Mahu Surfer m-2

by Neil S. Plakcy

  The place was decorated in a style I can only describe as island Starbucks; the walls were painted with murals of coffee beans, called kope in Hawaiian, growing on bushes on the slopes of what looked like Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. There were two groups of overstuffed arm chairs, and a number of blond wood tables and chairs for the laptop set.

  Melody ordered a tall vanilla soy latte and I got their signature macadamia mocha latte in the longboard size, their largest. We snagged a pair of the comfortable chairs and settled down. She was dressed for work by then, a light yellow linen dress and sandals, a lei of shiny brown kukui nuts and a sports watch her only jewelry. With her tanned skin and her sun-bleached blonde hair, she could have been an advertisement for healthy summer living.

  Mana’o Company was playing low in the background, encouraging us to “Spread a Little Aloha” around the world, and in one corner of the room a bust of King Kamehameha surveyed us, an electric blue plastic lei around his neck.

  “So how long did you know Mike?” I asked, when we were settled.

  “About three years. He came to the halau right after he got to the North Shore, as part of his strength training.”

  Though most people think halau means a place you can learn to hula, it also means a long house for canoes. “How well did you know him?”

  Melody sipped her latte and considered. “Better than an acquaintance, not as well as a friend,” she said finally. “We talked a lot, and I heard all about his background, but I didn’t see him socially. Of course, you can’t help running into people up here; it really is a small world.”

  “I’ve heard he was a dedicated surfer.”

  “Fierce. It was what he lived to do. Everything else revolved around surfing. How he trained, who he hung out with, how he supported himself.”

  “How did he support himself?”

  She slipped one sandal off and twisted around so that leg was under her, smoothing the edges of the yellow linen dress. “Part of the reason why he came up here was because he met a shaper at some tournament who offered him a job,” Melody said.

  A shaper’s a guy who customizes surfboards by sanding, polishing and shaping standard boards.

  “Mike did the scut work, he called it, for this guy, Palani Anderson. Dragging boards around, cleaning up the mess, that kind of thing. He did that for about year, I guess, and then he started having breathing problems from the Fiberglas fumes so he had to stop.”

  “Bummer.”

  She nodded. “By then, though, Mike was good enough that he was able to start teaching. He worked out of the marina for a while, giving lessons, and then he started landing in the money at tournaments. His career was just taking off when he died.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  Melody had to think about that one. The foot that was still wearing a sandal tapped lightly on the floor. “It was just a couple of days before he was shot,” she said finally. “I remember he went down to Mexico for a tournament, and so I didn’t see him for a couple of weeks, but then he was back at the halau. I remember he got into a fight with Rich over something and it really disrupted practice.”

  “Rich is the guy who hates surfers?”

  Melody nodded. “He’s not a bad guy, you know, but he and Mike used to argue about property rights-whether the beaches should be free for everyone, you know, that sort of thing.” She waved her hand a little for emphasis, and I saw she had a small tattoo of a sun on the inside of her right wrist.

  “I heard Rich used to be a surfer himself. I’m surprised that his attitude changed so much.”

  “Well, he’s a security guard for this guy who owns a piece of beach, and he’s always chasing surfers away. I think some friend of Mike’s-maybe his girlfriend-was surfing there and Rich frightened her. So they got into an argument and we had to cancel the practice.”

  “And that was the last time Mike came to the halau?”

  She sipped her latte, thinking. “Yes, because I didn’t hear he’d been killed for a week, and I worried that he’d stopped coming to practice because of the argument.”

  She drained the last of her latte and patted her mouth with a napkin, then stood up and slipped her sandal back on. “I’ve gotta get to work. If you come back to the halau again for practice, I can introduce you to some of the other people who knew Mike.” She pulled a business card out of her purse and handed it to me. Her last name was Isaacson, and she worked for an investment firm in Honolulu.

  “Deal.” I stood up with her, cracking my back. “I got a good workout today.” I wanted to thank her for the information, but since I was playing it that I was helping her out all I could do was smile.

