by Don Winslow
And he looks like a teenager.
Which means, Chon thinks, he isn’t even the surfer he’s going to be.
Jesus Christ.
“I take it he’s a local,” Chon says.
“Everyone here is a local, brah,” the guy says. “Except you. You shouldn’t be here.”
“I’m just watching.”
As far as Chon can see, most of the surfers in the lineup look Hawaiian. Karsen might be the only haole. He watches Karsen paddle into another wave, cut a line down the face and then bottom-turn and slide back up.
“Don’t watch too long, brah,” the guy says, hefting his board and stepping to the edge of the rock. “It’s not a healthy place for a malihini.”
“What’s a malihini?” Chon asks.
“A stranger,” the guy says. He tosses his board off the cliff and then jumps in behind it.
For a second, Chon thinks the guy just committed suicide, but then he sees him pop up, grab his board and paddle out.
Chon decides to come back another time.
Chon being Chon, he has to jump off that cliff.
* * *
Kauai is a small island, Hanalei a smaller town.
Within a couple of hours of meeting the haole on the cliff, Gabe Akuna finds out that his name is Chon, that he’s renting a house in Hanalei with two friends from California—a guy named Ben and a woman named O, whatever the fuck that is. He makes a call to some associates in LA and learns that Chon, Ben and O are major marijuana dealers.
And that they sell weed to Tim Karsen.
Tim has dealt small amounts of weed in Kauai for years and the Company has tolerated it because Tim is a local, Kauai is a backwater, his business is small scale, and he’s KK’s dad.
But things are changing.
The Company is getting more aggressive on taking back control of all drug sales in the islands—all the islands and all the drugs—weed, ice, coke and smack.
There’s too much money to allow leakage.
KK’s dad or not, Tim has to come into the fold or go out of business.
Then there are these new haoles.
It’s a problem.
Are they looking to increase their marijuana business with Tim? Start a wider distribution with more product?
That would be bad.
Worse would be if they’re thinking of starting their own grow operation here.
That just can’t happen.
The Company is buying up real estate, too, and Kauai isn’t known as the Garden Isle for nothing. Sugar, pineapples, rice and taro used to be the main cash crops, but marijuana is next. And whether it becomes legal or not, the Company is going to be in place to harvest that green.
Not some malihinis from the mainland.
Californication? Gabe thinks.
Fuck that.
The Company is not into Californication.
* * *
Organized crime in Hawaii used to be strictly an Asian affair.
First the Chinese triads, later the Japanese yakuza.
But in the late sixties, Wilford Pulawa, a native Hawaiian, decided to take things local and recruited a bunch of local boys to do it.
Gambling, prostitution, unions, the usual mob stuff—the Company had it locked down.
Pulawa went to prison back in ’73, his successors fell to fighting among themselves, and the Company had lost a lot of its power by the early nineties. Some people say it’s gone altogether, others say it’s making a comeback fueled by the ice epidemic.
Then there’s this:
A few years past, the mainland mafia sent a couple of hit men from Las Vegas to muscle in on the Company’s turf. The story goes that the Company chopped the two wiseguys into pieces and FedExed them back to Vegas with a note that read “Delicious, send more.”
* * *
When he gets back to the house, Chon wants to tell Ben that he’s just seen the future of surfing, but Ben has other things on his mind.
“We have business to do,” Ben says.
“I guess I’ll go to the beach,” O says. Paternalism, sexism or just looking out for her safety (choose one or all of the above), the “boys” rarely include her in the details of the business. She spoons a little poke onto a slice of Spam and sticks it in her mouth.
Not half bad.
She decides to call it “Spamoke.”
The boys get into their rented Jeep and drive north out of Hanalei on the Kuhio Highway, a two-lane blacktop that hugs the coast. Chon at the wheel, they drive past the spot where he watched KK do his magic, then up past Lumahai Beach to Wainiha, where they take a dirt road inland a couple of hundred yards through thick rain forest.
The road dead-ends in a clearing.
A house that could be best described as ramshackle sits to the left. Single-story, it stretches out along the edge of the forest like a series of train cars, as if each section had been an afterthought. On the right side of the clearing is another building that looks like a workshop. Racks of surfboards are set out in front, the open garage door revealing more boards inside. A small boat and a Jet Ski sit to the left of the workshop, beside a rack of solar panels.
At the end of the cul-de-sac is an enormous banyan tree, and in the tree is . . . well . . .
A tree house.
Under construction.
Not a tree house like a kid would build but a tree home, with floors on several levels, carefully and beautifully built, the planks honed and sanded.
Chickens run around the driveway.
The place is isolated, so all you can see is the thick vegetation and a single palm tree that sits in the small, well-tended lawn.
A man steps out of the house.
He looks to be in his mid-fifties, thick, long black hair with a few streaks of silver, slicked back from his head. A small Z-shaped scar over his right eyebrow. Hawaiian floral shirt and baggy board trunks over sandals. A pair of wraparound shades completes the look.
He’s smiling broadly. Tips up the shades and says, “Aloha!”
They get out of the Jeep.
