Shimura Trouble

21

ONLY AFTER OFFICER Than had walked behind a door to fetch Braden did I reach for Michael. I kept my face against his polo shirt, because the warmth of his body was the only thing that felt secure and real at the moment.

“Ironic how I checked Edwin and Yoshitsune’s police records, but not the kid’s,” Michael said, wrapping both arms around me. “Sorry about that.”

“I never mentioned him to you. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined my teenaged cousin three times removed would have a rap sheet as long as his hair. This is like a bad dream. Wake me up, please.”

“I think we should take him for a private talk, Rei, before we jump to conclusions. I played good cop last time, when we were talking to Josiah Pierce. Let’s reverse roles this time.”

“Of course.” I was trying to think of something else to add-how sorry I was that Michael’s short time in Honolulu was being smashed to pieces by Shimura family troubles-when my cell phone rang.

“Did you meet Braden yet?” It was Tom.

“Not quite. Michael and I are waiting for him to be brought out to us at the police station. And the situation is quite serious.” I told him about the arson and manslaughter charges, and about Braden’s police record.

“Have they hired a lawyer yet?” Tom asked.

“Nope, but I’d say that’s what he needs. And just watch; Edwin will need us to pay the retainer.”

“Good thing we didn’t hire anyone yet for the land troubles,” Tom said. “And Rei-chan, I must apologize for what I said about Michael yesterday. I’m grateful that he’s helping today. I should be there, I know.”

“Thank you, Tom,” I said. “And if anybody wants to know where we are, tell them we’re hanging on to Braden until at least one of his parents is home.”

An arrest is a sobering event for most people-I know from personal experience-but I was shocked to see Braden moving toward us with a pronounced limp. His body and clothes were dusty with the same black ash that had covered me in the morning, and there was a gash on one side of his face. And, most surprising of all, his expression was anxious.

Had the police roughed him up? I wondered, looking at the seemingly mellow Officer Than. The cop was saying something to us. It sounded like ‘Goodbye, and good luck.”

I murmured back something even I couldn’t understand.

“We should go.” Michael put a hand on my arm, realizing how distraught I’d become. “Thanks a lot.”

“No problem, Mike.” Officer Than gave Michael the shaka sign as we walked out of the station.

I was momentarily blinded by the sun, but when I oriented myself I saw two neatly dressed men in their twenties, one carrying a video camera, the other a wireless microphone. They seemed headed for the station itself, but when they saw our group, the two of them conferred and begin hurrying toward us.

“Hmmm. Wonder why they’re here,” Michael said.

“My guess is to interview the police about something.”

But the cameraman started his camcorder, and the reporter, smiling a big, fake smile, was headed straight for Braden.

“I’m a juvenile. They’re not supposed to know who I am!” Braden said, grabbing my straw handbag and using it to cover his face.

“Either you watch a lot of reality TV, or you’ve been through this before,” I said as the distance shortened between the men and us.

“Hey kid, you the one charged in the fire?” a reporter shouted loudly enough for pedestrians just going by on the sidewalk to turn around.

“Let me bring the car around,” Michael said. “It’ll be an easier get-away.”

As Michael loped away, the journalists closed in. “Is this the youth who set the fire?”

“I never set no fire,” Braden said from behind the handbag before I could stop him from convicting himself with double negatives.

“Say it again in the microphone, OK?” entreated the first reporter, an oily looking young man with a goatee.

“No!” I squawked, waving away the microphone that had been shoved in my face. “He has no comment, and neither do I.”

“You his lawyer?”

I shook my head miserably.

“Then who are you? You look too young to be his mama.” Another reporter had shown up, and his cameraman was bringing up the rear.

“No comment.”

“That man who just ran away, is he the lawyer?”

“No comment.” Where the hell was Michael? How could he have left me to the lions like this? Then I heard the sound of the car, and it swept up to us, scattering the men like water bugs after a light goes on.

“No comment, no comment, no comment! Please leave us alone,” I said.

“Ninety thousand acres burned yesterday. You got nothing to say about it? Not even when a person dies?” the second reporter called after us as we piled into the car, Braden in the backseat and me next to Michael.

I closed my door as Michael put the car in gear and we sped out of the parking lot, making a left turn only to be caught in a traffic jam. I’d half-expected the reporters to follow us, but instead, they just trained their cameras on the car and its license plate. Nice finish, as any enterprising person could check it back to the car rental agency, and acquire Michael’s name.

“I’m starving.” A snide voice came from the back seat. “Can we get something to eat?”

Michael fished in the glove compartment and took out two granola bars. He gave one to me, and threw the other one into the back seat.

“I meant real food, like chilli,” Braden said in a louder voice as the stoplight finally went green and Michael zipped over to the left lane.

“Be thankful for what you’ve got,” Michael said. “And eat fast, because you have a lot of talking to do.”

“Rei taught me to say no comment.”

“Braden! If you don’t start explaining what happened to us, the people who saved you, I’m going to have Michael drive you right back to the station.”

“There is no connection. I just was in the mountains, wrong place at the wrong time, and they busted me- Hey, why you going on H-1 East? You supposed to take me home.”

“There’s a chance the media may be waiting there,” Michael said. “Therefore, we’re going to one of the few places they can’t follow us.”

“Where’s that?” Braden sounded dubious.

“Pearl Harbor. They won’t be able to get on without permission from public relations. And I still have my day pass from this morning.”

“This is bullshit,” Braden muttered.

“Actually, I think the proper term is custody,” I said.

