Thrillers in Paradise

by Rob Swigart

  There was nothing to connect him with the murdered women. The man they had met no longer existed. Now he was Danny Cavanaugh from Waimea; he was the Phoenix, risen again from his own ashes.

  Soon he would have to do something about that woman, though, the one who found the second body. He’d been watching her for some time. He saw how she looked at him. She was thinking too much, she and the Jap woman, the policeman’s wife. They could be trouble.

  Now that fool Sangier wanted him to meet with the fat man from Vancouver, Meissner. Fine. Meissner would meet Danny Cavanaugh. He would tell people Danny Cavanaugh helped him out. He liked that. Later on the fat man would find out all about the power of the Phoenix. He liked that even more.

  Time was limited. It was a shame he would have to leave this lovely island, but in the end he always had to leave. Behind him was a long string of islands, most as lovely as this one. Perhaps some day he could come back, though. It was his kind of place.

  TWENTY

  THE TRAIL HOME

  She was hidden by the man’s naked back. He could see only ridges of muscle, highlighted by glints of moisture. The man was sweating, and she was screaming without sound, calling his name. She had run, and now she was caught.

  There was pain and behind it there was more pain. The walls were weeping, sharp red streaks flowing down. They were stone, carved by water and blood, and the ceiling was low. Small popping sounds startled him, and then the sound of wood dragged across the slats of a fence that faded away.

  He could see her face, distorted, first by fear, then by death. Her eyes went wide, still, open and staring. Her dark short hair congealed somehow, like old grease. The muscles in that back writhed, an animal. An octopus. It had a name, but he could not remember it, it was too dark, and grew darker still. He was gone again.

  He heard small mewling sounds, and it was a long long time before he knew they came from him, because for all that time there was no distinction between what was him and what was not. No such distinction existed. And then it did.

  She fell back, limp and dead. The popping sounds returned.

  The muscular figure turned. He had no face. Holes for eyes, no mouth. The blank, uncomprehending face of a manikin. His muscles flowed, waxen, melting. His arms writhed, and he was the animal: bulbous head a blank with eyes.

  His hand groped against something, and it was rough, and that meant it was not him, but something else, something other. It was stone.

  He tried to open his eyes; they would not open. That accounted for the darkness. He lay still and breathed. He could hear the breathing. He didn’t like the sound.

  He passed out again.

  When he woke up again, one of his eyes would open, though what it saw was very faint, small splotches of light against a velvet nothing. He blinked; a sharp pain ran down the side of his face. That meant he had a face.

  The splotches grew sharper and smaller and he knew they were stars.

  If they were stars, that meant she was not dead, that it was his own fear rising in him. Fear for her. She was back there, in Kauai, and he was… here. Tahiti. Raíatéa. Somewhere.

  He remembered the animal, writhing, and it did have a name. Its name was Plato, and it was the young octopus he had found at the bottom of the sea beside the advancing lava, exploding and popping the water to steam as it came on. The bubbles that flowed and shifted swiftly over the rolling surface were splotches too, brilliant blue, almost white, like the stars.

  But the popping sounds were not the explosions into steam in the sea; they were the strange sounds of birds, popping and then ratcheting, like dragging a stick along a wooden fence.

  He sat up, and the mewling sound came again. It was his own voice.

  Four men, coming at him out of the mist. He tried to shake his head, and could not, so he settled for moving it slowly from one side to the other.

  He found himself curiously without anger. They had been a force of nature. He should have handled it, but did not. That was curious.

  Even more curious was what they had wanted. They were from the disco, he had stopped them there, and they wanted revenge.

  Chazz did not believe it. His left eye was swollen closed. His back and sides and legs ached. His hands were scraped raw in places. It had rained earlier, when he was unconscious, and his beard was damp. Perhaps the rain had revived him.

  He did not think they intended to kill him. They could have done so, and did not.

  So they wanted something else.

  He put it away. He could not think clearly, and he had other things to do.

  The stone behind him and under his hand was very rough. The darkness rose all around him to meet black water in which the stars swam. He could see no lights, could hear nothing that sounded like humankind. The birds gradually settled into silence, out of sight somewhere.

  He listened carefully. He could not hear surf. But the surf would be far away even if he were near the shore, since it fell against the reef and did not flow in the lagoon. He could not smell the sea. What he could smell was damp earth and hot stone and rotting vegetation.

  Was he near the place where he had been attacked? He couldn’t tell. It had been misty then, and he hadn’t seen much. He had been thinking. Thinking about the man who killed the crew. The man who in his delirium had threatened Patria.

  He had been here for hours. Cobb would be looking for him, but he had told no one where he was going. Just walking, thinking, working out the small pain in his calf.

  He almost smiled at that. The pain was much larger now.

