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sealieRating: Slash
Word count: ~3, 700
Warning: Dun dun dunnnnn
Advisory: potty mouth; disability; IT’S A WIP.
Disclaimer: writing for fun not for profit.
Comments: British English spelling.
Spoilers: none, it’s an AU.
Betas: Springwoof – thank you ❤
The first part is here,
The Co-operative.
By Sealie
Uncharacteristically, Steve had forgotten that Toast was stuck at the university dealing with a computer emergency. Danny wasn’t too sure what a computer emergency would be comprised of, and made a mental note not to ask, because he never understood Toast’s rambling explanations.
Instead, Danny took himself off to Chin’s studio.
“Hi, Danny? You coming in?” Chin stepped aside, opening his door fully.
“Oh. Hi, Malia.” Danny leaned to the side and waved at Malia, who was looking interestedly over the back of the sofa. “Can I steal your fiancé for ten minutes or so?”
“Sure. Are you sunburnt?” She started to rise.
“Honestly, I’m okay.” Danny waved her to sit back down. “I was just in the sun a fraction too long. I’ve got cream. I forgot. It’s January, for fuck’s sake, you shouldn’t get burnt. Pardon my French.”
“You should be careful,” Malia admonished, folding her arms on the back of the sofa, and leaning her chin on her hands as she watched them.
“I know. I know. It was an accident.” Danny jerked his head down the corridor directing Chin.
“Be right back, Malia.” Chin carefully closed the door behind him.
“Sorry, I didn’t know that Malia had come by,” Danny said, as he led the way up to Steve’s apartment.
“Yeah, she just finished her shift. She’ll appreciate ten minutes, or twenty,” Chin said astutely, “doing nothing.”
“Yeah, it could take a little longer,” Danny said, as he stepped into Steve’s front room. The television was still on.
“Where’s Steve?”
“Believe it or not, running out to talk to the security guys.”
“The ones on Kala Drive?” Chin confirmed. “Or the Kapu?”
“Jesus, did everyone know about them except me?”
“My brother, my entire family, and most of my extended family, are cops. We have increased patrols, so believe you me they were spotted. You can’t leave a van on a suburban street for longer than twenty four hours before someone mentions something to someone. Especially in this neighbourhood.”
“Strangely, that makes me very happy.” Danny pressed the panel, and the hidden door opened, to reveal the museum office.
“Oh, my--” Chin huffed out a laugh, “--that I didn’t know about.”
“Seriously? Hah.” Danny preened. I knew before Chin went the sing-song voice in his head.
“So why do you want to talk? Steve’s all right?”
“Steve’s fine.” Danny made an about face that would have made the drill sergeant wanna-be in Steve perk up and salivate. “What’s this about a head injury?”
“Head injury. Who?” Chin said, suddenly all focus and worry.
“Steve said he had a head injury. I thought that it was his side.” Danny touched his own ribs and then waggled an earlobe. “And ears?”
“Ah.” Chin’s entire body segued into still calm. “Well, you don’t get close enough to a blast that deafens you without getting your brain rattled. It was described as a moderate traumatic brain injury -- essentially a bad concussion.”
“Holy shit,” Danny said horrified. “What else don’t I know?”
“I don’t know what you don’t know,” Chin said with Spock-like neutrality.
Danny absorbed that statement, momentarily bamboozled.
“I get that Steve’s private, and you’re going to protect him.” Danny braced himself. “But answer me one question: is the Steve that I know, the Steve that you knew?”
“Oh, yes,” Chin said without even a millisecond’s hesitation, and very reassuringly for Danny. “He’s quieter. Has less energy. But he’s Steve.”
“No weird and inexplicable personality shifts?”
“No weird personality shifts,” Chin confirmed. “Other than actually getting a boyfriend, of course.”
Danny glowered at Chin’s supremely satisfied smile at the jibe.
“So is that what you wanted?” Chin smoothly moved on.
“Oh, we need your help with something.” Danny stepped aside, letting Chin see the projector and screen set up. “The Mystery of the House of Seolh by Doris McGarrett, and Uncle Tom Cobley and All and All.”
“Who?”
“Rachel -- English thing.” Danny hand waved off the incomprehensible. “So we found the film, and I developed it. I have the slides here.”
Danny made three long steps across the office to the slide projector. It whirred as he switched it on, the old motor revving up. Fine dust motes danced in the beam of light.
“Can you get the switch?” Danny asked.
“Oh,” was Chin’s only contribution as he flicked off the lights.
“Okay. There’s a bunch of shots of the Mercury Marquis.” Danny flicked through them. “Mamo and your Uncle Choi think that’s Koji Noshimuri, who may or may not have been involved in Mr. and Mrs. McGarrett’s car accident -- also known as murder. He’s Yakuza. That’s Steve’s dad’s car, in case you don’t remember. And these are a whole bunch of papers that me and Steve can’t read. Can you?”
“Oh,” Chin repeated and slid forward.
Danny gnawed on his little fingernail, as Chin studied the screen. He had unloaded a lot on the man in a very short period of time. It was understandable if it took Chin a moment to process. Or a minute. Or two. Or three.
“Steve said that was a whole lot of numbers,” Danny said, when he couldn’t contain himself any more.
“It’s an accounts page. And it’s a lot of money.” Chin sighed. “Millions. Millions back in 1988.”
