As the organ swelled, cascades of urgent chords drowning the choir, the pallbearers guided the casket down the aisle, the mourners nearby in the pews reaching out to graze it with their fingers or place a flower on it, as though caressing the body inside.

The last vivid shot was not of the casket or the church; the camera veered and swung to capture a tight shot of a young man with a deeply tanned face and tousled blond hair, standing half in shadow, staring sadly in the direction the casket had gone.

“That’s Max.”

Malo aimed the clicker, froze the moment—the handsome man in profile—then switched off the machine, and the screen went black.

Olive said, “That was quite a funeral.”

“Like royalty,” Malo said. “Like when Bruddah Iz pass. Cost tens of thousands. Maybe hundreds of thousands. All those flowers. All that music. The band.”

“Who was she?” Olive said. “Someone special, I imagine.”

Malo hesitated, perhaps for the drama of the pause, and he lingered a bit longer, but when in the stillness he had their attention, he spoke with grave solemnity.

“A prostitute,” he said. “Sex worker. Wahine got murdered.”

In spite of herself, Olive groaned, then swallowed and went silent. Sharkey emitted an involuntary cluck, a twig-snap on his tongue, like punctuation.

“Was a big event—was historic,” Malo said. “Everyone in Honolulu knew about it. Was in the Star-Bulletin and the Advertiser. Big stories and pictures. The wahine had no family, just those popolo hookers and sex workers you see in the church. Wahine had no money. Body was unclaimed. The papers wrote about that, how that big funeral happened with mystery money. What people didn’t know was that Max Mulgrave, when he found out the body was unclaimed at the morgue, he paid for the whole thing. Was a whole bunch of money—the flowers, the choir, the musicians, some big-name Hawaiian performers, like Don Ho and Danny Kaleikini and the Makaha Sons of Niihau. You seen them, no? The Hawaiian kahu chanting, the hearse, the headstone, and afterward big luau at Paradise Cove, with hula, and they imu a bunch of pigs. Hey, the whole nine yards.”

“Murdered,” Sharkey said. “Did they catch the guy?”

“Max involved in that big-time,” Malo said. “Was a guy with a Taser. Tased half a dozen Waikiki hookers in hotel rooms, then raped and robbed them. They injured bad but they survived. One was from HPD, a decoy cop, policewoman plain clothes, Officer Ah Wong. She get heart trouble from the electric shock of the Taser.”

“Cardiac arrhythmia,” Olive said. “A stun gun sometimes captures the heartbeat and causes ventricular tachycardia.”

“You got it, sister. Officer Ah Wong had to quit the force and retire on disability. Daisy Hino not so lucky. She get tased and go into cardiac arrest. Then a coma for weeks. Finally they take her off life support.”

Olive said, “So who was the guy with the Taser?”