Rik and I had swapped email addresses, and he was supposed to send me a message confirming time and place for dinner. I had my laptop in my truck, so I swung past The Next Wave and discovered he had cancelled on me-he said he had to work late.
It was almost seven, too late for me to head back to the water. I didn’t want to go back in the bar, either, though my dick sure wanted to. But then it’s an unreliable monitor of what’s right and wrong, and besides, it had gotten an amazing workout the night before, courtesy of Brad. Like the rest of me, it could use a little R amp; R.
I decided to use the time productively, so I stayed at The Next Wave, where I began making copious notes on all the day’s conversations. Then I switched over to email. Sampson had replied to my message about Lucie’s apartment; he promised to get a detective out there to investigate. I responded to a bunch of messages from friends, worried about how I was doing. I had a stock message I wrote back, about how I was taking some time to think about my next step, and that I appreciated their support. It sucked to have to lie to people.
I was excited by the case, eager to solve it, and frustrated that I couldn’t talk about it with anyone. I had to put on a facade for my family and friends, telling them I was still getting my head together, and listen to their well-meaning advice. With every day that passed, I knew it would get harder to tell them the truth. Just one more reason why I had to settle this case quickly.
When I finished my emails, I tried to track down Harold Pincus, but there were just too many of men with that name, and I didn’t know the jurisdiction where he had been arrested. Shelving that idea, I did some computer searches on ice, cross referenced to Hawai‘i and the North Shore. The problem seemed to be worsening, in all the islands. Drug treatment programs reported more patients with methamphetamine problems, and for the first time more people entering programs reported problems with ice than with alcohol.
Child Protective Services estimated that 85 percent of their cases involved meth, and the number of methamphetamine-related deaths was climbing on O’ahu. I found a study which showed a jump in use by high school students as well.
On the mainland, users are more likely to inject methamphetamine, or speed, into their veins, but in Hawai‘i we tend to prefer the smokable form. Ice’s pleasurable and addictive effects are immediate, and can last up to twelve hours. Most of the powdered drug was smuggled in from Mexico; processors used solvents to create the powerful, nearly pure crystalline version, which could be smoked.
Because meth is so powerful, it can be profitable even in small chunks, and smugglers often brought it in from the mainland on their bodies, in luggage, and even in hand-held coolers. I wondered if somehow all three of the surfers who’d attended Mexpipe had been recruited to bring some of the drug back to Hawai‘i, for processing into ice. That would explain the crystal meth that I found behind the medicine cabinet at Lucie’s apartment. That would also explain how all three had lots of extra cash upon their return.
Now I just had to find the person or persons who connected the three dead surfers to the ice business. Easy peasy.
With that revelation, I left The Next Wave. I knew the logical, rational thing to do would be to go back to Hibiscus House, take a long, hot shower, and crawl into bed. Alone. But I was tired, and lonely, and my body hurt in a dozen places. I wanted someone to be nice to me.
My truck seemed to know that, too, and very shortly I was in front of Brad Jacobson’s apartment building. From there, it was only a few steps up to his door, and a single press of the doorbell. He opened it, and the momentary look of confusion on his face was replaced by one of pure joy. »
The next morning, Friday, I tried to get surfers to talk to me about drugs, but no one was willing to say anything. Finally, I pulled my board up on the sand and sat there, staring out at the water, trying to think of what to do next. I’d only been there for a few minutes when Trish came up and sat beside me. “Hey,” she said.
“Haven’t seen you for a while.”
“I had to take extra shifts at the place where I work because one of the other waitresses has been sick.”
She sat back on the sand, and we watched the surfers together for a few minutes. I wondered how long it would take Trish to get around to what she wanted to tell me-and if we’d be interrupted again before she could say it. Even so, I knew I couldn’t rush her. We watched one guy carve on a monster wave, and I said, “He’s not bad.”
“He’s got a lot of talent but no discipline,” she said. “See how he gave up there? He could have gotten another turn out of that if he’d tried. But he’s getting better-six months ago he wouldn’t have gotten in as many turns as he did.”
“You must know all the regulars. Didn’t you tell me you were Mike Pratt’s girlfriend?”
“I loved him, okay?” she said fiercely, and I saw that she had started to cry. “And it just really pisses me off that he’s dead.”
I put my arm around her and she leaned into my chest, crying. An older couple on folding chairs a few feet away looked at us. They were wearing matching aloha shirts, and looked settled and comfortable-the kind of people who never set foot in the water. She had a pair of heavy duty binoculars on a string around her neck, and he was holding a camera with a big lens. I smiled at them and patted Trish’s shoulder, and they went back to watching the surfers.
“It’s tough losing somebody you care about,” I said, when Trish had recovered enough to sit up. “How long did you know Mike?”
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and got a smudge of sand on her right cheek. “About two years. But he had this girlfriend back in New Jersey, and he didn’t break up with her until last year. Then it was another couple of months before we hooked up.”
