Thrillers in Paradise

by Rob Swigart

  “Impossible.” Chazz was not so certain, though.

  “Right. Impossible. I asked Dr. Strachey how much money it would take to set up a laboratory to do recombinant DNA research, to design deadly bugs.”

  Chazz knew what was coming. “I know,” he said holding up his hand.

  But Takamura interrupted him. “He told me it could be done for a few thousand dollars. That’s all. A few thousand dollars. Anyone could do it.”

  Chazz was shaking his head. “It takes more than money. It takes a very sophisticated kind of knowledge.”

  “The kind of knowledge your friend Dr. Silver might possess?”

  “Sure, but it also would take a very crazy person to do it. Silver is not crazy. He was at Asilomar. Everyone at Asilomar agreed. There are rules. No one would deliberately break them, not even a crazy.”

  “They have more than a few thousand dollars, though. They have a few million. That can buy a lot of sophisticated knowledge. Suppose it’s not terrorists. Suppose it’s greed. Threaten a government with an epidemic of some kind of human scrapie. Greed is not crazy.”

  “No. I won’t believe it.”

  “Well,” Takamura said with a weak smile, “as Charles Chan has said, ‘Theories like fingerprints— everybody have them.’ What’s yours?”

  Patria cleared her throat. “I might suggest one. I have done some field work in the Yucatan. Medicine and magic. Magic is often medicine misunderstood or disguised. There are poisons, very sophisticated poisons, from plants. Kahuna magic could use these poisons. Someone could have learned about them, used them. It’s a simple explanation. No complicated new diseases, no advanced technology. Simple herbal medicine, bad medicine. Religious reasons, personal grudges, who knows?”

  “I thought of that, too,” Chazz said. “How many of the victims were Hawaiian or part Hawaiian?”

  “The medics can’t find any poison,” Takamura said. “Doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”

  Chazz put in. “Some witch doctor poisoning people. Or a group, a cult. Some poisons are very hard to detect.”

  “Or,” Patria suggested, “perhaps actual praying to death, real ana’ana.”

  “Oh, come on,” Chazz snorted. “The power of suggestion. All the victims would have to know they were being prayed to death, wouldn’t they? They’d have to be believers.”

  “No,” she said, “they wouldn’t. In fact, if you look closely, it was very important that the victim not know. If he knew he was under a curse, he would hire another kahuna to cancel it, throw it back at the source.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that this kind of magic works? It’s real?”

  “Chazz, you are still a materialist. Of course it works.”

  “Where’s your scientific objectivity? Your detachment?”

  “You can’t study it, Chazz, if you don’t believe it exists.”

  “Now wait a minute…” Chazz began.

  Takamura’s calm voice interrupted. “Please. You two. Thanks so much. ‘Ancient Chinese proverb: Do not challenge supernatural unless armed with sword of truth.’”

  “Right,” Patria huffed. Chazz said nothing.

  “Now, Chazz. What is your theory? Back to terrorists.”

  “I don’t have a theory. Not yet. But two men were after us today; someone is doing something. Someone with a silver Subaru.”

  “Yes,” Takamura said. “Someone is.”

  “So, is killing by prayer or suggestion or whatever against the law?”

  Takamura shrugged. “Homicide is. By the way, Patria, I’ve arranged for you to meet Sammy’s uncle; though Western-educated, he’s said to be one of the best kahuna around. Ask him for me if he is praying people to death.”

  33

  Sammy Akeakamai glanced at the sky over the ocean as he crossed the street. Violet shadows shifted and turned over the sea surface, breaking up the sharply slanted light under the clouds. Dust eddies danced listlessly in the gutters, died down, flared and died again. Sammy thought there would be no storm this night, no wind. It was late in the season for big storms, but the Pacific had been capricious this year, and it seemed certain that Tropical Storm Walter would be coming down in the next few days.

  The Honeycreeper was a cavernous bar painted a hideous pale blue inside that induced instant depression in the most psychologically insensitive mortals. Sammy pushed his way through the screen door as if through some palpable resistance.

