by Rob Swigart
They sat that way for several minutes. Takamura twirled his hat and Sammy chewed his toothpick. Finally, as if the thought had occurred to them at the same time, they both stood up and went to the car without speaking.
When they got back to the highway, Takamura asked, “Who’s next?”
“Pete Williams. Runs a little dive shop in Hanalolo.”
“Okay.”
Takamura let Sammy make these decisions. They were the same as his own.
Takamura was hoping that nothing would happen today.
He was hoping this run of deaths was over. He was hoping the man from CDC would find a bug with a simple cure; that the cult, or the maniac, had left enough clues so the others working on this case could wrap it up today.
Pete Williams’ dive shop was definitely little. Pete Williams sat in one room surrounded by tanks, masks, fins and other equipment. He had a small two-hose compressor that thumped deafeningly by the back wall.
He cupped his hand over his ear and shouted, “Hah?” when Takamura asked him if they could talk a few minutes. Takamura gestured him outside into the street.
It was a little quieter there, and sunny. “Rake Wyman,” Takamura said.
Pete nodded. “Sure. What about him?”
“He’s dead.”
Pete nodded again. “Sure. I know that. It was in the paper. He was using my boat, my Zodiac. I knew it would happen someday.”
“Did you?”
“Sure. He went diving alone. Crazy. I think he tooted a bit, too. He was nuts, if you ask me, diving alone like that. I tried to tell him, a hundred times, but he insisted. A good diver, of course, been at it a long time. It was bound to catch up, though. Too bad.” Pete didn’t sound particularly upset.
“Any idea why?”
“Why he dived alone? Nope, not really. Treasure hunting, I imagine. Might have been looking for a ship. They often do, you know, look for ships, the treasure hunters. You know?”
“Do they?”
“Yeah. They always have some legend, some fabulous sunken ship. He was consistent, too, I’ll say that.”
“How so?”
“Always went to the same place. Always went to The Slip. Out past the Navy facility. Popular place for diving, but there are other popular places. He always went there. Probably thought there was a ship out there.”
“Was there?”
“A ship? I doubt it. Been a lotta divers there. Could be deep, of course, but a lotta divers been deep out there. You never know. Maybe he knew something. You never know.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“He did find something once.”
“Did he?”
“Yeah. An anchor, a propeller, something heavy. ’Bout this big.” Pete held his hands far apart. “I didn’t see it. He had it wrapped up. This was a month or so ago.”
Takamura nodded, staring off at the ocean. He wondered if all this had any meaning. “Anything else?” he asked at last.
“Not that I can think of, no, nothing else, I guess. He came and went, never talked much. A loner, you know the sort?”
“Yes, I know the sort. Thanks for your help.”
“Sure,” Pete said. “Any time.” He went back inside. The thumping of his compressor was loud when he opened the door, faded after he closed it.
“I wonder if it means anything,” Takamura said as they drove up to Wailanai, where Rake had lived. Sammy didn’t answer.
The propeller in the garage didn’t look much like a clue. It took both of them to load it into the trunk of the Toyota.
23
“You know what I’m going to do?” Renfrew said to the old man, whose eyes flared red when he looked up. “New shoes. I’m going to get new shoes.”
The old man said nothing.
“You know what else I’m going to do?” Renfrew mused. “I’m going to buy myself a Jennings bow with silencers and brush deflectors, and a new bow quiver and sights and a couple of dozen graphlex arrows and razorback broadheads. I’m gonna fletch my own goddam arrows. No goddam pig is gonna rip me again.”
The old man was silent, rubbing his knees slowly, soothing the ache.
“Hey,” Renfrew went on, “you know what else? This wound don’t hurt any more.” He slapped his side where the flesh puckered pinkly. “You did a hell of a job. That was quick. Tell me more about this ana’ana. Maybe there is something to this stuff.”
The old man smiled bleakly. “You’re dark, Renfrew, perhaps too dark. Ana’ana is a dark art; people do not speak of it much. A nighttime art, very bad. Used only to kill. You should learn healing, Renfrew; that is better. It has to do with the pig sometimes, too, ana’ana. You would understand about O’o-a-moa, the boar that attacked you.”
“Good. And praying to death!” Renfrew smiled. “Does it work?”
“People die, do they not?”
“Sure they do. They’re shot, they’re poisoned, they fall down, get sick. Do they get prayed to death?”
“That is ana’ana. When a man died, ancient Hawaiians said, was it ana’ana? They took a pig to the kahuna and said, ‘Here is the pig, O Uli in the heavens. This pig is offered to buy the death of him who prayed to death my friend.’ ‘Is this the pig to procure ana’ana?’ asks the kahuna. ‘Yes,’ they say, and the kahuna tells them to let the pig go. What the pig does then, that tells the kahuna who did it. If the pig roots in the ground, then the man who caused ana’ana is himself doomed, and it would not be long before he himself was in the earth where the pig was rooting. Pig points to the man, and the man dies. This was believed; men died.”
“The pig pointed at me.”
“Ah, indeed?”
“I want to learn.”
“So.” Kalaipahoa laid his finger alongside his nose. “You wish to become kahuna, though you are haole?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a black art, Renfrew, kahuna ana’ana. Deadly.”