“Did you go to Mexpipe with him?”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t. I had to work. But I know something happened down there.”
“What do you think?”
“I couldn’t say exactly, but I knew him, and I knew something was wrong. He kept complaining about his board, about how his rhythm was off. Whenever I’d press him, he’d say I didn’t want to know about it.”
“But he never told you what was wrong?”
She shook her head. “When they came to take him away, I talked to the cops. I told them I thought there was something funny about his board, and that they should take it into their office and look it over. But this fat cop just laughed.”
“I’ve heard Mike was having problems with his board. What happened to it after that?”
“I took it to my house, and I left it outside, along the wall, with my boards and my housemates’ boards. But then the next day when I was at work, somebody walked off with it. That’s when I knew there was really something funny. I mean, whoever it was didn’t steal any other boards-just Mike’s.”
“Did you report the theft to the cops?”
“I wasn’t talking to those jerks again,” she said. “They care more about donut shops than about what happens out here.” She turned to me. “Look how they treated you. Assholes.”
“Some cops are better than others. I worked with a lot of good ones. A few bad ones, too, but you get that anywhere. Even surfing.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Trish lapsed into silence, hugging her knees close to her and staring out at the waves. This was about the time when Akoni, would start to get frustrated, thinking that Trish didn’t really know anything specific. But me, I was just getting started. I had all day to hang out under the sunshine and the blue skies, watching the surfers and the waves, and waiting for Trish to talk. “You have any theories about what was going on with Mike?” I asked.
“You won’t believe me either.”
“I know you don’t really think that. Or you wouldn’t have been trying to tell me this for the last couple of days.”
She was still wavering, so I stood up. “Come on, let’s see what the waves are like from the other side of the breakers.”
Reluctantly, she followed me. We duck-dived through the incoming water and then sat on our boards near each other, waiting for waves. I caught one first, and then she did, and we surfed like that for almost an hour before she dragged her board back up to the sand where we’d been sitting. I followed her.
“Have you decided that I’ll listen to you?” I asked, sitting next to her.
Most of the people out at Pipeline were in the water, so we had the beach almost all to ourselves. The photographer couple had packed up and left. There were some kids up by Ke Nui Road, and a grizzled old guy asleep on the beach a few hundred yards away from us, but that was about it. The sun was high in the sky and it felt good to dry off in the hot sun. Overhead, a few cumulous clouds floated lazily past, and the shrieks of seagulls mixed in with the roar of the waves pounding against the beach and the occasional cries of a surfer who’d either caught or lost a good wave.
“I think he was smuggling drugs from Mexico in his surfboard,” Trish said finally. “I know, it sounds like something out of a bad movie.”
“Actually, it sounds pretty close to what I think was happening.” I turned to her. “There have been three surfers shot so far, and all three of them were at Mexpipe. They were all shot within a few weeks after they got back. So it’s likely that the trip to Mexico was somehow related. I heard Mike was having problems with his board, and I know the girl who was killed sold drugs, but I never thought of smuggling drugs in a surfboard. What made you think of that?”
“I just put it together. I never asked him about it. He was dead by the time I figured it out.” She ran her hand through her wet hair, pushing loose blonde strands back off her face. “He had, like zero money. Everything he made went for paying his basic bills and for travel to surfing competitions. Then he got back from Mexico, where he didn’t win very much, but he suddenly had enough to pay entry fees and air fare to this tournament in Tahiti.”
“And you thought he’d made that extra money from smuggling?”
“Not at first. But then he told me something was wrong with his board. That it had gotten a hole drilled in it.”
“So you assumed the hole was for smuggling drugs.”
She squared her shoulders and turned away from me. “You’re talking like one of them.”
“Like a cop? But isn’t that why you came to me in the first place? Because you knew I used to be a cop? People don’t change, Trish. At least not so fast.” I watched her back for a minute, and thought I saw the pressure on her shoulders lessen just a bit. “Another thing that hasn’t changed about me is that I care about catching criminals. I want to do what I can to make sure that the person who killed Mike gets put away for it. But I have to ask questions in order to do that.”
She turned back. “I know I sound paranoid. But something’s just not right.”
“It’s not that I doubt you, Trish. I believe you. I just have to learn everything I can.” I paused. “The girl who was killed after Mike appears to have been an ice dealer. He didn’t use drugs, did he?”
“Nope.”
“Do you know if he knew a girl named Lucie Zamora?”
“Sure. Most of the pretty decent surfers know each other. Is she the one who roped him into smuggling?”
“I don’t know. There may be somebody above Lucie, who put it all together.”
She fingered a gold surfboard on a thin gold chain around her neck. “What are you going to do now?”
“Keep asking questions.” The sun passed behind a cloud bank that was rolling in off the Pacific, and it got suddenly chilly on the beach. I stood up. “I’m going back in the water. You coming?”
