Honolulu Hottie

by Terry Ambrose

  I went through the usual bedtime rituals, all the while my breath coming fast. I was in the middle of brushing my teeth when I tried to count the number of times Alexander’s Great Grandpa Kimu had highjacked my dreams. I had no idea. It was more times than I could count. I’d become somewhat of a Kapono-family legend—I was the guy who needed “improvement.” The ‘ohana all agreed Kimu was the man, or rather, ghost, to make me a better person.

  I watched my image in the mirror, toothpaste foam and a brush sticking out of my mouth. “I—on’t eed imhoovment.”

  Toothpaste inched to the back of my throat. I gagged, spit it out, then stared at myself again. “Maybe you do.”

  With the lights out and my heart beating in double-time, I spoke to the darkness. “The afterlife must be a very bizarre place. Are those knights in your world, Kimu? Or, do you just like messing with my head? Either way, we’re going to have a showdown. Come on, big fella, let’s get this show on the road.”

  Twenty minutes later, I checked the clock. Still wide awake. No Kimu.

  I sat up and went to the bathroom, drank two sips of water and used the mirror to look myself in the eye. “You have to go to sleep, McKenna. It’s your part of the deal.”

  Half an hour later, I turned on the light. “Let’s try reading. That’ll put me out in about two minutes. Great, now I’m talking to the pillow.”

  The National Geographic article about the discovery of fossils in Egypt was fascinating. It was a page turner and kept me going for nearly an hour. I threw down the magazine at 11:30.

  “Who knew fossilology or whatever they call it was such an interesting subject? Yeah, that’s right Meyer, I’m mumbling. You can’t hear me. I know.”

  I pulled out the O‘ahu guidebook and started at the beginning. I never realized how many hotels were “real gems” in Honolulu. And restaurants. Man, we had a bunch of good ones. At 12:08, I put down the book. “Goddamn you, Kimu. You’re messing with me again.”

  This was ridiculous. “Nobody’s going to care if I’m talking to myself. As long as my pillow doesn’t start answering I’m okay, right?” Uh-oh. I really was losing it. “Look Kimu, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be blaming a dead guy for my problems.”

  I got up and went to the bathroom, sipped a little more water, and turned out the lights. “I can’t control you. You do what you want, I’m beat.”

  The next thing I knew, I saw lightening, heard thunder, and Kimu’s voice in a series of three-second video snippets, complete with audio voiceovers.

  “Previously in McKenna’s dream...”

  A flash lights up the castle.

  “McKenna found a bad man’s house...”

  The knight with the damaged shoulder appears.

  “He made new friends...”

  The women in their gowns gather round. The image zooms in on the one in the green dress.

  “He met some ladies...”

  The double doors open and Kimu strides in, a surfboard under each arm. He vanishes.

  I glance to my side and he’s standing next to me.“I get it. You do this on your terms. I won’t try to control you again.”

  He shrugged. “You gettin’ spunky. I kinda like dat.”

  “Everything’s not the same as last time. What happened to the cell phone? Where’s the water? And where’d the lady in red go?”

  “You already got one change made.” Kimu smiles and waves nonchalantly at the women on the opposite side of the room. A man in a white lab coat and tan board shorts drifts between the women. There’s one crystal champagne flute on the tray. He moves freely—no, he’s more like a marionette, but there are no strings. Each time one of the women in black takes the flute from the tray, another appears in its place.

  After the waiter serves the women in black, he glides over to the woman in the green dress. Her face was indistinct last night. This time I can clearly make out Cody’s features. The waiter offers her a water glass, which she accepts. The waiter vanishes.

  The armor plating of the knights around me is rusting rapidly now. One of them topples to the ground when his left leg crumbles into dust. The woman in red materializes next to the king. When I glance at Kimu, he shrugs. “It your dream, brah. I didn’t do nothin’.” He hands me one of the surfboards. “You gonna need dis.”

  “You can’t do a water thing here, there’s no ocean.”

  Cody strides to the king, slaps him hard enough to knock the crown off his head, then throws her water glass at his feet. The glass shatters on the marble floor, thunder cracks overhead. Surging waves roar in the background.

