“For the better, I hope,” Kai said.
“I hope so too,” Bean said as a familiar-looking red Jeep pulled into the parking lot. “But at this particular moment I have serious doubts.”
The Jeep pulled next to the hearse. Goldilocks, the guy with the long bleached-blond dreadlocks, waved at them to join him.
“Here we go.” Kai reached for the door handle.
“Whoopee-do,” Bean grumbled.
They got out of the hearse and walked over to the Jeep.
“Get in,” Goldilocks said.
Bean reached for the back to climb in, but Kai got there first and gave him a look as if he wanted Bean to sit in the front. Bean frowned, but did it. Goldilocks pulled the Jeep out of the parking lot and got on Seaside Drive heading toward Belle Harbor. Kai felt the wind on his face as the Jeep cruised down the road.
“So you guys like to surf, huh?” Goldilocks asked over the wind noise.
“Yeah,” Kai answered. “How about you?”
“I do a little surfing, but I’m more of a collector and trader,” Goldilocks answered. He slowed the Jeep down and then made a left off Seaside Drive onto a narrower, paved road. The road formed a boundary between a forest of oak and pine to the right, and a wide field of grass on the left. Kai thought it must have been a sod farm. Goldilocks pulled the Jeep onto the shoulder of the road. Kai and Bean watched silently while he reached into a glove compartment and pulled out two blue bandannas.
“Around your eyes, dudes.” Goldilocks handed the bandannas to Bean and Kai.
“We going to your secret spot?” Kai asked.
“Just put them on,” Goldilocks said.
Kai and Bean pulled the bandannas over their eyes and tied them in the back. When the Jeep lurched back onto the road, it caught Kai by surprise, and he quickly grabbed for a handhold and started to count silently.
After a while Kai felt the Jeep slow down and make a right turn. The ride became a lot bumpier and the Jeep lurched and rattled loudly. Kai was pretty sure they were on a dirt road. He started counting again, and stopped when they slowed and made a left. Then he started once again. This part of the ride was even bumpier, and with his eyes covered by the bandanna Kai began to feel woozy with each unexpected bounce and drop.
Finally the Jeep stopped.
“Okay, take ’em off,” Goldilocks said.
Kai pulled the bandanna off. They were deep in the woods. The spaces between the trees were thick with brush. It seemed to Kai that they were in a place where few people generally ventured. It was quiet. As dusk approached, the air was still and the sunlight was beginning to drain away.
Without a word Goldilocks started into the woods. Kai and Bean followed. At first Kai couldn’t tell where they were headed, but then he saw a small green wooden shed with a sagging roof, nestled in the trees.
Goldilocks stopped and pulled some keys out of his pocket. The old wooden doors were held together with a locked latch, which he released, allowing the doors to swing open.
Except for the thin bars of light that seeped in through cracks and gaps in the walls, it was dark inside the shed. There was barely enough light for Kai to see that the dozen or so surfboards lying on their rails inside were almost certainly the same ones he’d first seen in Curtis’s shed a few months before. He recognized the light blue Bruce Jones, the plain off-white Rusty, and the custom boards that appeared to have no markings whatsoever.
Kai stepped closer and carefully leaned one of the plain custom boards back so that he could see the stringer. There were the letters TL and #174. The board next to it was #239. So all these years Curtis had been collecting Teddy’s boards. Somehow Kai wasn’t surprised.
“What do you think?” Goldilocks said.
“These things are beautiful,” Kai said. “So you just collected them over the years?”
“Sort of, yeah,” Goldilocks said.
“Where’s the good breaks around here?” Kai asked innocently.
“What do you mean, breaks?” Goldilocks asked.
Kai shot Bean a quick look. What kind of surfer didn’t know what a break was?
“I meant, where do you surf around here?” Kai asked.
“Oh, you know, up and down the beach.”
Kai ran his fingers down the rail of the Bruce Jones board as if he was admiring it. “They got a surf shop in Belle Harbor?”
“Naw, most people go over to that place in Sun Haven,” Goldilocks said.
