[Lady Justice 03] - Lady Justice Gets Lei'd Read online

  “So what dey gonna do wif de stuff dey stole? Maybe fence it?” Willie asked.

  “On the contrary,” the professor continued. “Their goal is to return the artifacts to their proper resting place.”

  “And where is dat?”

  “The island of Maui,” I said. “They were discovered in a cave in the crater of a dormant volcano.”

  “So how do they get the stuff back to an island in the Pacific Ocean?” Jerry asked.

  “The Kalakoa family had packed it in a container to be shipped to California by rail. From there it was to go to Honolulu by ship, but the container was found empty. It appears it was loaded into another trailer, but we don’t have a clue where it went from there.”

  Dad had just sat there, quietly listening to our exchange. Finally, Dad chimed in, “They couldn’t send it by rail. There are too many people who would have to be involved. They would have hired a private contractor with his own tractor to move the trailer to the shipyard in Los Angeles.”

  “But Dad, there are thousands of eighteen-wheelers on the road. It would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.”

  “Not if you know where to look. The most direct route from Kansas City to Los Angeles is I-70 to Cove Fort, Utah, and then I-15 to Southern California. And there are weigh stations all along the route.”

  “How does that help us?”

  “The trucking industry is heavily regulated, and every driver must carry a logbook. This book must be current every time you start or stop. If you don’t, you can be fined, and I’m sure these guys don’t want to draw attention. The logbook must also list the shipper and commodity being carried, the point of origin, and the destination point. So now, how many rigs leaving Kansas City are going all the way to Los Angeles? You’ve eliminated a whole lot of needles.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yep. These guys aren’t going to use a big shipping company. Too many questions. They will use an independent guy who works for himself.”

  “And how can we get a list of these guys?”

  “Call my old buddy Tony Mancuso at the union hall.”

  “Ah, the teamsters.”

  “You bet. Any guy who has shelled out thirty to forty grand for a Peterbilt or K-Whacker is going to belong to the union.”

  Sweet! Maybe this old fart had some redeeming qualities after all.

  I was fairly confident that the thieves would not hang around Kansas City any longer than necessary, so I called the captain and shared the information gleaned from our front porch session.

  He agreed and asked me to take Dad to the union hall and talk to Tony Mancuso.

  Dad had been a teamster for forty years before he retired and knew everyone but the new guys. He and Tony went back a long way.

  After a round of backslapping, hugging, and catching up, we got down to business. Tony was reluctant, at first, to share the information, but I gently reminded him that it would be a lot less trouble for everyone concerned to share the data informally with me than for us to get a court order and bring in guys from the station to dig into their files.

  The teamsters being the teamsters, he finally agreed.

  He entered the search parameters in the computer, and soon we had a list of the independent contractors working out of the local union, with names, addresses, and the ID numbers on their tractors.

  I faxed the list to the captain, and before the day was over, weigh stations along I-70 and the highway patrols from Kansas City to Utah were on the lookout for our perps. Any independent contractor whose log book showed K.C. to L.A. was detained while officers searched their trailers for the contraband.

  Find the missing artifacts, and we find our killers.

  Days passed and dozens of trailers were searched, but we were no closer to finding the missing artifacts than the day they were taken. Either the thieves had slipped through our net by taking back roads around the weigh stations or had gotten word about the searches and were laying low until things cooled off. Either way, we had no idea whether the missing items were still in Kansas City or on a barge headed to Honolulu.

  Dad had settled in nicely. I introduced him to Maggie, and he promptly told me, “If I were twenty years younger, we’d be knocking heads over that one, Sonny.”

  This, of course, only endeared him to my sweetie.

  Dad had wasted no time. He and Bernice had quickly become an item. I suppose they figured that at their age there was no point in being coy.

  One afternoon, I happened to overhear their conversation as they sat swinging side-by-side on the porch.