“1988?”
“Yes.” Chin moved closer and tapped on the fabric in the bottom left hand corner, making the picture warp on the wobbling screen. “February 2nd 1988, to be exact.”
“But it’s written out. Not a printed statement.” Danny automatically looked to the box of Audrey’s old statements stored on the shelf by the hidden door.
“Yes. I don’t understand some of it. I think it’s coded.”
“And what’s been accounted?” Danny asked.
“I don’t know,” Chin said. “I’m guessing it’s a euphemism. ‘Medicine’ graded by type: black, gold, dragon. So I assume drugs.”
“Okay,” Danny said, not liking the sound of that. “Next image?”
Chin nodded and Danny moved the slide carriage on.
“Do drugs keep?” Danny asked. “Could there be a stash of drugs hidden in the House or anywhere in Seolh’s holdings?”
“I can only imagine that the amounts here relate to a lot of drugs.” Chin threw a speculative glance over his shoulder. “I would think that we would have found a room of heroin or cocaine.”
“What’s the word picture for medicine?” Danny asked.
“The word that you’re looking for is Hanzi.” Chin tapped the screen again. It looked like a stick person dancing in a three sided box.
“Hanzi? Okay?” Danny said, trying the word out. “Hanzi.”
“Dragon,” Chin continued, pointing to a hanzi that was significantly more complex. “Black.” It appeared to be a walking window with four legs.
“So it’s possibly a naughty drug lord’s diary,” Danny mused, and moved onto the next page of the ledger. There was more of the same. Able to now spot the stick person, the wiggly splodge and the walking window, Danny could only wonder on the importance of the ledger.
“Hang on--” Chin cocked his head to the side as the final page in the sequence of slides came on the screen.
“Yes?”
“Names. Family history. It’s written in a child’s hand. Practicing the traditional Chinese characters. Wo.”
“Whoa? Or Wo?” Danny pounced. This was amazing. “That’s the Wo Fat family tree?” He pointed at the long line of characters drizzling down the screen.
“Wo family tree. Wo is the family name. Fat will be his given name. Yun-fat possibly.” Chin reached up high and tapped a sequence and then the same sequence on another level. “Yun-fat is a given name through the generations.”
“So this is Wo Fat’s ledger, or more likely, Wo Yongfu’s ledger, and Doris McGarrett stole it off him.” Danny rocked up on his heels and back down. “You know, if I was a criminal mastermind, I wouldn’t write my family history all over the front cover.”
“I doubt he meant to lose it,” Chin said sagaciously. “And I can imagine that the child that scribbled on the book probably got smacked.”
“Holy shit. Do you think that the ledger is what Wo Fat’s after?” Danny rubbed at his temples, thinking hard. Had Doris taken the ledger off Wo Yongfu when she had assassinated him? Probably.
“Possibly.” Chin turned back to the screen. “The photos might be enough. There’s code I can’t read. Doris may have taken the photos, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that she stole it.”
“Oh, she stole it,” Danny said authoritatively, and started working through the rest of the slides. “The sequence of photos. The book was here in the House. She took photos of the pages and then the tapestry, Nandi Head, coins, and then the front of the ledger. She then took photos of a vase and a bunch of dolls.”
Danny moved the slides onto the first of the doll photographs. The wooden doll was propped up against what was possibly an old glass window frame. The grey putty holding the glass in position was bubbly and worn. The landscape behind was a vague blue blur that was probably the ocean.
Danny cycled through the rest of the slides for Chin’s benefit, all the way to the creepy, beady-eyed, blonde doll. And then he reversed allowing Chin to take in the sequence again.
“Okay.” Chin rubbed his hands together as the first page of written text flicked onto the screen. “Let’s look at the Nandi Head.”
“Why?”
“The ledger is not hiding in the tapestry. But the Nandi Head -- although more accurately it’s the Nandi’s Head -- is a giant carved wooden head of the bull that serves as the god’s Shiva’s mount. And interestingly, Nandi is the gatekeeper. So let’s have a closer look at the head and the podium.”
Danny beat him to the giant Nandi’s Head. Shadowed in the single red spotlight it was impressively wrought. The care and attention to detail was evident in every line of the bridle, the curve of an eyelid, each and every single carved petal on the garland around the bull’s neck.
Bright white light flooded the room.
“Jesus.” Danny flinched away from it, his headache sparking.
“Sorry,” Chin apologised.
“Isn’t that damaging or something to the artefacts?” Danny said, wincing under the actinic light.
“We’re not going to leave it on very long.” Chin circled around the podium. “The Nandi’s Head is actually carved out of a single piece of wood, and that includes the podium.”
“Where did it come from?”
“Kerala, India. Seventeenth century.”
Gingerly, Danny tapped the bull’s nose with his closed fist. It was solid. Reassured, he bent and tapped the podium that was solid under a cross-hatchery of woodwork. If there was some sort of secret compartment, he doubted that it would be easy to find.
“How big is the journal?” Chin asked.
“Don’t really know.” Danny skirted his finger along the delicately carved bridle. “Macro lenses have been around since 1955, so it could be relatively small. But since a kid used it as a practice book, I’m guessing at the least it’s the size of a notebook. I don’t think that you’d practice hanzi in an insy winsy tiny little book?”
“No,” Chin confirmed. “So a drawer or something?”
“Great minds think alike.”
