Mana (4 page)

Slipping the final copy into an envelope, she picked up her briefcase and walked along the deserted hall to the elevator. Still working the article over in her mind, she dropped the envelope into the slot in Cy's door, and started for the front door of the building, remembering at the last moment her promise to Julie.

Punching ninety-nine on the receptionist's phone brought a sleepy “Hallo” in answer to her call. “Yeah, yeah. Dis is Joe. Be up in jus' a minute.”

It was actually five, but the grey-haired janitor did not seem to be especially disturbed at having his routine broken.

“Have a good night, Joe.”

A smile spread over the dark face behind the stubble of beard, as he held the door open for her. “You too.”

The parking lot was badly lit, but Lehua had left her old two-door near the entrance under the brightest of the lights. She had purchased the ‘72 Ford for a trifling sum when she had taken her job with the paper, and had immediately christened it “Louie.” It suited her fine. “I never have to lock it,” she told her mother, “because no one would ever expect an old clunker like that to have anything worth stealing in it. Anyway, neither of the locks work.” The theory seemed to have proven out, since nothing had ever turned up missing from her car. With help from one of her cousins, who had considerable mechanical skills, the ancient vehicle had proven to be surprisingly dependable. Lehua slipped behind the wheel. The starter churned, but nothing else happened. She gave a sigh of disgust. That was not like Louie. Sometimes his battery got weak, but he would always let her know about it well ahead of time, and she had always humored him by replacing it for him. Now…nothing but a brisk whir from the starter motor, which meant it wasn't Louie's battery that was bothering him.

Getting out, she did not bother to reach behind the seat for the wooden prop she used to hold up the hood, because she knew in advance she would probably not be able to cure Louie's illness. She shook her head as she surveyed the mute and grease-covered block of metal. No loose wires, no obvious explanation for Louie's reluctance. She dropped the hood, toyed with the idea of rousing Joe again and calling for a taxi, then decided it would not be worth the half-hour wait Kona Kabs inevitably imposed upon its customers at this hour of the night.

Leaving the balky car behind, she started off on the three-quarter-mile uphill hike to her apartment. Walking quickly along the badly-lit alley behind Alii Drive, she was lost in thought when the figure jumped out from the tall plumbago hedge. There was no question of his intentions. With what looked like a tire iron brandished in one hand, his face covered by a stocking, his pants unzipped and his penis erect, his words—only half understood—were, “If you scream, I'll kill you.”

Chapter 4

The remarkable thing was the clarity of the visions which flashed across her mind, a mind powerless to make her move. Fixed to the spot, she suddenly saw the battered body of a rape victim she had written about months before. The spell broke only enough for her to raise her hands to ward off the inevitable blow of the upraised iron bar, and then she heard a crack like the sound of a breaking branch. A scream of pain came from behind the mask, the iron clattered to the concrete walk, the menacing figure flew backwards like a scarecrow caught in a wild gust of wind, smashed to the ground, struggled to get up and tumbled over backwards again.

Crawling along the alley, somehow managing to get upright but tripping again against the building flanking the left side of the path, the now-moaning form got once more to its feet and managed to run unsteadily, one arm hanging uselessly. Stumbling, falling, getting up, the creature managed to make it down between the buildings almost to the neighboring street before collapsing. The light of the lone lamp revealed a trail of blood following the battered figure.

While the memory of the scene remained clear in her mind, the time between then and when she got to her apartment was almost a blank. The fear, the need to explain to herself the terrifying and extraordinary event, the sheer physical exhaustion from her dash home overwhelmed her. Her hand shook as she locked the door. She looked at the flimsy chain, then propped a chair under the doorknob as an additional barrier. From there she went to the back door and checked the dead bolt, which was still firmly in place.

Convinced she would be unable to sleep, she considered taking a sleeping pill, something she seldom did and always disliked doing. There was no need. Strangely, sleep came quickly, a dreamless soothing sleep. She knew she would have slept until noon if the phone hadn't roused her shortly before ten. The befuddlement of sleep was difficult to dispel. The voice did nothing to help her gropings toward reality.

In answer to the question, she said, “Yes, this is Lehua Watanabe.”

“You've gone far enough. No more articles on the Angel Tong.”

“What?”

“Remember Victor Reisel.” The connection broke. Now she was awake.

Victor Reisel. Vaguely, she remembered hearing about him. A columnist from somewhere in the distant past who had written articles on racketeering. Where was it? Detroit? Someplace like that. Then one day someone threw acid in his face, blinding him. The connection was easy to make. She reached for the phone again and dialed Cy's number, but in the few moments it took to make the connection, she had changed her mind about what she planned to tell him. She would not leave it up to him to decide what to do.