“I wouldn’t use it that way,” Renfrew assured him. “Only for good.”
“But consider, Renfrew: the boar, O’o-a-moa, he turned toward you. He almost killed you. That is a serious thing, a sign. You cannot trifle with such things. There are spirits all around; they have their own purposes, and may mean you harm. They come down from the High Realm sometimes.”
“I killed him,” Renfrew said. “Who had more power?”
Kalaipahoa smiled again, and his smile was as bleak as before. “Yes, you killed him. That could have another meaning, though. You are bound to O’o-a-moa now. His name was Death Rattle. Be sure it is not your death too.”
“Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself. Just teach me.”
Kalaipahoa brushed his fingers along his bushy white mustache, back and forth, back and forth. “Ana’ana is strange,” he said, almost to himself. “It can turn back on itself. Very dangerous.”
“Teach it to me.”
Kalaipahoa brushed his mustache for a while, absently. Then he decided.
“All right,” the old man said. “First, a song. I sing the prayer for you. Listen carefully.” He closed his eyes and began.
A-a ke ahi, ke ahi a ka po o Lani-pili.
A i hea ke ahi, ke ahi a ka po o Lani-pili?
A i ka lani; make i ka lani;
Popo i ka lani; ilo i ka lani;
Punahelu i ka lani.
“The power,” he said, “is in the sound. The language reverberates on the palate, produces vibrations against the base of the brain. You must remember precisely.” He chanted again, his voice powerful, resonant, hypnotic.
Then he translated for Renfrew.
The fire burns, fire of the night of Lani-pili;
Where burns the fire, fire of the night of Lani-pili?
It burns in the heavens;
Death in the heavens; corruption in the heavens;
Maggots in the heavens; mildew in the heavens.
Heaven speed the death of the kahuna anaana…
“It is not the meaning, Renfrew, the meaning is not so important. It i
s the sound itself, and the intent you have to use it.”
Renfrew learned fast. As the day passed, he mastered one after another of the songs to pray someone to death.
He thought these songs probably wouldn’t work, not so well as whatever it was that he had given the girl in her cigarette that later killed the boy; he had seen with his own eyes how fast and effective those things were. Still, you never knew; some people would believe ancient kahuna were responsible. Rumors would be going around. He could use that.
Besides, the old man knew some other tricks that did not depend so much on magic. Maggots in the heavens was all right, but the crushed and dissolved roots of certain plants provided a certain path to death. Meat broiled on an oleander stick would kill, as would an injection of the extract of the seeds of the wiliwili tree. Even the lovely plumeria produced a poisonous sap. The kahuna could bring about death by innuendo, by suggestive extrasensory projection, by burning articles belonging to the victim, by what could only be voodoo, taking a piece of the victim, his hair, his skin, and making his image for destruction. Maybe he could do that. Kalaipahoa said it must be used to fight evil, not do evil. But of course no one thought what he did was evil. Evil was what others did.
But he used a little science too, in case the target was too strong, his magic too weak. He knew poisons, and secret deaths, intimidation and terror in the dark and bloody violence and the fear of akua, the brain robbers, the eaters of the soul. Healing kahuna had to know such things, to counter them.
So the day wore on and darkness fell on the mountain. The old man took his apprentice into the forest and showed him how to gather the plants, where to find them and what they did.
It was just the beginning, but Renfrew liked possessing the secrets. He liked the idea of being the human hand behind supernatural terror. There was, it seemed, a secret society of men who still practiced the ancient kahuna magic, some healing magic, others the black arts of death and fear. Renfrew would be one of these, whatever the old man said.
Kalaipahoa taught him that every medicine, every healing herb and root and prayer, had another face: it could cure, but change the dose just a little and it would kill.
And Renfrew, because he was not stupid, understood his lessons well and added this knowledge to all that the United States Marines had taught him, and all that he had learned before that in the streets of Detroit. Renfrew felt the power flow through him, and because he felt it, he thought he was free. He never saw the old man’s smile, never felt the yoke around his neck, never felt its weight on his shoulders. Not until it was too late.
O’o-a-moa, though. He was bound to O’o-a-moa. He forgot that. The pig had pointed to him.
This, Renfrew thought instead, was his college. He was going to be one of the best. Absolutely one of the best.
24
The men were right. His phone worked fine.
Chazz called Pan Am four times during the afternoon. The flight was on time. It remained on time.
He imagined her at the Oakland airport. He imagined her over the Pacific at 40,000 feet, watching the movie. She would have dinner on board. How long would it be between the time she ate and her arrival in Lihue? Should he have dinner first himself, or wait and take her out?
The condo was clean. The fridge was stocked with food. Through the living room window, the sun was hovering above the crowns of a clump of coconut palms that grew on the other side of the pool. That meant mid-afternoon. In the other direction was the scrub where he had walked the other night. He called it the Night of the Toads. But now the sun was stuck above the palms, refusing to move.
A breeze so slight as to deny its own existence rustled the leaves of the enormous ficus in the courtyard; they seemed to stir restlessly on their own.
