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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
Doing the Multi-Bully
» Halawa
He was talking in prison, the new convict, just sent up for the killing. Saying things he hadn't said to police or to prosecutors. Things he was too scared to say then. Of course police and prosecutors didn't have the power to turn him into a sex slave to be loaned out to loyal associates. Or not.
Bully had that power.
The new convict chose not. He was talking.
Bully was listening.
"I no blame you for saying nothing before," Bully said as they walked the yard. "Guy you protected is one bad mother, more worst than your cousin got mentioned in the papers. Just like he said, garans-ball-bearin's somebody'd've killed you and your family if you ID'd the mystery man."
"So what you going do now?"
Bully laughed, slapped the skinny kid's back. "You no worry 'bout that, bruddah. Worry 'bout putting some meat on them skinny bones. Get your okole into the weight room, hear."
Just like that, that little gesture, everybody in the yard, and soon the prison, knew. The kid's off limits. Bully's got his back.
Bully was one of those guys, he pulled strings on the outside from behind bars. Most guys get sent up, they're one-dimensional, part of the pack of creeps. Bully was multi-dimensional. He liked that word. Kinda like that song -- Multi-Bully, Multi-Bully, Multi-Bully. He sold drugs, fenced stolen goods including guns, ran a chop shop in Kahaluu. Which is what they got him for when he popped in to check on business at precisely the wrong time -- just before a raid.
The food wasn't so good inside, and he didn't get a different wahine every day, but life here wasn't bad. Pay off the right guards, a decent quality of life could be achieved, the other businesses could still be run from here.
Strings could still be pulled that affected life on the outside.
Or in this case, lives.
A friend of a friend of Bully's was a friend of the dead kid's family, that's how he got involved. They never believed the new convict didn't know the identity of the mystery man at the park that afternoon. Just a friend of the cousin's that's all, he never got introduced, never caught a name. Then the cousin took the fifth. Mystery follows the kid to prison, the mystery man relaxes.
So the word went out, in a sealed envelope carried by a guard on the take, delivered to a black SUV parked at Likelike Diner.
"Mahalo, bruddah," the driver said, accepting the envelope through the open window. Seth handed the envelope to his cousin Tai in the passenger seat as they pulled onto Keeaumoku. Tai read the message from Bully, handed it to his brother Wili in back. "We got a little action," Tai said. "Going be good."
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Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek. His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin. He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com