I laid him down on the deck, the hardwood awash with his blood and some of mine. The pain from my wounds had not yet come but I knew it would. I felt a little woozy, and debated whether to call Chawlie first or to call the cops. The decision was made for me. Two squad cars pulled up at the end of the dock, their bubble machine lights revolving, flashing a circumference of blue light over the marina restaurant and the yachts.
I knew they would be nervous, and they would have their survival at the top of their agendas, so I left the .22 where it was, unloaded my .45, locked back the slide, and placed the pistol on the teak tabletop. I switched on the spreader lights, opened the hatch and stood on the deck, my hands in the air, my bleeding wounds all too visible, and waited in the cool evening breeze for the officers to make their way down the length of the dock to my slip.
I wondered if I could reach Tala Sufai this evening.
I wondered if I should bother Kimo with my problems.
And I wondered why peace, when it comes to me, only comes in infinitesimal chunks.
56
In the weeks that followed, the official agencies issued their findings, blaming the murder of Professor Hayes on Ricky Lee and Felix Chen. Both men were dead, themselves casualties of what the Advertiser labeled as tragic gangland executions. I was not mentioned in the newspapers this time, much to the credit of Chawlie and Daniel Choy, who exerted an undefined amount of unofficial pressure on the members of the fourth estate to keep my name out of print. The hunt for the murderers continued, according to the local media, who issued broad hints that the second worst crime spree in the state’s recent history was the result of a difference of opinion on the distribution of profits derived from the sale and distribution of unauthorized pharmaceuticals.
The official also gave me a free pass on the killing of Felix Chen. This time self-defense was ruled as a permissible offense. In Hawaii, at least.
James came home from the hospital after a month of skin grafts and operations on the leg that had been kissed by Pele. He would always bear the scar. Tutu Mae called it an honor and a sacred burden.
Using James’s newfound wisdom, Tutu Mae took over the name of the former group, calling it the Silversword Alliance. The group’s new function was educational and spiritual, dedicated to preserving the culture and history of the Hawaiian people. That they took a more genteel path from the previous group did not change the fact that they espoused the same goal. Hawaii, they affirmed, should in fact belong to the Hawaiian people. Somehow I felt better hearing Tutu Mae saying that than someone like Ricky Lee.
David eventually went back to California. Already late for classes, he was intent on petitioning his professors for late admission, something he assured me would be feasible, especially when his role in the summer’s activities eventually came out in the press.
All in all he seemed to have come through his adventure with his sense of humor intact. He and Donna came to visit me before he flew home. I noted that they were still holding hands.
“Mother sends her regards,” he said, “and her gratitude.”
“Then you didn’t tell her what you really did.”
“Not all of it,” he said, his mouth in a wry twist. “Thank you for showing me some great diving in Hawaii. This was supposed to be a summer of leisure. This lady,” he indicated Donna, “made me work like a slave.”
“Come back anytime.”
He stared at Donna when he answered me. “Oh, I will. I’ll come back often.”
“Stay out of caves and volcanoes.”
He nodded.
“And sunken ships.”
“You can depend on that.”
Donna later kissed him good-bye and returned to her cloistered office provided by the university. They knew what she had. She had shared it with them, in all its glorious detail. Her doctorate assured, as well as her future, the university president who had been shepherding her project in the absence of Professor Hayes provided her with everything a graduate student could have wanted.
She had an office. Well, sort of an office, she told me. They gave her a table in a corner of a room in a basement, the room largely dedicated to the storage of film and video and image retrieval equipment. She had to edit and catalog thousands of images of the tomb and the site. A doctoral candidate, she had no assistants other than her sisters. That suited the university. The Wong sisters had worked together at the site and now they labored in another underground chamber to prepare Donna’s initial report.
It would be initial because what she had discovered was not just a find, it was the foundation of an international career. I wondered about her decision not to take the bone sample. That way it would have been a sure thing. The way she explained it, DNA testing would have assured the identity of the skeleton. Now it would always be conjecture. Now the world would never be certain just who had been buried with all that treasure. But I understood the reason for her decision. Scattering the bones would have demonstrated extreme disrespect, and might have caused outrage in these peaceful islands. That would have gone against every precept that she held. She was right. Some things are not meant to be done. Because we can does not mean that we should.
Even without a positive identity the find was earth shaking. The university president persuaded the magazine to quash Hayes’s pending article, managing to do so by a combination of threats and promises. Donna would announce her initial findings in the same publication when she was ready, and under her own name. She would share the credit with only one other person. And Tutu Mae didn’t even know it yet. That was Donna’s surprise, recognition for Tutu Mae’s contributions. Donna told me, but swore me to secrecy.
Hualalai, the little volcano that erupted just enough to blanket a mysterious tomb with thirty feet of solid rock, quieted down after Madam Pele had achieved her goal. If the bones were those of her darling, The Lonely One would never be disturbed again. Not after she had displayed such obvious displeasure. Donna’s photographs, drawings and video would be the only record of his final resting place.
