Walking on air, Speke left the archaeologist's office. As Randy Takagi escorted him to his rented car, he told the younger man of his good fortune.
Immediately, he wished he hadn't.
Randy Takagi wasn't invited to the director's party.
The dog burrowed between two ferns that blocked the path. Speke put his hands in front of his face and followed, the silky leaves brushing his forearms.
An olive-drab plywood shed stood before him, half on solid ground, half hanging over the steep hillside. There were two open doorways, no doors, and the path led directly through the structure. Speke dropped to his knees and peered at the support beams that speared the hillside.
Rusty nails, rotten wood.
The dog walked through the dark shed, its toenails clicking over plywood. It turned to face Speke from a patch of yellow sunlight on the other side.
"You wouldn't trick me, would you, boy?" Speke asked.
The dog only panted.
Speke thought about dogs. They were loyal creatures in most folk tales, the forerunners of Rin Tin Tin and other heroic animals. But in Hawaiian lore the first dog had been created by Maui, who had transformed a prideful rival into a subservient animal.
Speke shook away the thought. "Man's best friend. Right, boy? And I need a friend right now."
Speke stepped forward, lightly. A second step and the floorboard -for the entire floor was just one large piece of weathered plywood- complained.
One more step and he'd be outside again.
A beam of sunlight angled through a hole in the rusty metal roof. Speke felt the warmth of it on his cheek. He glanced at a shadowy corner of the shed and saw a rake, a shovel, and a hoe, each implement rusty with age.
This was the caretaker's toolshed. Speke remembered what Randy Takagi had said: "The caretaker died back in the forties, and no one has done much in the way of maintenance since then."
The tools had rusted here, waiting for someone to put them to use. But no one had, and as time passed the shrine became a wild thing. Overgrown. Somehow lonely. Standing here in the caretaker's shed, Speke was suddenly sure that, more than anything, this place was lonely.
Hungry for companionship.
Starving for attention.
The support beams creaked below his feet. Speke grabbed the rusty hoe, stepped out of the shed, and followed the dog up the trail.
Fourth evening. Social obligations.
Wong Jak Man's was a four-story pagoda that had been a Honolulu landmark for nearly a century. Though the surrounding neighborhood had turned seedy long ago, Wong Jak Man's had somehow maintained its reputation as the finest Chinese restaurant east of Hong Kong. Each level was decorated with valuable antiques, and the fourth-floor banquet room was stunningly garish, decorated in red velvet and gold trim.
"It's an old Hong Kong custom," the director explained. "The bartender here introduced it to me many years ago."
Speke forced a smile. He wasn't overly fond of the director, because when he was in the man's presence he found it hard to justify what he did for a living. Worst of all, the director had made it perfectly obvious what he expected from Speke when he introduced him to the Japanese investors as "our little sheepskin diplomat."
The director was rattling on. "Mao Tai really is a wonderful beverage. And when you mix it with the custom of Yam Sing, you're in for a stimulating evening."
Speke arched his eyebrows. "Yam Sing?"
The director grinned. "I'm stunned. I've finally discovered a foreign custom of which our renowned cultural attache is unaware." He set two large glasses on the table, one filled with a colorless liquid, the other empty. "Yam Sing. A loose translation would be drink to the finish."
Speke had made it plain on many occasions that he wasn't much of a drinker, and he wasn't eager to sample anything exotic after his experience with the seemingly harmless mai tais. But that didn't stop the director; he was more than pleased with Speke's handling of Mr. Kanahele, and he was ready for a proper celebration. And though it was childish, Speke felt compelled to go along with the show because he didn't want to seem less than manly in front of Kelly Douglas. He didn't want to "lose face" in front of the Japanese investors, either.
The director divided the liquor evenly between the two glasses, handed one to Speke, then toasted Speke and threw back his drink.
Speke raised his glass and drank. A thunderbolt hit his belly. Tears came to his eyes. The red velvet wallpaper roiled for a moment, crawling with golden snakes.
The director laughed.