Crouching on his good knee, Danny scrutinised the cross-hatched pattern, because he doubted that the drawer was hidden in the actual head of the beast. It was lucky that they had the lights, because under the low watt illumination of the red lights, looking for a secret compartment would have been difficult.
“What about the dolls and the vase you mentioned?” Chin asked.
“Haven’t found them. Haven’t looked for them yet,” Danny revised. “We focused on identifying the guy in the photo first.”
“And who was he? I know you said but….”
“Koji Noshimuri, Yakuza mole in the Honolulu Police Department back in the late 1980s, and possibly--” Danny poked a smooth knot in the woodwork and was disappointed when no magical drawer appeared, “--involved in Mr. and Mrs. McGarrett’s deaths.”
Danny leaned to the side, out of the shadow of the Nandi’s Head. Chin was staring down at him, expression pained.
“I kind of wish you kept us more in the loop,” he chastised gently.
Danny nodded, because Chin was right. Things seem to move at strange rates, slow-fast, slow-fast, like a demented tango. This morning had been particularly intense, with the threat of the car bomb and bug planted by Jovan Eteinne.
“Steve thinks that --”
A clatter of running footsteps sounded, echoing across wooden floors. Danny turned on his heel. Setting a hand on the floor, he leaned over trying to see through the door into the museum office.
“Danny? Chin?” Steve’s voice came urgently.
“Hey, Steve, we’re in the museum,” Danny called and, for the hundredth time, mentally chastised himself for forgetting the limitations of Steve’s hearing.
“They’re through that door?” Malia ventured, tone high and stressed.
“Malia?” Chin raced out of the museum in response to that pitch.
“Is Danny with you?” Steve demanded too loudly.
“Yes. He’s in the museum,” Chin said.
Not likening the entire tone of the brief conversation, Danny scrambled to his feet and darted after Chin.
“Are Kono and Mary with you?” Steve continued urgently.
“No,” Chin answered, as Danny skittered into the office.
Malia was sheet white, curling into Chin’s side. The light from the projector set them in bright illumination cut by harsh shadows.
“What’s happening?” Danny demanded.
“The Kapu weren’t parked outside the gates,” Steve said. The projected hanzi script looked like tattoos over his face. “I jogged up to Manoa Street to overlook the Heights, in case they’d changed their look-out point. They weren’t there either. I called Kavika, they should be here.”
“Talmai said that he wanted, you know, to get off early tonight, to see his girlfriend,” Danny thought out loud. The edge of worry around Steve made the hairs on his arms rise. “Paulo’s fed up. Maybe they just went home?”
“Have you triggered the House alarm?” Chin asked carefully.
Danny glanced to the door almost expecting a host of Navy SEALs and Marines to descend upon them. Was Steve overreacting?
“Yes,” Steve said tersely. “Do you know where Mary and Kono are? They weren’t in their rooms.”
“No,” Chin said.
Brusquely, Steve tapped on his BlackBerry. A high pitched squeal made everyone wince. Steve yanked his right aid from his ear, grimacing.
“What the Hell was that?” Danny demanded, he could swear that he could hear his ear bones grating.
“Cell phone signals have been scrambled.” Steve ground his teeth as he plugged the aid back in. “We’re--”
“Are you sure that the House alarm signal got out?” Chin said reasonably.
“Yes,” Steve said, flatly. “Different type of signalling system for just that reason.”
“But this Jovan guy is a special computery person.” A distant shatter of breaking glass caught Danny’s stressed attention.
“What? What did you hear?” Steve snapped.
“Breaking glass,” Danny answered.
Surprisingly, Steve glanced at his watch.
“What do we need to do?” Malia asked, very calmly.
“We stay out of harm’s reach until backup gets here in the next four minutes,” Steve said precisely.
Danny suspected that they were going to be the longest four minutes of his life.
“Do we hide in here?” Chin asked, curling an arm around Malia’s shoulders. “Secret room? Seems perfect.”
Danny hated the thought of closing the door on the tiny office and waiting things out. The narrow walls and low ceiling seemed to crush down on him.
Steve shook his head, but then glanced at Malia, or more accurately Malia’s abdomen, indecision rife across his mobile face. Then resolution flared brightly in his changeable eyes.
“No, I don’t like foxholes unless they’re the last resort,” Steve said. “Switch all the lights off, and shut the door into the museum. Into my apartment, now. Fire drill.”
And then he was darting into his eyrie, leaving them stunned for a moment.
“What?” Danny protested.
Chin untangled from Malia, and went to switch off the lights in the museum as instructed. Stirred into action, Danny went for the projector. In their absence, the only light left was from the television in Steve’s apartment.
Malia followed it -- a moth to its flame -- with Chin on her heels. Danny went with them. Steve came out of his study holding the biggest, chunkiest submachine gun that Danny had ever seen. It was an angular, black monstrosity that looked like it had been put together in a toy factory. Danny, however, did not doubt its power. Steve swung a lumpy black holdall onto the sofa. He pulled out a curved magazine from the bag and slotted it into position, with a skin tingling, satisfying clunk.
“Oh, my god,” Malia said, hands over her mouth.
“There’s a Remington 870 and shells in the bag, Chin.” Steve flared his nostrils. “Danny, topple over the bookcase.”
