Spider Bones

“How old was Logo?”

Fitch regarded me blankly.

“Roughly. Twenty? Forty? Sixty?”

“Shit, I don’t know. Maybe a little older than Kealoha.”

“Describe him.”

“Dark hair, dark eyes. Body by beluga.”

“Meaning?”

“The guy was big.”

“How big?”

“Six feet, maybe three hundred pounds. Typical Hamo. That’s why they hung together. Those guys are thick.”

It took a minute for the comment to register.

“Kealoha is a Hawaiian name,” I said.

“That got changed.”

“Changed?” An idea began to materialize in my mind.

“When Kealoha’s old lady come here.”

“Came here from where?”

“Tafuna.”

I remembered Gloria’s crack about the American dream. I thought she’d been referring to Honolulu. She’d meant the United States.

“Before that it was something else,” Fitch said.

I looked from one detective to the other.

Lô’s expression suggested his brain was co

A subtle angling of the brows told me Ryan was not. To his credit, he asked no questions.

“May I see Perry’s autopsy photo?” I managed to keep my voice calm.

Lô pulled the five-by-seven from his pocket and laid it on the table.

I studied the image.

There were the black and red swirls within the half-sickle form. There were the filigreed strips extending outward from the sickle’s two sides, converting the whole into a tapuvae, an ankle bracelet tattoo.

And there were the three loopy things riding the bracelet’s upper edge. The elements possibly added later. The two backward C’s flanking a U.

I knew what they were.

“Paper and pen?” I felt totally jazzed.

Lô passed me his ballpoint and a page from his notebook.

Positioning the paper’s lower edge along the truncated upper border of the little loopy things, I continued the line of each C upward and to the left, then swooped each right, converting the backward C’s to S’s.

Lô watched without comment.

I closed the top of the U, converting it to an O. SOS.

Lô regarded my handiwork a moment, then reached for his phone.

I rotated the photo and drawing so Ryan could see.

“Tabarnac,” he said.

PHONE TO HIS EAR, Lô HURRIED OUTSIDE. FITCH TRACKED HIM like a puppy hoping for a treat.

We waited.

I sensed Ryan assessing my injuries.

Three middle school girls giggled and elbow-shoved their way to the bathroom, each carrying a shoulder-slung pack.

The woman beside us finished eating and rolled off with her baby.

Fitch watched in fidgety silence.

Finally, Ryan nodded to someone over my shoulder.

“He’s back.”

We rose and joined Lô in the parking lot.

“My partner’s going to contact California, see what they’ve got on Kealoha, have them run the street name Logo through their database on gangs.”

“Remember, no blowback on me.”

Lô ignored his CI.

“Later Hung and I will haul Atoa and Pukui to the bag.”

“Look, I gotta go.” Fitch was shifting his weight from foot to foot. There wasn’t much to shift.

Yanking his wallet from a back pocket, Lô counted out five twenties.

Fitch grabbed for the bills.

Lô pulled them back. “Keep in touch?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Lô extended his hand.

Fitch snatched the money and skittered out of sight.

“Weird dude,” Ryan said.

“Guy’s a tweaker.”

“It’s all about the intel.”

“Yeah.” Lô bounced a glance off me. “SOS. Sons of Samoa.” The faintest smile played his mouth. “You’re right. The little lady’s not bad.”

“She has her moments,” Ryan said.

No way the little lady was getting sucked into that. I said nothing.

“A gang tat.” Lô slowly wagged his head. “I missed it.”

“Honolulu having problems?” Ryan asked.

“Until recently I’d have said no. We’ve got gangs, sure. The Samoans run together, sure. Everyone acts bad-ass, sure. But mostly the violence is Jets and Sharks type of crap.” Lô slid the John Le

“How?” I asked.

“Not long ago a street tough named Lingo got capped in Chinatown. A week later, there’s a stabbing.”

“Retaliation?”

Lô nodded. “Both vics were Samoan. A witness to the stabbing claimed one of the doers shouted ‘KPT SOS.’ ”

“Kuhio Park Terrace. Sons of Samoa,” I translated for Ryan.

“Could be a turf war,” Ryan said.

“Two punks from Oakland are going down for the shooting,” Lô said. “We suspect West Coast traffickers are heading this way.”

“And the locals are opposed,” Ryan said.

“And not rolling over.”

“If that’s the case, Fitch’s intel skews pretty good.”

“Yeah,” Lô said. “It does.”

At six, Ryan and I were still threading through traffic. Slogging, really.

I’d used Ryan’s phone to call Katy, explained about the accident, and told her that we were on our way home.

She’d demanded details. Sidestepping most questions, I’d assured her that I was fine. She’d offered to throw something together for di

I’d then given Ryan an overview of Lô’s conversation with Gloria Kealoha.

“But, until Fitch, you never made the Samoa co

“No.”

“What pulled the trigger?”

“Hamo. Tafuna. Waipahu,” I said.

“Klaatu. Barada. Nikto,” he said.

“What?”

“The Day the Earth Stood Still?”

I was lost.

“Buttercup.” Feigned disappointment. “Nineteen fifty-one? Michael Re

“Three things. First, he used the term Hamo. That’s slang for Samoan.”

“I thought it was a lunch meat that paired well with cheese.”

I ignored that.

“Samoan is a member of the Polynesian language family. Some of the other dialects substitute the letter h for the Samoan s. So Samoa becomes Hamoa.”

“Thus Hamo. I didn’t know that.”

“Second, Tafuna is a city in American Samoa. Fitch said that’s where the Kealohas came from.”

“Except back home they weren’t the Kealohas.” Ryan was quiet a moment. “How was a woman with two minor dependents and no job or job skills allowed to immigrate to the U.S.?”

“Though not citizens, people born in American Samoa are American nationals, free to travel throughout the United States and its territories.”

“OK. Third?”

“Waipahu. There are a couple of fairly good-sized Samoan communities on Oahu, one near Kalihi Valley, another up at Waipahu.”

“Kealoha lived at Waipahu.”

“VoilÁ.”

“But how’d you make the leap to Sons of Samoa?”

“Remember that kid I ID’ed about a year and a half back? The one with the full-body tattoos?”

“The Latin King stabbed outside the bar in Sainte-A

“Yes. I spent hours researching gang tattoos for that case.”

“Gold star, Bre

Before I could say thanks, Ryan executed one of his head-spi

“Tell me about the crash.”

“I did that.”

“Do it again.”

“A car pulled to my bumper, tapped me once, tapped me a second time, went to pass, and swerved into my left rear. I cut the wheel—”

“What kind of car?”

“A black SUV.”

“Year? Make?”

“It happened too fast.”

“How many occupants?”

“Two. I think. The glass was tinted. I couldn’t really see.”

“Male or female?”

“Yes.”

Ryan gave me a look that said he wasn’t amused.

“The passenger was definitely male,” I said.

“How do you know?”

“He waved.”

Ryan let a few beats pass. Then, “Lô doesn’t think it was an accident.”

Nor did I. But I hadn’t wanted to consider the implications.