Notes On Hawaiian Mystery
The guy is retributing against a girlfriend who promised an idyllic night lost and in love in the woods.
He finds a Vietnamese girl, a stripper who he sleeps with.
A Vietnamese girl is found killed ceremoniously in the woods.
One of the inspectors/detectives is an expert at mumbo jumbo.
The Vietnamese girl is sisters with the stripper unbeknownst to the guy.
She was a stripper too and gone missing at the strip joint.
The stripper brings the guy in to investigate the disappearance.
The guy’s father is an ex-intelligence officer in Vietnam
who’s all connected up with an old Saigon
criminal underground.
The detective does not know of the ceremonies involved in the underground of Saigon.
He finds a mystic woman and describes to her the kapu of the girl’s murder. He tells her he was familiar with a couple symbols but other symbols were baffling. She is afraid to tell him but his officious nature persuades her. She tells him of the old underground and its voix silence and the repercussions if not obeyed. She doesn’t believe it’s fresh, the members are aging, so she is surprised by the reappearance. She warns the detective to be careful. The underground is a well crafted trap with an entrance with no exit.
The old girlfriend returns and asks for a shower. While she is in the shower, the guy’s father arrives unannounced (the guy has no phone, only an answering service.) The guy likes his father and is happy to see him. The father takes him to a special dinner (without the girl) where he sees one of the owners of the strip club. He notices everyone who is as old as his dad alone or at the head of the table with often enough a tart or moll type girl accompanying him.
Outside the club the guy calls his old girlfriend who is busy that night and sounding annoyed at being disturbed. The guy slams down the receiver.
He locates the stripper at the strip joint and corners her. She leads him back stage. They kiss and pet and frustrate themselves. She has to go on. They reenter the joint. The detective is there watching them. She walks onstage and dances. The guy orders a double. He tries to ignore her performed seduction and when she turns towards him in the dance she feels the rebuff and moves her attention to the other clientele. When finished she slides away backstage. When she reenters, he is finishing a second double. She quickly sits with him and takes his hand, passing a note. She just as quickly moves away with a quick turn back to him. He opens the note telling him to meet her at the club where they met.
He exits the strip joint a little asway from the liquor. The detective walks up to him. Questions him about his association with her. The guy plays it cool. But there is a trust unexpectedly there and he confides in the detective about her search for her sister (though he doesn’t know its her sister) The detective comes clean as well confiding that the missing stripper is probably dead. He wants an ID. Not telling the guy the stripper’s true association, he asks if she would cooperate. The guy doesn’t know, but again confides that they were planning a rendezvous at the RnR club. The detective slips back into the strip joint. The guy wanders off to the club.
At the club the guy gets more soused. He imbibes in some cocaine from a friend who advises against the stripper, but is less than encouraging about continuing his relationship with his old girlfriend. The guy drinks again to that. He is getting out of control, acting a badly done cool and dancing with a whacked out girl. The stripper grabs him away and they exit out the back, let out by an older man who looks like an old friend of Dad’s at cocktail parties. He flashes back to the occasions.
They sit alone at Waikiki beach. The guy is an obnoxious clown. The stripper is nervous and guarded but finally lets loose and they laughingly jump into the water together.
The trade winds slowly dry them as they wander to his house.
They shower together.
The next morning, simultaneously at the hall of records where the guy smooth talks the clerk and at the screen in the police precinct where the detective researches all the connections involved with the strip joint. They both run into blanks.
The guy goes to his Dad’s hotel where he sits while his Dad gets dressed. He starts asking his Dad about the dinner at the exclusive club. Does he know the Vietnamese man? His dad knows the man, telling him about the warehouse and the middleman nature of the subject and his wealth.
The chief tells the detective about the exclusive club.
The detective stops in to get membership info. The place is cold to him, but he gets what he wants.
Back at the strip club, he puts a tail on the stripper, following her cab. The cab stops at the RnR club where she gets out. The guy is waiting for her. She sits with him and smokes. He asks about her sister. The question upsets her. He tells her about the detective. She pulls him suddenly into her cab.
The driver offers up a joint which they share. The driver is coolly anxious in regarding his driving mirror. He twists and turns around Waikiki and environs watching for the detective’s car. Feeling confidant he’s lost the trail he stops at the guy’s place. The stripper gives the driver keys to her place.
The two new lovers relax in eachother’s arms. She begins to reminisce about her life in Vietnam, mostly in a quick and angry way, blaming the liberals and their turning a blind eye to her and her people.
He pries further and she lets on she’s known the Vietnamese girl well, intimately. She has been cold but is melting into her despair. A shadowy figure crosses the shaded, slatted glass windows. The figure stops and turns towards the door. The guy grabs for his gun. The girl guides the gun back into its drawer. She pops up to door and opens it. The driver wasn’t sure of the door. She looks for the bag of clothes he was supposed to bring but instead he shows her the detective. She is startled and thinks of running and is angry at the driver who shrugs. He had no choice. She detenses a little. The detective hands her her clothes and steps outside. She dresses. They all exit.
She identifies her sisters body.
Two homicide detectives question her while the guy and the detective talk. The detective is at his computer terminal. The guy shows the detective his license. It reveals the chief of detectives. They realize a connection between the guy’s dad and the chief. The guy asks about naturalization records. They discover the two sisters were orphans patronized by a mysterious man.
The guy the next day wanders into the warehouse and looking for the Vietnamese man. He spots the man in a lively discussion with his dad. Two thugs take him out back and give him a pummeling.
The bloody guy wanders from bus to bus and to the stripper’s place.
She tends to his wounds as he attacks her inner wounds.