“Sun Haven Surf?” Kai pretended to act surprised.
“Yeah, that’s it.”
Kai spoke to Bean. “You know who’d love to take a look at these boards? Buzzy.”
Goldilocks didn’t react.
“You know Buzzy?” Kai asked him.
Goldilocks shook his head. Either the guy was a really good actor, or Kai’s hunch that Buzzy Frank was somehow involved in the theft of Curtis’s boards was going down the toilet fast. It was Bean who came to his rescue.
“Know who else would love to get his hands on these?” he said. “Big Dave McAllister.”
“The guy who runs the board room?” Kai said, watching Goldilocks out of the corner of his eye.
“Yeah.”
This time Kai caught the flicker in Goldilocks’s eye. If you weren’t looking for it, you might not have noticed. But there was no missing the abrupt change in the guy’s attitude.
“So look, what’s the story here?” he asked, suddenly impatient. “Are we gonna make a deal? You gonna buy a board or what?”
“Know what I’d really like to do?” Kai said. “I’d really like to get Big Dave over here to see these things. He’d know what they were worth.”
“Hey, screw Big Dave, okay?” Goldilocks snarled. “You guys surf. You don’t need him to know what a good board looks like. And he’d say the same thing.”
Kai pretended to be confused. “You know Big Dave?”
“Uh … No, never heard of him,” Goldilocks said. “So what’s the deal? You want a board or not?”
“Do I want one?” Kai repeated. “Sure. But I don’t know what they’re worth, so how do I know what to pay?”
“How much money do you have?” Goldilocks asked.
“Man, these are nice boards,” Kai said. “I’m sure I don’t have enough.”
“How much?” Goldilocks pressed.
Kai felt himself being backed into a corner. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know how much money you have?”
“Well, I … I didn’t really bring any,” Kai said.
Goldilocks turned to Bean. “You’re the one with the money?”
“Forty or fifty bucks,” Bean answered.
“What the fuck?” Goldilocks sputtered. “You guys came here to look at these boards, but you didn’t bring enough money to buy one? So why’d you come?”
Kai shot Bean a look, as if he desperately needed help with an answer.
“Hey, don’t look at him,” Goldilocks said. “What’s going on here? What do you guys want?”
“Boards,” Bean said in a quavering voice.
“For forty or fifty bucks?” Goldilocks said. “You knew that wasn’t enough.”
“I … I was scared,” Bean said.
Goldilocks frowned. “Of what?”
“That you were gonna rip us off,” Bean said.
“Like how did we know this wasn’t a scam?” Kai asked, following Bean’s lead. “Maybe you were gonna take us all the way out here into the woods and rob us.”
Strangely, this admission helped calm Goldilocks down. “I gotcha. So I’d bring you out here, take your money and leave you.” He seemed to like the idea that Kai and Bean thought he was a badass dude. “So now what? We go back to your car, right? Because that’s where you left the money?”
Kai and Bean glanced at each other. They both shook their heads.
“The money’s not in the car?” Goldilocks asked, confused.
“What would have stopped you from taking us back to the car and robbi
ng us there?” Kai asked.
Instead of answering, Goldilocks pulled the shed doors closed and relocked the latch. “Okay, let’s go.”
Once again they were blindfolded. This time the ride was faster and bumpier. Sitting in the back, Kai felt as if he would have been bounced clear out of the Jeep if he hadn’t held on.
It wasn’t long before they were back in the parking lot at 88s. By now the sun had turned reddish orange and had dropped close to the horizon. Kai and Bean climbed out of the Jeep. In the deepening light, Kai could see that Bean looked a bit green after the bumpy, blindfolded ride.
“Okay,” Goldilocks said. “So you’ve seen the boards. Next time I hear from you guys, it’s gonna be because you’ve got the money, right? Otherwise, don’t waste my fricken time.”
The Jeep’s wheels screeched and spun, spitting back loose gravel. Goldilocks took off, leaving a cloud of dust and exhaust.
