In Vegas, they’d probably give the likelihood of those events being a coincidence long odds. Me? I’d call it “fat chance.”
Here I was, caught in Conjecture City with no road map. Fifty directions to go with nothing but my wits to guide me. Right now, the two little guys on my shoulders were in total agreement. Kong was somehow involved in the theft of my identity and in the drowning. I still didn’t know whether he was “The Man,” but he sure had close ties.
CJ’s cautions played back in my head. How stupid could I get? This was way beyond ketchup-soaked bandage stupidity, this was get-yourself-killed stupid. I was sitting here having drinks with a guy who, when he showed up, made people disappear or turn up dead. Maybe he hadn’t actually drowned the guy in the marina, but what about Stan? Had the missing ex-boyfriend dropped off the island, literally? Forget Stan, what about me? I’d lied to Kong and he knew it.
Somewhere in the blurry scene before me, a hand waved. “Marvin? Hey, buddy, where are you?”
I blinked away my fears. Kong was staring at me like I’d gone off the deep end. If you asked CJ, she’d say I had. “Sorry. I, um, I had a friend who drowned. Brought back some memories, I guess.”
Kong pushed back his scraggly mane. “Man, you were really out there.”
“So, anyway, you said the guy who stood you up drowned, huh? Weird way to go—at least in a marina.”
Kong shrugged. “Stupid shit. He couldn’t swim. Why’d he go to a marina if he couldn’t swim?”
“Most people I know don’t swim at marinas.” I watched Kong’s face over the top of my glass, then finished off my wine. “Whatever, man.”
“Yeah, whatever.” If Kong had killed that guy, he knew no remorse. What if he hadn’t? That might make things even worse. “Well, you don’t have to worry about drowning, you’re like a fish in the water.” Definitely strong enough to overpower a wimp like me.
Kong rubbed his forehead. “Morah, too. Like a fish. She was learning to surf. That neighbor of hers, Kari, was teaching her, too. They showed up at the beach one morning. Surprised me, man. Morah had this really sweet Sunset Gun.”
“That’s a board, right?”
Kong shook his head, but smiled. “You really are a land shark, aren’t you? Yeah, it’s a board. Pretty blue, seven and a half feet.”
Goddamn. So it was Morah’s board I’d seen at Kari’s. Why hadn’t she told me? Unless she wanted another “present” from Morah. Don’t go there, McKenna. Not Kari. She wouldn’t kill Morah, would she? As I said, Conjecture City, no road map.
“Hey, you in there? What’s with you, man?”
“Long day, I guess.” I wasn’t about to reveal where I’d seen Morah’s board. Not yet, anyway. It’s possible I was wrong and the board I’d seen really did belong to Kari. Either way, I wanted to talk to her first. “All that watching the water. Maybe it was the dog.”
Kong’s laugh took a half second too long to kick in and sounded forced. “That was funny. Hey, we gonna eat? I’m starved.”
“Yeah, let’s order. Tell me about your sister, what’s she do?”
“Besides annoy me? I don’t wanna talk about her. She’s just a pain in the ass.”
“But you two work together, right?”
“She handles production and distribution.” His voice had an edge that told me I was beginning to become an annoyance myself. He motioned for April, who was already on her way.
When the waitress arrived at our table, she pushed her glasses up again. “These things are always slipping.”
The little evil guy on my shoulder wanted me to ask her if she knew about this new invention we had on the mainland—contact lenses. The nice voice on the other shoulder questioned how badly I wanted to get beaten up for insulting one of Kong’s friends. My response? “Another Tuesday’s red, please.”
April smiled. She winked. “That was last Tuesday’s, sir.”
“Excuse me, I didn’t realize it had been aged.”
Kong glanced at me, shook his head, and snickered. “High entertainment value. April, how about another beer?” He glanced at me. “Large pepperoni okay?”
“Whatever you want, I can’t have pizza. How about a plain house salad?”
“You got it.” April winked at Kong before she disappeared. The rest of our time went smoothly. I learned little else from Kong other than the name of his business, how much he missed Morah, and that his sister, Des, didn’t seem to understand his feelings of loss. She and Lu seemed like they might make a good pair of bookends with Kong squeezed between.