  “Bernice, dear, what is that lovely fragrance you’re wearing? It’s absolutely divine.”

  “I hoped you would like it, John. I bought it especially for you.”

  “Indeed I do.”

  “Well, you smell very nice yourself. What do you have on?”

  “Well, actually, I have a hard on.” He grinned. “But I didn’t think you could smell it.”

  I guess they are swingers in more ways than one.

  If someone had told me a month before that I’d be double-dating with my father, I would have laughed in their face.

  It’s absolutely uncanny how life’s little twists and turns can change everything in an instant.

  But there we were.

  Dad, Bernice, Maggie, and I had piled into the car and headed to Oak Grove, about fifteen miles east of Kansas City, to share a meal and drinks at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants. After a hearty meal of chips, salsa, fajitas, and more margaritas than any of us should have imbibed, we decided to call it a day. I was just about to turn on to I-70 when Dad spoke up.

  “Got me a problem, sonny. My old bladder has shrunk to about the size of a golf ball, and those margaritas are going right through me. How about we pull into that truck stop and let me drain the main vein?”

  “Me too.” Bernice giggled. “If I laugh too hard, I’m going to pee my pants.”

  “Then by all means, we should stop.”

  I pulled into the big TA truck stop, and the old folks hopped out.

  There must have been twenty big rigs lined up side-by-side in the lot. Their drivers were either in the restaurant or had decided to bunk there for the night.

  I pulled the list that Tony had given us and started cross-checking the numbers on the cabs with the numbers on our list. Maggie soon grew bored and flipped on the radio to pass the time while we waited for Dad and Bernice to return from their potty break.

  I hadn’t expected to find any matches, but what else did I have to do?

  Then there it was.

  I checked and rechecked the numbers and found a match.

  I was just about to say something to Maggie when I heard Boy George warbling his hit from 1980, and the words took my breath away, “Karma, karma, karma, karma, karma chameleon.”

  We looked at each other.

  “It just can’t be,” I whispered.

  “How can it not be?”

  I hopped out of the car and quietly circled the eighteen-wheeler. No one was around. The pull-down door on the trailer was secured with a padlock.

  Everything I had ever learned about police procedure told me to call for backup and do it by the book.

  Then I felt the tiny obsidian amulet in my pocket and heard Boy George crooning from my car.

  Just a coincidence?

  Sorry. I don’t believe in coincidences.

  Lady Justice often operates in mysterious ways. Who was I to argue?

  I popped the lid on my trunk.

  Old habits are hard to break. In my landlord days,

  I carried a toolbox loaded with all kinds of gadgets to deal with apartments and tenants. One of my staple items was a bolt cutter. People mistakenly believe that a padlock is secure and will keep people out of whatever is being locked.

  Nothing is further from the truth.

  A good, sharp bolt cutter will pop the shackle on a padlock in seconds.

  I retrieved my cutter and had just snapp
ed the lock when I heard, “What in tarnation do you think you’re doing?”

  I had fully expected to see a burly trucker headed my way, but it was just my father.

  “Dad! You scared the crap out of me.”

  I filled him in on what I had found, and we slowly, and as quietly as possible, raised the door on the trailer.

  I told Dad to keep an eye out for anyone coming our way and entered the bowels of the trailer to inspect the cargo.

  Sure enough, the bill of lading attached to the crates still bore the final destination that Ronald Kalakoa had printed before his death, “Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii.”

  “So what are we going to do?” Dad whispered as we huddled by the car.

  “I have to call for backup. We can’t handle this alone. We have no idea how many there are.”

  “But what if they come back before your buddies arrive? Are you packing heat?”

  Off-duty officers are supposed to be armed at all times, but I just never could get in the habit. Somehow it didn’t feel right carrying a revolver on a date. I understand now why they suggest you do it.

  I shook my head no.

  “Well, great. Then we need to get this thing out of here before they come back.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m saying that you call your buddies while I get this thing going, and we’ll get the hell out of Dodge.”