For the first time, Speke noticed that the five Japanese investors who stood behind his employer were actually standing in line. Each one held two glasses, one of which was filled with Mao Tai.
By the third toast, Speke's face felt numb. He searched desperately for an excuse to escape, but neither the director nor Kelly Douglas was anywhere in sight. Another drink appeared before him. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead as he tossed it back, and the tastes and smells of a traditional Chinese banquet, cigarettes, and a dozen expensive perfumes and colognes went down with it.
Another glass appeared on the table.
Speke lurched away from it.
Air. He needed air. He pushed through the crowd of partiers and made his way down a narrow stairway.
Flocked, peeling wallpaper. The smell of mildew, singed oil, and lemon chicken.
At the end of the stairway was a door, once white, now rutted with graffiti. Speke opened it, praying for fresh air.
The director stood there. Kelly Douglas was at his side.
"Oh no," she whispered.
Speke recognized the president of the Japanese fishing corporation. The old man was smiling, but not at Speke. A low, lacquered teak table sat before the businessman, and on the table was an open package nested in brandy-colored wrapping paper.
Inside the package was a fishhook made of human bone.
The director put his hand on Kelly's shoulder. "This one's yours, dear."
Kelly took Speke's hand. "Come on in, Mitch. Suddenly, we've got a lot to talk about."
Speke broke away and scrambled through the doorway.
He didn't remember anything else until the night air hit him.
Speke marked shrine number fifty-four.
He bent low and peered inside.
The gray statue was expressionless; it had been worn by wind and rain until its face was as smooth as an eggshell.
"Which sin are you?" Speke asked.
He reached inside the shrine, felt the cool figure. "Hypocrisy? That's a good one. Or maybe avarice. That's an old standby, found in many cultures. Very reliable."
Speke closed his eyes. It was as if he had his hand in a lion's mouth. He felt the hunger. He smelled the raw, feral breath. He sensed the cement jaws and wondered why they didn't snap closed.
C'mon, he thought. I'm willing. It's been a long time for you. I may not look like much of a meal, but there's a whole lot to me that doesn't meet the eye.
So many sins.
So many people he'd swayed with the power of his words.
But he hadn't believed those words. He hadn't known their power.
So he couldn't be responsible, could he?
Speke knew the answer to that. He jammed his fist against the statue.
Just take it away, he begged.
Fourth night. Separation.
Speke caught the last Honolulu-Lihue flight. It was a Pam Am dinosaur left over from the sixties, the kind with purple and orange psychedelic upholstery. The stewardess tried to sell him a bottled mai tai, but Speke wouldn't go for it.
The plane landed in a light rain. Speke rushed through the airport, past lei stands, past shops filled with plastic fetishes. He remembered the tiki letter opener that Kelly had joked about. She'd bought one for him at the Honolulu Airport. Speke pulled the thing out of his pocket, cringed at the sight of its glittering plastic eyes, and threw it into a trash can.
Speke got into his car, thinking about the let
ter opener, thinking about the fishhook and the way the old Japanese businessman had hovered over it, smiling.
Leering like a man half his age.
Speke drove out of Lihue. The storm grew worse as he passed through Koloa. When he got to the condo, the phone was ringing. The heavy rain made him hurry inside, but he didn't rush to the phone. He didn't want to answer it. He only wanted to pack his bags.
But it kept ringing, so he picked it up.
"I've never stolen anything," he said.
Kelly said, "I know that, Mitch."
"But you've stolen lots of things, haven't you? From the lava tube, and from the job sites in Mexico and the Caribbean."
The line buzzed softly. "Yes, I have," she admitted. "But we couldn't let those things gather dust in museums. Not when they have real power. You know that power, Mitch. It's in your stories. It sold your books for you. It cut your deal with Kanahele." She paused. "We're not really so different, are we, Mitch?"
"You're really saying this." Speke tried to laugh. "You can't be serious."
"It's really very simple. All we have to do is remember. There's power in that... in memory. People are willing to pay quite a bit for power. Maybe you can't believe that now, but you'll see in a few months. You'll see how much our Japanese friend's business improves now that he has that fishhook."
