Thrillers in Paradise

by Rob Swigart

  “Ah, that I do not know,” Cobb admitted with a smile.

  Patria shook her dark head, the close helmet of her hair barely stirring.

  “However,” Cobb continued, “I think perhaps I’d better see what Kiki wants. I believe she is training with your husband at this moment.”

  “Then,” Patria said, “I better see what it’s all about as well. They’ve been carrying on in secret for some time now.” She struggled from the hammock and, standing, arched her back, pressing palms into her kidneys. Then she grinned and followed Takamura after Kenji.

  The path wound through the garden and down a slope behind the house. Bamboo fencing screened garden areas from one another, giving an impression of size to an otherwise modest yard. Cobb opened a gate and bowed Patria through.

  They entered a small flat area of bright green lawn enclosed by oleander bushes and fencing. They could see the roof of a neighboring house; otherwise the glade was completely enclosed and private. Kenji held his origami stork at his side, watching.

  In the center of the lawn two bright blue mats were spread out, and on the mats Kiki Takamura, aged eleven, stood in the triangular stance called hanmi. She wore the traditional white karate gi and green obi of a sixth kyuu student of aikido.

  Chazz Koenig held a bokken, a wooden Japanese practice sword, in both hands. He was watching Kiki silently, calmly. She glanced over her shoulder and flashed a smile quickly at Patria and Cobb as they closed the gate behind them. At that moment Chazz chose to strike, raising the sword overhead and bringing it down toward Kiki’s exposed head. At the same time he shouted a thunderous kiai, “Ei-i-i-ya!”

  Kiki moved smoothly toward him, coming in under the strike and just to one side. The sword fell harmlessly beside her as she moved, and before the sword came to a halt at the end of the strike she was standing beside Chazz, her palm extended between his hands toward the hilt.

  Chazz was a large man. He loomed over the slender girl, but as she extended her palm and turned beside him the sword twisted away, and he was rolling smoothly over one shoulder, his black, skirtlike hakama swinging through the air. As she threw him, Kiki’s own girlish voice erupted in a prolonged kiai to the end of her breath. Chazz was on his feet instantly, charging her again, towering over her small form, but now she held the sword, tip aimed at his throat, and he stopped.

  “Very good,” he said, smiling.

  “I knew you were going to do that,” she said. “I faked you out, looking at Dad and Patria like that.”

  Chazz laughed. “You sure did. I thought I saw your attention wander there.” Suddenly he moved in beside her and twisted the sword away, reversing their roles.

  She looked surprised for a moment. “That’s not fair!” she complained. “You’re bigger.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Chazz. “But your attention did wander there, didn’t it? Zanshin, Kiki. Always be aware.”

  “He gotcha, Kiki.”

  “Don’t you laugh at me, Kenji,” she said. “You couldn’t do it. That sword’s hard. Try it some time.”

  “OK,” he said, flying his stork.

  Chazz put the sword to one side. “A little jiyuu-waza, Kiki? First, I will attack.” She extended her hand toward him and he reached for it. She spun to the outside, leading him, neither too far ahead nor quite close enough for him to grab. He strained for her wrist, and just as he was about to grasp it, she moved downward, bending her knees as she turned. He followed, and she extended her other hand across his face, forcing him to lean backward.

  He lost his balance and fell, rolling back over his left shoulder. He attacked again. She led him through a series of loops and circles, throwing him every time. Finally he held up his hand and told her to change roles.

  This time she attacked, and he moved smoothly, leading her into a series of easy rolls and back falls. Gradually he increased the intensity of the throws until she was flying through the air, landing on the mat with a slap and bounding back for the next attack.

  “Slow down,” Chazz said. “Don’t lean into it. Move from your center. That’s better. Don’t throw away your own balance just because you’re attacking. Very good.”

  He grunted and held up his hand. “Enough.” He bowed, and she bowed back, smiling broadly. “You’d better get ready, I think we’re about to go.”

  “OK.” She and Chazz folded the mats and put them beside the gate. Then she ran toward the house, giving her father and Patria a wave as she went by.

