Riptide

by Paul Levine

  Harry had the papaya juice and the bran but his digestive tract was still as congested as 1-95 in rush hour. Then he set out in his rented Chevy in search of Keaka Kealia. It had taken only a couple of questions in the hotel to learn that the windsurfers all hung out in Paia, a town on the north shore.

  * * *

  Yeah, I know Keaka, everybody knows Keaka. That’s what all the suntanned, long-haired, glassy-eyed kids said in every shop, but nobody had seen him since the trip to Miami. Paia had turned out to be little more than a few dusty blocks crammed with windsurfing shops and hippie restaurants serving mahi-mahi burgers.

  The day wasted, Harry returned to the hotel and tried to figure out what he would tell Violet. He dialed her number and got the machine — “y’all leave a message” — and figured she’d call him back. Where on God’s green earth you been? So Harry wasn’t surprised when the phone rang in his room. It was a woman’s voice, all right, but young and sweet. No, definitely not Violet.

  “Mr. Marlin, you don’t know me. I am with Keaka Kealia. He asked me to contact you. He very much regrets that the two of you had a misunderstanding.”

  “Misunderstanding! Look, honey, that bastard stole my hard-earned grubstake.”

  “As I say, Mr. Marlin, Keaka regrets your misunderstanding and wants you to know he has a great deal of respect for you, the way you traveled all the way here, your courage in coming to a strange land.”

  Okay, Harry Marlin thought. That’s more like it. Found out I was nosing around, got nervous, wants to deal. Even better than me making the first move. Dumb bastard shows his weakness right off the bat.

  “Tell him to save the grease job, just gimme back my property, he can keep ten percent just like we agreed and I’ll forget how he double-crossed me.”

  The sugary voice continued in the same tone, “Keaka asked me to arrange a meeting with the two of you.”

  “You think I’m gonna meet your pal in some dark alley, forget it.”

  “Mr. Marlin, I’m in the lobby. Would you care to join me at the Banyan Bar in, say, ten minutes? We can discuss the meeting there over drinks.” The voice still even, smooth, but a nice lilt on the word “drinks,” a bit of interest there.

  Why not? Safe place, young babe in a hotel bar, maybe hot to trot. What was it Violet was talking about, the old man saying something about his lawyer falling for the Hawaiian’s girlfriend, she was a real number. Okay, gonna meet her, maybe one of those nymphos. But how about this chicken-shit bastard sending his squeeze to do the dirty work. I’d never do that to Violet.

  * * *

  Only a few customers at the bar, some watching the fish swim under the bridge, a few couples talking at tables, one guy at the end of the bar staring into a drink.

  “Mr. Marlin.” A woman’s voice, sweet and soft.

  Harry turned around. Okay. All right. The Hawaiian had good taste in cooze. Harry gave her a grin that countless women had found resistible. “Yeah, that’s me.”

  In a dainty sweeping motion, the young woman extended her right arm and shook Harry’s hand with a grip that couldn’t break an egg. “So pleased to meet you,” she said.

  “You got a name, honey?”

  “Lee Hu,” said the petite woman with a shy smile. “My friends call me Little Lee.”

  * * *

  Harry Marlin didn’t notice the man at the end of the bar watching them, didn’t notice anything but Little Lee’s big dark eyes and compact body. He ordered drinks, Perrier for Lee Hu, a Blue Hawaii — pineapple juice, vodka, and blue Curasao — for himself.

  “Okolemaluna,” she said, hoisting her Perrier.

  “Huh?”

  “Okole, that’s butt or bottom. Luna, that’s moon. So, bottoms to the moon, or bottoms up.”

  “Gotcha,” he said, sipping at the straw, it being hard to toss down a drink served in a hollowed-out pineapple. Wouldn’t mind seeing her old-koley, Harry thought, a tight little bottom on this one.

  They talked. Yes, Keaka had the coupons, had stashed them on the slopes of Haleakala, the extinct volcano. She would meet Harry in the morning, take him there. Keaka had a new proposition, she said, a fifty-fifty split.

  Harry used the miniature umbrella to stir a second Blue Hawaii — not much vodka there — and said he would sleep on it. Shit, he would grab it, grab half the coupons and get the hell out of there. Then he asked her if she’d like to have a nightcap in his room. A polite no-thank-you. Okay, can’t blame a guy for trying, can’t get a hit if you don’t swing the bat. She’d pick him up at seven a.m. Better get some sleep. Maybe the digestive tract would be working in the morning, Harry hoped as he headed to his room.