  “Can you still drive one of these things?”

  “Is the Pope Catholic?” was all he replied.

  I presumed that was an affirmative answer.

  “But the cab is locked. And how would you start it?”

  He just shook his head and started feeling under the huge wheel wells.

  “Ah. Here it is.” He pulled a magnetic key holder from the wheel well.

  “Best not to waste any time. Call it in, and I’ll head to your precinct.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Bernice squealed. “I’ve always wanted to ride in one of these.”

  “Then let’s get your cute little butt into the cab.”

  Dad tucked Bernice into the passenger seat, and soon I heard the rumble as the big diesel engine roared to life.

  I called the precinct, and the captain wasn’t exactly enthused at my initiative.

  “Walt! What in the hell were you thinking? You broke into a truck, hijacked it, and it’s now being driven by an eighty-year-old guy and his girlfriend?”

  “Uh, yeah. That’s pretty much it.”

  “So where are you now?”

  “We’re just about to leave Oak Grove and head west on I-70.”

  “Just terrific! I’ll send a couple of black and whites to intercept you and escort you in. Heaven help us.”

  I looked at Maggie. She just shook her head and rolled her eyes. I had hoped my Lois Lane would be a bit more supportive.

  I pulled out of the parking lot with Dad close behind, and we entered the on-ramp to I-70 westbound.

  We were clipping along at sixty-five miles an hour, and I thought we were home free when two huge, black SUVs pulled alongside. One of them pulled into the lane directly in front of me, and the other crowded my left side.

  We were approaching the exit ramp for Buckner-

  Tarsney Road, and the passenger in the car to my left pointed to the ramp.

  The SUV in front slammed on the brakes, and the guy on the left forced me onto the exit ramp.

  I looked in the rearview mirror as I hit my brakes hard and saw Dad barreling toward our rear end. He jammed on his brakes, and I saw the big rig jackknife.

  The trailer swung dangerously across two lanes of traffic.

  We had just barely entered the ramp as Dad went whizzing by. Miraculously, he righted the fishtailing rig as he sped along I-70.

  I pulled to the shoulder of the exit ramp, and a stocky Hawaiian guy with a gun ordered us out of the car and into the forward SUV.

  I noticed the words inscribed on the front of his T-shirt, “Hawaiian by birth.” Then he turned around, and the words, “American by force,” were inscribed on the back.

  This couldn’t be good.

  Maggie and I sat in the backseat of the SUV as we sped north on Buckner-Tarsney Road.

  “Who are you guys, and why are you doing this?” I asked.

  The guy with the gun answered, “We are Kanaka

  Maoli, and we are simply taking back what is ours.”

  “What is Kanaka Maoli?”

  “We are people of Hawaiian blood. The sacred resting place of our ancestors has been defiled, and we have come to claim the bones of our forefathers and punish those who have angered the gods.”

  “But how can sharing your culture with the world be a bad thing?”

  “I would not expect a haole to understand. How you like it if we come to mainland and dig up your Lincoln or Kennedy and carry his bones to our village?”

  I hadn’t exactly thought of it in those terms.

  “So what happens now?”

  “You have angered Pele, who has guarded the sacred bones for centuries, and now you must pay. We will not rest until they have been returned.”

  We rode in silence through the back roads of Eastern Jackson County.

  I could feel Maggie shivering, and I held her hand. I wanted to offer her some words of encouragement, but under the circumstances, nothing seemed appropriate.

  We turned off a gravel road into a farm field. There were no lights or farmhouses anywhere to be seen. They had picked a remote area far from prying eyes to exact their vengeance and offer their sacrifice.

  Two old wooden gateposts stood as silent sentries at the edge of the field. I was bound to one and Maggie to the other.

  One of the men carried a five-gallon gas can from the back of one of the SUVs and saturated the ground around each of us.

