy a vehicle as a solid chrome Porsche, parked right in the front facing the mini landing strip, begging to take off. Daddy showed me the basics on flying, and with a little Internet research, I’m sure I could figure it out.

That’s when the little dog came yapping up. I knelt down behind a bush and tried to shush her. She’s a Chihuahua with a Napoleon complex. That just made her madder, and she barked so hard, she flew up in the air on each bark: “Riff! Riff! Riff!”

Her little bat ears were down, and she looked kind of scary for a two-pound dog. She’s brave, and I like that. I gave her a piece of mochi I had in the pocket of my shorts, and that shut her up chewing—and I made my getaway.

That tiny silver plane is some kind of sweet. Bet Max Smiley would miss it if it were gone.

Dear Diary,

I told the Boyfriend what I’m planning. He was pretty shocked, I could tell. “I need you for what I have in mind,” I told him. “I can’t do it without you.”