Sujata Massey - Shimura Trouble

“Oh, do you think I should talk to Gerry, then-is he based in Waikiki?”

“Gerry doesn’t have a lot of time for talk. And no, he doesn’t live in Waikiki. He’s lives in Lanikai and got an office in Chinatown. Unless he’s on site, that’s where you’ll find him”

“Lanikai the island?” I was trying to recall the geography of the Hawaiian chain.

“No, not Lanai! Lanikai is a neighborhood near Kailua. Where you from?”

“California. And what was Gerry’s last name again?” I asked, although she’d never said it in the first place.

“Liang. They’re Chinese. My sister Randy married a Chinese guy called Chin, and his sister Millie married Gerry. That’s the connection.”

It was almost too much to follow, but there was one thing I had to verify. “Is that Liang with an I?”

“Yep. How did you guess?”

THE WIRE AND microphone were undetectable, once I’d gotten it all inside the strapless bra I was wearing under a sundress with a tightly smocked bodice. I had friendly, hands-on assistance from Michael in a police station ladies’ room with Vang and another police officer, Jose Fujioka, standing outside. I also had a tiny speaker in my ear that would permit all of them to secretly communicate with me in the duration of the time I was talking with Kainoa. But the first step was tracking him down, and since he still wasn’t answering his cell phone, it seemed the likeliest place to start was with Gerald Liang.

Lanikai, the town that Carrie had told me about, was on the windward side of the island-the green, picture-postcard Hawaii. I drove Michael’s Sebring by myself through Kailua, a charming small town with huge old trees hanging over streets lined with simple, mostly 1950s houses; Lanikai was smaller, a neighborhood, really. As I drove along, Vang and the others were in a police van two blocks behind, but never seemed far, keeping up a steady travelogue in my ear. Apparently Lanikai had once been as unpretentious as Kailua, but now, the rich had torn down the old bungalows and replaced them with the elegant mansions that sat cheek-to-jowl. Almost every Lanikai home was surrounded by a wall and had a fancy gate, many of them crafted out of copper, just like the Kikuchi mansion back at Kainani. The wall around Gerald Liang’s house had been built beautifully out of irregularly shaped green, gold and gray rocks. Lieutenant Vang confirmed my suspicion that this was a lava rock wall. I parked, watching their Escalade go by and take a left on the next street, where they’d wait for me.

I waited for two teenagers carrying surfboards to disappear into the neighbor’s garden before I emerged from the convertible. Belatedly, I realized I’d left the top down, so I went back to the car to close it. It was sunny for the moment, but I knew that on the windward side, rain showers dropped by like uninvited guests.

I walked slowly toward Mr. Liang’s fancy copper gate decorated with dolphins-no, I realized with some distress, they were hammerhead sharks. I located a buzzer and pressed it, thinking what a shame it was I couldn’t just go to the front door, where it was harder to be turned away.

“Yes?” a woman’s voice yelled out of the speaker, making me jump.

“Hi, this is Rei Shimura,” I stammered. “I’m a friend of Kainoa’s; I came to see him-”

“Why you think he be here? My husband doesn’t run a boarding house.”

I was guessing that this was Millie Liang. Her accent sounded local-local and pissed off. I asked, ‘Oh, is Mr. Liang on site somewhere? Maybe I could track him down there. It’s kind of important,” I said.

“Oh, yeah? You pulled me out of the bathtub for this, and I was doing my ginseng mask. Now it cracked!”

“Your ginseng mask cracked? I’m so sorry!” As I spoke, I could hear Vang chuckling in the receiver I wore in my ear and fervently hoped the sound wouldn’t pick up.

“Yah, it done crack, and I’m gonna get off now before my face is ruined.”

“Will you tell them I stopped by?” I asked, desperate to come away from the house with something.

“Don’t repeat your name.” Vang’s voice came in my ear.

I spoke again, before she could answer. “Oh, thanks, then! Bye.” I stepped back, and walked back to my car, got in, and started it up, not bothering to take the time to lower my roof before I peeled off.

“If he’s on site, it’s not going to be too improbable for Rei to show up there,” I overheard Michael saying, at his location a block away.

Once I was back in Michael’s car, I asked Vang why he’d told me not to repeat my last name.

“The less information that’s left behind, the better,” he answered. “You don’t want Gerry Liang or Kainoa Stevens to feel stalked, especially as this search is turning out to be ongoing, and there are some things about Liang that could be trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?” I asked.

“Well, there are some rumors about gangs,” Vang said. “Gangs and construction go hand in hand in a lot of places.”

“You know, we should try Chinatown,” said Fujioka. “Liang’s got a building on Smith Street.”

“I saw the name on a building, but it was so faded I didn’t think anyone was there anymore,” I said.

“They are still there-I know, because they were cited for a fire code violation last year,” Fujioka replied, as I parked my car behind their Escalade, got out, and went to its driver’s door to talk to them. “It’s a big shop, and they got all kinds of construction odds and ends below, and the office up top.”

“OK, to Chinatown then,” said Vang, ‘Though I think the chances are slim. Liang is probably out working, and Stevens is probably hiding out somewhere.”

“So you guys will be around the corner again, listening?”

“Yah,” Vang said, grinning. “And maybe while we wait, Mike can pick up some manapua from Char Hung Sut.”

I’d thought Michael would flatly refuse to leave the listening station when he thought I might be in danger, but instead, he eagerly started asking about other kinds of char siu pork dumplings sold, and whether they carried half-moon cakes. Perhaps he assumed that this stop would be a failure, like the one before.

But I had a hunch that something would happen. Maybe it was because this section of Smith, once I’d reached it, looked even shabbier than I’d remembered: a succession of attached twenties and thirties storefronts marred by peeling paint and grit. The only people on this particular block were a pair of lost Italian tourists and a veteran panhandler heading determinedly their way.

“What about you, Rei? Are you there?” Michael asked, while I was parking my car in front of the Liang Building.

“I just parked in front of the building. Can’t you guys see me?”

“No, but we can hear you, and that’s good enough,” Michael said. “Before you go in, tell me what I can pick up for your lunch.”

“I don’t know, Michael.” I was too distracted to think about food. “Maybe something with tofu.”

“Tofu, are you kidding?” Vang laughed in the background.

“Hey, if nothing happens here, I want a sit-down lunch at Little Village. OK?”

THE GLASS DOOR was stamped Liang and Sons, in faded gold print that looked pre-war. I pulled at the grimy door handle, expecting it to be locked, but it opened to a narrow, terrazzo-tiled foyer lit by an exposed light bulb. My eyes passed over a listing of floor numbers and names. Horace Liang, Doctor of Chinese Medicine, was supposedly on the third floor. Liang and Liang real estate was on the second, and Gerald Liang, construction, on the floor where I was standing.

“First floor, construction,” I said aloud, as if I were talking to myself, though of course I wasn’t. The Escalade was parked blocks away, and I wanted Vang and Fujioka to know exactly where, within the building, I planned to be.