She shook her head. “I gotta work in an hour. But I’m out here most mornings. If you hear anything else, will you tell me?”
“Sure.”
I walked her back up toward Ke Nui Road, and watched her drive off toward Hale’iwa. I remembered that Mike Pratt had worked for a board shaper when he first came to the North Shore, and put that together with the fact that something had gone wrong with his board after coming back from Mexico. It made sense to me that before throwing the board away, he’d try to salvage it. And who better to go to than his old boss? The shaper was an old hippie named Palani Anderson; I’d read about him but had never met him. Maybe it was time I did.
The Old Hippie
I found Palani’s workshop in Mokule‘ia, just off Pu‘uiki Beach. The first thing that struck me was the aroma of polyester resin, which I could smell from a block away. When I approached the open garage, I heard the noise of an orbital sander, and I saw Palani standing in front of a shaping rack, working on what looked like a nine-foot board. His white hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and he wore goggles and a dust mask.
The room behind him was painted black, with lights mounted on the walls just above the shaping rack to highlight any bumps in the white foam. Scattered around him, on the floor and on shelves along the wall, were the tools of his trade: a dozen different types of planes; a spokeshave, used for shaping curved work; a Japanese curved planer; several different kinds of surforms (used to shape noses, tails, and rails); and piles of different grades of sandpaper.
I also saw stacks of foam blanks in sizes from six feet up to ten-feet longboards, and cans of resin. When Palani looked up and saw me approaching, he turned the sander off, pulled down the mask and flipped up the goggles.
I introduced myself. “I remember you,” he said. “You used to be a pretty decent surfer. You still surf?”
It was amazing how good it felt to be remembered for something other than coming out of the closet. “Try to.”
“You looking for a board?”
I shook my head. “Information. About Mike Pratt.”
“Poor son of a bitch,” Palani said. “I wasn’t surprised to hear he died. Still a shame, though.”
He put the goggles and the mask down on a table and we walked behind the garage. The air was fresher there, a nice breeze coming up off the ocean. He pulled a pack of Marlboros from his pocket, and offered me one, which I declined.
“Why weren’t you surprised?” I asked, as he lit his cigarette.
“He got himself in with the wrong crowd.” Palani took a deep drag on his cigarette. “I’m not opposed to recreational drugs. Hell, I smoked enough dope in my life to save a ward full of cancer patients. But the drugs these kids do today, they’re bad news. Crack cocaine and X and crystal meth.”
“Nothing like the heroin of the good old days.”
Palani laughed. “You got me there.” Then his face saddened. “But Mike got himself on the business end of the deal somehow. He was a good kid, you know, a real talented surfer. Had a feel for the waves you can’t train into somebody.”
“So I’ve heard. What made him go bad, then?”
“Money. Makes us all do things we shouldn’t sometimes. He was determined to be a real competitor, and to do that you need backing. Entry fees, travel, training time. Somebody offered him the money he needed, and he took it.”
“He ever tell you who that was?”
Palani shook his head, and his ponytail swung from one side to the other. “I didn’t want to know. But I knew he was in trouble.”
“Did he ever come up here with something wrong with his board?”
Palani looked at me. “You know a lot about him, don’t you?”
“I’ve been learning. Somebody asked him to smuggle drugs in his board, didn’t they?”
“Yup. Really pissed him off, because he loved that board. He customized it himself, right here in this shop.”
“The board wasn’t fixable?”
Palani laughed. “Not with the center of it cored out,” he said. “You can fix a broken plug, a stringer. Something simple. No way to fix something like that.”
“What I still don’t understand is how that could get him killed.”
“It was him complaining about it. I told him to shut his mouth, it was going to get him in trouble, but he kept on. I guess whoever it was got worried he’d bitch to somebody who would listen.”
We made small talk for a few minutes, and then Palani showed me around his garage. I’d done a little shaping when I was in high school, trying to customize my own boards, and it was cool to see a master at work. But eventually I had to tear myself away-I had the information I’d come for.
Leaving Palani’s place, I felt like I was getting somewhere. At long last, a real motive for Mike Pratt’s death. He was pissed off that his board had gotten ruined, and he couldn’t keep his mouth shut about it.
I dragged myself back to Hibiscus House. I thought I might take a nap and then think about going over to see Brad, but my nap stretched all night, until I woke up Saturday morning as fingers of light were beginning to crawl through the window that looked out over the driveway.
The next morning, as I waited for waves, I couldn’t help trying to organize what I had been discovering. There were certain pieces of evidence. All three of the murder victims had been to Mexpipe, though that was the only thing, beyond surfing and murder, that seemed to link them. Therefore it was probably an important fact.