  * * *

  A Hawaiian man, early forties, in khaki slacks and an aloha shirt, moved from the end of the bar where he had been nursing a drink and slid next to Lee Hu. “What do you think?” he asked.

  “It should be easy. He’s a fool, he makes eyes at me like I’m a pushover, spends six-fifty for a drink that looks like toilet bowl cleaner. He has no sense of who he is, his limitations, or where he is, the dangers.”

  The man smiled and squeezed her arm affectionately. “Good work, Little Lee. It’s no wonder Keaka likes you so much. You catch on quick.”

  “Compared to bringing a load in from Colombia through Coast Guard and Navy reconnaissance, this is child’s play.”

  “We’ll see you in the morning then.”

  He started to get up, but she touched his arm lightly and said, “Tell Keaka not to get careless. There was a bulge in the sports coat, a gun I suppose.”

  “I saw it halfway across the lobby. Don’t worry.”

  “Mikala, you’ll take care of Keaka for me?”

  The man nodded. “He takes care of himself pretty well. And he’s my flesh and blood. Anybody touches a hair of his head, I blow the guy away.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Island Cop

  First-class on United, L.A. to Maui nonstop. To Tubby Tubberville, it was like dying and going to heaven. “You mean I can have all the little bottles I want?” he asked the flight attendant. “Just line up the Jack Daniel’s like so many tenpins and see them fall down.”

  Jake Lassiter watched the bulk in seat 3A with concern. “Easy, Tub, we’ve got work to do when we get there.”

  “Sure, bro, you’re looking for the dame what left you and I’m making sure nobody sticks a shiv in your back. A little angel tit to warm the throat ain’t gonna hurt none.”

  “You’re not forgetting the coupons, are you?”

  “The bonds and the blonde, I remember.” He yelled at the flight attendant. “Hey, sweetie, there a movie on this wagon?”

  They were halfway across the Pacific and Jake Lassiter was trying to figure out where to start. He could have gone to the police in Miami, of course, and with his testimony could have gotten an arrest warrant, but for whom? For Lila. The only evidence of criminal conduct was the bond coupon on the floor of the cottage. He could have Lila arrested but not Keaka, and what he wanted was the opposite. He needed to trap Keaka, to find him with the goods, to get Lila’s help and win her freedom in return for her testimony.

  It had better work, because there wouldn’t be a lot waiting for him at home. The executive committee at Harman & Fox had suspended him pending an inquiry of the charges brought by Thad Whitney, who was claiming a severe case of whiplash, not to mention mental anguish.

  “This flight ain’t half bad, eh, bro?” Tubby said happily.

  “Glad you’re enjoying it. It’s lasting longer than most of my relationships.” Lassiter put his head back and tried to sleep but could not, visions of Lila streaking across his mind. Lila laughing at him, waving handfuls of colorful coupons, tossing them like confetti, the dark warrior Keaka watching with evil amusement.

  * * *

  At the airport in Kahului, they rented a Pontiac Grand Am and drove to Makawao, a rural town upcountry on the lower slopes of Haleakala. It was only a few miles from where Lila grew up, and from the mountain, you coul
d see the windsurfing beaches on the north shore. Because Lila loved the up-country, Lassiter believed she might be there. If not, it was a good place to start looking. What was it Keaka had said? The mountains and valleys talk, or something like that. Lassiter was ready to listen.

  “Somehow, Tubby, I pictured you as a faster driver,” Lassiter said as they crept up the mountain in the rental car.

  “Yeah, well ain’t in no hurry. Cindy complains too, says I drive too slow and screw too fast. Used to do ‘em both at the same time with biker chicks, but that was before Cindy. Settled down now. Cindy’s talking about marriage when she’s not telling me what to do — lose weight, get a real job, sell the Harley, buy a condo.”

  Lassiter laughed and did his best to carry a tune, “She’ll redecorate your home, from the cellar to the dome, then go on to the enthralling fun of overhauling you.’”

  “Huh?”

  “Henry Higgins, My Fair Lady.”

  “Ain’t none of ‘em fair,” Tubby Tubberville said.