  “You wouldn’t.” I can’t believe what I’m about to do.

  Kimu winks at me as the women in black lift their glasses. I grab the board from his grip as they chant something unintelligible and hurl their champagne flutes at the foot of the king. The distant roar is deafening now. The double doors Kimu used to make his grand entrance burst open. Lightening flashes illuminate the opening. Thunder shakes the walls. Kimu snaps his fingers and churning water bursts through the opening.

  The king holds his hands aloft in a feeble attempt to stop the tsunami pouring into the room. The wave tears through. Knights disintegrate. Ladies are swept away with the king. Giant chunks of stone from the walls tumble into the water. The flood tosses the blocks around like styrofoam toys.

  Kimu glances at me, cocks his head to one side, and nods. “Enough of dis place, yah?” The water is up to my knees. The knight next to me topples over, yet I still resist the tidal surge pulling me sideways. The last two knights explode into rust-red particles.

  It’s only Kimu and me. I have to take control.

  “Time running out, McKenna.”

  Kimu lays his board down and paddles away. I hold my position until the force of a wave pulls me from my feet. I throw one arm over the board in time to see Kimu catch the wave. His left arm is down to his side for balance and his right is high in the air. He’s flashing me a shaka sign.

  I bolted upright in bed. Gasped for air. Stood, and went to the window. “It was only a dream.”

  Outside, the night was calm. No thunder. No lightening. No great flood. My skin felt chilled with evaporating sweat. The last thing I wanted was having anything to do with water, but maybe just a sip would prove I could handle Kimu’s challenges. The cool tile reminded me this was the real world. No knights. No tsunami.

  In the bathroom, my foot went “squish” on the tile. I stopped, flipped on the light, and stared down. A puddle of water spread across the floor. On the countertop, my cup lay on its side. Under my breath, I swore. “Show-off.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I grabbed the hand towel and stormed out of the bathroom, quietly grumbling about how much more plush the Woodham’s towels were. I dried my feet, then threw on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. In the dining room, I stared out the slider at the black expanse of ocean. White foamy bands, waves reflecting the moon’s light, crept toward shore. It was a relentless, never-ending march.

  As usual, I’d left the slider open about six inches. Through the opening, the constant rhythm of waves crashing onshore grew louder, then softer. Faster, then slower. It had become so normal to me. How would I react if I moved someplace where the sound didn’t exist?

  The mess in the bathroom irked me. Had Kimu done that? Or had I bumped the cup at some point? I’d clean it up in the morning, which would probably take less time than figuring out who I was angrier at. Kimu? Or myself? In truth, it made no difference who controlled those dreams. Only one thing mattered—everything in the dream meant something. Kimu had done his part, now I had to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

  I flipped on the light and gazed at Victor’s files. What was the exact sequence of events in the dream? The only one who’d been missing at first was the lady in red. When she’d shown up—that’s when the disaster kicked off. No, the disaster kicked off when Cody slapped the king, and that was after the woman in red appeared.

  Cody’s reaction at the house had bee
n equally strong, but different. She’d thrown up. That was panic, not anger, or—oh no. In the dream, she’d been drinking water, not champagne.

  “It couldn’t be, could it?” I sat at the table thinking back to my days in a large office when a couple of the women had gotten pregnant. What were their symptoms? I wasn’t sure. Was this more than a love triangle?

  This could be a murder caused by jealousy, but that didn’t explain why Kimu kept showing me knights who disintegrated when they were touched. I opened the yellow folder and scanned the pages. “Not the knights. The doctor. The ‘waiter’ wore a white lab coat. He’s the one who served the women.”

  The waiter served each woman individually. Yet, there had only been one flute, used over-and-over. “Ohhh…they all got the same thing. Victor’s MO was always the same? Is that it, Kimu?”

  No answer. Of course.

  But, they weren’t all the same, were they? Victor may have had a lot of women, but only two mattered.