Mike Pratt knew Lucie Zamora. After a trip to Mexico, a trip Lucie had also made, Mike returned with the money for travel and entrance fees. Trish believed he’d gotten that money by bringing crystal meth back from Mexico, and that he’d used his board to hold it. Palani confirmed that a hole had been cored in Mike’s board. Shortly after he returned, after he’d complained about the condition of his board to anyone who’d listen, he was dead.
According to Jeremy Leddinger, who had a drug addict ex-boyfriend, Lucie Zamora sold ice, the powdered form of crystal meth. I had found a stash behind her medicine cabinet, and I doubted it had been left there by a previous tenant. Further evidence was provided by the cash she had to spend on designer clothing at Brad Jacobson’s boutique, Butterfly, and on shopping trips with Brad’s friend Larry Brickman.
Larry and George had also verified that Lucie knew Ronnie Chang, the computer nerd slash weekend surfer, who had also gone to Puerto Escondido for Mexpipe. A sexy woman has been known to draw even the straightest guy into troublesome waters, and Jeremy had said Lucie led Ronnie around by his dick.
A huge wave washed over me and knocked me into the cool Pacific, reminding me that I was in troublesome waters as well. I kept on surfing, all day long, though I couldn’t stop turning over the questions I had about the three dead surfers. Whenever I was on the beach, I tried to talk to other surfers, looking for anyone who had known Mike, Lucie or Ronnie, or anyone else who had gone to Mexpipe. I didn’t have any luck.
That night, I thought about calling Brad, but I decided first to head to the Drainpipe, the Hale’iwa bar where Lucie’s one-time boyfriend Frank worked. I was hoping he could shed some more light on where Lucie got her drugs from, and how her dealing might tie in with her trip to Mexpipe. I wasn’t sure how much he could tell me, particularly if the bar was busy, but it was Saturday night and I was thirsty, and the Drainpipe seemed as good a bar as any.
Jeremy had said that dating Frank was just a cover so that Lucie could hang around the Drainpipe and meet up with customers. Perhaps someone there had bought from her-or someone had moved into her territory.
Frank wasn’t on duty, which was disappointing, but I got myself a beer and relaxed. I got roped into a darts game, talked to a couple of guys and girls, and remembered what my Saturday nights had been like before I came out of the closet.
I had a good time, partly because there was no sexual agenda going on-at least not on my part. I wasn’t sizing up the wahines-or the guys, for that matter-and trying to figure out my chances of scoring. While there might have been a girl or two checking me out, none were blatant, so I didn’t have to do anything to discourage anyone. I played darts, I drank my beer, and I laughed. A lot.
It was obvious to me, though no one said anything directly, that people knew who I was, so I couldn’t be too blatant about asking for drugs, or asking if anyone knew Lucie, Mike or Ronnie. Around ten o’clock I was surprised to see Brad’s friend Jeremy, but we did nothing more than shout hellos before he appeared to have left the bar. I figured there were probably few gay places he could go, and if he was bored at Sugar’s it was worth checking out the straight bars to see what kind of action was going on.
About a half hour later, George and Larry, the macho guy and the cute guy, came in together, and my radar went into overdrive. Sure enough, as soon as they both had beers, they were heading my way.
I was a little drunk by then. Still able to function, still able to drive, but my defenses were dangerously low. They clinked their bottles up against mine and made their greetings, and I followed them to a dark corner of the bar.
“How’s it going?” George asked. “You finding anything out about Lucie?”
“Still picking up information,” I said. “Haven’t really processed it all yet.”
“If there’s anything we can do to help,” Larry said.
“Anything at all,” George said. His leg brushed against mine, so casually that it might have been nothing, but my adrenaline level soared. I decided I could put my homicide investigation on hold for one Saturday night and enjoy myself.
I knew I could play coy with them, ignore the subtext, come up with another excuse to leave. But what was stopping me from heading out with them, enjoying what they had to offer? Some outdated code of ethics that said sex should be only a two-person sport? Or some deeper programming, which indicated that sex had to be involved with romance, which had to lead to me and Mr. Right living together behind a white picket fence?
I didn’t think either of those should control me, and frankly, I was horny, so I said, “That offer you made the other night. That still stand?”
“You bet,” George said.
“Didn’t think you’d be so easy,” Larry said.
I licked my lips. Might as well go for the gusto, I thought. “I’m not easy,” I said. “I’m hard.”
Both George and Larry laughed out loud. “Well, that’s a good state to be in,” George said. “You’re staying at that sleazy old Hibiscus House, aren’t you?”
“Yup.”
“Well, let’s get over there and make it a little sleazier.”
They’d come in George’s pickup, in response to a phone call from Jeremy, as I thought, so Larry came with me, and George followed. His truck was a lot like mine, banged up and yet still serviceable.
Larry sat next to me, playing first with a bit of my black hair, then stroking one finger down my thigh as I drove. “You’d better not do too much of that, if you want us to get there in one piece,” I said. I could feel my erection straining against my jeans, and thought if he touched it, I’d probably explode right there.