“What?” Automatically, Danny looked to the off-kilter bookcase, between the kitchenette and sitting room. It gave the apartment the ambiance of the cant of a ship sailing through waves.
Steve didn’t explain further. Stepping to the far side of the bookcase and setting his hand up high, higher than Danny could reach, he easily pushed the bookcase over. It had to be pivoted since it folded like a falling house of cards. The contents smashed onto the floor. The collapsed bookcase totally blockaded the door as it had been no doubt designed exactly to do.
“What about Kono and Mary?” Chin demanded.
“I haven’t forgotten them.” Steve pointed to the office door. “Close it now.”
Quashing his automatic response to argue, Danny went to slap the panel to conceal the door.
“You’ve used a handgun, Danny?” Steve asked, and then answered his own question. “No, fuck, of course you haven’t.”
Danny curled his fingers around the swinging door bringing it quickly back into position, flush with the wood panelling. Chin had a shotgun in his hands and was loading large shells into the barrel. Steve reached into the bag, and hauled out a sheathed machete.
“Catch.”
Danny caught.
“I’m licensed for a handgun,” Malia said quietly.
Steve glanced at her, a furrow deep between his eyebrows.
“I’m licensed for a handgun,” Malia repeated, louder.
“Kel Tec PF-9.” Steve tossed it over, and then a box of bullets. “And rounds. You familiar with?”
Malia answered with actions rather than words, efficiently loading the rounds. The next piece of equipment that Steve pulled out of his bag of toys was a bulky pair of high-tech goggles. He moved over to the semicircular window overlooking the woods behind the House, and held them up to his face without putting them on.
“Come on.” Steve gestured the three of them over, as he flipped open the half circle window and ducked under the glass and out onto the balcony.
“Malia, go.” Chin directed. He kept his shotgun pointed at the door. She moved after Steve. “Danny.”
“Hey, go with your fiancée.”
“I have a gun, Danny. You have a knife,” Chin said.
Now wasn’t the time to argue. Danny followed Steve and Malia. He stumbled over a large bag of plastic wrapped garbage and kicked it out of the way. Steve had Malia crouched down low, under the protection of the balustrade as he scanned the woods out back. There was, Danny remembered, supposed to be a surveillance team camped in the woods. And there, in the distance, was a flash of laser-red light -- three short blips.
Steve breathed out hard, the rush of breath sounding like wind in the woods.
“You good with heights, Malia?” Steve asked, glancing over her shoulder at the hook of a hoist suspended above their heads. The arm of the wheel mechanism was bolted into the junction between the House roof and the slight jut of the tower of the lantern bedroom on the next level. Danny guessed that he was wondering if they had to lower Malia to the ground.
“If I have to be,” she said resolutely.
“Where are they?” Steve said, probably louder than he intended to, as he looked heavenwards.
A dull pop, popping thud made Danny look back into the living room. Directly opposite the door, strafing the back wall of the kitchen, rounds hit.
“They’re here,” Danny said for Steve’s benefit. But he got the impression that Steve was looking for the cavalry arriving by helicopter, not the bad guys.
Steve gave the living room the most cursory of glances as he squatted beside Malia.
“Tight angle at the top of the staircase,” he said, sounding supremely satisfied as a few rounds continued to ineffectually smack against the far wall, but most were caught by the solid bookcase. “Chin.”
Belatedly, Danny realised that Steve was bench pressing a thick coil of metal that resolved into a rolled up ladder. He levered it over the balustrade and Danny leaned over the balcony to watch it unfurl all the way down to the ground.
Chin stepped under the canted window and onto the balcony.
“You guys have practised this?” Danny asked, amazed.
“Fire drill. It’s a four storey building,” Steve said with a distinct of course we have tone to his voice. “We didn’t factor in terrorists, however.”
“Malia, you done this?” Danny asked.
“No,” Malia said succinctly.
“Keep three points of contact on the ladder at all times,” Steve advised.
“Okay,” Malia squeaked.
“Chin, there are two guys out back waiting for you. They’ve got you covered.” Steve angled the blade of his hand at ninety degrees to the House. “Use the walls of the terraced gardens for cover. Head straight towards the stand of soapberry trees.”
“Okay.” Chin swung his leg over the balcony. “Malia, follow me down. Danny, you okay coming next?”
“Yeah, sure?” Danny looked at the ladder and hoped that it could take all their weights combined. It appeared sturdy, bolted to the ironwork of the balcony, and made of thick twists of steel rope and piping.
Steve ducked back into the sitting room, slipping the submachine gun off his shoulder and into his hands.
“Steve!” Danny yelled.
“Go with Chin, Danny. I’ve got some rats to take care of.”
~*~
Tbc
Part ninety six
Word count: ~3, 700
Warning: Dun dun dunnnnn
Advisory: potty mouth; disability; IT’S A WIP.
Disclaimer: writing for fun not for profit.
Comments: British English spelling.
Spoilers: none, it’s an AU.
Betas: Springwoof – thank you ❤
The first part is here,
The Co-operative.
By Sealie
Uncharacteristically, Steve had forgotten that Toast was stuck at the university dealing with a computer emergency. Danny wasn’t too sure what a computer emergency would be comprised of, and made a mental note not to ask, because he never understood Toast’s rambling explanations.
Instead, Danny took himself off to Chin’s studio.
“Hi, Danny? You coming in?” Chin stepped aside, opening his door fully.