  I left Melody and headed back to Hibiscus House, where I showered and ate my Pop Tarts, thinking about my day. I decided I had to learn more about Mexpipe, which meant I had to find someone who had surfed there. I pulled out the printout I’d made the day before at The Next Wave of the top finishers, and scanned the names, looking for any I recognized.

  Pay dirt. My cousin Ben’s name was there. I made a point of keeping an eye out for him that morning at Pipeline, and when I saw him taking a break I went over to where he was hanging out on the beach with a couple of friends.

  He’s good-looking, in a scrawny, surfer way. There isn’t an ounce of fat on his six-foot something body, and he wears his black hair loose, down to his shoulders. His father was a haole Aunt Pua married in a quickie ceremony in Vegas, who left her life, and our family circle, shortly after Ben was born. So, like me, Ben has just a slight epicanthic fold around his eyes, and his skin takes a tan well.

  “Yo, cuz, how’s it going?” he said as I came up. “You guys know my cousin Kimo?” he said to his friends.

  We nodded all around. “You got a minute?” I asked. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

  “Sure.” He and I walked down the beach a little to a refreshment shack, where we both got bottles of water. “Your folks still upset about what happened to you?” Ben asked, as we sat down on benches overlooking the water.

  “Pretty much. I talk to them every night and you know my mother, she’s full of ideas for me.”

  He laughed. “Boy, I know that. You should hear my mother talk.”

  “I never imagine Aunt Pua as the type to tell anybody how to run his life.”

  “That’s because you’re not her son. That laid-back act is for the rest of the world. Not for me. She keeps telling me I could be teaching surfing at a resort and making good money.”

  “My mother keeps telling me things like when the next LSAT test is. ‘You can still go to law school,’ she says. ‘Lots of people go back to school in their thirties.’”

  “Man, those two will never change,” Ben said, shaking his head. “So what’s on your mind, dude?”

  “You went to Mexpipe, didn’t you?”

  “Sure. Did better than I expected, not as good as I hoped.”

  “What’s it like?”

  He took a swig from his water bottle. “Zicatela’s the beach that everybody surfs. Six to fifteen foot ground swells; lots of tubes. Wipeouts can be really bad. There’s this break called the Point, and you can get some long, fast, challenging rides.”

  “How’s Mexpipe itself?”

  “Lots of good surfers show up, and the waves can be awesome.” He shifted around on his bench. “Big party scene, too.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Toga party, bikini contest-I mean, they try to make it fun.”

  “Lot of drugs down there?”

  He nodded. “I don’t do anything more than pot, and never when I’m in a competition, but you could get anything you wanted there. Just had to walk around the town for a few minutes and somebody would try to sell you something.”

  “I’m trying to track down some people who were there-maybe you knew them. Mike Pratt, Lucie Zamora, Ronald Chang.”

  Ben narrowed his eyes at me. It was obvious that he recognized the names and had an idea of why I was interested in them. “I th
ought you were done being a cop.”

  I shrugged. “Old habits die hard.”

  Ben considered that. “I knew Mike Pratt pretty well,” he said finally. “Interesting guy. Really good surfer-I think he was just about to make a name for himself. He got in with this weird crowd in Mexico, though.”

  “Weird how?”

  “This Christian surfing ministry-they run a cafe at the main surfing beach down there, and they have Bible study sessions at this place called El Refugio. Now, I’m not against any religion-I figure, you want to believe, man, more power to you.”

  He stopped to take another swig from the water bottle. “But Mike, man, he really took it to heart. Then when we got back, he started bitching about his board not being right. You ask me, it’s his head that wasn’t right.”

  “You ever see him hang out with Lucie or Ronnie?”

  “A couple times, I saw him with Lucie. But you know, she didn’t really belong there-she wasn’t good enough. I think she was just there for the party. The other guy-Ronnie-I just met him once or twice because he was with other people from the North Shore. He was a total wannabe.”

  He drained the last of his water. “I gotta get back. You gonna be around for a while?”