Flashback to Saigon where she and her sister are being shown to some men in shadows. They are in their early teens and are being sold like slaves. She is cold, but her sister is in tears. Their father, the Vietnamese man, slaps her sister and then consoles her, flirting with her. As they leave they hear themselves as negotiable.
A mysterious man watches as the sisters play together in an innocent pre-sexual manner. He tells the stripper to come over. He tells her to whisper to him all the nasty secrets about her sister. She does and he smiles. His hand barely touches her body but manages to explore it at great length. Her sister is getting angrier and finally shouts for her to quit. But the mysterious man offers the sister revenge in kind.
The exodus is on in Saigon. The mysterious man visits the young stripper one last time. She is older, around seventeen, almost legal. He confesses his love. She is angry at him. He clutches at her awhile but finally adjures to her decision. She then softens and seduces, teasing him to the sexual brink and runs away giggling.
Back to the present, the stripper tells the guy who her father is.
The guy decides to check out the warehouse at night. She tags along. They are driven by the cab driver. He gives them courage in a bottle and some white pep up the nose.
They infiltrate the warehouse. There’s a guard inside, but the stripper plays a kink with the guy. The guard becomes a voyeur a little while, then breaks it up. He pulls out the pistol and pushes the guard back but not down. The guard is about to challenge the guy to a quick fastest gun duel when the stripper kicks the guard in the groin and the face. The guy finishes pushing the guard down and holds the gun on him. They hear someone fall. The guard yells. He gets smacked in the face by the guy’s gun and further threatened with it and shuts up. The driver sneaks up startling everyone. He’s pulling a beaten man with him. The two guards are thrown together. The gun is handed to the driver who covers the guards. The stripper and the guy look through the warehouse. They crack open a couple cases to find treasures including large pots which contain an abundance of white powder. It is tasted. Bitter. Heroin.
They move into the office. There is a safe but also some locked file cabinets easily opened. In the files are blackmail pictures featuring the stripper and her sister with older white men. He finds his dad’s file with pictures of the stripper. He is devastated. Meanwhile she has attacked the desk and popped it open to find the ledger. She grabs his deathly flaccid arm and pulls him away.
When they return to the driver, he has bludgeoned the guards to death. They slip away.
The guy is frozen and silent except for brief and pointed profanity. They are out of the city and into darkness.
They arrive at a small hut, a homemade job so to speak, the driver’s home. He puts on the kerosene lamp. He shows the guy more pictures. A small group of Green Beret’s. At the center, older then the rest but younger by 20 years then he is presently is the Dad. The man at the door is in the picture. People at the dinner are in the picture. Where’s the chief? Another picture—the chief and the Vietnamese man accompanied by the Vietnamese man’s wife, the stripper and her sister, and a beautiful older Vietnamese woman sitting beside the chief. Then the chief with a general and two beautiful Vietnamese women, happy and toasting. Then the chief planning strategy with the Dad. Then the Dad bringing his men into it. Then the loading and unloading of cargo. Then a beautiful rendering of the stripper’s sister. The driver and her were in love.
They drive back to the RnR club. They dance intensely, bumping eachother angrily and caressingly.
As they exit, they spot the detective. The older man has a gun to their back and guides them to the men’s toilet, threatening “the old man’s kid” with an empty gun barrel. Then he lets them out the side.
They slip around the back and to the beach. A flashlight catches them. Police. Told to pull out his throwing knife, the driver is shot.
The stripper and the guy are brought to the Chief’s office. He wants what was taken from the warehouse. He threatens torture. The guy laughs and tells him all will be lost if he is not set free. The Chief slaps him around anyway, telling him to grow up, giving him a twisted patriotic speech. The Chief gets a phone call. Time to meet. The detective and his superior enter. They are told to leave. The detective insists on talking with his witnesses for his case. The detective is told to shove off. He hands off a note to the guy secretly. If you can meet at the warehouse.
The drive is back into the dark. A clearing appears lit up sitting above a cliff. The band of ex Green Berets is there with some Vietnamese men including the Vietnamese man. Arguing about what to do. The Chief is furious. The Dad appears, turning from the dark into the light. He goes into a tantrum against everyone there. He suddenly pulls out a gun and shoots the chief. He turns on the Vietnamese man, who slips below into the darkness. The dad is hit as he moves in defense but manages to slip into the darkness yelling for his son to follow with the stripper. They reach his Dad’s car and tear off dodging and swerving against the bullets.
In the car the dad reminisces.
Scenes of the deeply secret meeting with CIA and Vietnamese underground. The patriotic disguise for the monetary and cynical true purpose. The seduction and blackmail to ensure silence. The continuance of activity and its continuous filling of pockets. The shame. The death of an impossible innocent to supposedly seal a leak. Climaxed by the giant wall approaching fast.
The brakes are slammed. They slide onto the sidewalk outside the warehouse. Cops close in and threaten, pulling the guy and the stripper out of the car. The guy yells for an ambulence for his Dad. The detective inspector arrives and they move away with him into the warehouse.
They hurry to the office where documents are strewn on the desk. Is there to be a search? The guy grabs the phone and gets his friend, a lowly intern shuffling papers and doing undistinguished research at the paper. Then the guy and the stripper leave.
The watch as his Dad is taken away.
They walk down the street to a yuppie scale neighborhood bar. And wait,
His friend finally arrives with his boss, a reporter. The reporter gets the story and some of the cabdriver’s pictures. The two walk away.
They walk down a quiet highway.
It is daylight when they arrive at a small town where the guy buys a paper. They walk with it into the cabdriver’s sanctuary.
There is a feature story with several pictures a few pages back in the paper, but the front page has the drawing of the girl and a headline proclaiming the end of a murder mystery and the beginning of a scandal. They sit and don’t talk, just reading the paper.