  “When can I do that?” Kenji asked, landing his stork on the lawn. He watched as Chazz removed his hahama and began the intricate process of folding it, shaking down the creases, finding the folds, pressing down on them. He laid the garment on the mats and finished the fold, carefully placing the ties in their proper places and picking up the small package with one hand and heaving the mats with the other.

  “Be right with you. I’ll just take these in the house and change.”

  “I still want to know when I can do that,” Kenji said to his back. Chazz turned briefly. “Soon,” he said. “Real soon.”

  “He’s good with kids,” Takamura said, watching Chazz climb the hill to the house.

  “Mmm,” Patria murmured, and Cobb looked at her.

  She was looking at her hands. It took a moment for Cobb to realize she was laughing. She looked up. “We have some news,” she said.

  Takamura held up a delicate hand, palm out. With the other hand he tipped his colorful if battered porkpie hat to the woman. “Let me think,” he said, striking a thoughtful pose. “You have decided something.”

  Patria, still laughing, nodded.

  “You have decided… no, no, don’t tell me… you have decided… to buy a house!”

  She shook her head, unable to speak for a moment. “No. I mean, yes, we are getting a house, though we’re not buying it. We’re buying a lease, actually. But that’s not it.”

  “Oh,” the detective said. “You are buying a lease on a house, but that is not what you have decided. Most puzzling. It is news perhaps we should summon Mrs. Takamura to hear?”

  Patria laughed out loud then. “Mrs. Takamura already knows this news,” she said.

  “Is it so? In that case, I take this news to be of a delicate nature, suitable for womenfolk but not men until the time is ripe.”

  She laughed. “The lieutenant is sexist, too. Chazz knows.”

  “Now, really,” he began, but she waved him down, still grinning.

  Cobb took off his hat and stared into it. “Ah,” he said. “Here it is. I believe I see a little Koenig in the future. Yes. Honorable tea leaves in porkpie hat tell of blessed event.”

  Patria harumphed. “You will never convince me that is a quote from Charlie Chan.”

  Takamura smiled. “Well?” he said. “Am I right?”

  Patria clasped her hands behind her neck and stretched. Her grin softened. “Yes,” she said. “You are right.”

  “Well,” Cobb said. “Well.”

  “Come on, Cobb. Where’s my quote from the great detective?”

  “OK. One question then, from Detective Chan. ‘Are you well fitted with the armor of preparation?’ I had known this was an issue between you two. So is this truly your decision as well as his?”

  “You’re a good person, Cobb Takamura. But it is very much our decision, Chazz’s and mine. I’ve got some real research here, but I have discovered that there is something missing in my relationships with my informants, many of whom are mothers. They won’t really let me in, you see, since I don’t have children. So.”

  Now Cobb was laughing. “All right,” he said. “So purely in the interests of furthering your research, you have decided to become a mother.”

  She nodded, laughing. “That’s it exactly.”

  They moved up the path to the patio again. “My congratulations,” he said softly as Patria sat on a lawn chair this time. “This is wonderful news.”

  “Thank you,” Patria said. “Thank you. I… well, thanks.”

 
Chazz came outside. He was dressed now in white duck trousers and a garish T-shirt that advertised the virtues of scuba diving with Pete Williams in Hanapepe. “You know,” he said as the door banged shut behind him. “Kimiko is giving me funny looks.”

  “That fails to surprise me,” Cobb said.

  Chazz looked at him. Then he looked at Patria. Then he looked at Cobb again. “He knows?”

  Patria nodded.

  “And Kimiko…?”

  Patria nodded again.

  “You told him?” Nod. “And Kimiko? You told her?”

  “Not really, no. She guessed.”

  “She guessed? Pheromones? Electro-chemical transmitters in the atmosphere? Little antennae waving? Cobb, your wife is psychic?”

  Cobb nodded. “As a matter of fact, Mrs. Takamura is gifted in that direction, yes.”

  Overhead fat puffy clouds floated lazily in the warm Hawaiian sky. A gentle trade wind stroked the leaves around them, bringing strong scents of plumeria and frangipani, of moist earth and hospitable air. A cloud came between the house and the sun, dimming the light momentarily before letting it brighten again.