  And, what about the waiter? If the dream waiter really was Dr. Melville Morph, why didn’t he look across the room at the knights? I tossed the file back on the table, let the papers spread themselves across the surface, then went to the slider.

  The white bands still marched onshore, each unique in some small way. The breath of fresh, ocean-scented air drifting through the window helped clear my head. I leaned forward and spoke into the darkness. “You’ve driven me over the edge, Kimu. I’m having complete conversations with inanimate objects.”

  On the plus side, the ocean wasn’t inanimate. And, if a ghost could guide my dreams, why couldn’t the ocean be my therapist? “What do you think, Dr. O?”

  I sucked in a quick breath. Of course. The doc’s job was to sign off on disability and medical claims, not to see patients. So, the knights weren’t being treated, they were being destroyed.

  My pulse raced. Finally, I had a sense of direction. I returned to the table. Meyer had said he’d never heard of a Dr. Morph and knew nothing of the claims. I picked up and read one of the forms again. “You never did see the patients, did you, Dr. M.? Who are you?” I opened the lid to my laptop, determined to find out.

  By 5:30 a.m., the ocean was shedding its black overcoat for the deep blue of early morning light. In an hour, the sea would glow with iridescent greens and blues. For now, a ribbon of pink and red stretched along the horizon, growing longer and brighter with each passing moment.

  Contrary to my promise of finding Dr. Morph before dawn, I’d wound up drying the bathroom. That led to some cleanup, which led to more. Now, it was past first light and I had a sparkly clean bathroom, but no Dr. M. After cleaning the bathroom, I made a pot of coffee and sat in front of the laptop.

  I typed in his name and thought about the burden he must have felt going through life with a double-barreled name like Melville Morph. Of course, he was a doctor and I was just a lowly former skip tracer, a guy who found people for a living. On the other hand, he’d been disgraced in his profession; I hadn’t. I still had connections in this business, and if all else failed, I could always call Paddy in a couple of hours.

  The good doctor didn’t turn up under any of the typical medical terminology. What if…I went into the kitchen, pulled out the white pages, and found M. Morph listed. He was in an old residential district. I’d seen clinics run in old houses before—it wasn’t uncommon in the more rural areas. Here in Honolulu, though? Not likely. How would he have gotten zoning approvals? Unless he hadn’t worry about zoning.

  Given what I knew so far, Dr. Morph didn’t care about much of anything except getting paid by Victor Durisseau. And that source of income was now gone—so he’d be looking for a new employer. Chance and I could discuss how to play that option later.

  In flipping through the claim forms, I found another pattern. There were no forms over two years old. A knock on the slider caught my attention. It was Chance. When did it get light outside? I checked the time. Jeez, I’d just spent another hour on these stupid files. I motioned for Chance to enter and summarized what I’d discovered about Dr. M&M in a few short sentences.

  “M&M?”

  “Never mind, I’m rummy. Too little sleep. What I don’t understand is why he uses a PO Box for these claim forms when he has a street address also.”

  Chance brightened. “You want to go find out?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  We broke for breakfast, then reconnoitered at the attention-mobile just after eight. Chance donned his Tigers cap before he drove us to the doc’s place. Like many of our neighborhoods, this one was undergoing a serious architectural identity crisis, another cross between century-old construction and current day remodels. Think of it as upscale meets train wreck, but without the bodies. Actually, for all we knew, he could have bodies buried here, too. To be blunt, the doc’s place was the downer on the block and if I’d ever seen a shack worthy of being razed, this was it.

  Chance stared at the rundown home. “So you think he runs a medical office out of there?”

  “It can’t be anything legitimate.”

  “Looks worse than the Chinese restaurant in Kalihi.”

  I nodded. “Don’t worry. The only rat here is probably the doctor. Gotta tell you, though, this is way worse than the dingiest apothecary in Chinatown.”

  “I didn’t think the ones in Chinatown were that bad. One of them looked pretty good.”

  “I’m not talking about the ones in the front of the store. Someday, we’ll take a little trip. Further your education. Right now, I want to see what Dr. Melville Morph has to say for himself.”