  They were upcountry now, the temperature a few degrees cooler. The sugarcane and pineapple fields yielded to pastures with horses standing vigil, cattle grazing, and hibiscus growing wild. They registered at the Makawao Inn and headed down to Paia. He knew from the windsurfing magazines that Keaka and Lila lived in the little town near the Sprecklesville Beach. He doubted they would be there. On the main street and in the shops, they asked their questions. The answers were always the same. Nobody had seen Keaka or Lila since they’d left for Miami.

  Tubby eased the Pontiac by their house, an old stucco number on a dusty street with overgrown lawns. No signs of life, neighbors said nobody there for weeks. A short ride to Hookipaa, the most famous windsurfing beach in the world. Lassiter asked several of the beachers but came up empty until he found a dark-skinned Hawaiian teenager with spiked, bleached hair. He was using sandpaper to smooth the rough spots out of a fiberglass fin. “That Keaka a radical dude, he may be on Molokai,” the kid said.

  “Molokai?” Lassiter asked.

  “The dude loves the jungle there. Gets high on it. Weird dude.”

  Lassiter asked, “Where on Molokai would the dude be?”

  “Don’t know. Big jungle.”

  Molokai was only a few miles across the Pailolo Channel, but there was little development, just cattle ranches on the high plains and a jungle on the east end facing Maui. If Keaka was in there, no one could find him. And if Lila was with him? Lassiter’s spirits plunged. He decided to do what he hadn’t done in Miami.

  * * *

  The County of Maui police station in Wailuku sits at the foot of the West Maui Mountains, green and jagged, a beautiful backdrop to the small downtown. An old banyan tree shades the building, a sturdy structure with a red barrel tile roof, a holding cell downstairs, and a small office crammed with typewriters, communications gear, and computers upstairs.

  A pleasant young woman in uniform ushered him into the captain’s office, a cramped room with maps on the walls, pictures of soldiers in a jungle, an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army, and a framed medal tarnished at the edges. The captain was swarthy and stocky, mid-forties, his uniform neatly pressed, short sleeves rolled up over solid biceps. His name tag read M. Kalehauwehe, and he watched Lassiter scan the mementos.

  “Nam,” the captain said. “Flew a chopper, Cobra gunship, had three shot out from under me, two more burned up flying flat out. Loved those Cobras, like little bees buzzing, blasting the shit out of anything that moves. Got thirty-caliber machine gun, twenty-millimeter cannon, grenade launcher, aerial rockets, and TOW missiles. Shit, I could destroy a town with one Cobra.”

  “You must have some memories,” Lassiter said, letting him play them back. He was going to anyway.

  The captain nodded and settled back into his wooden chair. “Brass said I was hell on engines, the way I flew. After I was grounded, learned something new, ordnance specialist, C-4 plastique. Looks like clay the kids play with. Hit it with a hammer, nothing happens, but send an electric charge through it, ka-boom! Wired a toilet once, blew porcelain up a VC’s ass and out his Adam’s apple.”

  “Guess he was really on your shit list,” Lassiter said, but the captain didn’t get it, just kept talking.

  “Had a problem with VC stealing our jeeps. So we’d bait ‘em. Leave a jeep out but wire it with plastique. Bastard turns on the ignition, his balls end up on the far side the Ho Chi Minh Trail. But they catch on, get little kids — orphans, ragamuffins — to start the jeeps for ‘em while they hide in a ditch. Then we catch on. I rig up a gizmo, the ignition doesn’t blow the plastique, just starts a timer that sets a spark in three minutes. By then the kid’s gone, the VC slimeball gets in, ka-boom!”

  Captain Kalehauwehe smiled with contentment. Time to bring him back to his job. Lassiter said, “Guess police work is a breeze after those experiences.”

  “Yeah, just a bunch of Filipinos cutting each other up and tourists losing their wallets. What can I help you with?”

  Lassiter told part of the story, held back part, told him a client was burglarized, lost a bunch of valuable securities — didn’t say how much — and circumstantial evidence implicated Keaka Kealia, did he know him?

  Sure, everybody knew him, great athlete. No, he’d never been in any trouble, at least nothing more than the rest of the kids here, maybe a few fights when he was younger, never lost one. No, hadn’t seen Keaka in some time, usually with his girlfriend, what’s her name, Lila, right.