“We’ll get there,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
Fortunately, Hibiscus House wasn’t too far away, and shortly the three of us were standing in my slightly-messy room. I’d learned from Brad’s visit that I had to keep it neater, so the only thing I had to do was move some dirty clothes off the chair and the place was fit for company.
George and Larry didn’t wait for hospitality, though. George was behind me and Larry in front of me, one stroking my back and the other kissing me. In short order, and almost without my noticing it, I’d shed my clothes and stood there, nude, between them.
“If you guys don’t strip down, we aren’t going to have much fun,” I said, in between my tongue’s dueling with Larry’s.
“Oh, we’ll have some fun,” George said.
There was something quite erotic, on the edge of dangerous, about my being naked with the two of them fully clothed. I’d exposed myself to them completely, while they had exposed nothing at all to me. I’d relinquished all the power, and that was a powerful aphrodisiac itself.
I felt Larry’s stiff dick rubbing against mine through his pants fabric, and George’s finger, magically lubricated, exploring my ass, and I gave myself up to the pleasure. Soon enough, both of them were naked, too, and Larry had turned his ass to me. George handed me a rubber and squeezed some lube onto my hand, and I began doing to Larry what George was doing to me.
In short order, we were making a Kimo sandwich. Larry’s hole was loose and slippery, and I slid right in. Mine was more difficult for George to penetrate, but he seemed to have a lot of experience. I felt the rubbery head of his condom-enclosed dick knocking up against my back door, and then in one strong push that sent waves of pain through my body, he was inside me.
He led the rhythm; as he pushed into me, I pushed into Larry. Soon my ass got used to the intruder, and the pain melted away. I had my hands on Larry’s prominent hipbones, more for balance than for anything sexual, while George was balanced enough to let his hands roam around my body, tweaking my nipples, cupping my hipbones, running down the outer edges of my thighs.
I shut off all thinking, opening myself to pleasure, and pleasure was provided. I felt incredibly connected to both of them, as if an electrical current that began in George pulsed through me and into Larry.
I couldn’t control the noises I made, and it seemed George couldn’t control his, either. They worked together until, with one massive push into me, he filled his condom’s reservoir, and I did the same with mine. We held the position for a moment or two, and then with a squishy plop, George had pulled out of me, and I pulled out of Larry.
Larry turned to face me and we began to kiss again. Then I felt George move between us down at crotch level, and realized he was blowing Larry, my limp dick nested in his hair. Larry came quickly, and then the three of us fell onto my bed, where we spooned up together. “Man, that was awesome,” I finally said.
“That was pretty good,” George said.
“You guys do this kind of thing… often?”
“When we find somebody we both like,” Larry said. “Not so often as all that, but occasionally.”
“Are you-together?”
George laughed. “Tonight’s about as together as we get. I like a little pussy now and then, and Larry mostly likes to get fucked-as often as he can.”
I didn’t pretend to understand. I loved what we did-while we were doing it-but I didn’t think I’d make a habit of it. After a while, Larry and George both kissed me good night, and slipped out the door.
I looked at the clock. It was just midnight. I could get some sleep and then the next morning… I suddenly realized. The next morning was Sunday, and my family was coming to the North Shore for a big luau. My room was littered with condom wrappers and lube bottles, my ass felt like it had been reamed by a beer bottle, and my nipples felt like raw meat. Jesus.
I hoped it would all be better in the morning, and went to sleep.
Luau
My cell phone woke me at eight. “We’re passing Helemano Plantation,” my brother Lui said. “We’ll be in Waimea soon. You got the picnic area reserved?”
“Shit.”
“You still in bed, sleepy head? I figured you’d be surfing already, trying fruitlessly to improve your surfing skills before your big brothers show up and blow you out of the water.”
“Rough night. I’m getting up. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Get lots of tables. We have a whole caravan here.”
“Caravan?”
“Mom, Liliha and Tatiana are each driving a car full of food. The three of them have been cooking for days-it’s like those three witches from Macbeth.” His voice turned away from the phone for a second. “Jeffrey, you tell your mother, your auntie, or your Tutu I called them witches and you get no Xbox for a month.” His voice returned to normal. “Dad’s got every surfboard this family owns packed into his truck. I’ve got a car full of kids and toys and so does Haoa. Harry’s back there somewhere, and so’s your friend Terri with her son.”
“Jesus.”
“He’s probably trailing along behind,” Lui said. “Get your skinny butt moving. I can almost see Matsumoto’s.”
I stumbled out of bed, into the shower, and into board shorts and a T-shirt. I could just imagine the wrath of my entire family if they showed up at Waimea Bay Beach Park and I wasn’t there with a batch of picnic tables.