  After a time, he could move a little. He assessed himself. Possible broken ribs. Left eye closed, swollen. He could feel his toes, his feet moved, and although everything was painful, he thought damage was contained. He would heal. But he could not stand.

  He was still sitting there when the lights danced crazily through the trees, and the muffled voices called, and footsteps came over the flat volcanic stones and found him squinting through his one good eye up into the hidden faces of three men.

  “Chazz,” one of them said, and it was Cobb Takamura and not the French soldiers come back to kill him again.

  He grinned. It was a painful expression, lopsided and grotesque.

  The three men helped him to his feet and walked him around, and their lantern light danced on the dark rough wall, on the paving stones. No one spoke for a long time as they paced slowly, one foot before the other. A grating in his ribs fired off a sharp inhalation with each step.

  They moved away, down the trail. “Same marae,” Tepe said behind the swinging shaft of light. “Same rock. Killing stone.”

  The journey lasted forever. A moon appeared out of somewhere in the brief patches of sky overhead. The journey was down from the mountain, back to the sea. “I thought it was,” Tepe said. “Saw you going up, saw the men. Bad men, I think. Gone now.”

  Chazz could only croak assent. His throat was dry and empty. Finally, they got to a car, and riding in it was almost worse than walking, and then they were in the town. And then they were at the hospital, and the lights were very bright, and Chazz could smell alcohol but could not feel the sting.

  He fell into more dreams of Patria— running in dark night or locked in a tower or buried in a narrow place— and when he woke up, Cobb Takamura was standing beside his bed in brilliant sunshine, and he hurt all over.

  “Welcome back,” Takamura said.

  “Easy for you to say,” Chazz answered.

  “You’ll live.”

  “I’m sure I’m glad. What happened?”

  “You went for a walk.”

  “I remember that part. What happened after?”

  Another man entered the room. “Chazz, this is Charlie Song. He helped find you. What happened is that Duvalois has gone to Hawaii. That suggests he wants to find our man before we do. He wanted to delay us. He has friends in the army. I think he dogged those thugs onto you.”

  “I guess he must’ve. They were very good— some kind of foot-fi
ghting I’ve never seen before.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Cobb said. “We found you. I don’t think they expected that, not so soon. You were sitting against the same rock where Tepe found Queneau. Our good luck.”

  “What time is it?”

  “A little after nine.”

  “Help me up.”

  Chazz sat for a time with his feet dangling over the edge of the hospital bed. “This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he said.

  “No. You were supposed to be up there for a few days. A grim reminder. The birds were supposed to eat you.”

  “Thanks. Lovely thought. I can travel.”

  “Not yet.” Dr. Rathé stood in the doorway. “A few days rest.”

  “No. I figured some things out. It’s why they got the jump on me. I was distracted. No excuses, but I was worried about Patria. That guy is there, on Kauai. And I think he’s the one killing women. I don’t know why, but he is. And he’s good at covering his tracks.”

  “Yes. I’ve learned a few things too. We’ll talk later.”

  “Can you give me a shot or something?” Chazz asked the doctor, who frowned and sucked on his lips. He looked suddenly very disagreeable. “Something to get me moving,” Chazz urged.

  “It’s not necessary, Chazz,” Cobb said.

  “Yes, it is.” Chazz let himself slide forward until his feet touched the floor. He stood carefully, then sat down suddenly. “Dizzy.”

  “A wheelchair, perhaps,” Dr. Rathé suggested. The expression of distaste had not left his face. He appeared anxious to get rid of these troublesome foreigners.

  “Yes.”

  Chazz sat in the sunshine at the entrance to the hospital, waiting for Cobb to summon a taxi. It was warm and drowsy and his body ached. He dozed.

  A sputtering and screech woke him: Freddie Barrone leaping from his hideous yellow Renault. He slammed the door and ran up the steps. He was already halfway through the door when he spun around. “S you!” he shouted. “I heard the terrible news. My God, what happened?”

  “Accident,” Chazz murmured.

  “Four of ‘em, I heard. Hell, those guys were army. Trained in savate, foot-fighting. Those guys can kick the pecker off a fly so’s he don’t even notice till it’s all over and they’re home on leave.”

  “How’d you know who it was?”

  Freddie grinned. “All over the island. Gone now, took the morning flight out, not a care in the world. Only one of them had a big bandage on his head, took twenty-three stitches is the way I heard it— my wife has her ear to the grapevine, see— and another one was limping, so I guess it wasn’t all one sided. Limping bad, too. Won’t be kicking off any peckers for a while, I guess.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  Freddie threw up his hands. “Too bad? What the hell’s matter with you, son? Those was mean guys, gut mean. Not popular around here, anyway. You, on the other hand, are something of a folk hero. Fella works at the airport called up his cousin, who’s married to my wife’s cousin, see, and he said when they came through they didn’t look at all happy. Didn’t talk, didn’t smile. Held his head, the bandaged one did, and the other one was leaning on his buddies. And then, see, Tepe likes to tell about it. He’s a real actor. Almost believe he saw the whole thing, way he tells it. Spinning around, bodies flying, all that.”

