“How are you and Māmā holding up?”
“I was scared, Koa, really scared for him, but Māmā’s doing fine. I’ve never seen her so calm around doctors. She’s been in all the meetings and never once challenged the haole doctors. It’s like she’s always known something was wrong with Ikaika and suddenly discovered the secret. It’s strange. Not at all like her.”
“She’s always believed in him even when the rest of us gave up.”
“You’re right. She felt something the rest of us never did.”
After Koa thanked his sister and hung up, he turned back to Basa. “You ever follow up with your brother up at West Hawai‘i Concrete?”
“Yeah. He’ll talk to us. Says we’ll be interested. Real interested.”
When Koa arrived home that evening, Nālani failed to greet him at the door as was her custom. His heartbeat quickened and he felt a ripple of fear. As a police officer, he and those close to him lived with a level of danger beyond that of most people. Having recently come from two murder scenes, he was already tense, and with no sign of Nālani, his unease became palpable. “Nālani,” he called out.
“Here,” she answered before emerging from the kitchen with a handful of ginger root from their garden. “I was out back. Didn’t hear you drive in.” Coming forward, she kissed him, her arms outstretched to avoid touching him with her dirty hands. Relief surged through him.
“We saw you on TV. The super circulated the news clip,” she said, referring to her boss at the national park. “Everybody was talking about the way you faced the crowd down.”
“We were lucky no one got seriously hurt,” he responded.
“You mean that crowd was lucky you were there,” she replied.
Later, over dinner, he told her about Pueo. “He’s a strange old codger with a beard longer than Santa Claus, living like a hermit on that mountain, lost in the past. Going on about the Grateful Dead, and I’ll bet he’s never even heard of Madonna. Hawai‘i has some of the strangest dudes.”
“‘I will get by … I will survive.’” Nālani, something of a rock and roll buff, rattled off a few bars of the Grateful Dead’s hit single.
Koa shook his head in awe. “You’re amazing.”
“My wasted tween years … listening to Jerry Garcia’s brand of rock while my friends were into Madonna and George Michael. The other girls thought I was nuts … and maybe I was.”
“That’s my Nālani, always independent-minded,” he said taking her in his arms with a smile. “It’s one of the things I love about you.”
“I hope there are other things,” she said with the mischievous smile that had first attracted him.
“Oh, there are,” he said, pressing his lips to hers.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
KOA AND BASA turned off the Māmalahoa Highway a few miles south of Kamuela. Giant cinder cones dotted the landscape with Mauna Kea rising 14,000 feet to the east. Sunshine had returned to the Big Island, and brisk trade winds sent puffy white clouds skittering across a blue sky. Closer to the road, the silos and conveyor belts of West Hawai‘i Concrete stood out against a mountain backdrop. Trucks kicked up dust trails as they hauled crushed stone from a nearby quarry. At least a dozen concrete mixers dotted the yard around the concrete company’s headquarters building.
“How long has your brother been doing concrete?” Koa asked.
“Since the ’80s,” Basa responded. “He tried to get me into the business, but I turned him down. Big mistake. He makes a hell of a lot more than I do.”
“There’s money in concrete?” Koa asked.
“Not for the slobs who lay the stuff, but the drivers do okay, and the managers make good money, especially with all the construction activity on this side of the island. And West Hawai‘i Concrete dominates the business on the west side. My brother does alright.”
When they drove through the gate, the ground turned from the rusty red of oxidized lava to the white of concrete dust, and the glare from the reflected sun intensified tenfold. They parked and got out. The trade winds caught them in a swirl of concrete dust, blinding them and coating them with fine white powder. They’d be cleaning shit out of their hair for a week. At least, Koa thought, it didn’t have the taste or smell of rotten eggs like the KonaWili site.
Koa stopped just inside the admin building, letting his eyes adjust from the blinding glare outside to the fluorescent office lighting. He looked to Basa. White dust coated the sergeant’s face, and Koa guessed he too must look like a ghost.
“Arsenio!” The deep voice boomed across the confined space. A taller and heavier carbon copy of the barrel-chested police sergeant came around the counter to bear-hug his brother. Dressed in jeans and a company logo shirt, the older Basa topped six-three and weighed over two hundred pounds, but it was all muscle. Although Basa’s brother was a good ten percent taller and bigger than his little brother, the resemblance was uncanny.
Basa hated his given name. Cops used it at their peril, but family, Koa guessed, got a pass. Slapping his brother hard on the back, Sergeant Basa turned to Koa. “This hairy caveman is my older brother, Osvaldo.” Koa barely suppressed a laugh; Arsenio had wrought his brotherly revenge on Osvaldo.
“Just call me Ozzy,” the older Basa said, leading them around the customer counter into a small room with a conference table. “You’re here about that horrific disaster down at KonaWili.” It was a statement, not a question. “Let me get the paperwork.”
“Osvaldo?” Koa asked with a raised eyebrow after Ozzy left the room. Basa just spread his arms and shrugged. “What can I say? Parents!”
“You got your body cam running?”
“No. I turn it off for family.”
Ozzy returned with a sheaf of papers. “You want to know about the concrete orders for the school?”
“Orders … plural?” Koa asked.
“Yeah,” Ozzy responded. “Unusual for a government contract, but that job had two separate orders.” Ozzy pulled papers from his stack. “This first one is pretty straightforward. On big government contracts, we typically get about three months’ notice, ’cause the contractor wants the materials ready. Delays on these government jobs cost big bucks.”
Koa pulled the order across the table and studied it. Boyle Construction had ordered hundreds of cubic yards of concrete to be delivered in stages—foundation, foundation walls, main floor, main building walls, sidewalks, and miscellaneous finishing. The order appeared to cover the entire job and bore the number of the DOE-approved construction contract. Dozens of delivery tickets, some dirty or crumpled from having been countersigned on the job, were clipped to the order, showing the deliveries as the job progressed. Finally, the file contained a series of invoices requesting payment and vouchers reflecting the dates and amounts of payment.
Koa looked up at Ozzy. “This all seems pro forma.”
Ozzy nodded. “It is. That’s typical of the way these government contracts work.”
“What about the other order?”
“Strange, that one. Never seen anything like it on a government deal, and I’ve been doing this job for more than twenty-five years.”