“Oh. Hi, Malia.” Danny leaned to the side and waved at Malia, who was looking interestedly over the back of the sofa. “Can I steal your fiancé for ten minutes or so?”
“Sure. Are you sunburnt?” She started to rise.
“Honestly, I’m okay.” Danny waved her to sit back down. “I was just in the sun a fraction too long. I’ve got cream. I forgot. It’s January, for fuck’s sake, you shouldn’t get burnt. Pardon my French.”
“You should be careful,” Malia admonished, folding her arms on the back of the sofa, and leaning her chin on her hands as she watched them.
“I know. I know. It was an accident.” Danny jerked his head down the corridor directing Chin.
“Be right back, Malia.” Chin carefully closed the door behind him.
“Sorry, I didn’t know that Malia had come by,” Danny said, as he led the way up to Steve’s apartment.
“Yeah, she just finished her shift. She’ll appreciate ten minutes, or twenty,” Chin said astutely, “doing nothing.”
“Yeah, it could take a little longer,” Danny said, as he stepped into Steve’s front room. The television was still on.
“Where’s Steve?”
“Believe it or not, running out to talk to the security guys.”
“The ones on Kala Drive?” Chin confirmed. “Or the Kapu?”
“Jesus, did everyone know about them except me?”
“My brother, my entire family, and most of my extended family, are cops. We have increased patrols, so believe you me they were spotted. You can’t leave a van on a suburban street for longer than twenty four hours before someone mentions something to someone. Especially in this neighbourhood.”
“Strangely, that makes me very happy.” Danny pressed the panel, and the hidden door opened, to reveal the museum office.
“Oh, my--” Chin huffed out a laugh, “--that I didn’t know about.”
“Seriously? Hah.” Danny preened. I knew before Chin went the sing-song voice in his head.
“So why do you want to talk? Steve’s all right?”
“Steve’s fine.” Danny made an about face that would have made the drill sergeant wanna-be in Steve perk up and salivate. “What’s this about a head injury?”
“Head injury. Who?” Chin said, suddenly all focus and worry.
“Steve said he had a head injury. I thought that it was his side.” Danny touched his own ribs and then waggled an earlobe. “And ears?”
“Ah.” Chin’s entire body segued into still calm. “Well, you don’t get close enough to a blast that deafens you without getting your brain rattled. It was described as a moderate traumatic brain injury -- essentially a bad concussion.”
“Holy shit,” Danny said horrified. “What else don’t I know?”
“I don’t know what you don’t know,” Chin said with Spock-like neutrality.
Danny absorbed that statement, momentarily bamboozled.
“I get that Steve’s private, and you’re going to protect him.” Danny braced himself. “But answer me one question: is the Steve that I know, the Steve that you knew?”
“Oh, yes,” Chin said without even a millisecond’s hesitation, and very reassuringly for Danny. “He’s quieter. Has less energy. But he’s Steve.”
“No weird and inexplicable personality shifts?”
“No weird personality shifts,” Chin confirmed. “Other than actually getting a boyfriend, of course.”
Danny glowered at Chin’s supremely satisfied smile at the jibe.
“So is that what you wanted?” Chin smoothly moved on.
“Oh, we need your help with something.” Danny stepped aside, letting Chin see the projector and screen set up. “The Mystery of the House of Seolh by Doris McGarrett, and Uncle Tom Cobley and All and All.”
“Who?”
“Rachel -- English thing.” Danny hand waved off the incomprehensible. “So we found the film, and I developed it. I have the slides here.”
Danny made three long steps across the office to the slide projector. It whirred as he switched it on, the old motor revving up. Fine dust motes danced in the beam of light.
“Can you get the switch?” Danny asked.
“Oh,” was Chin’s only contribution as he flicked off the lights.
“Okay. There’s a bunch of shots of the Mercury Marquis.” Danny flicked through them. “Mamo and your Uncle Choi think that’s Koji Noshimuri, who may or may not have been involved in Mr. and Mrs. McGarrett’s car accident -- also known as murder. He’s Yakuza. That’s Steve’s dad’s car, in case you don’t remember. And these are a whole bunch of papers that me and Steve can’t read. Can you?”
“Oh,” Chin repeated and slid forward.
Danny gnawed on his little fingernail, as Chin studied the screen. He had unloaded a lot on the man in a very short period of time. It was understandable if it took Chin a moment to process. Or a minute. Or two. Or three.
“Steve said that was a whole lot of numbers,” Danny said, when he couldn’t contain himself any more.
“It’s an accounts page. And it’s a lot of money.” Chin sighed. “Millions. Millions back in 1988.”
“1988?”
“Yes.” Chin moved closer and tapped on the fabric in the bottom left hand corner, making the picture warp on the wobbling screen. “February 2nd 1988, to be exact.”
“But it’s written out. Not a printed statement.” Danny automatically looked to the box of Audrey’s old statements stored on the shelf by the hidden door.
“Yes. I don’t understand some of it. I think it’s coded.”
“And what’s been accounted?” Danny asked.
“I don’t know,” Chin said. “I’m guessing it’s a euphemism. ‘Medicine’ graded by type: black, gold, dragon. So I assume drugs.”
“Okay,” Danny said, not liking the sound of that. “Next image?”
Chin nodded and Danny moved the slide carriage on.