  “For a while.”

  “Cool. See you around, then.” He gave me a shaka and walked back toward his friends.

  Ben had seen Mike and Lucie talking to each other at a party. It didn’t mean that they were best friends, or involved together in some way, but it was a start.

  Coach Tex

  I surfed all day Saturday, hoping to see Trish. Though I talked to a bunch of surfers, I didn’t learn anything new, and I was starting to get discouraged. Once I actually heard the word “faggot” muttered under someone’s breath-but I couldn’t tell who had said it. I was discovering information, but very slowly, and that was frustrating. By late afternoon, I was beat. Though I had surfed regularly in Waikiki, that was nothing compared to the punishment I was putting my body through. I couldn’t even keep my promise to get out for meals-I stopped at Fujioka’s and bought some takeout sushi, and nearly fell asleep eating it.

  Sunday morning, I put on my wetsuit and walked out into the pre-dawn darkness, dragging my board with me. I couldn’t help thinking about the murders as I surfed. Usually the water is the place where I can put everything else aside, but knowing that all three victims had been surfers somehow connected the act of surfing with their deaths, making it impossible for me to forget them.

  I surfed most of the day, resting between waves, scanning the sand for Trish and talking to whoever passed by. I had a burrito for lunch, bought from a roach coach that drove past around noon playing a complicated tune on its horn. By around three o’clock, I gave up, and after a quick shower back at Hibiscus House I drove over to The Next Wave, hoping that Dario had the day off.

  Either he did, or he was holed up in his office the whole time. I was grateful, and it allowed me to focus on doing more computer searching. I already knew a lot about Mike Pratt, so I decided to spend some time on the other two. I knew it would be hard to zero in on someone with as common a name as Chang, but I wanted to give it a shot.

  After a number of fruitless searches, I found a site from Lahainaluna High School in Lahaina which listed winners of a science fair. One Ronald Chang had won second prize for a case study of how one could hack into the school’s computer system and change student grades. Chang’s photo, which was close enough for my purposes to the one I’d seen in his dossier, clinched the deal for me.

  There was a little note on the web page thanking Mr. Chang for his insight, which resulted in a total revamp of the school’s computer grading system. If Ronnie could do that at 16, I thought, what was he capable of at 25?

  I went back to the dossiers on the dead surfers. Ronnie Chang was a computer technician for a firm in Honolulu, and the investigating detectives had spoken to his co-workers, but as far as I could tell, no one had spoken to his family or friends back in Maui. I wondered about that, and sent a quick email to Lieutenant Sampson asking if there had been a reason why not.

  There was almost nothing online about Lucie Zamora, other than her name on the roster of a couple of surfing tournaments. The original detectives had run all three surfers through the police system, checking for arrests, warrants, and other malfeasance, and all three had come up clean.

  My brother Lui emailed that he still felt bad about running the stories on me, even though both the series on gay cops around the country, which ran while I was suspended, and the series on coming out, which ran during my first week on the North Shore, got great ratings and great viewer feedback. He suggested that a big family luau at Waimea Bay Beach Park might make me feel better.

  I replied by saying I’d only agree if I could challenge him and Haoa to a surf contest, and I copied the entire family on the message.

  My older brothers had been great surfers in their day. Neither had pushed it as far as I had, but both were good, and both still kept their boards in their garages, though I doubted either had been on the water for years. My father even promised that he would join us for a wave or two if we would all go out together. I could just imagine what my mother thought of that idea, but as my father got older, he never missed a chance to hang out with his boys.

  Sampson must have been online himself that afternoon, because I got an email back almost immediately, authorizing me to fly to Maui to talk to people about Ronnie Chang. It wasn’t a big deal; an inter-island flight takes about half an hour, and the round trip, with a rental car, would be under $200. I was able to get a reservation for the next morning, which meant I needed to be at the airport in Honolulu early. I decided to drive down that night and sleep in my own bed-but I didn’t tell my family or friends, because I didn’t want to have to come up with yet another lie.

