"That was one of the guys that killed your dad." "A friend of mine is dead and his son is missing." "Please find my son, T.C." "I'm working!" "Today was his funeral and you weren't there." "The both of them took off and I think it was to go after those boys." "That would be a real mistake." "My friend was killed because you robbed a store." "Basketball is a simple game." "And it really hasn't changed much since Dr. Naismith nailed up that peach basket some 90 years ago." "The object of the game is still to throw the ball through the hole more times than the other guys." "We got them on the run!" "But as you get older, you also find yourself playing some tough D against that fast-breaking combo of mortality and Dr. Time himself." "That's why my occasional Saturday mornings of a little three-on-three with T. C. and our buddy Ron, against these kids have become a little more than just recreation." "Recreation's fine, but winning has somehow become sweeter." "Chalk another one up to experience, teamwork, and six deadly eyes!" "And six dead legs." "Speak for yourself, Thomas." "You boys want to give us old men one more taste of victory?" "You sure about that, Ronnie?" "I mean, maybe we ought to call the paramedics and have them standing by just in case." "Look here, we are just getting warm." "Hey, man I thought you had to get home?" "I do." "But I got enough for one more game for the road." "I guess one more game won't kill anybody." "Man, I don't care if I never play another basketball game in my life." "At least not for six or seven years." "How about watching one instead?" "76ers and Lakers." "I got it on cable." "Sheila won't mind?" "Mind?" "Come on, T.C., you're family." "And she hasn't seen you in months." "Hey, that's great." "I promised Higgins I'd help him catalog Robin Masters' collection of detective fiction." "Detective fiction?" "How much could he have?" "All of it." "A personal favor to Mr. Masters." "Listen, if I hurry maybe I can get there for the second half." "You're on." "T.C.:" "Good luck." "With Higgie baby, though, you might make it by halftime next season." "I'll be there." "Sheila said she'd keep the fire going." "Burgers okay?" "How many?" "Well, you think Dr. J is gonna hang it up at the end of this season?" "I hope not." "Man, he's an inspiration to all us..." "All you old guys." "You know, I think old age really starts hitting you when you realize that all of your heroes are younger than you are and even they're considered old." "Especially if you've got a 17-year-old son that almost outjumps you..." "And outshoots you!" "How's Ronnie Jr. doing, anyway?" "I don't know, man." "He's not talking to me too much these days." "Maybe you better ask him." "Oh, what is it this time?" "I think the psychologists call it alienation." "Oh..." "Hey, that's nothing, huh?" "I mean, it's all part of growing old." "First they need you, then you need them." "Except right now, I don't think he needs anybody." "Hey, Sheila asked me to stop by and pick up some hamburger buns on the way back." "You mind?" "Oh, no." "No." "T.C.:" "And don't forget my Gatorade." "Man, I'm dying of thirst here." "You got it." "Be right back." "Oh, hey, the orange kind." "Doctor, I just don't know, except lately when my husband comes home from work, he doesn't want to do a thing." "Nothing." "It doesn't matter what kind of sexy clothes I'm wearing, or what kind of perfume I've got on, or even the Johnny Mathis records on the stereo." "It just doesn't matter." "All he wants to do is watch a damn basketball game." "What should I do?" "If I was you, I'd leave the poor sucker alone." "Not only are you getting old you're getting senile." "This is green." "Oh, that's right." "You wanted orange." "It's all right, I'll take it back and exchange it." "Hey, look, I'll take it back." "Look, I'm the youngest." "After all, I'm the one that messed up." "That's okay, I'll drink it green." "Come on, T.C., I'll be right back." "So watch one of those silly ballgames with him," "learn a little bit about them so you can communicate in his own language." "But at the same time, do it totally nude, side by side." "Then I guarantee you, by halftime, he'll be watching you instead of Larry Bird." "Thank you, doctor." "I hope I don't catch cold." "Yo, Ron!" "Ron!" "Father, are you all right?" "You okay?" "Ron." "Ronnie!" "They hit my father." "He doesn't speak very good English and I think at