“Do drugs keep?” Danny asked. “Could there be a stash of drugs hidden in the House or anywhere in Seolh’s holdings?”
“I can only imagine that the amounts here relate to a lot of drugs.” Chin threw a speculative glance over his shoulder. “I would think that we would have found a room of heroin or cocaine.”
“What’s the word picture for medicine?” Danny asked.
“The word that you’re looking for is Hanzi.” Chin tapped the screen again. It looked like a stick person dancing in a three sided box.
“Hanzi? Okay?” Danny said, trying the word out. “Hanzi.”
“Dragon,” Chin continued, pointing to a hanzi that was significantly more complex. “Black.” It appeared to be a walking window with four legs.
“So it’s possibly a naughty drug lord’s diary,” Danny mused, and moved onto the next page of the ledger. There was more of the same. Able to now spot the stick person, the wiggly splodge and the walking window, Danny could only wonder on the importance of the ledger.
“Hang on--” Chin cocked his head to the side as the final page in the sequence of slides came on the screen.
“Yes?”
“Names. Family history. It’s written in a child’s hand. Practicing the traditional Chinese characters. Wo.”
“Whoa? Or Wo?” Danny pounced. This was amazing. “That’s the Wo Fat family tree?” He pointed at the long line of characters drizzling down the screen.
“Wo family tree. Wo is the family name. Fat will be his given name. Yun-fat possibly.” Chin reached up high and tapped a sequence and then the same sequence on another level. “Yun-fat is a given name through the generations.”
“So this is Wo Fat’s ledger, or more likely, Wo Yongfu’s ledger, and Doris McGarrett stole it off him.” Danny rocked up on his heels and back down. “You know, if I was a criminal mastermind, I wouldn’t write my family history all over the front cover.”
“I doubt he meant to lose it,” Chin said sagaciously. “And I can imagine that the child that scribbled on the book probably got smacked.”
“Holy shit. Do you think that the ledger is what Wo Fat’s after?” Danny rubbed at his temples, thinking hard. Had Doris taken the ledger off Wo Yongfu when she had assassinated him? Probably.
“Possibly.” Chin turned back to the screen. “The photos might be enough. There’s code I can’t read. Doris may have taken the photos, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that she stole it.”
“Oh, she stole it,” Danny said authoritatively, and started working through the rest of the slides. “The sequence of photos. The book was here in the House. She took photos of the pages and then the tapestry, Nandi Head, coins, and then the front of the ledger. She then took photos of a vase and a bunch of dolls.”
Danny moved the slides onto the first of the doll photographs. The wooden doll was propped up against what was possibly an old glass window frame. The grey putty holding the glass in position was bubbly and worn. The landscape behind was a vague blue blur that was probably the ocean.
Danny cycled through the rest of the slides for Chin’s benefit, all the way to the creepy, beady-eyed, blonde doll. And then he reversed allowing Chin to take in the sequence again.
“Okay.” Chin rubbed his hands together as the first page of written text flicked onto the screen. “Let’s look at the Nandi Head.”
“Why?”
“The ledger is not hiding in the tapestry. But the Nandi Head -- although more accurately it’s the Nandi’s Head -- is a giant carved wooden head of the bull that serves as the god’s Shiva’s mount. And interestingly, Nandi is the gatekeeper. So let’s have a closer look at the head and the podium.”
Danny beat him to the giant Nandi’s Head. Shadowed in the single red spotlight it was impressively wrought. The care and attention to detail was evident in every line of the bridle, the curve of an eyelid, each and every single carved petal on the garland around the bull’s neck.
Bright white light flooded the room.
“Jesus.” Danny flinched away from it, his headache sparking.
“Sorry,” Chin apologised.
“Isn’t that damaging or something to the artefacts?” Danny said, wincing under the actinic light.
“We’re not going to leave it on very long.” Chin circled around the podium. “The Nandi’s Head is actually carved out of a single piece of wood, and that includes the podium.”
“Where did it come from?”
“Kerala, India. Seventeenth century.”
Gingerly, Danny tapped the bull’s nose with his closed fist. It was solid. Reassured, he bent and tapped the podium that was solid under a cross-hatchery of woodwork. If there was some sort of secret compartment, he doubted that it would be easy to find.
“How big is the journal?” Chin asked.
“Don’t really know.” Danny skirted his finger along the delicately carved bridle. “Macro lenses have been around since 1955, so it could be relatively small. But since a kid used it as a practice book, I’m guessing at the least it’s the size of a notebook. I don’t think that you’d practice hanzi in an insy winsy tiny little book?”
“No,” Chin confirmed. “So a drawer or something?”
“Great minds think alike.”
Crouching on his good knee, Danny scrutinised the cross-hatched pattern, because he doubted that the drawer was hidden in the actual head of the beast. It was lucky that they had the lights, because under the low watt illumination of the red lights, looking for a secret compartment would have been difficult.
“What about the dolls and the vase you mentioned?” Chin asked.
“Haven’t found them. Haven’t looked for them yet,” Danny revised. “We focused on identifying the guy in the photo first.”
“And who was he? I know you said but….”
“Koji Noshimuri, Yakuza mole in the Honolulu Police Department back in the late 1980s, and possibly--” Danny poked a smooth knot in the woodwork and was disappointed when no magical drawer appeared, “--involved in Mr. and Mrs. McGarrett’s deaths.”