  It was strange pulling into my own parking lot, climbing the stairs to my own little studio apartment. I had only been away for two weeks, but I had immersed myself so much in my new life on the North Shore that I almost felt like I didn’t belong back in Honolulu. Or maybe it was that I knew I didn’t belong back there until I had solved the murders.

  I had been waking before sunrise every day, so the next morning I was able to make it to the airport in plenty of time for my flight. The Hawaiian Airlines agent recognized my name at the gate and winked at me, but that was the extent of my notoriety. I figured I had finally slid out of the newspapers, and I was able to settle back into a bit of anonymity.

  I got into Kapalua-West Maui Airport on the Valley Isle a little after ten. I had a list of things to check out-Ronald Chang’s high school, and his parents’ restaurant, for starters. I was also going to cruise a couple of surf shops, looking for anyone who might have known him.

  I took the Honoapiilani Highway, which circles around West Maui, down to Lahaina, where I was looking for Victor Texeira, the computer science teacher at Lahainaluna High. I was somewhat surprised to discover, when I asked at the office for him, that I was directed to the gym, rather than to a computer lab.

  There was only one teacher in the gym when I stuck my head in there, a very fit guy in very tight clothes, with a whistle around his neck. When one of the kids called him, “Coach Tex,” I was even more confused.

  “Can I help you?” he asked, coming over to me. “You guys do two laps, then hit the showers,” he called to the kids, who promptly took off around the perimeter of the gym.

  I gave him my name, and he said, “I’m Victor Texeira.” He smiled. “The kids call me Coach Tex, as you heard.”

  I had worked out a story in advance. I explained that I was a former homicide detective, and that I’d been asked to look into a series of murders that had occurred on the North Shore. All that was true. I have discovered, in years of listening to lies and pulling them apart, that those lies which are most closely rooted in truth are the easiest ones to maintain.

  One of the victims had been Ronnie Chang, his former student, I continued. “I’m a li
ttle confused, though,” I said. “I thought from what I read online that you taught computer science.”

  “I do, one class. Mostly I’m the gym teacher, though.” He motioned to a room at one corner of the gym with glass windows looking out on the floor. “Come on into my office and I’ll explain.”

  I followed him, noting privately how his little gym shorts hugged his ass, the way his pecs and biceps bulged out of the skin-tight polo shirt he wore. I was pretty sure he was straight; he wore a wedding band and one of those little Jesus fish pins at his collar. Even so, I rarely saw a straight man dress so provocatively. I could even tell he was wearing a jock strap under his shorts-that’s how tight they were.

  “I want you to know, I’m not normally the type of guy to speak ill of the dead,” he said, opening the door to the office and motioning me inside. “But in this case, I’ll make an exception.”

  “Tell me how you knew Ronald Chang,” I said, sitting across from his desk. The room was lined with trophies, certificates and commendations, including pictures of Coach Tex with the governor and both state senators.

  “It was my first year here,” he said, sitting. “I was hired as a coach, but the state had just installed this email system for us, and they needed somebody to administer it. I had just graduated from UH, and I’d lived in a computer-equipped dorm, so that made me the most qualified.”

  “Ronald Chang was a student then? How old was he?”

  “He was a junior,” Texeira said. “Ringleader of a bunch of kids who didn’t take gym seriously. Every day they’d come in with obviously faked excuses-recovering from a cold, can’t get overheated, that kind of thing. Then on the weekend I’d see them all at Breakwall or Shark Pit, surfing like there was nothing wrong with them.”

  I knew Breakwall and Shark Pit, both decent surfing spots in Lahaina. “That must have pissed you off,” I said.

  “It did. So one day I decided I’d get even. I came up with a bunch of exercises designed specifically for surfing. Nothing elaborate-your standard strength conditioning, flexibility and so on, but I packaged it right. I waited to collect everybody’s excuses, then I announced this special program all week. But anybody who was sick that day couldn’t start, and would have to miss the whole week.”