first he didn't know what was going on until they pulled a gun." "He tried to fight them, that's when one of them hurt him." "Hit him with the gun?" "Yes." "T.C.:" "Where were you?" "I was in the cooler, stocking the soft drinks." "I heard the commotion, that's when I ran outside." "And saw what, precisely?" "I saw them turn and shoot this man's friend." "He was in the juice aisle." "He was going to help my father and they shot him." "We'll be in touch." "Thank you, Andy." "Did you get a good look at them?" "One haole, one local, one local guy driving a car." "No license?" "Just a brand new black Continental." "Guess they stole it." "I'm gonna find out." "Put it in the computer right away." "If it turns up, we've got a good shot at them." "When you find them, I want to be there." "I'll call you later." "Right now, I've got to see Mr. Pennington's family." "No, you don't." "I do." "It's my duty." "No, it isn't." "It's mine." "Forget your key again, Ron?" "Or did you just have trouble remembering where you live?" "T.C. I hope you guys like your hamburgers well done." "Where's Ron?" "Where's Ron?" "I guess when I think of funerals," "I think of dark, drizzly days and everybody dressed up in long gray overcoats." "Kind of like a black and white movie." "I mean, it's real hard to reconcile death and rainbows." "Especially when you're at a funeral of a friend who spent a lifetime collecting them." "T.C.:" "He'll show up." "When?" "You only bury your father once." "One day when he's older, he's going to be real sorry he wasn't here." "Maybe he's real sorry now." "Then where is he, Thomas?" "I'll go find him." "Will you take care of Sheila and Jan?" "What if you do find him, T.C.?" "What are you gonna say to him?" "What makes you think it'll be any different with you than it was with his father?" "Well, I don't know whether it will or not." "I'm gonna give it a try." "Tom." "Mrs. Pennington?" "Come on, Sheila, I'll help you get ready." "Thomas, I really don't feel like seeing anybody now." "Mrs. Pennington?" "Excuse me, my name is Andy Nguyen." "My father's very sorry he couldn't be here this morning." "The concussion's very painful." "But he wanted me to express our family's sorrow and our gratitude for what your husband tried to do." "We're truly sorry." "Thank you." "That must have been real hard for him." "Please find my son, T.C." "Let's just slow down a little bit, huh?" "Hey, slow down a little bit, huh?" "Watch out." " Hey!" "Hey, watch out!" "Hey, pull over, huh?" "Pull over!" "Pull over!" "20 bucks." "No, you're kidding me." "You almost got us killed." "20 bucks." "You're lucky we're not calling the cops." "Come on, honey." "T.C.:" "Drive." "Forget it, T.C., I don't need any more grief." "Leave me alone." "Just drive." "Leave me alone." "I'm working." "Here." "I'm paying for my time." "Now drive!" "You're wasting your time, T.C. Save your speeches for your Little League Team." "Ain't gonna be no speeches, but we are going to talk." "About what?" "About your mom, man." "Oh, come on, now, T.C., that's not fair." "Who's trying to be fair?" "You are hurting your mother, Ronnie." "I guess that just runs in the family, right?" "I mean, same name and everything, too." "He couldn't even give me my own name." "He gave you..." "He and she gave you that name because they were proud of you." "They were proud of that name." "Well, they sure had a funny way of showing it." "What's that supposed to mean?" "What's that supposed to..." "Are you serious, T.C.?" "Where you been?" "I mean, I haven't even..." "My mom hasn't had a real good look at my dad since we settled here." "He's either at that lame bureaucrat job, or at the playground with you." "Shooting baskets with you and the other guys like a bunch of kids." "Hell, you probably knew him better than I did." "My dad abandoned his family a long time ago." "Except he did it without leaving." "Pretty neat trick, huh?" "But it don't matter." "Today was his funeral and you weren't there." "What are you running from?" "I'm working!" "Stop!" "Stop this thing." "Stop it right now." "I think you're running away because you care!" "You're wrong." "Wrong!" "I'm past that." "Well, I'm not." "Your father was a good man and he was my friend." "And that lame bureaucratic job probably did more for people than any 100 laws or shouters or do-gooders..." "Oh, come on, T.C. He worked for the City Planning Commission." "He wore a