  The captain asked if Lassiter had an arrest warrant or an extradition order. No, well, not much we can do for you, just coming in here accusing a well-known citizen of being an accessory to a felony. Where you staying? Makawao Inn. We’ll let you know if anything turns up, have a pleasant stay, Mr. Lassiter.

  Okay, Jake Lassiter thought, the cop was a little defensive. Understandable, I come in here with a story like that. He’ll probably call Miami Beach and check it out. Shit, Carraway will tell him a skinny kid named Rodriguez took the coupons.

  * * *

  Captain Kalehauwehe escorted Jake Lassiter to the door and watched him walk to his car. Then the captain returned to his office, closed the door, picked up the telephone, and dialed a familiar number. A woman answered the phone.

  “Hello, Little Lee,” the captain said. “Tell Keaka we’ve got some work to do.”

  “More, Mikala, more besides the stupid little man?”

  “First him. Then a smarter, larger one,” Captain Mikala Kalehauwehe said.

  CHAPTER 25

  House of the Sun

  At the time when the earth became hot,

  At the time when the heavens turned about,

  At the time when the sun was darkened

  To cause the moon to shine,

  The time of the rise of the Pleiades,

  The slime, this was the source of the earth …

  FROM “KUMULIPO,” A HAWAIIAN

  SONG OF CREATION

  The islands that are Hawaii sit atop the largest structures on earth, volcanoes that extend five miles from the ocean floor to peaks ten thousand feet above the sea. The oldest of the islands, Kure, was formed more than twenty million years ago. Today, it is a tiny reef fifteen hundred miles northwest of Maui, eroded into a semicircle that will eventually disappear beneath the sea.

  All these islands — from the largest and youngest, Hawaii, t the Big Island, to the smallest and oldest, Kure — were born from the same womb, a hot spot boiling with magma beneath the surface of the earth. When the pressure builds in this underground reservoir, steam surges upward, searching for the path of least resistance. Then molten rock erupts from the innards of the earth, and if the volume is great enough, a new land mass is formed.

  The mantle of the earth moves slowly over the hot spot, a few inches each year to the northwest, and with the millennia each island moves with it. While Kure slowly disappears under the ravages of erosion, the Big Island of Hawaii grows even now as Kilauea continues to erupt and add silvery rock
to the land.

  The ancient Hawaiians, the Polynesians who crossed the ocean in giant sailing canoes, had their own explanation for the explosions and the crimson flow of molten earth. The fire goddess Pele lived in the heart of the volcano, shifting from Kauai to Oahu to Maui before settling in Kilauea on the Big Island in search of the perfect home and perfect lover. She thought the chief Lohiau would be that lover but he fell in love with her younger sister, Hiiaka, and when the couple tried to escape, Pele drowned them in the caldron of fiery Kilauea.

  Pele, it seems, is a jealous lover.

  * * *

  Haleakala. Haleakala here, there, and everywhere, Harry Marlin thought. Postcards in the gift shop, a tourist film on the hotel’s TV channel, busloads of hicks leaving at four a.m. to see sunrise at the Haleakala crater like a bunch of friggin’ pilgrims. Four a.m., for Christ’s sake, time to call it a night, not start the day. Haleakala, that’s all there was here except for the beaches and Harry Marlin didn’t travel six thousand miles for a suntan or for a ride up a mountain to take snapshots of a burned-out volcano. A one-horse town, that’s Maui for you.

  Harry studied the literature, as he called it, at the concierge’s desk. Haleakala, House of the Sun. Hale, “house”; La, “sun.” That’s where the girl, Little Lee, said the coupons wereand that was the only good reason to go up the mountain, as far as Harry could see.

  He showed up fifteen minutes early. That was smart, he thought, take a look-see, scout the perimeter for wise guys. At seven o’clock sharp, Lee Hu pulled into the driveway. Hard to miss her, the engine of the Chevy Blazer 4x4 rumbling in the still morning air, awakening the snoozing cabbies. Now if this wasn’t a sight, Harry thought, the little dumpling driving a souped-up truck, actually a jacked-up truck, thirty-nine-inch wheels and a heavy suspension system lifting the cab high off the ground. The front bumper was a foot-high beam of thick steel with a heavy winch attached. Seven high-powered spotlights were attached to a rail across the roof, nearly enough wattage to play a night game.