“Hi, Lehua. Great story. It's being set up right now. What's up?”

Instead of breaking the news about the phone call, she told Cy about the rape attempt.

“Jeezus! I wondered why your car was still in the lot when I got here this morning. You want me to have someone look at it?

“No. I'll have my cousin come by.”

“Have you told the police?”

“Uh-uh. I just woke up.”

“There was a fire down at Captain Cook last night I wanted you to look into, but I can have Lenny do that. Christ, but I'm sorry about what happened. Take your time about getting back to work, and call the police!”

Lehua laughed. “You're the kind of boss all workers should have. I'll use the time for my next article on the Tong. When do you think we should run it?”

“The sooner the better.”

The sooner the better, Lehua thought, as she put down the receiver and swiveled her feet to the floor. Would there be another early-morning call when the current article hit the streets? Or would there be an attempt to carry out the threat? It was time to talk to Captain Silva, to tell him about the phone call, and perhaps about the attempted rape. Why “perhaps?” Lehua was not certain who it should be, but knew it was time to confide in someone other than the Captain, and she wished Bill were there.

No Bill? Then she would turn to Tessa Kaholakula. Somehow, Tessa seemed to be an especially appropriate confidante. Something was happening that the police could do nothing about. Of course, there was really no reason for thinking Tessa could do anything about it either.

* * *

Lehua decided to walk part way to the University. She had forgotten to call her cousin, but then decided he must be at work and would not be able to look at the car until five anyway. She needed the walk, and knew at least one of Kailua's roving fleet of cabs would soon come within hailing distance, once she got down to tourist-crowded Alii Drive.

Cutting across the civic playground, she was only half aware of the young players vying to drop the ball into the basket and, for the most part, failing dismally to do so. One over-ardent thrower bounced the ball off the backboard and it came toward her. As she raised her hands to intercept it, it stopped in mid-air, flew back above the heads of the children and arched over the hoop, plopping in without touching the rim. The young heads followed the path of the ball, then turned as one to look at her, while she hastily retreated toward the street to find a taxi. The ten minute ride to the University barely gave her time to collect her thoughts.

The greeting was the usual one. “Clear off a chair and sit down,” Tessa said, accepting back the board Lehua had brought along in a grocery sack. “How'd your interview with Anuenue go?”

“I guess I should have brought along the tape I made too, but there have been some distractions.” Lehua could not resist smiling at her own understatement. Tessa lifted two heavy dark eyebrows in question. Lehua obliged her with a graphic description of the attempted rape.

“His arm seemed to be completely out of its socket,” Lehua said.

“You mean he started to attack you and then fell apart?”

Lehua shook her head. “I mean something knocked him apart. At least that's what it looked like.”

The dark brown face looked skeptical, and Lehua could feel her own annoyance growing as she caught the expression.

“Are you sure that's what happened?” Tessa asked. “It must have been pretty dark along that alleyway.”

“Not so dark I couldn't see what he was planning to do, and not so dark I couldn't see something prevented him from doing it.”

Tessa shook her head, and Lehua's annoyance began to change to anger. Tessa's next words completed the change.

“Could you have imagined all that?”

Lehua pointed to a pen on Tessa's desk. “Toss me that pen!”

Surprised at the sudden shift of topic, Tessa nevertheless reached for the pen and threw it with an underhand motion across the desk. Lehua made no move to catch it as the pen stopped in mid air, then flew off at a right angle across the room.

Tessa's eyes opened wide in astonishment. “How did you do that?”

“I didn't, and that's the point. I have no idea what's going on. I'm grateful whatever happened last night happened, but I'm also terrified at what's going on. There's some kind of force around me that strikes out against anything approaching me.”

“I can't believe it.”

“I know you can't. I couldn't believe it either. Now I have to believe it, because whatever it is, it's real.”

“Why did you come to me?”

“I don't know, except I had the feeling you might have an explanation. Maybe that was just wishful thinking.”

Tessa furrowed her brow in thought. “Maybe I do have an explanation, but it's pretty farfetched.”

Lehua shrugged. “A farfetched explanation is a big improvement over none.”

“Have you ever heard of mana?”

“Mana? I think so. Wasn't that one of the old Polynesian gods. No! It's the Hawaiian word for power or strength, or some such thing.”

“It's not a god, but the gods were supposed to possess it. I guess you could call it some kind of divine quality. Later, the word came to apply to almost any kind of ability. Traditionally, it was something that, among living beings, only alii were supposed to have. That was why there were so many taboos surrounding them. They convinced everyone else it was much too dangerous a force for the average person to fool around with, and they claimed it protected them from being attacked. It was a good ploy, if nothing else, a good way of maintaining fear and respect, if not actual loyalty.”

