by
No one reads a preface which is more than a page long, but it will take less than a page to tell you about Elima. It is one of the Neighbor Islands. That is what the residents of the main island of Oahu call the other islands in Hawaii and, more and more, that is also what the residents of those other islands call them too. Elima–and the time setting is somewhere in the near future–is much like the other Neighbor Islands. It is a county in its own right, has its own mayor for the entire island, its own police force, its own tax structure and its own share of corruption. Once almost entirely rural–with the standard crops of sugarcane, pakalolo and pineapple–it was recently discovered by Mainland and Japanese entrepreneurs. Along with the other blessings of civilization have now come sprawling resort hotels, a rising crime rate and the twenty-first century con man. But does Elima actually exist? In a sense it is far more real than those other dots of land in the middle of the North Pacific and is a distillation from all of them. The people–the haoles (white newcomers), the Asians, the Portuguese, the native Hawaiians–in the following pages are also an amalgam of what one can find on any of these islands. They all exist as you see them, but only in the author's imagination. Leilani Pak ran the office for Smith, Chu and Yoshinobu. She also did her best to run their lives. At the age of fifty, she felt she had a right to advise the attorneys, to guide them, to steer them away from the pitfalls which those unaided by her wisdom were sure to tumble into. Now that Leilani's own children were grown and scattered to the winds, Quality Smith, Sidney Chu and Keiko (Kay) Yoshinobu had become the special charges of this heavy-set Hawaiian woman who loved flowery muumuus and wore them on all occasions. In the evenings after work she regaled her patient husband, John Pak, with the highlights of the day. These never involved the firm's cases–rather, they dealt with the behavior of these adult children. "I just don't know about Sid and Kay. Why they don't get married and raise a family is beyond me. Sid wants to, I know, but Kay doesn't know what she wants. You mark my words. She's going to get into more trouble than she can handle one of these days. I've told her. And she's not getting any younger. She's almost thirty. When I was her age, I was a respectable married woman with three beautiful keikis. Four, if you count my sister's Kimo. Anyhow, it's a big relief to know that Qual and Craig have patched up their differences. You should see the lovely place they live in now. Qual wants us to visit them one of these days. My, they've got it fixed up so nice." Quality Smith was a fortyish, balding, pleasant-faced man who, some eight years earlier, had come home from the Mainland to Hawaii. He'd worked briefly in a large firm's Honolulu office, but he'd promised himself he would leave just as soon as he passed the Hawaii bar exam. A few days after he'd received his results, Qual had moved to Napua, the major city on Elima, and had opened an office specializing in criminal defense. Other firms on Elima were more concerned with lucrative cases involving corporations, medical malpractice, divorce and personal injuries, and this was all to Qual's advantage. His practice grew steadily. Sid Chu joined him within a year, fresh from Columbia Law School. Ten months after that, the building maintenance man stenciled the third name on the door. Sid and Kay provided an exuberance which counterbalanced Qual's essentially conservative views of how to deal with clients and handle cases. Leilani was the perfect complement to these three. At first she had been bookkeeper-secretary-receptionist, but now the work force had grown. Leilani supervised the firm's paralegals and helped train new clerks, demanding the same quality from them as she expected from herself. *** "The Colonel called," Leilani announced to Qual as he entered the office on a windy January morning. The trades had given way to the advance breezes of a winter storm, and there was a promise of rain in the air that was welcome on the dry side of the island. "It's his usual one call from the station," Leilani added. Qual rolled his eyes heavenward. "I guess I shouldn't complain. The Colonel pays the rent." The Colonel was Napua's kleptomaniac. His real name was Lou Metgers, but his resemblance to Colonel Sanders of chicken fame was so remarkable that all the locals knew him as the Colonel. Longtime storekeepers knew him too well for him to exercise his skill in their shops, but newcomers were always taken in by his dignified appearance. Inevitably, the Colonel would overwork the premises, be found carrying the evidence, and end up in front of the desk sergeant with an angry storeowner eager to press charges. The Colonel had become Kay's special client and concern, so Qual left the task of returning the call