I did a lot of reading as the summer turned to fall. Not that there’s much of a difference here. In October, the golden plovers begin returning from Alaska, and Hawaii is only two hours behind the West Coast instead of three when their daylight saving time expires for another year. The hurricane season has one more month, but aside from that there is very little change. Tourists still crowd the hotels and the sandy beaches. The sun still plays its light upon the pale blue water. Trade Winds tease the palm trees on any given afternoon. And rainbows still grace the Waianaes every morning and the Ko’olaus every afternoon.
As I said, I did a lot of reading. The doctors had been right. Diving with open incisions had not been a good idea. After they had treated me for minor gunshot wounds, I came down with a vicious systemic infection. I spent three weeks in Tripler, the great pink army hospital that attended wounded American soldiers and veterans for more than just a few wars and “police actions.” I’d been there before, and it was where I went when I realized I was very sick. I parked my Jeep in the long-term lot, shuffled to the front counter, showed the nice admissions lady my identification and reported that I was probably suffering from a variety of infections and parasites, that I had been a sailor, and that they should not treat me for that malady alone.
The doctors didn’t give me much of a chance, as weakened as I was with my injuries and surgeries, and at one point a well-meaning chaplain leaned over my bed and asked in concerned but plummy tones what my religious affiliation was. The man gave a visible start when I said, “Epicurean.”
Finally it became apparent to everyone, including the disappointed chaplain, that I was not going to die.
Shortly after David returned to California I checked out of Tripler, walked over to my Jeep and tried to start the engine only to find that the battery had died. I shrugged, appreciating the ability to enjoy the view of a magnificent double rainbow. Better the battery than me. I called a taxi to take me home. The Jeep would be ther
e when I needed it.
Daniel met me at my dock. Olympia floated at her slip, forlorn and lonely, reminding me of her terrible neglect. I sighed, gazed longingly at my home, remembered that duty to friends was a man’s highest duty, nodded, and climbed into the back of the Cadillac SUV double-parked in the lot above the Marina Restaurant.
“It would have been easier if you’d just called and asked me to come directly to Chinatown,” I told him as the driver goosed the Caddie up the Nimitz Viaduct.
“I just follow orders,” he said without inflection. His voice would always have that raspy quality. He would always sound as menacing and as dangerous as he really was.
“You shouldn’t use a company car when you fill your special orders,” I said.
He looked at me sideways. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You called me and told me to get out of there. Right after the place was shot up and burned.”
“Yeah, I called you. But that was just to tell you that your hotel room was a hole, man. I wanted you to come back to the suite at the Royal.”
“Sure it was, Daniel.”
He stared at me impassively. Chawlie would have been proud. Of all of Chawlie’s sons, Daniel was most like his father. When I looked at Daniel I sometimes wondered if Chawlie had been as tough and as silent as this young man when he was his age.
“Okay.” I leaned back into the leather seat and closed my eyes. “You know what this is about?”
He shrugged.
Sometimes it’s best just to let things flow the way they are going to flow. Sometimes talking to Daniel is like talking to a granite boulder. Except you might get more information from the boulder.
The Cadillac stopped in front of Chawlie’s restaurant and I climbed out and tottered across the sidewalk.
Daniel ushered me into Chawlie’s den and backed out, leaving the two of us alone in his father’s private quarters.
I found Chawlie elaborately fussing with another elm bonsai, a perfect living miniature the same shape as one of its larger cousins. Fascinated, I watched him prune and prick it, carefully grooming the plant the way one would groom an expensive pet.
“We are alone,” he said, not looking up from his task. “Sit down.”
I found a pillow and gingerly planted myself. Nothing worked exactly right just yet.
“You have had a hard year, John Caine,” said Chawlie, when he had finished his task.
“I’ve had better.”
“And worse, I would imagine.”
The fever almost killed me when the gunshots did not. The State of California did their best to put me away. As did a couple of malcontents who saw me as a roadblock to their success. And then there was the volcano. But all in all, things could have gone much worse. “Yes, Chawlie,” I said. “I’ve had worse.”
“I am concerned about you. I know what you do when you are hurt. You go into hiding until you are better. I knew that if I did not not see you before you became a hermit I would not see you for months. Maybe more. You must rest.”
“Now I try to get my strength back.”
“It will not be easy,” he said, and I heard echoes of another conversation I had had before, unsure of where, or with whom.
“It’s not easy being me, old friend.”
He smiled. “Nor is it easy being Chawlie.”
“How is Gilbert doing?”
Chawlie’s eyes twinkled. “They report that he is doing well, given the circumstances.”
When Chawlie had learned that his son had planned to assassinate his brother for succession to the throne, he had not done what I had expected of him. In the past he would have killed the young man, but Chawlie was evolving, or attaining enlightenment or wisdom, and he did something so out of character that I had to have Daniel repeat Gilbert’s sentence twice before I understood what he had done.
Gilbert was a thoroughly Americanized young man, typical of second-generation immigrants. Princeton and Yale educated, Cornell hotel school, Wharton School of Business, Chawlie had invested a fortune in the young man’s training. But the old Chawlie would have had him killed for far less, I knew. I had been there when he had dispatched another son to his fate when he had become an embarrassment to the family.