After I left the restaurant and found Buster, I leaned backwards against the driver’s door and looked up. Overhead, the moon drifted behind a large cumulus cloud. Silver edges glowed against a black sky filled with twinkling white stars. Ancient mariners had navigated their way here using those same stars. Would they guide me, too? I breathed in the air, heavy with the moisture of early evening and remembered how much I loved tropical nights. Maybe I did have hope, after all.
When I got back to CJ’s, she’d apparently already gone to bed. Take note that I didn’t say to sleep. The grunts and groans coming from her bedroom assured me she had company. With the living room to myself, I began my research with a search for Kong’s business, “Makai Business Services.” It was a daunting list with 26,000 or so listings, everything from web services in Hawaii to carpet cleaning in New York. After searching through a dozen or so pages, I gave up and Googled “Kong Lam.” That didn’t do much good either. In fact, that made things worse. There were over two million listings there. The web’s a great research tool if you think you can scroll through a few hundred or a few thousand pages of results. Since I’m basically impatient, I went to the yellow pages on the web. Nothing.
The telephone book. Nada.
I tried different combinations of the terms Hawaii, business, computers and more. Still no indication of a business. At 10:30 p.m., frustrated by my lack of progress and the continuing animal noises coming from CJ’s bedroom, I called Alexander. He answered almost immediately.
“Hey, what you doing calling this late?”
“I need to talk to someone who doesn’t make feral pig noises when they, you know.”
“What you talkin’ about, brah?”
“CJ, she’s screwing Fritzie. One of them—oops, make that both of them, sound like something got stuck and it hurts.”
I heard a snort on the other end of the line. “That’s Frankie, my friend. You call him Fritzie to his face and he gonna make two of you.”
“Yeah, well it sounds like I’m in a freaking barnyard.”
I heard giggles; finally, he said, “So what you’re telling me is—never mind, I don’t want to know. You’re giving me too much information, yah?”
“Fine, then help me out with this. Kong, the guy I met to surf today? He was in Honolulu the weekend when the guy who stole my checks drowned. And then, there’s another guy who disappeared.”
“McKenna, what is this? This ain’t one of those, I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy things, is it?”
“Shut up. Anyway, this other guy—fine, Morah’s ex-boyfriend, though I don’t think he ever really was her boyfriend, disappeared when Kong showed up. Then, the girlfriend died in a meth explosion while the boyfriend was out of town. He hates his girlfriend’s sister. The feeling is mutual. Seeing a pattern here?”
“Yeah, you gone pupule.”
“Why do people keep calling me crazy? I’m not.”
“Whatever you say. Tell me what all this got to do with your checks?”
“I think Kong’s behind it all. I think he went to Honolulu to kill the guy who stole my checks. He might have killed Morah’s ex, too. But while he was gone, someone offed Morah.”
“Why? He got a motive for all this killing? Don’t the cops need that?”
“It’s the only scenario that makes any sense.”
“Don’t really sound like you know much, yah? Where’s the proof? You got anything besides McKenna hunch
es?”
I slouched down in my chair while staring at the ceiling fan. It went round and round in slow motion. Isn’t that exactly what I was doing? Spinning around in circles? “I’m lost here.”
“You felt that way after your trip to L.A., too, yah?”
“What are you getting at?”
“Maybe you still got issues to deal with. Maybe you can’t make progress on all this current stuff cause you still got unresolved things from the past.”
“You sound like a damn fortune cookie.” But, as much as I hated to admit it, he could be right. “When I left L.A., I thought I’d reconciled everything.”
“You don’t sound too reconciled.”
I mulled that one over. I didn’t, did I? I was like Kong, caught in my emotions and unable to move forward until I fixed the past.
“McKenna? You okay?”
“Just tired, I guess. I keep running into dead ends. I thought this would be so easy, which was shortsighted. All I’m doing is running up more debt. I’ve gotta get home and handle my real job, otherwise I could lose that, too.”