Fortunately, the near-perfect surf conditions meant that everyone who’d considered heading up to the North Shore had gone directly into the water, and I was able to secure the perimeter of an area I thought was big enough for all of us. And only moments after I arrived, my father’s pickup, loaded with surfboards, entered the parking lot.
There was indeed a caravan behind him. Lui had recently surrendered his pickup for a dark gray Mercedes sedan, which was in second place, filled with Jeffrey, his brother Keoni, and their sister Malia. Right behind was Lui’s wife Liliha in her gold Mercedes, which filled with food and picnic supplies.
My mother drives a Lexus, and she and her load were sandwiched between Liliha and my brother Haoa’s panel truck, in which he had the kalua pig, fresh from the imu pit in his back yard, along with barbecue supplies.
His kids, Ashley, Alec, Ailina, and the newest baby, Apikela, rode with their mother, Tatiana, a big-boned daughter of Russian immigrants to Alaska who had floated up on our shores and fallen in love with Haoa. She drove a Chrysler PT Cruiser which was perennially loaded with kids, toys and various levels of debris.
At the rear were Harry, his girlfriend Arleen next to him, her son Brandon strapped into a car seat, Harry’s longboard strapped to the roof of his BMW, and Terri in her Land Rover, with her small son Danny. It struck me that we probably had every variety of luxury car on the islands represented, along with my father’s beat-up old truck, the previous beat-up old truck which he’d passed down to me, and Haoa’s landscaping van.
The parking, hugging, kissing and unloading seemed to take forever, especially with the kids all clamoring to get out on the water. Harry and Terri finally volunteered to chaperone the lot of them, and while the rest of the adults unloaded, they trooped down to the Pacific to check out the surf conditions. The littlest kids had boogie boards, but Ashley and Jeffrey, who were already teenagers, both had graduated to real surfboards.
I helped Haoa lift the pig out of his van, and noticed him wincing. “How you doing, brah?” I asked. He’d gotten banged up pretty badly over the last month, between getting himself into a variety of fights, and then redeeming himself, at least in my eyes, by rushing to save me when a bad guy was about to shoot me.
“I’m getting old, Kimo,” he said. “Forty. Jesus.”
“Cool,” I said. “So I can beat your ass when we go surf.”
“You never do dat,” he said.
“I’ll beat both of you,” Lui said, coming up to join us. “When we go surf?”
“Soon as we get rid of this stuff,” I said. Lui helped Haoa and me carry the pig over to where the women were putting the food together, and then the three of us dropped our shirts, grabbed boards and raced each other to the water’s edge, then out into the surf.
“Go, daddy!” Ashley cried.
“My dad’s the best surfer,” Jeffrey said.
“Uncle Kimo’s the best,” Keoni said defiantly. “You watch.”
“You don’t know anything,” Jeffrey said, cuffing his brother.
“Loser buys everybody shave ice,” I called, launching myself into the waves.
My brothers were always so much older than I was, Lui by ten years, Haoa eight, that I never got to hang out with them as equals. Even once I returned to the islands from college, both of them were so busy with their families and their careers that sometimes they seemed more like uncles than brothers, though I felt a visceral closeness to them whenever we were together.
For the first time that day, I felt like we were three brothers. I hadn’t seen Lui shirtless, in board shorts, since he was a teenager; my oldest brother is rarely seen without a suit, or at least a sports jacket.
Haoa’s more relaxed; in his landscaping business he usually wears polo shirts embroidered with the name of the business, khakis or chinos, and deck shoes or sandals. But I hadn’t been on the water with him in years, either. The three of us raced through the breakers, laughing and talking stink, as the rest of the family gathered on the beach to cheer and watch.
I knew I was the best surfer in the family, at least in part because I was the only one who’d kept on surfing, year after year, and because I secretly thought I was the one with the most talent, too. But my brothers gave me a run for my money. I remembered being a little kid, watching Haoa and Lui surf and being amazed at their prowess. Those feelings came back to me as I watched them both jump on their boards, catch waves, even do a little carving. They were both rusty, sure; and the waves at Waimea Bay, though nothing like Pipeline, were still pretty strong. But my brothers, like me, were Hawaiian to their core, and for us, surfing is like riding a bicycle; you never forget how to do it.
The kids on shore exploded into laughter any time one of us fell, and cheered wildly as we bobbed, turned and rode the waves in. We must have surfed almost an hour like that before we called a truce. “So who wins?” I asked, as the three of us trudged up the shoreline, dragging our boards.
The kids had obviously been practicing together, because with one voice, they shouted, “Uncle Kimo!”
I gave an exaggerated bow, and one of my brothers kicked my behind, knocking me head first into the sand. Immediately, all six of my nieces and nephews, along with Danny Gonsalves, were on top of me. Ashley and Jeffrey wanted a private surfing lesson, and then I had to fool around with the other kids and their boogie boards. It was almost noon by the time I dragged them all up the shore to the picnic area so we could start the luau.