The guy stretches out his hand. “I’m Tim.”
“I’m Ben. This is Chon.”
“Nice to finally meet in person,” Tim says.
They’ve only previously talked on satphones or exchanged encrypted emails.
Tim Karsen is their distributor in Kauai.
They connected in the usual way—friends of friends of friends, but this is the first time they’ve met face-to-face.
“I’m digging the tree house,” Ben says.
Tim smiles. “My son. He’s building his own home.”
“Very cool,” says Ben.
“Come on in,” Tim says.
They follow him through the front door, which leads directly into the kitchen. Given the improvised look on the outside, the interior of the house is a surprise—spacious, well ordered, tidy. The floors are polished wood planks, the walls wood paneling with Hawaiian art.
A woman stands at a butcher block, mixing a salad.
“This is Elizabeth,” Tim says.
She’s beautiful.
Long auburn hair, deep brown eyes, slim in a denim shirt over jeans.
And that voice, Chon thinks. Low, soft, pure sex, even when she says something totally mundane like, “I made a salad for lunch. I hope that’s okay.”
Chon’s thinking that she could have made dog shit on a shingle and that would have been okay, too.
They sit down at a long table in the dining room, which has been set with pitchers of iced tea and guava juice, although Tim comes out of the kitchen with three bottles of ice-cold beer.
“Captain Cook IPA,” Tim says. “It’s local.”
“Local means a lot here, doesn’t it?” Chon says.
Tim nods. “We’ve been here for twelve years, and we’re still sort of malihini.”
“People here are actually very friendly,” Elizabeth says. “As long as you respect the local culture.”
“Which is basically don’t
be an asshole,” Tim says.
“Words to live by,” Chon says.
They clink bottles.
But the funny thing is . . .
Chon thinks he knows this guy.
He knows they’ve never met, but . . .
He knows Tim from somewhere.
And his name wasn’t Tim.
* * *
Tim walks them up a narrow dirt road, more of a trail, through the thick forest.
It’s started to gently rain, and the red dirt turns to red mud on their shoes as they climb up into the hills.
A creek runs on their right.
They’ve been walking for ten minutes when they come to a grass-covered clearing, about two acres, surrounded by thick vegetation.
“Here’s where I was thinking,” Tim says.
“It’s for sale?” Ben asks.
“I already bought it,” Tim says. “But yeah, we could work something out.”
“Is that on record?” Ben asks.
“I only look dumb,” Tim says. “I ran the purchase through five shell corps. It can never be traced.”
“Perfect location,” Ben says, looking around. “Private . . . We’d need to do a soils test.”
“Sure,” Tim says. “But everything grows here. You could stick a Chrysler in the ground here and it would grow little Chryslers. The real issue will be keeping the jungle cut back.”
“It has potential,” Ben says. “Could we clear more land if we needed it?”
“I bought fifteen acres,” Tim says.
“Can you supply labor?” Ben asks.
Tim nods.
“That we can trust?” asks Chon.
“These people are ohana,” Tim says.
Chon asks, “What does that mean?”
“Family,” Tim says.
Like, subject closed.
They walk back to the house in the rain.
When they get there, Chon sees Kit Karsen lift his board onto a rack in the workshop.
Kit looks back, sees Tim and grins.
“Hey, Dad!”
* * *
Chon’s father is a genuine son of a bitch.
One of the founding members of the Association, the largest dope ring in California history, he wasn’t very present in Chon’s life, and when he was, it wasn’t exactly positive.
For example, some of his business associates once took young Chon hostage until John paid them the money he owed.
One of the few times Chon felt actually valued.
Chon always knew that his old man was in the business, but Ben and O had only recently found out that they, too, were second-generation dope slingers and not the pioneers they thought they were.
Ah, the beautiful, ignorant arrogance (and arrogant ignorance) of youth—to think they were the first.
But Paqu and Ben’s psychotherapist parents were major investors—on the board of directors, as it were—of the Association, and O’s real bio-dad was not the man that she thought but instead was the (recently) late Doc Halliday, who had once made Orange County the epicenter of the American marijuana, hashish and cocaine business.
Proving, yet again, that:
We don’t know our origins.
Nothing is new under the sun.
Dope has been around forever.
All of the above.
Now Chon and his old man have a relationship based on an agreement that the less they see of each other, the better.
But Kit clearly loves Tim.
Just as clearly as Tim loves Kit.
Chon can see it as they embrace each other, as if it’s been years, not hours, since they’ve seen each other.
It makes Chon a little sad.
“Meet Ben and Chon,” Tim says. “This is our son, Kit.”
“Aloha,” Kit says, nodding to them both.
“Ben and Chon are from California,” Tim says. “Laguna Beach.”
Kit says, “I’d like to go there sometime.”
“Anytime,” Ben says. “You always have a place to stay.”
“Be careful, I might take you up on it,” Kit says.
Elizabeth comes out and smiles at her son. “Malia called from town. Your water pump came in.”
“Excellent,” Kit says.
It’s a family, Chon thinks.
He’s never really seen one before.
But who are these people?
Really.