“Could that happen?”
“If I slack off too much. And Melanie’s sounding like the honeymoon might be over. I might be gone.”
“I’m sorry, brah. I know how you love that writing thing. Maybe something will turn up?”
I shrugged. “Maybe.” Maybe not. “Hey, you’ve probably had a long day. I’m sorry to call you so late and lay all this on you. Get some rest.”
A short while after we’d said our goodbyes, Freckles emerged from CJ’s Inner Sanctum of Love, a sheepish grin pasted on his face. His baggy shorts hung low on his hips; his coffee-colored tee had a map of the islands imprinted on the back. He gave me the shaka sign, which I returned.
“Heading out?” I said.
“I gotta be at work early tomorrow. I stay here, won’t be no sleepin’ goin’ on.” He smiled and made his way to the door.
I smiled back, “And that’s a bad thing?”
He paused, glanced back at CJ’s door, then shook his head. “Nah. Later, brah.”
I turned off the lights and went to bed, but couldn’t sleep. Every snippet from every encounter I’d had over the past couple of days demanded my attention. None of them made any sense. In retrospect, my original plan, to fly to Kauai and bust up the identity theft gang, had been lame. I hadn’t laid any groundwork nor did I have a foundation for going undercover. It had been a plan driven by anger. I’d still been running on that emotion when I met Kong and assumed I could worm my way into his confidence. Our pasts were similar, my attempts to gain his confidence not well thought out. What did I expect to do? Work my way into the gang because he’d “lost” his Honolulu connection? Did I think I could just apply for a job? Maybe volunteer my services? Actually, I did. If he bought my deception, I’d have everything I ever needed to get them put away. But what if Alexander was right? What if Kong had nothing to do with any of this? Maybe he was nothing more than a victim like me.
So many questions. Which direction to turn? Did I put my money on Kong and play my hand?
I’d made so many mistakes—the worst one had been using my real name in the beginning. Everything was catching up to me. Given the efficiency of the coconut wireless, it wouldn’t take long for Kong to put two and two together and come up with McKenna. Was he investigating me while I investigated him? No matter which way you cut it, my karma credits were gone. I was screwed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I’m the first to admit that Hawaii’s allure is not only the weather, but also the legends. While professing on one hand to not believe in “that crap,” I’ve become hooked. That night, before bed, I found a couple of websites with information about Kauai, its history, and its legends. I found the history of sugar and pineapple growing on the island interesting, but got hooked on the legend of Spouting Horn, a popular tourist attraction on the south side where water spouts regularly from volcanic rocks along the ocean. Legend says that Liko, a young boy, outwitted a giant lizard, and trapped him in a cave beneath the rocks forever. According to the legend, that’s why visitors can hear moaning every time the cave spouts water.
With Liko’s story in the back of my mind, I fell into a fitful sleep and dreamed of treading water in the ocean near Spouting Horn. Ocean water cooled my skin as I floated, waiting, constantly watching for the giant lizard to return. So far, each time he’d chased me, I’d plunged underwater and swam into a cave lit by occasional blow holes in the roof. At the back of the cave I crawled out of the water onto a rocky shelf while waiting for the lizard. He appeared, but seemed not to notice me. Eventually, he grew tired of waiting and left.
I swam back to the surface, where I scanned the ocean for Alexander or a rescue boat. Behind me, I heard the slap of the lizard’s tail on water. I took a deep breath and dove again. I was almost to the mouth of the cave, but somehow knew I wouldn’t make it this time. I was too tired. The lizard was too big. Too fast. I was about to become lunch.
A young boy with long dark hair, a wide smile, and wearing brightly colored board shorts swam past me. To my surprise, the lizard followed the boy into the cave. The boy had saved me, but my air was gone. I had no choice but to return to the surface, where I treaded water and kicked to get away from the rocks exactly like the panicked snorkeler had done at Lawai Beach.
I heard a voice over the crashing of the surf. “You stay off rocks, McKenna.”
“What the hell are you doing in my dream?”