“You okay?” Kai asked Bean.
“Great,” Bean grumbled, reaching for the hearse’s door. “Just great.”
Kai got in on the passenger side and Bean started to drive back toward Sun Haven. Kai’s friend had a sour look on his face. “That’s the end, dude,” he said. “I mean it. I hate dealing with creeps like that. Don’t ever ask me to do something like that again, understand?”
“I thought we made a good team,” Kai said as he opened the glove compartment and started hunting through the paperbacks.
“Team? What are you talking about? You’re insane. Reality check. We are not a team, get it? No way am I ever dealing with a creep like Goldilocks again. Ever!”
“Got a piece of paper?” Kai asked.
“Any piece of paper?” Bean asked. “Or a certificate of insanity? Because you are certifiable, know that? And so am I for going along with you.”
“Hey, two peas in a pod.” Kai tore a blank sheet from the back of one of the paperback books. “Got a pen?”
“Writing a will?” Bean asked.
“Chill, Bean, we found out what we needed to know, and we got away unhurt,” Kai said. “I’d say the mission was a success. Now, seriously, a pen?”
Bean reached up to the sun visor. On the other side was a plastic pocket with some pens and pencils. He handed one to Kai. “Mission? Dude, this isn’t a video game. That Goldilocks is one serious badass and he’s not—”
Kai pressed a finger to his lips. “Quiet. I have to remember.”
“Remember what?”
“Where we were and how we got there.” Kai started to write.
“What are you talking about?” Bean said. “We were blindfolded.”
“I know.” Kai started to write down each turn they’d made and how long he’d counted between them.
“What are you doing?” Bean asked suspiciously.
“Writing down the directions.”
“Directions?”
“Yeah,” Kai said. “For when we go back.”
Four
Bean was silent for the rest of the ride to Sun Haven. By the time they got there, the sun was well below the horizon and it was getting dark.
“This is the last time I’m gonna say this,” Bean said as they cruised into town. “You’re a great guy and a good friend, but I’ve had it with the cops and robbers stuff. It’s over, done, finished. Next time, find someone else to risk his life, because I’ve retired.”
He pulled the hearse to the curb and stopped. “Here you go.”
Kai looked out the window. They were in front of T-licious. For a second Kai didn’t recognize the place.
“You didn’t tell me your old man was getting into the surf clothes business,” Bean said.
Kai stared at the storefront. He hadn’t told Bean because he didn’t know himself. The store not only had a new look, but a new name. It was no longer T-licious Custom T-shirts. It was now T-licious Discount Surf Wear and Custom T-shirts. Displayed in the window were long-sleeved T-shirts and rash guards from some of the top surf apparel companies like Roxy, Hurley, Quiksilver, and Billabong. In addition, stuck here and there to the glass were bright red stickers proclaiming SALE! OVERRUNS! OFF-PRICE! MANUFACTURER’S SECONDS! DEEP DISCOUNTS!
Looking through the window and into the shop, Kai saw plenty of customers picking through the racks and displays. Most were kids.
He reached for the hearse’s door handle, then looked back at Bean. “I really appreciate your help.”
“Oh, yeah?” Bean said. “Well, please show your appreciation by never asking me to do anything like that again.”
Kai smiled. “Did anyone ever tell you that you’re cute when you’re angry?”
“Get out,” Bean growled.
“Catch you later?” Kai asked.
“Sorry, I’ve got plans,” Bean said. “Non-life-threatening ones, for a change.”
Kai got out of the hearse, walked across the sidewalk and stepped into the shop. Dick Dale’s “Miserlou,” the anthem of 1960s California surf culture, was playing on a boom box. It was clear that Pat had jumped on the surf craze bandwagon that was currently selling millions of dollars of surf apparel to kids in landlocked states thousands of miles from the ocean who wouldn’t have known a beer keg from a board skeg.
Even more amazing, there was actually a line to the cash register where Pat was merrily ringing up sales while Sean rushed to and from the back office where, Kai assumed, he was running off extra credit card slips for Pat’s “business associates” in Nevada.
