Mahu Men, page 13
part #91 of Mahu Series
“You don’t get insurance through the university?” I asked.
“Not as an adjunct.” She paused, weighing how much to include. “My partner’s company doesn’t offer domestic partner benefits either. But at least they let her cover our daughter.”
“I have a friend who had a lumpectomy last year,” I said. “She and her partner went through it all. I’d be happy to give you her number, if you’d like to talk to someone.”
“That’s very kind, detective,” Melanie said. “But unfortunately, I know all too many lesbians who’ve had breast cancer. It’s the AIDS of our community.”
We came to the kitchen, and Melanie pointed to a couple of zip–lock bags crammed with pill bottles. “My father’s collection,” she said. “I filled those big pill cases every week for him.”
Ray brought out a couple of evidence bags, slipped on a rubber glove, and started collecting. “No one else helped him with his pills?”
“Not that I know of.”
We took the bottles and cases, and said goodbye to Melanie Bishop. Ray looked at his watch as we got back in my truck. It was nearly four. “How long you think it’ll take us to get back downtown?” he asked.
“You got a hot date?”
“My wife found an apartment that we just might be able to afford. She’s got an appointment to see it at 4:30. It’s near something called Kamehameha Community Park. We’re sharing a car, so I’ve got to get a bus out there.”
“Not the best neighborhood, but it’s okay. If you get Julie to drop you off on her way to UH, you can hop right on the H1 at Kalihi Street and be at work pretty quickly. She’ll keep going to the University Avenue exit.” I looked at my watch. “Tell you what. I’ll run you out there, then I’ll drop the evidence off at the station. We’ll meet up tomorrow morning and go over what they find.”
“You’re the man, Kimo.” He waited a beat. “So, what’s it look like to you? She did it?”
I shrugged.
He started ticking things off on his fingers. “She had the means—the pills. The opportunity—every Thursday. Motive—five million bucks.”
“Let’s just see how the evidence stacks up,” I said. “You never know who else’s prints we’ll find on those bottles.”
I dropped him off at the apartment building, and as soon as he was out of the truck I stuck the Bluetooth on my ear and called Mike on my cell phone. “Hey, it’s me.”
“Hey, me. How’d your day go?”
“Got a new partner. Finally.”
“Really? I want to hear all about him.”
“Over dinner?”
“Can’t. Command performance at my folks. How about tomorrow?”
“Sure.” We chatted some more and I hung up, wondering if I would ever get to meet his parents. He had met mine, and both my brothers and their families. Everybody liked him—but what was not to like? He was a sweetheart. A couple of inches taller than me, handsome, with black hair and piercing blue eyes. Kids and dogs gravitated toward him; guys were impressed that he was a firefighter, and women swarmed him, even those, like my sisters–in–law, who knew he was gay.
I dropped the plastic bags off at the Scientific Investigation Section, the only full–service forensic laboratory in Hawai‘i. We’d also taken Melanie Bishop’s fingerprints for comparison, and she’d called the maid and asked her to come by the SIS office at headquarters to supply her prints as well.
I went home and grilled myself a burger on my little hibachi. The next morning I was at my desk at eight, reviewing a copy of Milton Bishop’s Last Will and Testament. Ray came in a few minutes later and I started passing him pages.
“So, what did you think?” I asked when he finished.
“Seems pretty straightforward to me. Just like she said. Split down the middle with her brother.”
“What about if the brother dies first?”
“His share goes to his kids.”
I leaned back in my chair. “And if Melanie dies first?”
Ray paged through the will to proper section, then whistled. “If she dies first, the entire estate goes to the brother.”
“Cutting out her partner and her daughter.”
Ray nodded. “So?”
“So she told us she’s got breast cancer.”
“And she’s got no health insurance and big medical bills coming up.”
“Gives her a good motive.” I hated the idea even as I said it. I liked Melanie Bishop, and I didn’t see her deliberately overdosing her father so she could inherit. Unfortunately, I did see her doing it to safeguard her inheritance for her partner and her daughter.