* * *
Gabe is very aggro that the haoles are sitting down with Tim Karsen and that he showed them the land he bought.
It doesn’t bode well, so he makes a phone call.
* * *
Red Eddie’s hair is more orange than red, and his real name is actually Julius, but no one is going to call the Company boss Orange Julius.
Educated at Harvard and Wharton Business School, Eddie is a Hawaiian-Japanese-Chinese-Portuguese-Anglo entrepreneur with offices in Honolulu, the North Shore and San Diego. Now he’s in Honolulu, and he’s not happy about what he’s hearing over the phone.
A trio of California haoles starting a plantation in Kauai?
Hells no.
“Tell them to leave,” he says.
“What if they don’t want to go?” Gabe asks.
“Did you seriously just ask me that?”
He clicks off and takes a Tylenol.
Running the Company can be a headache sometimes.
* * *
Ben is totally into the tree house.
This is Ben’s kind of thing, right up his alley, so to speak—anything, green alternative, off the grid, crunchy granola—that’s for Ben.
(There’s no arguing with DNA.)
“Kit and I are building it,” Tim says. “For him to live in.”
Ben asks to see it.
“Let me show you the plans,” Kit says, enormously pleased. They go into the workshop, and Kit unfolds the plans on a table. “I want to live as close as I can to nature.”
“I guess you can’t get any closer than living in a tree,” Ben says.
Soul mates, Chon thinks.
The plans call for a three-level structure, connected by ladders and catwalks. The lower level will be the kitchen, its walls curtains that can be pulled up or lowered, a wood-burning oven and stove, an antique sink with water pumped up from the creek.
A catwalk, railed with coconut wood, will switchback up to the next level, a sitting room with broad plank floors of koa wood and real walls made of monkeywood, with big windows that will look out onto the forest. Another series of catwalks and a ladder lead up to the next level, a bedroom with more plank flooring, walls of mango wood and a thatched roof with a skylight. An attached bathroom (“En suite,” Kit jokes) with a gravity toilet and a shower serviced by a Lister bag hung from a higher limb that collects rainwater.
Kit is proud that all the wood is local, from trees that have naturally fallen or had to be taken down for safety reasons. This means that they’ve had to wait literally years for certain pieces of wood, but they want it right. They’ve bought the raw wood and lovingly sawed, planed and hand-sanded it themselves. They’re also building the cabinetry from kamani wood, the shelves and a big table for the kitchen area made from ironwood.
“It’s all solar-powered,” Kit says.
“Do you get enough sunlight?” Ben asks.
“Enough to battery store,” Kit says. “And when there isn’t enough power, we have kerosene lamps. And it’s not like we have a lot to power.”
No television, for instance.
“I like books,” Kit says.
No excess lighting.
“I go to bed early,” he says. “Get up with the sun.”
Kit takes Ben for a tour.
The first level is almost finished. The floors are down, the stove and oven in, the heavy natural bamboo curtains attached and rolled up now.
They go up the catwalk to the next level, a twelve-by-fourteen room with polished floors and beautiful red wooden walls with large windows. Two of the walls are done, the other tw
o only framed out. On the north wall is a stained-glass window bearing the image of a Hawaiian woman walking into the ocean with her surfboard.
“Did you do this?” Ben asks.
“Malia,” Kit says. “My girlfriend.”
“This is amazing, Kit,” Ben says. He feels like he’s in an apartment, not a tree house, and yet the leaves brush against the windows and the place is suffused in birdsong.
It’s all been done with so much care, so much love.
They climb up to what will be the bedroom and stand on the framing, because the floors aren’t down yet.
“I know my dad does business with you,” Kit says. “And I know what it is.”
“Are you okay with that?” Ben asks.
“I’m protective of my parents, you know?”
“I respect that.”
“And I have ethical issues,” Kit says.
“I respect that, too.”
“As long as it’s just herb, I’m good with it,” Kit says. “But if it evolves into coke, ice, heroin—”
“It won’t,” Ben says. “We’re on the same page.”
They shake hands.
Kit’s not even trying to exert force, but Ben’s hand feels like it’s been crushed.
It would be a good idea not to mess with Kit.
* * *
On the drive home, Chon says, “I know that guy.”
“Tim?” Ben asks. “Not possible. He hasn’t left the island in twelve years, and you’ve never been here before.”
“I know, but I know him.”
“Chononoia.”
Chon will cheerfully admit to being paranoid—multiple tours with special ops in Afghanistan and Iraq, it’s a predicate to survival—but he doesn’t think he’s being paranoid now.
Because now he remembers where he knows Tim from, why he looks so familiar.
It’s the Z-shaped scar.
An old business partner of his dad’s. Chon hasn’t seen him in . . . well, at least twelve years—but Tim is a dead ringer for Bobby Zacharias.
The legendary Bobby Z.
Bobby Z was a legendary surfer, one of the best on the West Coast. Chon remembers being a kid and looking up to him. And Z was one of the biggest marijuana dealers in California.
Then he disappeared.
About twelve years ago.
Just fell off the face of the earth.
Landed, Chon thinks, in paradise.
And back in the dope business.