Kai caught his father’s eye, but knew better than to interrupt him when he was doing business. The Alien Frog Beast gave his son a hard look, and Kai knew he was ticked off that he hadn’t been around that evening to assist in the scam. Kai wandered over to a rack loaded with rash guards. He still hadn’t been able to scrape together the money to buy one for himself, and instead had been surfing bare-chested or in a T-shirt. The one he liked at Sun Haven Surf, an aqua blue polyolefin/spandex long-sleeve made by O’Neill, was listed at close to seventy-five dollars—far more than he could afford.
Kai thumbed through the rack. All the familiar brands were there. He stopped at an aqua blue long-sleeved O’Neill rash guard almost exactly like the one at Sun Haven Surf, except his father was selling this one for thirty-four ninety-five. How could they sell the same garment for half what Buzzy sold it for? Kai pulled the rash guard off the rack. Up close he could see that the O’Neill logo wasn’t quite the right size or in quite the same place as the one he’d seen in Sun Haven Surf. The seams were loosely sewn and the material felt thin and rough.
Kai slid the rash guard back into the rack. After two years of living with a crook like Pat, he could pretty easily figure out what the story was. These items weren’t manufacturer’s seconds, made of the same material but with a flaw that kept them from being sold in regular stores. These garments were knockoffs, imitations made as cheaply as possible out of inferior materials, and stamped with counter-feit logos.
Leave it to his father to concoct a scam like this.
Kai went into the back office where Sean was running extra credit card slips.
“Hey, Kai, where ya been?” his half brother asked. “Dad’s ticked that you didn’t come back after dinner.”
Kai shrugged. “Looks like the new scam is a big success.”
“It ain’t a scam,” Sean said. “He explained the whole thing to me. Manufacturer’s seconds?”
It always amazed Kai that his half brother was so gullible. “And where’d he get these so-called seconds?”
“You know,” Sean said. “That place in Brooklyn.”
“The place where the guys have those strange bulges under their shirts near their waists?” Kai said.
“I asked Dad about that,” Sean said. “He told me Brooklyn’s a really dangerous place. Those guys need guns to protect themselves.”
Kai had serious doubts about that, but didn’t see the point in arguing. Nor did he think it was worth pointing out that the guys with the strange bulges under their shirts insisted on dealing only i
n cash and avoided all forms of paperwork—not exactly the typical way of doing business.
Sean went out to the front of the store and closed the door behind him. Kai stayed in the back. He didn’t want to be out front where he would be expected to help sell this bogus crap to unsuspecting tourists. Instead he sat down at the computer and clicked onto Ethan’s Web site. Ethan, his mom’s boyfriend until her death two years before, was a photographer back on Kauai.
Ethan’s site uploaded slowly. Kai’s father, the cheapest person on earth, still insisted on using a dial-up connection to the Internet. Finally the page appeared, featuring a beautiful fiery pink sunset shot of Bali Hai, the mountainous point where the road on the north shore of the island ended and the steep, rocky shoreline of the Na Pali coast began.
Kai sat back and gazed up at the ceiling. His mom used to take him hiking along the Na Pali coast, along rocky jungle trails that were overgrown with green vegetation and had a view of the vast endlessly blue Pacific with the sound of waves smashing into white foam against the rocks below. They’d often stopped for lunch on the cliffs, and if it was winter, they might see the humpback whales who’d come down from Alaska to give birth to calves. Kai knew that a lot of kids thought whale watching was pretty cheesy, but once you’d actually seen those huge beasts—the largest animals on earth—you might change your mind.
He looked at the computer again. Ethan’s site had contact information. Kai only had to tap a few keys to send him an e-mail. He felt that tug. Ethan was a great guy. While Pat, Big Chief Hockaloogie, may have been his birth father, there was no doubt in Kai’s mind that Ethan was hie real father. But then Kai’s mom had died….
The door opened and Pat came in. Kai quickly closed the Web site, but not before, his father got a look.
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