  The light within had the same twilight quality as outside. Deep shadows shifted in a confusing pattern across the plastic tables, the bare cinderblock walls, the sagging bar. Violet-green fluorescent tubes hung listlessly from the ceiling. One of them sputtered from time to time.

  The television was throwing off the pastels of an ancient and soundless Dallas rerun. Three people sat in mute isolation at the bar, staring over their drinks at the screen.

  A solitary man waved from a table near the back, and Sammy maneuvered his way through the obstacle course of empty tables and metal tube chairs and sat heavily across from him. A Primo sat on the table fizzing out its final effervescence. Sammy downed it in one vast swallow and sighed as he put down the glass.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Just what I needed.”

  “Sure,” the other man said. Several teeth were missing from his smile.

  They sat still for a time, resting in an almost tangible fluid of inertia. Finally the waiter materialized at the table and they ordered another round.

  “Why do you like this place, Alfie?” Sammy asked.

  “You always ask me that. I like the light in here.”

  Sammy nodded solemnly, and conversation died again. The waiter returned with the next round. They sipped in silence while the small man appeared to be watching the soundless television screen thirty feet away over Sammy’s shoulder. Finally he spoke quietly, his head down.

  “The community’s nervous,” he said. “Funny weather, maybe. Some say its kahuna. You know how the old folks are, they want tradition. Others, though, kids mostly, they think it’s the base.”

  “What do you think, Alfie?”

  “I think you should talk to your Uncle Paul, Sammy. He’s kahuna. He could tell you. There are whispers of ana’ana. That guy, the junkie, he sold drugs. The old folks don’t like that. Then he’s dead. A lot of people weren’t sorry; they say he was spooked.”

  “What about the others? What about Sally Cameron, or Wyman, or the man in the car? What about Freddie Delarota, Alfie? Anything on them?”

  “Ah, Delarota, now there was a bad one. ‘Aihu’e, a thief, Sammy. The others, I don’t—”

  “God damn!” One of the men at the bar shouted suddenly. Sammy turned around. The man in the middle was staring into his beer, muttering to himself. He lifted his head and glared around the room as if challenging anyone to contradict him. The other two at the bar glanced at him, then went back to Dallas.

  “God damn,” he repeated.

  This time no one looked at him and he sank back into whatever lethargy had possessed him before. Sammy turned back to his cousin. “Know him?”

  Alfie squinted at the ceiling fixtures. He was a leathery fisherman who had been Kekaha High School surfing champion three years running. That was a while ago now. “Seen him a few times. Navy.”

  Sammy nodded. He picked up his beer and stood. “Wait,” he said softly, draining his second Primo.

  He waddled over to the bar and slipped between the ancient leatherette stools where the belligerent drunk was now peering glumly into his glass. “Gimme another,” Sammy told the bartender, who took the glass and walked slowly to the television end where the spigots were. Sammy looked casually at the drunk.

  “Hi,” he said. The man was definitely a Naval officer.

  “Sure,” the man said. “Hi. Sure.” He didn’t look up. Sammy looked away, waiting for his beer. “God damn,” the man said. His voice was low and tense.

  “Something wrong?” Sammy asked him quietly.

  He looked up. “Wrong? Sure
something’s wrong. I got transferred, that’s what’s wrong. To goddam fucking absolute nowhere. What’s it to you?”

  Sammy shrugged. In the fluorescent light, the pineapples on his shirt were purple. “Just wondered,” he said sympathetically.

  “Oh.” Suddenly the man ducked his head. “They’re doing something out there,” he said. He waved his hand loosely at the television.

  “Is that right?” Sammy said casually, looking at the Primo Beer sign behind the bar.

  “No,” the man mumbled. “I was just about to win. I had it figured out. I had it figured. Twenty points. God damn. God the fucking damn. You know something? Class Three. That’s right. Class fucking three.” He swallowed his beer and waved for another. The lights drew deep purple shadows under his eyes.

  “Why not join us?” Sammy suggested, picking up a new draft.

  “Sure.” The man stood up. “Collins,” he said, putting out his hand. His eyes were slightly unfocused, but his hand was steady. Hours of practice on the PACMAN simulator, he told Sammy. Missiles over the Aleutians, Ferrets on the beach. The Navy was always testing the Ferrets, which seldom worked. Everyone knew that.