  Cobb poured glasses of fruit juice, and the three sipped in silence for a time. The clouds drifted away. A breeze sprang up, played briefly with the banana leaves, then died away again.

  “What, if anything, is happening in the great world beyond the sea, Lieutenant Takamura?” Chazz said at last. He made a broad gesture, showing that this endless monotony was getting to them all. “Island fever infects us, and we crave news.”

  Cobb leaned back in his own chair and stared into the sky. “Let me see,” he mused. “I believe on the mainland at this moment another new flu has arrived from the Orient, Singapore perhaps, bringing great misery, especially in Berkeley, where you once lived. And I did read that the Soviet Union has made new proposals that our President has denounced as mere propaganda despite his newfound friendship with them. And I read that our President has made new proposals that the General Secretary of the Soviet Union has denounced as mere propaganda. A new music and fashion craze is sweeping the country, involving common household implements and feather headdresses of vaguely Aztec, or possibly Hawaiian, origin. That should be of interest to you, Patria, as our resident anthropologist. The revolution in the Sudan is well underway. Or, if it is not a revolution, then it could be an invasion by foreign advisers from one side or another. And let me see, another satellite is going to fall to earth somewhere in a short time, probably nearby, making, I believe they said, the sixth in the past decade. This one, it is reported, is a Soviet satellite. And a scholar has discovered another new Bach cantata in the library in a small town in Germany. Other than that, nothing.”

  Another cloud passed overhead, dimming and brightening the nearly overdone colors of the garden. “Dear me,” Chazz intoned. “Just another typical mainland day. I suppose, my love, we should be glad we are here, away from it all, in the peace and quiet of island life, where we can fructify in leisure.”

  Patria snorted. “Fructify! You call having a child fructifying? And it wasn’t so ‘peace and quiet’ a while back, was it?”

  “Well, just because we had a little excitement here…” Chazz began.

  Patria snorted. “A little excitement! Dead bodies, kidnapping, ninja attacks on a secret biological laboratory. Just a little excitement, he says.”

  “Now, now,” Takamura laughed. “Fortunately such events are rare. Almost unheard of. This is a quiet island. We just want to dream away our time in the sun. Especially today, a day off from work.”

  “Why do I have the feeling I’ve heard this before?” Patria murmured.

  Mrs. Takamura emerged from the house, wearing jeans and a windbreaker. She was a small, intense, round-faced woman in her late thirties. “Ah, Kimiko,” Cobb said, rising and stretching. Kenji and Kiki tumbled from the house. Kiki now wore jeans like her mother, a smaller version of Kimiko. Besides size, the major difference was the wad of purple bubble gum in the girl’s mouth and the braces on her teeth.

  Patria and Chazz stood.

  They climbed into Chazz’s battered VW van and drove down the gently sloping hillside toward the coast highway.

  “Say what you will,” Takamura said, waving his arm out the window at the patterns of field and forest, the lush flowering trees, the serene hills, “this is still paradise.”

  Kimiko laughed softly. “Yamiyo no teppō,” she said.

  Takamura winked at Patria. “She says I might be shooting a gun on a dark night and I should be more careful what I say. I think she is having one of her hunches.”

  “Mr. Takamura,” Kimiko said. “One day you will learn to trust my hunches. Things have been too quiet for too long.”

  “Bah,” he said. “It is a beautiful day. Nothing can spoil it.”

  It was a beautiful day. The beach was warm, the breeze stirred just enough to soothe, the waves that lapped the sand were just the right size, and a patrol car was waiting for them when they parked.

  CHAPTER 3

  A LIGHT RAIN WAS FALLING on the body.

  Cobb Takamura frowned. He held his porkpie hat in his right hand, and the rain fell gently on the spot of thinning hair on top of his head. It felt as if a myriad of tiny insects were walking around up there.

  He was frowning because the body was in the wrong place. He was frowning because a coconut on the ground nearby was cracked open and he could see the white flesh inside. Coconuts that fall from a tree onto soft turf do not crack open and show their white flesh. It was unnatural.

  “The body was moved,” he said to no one in particular.