to her. Kay would not be overly pleased at hearing the news but, Qual thought, Sid would be even less happy when he heard what he had to face in the coming weeks. At least the Colonel paid his bills. But Sid had been assigned to defend an indigent man who was accused of murder. The minimal pay wouldn't bother Sid too much, but by all accounts the case was hopeless. Together, the two features of the case would make him a bear around the office. Sid confirmed Qual's worst expectations. "Lester Hixon? Who the hell is he?" he asked when he heard about his new client. Sid was a tall, handsome Chinese who had been born in upstate New York. While he was not eager to admit it, it was the early Perry Mason television series which had seduced him away to law school. For the most part, he was sure he'd made the right choice, but news like this always made him wonder. "I always suspected you didn't read the newspapers," Qual said. "Now I'm sure of it. Hixon's accused of beating a woman to death with a hammer. It was headlines in the Chronicle last month." "Oh, sure. I didn't recognize the name, but the court assigned Bill Kuroyama to that case." "Too bad, Sid. Bill dropped a bowling ball on his foot and really messed himself up. Judge Schreiber had to make a reassignment, since Bill will probably be out of action for the next month or so. Here's the case summary, Bill's notes, and most of what you'll need, except for the final police report. It's all your baby from here on." "I'll trade you Lester Hixon for the Colonel," Sid shouted to Kay after they had received their respective morning messages. The offices of the three attorneys opened onto the large reception room where Leilani presided. "How many times have I told you two, if you want me to work out here, quit yelling back and forth. If you can't stand to talk face to face, use the phone." Leilani's voice was several decibels higher than Sid's. At the sound of the warning, Sid came out of his own office and headed toward Kay's. "I sure wouldn't want to keep you from working, Leilani," he said with a grin. "It wouldn't be a fair trade," was Kay's response to Sid's offer. Kay was what the tourist brochures liked to call an "exotic Hawaiian beauty." Some people, including many of her friends, assumed that she had something else besides Japanese in her ancestry. What was deceiving was that she was so tall, almost exactly as tall as Sid. Her eyes looked Polynesian rather than Oriental, and her dark skin was a marked contrast to the paler cast of most of the Japanese women in the Islands. Unlike Sid, Kay had gone into law school mainly by default but, once there, had found the law a fascinating subject. Like Qual, she had started out in a big Honolulu firm, but Napua was much more to her taste. Besides, Sid was here. "At least with the Colonel," she continued, "I know what I'm facing. We'll bring in his psychiatrist and have a big conference. The Colonel will pay off the storekeeper, who'll drop charges. It's always worked before, so it should work again. You aren't going to have that kind of luck. Now that we have capital punishment back, you may have the privilege of defending the first person to be hanged in the State of Hawaii since the US dumped the Monarchy." "There's no chance of that. It's all cut and dried. Hixon has no choice but to plead guilty. That will get him life, but it will save his neck. Look at the evidence the prosecuting attorney has." Sid handed her two single-spaced typewritten pages. Kay started scanning the report, commenting aloud on some of the points. "It's his hammer, to begin with. At least that's what the police report says. And he admits to having had intercourse with her in the past. That does it! That will clinch it for sure. There's evidence of intercourse near the time of death, and the DNA of the semen matches the DNA in his blood. How can he claim he's innocent? Is he saying she was alive when he left her?" "It's worse than that. According to Bill's notes, Hixon claims he wasn't even there in the first place. He says he was home during the time of night when the killing is supposed to have happened. He swears up and down that he hadn't seen her for over a week." Sid shook his head in growing exasperation. "The lab's expert will make that kind of testimony worthless." "If Hixon pleads not guilty and comes to trial, he will be the perfect candidate for the first one executed under the new law…heinous crime, and all that. What a loser! Have you talked to him? "Uh-uh." Sid had hooked his feet under Kay's desk and was leaning the chair back on its hind legs. "I didn't get the call, Qual did. And it was from the court, not from Hixon. I haven't even met the guy yet but, unless he's a complete imbecile, I should be able to convince him he'd better plead and get the misery over with. I'm going by the jail this afternoon, but I'll drop by and see Bill first. He's still