dumb tie and disappeared for 16 hours a day." "Then he spent the rest of his time with you guys, at the park." "Ron Pennington is the reason there is a park." "He's also the reason that clubs and discos that discriminate get closed down if they don't get their act together." "And don't think that fighting for other folk 16 hours a day don't take its toll." "He probably had to run up and down that basketball court just to get it out of his system." "You know what, Ronnie, you find it easy to find fault with your dad, but you know what's hard for you?" "What's hard for you is seeing that there's a lot in him to be proud of." "Man, he really dug you and your mom." "Now, maybe that wasn't enough for you, but I think he did the best he could." "Then why'd he have to go and die on me?" "Die on you?" "Die on you?" "Man, he lived for you." "In fact he'd still be living for you if I had gone into that store like I started." "So I only want two things." "Number one, I want your family to have peace, and number two, I want to find the people responsible for what happened." "Now you can help me on the first one if you're not too busy feeling sorry for yourself." "Now, I'd appreciate it and your mom would, too, Ronald Pennington Jr." "Death." "Death." "Death." "Ah, here they are." "Death Among Friends, Death At Lords." "Death Before Bedtime, Death by Dreaming." "Death At the BBC." "How extraordinary." "Yes, it is, Higgins." "Real extraordinary." "Extraordinary is a superlative, real extraordinary is a redundancy." "However, I was referring to your rather unorthodox method of filing books." "By title." "Don't you care about the Dewey Decimal system?" "At this moment, not particularly." "You know what's real extraordinary, Higgins, is how many people trivialize the word death" "in their book titles and their movie titles just to make a buck." "That will be all for now, Maile." "Thank you." "Magnum, I believe there's a difference between trivializing such a profound event and mere entertainment." "Unfortunately, sometimes, the line often gets blurred." "Did you find out anything illuminating at the store?" "No." "Nothing illuminating." "Unless you count a lot of flat neon lights that don't illuminate a damn thing." "Now that the glass is cleaned up," "Andy is behind the counter instead of his dad." "And it's business as usual." "Well, of course it is." "They're poor immigrants." "That store is their livelihood." "I know that, Higgins." "He's a good kid." "You know something, they've been robbed over a dozen times in the last year." "Yet they persevere." "I suppose..." "Robin Masters' Estate." " Higgins?" "Yes, one moment, Rick." "Yeah?" "Thomas, I think I got what you're looking for." "Great." "But I had to pull in every favor that I had." "Plus, the big one." "Ice Pick's daughter, Hilda?" "You got it." "How many dates?" "It's more than that." "More than..." "You..." "No, he's not..." "He's making you..." "Look, can we talk about this later?" "Do you want the information on the black Continental or not?" "Sure, go ahead." "Well, I found at least parts of it in a chop-shop over in Waimanalo." "Any registration?" "To No-Lemons Rent-A-Car." "Well, that's a dead-end." "Not necessarily." "The car was stolen from a couple of rich tourists the other night down in Waikiki." "Great." "That is a dead-end." "Not necessarily." "Wait till I tell you where it was stolen from." "Hi, Kika." "Hey, Magnum, T.C. How's it?" "Listen, congratulations on your promotion." "You don't drive anymore?" "Hey, you get old, your legs start to go, and they kick you upstairs." "I'm management now, brah." "You guys looking for a job?" "Oh, no." "Just some information." "Hey, Magnum, you getting old, too?" "Taking on trainees, huh?" "What about me?" "It's personal, Kika." "We need your help." "What can I do for you?" "Uh, a buddy of mine..." "Of ours was killed in a market holdup." "And the guys who did it stole a black Continental that was parked right across the street a couple of nights ago, by a couple of tourists who rented some time on one of your cabs and we were just wondering if maybe you saw something, you know." "You know, anybody who was hanging around who struck you as out of the ordinary?" "Everybody down here is out of the ordinary." "Man, I wish I could help you, but, you know, so many cabs and drivers go in and out of this place, tourists everywhere." "I don't think I could remember