When Kelso called the house, Chan was sitting out on the lānai, watching Honolulu grow by the minute.
“You know what I wish I had?” Chan told Hank, as the coroner helped him get inside to the phone. “It would be great to have one of those Dick Tracy wrist radios. You’d be able to take calls anywhere. I should retire and invent some kind of portable phone.”
Hank laughed. “That’ll be the day.”
“What? That technology is coming, Hank.”
“Oh, yes, I agree with you there, David. What I meant was the day you retire is never going to come.”
Chan shook his head as he picked up the receiver. That thought had crossed his mind more than once.
A job he could hardly wait to forget about. But you couldn’t forget about it if you didn’t retire. Sometimes he wished so badly that he’d followed his initial passion of teaching high school English.
Chin said, “Chin, get this. There is a Harry Wong, an associate prof in the math department at HU. And he’s been missing his classes with no explanation.”
“Wow, that’s amazing, mister ESP. Now you get this.”
Chan could tell by the excitement in Kelso’s voice that this was going to be big.
“There’s nothing on the twins or the mom, but Mr. Wong, in 1938 and ‘39, was a person of interest in two fires. HPD couldn’t pin anything on him, but someone died in each one.”
This news broke for Chan with something like the feeling he imagined the first human being to set foot on the moon might experience. That day was coming, just as Chan knew the day of Mr. Wong’s arrest was coming. Maybe today.
“David, you still there?”
“Yes, Chin, I’m here. But not for long. Can you come get me?”
“Will do, boss, I’ll be there in two shakes. But there’s one more thing?”
“Yes?”
“The person who investigated Wong, it was your father, David.”
At that moment, Chan was transformed into the first astronaut who had just set foot on the moon. The sensation these words brought on was one of stunned wonder. It was mixed, however, with a welling of sorrow.
Chan had switched his career path from English teacher to the police academy the moment his father had disappeared. That was a passion, too, the goal being apprehending the people responsible for his father’s murder. That arrest had never happened. Sometimes he believed he hung on with the police force only in the outside hope that he could bring the perpetrators to justice.
And he was sure he knew it was the Korean syndicate, led by founder Kang Yu, his son Byung, and his grandson Jason, the brother of Ji Yu.
Kang Yu was still alive and kicking in his impregnable fortress in Wanhei, Korea. Byung and his son, however, were dead. But that loathsome Kang Yu, Chan wanted personally to slap the cuffs on the octogenarian.
Either that or put a bullet in his brain.
“David, did you hear what I said?”
“Ah, yes, I did, Chin. It’s, it’s hard to believe that he and I are connected to the same perp. How old would the twins have been when the old man was pulling all this?”
“Let’s see.” There was a pause. Chan could hear Kelso leafing through a file. “Okay, they were born in February of ’28, so they would have been . . . 10 years old when the first fire happened.”
The sins of the fathers. The line ran through Chan’s mind again. But not his father. No, Chan’s father had passed down the desire to serve and protect, the desire for justice.
“Come get me, Chin. I’m ready to bring this guy in.”
Lanning Lee 