Mahu Surfer

by Neil S. Plakcy

  On our way up the coast, Terri continued to tell me about the land. “It belonged to my great-grandparents. My grandparents used to go up there in the summer. My father never liked it, and Bishop did, so he was happy to let Bishop have it.”

  “Bishop never had kids?”

  “Nope. He was married three times, always to much younger women, but they all left him—taking a chunk of his money with them, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “He had a trust fund, but he hired an attorney from one of the big firms and broke it over some technicality. He drained it, and then started selling off other property that was in his name alone. He’s finally run out of money, and he wants to sell this land to a developer, who will give him cash and a new house on the property.”

  “Sounds like a good deal for Bishop.”

  “He and my father haven’t spoken for years,” she said, peering at the road ahead. There was very little traffic, but I could see she was looking for landmarks. “It’s the ant and the grasshopper thing—my father worked his whole life, managing Clark’s, building it up, and all Bishop did was have fun and spend money.”

  I leaned back against the door of the SUV so I could look at her. “Can you change the terms of the trust?”

  “It’s not the trust that needs changing, just the deed restrictions on the land. And my father, and my great aunt Emma, who’s the chair of the Trust, have the power to change those. My father wants to make sure that at least part of the land is preserved, though. That’s where I come in.”

  I nodded. “The negotiator.”

  “Exactly. Now that I no longer have a husband to answer to, Aunt Emma is grooming me to take over the Trust from her. At least that’s her attitude. She forgets I still have a son.” She sighed. “Anyway, this is my first assignment.”

  “Is that something you want?”

  Terri turned makai, or toward the ocean, off the Kam Highway at a barely visible driveway, narrow and rutted, between hibiscus hedges bright with platter-sized yellow blossoms. “The Trust gives away a half million a year in grants,” she said. “Mostly to education and family issues. Do I want to control that? You bet.”

  “It’s a shame your family sold the chain. You would have made a great CEO.”

  “Not me,” she said, pulling up in front of a gate with a crude speaker mounted next to it. “I saw how hard my father worked all those years. I want to have a family life, too.”

  She blew the horn, and the speaker crackled. “Uncle Bishop, it’s me, Terri,” she said into it.

  “Just a minute,” a disembodied voice said.

  We waited, and a man dressed in a camouflage T-shirt and khaki shorts appeared from behind a purple bougainvillea a few hundred feet ahead of us. As he walked toward us, I noticed his oddly stilted gait—and then recognized him. “I know that guy. His name’s Rich, he rows for the North Shore Canoe Club.” I remembered what I’d learned about Rich’s habit of shooting surfers; that tied in with what Terri had heard. I didn’t want to tell her he was a suspect in the shootings.

  “We’ll talk about him later,” she said. Rich came up to the gate, unlocked the padlock, and swung it open. We continued up the driveway, and turned the corner, to park at the back of the house. In the rear view mirror, I saw Rich swing the gate shut and connect the padlock again.

  The house was long and low, plantation style, painted white with dark green shutters. A hipped roof sheltered the windows from the sun, and a gravel yard lay between us and a back door. Bishop Clark stood in the doorway.

  He had aged a lot since I’d met him, which had probably been at Terri’s and my high school graduation. “He used to be so handsome,” she whispered to me. “Just devastating.”

  The man before us was skinny and stooped, with straggly white hair down to his shoulders. But he had good bones in his face, and if you looked closely you could see that indeed he had been very handsome.

  We got out of the car, and I stood to the side while Terri hugged him. “Such a young lady,” he said, holding her at arm’s length for a good look. “Very Clark.”

  “It’s the way I was raised,” she said. “Uncle Bishop, this is my friend Kimo. I think you’ve met him before. We’ve known each other since Punahou. He’s living up here now, and I wanted to show him how wonderful this property is, and what a great development it could be.”

  Bishop stuck out his hand, and I shook it. “Pleased to see you again,” he said.

  “The pleasure’s mine, sir.” I did learn a few manners at Punahou.

  “Well, come on inside,” he said. “I’ve got some lemonade, if you’re interested. I can show you the drawings.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rich come up the driveway, and Bishop waved him away.

  Terri and I followed her uncle into the house. I guess I was expecting a rat trap, stained walls, the floor lined with piles of old newspaper, but the house was beautiful inside, flagstone floors and the kind of antique furniture that would have had my mother salivating, all made out of koa wood and probably over a hundred years old.

  In addition to a couple of sofas facing a wall of glass that viewed the ocean, there was a tall china cabinet filled with Chinese export porcelain, and next to that a gun cabinet with a display of old and new firearms. I recognized most of them, but some were such antiques that I’d only ever seen pictures of them.

  I was naturally drawn over to the cabinet. “Interested in guns?” Bishop asked.

  “Kimo is a… used to be a police detective,” Terri said.