  Sammy smiled benignly as he shook the hand. Sammy had a large face and his smile filled it.

  Collins talked. TOY wasn’t up, he got transferred suddenly, didn’t understand why. Why? Had something to do with that building. Whaddaya mean, what building? NBL-212, thass wha building. Scientists working on speedboats, he saw the trials, some kinda paint. They painted the boats, put ’em in the water, watched ’em go. Whizzed along. Slick paint.

  Sammy lost interest.

  Alfie was bored, too. “You an officer?” he asked, not interested.

  “They treat me like a fuckin midshipman,” Collins complained. “Do this, do that. Officer of the Day, hell. Goddam Ferret flew, most of the time they don’t work. Everybody knows that. Big deal. I lost twenty bucks! No reason to transfer someone. God damn it to hell, I was assigned to fucking paradise, you know? Paradise. Got a little place off base. Got a stereo. Got almost the highest fucking score on the fucking simulator, I had it figured. Then boom. Just like that.” He tried to snap his fingers.

  “Too bad,” Alfie said. He scratched his scraggly goatee with a callused forefinger. The rasp was loud.

  Collins leaned forward, crooking his finger at Sammy.

  “You know what I think,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper.

  Sammy shook his head.

  “I think,” Collins said, rolling his eyes, “that they think that I know something about something they’re doing that they think I shouldn’t know, that’s what I think. And that makes me think they’re doing something that they think I shouldn’t know, and that they think that I know what it is, but I don’t. It makes me mad.” His eyes filled. Then his head tilted slowly forward; he cradled it in his arms and went to sleep.

  The two Hawaiians sat for a long time without speaking, sipping at their beers. At last Sammy got up to make a call from the pay phone.

  34

  He was an ordinary man with something familiar about him, the set of his shoulders, the texture of his hair.

  His house was ordinary, a bungalow in Wailua down a dirt road, surrounded by banana trees. The leaves hung listlessly in the evening heat, burdened by the heavy air, the moisture. The room was small, ordinary. An ancient black-and-white television on a low wooden table, a green couch with a colorful cloth thrown over it, a cabinet with ordinary dishes. He sat calmly in a vinyl easy chair watching her. His eyes were liquid brown, crinkled with good humor.

  “My name is Paul Viana,” the old man told her. “An ordinary person. I’m in the telephone book, I like a beer from time to time. This is an ordinary house. Nothing much happens here, you know: some dust, some stones, a few trees, the sea. The wind blows, the waves break.”

  “Yes,” she said, waiting him out.

  “It is not Paul Viana who interests you,” he said. “My nephew Sammy has told me you are an anthropologist. You study healing, medicine, magic. How can science study magic? Either they are the same thing, or they are too different to share words.”

  She smiled. “Science can study magic if it can get inside.”

  “Then it must know the language of magic.”

  “Of course. It’s language that has the power. Chants, prayers, spells.” She paused. “Curses.”

  She could detect no reaction. “The mind is powerful,” he answered. “The mind can do things your science can’t. This is because science is a product of the mind. It is not the other way around.”

  “I know that.”

  He smiled. “That’s why you are here, of course.”

  “Of course. For instance, something is happening on this island. Cults, maybe?”

  He nodded soberly. “My people,” he said. “Some of them are dying. But it is not ana’ana. No. If you want to understand, you must open your mind. You must receive.”

  She nodded.

  “You do not want Paul Viana. You want Kalaipahoa.”

  “Of course,” she said. “Mikey said that name. You were the one at the fort, calling in the mano, he said.”

  He nodded again, not surprised. “Our little cousin Mikey, he has the calling too. He will be a great kahuna one day, if he answers that call. Now, you want Kalaipahoa.” His hand lifted slowly from his lap. She watched the hand, the thick strong fingers. “You want to know what Kalaipahoa can do. To know those things, though, you must come with him.”

  “Come with him,” she repeated.