“We still have to talk to the brother,” I said. “Let’s see if we can get hold of him.”
“And the maid,” Ray said.
We left messages at Henry Bishop’s home and office. The maid, a tiny dark–haired Filipina named Encarnacion Rodriguez, came up to our office on the second floor after leaving her prints with SIS on the B1 level. She had worked for the Bishops for many years, since before Melanie’s mother had died. “You ever have reason to touch Mr. Bishop’s medication?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Not even to dust?”
“He leave his pills on the table, on top of whole pile of newspapers. Mostly I mop the floor, I clean the bathroom and the kitchen counters. The table, I don’t even touch.”
“Okay. Anybody else come by?”
“Miss Melanie, she come every week. Sometimes I see her, sometimes not. Mr. Milton, he leave a big pile of mail on the coffee table for her, he just drop the bills there for her to pay. I always know when Miss Melanie just been there.”
“How about her brother?”
Encarnacion frowned. “Mr. Henry not nice man. Always lotta yelling when he come by.”
“He come over a lot?”
She shrugged. “Not like Miss Melanie. And I tell you something, when he there, I stay in bedroom ‘til he gone.”
“You see him at the condo in the last couple of weeks?”
Encarnacion thought. “I see him once, maybe two, three weeks ago. But I think maybe he there more, I just don’t see him.”
“You remember when you saw him?” Ray asked. “What day it was?”
“Had to be Friday. I always go Friday.” She slapped herself on the mouth. “But wait, last two weeks, I had doctor appointments for my son, Fridays. My son, he have cerebral palsy. Got to take him to doctor all the time. So last two weeks I go on Saturday instead.”
Ray was taking notes. “So you think you saw Mr. Henry Bishop at his father’s house three weeks ago, on a Friday.”
Encarnacion nodded. “And then you think maybe he was there once or twice more in the last two weeks, but not on the Saturdays when you were there.”
“That right.”
“How did Miss Bishop get along with her father?”
“Mr. Milton was not nice guy, not after his wife die. He get old, you know, cranky and sick. But Miss Melanie, she always put up with him. Sometimes he yell at her, call her names, but she just keep taking care of him.”
Ray thanked her and walked her out to the elevator. By then the fingerprint results were back; the only prints on the bottles matched Melanie and Milton Bishop. Lieutenant Sampson came by as Ray came back. Sampson wore his signature look—a polo shirt and chinos. This one was hunter green, with some kind of embroidered crest that I didn’t recognize. Once you get past the polo player and the little alligator, I’m pretty clueless about labels.
We laid the case out for him. “You going to pick up the daughter?” he asked.
“I still want to talk to the brother,” I said. “She’s got a job at UH and she stands to inherit $5 million if she sticks around. I don’t think she’s going anywhere.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” Sampson said dryly.
Ray and I decided to stake out Henry Bishop’s apartment on the edge of Chinatown. “Not exactly what I’d expect of a guy who’s about to come into five million,” Ray said, surveying the run–down building, the lone scraggly palm tree, the crumbled newspaper blowing along the gutter.
“Expectations don’t pay the rent.” I was just settling back into my seat when I saw a guy I knew. “Stay here,” I told Ray. “I’ll be right back.”
My father’s lifelong best friend was a career criminal I called Uncle Chin, who had died a few months before. One of his friends was Hang Sung, a weaselly Chinese bookie in his late fifties. Hang worked out of a lei stand on Hotel Street, taking bets on everything that gave odds—including things like would Prince Charles ever accede to the throne of England, and how long Britney Spears’ latest marriage would last.
He tried to get away when he saw me, but I said, “Hold up, Hang. You know I can outrun you, so why make me break a sweat?”
“What you want, detective?” He was wearing a white brocaded shirt with yellowing stains under the armpits, and a little porkpie hat that should have seen the dumpster years ago.
“I’m looking for a guy lives around here. Henry Bishop. You know him?”
