Mahu (6 page)

A very beautiful woman opened the door as we drove up and stepped out. She was about forty-five, perfectly dressed and made up, with a kind of China-doll beauty that made her seem like she was belonged in a magazine. On her best days, when she
was
dressed up for a party or special event, it
was
the look my mother str
ove
for. On this woman, however, it appeared effortless.

“I am Genevieve Pang,” she said, extending a tiny, manicured hand to me. I introduced myself, and Akoni, and then the two of us stood there with Tommy Pang’s widow, rocking a little back and forth, neither of us knowing quite what to say.

She smiled. “You don’t have to be shy, detective. You can tell me. Have you arrested my husband again?”

The air around us was still, and I heard the chirping of birds and a slight rustle in the underbrush. The driveway and yard were as perfectly manicured as the woman before us, the gravel raked, the bushes carefully pruned.

“I’m afraid not,” I said. “Your husband was killed late last night, outside a bar in Waikīkī. We’d like to talk to you about him, if you think you can.”

Genevieve Pang didn’t look surprised. Rather her face hardened a little, like this was something she’d expected for a long time. “Of course,” she said quietly. “Please come inside.”

She turned and led us into the house. We sat in a formal living room, on elaborately carved mahogany chairs, in front of a Japanese lacquered screen that probably belonged in a museum. There was a display of Javanese puppets on a mahogany table, and on the wall above it was a collection of what looked like Balinese masks. The room was elegant and tasteful, much like Genevieve Pang herself. I found it hard to imagine the man whose body we’d seen on the autopsy table, the man with that long record, there in that house. “When was the last time you saw your husband?” I asked.

“Let me tell you about our house, detective,” she said. “You are in the south wing now. That’s my part of the house. My bedroom is behind us. To your left is the kitchen, and beyond there the family room. On the other side of the family room is my husband’s part.” She smiled. “He has his privacy there. If he wishes to have company for the evening, he can do so.” Her smile hardened again. “I don’t have to know about it.”

“Do you know that your husband was here last night?” Akoni asked.

“We are not total strangers, detective,” she said, turning to him. “We had dinner together last night at a restaurant in Waikīkī
.
Then he brought me home and went on to what he said was a business meeting. I don’t know if that was correct. I was reading until midnight, and if he had come home before then I would have heard his car come through the gate.” She looked at me. “You may have heard, when you drove through, that the mechanism needs oiling. My bedroom window faces in that direction. I hear it often. I suppose now I can have it repaired.”

“Do you know anyone who might have had reason to kill your husband?” I asked.

Genevieve Pang laughed lightly. “I am sure there are many people who wanted to kill Tommy,” she said. “But he was careful to keep his business dealings secret from me, and I was careful not to pry. You see, in many respects I am a good Chinese wife.”

“I’m sorry to have to ask this, ma’am, but it’s routine,” I said. “Do you know if Mr. Pang had a will?”

“We made wills a long time ago, detective. If my husband hasn’t changed his, then I inherit everything. I can have his attorney call you, if you’d like.”

“That would be good of you,” I said. “Is there anyone you would like us to call for you? Children, a sister or a brother?”

“I have a son, Derek. But I will call him myself.”

“May we have his number?” I asked. “Perhaps he knows more about his father’s business.”

Genevieve Pang laughed, and I saw that she was still a very attractive woman. “My husband was even more careful with Derek than he was with me,” she said. “He was determined that Derek would have all the advantages he did not have, that Derek would become a respectable person. He is going to run an art gallery, as soon as he gets himself organized.” She smiled. “He just graduated from Yale in May.”

“We’d still like to talk to him,” Akoni said.

She looked at her watch. “You can probably reach him now,” she said. “He has a friend staying with him, from college. They are both such lazy boys, late sleepers. Not like my husband and me. But then, Derek is different from his parents in many ways. Very American.” Then she straightened her back in a mocking kind of way. “Very Yale,” she said. “But then, it’s what we wanted for him, isn’t it? To be American?”

I didn’t know what to say. After a minute, Akoni said, very gently, “Your son’s phone number?”

“Of course, detective.” She took a pen and a pad from the gilt-covered stand by the phone and wrote the number down, then stood. “My husband’s…remains?”

“The medical examiner’s office will release the body,” I said. “If you contact a funeral home they’ll take care of the arrangements for you.”