“How did a chief get this mana?”

“I don't remember, if I ever knew. I'll have to do some research and see what I can find out. Tell me more. Do you feel any different? Has this, whatever it is, done anything else?

“No to the first question, except I feel pretty eerie when these things happen. It swats mosquitoes, by the way.”

“That makes sense. After all, mosquitoes are attacking you.”

“I guess it has a sense of humor too.” Lehua described the basketball incident.

Tessa laughed. “You'd be a sensation in the NBA.”

Lehua gave a wry laugh in return. “And me who couldn't even hit the backboard in high school gym classes.”

“I wouldn't count on mana having a sense of humor,” Tessa said, after a pause. “So far as I know, it's always represented as being completely impersonal, like electricity. I can't quite picture an electric generator doing anything for laughs. Is there anything else you noticed about it?”

“No. Except I don't know what I'll do if someone tries to shake hands with me. I took a chance with that pen trick. It could have flung it right back into your face for all I know about how it's going to act.”

“There does seem to be intelligence behind it, some kind of decision-making process. Maybe it's more like a programmed computer than an electric generator.”

“Yes, but there's no guarantee the decisions will be the right ones. The purpose behind an upraised tire iron is pretty clear, but I'm not sure what will happen if someone waves at me.” She paused, then added, “Right now I'm hoping it will just go away.”

“You need to go to the police.”

“To tell Sam Silva what I told you? C'mon, Tessa! He thinks I'm pretty wacky already doing all this investigative reporting. If I come up with a weird story like this one, he'll lock me up.”

“You still have to tell him about the attempted rape. That creep will be threatening someone else soon, someone not as well protected as you.”

“I doubt it, not in the condition he was in when I last saw him. But I will drop by the station.”

“In the meantime, I'm going to find out all I can about mana.”

* * *

Captain Silva had always seemed best at relaxing. Today, his two-hundred-and-fifty-pound bulk overflowed the armless swivel chair he occupied behind his desk, and he was doing what he did best.

“So you've got a crime to report? Well you've come to the right place. What form of corruption are you unveiling these days?”

Lehua had known the Silvas since her early childhood. Her closest friend had been Sam's daughter, up to the day she married and moved to the Mainland with her engineer husband, and they still corresponded regularly. The friendship and early acquaintance with Sam Silva had paid off in Lehua's reporting, and she had been careful to avoid abusing the relationship. She always made sure that, for what information and help she gained, her own findings would be made available to him whenever possible.

Skeptical as he had been of the usefulness of her work, the Captain had eventually grown to respect the perseverance that went into the investigations and, increasingly, to value the material they uncovered.

“This is more personal. It's an attempted rape.”

Sam slowly shifted forward in his chair. “You? Where? When?”

“I was just leaving the newspaper office, late last night. My car wouldn't start, so I decided to walk home. I'd just started down the alley behind Alii Drive when this guy wearing a mask jumped out from behind the bushes with a tire iron in his hand. There wasn't much question about what he had in mind. He said something like, ‘I'll kill you, if you scream.' Just about then he stumbled, and I think he must have broken his arm, because he turned and ran off toward Alii with it hanging down by his side.”

As she spoke, Sam flicked on the intercom. “Bring me the personals we found on that body last night.”

Instead of going back to her description, Lehua asked, “Body?”

Sam nodded. “I think you've cleared up a mystery for us. We found a body lying face down in the gutter in an alley connecting Alii to the parking lots. He was unzipped, though he didn't much look like he was ready for any action. He was wearing a stocking mask, had a badly broken arm and a face that looked like hamburger when we finally managed to peel the mask off and look at it.

“Someone must have stomped the bastard after he ran away from you, though I can't see why. Robbery obviously wasn't the motive. The pm isn't in on him yet, but the pathologist's guess is he bled to death from an artery that was torn to shreds in his arm and another that was ruptured in his neck.”

At that moment a clerk brought in a plastic bag and handed it to the Captain. Sam snapped open the ziplock. “Did you recognize him?”

“No. It was pretty dark back there. The hedge blocks the light from the neighboring lamps. Besides, how could I recognize him when he was wearing a mask?”

A faint smile crossed Sam's face. “You'd recognize me wouldn't you, even if I was wearing a mask?”

Lehua could not suppress a smile in return, as she tried to picture Sam's formidable bulk topped by a mask. “You have to admit you're different, Sam. Anyway, there was nothing familiar about him.”

Sam opened the wallet which had been one of the bag's contents. “His name was Martin Reveille, a haole. Came from the Mainland about a year ago and worked for the Kona News. I've already checked with Cy, and he says Reveille worked in the press room and on the loading dock, mostly in clean-up and as a gofer. Are you sure you didn't know him?”