Hang’s nose twitched and I could see him trying to formulate a deal. “How much is he into you for?” I asked.
“Into me? What you mean, into me?”
“You know what I mean, Hang. I couldn’t care less what you do over on Hotel Street. But I’m looking for this guy, and I think you know him.”
“I do you a favor, you do me a favor, detective?”
I put my hand on his shoulder in a friendly way. “Hang, Hang. You were a friend of my beloved Uncle Chin. You need a favor, you come to me.”
Hang didn’t believe me, and he was right not to. But he said, “Henley Bishop owe me 100 large.”
“One hundred thousand dollars?” I asked. “Hang, how do you let somebody get so far down?”
“He long time client. Always get money from his father before. This time, father no give him money. I tell him, Henley, everybody got to pay. Even poor son of rich father.” He looked down the street. “Here he come now. You pick him up, you ask him when he going pay me. Save me the trouble.”
A tall, skinny haole was coming toward us. When he saw Hang, he turned and started to hurry away. “Mr. Bishop,” I called, starting after him. “Police. I need to talk to you.”
Bishop ran and I gave chase. Behind me, I heard Ray start up my truck, and moments later he zoomed past me, executing a turn that blocked Henry’s path. Ray jumped out of the driver’s seat when I was half a block away, pointing his gun and shouting, “Freeze, motherfucker!”
Henry Bishop froze.
“That the way you do it in Philadelphia?” I asked, coming up to them.
“Nah, I just always wanted to say that.”
“Why’d you run, Henry?” I asked. “We just wanted to talk to you about your dad. Give you our condolences.”
“Yeah, right,” Henry said.
“But now, your running, that seems suspicious to me. I think that calls for a little chat down at headquarters. What do you think, detective?”
“I agree, detective.” Ray patted Henry down for weapons, and finding none, bundled him into the tiny back seat of my truck, really more of a cargo compartment. Since he wasn’t a suspect, just a guy we wanted to talk to, we didn’t bother to cuff him. My previous partner had a Ford Taurus with a full back seat, easy for one of us to ride in the back with anyone we were taking in. I had to hope Ray got his car situation worked out, or I’d be giving up my truck very soon.
At headquarters, Henry Bishop asked for his attorney before we could ask him anything. That made me suspicious, so I read him his Miranda rights, just in case he said anything while we were waiting. I got him a cup of coffee, and he said, “So, you talk to my dyke sister yet?”
I nodded toward Ray, letting him take the lead. “Yeah, looks like an open and shut case against her,” he said. “That’s why I don’t understand why you were running.”
“Not from you guys; from that bookie I saw your partner talking to.”
“In a little over your head?” Ray asked.
“You could say that. Bastard was trying to squeeze me.”
“You dad wouldn’t bail you out this time?” I asked.
He shot me a look. “Hang told you that?”
I nodded.
“It wasn’t that big a deal. I told him my dad was old and sick, he just had to wait a little while. Hell, charge me the vig, I don’t care. I knew I was going to inherit a bundle.”
“Even more if your sister died first.”
He laughed, a sharp almost barking sound. “That carpet–muncher? She’ll live to be a hundred.”
“Not with breast cancer, she won’t,” I said.
Henry’s head swiveled toward me. “You didn’t know? She’s going in for surgery next week. Apparently the tumor’s big, and it’s spread.”
“Good for her.” Then a light bulb went off. “Jesus, you mean if I’d waited a few more weeks I could have had it all?”
His mouth dropped open as he realized what he’d said. “Waited for what, Henry?” I asked. “Waited to switch your dad’s pills around?”
“I want to talk to my lawyer.”
“Not much your lawyer can do at this point,” I said. “We already read you your rights. The thing is, though, if you explain to us what happened, maybe we can put something together for the DA that swings in your favor.”
“You in pretty deep to the bookie?” Ray asked. “I know what that’s like. My cousin back in Philly got into trouble like that. And the asshole bookie, he wouldn’t cut my cousin any slack at all.”