in the hospital with that broken foot." Sid shook his head in disgust, pulled himself and the chair back up straight with a thump, and added, "If this jackass does insist on pleading not guilty, I'll probably drop a bowling ball on my foot too." *** Sid was amazed at the elaborate apparatus attached to Bill Kuroyama's leg and cast. "All this for a bowling ball?" he asked. "When I screw up," Bill answered, "I do it up proud. Doc says I not only broke a half-dozen bones in the arch, but also ruptured an artery and tore a couple of muscles. He insisted I stay here a couple of days and have a specialist come in and look at it." "How in hell could you have messed up your foot that bad with just a bowling ball?" "It's real easy. The first thing you gotta do is to put the ball on top of a tall file cabinet, and then have a drawer stick when you try to pull it out. It all works like a charm." As Sid pulled a chair up to the bedside, Bill added, "Even so, I think I'm lucky." "You call that lucky?" Sid nodded toward the pulleys and ropes and canvas harness holding Bill's foot immobilized. "I sure do. A broken foot is a small price to pay to get rid of this case. You've never met anything like Les Hixon. I talked to him on three different occasions. He grows worse with each exposure. He's a slime bucket." "Is he really insisting on pleading not guilty?" "Not only is he insisting, but he called me every name in the book when I told him we couldn't possibly win the case." "Is there even a remote possibility he's innocent?" "Wait until you meet him. He's guilty as hell of this and of God knows what else besides. He's a tin man, for one thing." "A tin man?" "Yeah, I'm sure you've heard of them. There was even a movie about them a few years back. They're the guys who go door-to-door and sell cheap re-roofing and siding installations to anyone who's sucker enough to let them into the house. The material's overpriced. The work's shoddy. They use ultra high-pressure tactics. You know. Low down payment and that sort of thing. They don't mention the high interest rates, so the buyer pays forever. They try to stay just within the law, but aren't too worried about it if they step over the line, and they're generally only one jump ahead of some other state's attorney general or consumer protection agency." "What in hell are they doing on Elima?" "Elima's growing, Sid. Or haven't you noticed? The crew–there's about a half-dozen of them–moved onto the Island two months ago. They outlasted their welcome on the Mainland, and now they figure on working Elima for three or four months, then moving on to the big time on Oahu. This is kind of a practice run for them." "Terrific! So in addition to everything else, he's a new mainland haole and a con man besides. The jury will crucify him." "That's what I told him, but he wouldn't listen." "How come he didn't get bail?" Bill guffawed, then became serious. "I don't know why I'm laughing. It sure wasn't funny at the time. The prosecutor was willing to settle for a hundred grand. I was asking fifty, and I'm reasonably sure Judge Schreiber would have gone along with it, even though Hixon's residence is in New York and the business he's in could pick up and leave anytime. Hixon had already figured the company would come up with the necessary ten per cent, since they want him out hustling. Judge Schreiber turned him down because Hixon rubbed him the wrong way." "Oh, c'mon. That doesn't sound like Schreiber. He's put up with a lot from criminals in his day. I sure can't see him doing that, no matter how Hixon acted." "Put yourself in Judge Schreiber's place. How would you have reacted if you'd heard the accused mumbling something about a no-good fucking kike judge?" "Jeezus!" "You're beginning to see what you're facing. I talked to Judge Schreiber a couple of days later, and he'd cooled down. If anything, he'll probably bend over backwards to be fair at the trial, but you'd better gag your client." Sid shook his head in disgust and disbelief. "What possible defense does Hixon have?" "You mean besides his saying he's not guilty?" "Yeah. Does he think that that's all he has to do, get up and say he's not guilty? Does he figure he can convince a jury to let him go, the way he can convince some poor sucker that his house needs aluminum siding?" "That's about it, except that his wife swears he was home all that night. Hah! Just wait till you meet her. It's hard to believe that when God screwed up and made Hixon, He could have turned around and made the same mistake all over again, but He did! A jury wouldn't believe her if she said white's white and black's black!" In spite of it all, Sid could not help grinning. "You paint a grim picture, Kuroyama." Bill cackled. "Just you wait and see!"
CONTENTS
DEATH OF THE TIN MAN'S WIFE
THE LEFT HAND OF DEATH
DEATH OF A DEVELOPER
A METHOD TO MURDER
DEATH OF THE TIN MAN'S WIFE
Preface
Chapter 1