I found myself in line next to Terri. She was wearing a navy polo shirt and black shorts, and when she pulled off her dark glasses for a moment I saw dark circles under her eyes. Her husband Evan had died just a month before, and the grief was still wearing on her. “How are you holding up?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I get through the days. Tatiana’s been great. She’s always inviting Danny over to play. He and Ailina go to kindergarten together. They’re like little sweethearts.”
“Good for them.” I smiled. “I’m glad you guys could come up here today.”
“I wasn’t going to, but Tatiana insisted. I didn’t want to intrude on a family thing.”
“You know you’ve always been part of our family.” Terri and I had gone to Punahou, a Honolulu prep school where both my brothers had preceded me, and even though her family was one of the wealthiest in the islands, we’d always been great friends.
“I know, and I appreciate it, now more than ever.” She paused. “I know that you’re working undercover,” she said in a low voice. “Harry told me. I know he wasn’t supposed to, but I was feeling so miserable about what happened to you that he thought he had to tell me.”
“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about,” I said, loading my plate with lomi lomi salmon, kalua pork, long rice and vegetables. I saw Harry coming toward us. He looked as skinny as ever, though his mop of black hair seemed to have been cut at a fancy salon, instead of with a bowl and a pair of scissors. “I left the force. I’m just up here surfing, trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life.”
“Harry,” Terri said darkly, as he arrived in line behind us. Back in Honolulu, I had counseled him to start working out, to bulk up some of the muscles he would need to improve as a surfer. After not seeing him for a couple of weeks, I noticed the workouts were starting to have an effect; his arms seemed at least a little more muscular under his short-sleeved aloha shirt.
He looked from my face to Terri’s. “Shit,” he said. “Were we not supposed to know?”
“Get some food, Harry. We’ll talk.”
Terri and I walked over to a picnic table under a stand of palm trees, and sat down. Harry joined us a few minutes later. Across the way, I could see Arleen, a sweet Japanese girl Harry had met through me, holding Brandon, all the moms swarming over the new baby in our midst. “What makes you think I’m working undercover?” I asked.
Harry looked sheepish. “As long as you’re not a cop any more I can tell you,” he said. “I hacked in to your bank account.”
“You did what?” Terri and I both said, almost simultaneously.
“I was worried you’d run out of cash. You know with all those patents in my name, I’m running a big surplus. So I was going to transfer some money to your account. I figured if you didn’t know where it came from, you couldn’t complain.”
“That’s a really-nice-sentiment,” I said. “Strange, but nice.”
“Once I got in-and by the way, your bank’s site isn’t very safe from hackers, any teenager could break through-I saw that your paycheck was still being deposited. But some of the codes on the deposit changed two weeks ago, and just for my own amusement, and to see if I could do it, I decoded them. You were switched from District 1 to District 2, on temporary assignment undercover.”
I shook my head. “Jesus, Harry. How many crimes do you think you committed just doing all that?”
“Well, if you’re not really a cop any more then you aren’t obliged to report me, are you?”
I sighed. “Lieutenant Sampson-he’s my new boss. He was worried that if Lui got wind of my assignment, he’d find some way to get it on TV. So I had to promise to tell everyone that I had given up the job and was coming up here just to surf.”
“I don’t know that I’d trust Lui either,” Terri said, wiping her fingers on a napkin. “Sorry, I know he’s your brother, but look what he did to you, Kimo. If he ran that story about you being gay without telling you-or your parents-I don’t think he has any ethics at all.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. But I guess I agreed with Sampson, because I said I’d do it his way.”
“So your parents don’t know you’re still working?” Harry asked. “Your mother must be having a cow.”
“A herd,” I said. “New cows popping out daily.”
The three of us ate in silence for a few minutes. “Are you making any progress?” Terri finally asked.
“I’ve been learning a lot, but without a partner to bounce it off I’m feeling swamped.”
“We can help,” Harry said. “I provide the logic, Terri provides the heart. Together we’re a full person.”
“Arleen thinks you have a heart,” Terri said.
“You know what I mean. You’ve always been better at the touchy-feely stuff, I’ve always been better at the logic. Kimo’s always been the one who just bulls through and gets things done. We’ve been like this since high school and we’re not likely to change.”
When we were at Punahou, Harry and I were mad to surf, sneaking off every available moment to drag our boards into the water, ignoring homework. He was the only reason I’d made passing grades, though somehow he’d scored straight As and gone off to MIT for undergraduate and graduate degrees in computer science. He’d come back to the islands just a few months before, teaching a little at UH, fiddling with some inventions and managing the money he’d made on the mainland.
Terri had been the good girl, president of the honor society, homecoming queen, a straight A student herself. She had made sure we knew when our tests were and dragged us to extracurricular activities. It was good to be together with them both again.