But not now. Chawlie had invested heavily in casinos and hotels in Saipan, down near Guam, and he needed an assistant night manager, one of the more menial jobs available. He sent Gilbert down there to take the position. “For a few years,” he said. “He will not get a vacation, he will not come home, he will work sixteen hours a day, seven days a week until he learns the business of the family. The business of the family is not killing one’s brother. That is no way to succeed.”
Deep down I was glad that Chawlie had begun to mellow. I also had a random thought that Daniel would have dispatched his brother without a second thought, and that, perhaps, was the main reason he was the natural heir to the family fortune. Gilbert would not get his hands dirty. Hiring others, even talented others, was not the same. Chawlie’s interests sometimes required hands-on problem solving, like the night Ricky Lee and his associates died in the bar fire in Waialua.
“Are you still going to China?” I asked.
“Not yet. I will. Someday. But not just yet. Will you retire?”
“I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”
His eyes crinkled and he opened his mouth in silent laughter. “That is a big joke, John Caine. All this trouble. Because I said I wanted to live in China. I send architects to build me a house in Hong Kong. So oldest son thinks that I am going to name another as head of the family. And now that I am faced with going to China, now that I have my new home, I do not want to go. Like you, John Caine, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”
Chawlie laughed until tears rolled down his cheeks.
“You see the joke?” he asked.
“People died, Chawlie.”
“Gilbert is paying for it. He will be in exile for many years.”
“And that’s enough?”
Chawlie looked at me with his little obsidian eyes, his face expressionless. “It will have to be. Better I punish him than anyone else. The world is in balance. I will not lose another son.”
57
The awful dream, my companion for nearly three decades, had come to me again while I was in the hospital. At Tripler, where they had seen their share of battlefield trauma, the night nurse recognized it for what it was and mentioned my experience to the local physician serving with the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The Center is a network of research sites based at Veterans Administration hospitals around the country, where our nation has deposited many of those who cannot manage to rid themselves of the horrors they experienced. People who are regularly tortured by a sudden reliving of that single, defining moment that changed their lives forever.
People like me.
Dr. Goldman, the PTSD psychiatrist, spent some time with me before I left the hospital and asked me to come back afterward. I had enough to do on the outside making repairs to Olympia and getting physically healthy, and was reluctant to return. I wanted to end this thing, but I didn’t want to attend a group. I couldn’t see myself sitting around a circle of folding chairs sipping coffee from a paper cup and sharing my story with a group of strangers. I also had the vague feeling that my story would be written up somewhere and published in some obscure medical journal. I didn’t want to be under a microscope. I didn’t want to share my innermost thoughts and feelings with people I hardly knew. I wanted to lose this nightmare, but there had to be other ways to do it.
Finally, after the dream had come two nights in a row, I called Dr. Goldman and made a private appointment. He agreed to have me come in alone for a private consultation.
“Just to talk,” I said.
He chuckled. “That’s mainly what we do here.”
His office was a tiny cubicle at the end of the fifth floor. He had no couch, he said, because he had no room. Metal bookshelves l
ined two walls, crammed with books. They weren’t just stacked, they were stuffed in in all directions, vertically and horizontally, and in no particular order. A small, bright carpet covered the vinyl asbestos tile floor. Dr. Goldman sat at his desk, a battered government-issue model for GS-6 assistants. He offered me a chair next to the desk.
“Be it ever so humble,” he said, smiling.
“You go to ground here,” I said.
His eyes brightened. “You are perceptive, Commander Caine.”
“John. I haven’t been Commander in a long time. And it was only Lieutenant Commander, at that.”
“Have it your way. I’m a captain, and I like being a captain. Got the white eagle on my windshield and a good parking spot at the driving range. What more could I want?”
“And in Hawaii, too.”
He nodded. “Would you like some coffee?”
“No thanks.”
“You’re still having the dream?”
“More often lately, I didn’t have it for years at a time. It was a nuisance, nothing more. Lately it’s gotten out of hand.”
“Tell me,” he said, and I did, explaining my life, giving him the short version. He nodded encouragement when I hit the rough spots—when I spoke of Jayne and Kate and Angel—and his eyes widened in disbelief when I explained how I had made my living. I highlighted the shootings, the fights, and the pitched battles in Mexico and Kauai. Coming face to face with monsters had been the way I had lived. I had sought out the violence. If trouble didn’t come looking for me I had gone looking for it. And I had found it, time after time after time.
“You’ve just described to me one of the classic responses to PTSD. Let’s discuss that for a moment. Aside from your violent history, you seem to be an intelligent man, and there’s no need to be evasive with you. We know the cause of PTSD. It is learned fearfulness. It is the most intense kind of learned fearfulness. Its source can be personal tragedy, a mugging, or a rape, or it can have its genesis in a natural disaster, such as an earthquake or a fire. In your case it was the imminent loss of your life. Let me ask you, you felt helpless at that moment? That precise instant when you awake from your dream?”
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