Danny leaned to the side, out of the shadow of the Nandi’s Head. Chin was staring down at him, expression pained.
“I kind of wish you kept us more in the loop,” he chastised gently.
Danny nodded, because Chin was right. Things seem to move at strange rates, slow-fast, slow-fast, like a demented tango. This morning had been particularly intense, with the threat of the car bomb and bug planted by Jovan Eteinne.
“Steve thinks that --”
A clatter of running footsteps sounded, echoing across wooden floors. Danny turned on his heel. Setting a hand on the floor, he leaned over trying to see through the door into the museum office.
“Danny? Chin?” Steve’s voice came urgently.
“Hey, Steve, we’re in the museum,” Danny called and, for the hundredth time, mentally chastised himself for forgetting the limitations of Steve’s hearing.
“They’re through that door?” Malia ventured, tone high and stressed.
“Malia?” Chin raced out of the museum in response to that pitch.
“Is Danny with you?” Steve demanded too loudly.
“Yes. He’s in the museum,” Chin said.
Not likening the entire tone of the brief conversation, Danny scrambled to his feet and darted after Chin.
“Are Kono and Mary with you?” Steve continued urgently.
“No,” Chin answered, as Danny skittered into the office.
Malia was sheet white, curling into Chin’s side. The light from the projector set them in bright illumination cut by harsh shadows.
“What’s happening?” Danny demanded.
“The Kapu weren’t parked outside the gates,” Steve said. The projected hanzi script looked like tattoos over his face. “I jogged up to Manoa Street to overlook the Heights, in case they’d changed their look-out point. They weren’t there either. I called Kavika, they should be here.”
“Talmai said that he wanted, you know, to get off early tonight, to see his girlfriend,” Danny thought out loud. The edge of worry around Steve made the hairs on his arms rise. “Paulo’s fed up. Maybe they just went home?”
“Have you triggered the House alarm?” Chin asked carefully.
Danny glanced to the door almost expecting a host of Navy SEALs and Marines to descend upon them. Was Steve overreacting?
“Yes,” Steve said tersely. “Do you know where Mary and Kono are? They weren’t in their rooms.”
“No,” Chin said.
Brusquely, Steve tapped on his BlackBerry. A high pitched squeal made everyone wince. Steve yanked his right aid from his ear, grimacing.
“What the Hell was that?” Danny demanded, he could swear that he could hear his ear bones grating.
“Cell phone signals have been scrambled.” Steve ground his teeth as he plugged the aid back in. “We’re--”
“Are you sure that the House alarm signal got out?” Chin said reasonably.
“Yes,” Steve said, flatly. “Different type of signalling system for just that reason.”
“But this Jovan guy is a special computery person.” A distant shatter of breaking glass caught Danny’s stressed attention.
“What? What did you hear?” Steve snapped.
“Breaking glass,” Danny answered.
Surprisingly, Steve glanced at his watch.
“What do we need to do?” Malia asked, very calmly.
“We stay out of harm’s reach until backup gets here in the next four minutes,” Steve said precisely.
Danny suspected that they were going to be the longest four minutes of his life.
“Do we hide in here?” Chin asked, curling an arm around Malia’s shoulders. “Secret room? Seems perfect.”
Danny hated the thought of closing the door on the tiny office and waiting things out. The narrow walls and low ceiling seemed to crush down on him.
Steve shook his head, but then glanced at Malia, or more accurately Malia’s abdomen, indecision rife across his mobile face. Then resolution flared brightly in his changeable eyes.
“No, I don’t like foxholes unless they’re the last resort,” Steve said. “Switch all the lights off, and shut the door into the museum. Into my apartment, now. Fire drill.”
And then he was darting into his eyrie, leaving them stunned for a moment.
“What?” Danny protested.
Chin untangled from Malia, and went to switch off the lights in the museum as instructed. Stirred into action, Danny went for the projector. In their absence, the only light left was from the television in Steve’s apartment.
Malia followed it -- a moth to its flame -- with Chin on her heels. Danny went with them. Steve came out of his study holding the biggest, chunkiest submachine gun that Danny had ever seen. It was an angular, black monstrosity that looked like it had been put together in a toy factory. Danny, however, did not doubt its power. Steve swung a lumpy black holdall onto the sofa. He pulled out a curved magazine from the bag and slotted it into position, with a skin tingling, satisfying clunk.
“Oh, my god,” Malia said, hands over her mouth.
“There’s a Remington 870 and shells in the bag, Chin.” Steve flared his nostrils. “Danny, topple over the bookcase.”
“What?” Automatically, Danny looked to the off-kilter bookcase, between the kitchenette and sitting room. It gave the apartment the ambiance of the cant of a ship sailing through waves.
Steve didn’t explain further. Stepping to the far side of the bookcase and setting his hand up high, higher than Danny could reach, he easily pushed the bookcase over. It had to be pivoted since it folded like a falling house of cards. The contents smashed onto the floor. The collapsed bookcase totally blockaded the door as it had been no doubt designed exactly to do.
“What about Kono and Mary?” Chin demanded.
“I haven’t forgotten them.” Steve pointed to the office door. “Close it now.”
Quashing his automatic response to argue, Danny went to slap the panel to conceal the door.
“You’ve used a handgun, Danny?” Steve asked, and then answered his own question. “No, fuck, of course you haven’t.”