  Sergeant Handel looked up and moved closer. “Yes?” he asked. He looked thoughtfully at the body, his posture an unconscious echo of Takamura’s.

  “The body was moved.” Takamura grunted and walked a short distance away along the line of trees. “Or it moved itself.”

  “Yes,” Sergeant Handel answered, following. “It was moved, all right.” Handel was tall, broad, and blond, a contrast to his senior partner. “He dragged himself, one foot dragging behind the other. Or someone moved him, helped him along. While he was still alive.”

  It was obvious. The toes had dragged in the turf, leaving faint but distinct parallel dashed lines of roughened zoysia. The toes of the running shoes showed green and brown stains.

  “There was a lot of blood,” Sergeant Handel observed.

  “If someone helped him, the someone would be covered with blood— if he were on the victim’s left side. He would have to be amazingly stupid for a murderer to do that. I doubt we’ll be so lucky as to find a man covered with blood walking down the Kuhio Highway on a Sunday morning.” Cobb moved a few paces to his own left for another angle on the body.

  The man was seated, back to a coconut palm, hands in his lap. His head had fallen forward. His expression, Cobb thought, was vaguely irritated, as if he had been interrupted at some important task and was anxious to get back to work. What could the task have been, besides early-morning jogging?

  “ ‘Death is the reckoning of heaven’,” Cobb said softly.

  Sergeant Handel laughed softly. “That’s a good one, sir. Charlie Chan?” Everyone knew Cobb Takamura quoted Charlie Chan all the time.

  “Mmm.” Cobb glared at the coconut as if it were responsible for the messy gunshot wound in the dead body lying against the tree. “I don’t like that coconut,” he said.

  Sergeant Handel shuffled his foot for a moment, as if something were stuck to the sole of his shoe. Sometimes Lieutenant Takamura spoke in illogical and peculiar ways. Finally he said, “Why’s that?”

  “Hmm?” Takamura looked up. He removed his sunglasses and peered at Sergeant Handel as if he had never seen him before. “Why is what?”

  Sergeant Handel frowned. “I wondered why you don’t like that coconut.” He prodded at the sole of the body’s running shoe with the toe of his own. The foot flexed. The body was not yet stiff.

  Takamura snorted. “Oh. I don’t like the
coconut because it is broken open. I don’t like it because it seems to be in the wrong place. I don’t like it because it looks too much like a clue but probably isn’t. I don’t like it because there is a body lying there against the tree from which that particular coconut may have fallen, and bodies, particularly bodies that are messy and dead, upset me. They give me a headache, Sergeant; they are extra work. They disturb my statistics. They are bad for business. The Mayor gets on our case about bodies. The county council gets on our case. When a body turns up with a bullet in it, it looks suspiciously like murder. That’s why I don’t like that coconut.”

  “Yes, indeed. I see what you mean.” Sergeant Handel looked hard at the coconut for a moment. He decided he had important business over by his patrol car.

  Cobb put his hat back on, shoved his hands into his trouser pockets, and leaned back against a tree in the next row where he could frown some more at the body.

  Short-cropped gray hair. Heavyset, running to flab, but not much. Early fifties probably. Well off, certainly. The murderer had not removed the expensive Rolex on the body’s wrist. That seemed to preclude robbery as a motive.

  Cobb knew him, of course. His face had been in The Garden Island only last week. He’d been shaking hands with the Mayor, a haole land developer congratulating the county mayor on a wise decision that would be very good for business.

  Victor Linz. A wealthy man from San Diego with broad interests in the islands.

  There was resentment toward the land developers. Sugar fields were turning into condominiums. Natural beauty was congealing into cement. Once deserted beaches were turning into tanning racks for middle Americans basting in a haze of coconut oil. Locals resisted such changes. Would they resist this violently?

  He looked over toward the road. Sergeant Handel leaned against the passenger door of his patrol car, talking on the radio.

  In the distance he could see the ambulance approaching in no particular hurry. Three cars were parked in front of the patrol car. The ambulance pulled in front of the first car and backed up with its rear doors toward the coconut grove. Cobb watched as the driver and his assistant climbed out and moved around to open the back. They pulled a stretcher out and the driver carried it over one shoulder like a rifle.