unless they were really weird or something." "Sorry, but I..." "Hey!" "I need your cab, man!" "Ronnie!" "What?" "T.C., what's going on?" "That was one of the guys that killed your dad." "Like I said, it's your leg that goes first, huh?" "Thanks, Kika." "Hey, um, I'm sorry it was one of my guys, huh?" "You got an address on him?" "Yeah, but..." "But he's not gonna be anywhere near there now." "Hey, try the cops." "He got a record?" "Yeah, in a way." "You see, all my drivers are registered with the police." "City rule, you know, regulate the industry so the tourists don't get ripped off." "Maybe you can find out something down there." "Appreciate it." "Go for it." "I hope you get the slime, huh?" "Ronnie knew him." "Yeah." "Looked that way." "What do you mean, looked that way?" "He knew him!" "We'll find him." "And then what?" "It's as though everything I said didn't even get through to him." "Probably the same problem that Ron had with him." "I want to find the other guy, Sammy Garns." "Well, let's go see Tanaka, we'll check him out." "No, no, no, no, no." "You go." "I got something else I gotta do first." "No, I don't know where he go." "And I don't know why he go." "Yesterday, I had a family." "Yesterday, I had a little baby." "Why's it all been taken from me, T.C.?" "Maybe not all." "Maybe..." "That's that same misguided optimism Ron had." "It may be bleak, but there's still some light out there." "No matter what." "Where'd anybody be without some kind of optimism, misguided or not?" "Maybe back in Philly." "That's where." "Maybe back with our family, our friends." "Home." "You and Ron have lived here for 10 years." "This still isn't home." "I tried." "But, somehow, things just never turned out like we planned." "I remember when Ron was discharged." "It was in the middle of February, we were under three feet of snow back on Vine Street." "And he called me from a phone booth at Wheeler Air Force Base telling me we had a new home." "He, Ron Jr. and I." ""Paradise," he said." "We took the next plane." "I worked at a souvenir stand in Waikiki while Ron finished his degree." "Then when I'd come home Ron would leave for his night job down at that club in the marina, mixing drinks." "Yeah." "Ron Jr. didn't know either one of us very much back in those days." "I guess he doesn't know us very much better now." "We should have never come here." "Wrong." "Ron working like that and you working, why, it's paid off." "I mean, look at..." "Look at his job with the city?" "But what about Ron Jr." "hanging out with bums doing that rickshaw thing in Waikiki instead of going to college?" "Tell me, T.C., what good is any job without a life?" "Without a family?" "You have a family." "Where?" "Where?" "Where were you?" "I'm..." "I'm sorry." "I had to think." "But I'm back." "I'm back now, Mom." "I guess there could be a case made for the theory that not every kid has an equal shot at making it." "Handicaps like being poor and not being exposed to some of the better things in life can make it tough on kids." "Like the kids from this block." "Sammy Garns' block." "But on the other hand, what about a kid like Ron Pennington Jr?" "A kid who grew up with loving parents, grew up not wondering where his next meal was coming from, and above all, grew up in Paradise?" "But then, of course, so did Sammy Garns." "Yes?" "Hi, Mrs. Garns?" "What kind do you think it is?" "I don't know." "I want one." "I'm looking for Sammy, Mrs. Garns." "You from his job?" "No." "You police then?" "No." "Then why you want him for?" "Could we talk inside?" "No, mister." "We can talk right here." "Why do you want Sammy?" "He's in some trouble." "Sammy's always in trouble." "Look, a friend of mine is dead and his son is missing because of this trouble." "Sammy may know where he is." "Sammy's been gone for three weeks now." "He shares this room with his two little brothers." "Maybe it just got too crowded for him." "Any idea where he'd go?" "No, I don't." "Not anymore." "I tried." "I try with all my kids." "Maybe, the two little ones, they be okay." "Anything else?" "No." "Thank you for talking to me." "Mister." "Wait." "If you find Sammy, you do what you have to do." "I understand." "Sometimes being a private investigator can be extremely frustrating." "Especially when you do everything by the book and still nothing makes sense." "No black, no white." "Just gray." "No happy ending." "And the best you