Chazz looked around. There was nothing more he could think of doing. Should he do something about the stolen slides? Should he do something about disease and death?
There was no aikido training today. Shinawa was away for the weekend. Takamura was busy chasing clues.
A few people were using the pool. Off-duty waitresses who didn’t surf, people with normal weekday jobs who lived in this complex. Chazz stood in his living room and watched them blankly for a while. Then he shook himself, took his jo, his ashwood staff, out of its case and walked up the dirt road into the scrub. There was a clearing where he could work out.
Because the day was fine, the dirt in the clearing was dry, packed hard and relatively level. Chazz in his bathing suit began to sweat as soon as he started doing the 31 kata, the prescribed series of thrusts and blocks with the staff.
Muscles leaped under his skin. The wooden stick sighed through the air. He counted under his breath as he went through the series, slowly at first, limbering up. Thrust, step aside, cover; thrust, step, cover, strike. Strike again, reverse, strike, strike. High thrusts and low ones, upward blows, blows to the side of his imaginary opponent’s head.
He went through the series once. He paused, then went through it again. He felt dizzy, tired, a little bored. He wanted to throw the stick away; he felt silly.
He forced himself to do it again, a little faster, and as he did his breath began to ease. Sweat poured off him now, the staff moved in a blur, darting forward, whipped overhead to block, swinging in an arc, whistling as it fell. What he began to feel was anger. His muscles moved smoothly, the staff moved as a part of him, circles, thrusts, sweeps.
He switched to the thirteen kata, a different series.
He worked for an hour.
When he finished, he felt better. His violence had melted away. The air was clear and warm and sweetly scented. He breathed easily.
Patria’s plane would be descending for a landing at Honolulu. An hour between planes, then a half-hour flight to Kauai. Two hours from now. It was a little after five.
Chazz went for a swim. The few people in the pool that time of day gradually drifted inside. He didn’t know any of them, anyway, and didn’t feel like talking. It was cocktail hour for most. He had the pool to himself.
He swam to the deep end. The water was cool on his skin after the heat of the day. He floated on his back, and an experiment occurred to him. He closed his eyes and slowly let out his breath. He began to sink, stopped. He let a little more air out. He could hear the sound the bubbles made when they broke on the surface. He sank a little more.
He could regulate exactly where he was in the water by relaxing and establishing neutral buoyancy by letting out his breath. He found that to get to the bottom he had to let almost all of the air out of his lungs. This shortened the time he could stay down. The important thing was to be completely relaxed.
He felt the cement of the bottom against his back. The sound of the filtration system was clear down here, faint gurgles and swishings. The game amused him. It was a matter of fine control, flirting with panic. Finally he allowed his feet to drift underneath him, and with a convulsive thrust pushed himself up through the surface, gasping for air, streaming water from his hair. In the moment he broke the surface of the water and opened his eyes, he thought he saw someone watching him, but the water flowed over his face, and when he could see again, the figure was gone.
At six he called the airport again. Aloha #237 was on time. He called the Koloa Broiler and made a reservation. He showered and dressed. It was six-twenty. He could leave now and be early, or a wait a few more minutes.
The phone rang. “Hi,” Takamura said. “Good luck tonight.”
“Thanks.”
“Investigation is under way. ‘Bills sometimes more difficult to collect than murder clues,’ says the great detective. Not in this case, however.”
“I imagine that’s true,” Chazz said, laughing.
“One or two things of interest, however. Perhaps tomorrow? I could come by the laboratory.”
“Great. You can meet my wife.”
“I look forward to same.”
Chazz went to the airport. He leaned against the wire fence and watched the sky. Aloha #2
37 was a dark spot against the deepening blue. It swung gracefully around and came in for a landing in paradise.
PART II
INFERNO
25
She was darker than he remembered, and thinner. Her bare arms were wiry and tan, her thin fingers long and tapering where they touched his forearm. She was pointing with the other hand, and he followed the motion to the wall ahead.
“I expected lush tropical jungles,” she said. He heard a sliver of laughter in her voice.
“Lush tropical jungles right this way.” He waved at the mountains to their left.
“I didn’t expect this.” Around them was dust, sad trees and an iron-black stone wall roughly piled up without mortar. The heat built up on the dust and rock, rising to rustle the dry leaves. “In a way it’s a relief after Yucatan.”
“There’s nothing left of it,” Chazz told her, “except this wall, all the way around. Fort Elizabeth. The Russians built it in 1817.”
“Russians?”
“This was their foothold on the island, this fort, and another one on the north side. They didn’t do much here, just some sandalwood trading. Eventually they left.”
The wall rose above them, black and hot. They climbed it and walked along the top. The earth was brown and hard. The interior of the fort was filled with weeds and trees that whispered in the faint breeze. As they turned the sharp corner of the first spike of wall on the lopsided star shape of the fort, they could see the waters just offshore were studded with reef. Two men stood on the rocks looking out toward the island of Niihau low in the distance.
They walked on. Patria’s fingers rested lightly on Chazz’s forearm, an almost abrasive thrill of need. Their touching was tentative, reaching across the time gulf between them. The wall wove in and out. They looked down on the reddish water of the Waimea River where it flowed into the sea.