Braden didn’t speak again until Michael exited H-1 for Pearl Harbor. Ahead of us was a short line of cars and a checkpoint with at least half a dozen armed sentries. “You sure you’re not taking me to another jail?”

“Michael, how are you going to explain us? I don’t have much ID with me-’

“Since you were so hot on taking off our rings, you are simply my girlfriend, and he’s simply your cousin-please don’t go into the three times removed business, that’ll only give them a headache. We’re going to the Morale, Welfare and Recreation office to buy reduced-price admission tickets for the glass boat ride at the Pearl Harbor Memorial.”

“I never did that. Can we?” Braden said from behind, where he was craning his head to get a look at the State Department ID that Michael was readying for inspection. The card worked; the guards largely ignored us, but saluted Michael through, wishing him a good visit at Pearl Harbor. I looked back at Braden, who had a funny expression on his face. I could only imagine what he’d think if he’d seen the CIA card.

I’d heard that Pearl Harbor was the largest US navy base in the world, and that seemed entirely believable. We took a circular road down by the docks, which were dominated by hulking gray aircraft carriers and warships.

“I used to live there,” Michael said, indicating a row of large, colonial-style villas seemingly besieged by a circle of traffic whizzing around.

“I’m all for historic preservation, but what was it like to live in the middle of a traffic circle?” I asked.

“It wasn’t this manic twenty years ago.”

“You lived there? Who are you anyway?” Braden burst out.

“We can have an information trade, Braden. You talk first, then I will.” Michael continued the loop past more ships, a tiny group of stores, and giant housing towers. At last, he stopped at a desolate gas station, where there were a few pumping bays, and nobody was there. He pulled off to a corner of the asphalt and turned off the ignition. Then Michael began the talk that he’d probably been composing ever since we’d picked up Braden. He told Braden he knew what it was like, to be a foot away from falling off a cliff, which was where Braden was now, with the pending charges. Braden could either volunteer the story to us in his words, or sit back and just answer our questions. Either way, we weren’t leaving until he talked.

Braden said nothing, and Michael and I exchanged glances. The interrogation would begin.

“This morning, the cops found you in the mountains of Nanakuli. What were you doing up there?” I asked.

Braden shook his head, and remained mute.

“Braden.” Turning around, Michael fixed him with a gimlet gaze that I’d always found particularly spooky. “If you don’t tell us what really happened, how’s the lawyer going to figure out a way to save your sorry ass?”

“OK, I was working. I don’t like to talk about it, because my dad doesn’t want me to work. That’s why I was over there. I can’t work at Safeway or somewhere oblivious like that.”

Obvious, I thought. He doesn’t even know the word obvious. I felt a new surge of annoyance with both him and Edwin. “Tell me about the job. What is it, exactly?”

“It’s like landscaping.”

“Excuse me?” I had a vision of the gnarled old men at Kainani, who always worked with heavy cloth headdresses on, to shield them from the elements. Braden, in his board shorts and skin-tight Quiksilver T-shirt, did not seem a likely gardener.

“We work after the fires, because that’s when you sometimes find lava rock.”

“Lava rock?” Michael asked, and I explained that Oahu was studded with volcanoes that had erupted long ago, and that lava had hardened into amazing rock, each piece one of a kind. I’d seen lava rock in garden shops in San Francisco for exorbitant costs. It was said that anyone who took lava rock was holy, so that anyone who removed it from Hawaii would be cursed with terrible events; the only solution was to bring the rock back to where it belonged. I wasn’t sure how fate worked for people who stole lava rock and just took it a few miles away.

“So you’re finding and loading up lava rock for a contractor?” Michael continued. “Were you paid for what you did today?”

“Nope, the police came round before I finished. Had to leave everything lying.”

“Large rocks can be heavy,” I said, trying to follow his story. “Do you carry by hand, or use something?”

“When my buddy picked me up today, I used an old wheelbarrow of Jii-chan’s. Actually, it tipped over when I was trying to make a getaway; that’s how I bashed my foot and cut my face.”

“OK, so you were using Uncle Yosh’s wheelbarrow, bringing the rocks to…where? Somebody’s truck? Where was your friend when this was all happening?”

“He went to work another area. I’d pile up whatever rocks I find, then get a ride back home around three, either from him or the boss. I’d get the wheelbarrow back in the yard before my mom or dad came home. Nobody had an idea I had a job.”

“Did you tell the police about your job and the boss?”

“No, I didn’t tell them squat. Like you said, no comment.”

“You talked about the rocks,” Michael said. “But what about the cigarette lighter in your pocket?”

“There was a lighter in my pocket, but that’s because I smoke every now and then. The police got it now.”

“The thing about fire is, when it sweeps through an area and burns brush, it’s easier to see what lies underneath,” Michael said. “Do you think it’s possible that the people behind your rock-gathering business might have set the fire a couple of days ago, in anticipation of you doing a little work for them?”

“I never heard nothing like that.” But Braden looked uncomfortable.

“Well, when did you get the call to work today?” I asked.

“An hour before I left this morning. See, it couldn’t have been planned. They didn’t know I could work.”

“Whether the fire was accidental or arson, it would be helpful if your boss would come forward to explain that you were just out gathering rocks because he’d told you to do that,” I suggested.

“He’s not gonna come forward.” Braden pressed his lips together. “No way.”

“Then we’ve got to make him come forward,” I persisted. “I mean, not us literally, but your lawyer could subpoena this person.”

“I can’t tell the name to you or any lawyer either.”

“Why?”

“Because the boss said to me once that if I ever say who’s behind this, I won’t live to see eighteen.”