Alexander’s long-dead grandfather Kimu gazed back at me from his koa wood longboard, confusion on his face. He shrugged. “No need you worry about dat now. You kinda my problem, I think.”
I reached for Kimu’s board, but he maneuvered away. A stray wave washed over my head. I came up coughing sea water out while sucking air into my lungs. Between sputters, I got out a few words. “Get me—out of this—damn ocean.”
Kimu started to paddle away. He glanced over his shoulder and waved. “What da kine? I already save you from big lizard. You gotta do something. Stay off ship.”
“Kimu. Kimu, come back! I’m sorry, I need help.”
But Kimu was gone. I was alone in the ocean with a large sailing ship straight out of the 1800s approaching. Protruding from the side of the ship was a long wooden plank. I saw a flag on the mast. A woman with raven hair and a billowy white shirt unbuttoned to the waist threw a rope into the water next to me. Could someone drown in a dream? Was this dream R-rated? Next to me, the rope floated. Above, the flag flew. The plank nearly touched the ocean. The ship was the Jolly Roger.
“Ahoy, love.”
I awoke with a start, got up and went to the bathroom. When I returned to the bedroom, I checked the time. It was 5:30 a.m. “Enough is enough,” I said to myself.
Whatever the dream meant was a mystery to me. There had been two pirates hanging over the side of the ship and offering to save me. One had looked much like Kong Lam. The woman had been incredibly hot in the white shirt—but I didn’t know anything more than she had long dark hair. It was just a stupid dream, the product of too much wine and too much fascination with legends. Forget going back to bed, it was time to leave the night behind and get on with the day.
The morning was uneventful. CJ was in a chipper mood—a distinct contrast to my own aura of exhaustion and anger. Somehow, it didn’t seem fair. She sinned; I got screwed. After I drove her to work, I dialed Kari’s number.
She answered on the third ring, sleep still in her voice. “Kari, McKenna. Sorry to wake you up. We didn’t get to talk about the necklace.”
“I couldn’t stand it. Those two fighting.”
“I understand. They were pretty intense. You sound tired.”
Her voice became stronger, filling my mind with a mental image of her stretching in bed. “I couldn’t sleep. You know, I kept seeing poor Kong and Lu going at each other. It was awful. Morah loved them both so much.”
We both remained silent for a few seconds, then she continued. �
�You’re calling about the pendant?”
“Yah.”
“I’ll give it to you. I hate to part with it, but it’s not right. You’ll turn it in—and keep me out of it?”
“Promise.”
“Can we meet in about an hour at Hanalima Baking Company? It’s not that far from where you said you were staying and it’s on my way to Poipu.”
“They probably don’t do gluten-free.”
“They have great malasadas.”
Malasadas are a Portuguese confection that resembles an oversized donut hole. They’re quite popular in Hawaii. Even though that little delicacy was off limits for me, if it would make Kari happy to treat herself, so be it.
I found the store without difficulty. It had a quaint plantation appearance with dark green paint accented by white trim. The welcoming atmosphere drew me in. So, here I sat, sipping another cup of coffee, waiting for the lady fair. I was about to give up when she burst through the front door. She gave me a girly smile and a wave, then strolled over to the counter. After she placed her order, she chatted with the girl at the counter for a few moments. When she had what I assumed was her breakfast, which consisted of three malasadas and a cup of coffee, she joined me.
She was dressed much like she had been the other day, bikini top, capris and sandals. This time, the top was bright red and the capris were khaki; the girl obviously could care less about executing a fashion faux paux. For all I knew, she dressed in the dark and chose her clothes by feel. She gave me a huge smile as she sat. “Hey.”
I smiled back. “Hey, yourself. You look happy.”
“This place is one of my favorites. I love these things.” She held one of the malasadas out for me to take. “Try it.”
“I can’t.”
“Sorry, I forgot.” She dug into the first one and closed her eyes. Her facial muscles relaxed as she absorbed the flavor. “Better than sex.” She smiled.
I swallowed the coffee, trying not to choke. I managed a quick, “Better?”
“Than any I’ve had lately.” She winked.
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