Speke didn't say anything.
"Wait for me?" Kelly asked. "The director has offered me his private jet. I can be there in an hour. We can—"
Speke hung up. He threw some things into his suitcase.
Outside, rain fell in waves of silver needles.
Speke closed his suitcase and turned off the lights. The light from the windows made everything look silver and black and wet, and Speke was reminded of the lava tube beneath Shipkiller Beach.
It was so empty, shorn of its treasures. Just another hole in the ground.
As empty as this room.
As empty as the unfinished hotel.
As empty as he wanted to be.
Speke spent the night alone in the unfinished third-floor suite. Everything came clear in his mind.
He knew that Keleka Douglas was right.
He knew other things, too, and he was beginning to believe them.
The shrine was still there. The corporation's bulldozers hadn't destroyed it. That meant it still had power. The power to suck away evil.
The shrine could eat temptation. It could free Mitchell Speke.
It was a lonely place. A few people remembered it. They left offerings of flowers. But Speke knew that they didn't walk the path, and he realized that walking the path was the only way to satisfy the place's hunger.
It was a hunger that he would gladly feed. The feeding would make him clean. No one would be able to touch him once he'd traveled the path of the eighty-eight - not the director, not Kelly Douglas. He'd leave this place then, go home with his shoes caked with Madame Tele's earth, and he didn't care what would happen to him for breaking the goddess's kapu, just as long as his journey on the path of the eighty-eight was successful.
The dog barked at him and he clambered over a cracked stone stairway. He marked "84" on a shrine to his left, then turned and charcoaled "85" on a shrine that leaned over the cliff to his right.
The dog crawled through a tangle of ferns at the top of the stairway.
Speke chopped at the ferns with the caretaker's hoe and followed.
He climbed to the top of the hill.
Tire tracks angled along a muddy road. At first it seemed that they had been left by two different vehicles because one set was deeper than the other, but then Speke saw that the tracks came together near the edge of the hillside.
The truck had come in light, gone out heavy.
The dog was sniffing a patch of weeds. Speke approached the animal.
There were three holes in the earth, like three bloody wounds.
In his mind they seemed as large as lunar craters.
The dog barked at the holes, confused. It jumped into the center hole and dug at the earth, then leaped into the hole nearest Speke and came out with something in its mouth.
A candy-bar wrapper.
Speke took the wrapper. Crushed it in his fist.
"It's okay, boy. It's okay."
He reached out to pat the dog, but it drew away from him, whining.
THE CUT MAN
I'D FORGOTTEN THAT THE KNOCKER on Torito's front door was shaped like a boxing glove. I tapped a flurry of jabs on the brass face-plate and waited, my heart thumping a staccato speed-bag rhythm, the desert emptiness swelling at my back. Why Torito lived in the middle of the desert instead of in Vegas was a mystery to me. The sleeping black sky stretching forever, dry sandpaper breezes scudding this way and that like indecisive ghosts, heat waves radiating from the highway in the middle of the night—it was creepy.
I knocked again and listened at the narrow stained-glass window to the right of the door. Just then a zombie opened up, the kind of zombie you see nearly everywhere these days—empty eyes, gray skin, skinny as a bantamweight. He stood there smiling at nothing, his teeth yellow-green from neglect or the weird glow of the halogen porch-light. Finally his eyes did a little focusing trick and he saw me.
"You ain't Willie," he rasped. "You bring Willie's heroin?"
I shook my head, thankful for the succinct way the zombie had explained the situation. "I guess Willie's gonna be a little late," I said, checking my disgust, hoping to keep the junkie calm. "I'm here to see Rosie."
A sharp click echoed in the entry way as a glinting blade disappeared into the hollow of the zombie's palm. He shrugged, turned, and shuffled to the base of a circular wrought-iron staircase. "Rosie!" he called, his raspy voice straining for volume. "It's for you!"
No answer from above. The zombie shot me another tired shrug and wandered away, into the shadows.