  Bishop showed no sign of having seen a newspaper or heard a TV broadcast for the last few years. He came over and opened the cabinet. “Let me show you a couple of pieces.” He opened the cabinet and pulled out a pistol. “This is the Colt Model 1860. The principal side arm used during the Civil War. It’s the oldest one in my collection.”

  It looked it, too. Despite Bishop’s best efforts to keep the pistol oiled and polished, it had seen hard service. I admired it, and he replaced it in the cabinet and pulled out a rifle. “The Sharps ‘Big Fifty.’ Used to kill buffalo. It’s where the term sharpshooter comes from.”

  “Cool.” I raised the gun up to my eye and sighted down the barrel toward the ocean.

  “It can kill at a range of up to a thousand yards,” Bishop said, as I handed it back to him. The next gun was a pistol. “This one’s interesting. Japanese. Pistol type 94. One of the worst service pistols in history.”

  It was ugly and difficult to handle. “Doesn’t look that great,” I said.

  “Supposedly it’s capable of accidentally discharging rounds before they’re fully seated in the firing chamber.”

  “Boys and their toys,” Terri said, as I handed the pistol back to Bishop.

  “Here’s one you might recognize,” Bishop said. “I promise you, Terri, it’s the last one.”

  “A .38 Special,” I said.

  “You got it. Standard issue for most police departments in the US at one time.”

  “They’re still making these, but this looks like an old one.”

  “At least 75 years old. I have some newer ones, too, but nothing all that interesting.”

  “Thanks for showing me.”

  “My pleasure. Don’t get to take them out all that often. Rich helps me keep them cleaned and polished, but he’s only interested in the new guns.” Bells started going off in my head; Rich had access to a wide range of weapons, including the kind of rifle that had killed Mike Pratt and Lucie Zamora, and the type of handgun that had been used in the other murders. I had to know more about Rich, and soon.

  The three of us walked over to the full-height glass windows of the living room. We were on a slight bluff, and the land sloped down, toward the Pacific. Terri had told me the property spanned a hundred acres, most of it behind us and on the other side of the Kam Highway.

  Bishop’s land looked out at prime surfing area, but his fence ran down to the water’s edge and kept surfers out. I saw that he probably kept Rich busy patrolling th
e waterfront—though today there were likely to be few surfers at any of the public beaches, no less trying to sneak onto Bishop’s land.

  The sky was a clear light blue, and there were no clouds in sight. There was mostly scrub, broken with the occasional splash of color, between us and the ocean, which rolled and frothed relentlessly against the shore. We watched the waves for a few minutes, then Bishop sat us down at a massive koa wood dining table, brought out lemonade in French crystal glasses, and spread out the plans for Bishop’s Bluff Estate Homes.

  “You’ll see, it’s going to be beautiful,” he said, unrolling the first drawing. “Not some ticky-tacky little place like they put up nowadays.” The plan showed a circular drive, much like the one at Cane Landing, with an entrance down on the Kam Highway and a guard house. The houses were situated on the bluff so that each one had at least a partial ocean view. He laid out a couple of other drawings, of each style of house. They looked much like where I was staying, and I had a feeling I was looking at the property Ari had talked to me about.

  “This one’s going to be mine,” Bishop said, pointing proudly at a lot at one end. “I’ll still be able to see all the way down to Hale’iwa.”

  “What about all the land behind us?” Terri said, pointing to the area on the other side of the highway.

  “Clubhouse and swimming pool,” he said. “If we can get the zoning changed to multi-family, we’ll put a couple of low-rise condo buildings up there. Max six stories, very high-end.”

  “I’m a little worried about developing all the land,” Terri said carefully, “and I know my father and Aunt Emma are too. They might be willing to agree to change the deed restrictions if they knew part of the property would be preserved.”

  “The mauka part?” Bishop asked, meaning the area on the mountain side of the highway.

  “I think I could get them to agree to that.”

  “I’d have to see what Ari says.”

  “Harry?” Terri asked, but I’d already recognized the name.

  “Ari. Short for Aristotle. Young Greek fella. He’s the one put all the money together to buy the land and get the construction started.”

  “Can I take a copy of these plans with me?” Terri asked. “I’d love to be able to show my dad and Aunt Emma what you’re considering.”

  “Sure. I’ve got more sets here somewhere.” He rolled up the drawings for us, and then we sat and drank lemonade for a while. I watched the ocean while Terri talked about family stuff, and finally we all stood up and said our goodbyes.

  “I’ll get Rich to open the gate for you,” he said.

  “What do you need a security guard for, Uncle Bishop?” Terri asked. “Has the North Shore gotten a lot more dangerous?”

  “People today have no respect for private property,” Bishop said. “Surfers used to traipse through here like it was public beach. I put up the fence and the gate, but that hardly stopped anybody. So I hired Rich to keep an eye on things. He’s had to fire a few warning shots, but people have started to get the message.”

  “I don’t like the idea of anybody shooting up here, Uncle Bishop. Somebody could get hurt, and sue you, or sue the Trust. I don’t think my father or Aunt Emma would like that.”