With Genevieve Pang’s permission, we searched Tommy’s part of the house, but he was very meticulous, and we could find nothing
that
indicated any illegal dealings, and certainly nothing that gave anyone a motive for murder.

She thanked us again, and stood on the front step of the house until we had driven out the gates. I heard them squeal as they closed behind us.

I dialed the phone number Genevieve Pang had given me, but got her son’s answering machine. I left a message.

Akoni was quiet for a minute, as I negotiated the entrance to the Lunalilo Freeway. Finally he said, “It’s just after four. They have a happy hour at that bar?”

“The Rod and Reel? I think so.”

“And fortunately our shift is over. I could definitely use a beer.”

“I’ll second that emotion. You’re sure you want to go there?”

He frowned at me. “Don’t think we really have a choice. We’ve got to find out who owns the bar, what Tommy Pang was doing there.”

I parked back at my apartment, and we walked the couple of blocks to the club. It was funny, but I felt none of the tense expectation I’d felt the night before. Now it was just business, just me and my partner going in to a bar to ask some questions. Yeah, right.

The Rod and Reel was a different place in the afternoon. Liquid sunlight dropped down through the trees overhead, and mixed couples, tourists, and guys in tank tops sat at the plastic tables in small groups. The testosterone level seemed to have dropped about a thousand percent, and there were no restless, horny guys circling the room. The back room, where they showed X-rated videos on big-screen TVs, was closed.

Akoni and I sat down at a clean table right underneath a big overhead fan that moved the warm air around, and ordered a couple of beers.

It was a typical Waikīkī happy hour. Keola Beamer was playing on a stereo behind the bar, and around us people compared sunburns and drank fruity frozen drinks. When the waiter brought our beers, I showed him my badge and asked, “Do you work the late shift here, too?”

He said, “Sometimes. Why?”

I held out a picture of Tommy Pang. “Recognize this man?”

“Sure. He owns the place. Mr. Pang.”

I nodded. “He here last night?”

“He comes by almost every night. I think he was here last night. But not at closing. Fred and I had to close up ourselves.”

“Fred the bartender?”

The waiter nodded. “Look, I got customers. Can I take care of them?”

“Sure.”

The waiter walked away. “That was easy,” Akoni said.

“Too easy. You wait here. I’m gonna talk to Fred.” Akoni looked distinctly uncomfortable, and the idea that a guy his size would worry about anything made me laugh. “Don’t worry, anybody comes over to talk to you, you just tell them you’re my bitch.”

“Keep it up, you’ll see what a bitch feels like,” Akoni said, but he sat back in his chair and picked up his beer.

I carried mine with me to the bar. It took a couple of minutes for Fred to finish with a gaggle of pretty young boys at the far end of the bar, but eventually he came over to me. Up close, he was older than he looked from far away, the kind of guy who spent too much time in the sun when he was younger and too much time in the gym now. I showed him my badge and said, “Tell me about Mr. Pang.”

He shrugged. “What do you want to know?”

“Anybody ever threaten him?”

Fred laughed. “No, my guess is that Mr. Pang does all the threatening.” He leaned close to me. “What’s this all about? He in trouble? I’ve seen his tattoo.”

“Yeah? You know what it means?”

“Tong,” Fred said. “He’s some kind of gangster. But he only comes out here for a minute at a time—he doesn’t particularly like our clientele. And I only go back to his office to lock up the receipts for the night.”

“You do that last night?”

“Sure, just like always.” A light bulb seemed to go on over Fred’s head. “Say, there were a lot of police out there last night, when I was closing up. You have anything to do with that?”

“They were out there because your Mr. Pang’s body was out there.”

“Shit,” Fred said. “He’s dead?”

I nodded. “You have any idea who might have wanted him dead?”

Fred shook his head. “Not a clue. I said maybe five words to the guy on a daily basis, usually just a greeting.” He grabbed a rag and started wiping down the bar. “So who’s gonna take over here?” he asked. “Not that peckerwood kid of his?”

“Peckerwood?” I asked. “That some kind of tree?”

“Where I come from it means jerk,” Fred said. “That pretty much sums up Derek.”

“So Derek comes around here?”

“With his boyfriend. Usually when his dad’s not here.”

I started taking notes. “Got a description?”