can do is try and keep the situation from getting any worse." "Like Sammy's mother." "So, Sammy Garns was now a dead-end, joining the black Lincoln, interviews with the witnesses and Ron Pennington Jr. himself as leads that didn't pan out." "Like I said, being a private investigator can be extremely frustrating." "But never more frustrating than when even though you know you've done everything by the book, you also know that the answer" "lies somewhere between the lines." "The only thing is you just can't quite see them." "Hi, Higgins." "Anything from Rick or T.C.?" "Unfortunately, no." "At least not in any positive sense." "Rick did call an hour ago to say the chaps at the chop-shop had no idea how to reach the house boys who ditched the Continental." "It's homeboys." "Well, at least it looks like you're making some headway." "Yes, quite." "Although, insignificant as it may be considering what has occurred, however, it does provide some mental relief in a way, if not stimulation, actually." "For instance, this book I'm perusing is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study In Scarlet." "As you know, Holmes was the archetypical deductive private detective..." "Investigator." "...who solved the seemingly unsolvable plots by his comprehensive genius at discerning clues that apparently did not exist." "His was the consummate deductive mind." "He also talked funny." "If you're referring to those silly movies of the '40s that merely..." "Oh, come on, Higgins, I liked those movies." "I thought Basil Rathbone was great." "I just meant that he kind of talked..." "Never mind." "What's your point, if you have one?" "On the other hand, you have a detective" "like Chandler's Phillip Marlowe, who plodded along, muddled in the most incomprehensible plots." "Chandler himself admitted in his later years, that even he did not understand The Long Goodbye." "But nevertheless, due to his acute sense of human nature, not only the "how" but the "why" people do what they do," "Marlowe was able to, in the last chapter, finally confront the villain, even though we did not know exactly how he got there." "The point is he did." "Where are you going?" "To test how acute my sense of human nature is." "I'm not really sure which kind of private investigator I am." "The Holmesian type with the consummate deductive mind, or one with a Marlowe-type intuitive sense of the darker side of human nature." "Hopefully, a combination of both." "At any rate, it doesn't matter." "Not when you have a little voice." "I don't know, maybe a gently nagging little voice is really just another way of adding what you know to what you feel." "But right now, mine wasn't gently nagging, it was screaming." "Hello, Andy." "Mr. Nguyen." "Hello." "Hello, Magnum." "You've come to visit your friend?" "No, actually, I came here to see you." "They told me down at the store I'd find you here." "Me?" "Why do you want to see me?" "Oh, I think you know why." "It was an accident, wasn't it?" "Why didn't you tell anybody?" "Because it was me." "I shot your friend." "They're surfers." "Most of the drivers are." "You ever try that?" "Once." "Being inside a washing machine is not my idea of sport." "Anyway, Sammy goes up to Sunset on the weekends when he's not working 'cause Stu and Lee have a shack up there." "They surf, they get blitzed." "You try that, too?" "Come on, T.C." "Oh, yeah, I forgot." "You're a man now." "Don't ask you anything about something you want to hide." "I did that once or twice with them, too." "And, no, I don't do it anymore." "I mean they kind of graduated." "To what?" "Dust." "Anyway, I gotta tell you, T.C., I don't know." "I find it real hard to believe it was them." "I mean, real hard." "Why?" "I mean, from what you said they sound exactly like the two guys that I saw running from the store." "At least, I intend to find out." "And then what?" "I didn't know where else to turn, Mr. Higgins." "I'm sorry." "Oh, please, don't be, Mrs. Pennington." "I'm very glad you came here." "I'm sure Magnum is doing everything he can to help right now as will I, even if it's only offering a meager cup of tea." "Thank you." "It's just that Ron and T.C. took off and haven't come back yet." "And here was the only other place I could think of to look for them." "I've been looking for T.C., too, and you." "He's with Ron Jr." "Yeah, I guess T.C. did reach him." "But then the both of them took off and