Flea was impressed by the complimentary fruit basket in my room at the Beach Chalet. The hotel was on the beach at Kaanapali. It was as expensive as Las Vegas, but the room had more light and more fresh air. And of course the room had a view of the ocean.
I ignored him, the basket and the view and kept paging through the newspaper I had bought earlier in Lahaina. One headline on page ten read "Senator Urges East Maui Nat'l Park."
I said, "What's different between Maui and Vegas for you, Flea?"
Flea was confused and defensive. "I like Maui because it's dark at night. In Vegas you never know if it's day or night. Ever notice they got no clocks in the casinos?"
I stared at the headline. "I think that's my handle." I considered all the angles, liked how they connected, then said to Flea, "If anybody asks, I'm working with the National Park Service."
Flea did not understand. "How come?"
I set down my paper. "It just dawned on me. Flea, you're not even making expenses on this deal."
"I'm getting those checks back."
"What happens when it's over? What do you do next? Where do you go?"
Flea didn't understand. "I don't go nowhere. I stay here and do the same things I did yesterday, last month, the same things I did before all this shit started."
"Why stay here?"
"There's no place else I want to be. Everybody's got a place like that. You got Vegas, don't you? It's the same thing with me."
"How much were the checks for?"
Flea tasted bile with each word. "Five bills."
"For what? What did you spend the money on? Women? Dope? Are you back on the booze?" I remembered: "Horses!"
Flea squirmed. "I thought I had one this time."
I laughed. "Flea, you're always dead wrong on everything!"
"The horse couldn't run, that's all."
"One race or a bunch of races?"
Flea was silent, condemning himself.
"What else has he got on you?"
"Just the checks, Mister Paoli."
I disbelieved. "You were willing to escalate yourself up to Murder One just because some local yokel's got you for bad checks?"
"I wanna stay here," Flea said. "I like it here. Back in Vegas a guy can end up dead for dumb reasons."
"Better than risk getting busted for bad paper, you agree to solicit Murder One."
Flea had nothing worth saying.
"Didn't you never think that just maybe going to county jail for six, seven months for bad checks was smarter than committing Murder One for somebody else?"
Flea was consumed by anguish. "I don't want to do any more time."
I was sour. "No, Flea, you wanted to get us involved instead." I became somber. "You know, Flea, there is going to be an accounting."
But Flea had given up. "What choice did I have?"
Twilight brought a calming of the sea, and most boats returned to their harbor. I showed up at the Pier Inn, where that skinny young waitress was busied herself busing tables. I took a table near her. I let her wait on me.
"Could I have some coffee?" I said. "Black."
She brought my coffee and set it in front of me.
My hand swept out over the chair on the other side of the table. "How 'bout joining me?"
She was wistfully smiling. "I couldn't." She glanced at the clock above the jukebox. "I got customers."
I spoke with my sexiest voice: "Please."
Slowly, she slid in across from me.
"Michael Bishop."
"Ivy Lawson."
"Ivy's a pretty name," I said. "How’d you get it?"
Ivy sloughed it off. "I was born two months premature. My mom and dad said I was hardly a handful. He named me Ivy because of how I was clinging to life, after the doctors had given up on me. Where are you from?"
"Las Vegas."
"What do you do for a living?"
"I work for the National Parks Service.
Ivy started laughing. "Smokey the Bear!"
"Hey, somebody’s gotta. How do you like living here?"
Ivy fell into a black mood again. "I hate it. The only thing to do here is sit around and watch night fall."
I was smiling. "So why not leave?"
Ivy appraised me. "D'you want to take me away from all this?"