I stepped into the entryway, brushing past a withered fern that stood guard just inside the doorway. A chill rose from the marble floor that Torito had had installed after the Kalambay fight in Naples. Carrara marble. Michelangelo's favorite.
TV sounds bounced through the house and lingered over the smooth white rock. Pung pung pung. I guessed tennis. Then I heard the familiar voice of an ESPN announcer and knew that I was right. It was a safe bet that Torito wasn't watching TV—he hated tennis. Football, basketball, and baseball, too. He said they were kid games, games that you played, and Torito never played at anything. Fact is, you never hear about anyone "playing" boxing.
Someone whispered from above, "Willie? Is that you?"
A bronze foot appeared on the circular staircase, and then a shapely ankle, a gold bracelet shimmering around its delicate circumference. A perfect calf followed, and then a perfect thigh. Rosie's wispy lavender negligee came into view mid-thigh, but it hid nothing.
I swallowed hard.
Slivers of shadow melted across Rosie's face. Her strong Navajo features had shriveled on the bone. Her empty eyes blinked through a private haze, her eyelids too small and dark in deeply hollowed sockets. She smiled, leered really. A zombie smile.
"Richeeee," she said. "Thank God you came!"
"All the way from A.C.," I said, sounding like a happy uncle who'd come to visit. "I came as soon as I got your letter. My mail's not so good, you know. I move around too much. But your letter finally caught up to me at Caesars. The concierge from Trump Plaza sent it over. And I tried to call first, but no one's been answering your phone...."
She wasn't listening. We hugged. I felt too many bones, smelled greasy hair and too much Anne Klein II.
I followed her upstairs and down a long hallway. My shoes sank into thick mint-green carpet and I worried that I hadn't wiped them. Rosie was very proud of her carpets and her Italian marble. After growing up in a New Mexico hogan with nothing but dirt under her heels, I guess she had a thing about floors. In happier times, she'd sent her decorator after carpets that would match those at Caesars Tahoe. Drove the guy nuts. Torito had told me that the de
corator finally bribed some maintenance guys at Caesars into stealing a couple hundred square yards of the stuff.
Better days, better ways, I thought.
I caught up to Rosie at the bedroom door. A framed poster from the Barkley fight hung to my left; blank wall stared at me from the right. While Rosie fumbled with the doorknob, I prayed that Torito wasn't saving that space for another poster. A comeback was the last thing I wanted to see. Two years ago he'd had nothing left; now he'd be worse.
Gus's voice: "They always come back. You know that, Richie. They say they won't, but they always do."
Rosie flipped on the light. Torito was sitting up in bed, staring at a big screen Mitsubishi that stood to the right of the door.
Dried blood on the padded leather headboard.
Spots of fresh blood on Torito's silk pajama top.
The stink of sweat and blood hit me as I stepped into the room. Heavy, worse than the stench of a slaughterhouse. Reflexively, my eyes darted from Torito to the spinach-green wallpaper above his bed; the flocked pattern squirmed like a tangle of snakes and I wiped my eyes and looked again. This time I saw a wooden crucifix nestled in the mossy velvet above Torito's head, the figure of Jesus red with paint or Torito's blood. A rusty nail had been hammered through Jesus' chest, pinning the crucifix to the wall, splitting the icon from breastbone to head, but the old wood scissored tightly around it as if clinging there.
Rosie took my hand. "Richie, you gotta make it okay again... I need you... Toro needs you...."
She kept talking, but I couldn't hear her over the blaring Mitsubishi. It shouted, "BARK-LEY, BARK-LEY, BARK-LEY!"
Torito looked at me through swollen eyes. "Help me, Richie," he said, his voice barely audible. "You gotta help me... I can't see the punches."
The ice in the bucket had melted in the Vegas heat, but the Enswell iron was still cold. Gus pressed it against Torito's swollen cheek and begged him to follow his jab with a doublehook to the body. "You can't stop Barkley unless you take his legs," he said.
Bad Intentions Page 4