I outlined the facts. “That poor girl,” Terri said, shaking her head.
“Hey, there’s two dead guys, too,” Harry said.
“I know, but I keep thinking that this Lucie is at the center of things,” Terri said. “I’m getting a clear picture of her from the details. She sounds determined to succeed, but it’s not just a lack of money that’s standing in her way, it’s her attitude toward money.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, sitting forward on the picnic bench.
“You said she loved labels-name brand clothes. Usually people wear those clothes because they want to fit in, to be like people they see as better, and they want everyone to see that they’re worthwhile, too.”
Harry and I must have both been looking skeptical, because she continued. “It’s like that saying, dress for the job you want, not the job you have.”
That was a saying I’d heard.
“Lucie was dressing like the person she wanted to be-successful and rich-the person she wanted people to think she was. Combine that with her drive to succeed as a surfer, and you have somebody who’s willing to do almost anything to achieve her goals.”
“Okay, I get it,” I said. “So then what do you think got her killed? Somebody who perceived her drive as a threat?”
“It’s possible. But you also said she was Filipina, right?”
I nodded.
“And the Philippines is almost completely Catholic.”
“Your point?”
“My point is that she probably had a strong moral upbringing, but her desires overwhelmed her morals. Then maybe something happened that changed the balance again.”
I was starting to see where she was going. “Mike Pratt was killed,” I said. “You think maybe either she knew who killed Mike, or suspected, and her morals were resurfacing, maybe making her a threat to the killer.”
“I think it’s a possibility,” Terri said. “Plus you said that Mike had gotten involved with a Christian surfing group in Mexico, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“And you think maybe he was involved in smuggling some drugs back from there. It’s possible those Christian surfers got him thinking that what he was doing was wrong, and he tried to back out, go to the authorities.”
“This is very interesting,” I said. “So let me see if I can construct a scenario. Lucie’s this very determined girl who needs a lot of money to feed her habits-surfing and shopping foremost. She overcomes her Catholic upbringing to become a low-level drug dealer. She plans to go to Mexpipe, and makes arrangements to bring some crystal meth back-some of which I found in her apartment.”
“Makes sense so far,” Harry said.
“She knows Mike Pratt and knows he needs money, so she recruits him to help her. They come up with a scheme to smuggle the crystal back to the US in their surfboards.”
I stood up and started walking around. “But while they’re in Mexico, Mike hooks up with the Christian surfers, who make him see that what he’s doing is wrong. By the time he gets back to the States, he’s really upset-both on moral grounds, and because the board he loved is ruined.”
“Where does the Chinese guy fit in?” Harry asked. “Don’t forget the Chinese guy.”
“Ronnie was Lucie’s friend, right?” Terri asked. “Maybe she recruited him, too.”
“Okay, the three of them bring the crystal back from Mexico and turn at least some of it over to Lucie’s supplier. I found the rest behind her medicine cabinet.”
“Then there ought to be a money trail,” Harry said. “These guys weren’t sophisticated enough to cover their tracks. Maybe the supplier, but not Lucie, Mike or Ronnie. You could subpoena their bank records.”
I shook my head. “Not without some probable cause. Judges don’t sign subpoenas based on speculation.”
“I could check it out for you,” Harry said. “I already know how to get into your bank.”
“I’m still a cop, Harry, as you have already figured out. I can’t ask you to do that-and I can’t use anything you find in court.”
“Email me their names, addresses, anything you have,” Harry said. “That’s all you need to know. But you still haven’t established why the Chinese guy got killed. Just the haole and the Filipina.”
“Ronnie disappeared the same day Lucie was shot,” Terri said. “Maybe she confided in him. He was a smart computer guy, right? Maybe she was trying to atone for her sins by finding out who killed Mike, and she recruited Ronnie to help.”
“That’s as good a scenario as I can get for now,” I said. “Though there isn’t much I can do to prove any of it.”
“You need to find the supplier,” Harry said. “That’s the guy who has the motive. But I hope you’re not going to tell me you plan to buy some ice yourself. Because you’re not officially a cop up here and you could get yourself into a whole heap of trouble.”
“The idea did cross my mind,” I admitted. “But I met a guy who bought from Lucie. He must be buying somewhere else now that she’s dead.”
“That’s the guy who was supposed to meet you for dinner but cancelled?” Terri asked.
“Yeah. His name is Rik. He’s hard to get hold of because he works at Waimea Falls Park and he’s always having to cover for other guys’ shifts.”
“Or he’s dodging you,” Harry said. “Is he working today?”
I nodded. “I see a plan forming. You think we could take the kids over there this afternoon?”
“It’s a good diversion,” Terri said. “That way you kind of stumble on him. We can keep the kids busy while you talk to him.”
We agreed to head to the park after lunch, just as we were inundated by a flood of my nieces and nephews, and we gave up on the idea of talking any more then.