  The four men then gathered in a circle between us, and one of them began to chant in Hawaiian.

  Under more favorable circumstances, we would have thoroughly enjoyed the ceremony. I was mesmerized as I listened to the beautiful, lyrical phrasing that was totally foreign to us.

  The chant was long and drawn out, and I could only imagine the words of supplication that were being offered to their gods.

  As the chant droned on, a different sound broke the silence of the night. It sounded like the distant rumbling of an approaching storm.

  The sound grew in intensity, and soon the words of the chant were no longer audible.

  The ground began to shake, and the Hawaiians looked around in terror, wondering if they had invoked a personal appearance from Pele herself.

  But it was not the gods who were approaching. It was the headlights of two-dozen massive eighteen-wheelers.

  The first big rig crashed through the rusty barbed wire fence with gears grinding and diesel smoke billowing from the exhaust. Each rig followed in turn, and soon the huge trucks, much like Indians circling a wagon train, surrounded us. I could see flashing lights outside the circle, and soon officers from the highway patrol, the sheriff’s office, and the K.C. police department flooded the area.

  A sheriff’s deputy cut our bindings, and Maggie ran into my arms sobbing. This was the second time in a month that she had been abducted. I silently wondered how much more she could endure.

  As I stood there holding the most precious thing in my life, I saw an old dude climb painfully from the cab of one of the trucks and come hobbling in my direction.

  “Dad! How on earth …?” I pointed to the wall of steel around us.

  “Simple, sonny. CB radio. I was on the horn the minute we pulled out of the parking lot.”

  “You guys still use those things?”

  “You bet we do. I couldn’t stop in time to make the exit ramp, so my good buddy Earl, who was right behind, kept an eye on you till I found the next exit. By the time I caught up, we had us a convoy.”

  C.W. McCall would have been proud.

  Who knew that Lady Justice could drive a big rig?

  Suddenly a frail li
ttle figure burst into the circle and grabbed Dad around the waist. She was out of breath, and her face was flushed. All Bernice could muster was, “Man, that was a real hoot!”

  CHAPTER 8

  As I reflected on the events of the past month, I was amazed at the dramatic shift my life had taken.

  Somehow, not only my life but the lives of all those around me, including a father whom I hadn’t seen in years, were drawn into the vortex swirling around the Kalakoa family and the ancient Hawaiian artifacts.

  Uncle Ray had said that Maggie and I had been chosen, but I had nearly lost her twice since his proclamation. Each time I felt a renewed urgency to take her as my wife. I couldn’t bear the thought of being without her.

  Unlike my dad, who seemed to enjoy his life as a geriatric Casanova, the thought of being out there again was even more frightening than the idea of being alone.

  Once again, the guys at the precinct couldn’t pass up the opportunity to harass the old man. I had taken a day off to decompress, but on the morning of my return, I was bombarded with wieners and marshmallows, just in case I wanted to host another bonfire.

  To an outsider, this constant haranguing might seem cruel and insensitive. But since no one was actually hurt, the act of poking fun at and ridiculing the situation seems to take the power away from what could have been a tragic event.

  I can live with that.

  I learned that our four abductors were in custody and were to be arraigned on charges of murder, kidnapping, and grand theft. The artifacts were again secure and were awaiting transport to the West Coast, this time under guard.

  The captain informed me that Buddy Kalakoa had requested that Maggie and I drop by the art gallery. He wanted to thank us personally for our role in reacquiring the artifacts.

  I thanked the captain but silently wondered if there might be more. I wasn’t convinced that our Hawaiian adventure had come to an end.

  I picked Maggie up after work, and we headed to the art gallery. We found Buddy sitting at his desk. After the perfunctory greetings and words of thanks, I got down to business.

  “Buddy, did you know those guys who did those horrible things?”

  “I knew of them. They are part of a Hawaiian sovereignty group who have established a village near Waimanolo in the Koolau Mountains on the island of Oahu.”