“Sounds like Hang Sung,” Henry grumbled. “Kept upping the interest on me. Every other day it was ‘ask your father.’ Asshole didn’t know what kind of jerk my father was.”
He sighed. “My father didn’t know what he was taking,” Henry said. “I just went in and added a couple of Coumadin to his morning pills and his night pills. I figured nobody’d ever investigate, and if they did, they’d put the blame on Mel.”
“What did you do about fingerprints?”
“Rubber gloves. I’m not stupid, you know.”
“No, Henry, you’re not. You know, you might as well write it all up now, put in about how the bookie was squeezing you. Might get you some juice with the judge.” I pushed a pad and pen over to him.
“You think?”
“You never know.” By the time his attorney arrived, Henry had already written up his statement and been taken down for processing.
“Say, you get that apartment?” I asked Ray, as we were filling out the paperwork.
“Nah, she found a sublet for us in Waikîkî instead. Some professor from UH who’s going to the mainland to pick up a grant. She thinks the guy might not come back at all, which means we could just take over the lease.”
“Whereabouts in Waikîkî?”
“A couple of blocks from Kuhio Beach Park,” he said. “You know, I heard they surf out there. I was thinking I might get myself a board, and learn.”
“Ray,” I said, “this might be the beginning of a beautiful partnership.”
A RAINY DAY AT BLACK POINT
“Fancy neighborhood,” Ray said, as I drove us up into Black Point to respond to a homicide call.
“All lava underneath here,” I said. “Hence the name. They say when King Kamehameha arrived from the big island, his war canoes stretched all the way from here to Hawai‘i Kai.”
“The homicide department doesn’t work out for you, you could always get a gig as a tour guide.”
“You like this neighborhood? Cause I’m happy to let you out.”
“No, no, continue the tour,” he said, holding up his hand.
It was a gray, rainy day, another in a long line that had besieged Honolulu. We’re accustomed to blue skies and the occasional quick, tropical shower; this prolonged spell of bad weather had everyone on edge, the crime rate spiraling. Husbands and wives were battling, kids who had been cooped up indoors for too long were sneaking out to cause mischief, roads were flooding and roofs were leaking.
Both of us were short–tempered after the non–stop deluges, and cranky about working on a Sunday. The fact that I’d broken up with Mike Riccardi a month before didn’t help my mood, either. “Neighborhood first developed in the 1930s,” I said, trying for a lighter tone. “Some of the most expensive houses on the island. We’re talking ten to fifteen million bucks.”
“I guess a lot of cops don’t live over here.” The sublet Ray and his wife had in Waikîkî was running out, and they were house–hunting again. Even though they’d sold a home in Philadelphia before they moved, their budget was still too thin to get them much in Honolulu.
This was the third murder we’d responded to in a residential neighborhood in the last two weeks. The first two had been clear cases of domestic violence, passed into the system quickly. As we drove up and parked in front of a sprawling ranch, I hoped the third time would play out the same way.
The house looked like no one had mowed the lawn for weeks, but then, lawns all over Honolulu were growing fast due to the constant rain, and our legions of yard workers couldn’t cut them in downpours. But there was more to the distressed look of the house than just an overgrown yard. No one had trimmed the hibiscus, which were running rampant with plate–sized red blossoms, or picked up the dead leaves under the kiawe tree in the center of the yard.
The house needed a paint job, and there was a broken shutter hanging loosely next to a front window. I stopped my truck behind the black–and–white parked in the driveway, and the medical examiner’s van, which had come up behind us, parked on the street. A couple of neighbors were standing in their driveways, under umbrellas, watching what was going on.
Ray and I hurried into the house, getting soaked on the way; we were both too macho, or too stupid, to carry umbrellas. Inside, we met the two cops from the 780 who’d responded to the initial call, a haole named Cooke, and a Japanese named Okada. “What’ve we got?” I asked Cooke.
“Caucasian male, forty–eight years of age, named Michael Paterson. Significant blunt trauma to the head. Lots of blood.”