  Despite the newer homes, the old residential road was barely wide enough for two cars. With no sidewalks or gutters, parking was “at your own risk.” I had to give Chance credit though, he hadn’t flinched when he’d parked on the grassy shoulder. We followed the driveway straight to the front door.

  “Whatever you do,” I said, “don’t give him a card right away. I want to have him wondering who we are.”

  “Gotcha, we’re undercover.”

  More like trying to be taken seriously, but undercover was a good euphemism. The closer we got, the more dilapidated the house’s appearance became. Clapboard siding rotted on the corners and at the joints. A rain gutter, detached on one end, hung at a forty-five degree angle.

  “What a dump,” Chance whispered.

  “Yeah, the only thing that gutter does is reduce property values.”

  Our slippas clip-clopped against the cement as we walked to the dilapidated front door. I knocked. No answer. I tried again.

  “I’ll check the back,” said Chance, but before he could move, the door opened. The man standing before us was no more than five feet tall and hunched to one side. His left leg appeared slightly shorter than his right and his twisted posture reminded me of someone who’d been the victim of a childhood disease or a botched operation. He looked to be in serious pain.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “We’re looking for Dr. Morph.”

  “I am he. How may I help you? The doctor peered at me from behind a pair of dark, horn-rimmed glasses.

  At that point, Chance stepped forward. He eased me to one side and spoke in a smooth, confident tone. “Look, doc, my Uncle McKenna, well, he’s got some medical issues he needs to deal with. I heard you could handle the paperwork for him.”

  The doctor eyed Chance, then me. I sputtered, but Chance patted my shoulder. “Now, come on, Uncle. Victor said the doctor was gentle and wouldn’t hurt you.” He leaned into me, but glanced sideways at Dr. Morph and whispered, “He’s got that White Coat Syndrome. I think all the men in his family had it happen as they got, you know, older.”

  “I do not see patients in my home. Who sent you?”

  “My uncle’s been dealing with Victor.”

  The doc shook his head. “Victor’s deceased.”

  “My uncle wouldn’t take action when he should have, Doc, so this has turned into kind of an emergency. You know, my uncle’s kind of, w
ell, stopped up. It happens at that age—that’s what I’ve heard, anyway.”

  I stamped a foot. “I’m not stopped up! This quack’s not doing anything to me!”

  “Now, now, Uncle.” Chance took my hand in his and patted it. “See how he gets? All cranky. I think it could have been three days this time. He doesn’t like talking about it. How about if I pay you in cash? The last time we talked, Victor said the going rate was—well, he said you gave a discount because he sent you so much business.”

  “Victor advised you of our business relationship?”

  Chance nodded very solemnly. His straight face belied the preposterousness of this entire story. “He’d been working on some benefit claims for my uncle. Times are difficult these days and every penny counts. I don’t know what we’ll do with Victor gone.”

  The doc peered past us and, seeing no others nearby, said, “How far had you gotten in the process?”

  “We’d really just started,” Chance said.

  “You would be making payment in cash?”

  Son-of-a-bitch, the kid’s stupid plan was going to work. McKenna’s Sixth Skip Tracing Secret was, “People have a weakness. Find it and use it against them.” Well, okay. Two could play this game. It was time to invoke Secret No. 1, “Be flexible and go with the flow.” I rubbed my stomach with both hands. “Uh, doc, I might, maybe just need a little industrial-strength something to get me going again. If you can give me a prescription, we’ll be on our way.”

  It took a moment, but Dr. Morph lived up to his name. His eyes lit up with the scent of money. “One hundred dollars. I must perform an examination before prescribing any medications. The law is very specific.”

  Laughter seemed inappropriate. When was the last time this quack had even thought about the law, let alone obeyed it? Or seen a live patient? To my surprise, Chance had his wallet out. “Sounds good to me.”

  Dr. Morph opened the door fully to let us in. He held out his hand, all pretentiousness suddenly gone. “Payment first.” He waited patiently while Chance parted with another hundred bucks and I prayed his dad didn’t count the petty cash. Money in hand, the doctor beamed, all business once again. “Please follow me.”