Danny curled his fingers around the swinging door bringing it quickly back into position, flush with the wood panelling. Chin had a shotgun in his hands and was loading large shells into the barrel. Steve reached into the bag, and hauled out a sheathed machete.
“Catch.”
Danny caught.
“I’m licensed for a handgun,” Malia said quietly.
Steve glanced at her, a furrow deep between his eyebrows.
“I’m licensed for a handgun,” Malia repeated, louder.
“Kel Tec PF-9.” Steve tossed it over, and then a box of bullets. “And rounds. You familiar with?”
Malia answered with actions rather than words, efficiently loading the rounds. The next piece of equipment that Steve pulled out of his bag of toys was a bulky pair of high-tech goggles. He moved over to the semicircular window overlooking the woods behind the House, and held them up to his face without putting them on.
“Come on.” Steve gestured the three of them over, as he flipped open the half circle window and ducked under the glass and out onto the balcony.
“Malia, go.” Chin directed. He kept his shotgun pointed at the door. She moved after Steve. “Danny.”
“Hey, go with your fiancée.”
“I have a gun, Danny. You have a knife,” Chin said.
Now wasn’t the time to argue. Danny followed Steve and Malia. He stumbled over a large bag of plastic wrapped garbage and kicked it out of the way. Steve had Malia crouched down low, under the protection of the balustrade as he scanned the woods out back. There was, Danny remembered, supposed to be a surveillance team camped in the woods. And there, in the distance, was a flash of laser-red light -- three short blips.
Steve breathed out hard, the rush of breath sounding like wind in the woods.
“You good with heights, Malia?” Steve asked, glancing over her shoulder at the hook of a hoist suspended above their heads. The arm of the wheel mechanism was bolted into the junction between the House roof and the slight jut of the tower of the lantern bedroom on the next level. Danny guessed that he was wondering if they had to lower Malia to the ground.
“If I have to be,” she said resolutely.
“Where are they?” Steve said, probably louder than he intended to, as he looked heavenwards.
A dull pop, popping thud made Danny look back into the living room. Directly opposite the door, strafing the back wall of the kitchen, rounds hit.
“They’re here,” Danny said for Steve’s benefit. But he got the impression that Steve was looking for the cavalry arriving by helicopter, not the bad guys.
Steve gave the living room the most cursory of glances as he squatted beside Malia.
“Tight angle at the top of the staircase,” he said, sounding supremely satisfied as a few rounds continued to ineffectually smack against the far wall, but most were caught by the solid bookcase. “Chin.”
Belatedly, Danny realised that Steve was bench pressing a thick coil of metal that resolved into a rolled up ladder. He levered it over the balustrade and Danny leaned over the balcony to watch it unfurl all the way down to the ground.
Chin stepped under the canted window and onto the balcony.
“You guys have practised this?” Danny asked, amazed.
“Fire drill. It’s a four storey building,” Steve said with a distinct of course we have tone to his voice. “We didn’t factor in terrorists, however.”
“Malia, you done this?” Danny asked.
“No,” Malia said succinctly.
“Keep three points of contact on the ladder at all times,” Steve advised.
“Okay,” Malia squeaked.
“Chin, there are two guys out back waiting for you. They’ve got you covered.” Steve angled the blade of his hand at ninety degrees to the House. “Use the walls of the terraced gardens for cover. Head straight towards the stand of soapberry trees.”
“Okay.” Chin swung his leg over the balcony. “Malia, follow me down. Danny, you okay coming next?”
“Yeah, sure?” Danny looked at the ladder and hoped that it could take all their weights combined. It appeared sturdy, bolted to the ironwork of the balcony, and made of thick twists of steel rope and piping.
Steve ducked back into the sitting room, slipping the submachine gun off his shoulder and into his hands.
“Steve!” Danny yelled.
“Go with Chin, Danny. I’ve got some rats to take care of.”
~*~
Tbc
Part ninety six
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2014-06-14 10:49 am (UTC)Anyway, I'm so grateful you update regularly so I won't be left hanging for months. Thank you for sharing.
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Date: 2014-06-17 07:37 pm (UTC)*g* I fully plan to post the next part on Saturdayt
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Date: 2014-06-14 12:09 pm (UTC)oh god! they're under attack. I'm just a
littlelot worried about that!anxiously awaiting more to know what happens. Where are Kono and Mary?! I hope they didn't try to sneak out for a good time and get caught to be used as leverage!
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Date: 2014-06-17 07:38 pm (UTC)I fully plan to post the next part on Saturday!
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Date: 2014-06-14 01:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-17 07:39 pm (UTC)I don't think that Danny's going to idly stand by.
no subject
Date: 2014-06-14 02:36 pm (UTC)this cliffhanger is stressful. :[
btw, please don't call Chinese characters Hanzi. Hanzi is Japanese. :)
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Date: 2014-06-14 02:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-14 05:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-17 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-15 08:27 am (UTC)oh man-Cliff hangers areSO stressful!
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Date: 2014-06-17 08:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-16 01:03 am (UTC)Loved knowing Malia could handle a weapon, the cool pre-set up 'fire escape' and that lasting image of Steve with that sub machine gun, ready to defend his home.
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Date: 2014-06-17 08:29 pm (UTC)I did like that image of Steve...
being Steve
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Date: 2014-06-18 07:53 pm (UTC)