  “My brother and my aunt can jump in the Pacific and drown, for all I care,” Bishop said, raising his voice. “Your father has looked down his nose at me since we were kids, and I’m sick and tired of it. And as for Aunt Emma, well, I never fit her idea of what a Clark should be, and the older I get, the less interested I am in that idea. And you can tell her I said that.”

  There was a knock on the back door, and it opened a moment later. “I heard some shouting. Everything okay in here, Mr. Clark?” Rich asked.

  “These folks are just leaving,” Bishop said. “You can open the gate for them.”

  Terri looked like she wanted to say more to her uncle, at least kiss him goodbye, but he turned and walked back toward the dining room. We got back into the Land Rover, and Terri turned around, then headed out the drive. Rich had already opened the gate, and as we headed toward the Kam Highway my last view was of him pushing the gate closed again.

  A Place Like This

  “I’ve got a lot to tell you,” I said, as we reached the Kam Highway. “You in a hurry to get back?”

  “Nope. My mother’s picking up Danny at school, and she can give him dinner if I call.”

  “Then you can follow me up to my new digs. I think you’ll want to see it.”

  While we headed back to Rosie’s so I could pick up my truck, I told her what I knew about Rich and the accident in Bosnia that had ruined him for surfing. “So he’s pretty bitter,” she said.

  “You bet. I’m going to look up any incident reports involving Bishop’s property, see if Rich really was shooting at people.”

  “Lovely. That’s a detail I think I’ll leave out of my report to Aunt Emma.”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  Terri followed me up to Cane Landing. I motioned her around me, so that I could open the gate for her, and then open it again for myself, and then I jumped around her to lead her up to the third house.

  “Boy, you’re moving up in the world,” she said, as we both got out in the driveway.

  “Wait til you see the inside. And it’s all courtesy of Aristotle Papageorgiou.”

  “Let me guess. The young Greek fella.”

  “You got it.”

  “Interesting.”

  I gave her the grand tour, and she oohed and aahed appropriately. There were still a couple of Konas left, and we sat down in the living room with them. “So this Aristotle must be some kind of North Shore real estate mogul,” she said.

  “Seems like it. He’s a nice enough guy—I mean, it’s certainly nice of him to put me up here. And he doesn’t know that I know you, or Bishop, so it’s not like he’s doing it so I’ll help him in some way.”

  She slipped off her pumps and slid her feet underneath her, relaxing on the leather sofa. “Speaking of Bishop, didn’t you find all those guns kind of creepy?”

  “It’s a guy thing,” I said. “My dad has a couple of guns, and so do my brothers. Almost every guy I know owns at least one gun.”

  “Not Harry.”

  “Um, actually, yes, Harry has a nine millimeter Glock. I helped him pick it out.”

  Terri shook her head. “Like I said before, boys and their toys.”

  I took a swig of my Kona. “Only your uncle has some toys that can do some serious harm. That buffalo gun that can shoot at a thousand yards, for starters.”

  “Could you shoot a surfer with a gun like that?”

  “You’re reading my mind. I think so. Maybe not that gun, because it’s an antique, and there might be some rust or other damage inside. But a rifle like that, sure, you could shoot somebody off a board if you were a good enough shot.”

  She sat up and pulled her legs around to the floor again. “How about Rich? I didn’t like him. Something about him gives me the creeps.”

  “Something like his prosthetic leg?” I kicked out with my right leg.

  Terri frowned. “I can’t say I like that, but no, it’s not that. Something about his personality.” She rubbed her upper arms.

  “He’s a security guard, Terri. I don’t much like him, either, but I don’t think a charming personality is a prerequisite for being a guard.”

  “You think he hates surfers enough to start killing them?” She shuddered. “I hope Uncle Bishop hasn’t gone so far around the bend that he’s involved in what you’re investigating.”

  “I asked Lieutenant Sampson to look into Rich’s war record,” I said. “He’s an ex-soldier, so he’s probably a good marksman. I know he has a grudge against surfers, because he can’t surf any more, and because they piss him off when they trespass on your uncle’s land.”

  I popped open my laptop and checked my email while Terri went to the restroom. Still no word from Sampson on Rich Sarkissian’s war record. There was an email from Harry that he
was looking into the dead surfers’ bank records, and also trying to find Harold Pincus. I made a couple of notes about Bishop’s guns, in case we ever needed to subpoena them for ballistics tests.

  “This is some house,” Terri said, when she came back. “I think Uncle Bishop would be happy with a place like this.”

  “You can’t blame the man for trying to maximize his assets and secure his old age,” I said.

  Terri sat down again on the sofa. “You can blame him for squandering a lot of the money that was supposed to take care of him for the rest of his life. But I’ll try and make peace between him and rest of the family. I think I can convince Dad and Aunt Emma to let his plan go forward if we carve out some open space. And that will only make the houses more valuable.”