“Derek’s a kid, just out of college. Chinese, about five-seven, hundred fifty pounds soaking wet. Black hair down to his shoulders. Sometimes he wears it pulled back into a ponytail, he looks like a gangster. Beautiful clothes—silk shirts, linen pants. Italian shoes. Guy has a thing for Italian shoes. Skinny. Moves like a dancer. Cute butt.”

I raised my eyebrows at him. “So we get him in a lineup, we gotta turn him around so you can see his butt?”

Fred smirked. “You asked, I told.”

“Know the boyfriend’s name?”

“Wayne Gallagher. Six-four, I think. Maybe two fifty, maybe a little more or less. Hard to judge at that size. Curly hair, kind of halfway between blond and brown, cut just to the neck. He’s much looser than Derek. You know, sometimes he does the Ralph Lauren polo look, oxford cloth button down shirts and khakis, but sometimes he wears big aloha shirts and tight jeans. Caucasian, in case the name didn’t tell you that. Big hands, big feet. Dick the size of a beer can.”

I put my pen down. “I’m not even going to ask how you know.”

Fred held up his hand. “I was pissing next to the guy one night. ’Course I had to look.”

“’Course. Anything else?”

Fred shrugged again, and the party of boy toys called for him.

“One last thing,” I said. “Anybody else work back in the office there?”

“Arleen,” he said. “Secretary.” He looked at his watch. “She’s still there, at least another few minutes.”

I let him go, and went back to Akoni, where I told him almost everything I’d heard, leaving out the part about Derek’s butt and his boyfriend’s dick.

I drained the last of my beer. “You want to head back and say hello to this Arleen?”

“Why not,” Akoni said. “Though I got to tell you, Arleen’s a guy in drag, you do all the talking.”

BORN TO RUN

The waiter told us that the door into the office was locked and visitors had to go around to the alley side. The Rod and Reel Club occupied a square at the corner of Kuhio Avenue and Launiu Street. A group of tall trees sat at the corner, behind a wooden fence, and shaded a large open patio. The bar itself wrapped around the patio as an L, with one side facing Kuhio and the other Launiu. Roll-down grilles sealed off the bar area from the patio when the club was closed.

An alley ran parallel to Kuhio Avenue; it was narrow but cars often parallel-parked back there. The waiter pointed down the hallway where I’d seen guys coming and going the night before and said there was a door back there that led to the office, but it was locked, and we’d have to go out to Launiu and then up the alley to the first door on the left.

At the entrance to the alley I stopped. “I heard the guy dragging the body as I was standing in the shadows over there, by the patio entrance.” I remembered the giraffe following me out the door, making eye contact with him and shaking my head. “He’d just dumped the body over there, by that kiawe tree, when I came around the corner. I saw him run up to the Cherokee, which was parallel-parked up there, facing this way. He jumped in, and zoom down the alley toward me.”

“Where were you standing then?”

I pointed to the left about ten feet. “Under those trees over there. It wasn’t until the Cherokee had passed me that I walked over to the kiawe and saw Tommy Pang’s body.”

We walked down the alley to the office door, and I buzzed the intercom. “Who is it?” a woman’s voice said.

We identified ourselves, and the door buzzed. We walked right into an open reception area, where a young Japanese woman stood behind a desk. The room was slightly dingy and not very attractive—nothing on the walls, the furniture older, kind of crappy. A little boy, about five, sat on the floor in the corner, coloring. On the desk there was a little nameplate that read Arleen Nakamura. “Can I help you?”

“Are you Arleen?” I asked.

“Uh huh. What’s this about?”

I told her Tommy Pang had been killed, and she said, “Oh, wow. I wondered why he wasn’t answering his cell phone, why he didn’t call me.”

“What’s your job here?”

“I’m Mr. Pang’s personal assistant. I answer the phones, order the supplies, you know, that kind of thing.” She sat down in her chair and motioned me to her visitor’s chair. Akoni leaned up against the wall.

“What kind of business did Mr. Pang do besides run the bar?”

She held her hands out, palms up, in a gesture of defeat. “I have no idea,” she said. “Nobody ever comes by. It’s like totally boring, but my little boy goes to school around the corner, and I can bring him over here when he’s done.” She motioned to the boy in the corner, still absorbed in his coloring book. “So mostly I surf the internet and talk on the phone.”