Page 38 of Deadly Aloha
But there was no point in saying any of this out loud. Tangaloa had been married to Kalea. He knew exactly what the situation was, and there was no sense in bringing it—or her—up now when nothing would be solved during this conversation.
“And,” I added, “it’s safer if we don’t have boarders roaming about.”
“How many of the horses are yours?” Mal asked me.
“Five,” I answered before turning to point them out. We were standing in the center of the barn with the horses at our backs and the loft entrance, tack room, and storage rooms in front of us. My shed row barn was a very long rectangle with two very small outlets in the center that created a small cross. “Koa is mine. He’s the black stallion with the white socks. Kekame is Lu’s mare. She’s a paint. Maui is Tangaloa’s, though he doesn’t ride him much.”
“Maui broke his leg a few years back. I retired him after that,” Tangaloa explained softly. “I used to think it was funny, called him my escape artist, my trickster horse. But then we discovered he’d made a bad jump after a storm. Choices were to put him down or let it heal as best we could. Amputation on a horse isn’t practical. I couldn’t put him down, and nursed him back to health. He can walk, even take my weight now, but it’s for very short spurts.”
Mal nodded, his face sympathetic. “What about the other two?”
I tried my damnedest not to look at Tangaloa as I said, “They belong to family members.”
Mal didn’t question the evasiveness of my answer. “My Little Owl wants to learn to ride. If any of your boarders want to sell their horse rather than find a new place for them, let me know.”
“Why do you call her ‘Little Owl’?” Tangaloa asked. I was sure he was equally curious as he was wanting to get away from the topic of who owned the other two horses.
Rafe, Sebastian, and Virgil were lifting the St. Andrew’s cross into the air. The Bloody Scorpion currently had a bit in his mouth, keeping him from yelling. When they couldn’t find rope thick enough to hold his weight, they’d ended up using a nail gun to secure his limbs to the cross. I wasn’t positive the nails would hold him upside down either, but I knew it would be just as painful being torn out of him as it was going into him. Gravity was such a fickle bitch.
“First time I fucked her, she was wearing a black owl mask. Didn’t learn her name until a few weeks later, and by then, she was alreadymylittle owl.” Mal shrugged, like that was the simplest explanation he could give.
After the cross was secured, the twins came down the loft.
“Found our bread knife,” one said, offering me the serrated blade. “And we also found this,” the other one said, holding out another tool.
I took the stainless steel handle of the second item. “Do I want to know why you have this?”
Both licked their lips in unison. “We love watermelon,” they said as one.
My eyes flitted between the two of them. “Is there anything you don’t do together?”
“Pegging,” they answered. “We tried once,” the one on the left said. “It was weird,” the one on the right added.
Tangaloa’s eyebrows rose up. “Like, each other or just in general?”
“Both,” they said before turning away to walk into the tack room.
“I’m going to have to tattoo one of them so I can tell them apart,” I grumbled, watching them go.
“I don’t think it would help,” Mal commented. “Have you seen their left hands?”
Couldn’t say I had. I looked now. It took me a second to find what Mal was referring to. The tip of their left middle fingers was missing.
“That happened to one,” Mal went on, stepping forward, “and the other cut his off to match.”
Tangaloa and I glanced at each other. I knew they’d had a difficult childhood, and I could only guess at the horrors they’d faced, but that was…extreme.
I looked down at the circular watermelon peeler in my hand. “Well, time to get started.”
The first Bloody Scorpion,now missing both nipples thanks to a pair of handy scissors, was little to no help. I got a feeling that he’d only recently earned his patch anyway. It was rotten luck, but not entirely a waste of time. He was able to tell us what they were doing at the laundromat. Tangaloa stepped away to inform Kayl that the clothing was dipped in a solution that somehow adhered the heroin to it. Make it appear just like clothing, but was in reality a very ingenious plan to ship the heroin.
The second Bloody Scorpion hada lotmore information. Once I started to use the peeler on the giant tattoo of a rearing scorpion on his back, he was all too eager to give it to me.
Red and Aftermath had to fill in the rest. The Black Market Railroad was an underground organization run by the Russians. They were big in the flesh trade and were like a fungus that would not die. Neither one seemed surprised to learn that the Bloody Scorpions had been working with the BMR.
With several slices of his skin on the ground at my feet, the Bloody Scorpion informed us about how they needed money to start up their heroin trade in O‘ahu. They struck a deal with the Black Market Railroad where the Bloody Scorpions traded kidnapped men and women for their startup heroin. Only, they couldn’t deliver their last promised batch of victims and the BMR was pissed. They pulled out of the deal, taking their heroin back and leaving the surviving Bloody Scorpions with the meager amount they’d had at the laundromat.
The Bloody Scorpion claimed he did not recognize Nishi’s picture, but he was able to tell us the first shipment of women was taken to Amsterdam.