I think it was to go after those boys." "That would be a real mistake." "Of course it would." "As much as we may sympathize with their motives, vigilantism is..." "Absolutely irrelevant." "I beg your pardon?" "Those three kids didn't kill Ron." "The store owner did." "The boy's father." "How do you know that?" "I've just been wondering why this old man who'd been robbed so many times would try to fight off three armed robbers with his bare hands." "I mean, it didn't figure." "Why wouldn't he keep the gun in the cash register drawer?" "And then they were so solicitous after the incident." "What you are saying, Magnum, is that Mr. Pennington was the unfortunate victim of circumstance." "Why then did they not go to the police and tell them this?" "Maybe they're not familiar with delicate legal phrases like accidental shooting." "The boy was probably afraid they'd send his father back to Vietnam." "So he just threw the gun away and blamed it on the robbers." "So then Ron and T.C. are going after innocent boys." "Not entirely innocent." "They're still armed robbers." "The question is, what can we do to stop them?" "Do you have any idea where they're heading?" "No." "The police?" "No." "That would be worse for Ron and T.C." "Well, who are you calling?" "Come on, Magnum, give me a break, brah." "I got a major disaster on my hands here." "A what?" "What?" "I'll tell you what." "In addition to Ron Pennington not showing up, and that sleaze ball Sammy Garns," "I got two more drivers stiffing me." "Flu." "Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you where." "And when you're through with them, maybe you can come down and pedal a cab for me, huh?" "That's it." "Stu and Lee crash here." "Sammy comes by sometimes." "Okay." "Okay, I want you to wait here." "I'll be right back." "Wait a second." "Uh-uh." "You wait a second." "I want to go check this place out first." "Look, T.C., these guys are, like, totally dusted." "You know, like, space, the final frontier?" "Maybe I..." "Hold it, hold it, hold it right there." "Now, I know exactly what you're going to say." "But I am not gonna blindly walk in there." "I mean, there're no cars parked around here, that probably means that there's nobody inside." "Now, I just want to simply sneak up there, check the place out, and after we're certain that they've been there, then I'm gonna send you to call the cops and I'll wait for them." "Okay?" "That's not what I was going to say." "What were you going to say?" "Well, um, all the way up here I thought you were gonna go off half-crazy because of some weird sense of guilt." "I mean, because you didn't go in the store and get the Gatorade yourself." "But then I was thinking about how that would be the most absolutely stupid thing you could do." "After knowing you and especially after talking to you and hearing you talk to Mom over the last couple of days," "I know you wouldn't do anything emotionally that dumb." "So, um, what I was gonna say was good luck." "I'll be right back." "T.C.:" "Sammy sent me." "You looking to score some dust, man?" "Yeah, yeah, I want some dust." "Powder or sticks?" "Powder." "How much?" "Uh..." "Couple of ounces." "You're a narc." "You're a freaking narc." "No, no, no." "Calm down, man." "I'm not a narc." "I just want..." "I am not a narc!" "Hey, I am here because you and your buddy robbed a grocery store last Saturday and you killed my friend and you are going to the police." "Hey, man." "Now, go wake that punk up." "Hey, look, we didn't kill him." "Now, come on, I'll wake him up!" "Hey, look, that old dude shot him." "He just picked up the gun and whaled out." "Too hyper, you know what I mean?" "Look, let's talk this over or something." "You get high?" "Hey, man, my friend was killed because you robbed a store." "In the eyes of the law and God you are as guilty as hell and you are going!" "Hey, cool out, man." "Let them go." "And then what?" "Then we hop into these wheels and we drop Ronnie off someplace." "Hey, no worry." "He gonna be okay." "Besides, I told him, we ain't murderers." "Let them go." "And, brah, don't even think about following us." "No problem." "Hey, Ronnie, when they drop you off, you call Magnum." "He'll pick you up." "Hi, guys." "Nice game, guys, thanks." "Yeah, thanks, guys." "Go easy on us next time, huh?" " Hey, Bert." "Yo, thanks, Bert." "Hey, see you guys next week." "T.C.:" "Bert, good luck at the club tonight."