Read Black Jasmine (2012) for Free Online

emitted a groan. The black cock stood on the red’s back, the blade tied to his leg embedded and tangled in the other bird’s neck plumage, and as the red collapsed, he continued to peck at the bird’s head and eyes with an intensity that was unnerving.
    “Son of a bitch,” the man she was holding said. “Could this day get any worse? I just lost a hundred bucks.”
    “That’s not all you’re going to lose,” Lei said, giving his arms a little yank. The owner of the red cock—the bald guy she’d first restrained—emitted a cry as the black continued to mangle the bloody head of the downed red.
    “Get that fucking black off my bird! He’d have won if the cops hadn’t distracted him!”
    “He got the eyes fair and square!” yelled the black’s owner. The big, bald guy uttered a roar, lumbered up from his knees with his hands still tied behind his back, and hurtled across the ring to ram the other owner.
    The two huge Hawaiians went down in front of Lei in a cloud of dust and curses.
    Lei blew her whistle for help as the men she’d zip tied, realizing there was a distraction, jumped up and took off, since she hadn’t had time to do their legs. More chaos ensued as the other officers tackled them. It took Lei, Pono, and another officer to pull the two rooster owners off each other.
    They eventually got the scene under control and secured eighteen cockfighters for the station’s arrest count. Lei glanced back at the ring. The triumphant black cock stood square on the red’s body, stamped his long, elegant bladed legs, flapped his wings, and crowed.
    Pono called Animal Control to come take charge of the stacked, portable cages of birds that had all begun to crow once the black got them started. Pono approached the black cock, crouching low and speaking in a soothing voice. The bloodied bird was reluctant to leave his trophy, bobbing a sleek head that had been razored of the comb and wattles, prancing back and forth over the corpse of his enemy.
    Pono took a handful of grain from one of the fallen cages and, clucking his tongue softly, extended it to the bird. Mincing like an eighteenth-century dandy, the cock approached and deigned to eat from his hand. Pono encircled the bird’s body, and the rooster seemed to go limp as he untied the wicked, bloodied spurs from the cock’s legs.
    “You look like you know what you’re doing,” Lei said as Pono put the bird into one of the cages, still talking to it, and gave it some more grain. Her partner’s teeth flashed in a grin.
    “I wasn’t always a police officer.”
    Lei laughed. The aftermath of adrenaline was making her a little punchy. She took the picture of the dead girl to the three captives they’d stowed in the back of her Tacoma.
    “Anyone recognize this girl?”
    The guys all looked at it and shook their heads. “She looks dead,” one of them said. He was just a kid, no more than sixteen, and Lei knew they’d be letting him go later.
    “She is. Went off the cliff at Pauwela Lighthouse. We’re just trying to figure out who she is.”
    “She a hooker?” one of the men asked.
    Lei looked up sharply. The man was in his fifties, a belly straining the oversized board shorts he wore under a fraying UH football jersey. His eyes, sunk in dark folds, got shifty.
    “What makes you think so?”
    “That red hair. Can’t be real.”
    “We’re just trying to identify her at this point,” Lei said. “What do you know?”
    The man pinched his lips shut and sat back. “I don’t know nothing. Never seen her.”
    Lei moved on, making a note that James Silva, age fifty-two, bore more questioning down at the station. Lei showed the photo around to everyone they’d caught. They all denied having ever seen Jane Doe.
    The officers and Pono worked the group, getting names and addresses and writing up charges so they could be put in the group lockup at Kahului Station. Pono was working on trying to identify who’d organized the fight. The ‘‘paddy