  “Come,” he said, or she thought he said it; his eyes were elsewhere. When his eyes turned back to her, they were red, as if they had caught the light from a fire that did not exist. “Come,” he said again, and she went.

  The sea itself had begun to change; she could feel the change in her unihipili, in the scent and taste of wind. She tried to look at Kalaipahoa, but he sat absolutely motionless, feeling the change, letting his awareness expand beyond his body, through hers, beyond what they could see and taste and hear. Her eyes closed, or were they hers?

  The body was seated by the shore, her body, or his body, or, it seemed, their body. The sea stretched away, the teeming sea. Were fins cutting the surface? Did she see the faces of drowned men, pale and distorted, beneath it?

  There was sun, no sun; moon, no moon. Her hair swirled over her eyes, though her hair was short. She walked through fern forests many times larger than she, and was afraid. She heard the clicking of bamboo stalks overhead, too loud to be so far away. She was drawn thin, stretched along a wire thousands of miles long; she was pressed hard into a small place that was darker than blindness. She sat on the shore, and small waves touched her feet with toothless mouths. There were rocks made before the beginning of things.

  Where was Kalaipahoa? She was alone.

  Beyond her, behind her, to all sides the shoreline stretched away, rock, dry, dead rock, and desolation. She shuddered and reached for her body.

  It began to move, not limbs, not hands or the lift of breath. Instead, she lifted out of it, slowly at first, but with growing speed. The earth uncurled like a fern fiddle beneath her. Yes. Currents had shifted, the tones of blue on blue on blue sang a different pitch, a different pattern. Lime fell in fine silt to the bottom of the sea, like white powder spreading through milk, deep, deep and dark, piled and pressed to limestone. Beneath that deep skin the magma moved, blood-red and hot, a pulse within; and the hot blood of earth pulled down the limestone, dissolved it, moved it. Far above, the sky rang like stone. The air was thin here, and cold. Darkness swept in broad filaments, in curtains of cold fire. She could feel a swelling of magma nearby, there in the big island, sluggish wound, the volcano that would erupt with Pele’s rage.

  Other rhythms emerged, matching the change in blue currents, more strident rhythms, a filling, syncopated beat within the broad, stately movement of mountains and glaciers. Strife coming.

  See, the old man’s voice said out of the emptiness. The blue, see
the patterns there, the shapes where they come together, where they unravel. Trace them, follow with your eye, your finger. Those patterns are the change, the rising wind. Crisis.

  I have none, Patria said. No eye, no finger. She screamed then in her mind.

  Paul chopped with his hand, palm down. The long white whiskers of his mustache fluttered. “It is nothing. Come.”

  His voice was loud, and echoed off the walls of his living room. Yet she could not move. He leaned forward.

  His grip was hard on her elbow. “You must know,” he hissed. “Not only form. Not only ritual. These things are only half. You must understand the other half. Pah!”

  “Yes,” she said dreamily, wondering where the fire was, where the heat was coming from, why his eyes had reddened so.

  “Healing and killing. Maintaining the balance, tipping it this way, that way.” He seemed troubled. “You’ve seen it now.”

  “Yes,” she said, wondering what she’d seen.

  “Feel that breeze,” the kahuna said, rubbing his fingers together. “This is the calm time, before the sickness comes.” She could feel the breeze then. She heard something. A snuffling sound, rasped breath, the sound of hard feet in the earth. This was fever, delirium. She heard herself moan. It came out of the ferns, the pale terrible shape. What the boy had said, the akua? She fell heavily, tasted brackish water, heard dark colors swell and fade, violet and brown. Eat her brains. No, she screamed, I’m not dead. The rough texture of blankets on her tongue, scraping sounds in the dirt, all fell through her at once.

  It was a high platform of stones heated by sun, the size of a football field. This was the altar. She heard the word, perhaps it sounded like a memory, something she’d read, perhaps he said it to her: heiau.

  “You want something else. Something for yourself.” His voice was low, singsong, chanting, yet she understood the meaning. “Something for your marriage. Your husband, something for him.”

  “Yes,” she heard herself answer. “I… I do love him. It just isn’t working. I’m not ready—”