  “Not true, I’m afraid. It was over in a short time.”

  “Sure. Why I came, I wanted to tell you something. I thought of it after you left.” His fingers lightly stroked his graying goatee down, down.

  Chazz looked up at him. Even from the chair it was not a long look up. “Go on,” he urged.

  “It’s, uh, well, what you might call hearsay, I suppose, but you were asking about the man, the boat leaving and all that, so, I suppose, it applies.”

  “Yes?”

  He pulled a folded piece of newspaper from his pocket and handed it to Chazz, who shrugged. His eye was still swollen almost shut. Only a thin slit showed. “It’s a little blurred,” he said. “And I don’t read French that well.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” Freddie took the paper back and unfolded it. “It’s about the crew, see. Who they are— were. Noel Taviri, see. He was from Huahine, over that way.” Freddie nodded his head toward the distant island, hidden by the bulk of the hospital. “Well, I heard you met Charlie Song?”

  “Yes.”

  “Noel was working with him.” Freddie stopped speaking. His fingers continued to smooth down his goatee, and his eyes seemed to bulge with unspoken meaning behind his thick glasses.

  “You mean they were doing something subversive? Something the government didn’t like?”

  “I wouldn’t want to say anything,” Freddie said softly. “I’m a resident here. You have to be careful what you say.”

  Chazz nodded. “Why don’t you just read me the piece, then?”

  The botanist pushed his glasses back against the bridge of his nose and stared down at the paper. “Well, I’ll just summarize, right? The Ocean Mother, a Gaia Foundation vessel, is in Polynesian waters, you know that, of course, everyone did, but the paper implies this is something significant. A Tahitian man, Noel Taviri, has joined the crew in Papeete as a volunteer. Taviri is a well-known independence activist convicted several times on charges of sedition, is that the word? He was on probation when he joined the ship. Did Charlie tell you he’s spent time in jail too? No? Both of them, years I think. You think Polynesia is so laid back and quiet it’s almost a joke, but the French don’t think it’s funny, they take it serious, see, but they got real sensitive to public opinion, so they move quiet and soft mostly when it comes to these guys.”

  Cobb Takamura appeared. “What are you doing to the invalid?” he asked Freddie, who bobbed his head and swallowed.

  “He’s reading me the funnies,” Chazz said. “Go on, Freddie.”

  Cobb stood with his hands resting on the handles of Chazz’s wheelchair and listened attentively. Freddie went on. “Well, it seems there was a warrant out for Taviri’s arrest again, see, after the protest at Moruroa. The ship went inside national waters despite repeated warnings, et cetera, et cetera. The criminal ringleader was this Noel Taviri. He was unofficial navigator, they say, responsible for showing the Ocean Mother’s captain how to slip in undetected in time for the test. I’m translating here, see, a little between the lines. The tone is more detached and official than that, but it’s what they mean.” Freddie looked around to make sure no one was listening. “I’m not taking a position on this, you understand, just giving you the information. I thought it might be important.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Chazz said. “If I read between the lines you are reading between, it means that the French government had some reason to either kill or discredit this Taviri?”

  “I didn’t say that exactly,” Freddie protested. “Noel Taviri was not popular in official circles. He knew how to generate publicity. An attractive man, not pretty but well-liked. The official position was that he was the dupe of international terrorists pretendin’ to be ecology activists. But you see, between the lines, so to speak, he looks a lot like a threat.”

  “Would someone in official circles be willing to kill the whole crew to get rid of one man?” Cobb asked.

  Freddie was shocked “Of course not! Unthinkable.”

  “Perhaps not unthinkable in a complicated world like ours.”

  “Surely the French government would never tolerate such a thing,” Freddie said drily.

  Cobb nodded. “Chazz?”

  “Ha-ha. Ouch.”

  “Hurt?”

  “Only when I laugh. Doesn’t Charlie Chan have anything to say about situations like this?”

  “‘Biggest mistake in history made by people who didn’t think.’”

  Chazz frowned. “Is that relevant?”

  “Perhaps so. If true, someone didn’t think.”

  “Only if the truth got out. And this isn’t proof, is it?”

  “No. Not proof. A whiff of motive, i
s all.”

  Freddie Barrone spoke up. “There’s a little gossip, too, might be interesting. Not proof either, I guess. But there was some relationship between that man who joined the crew here and one of the people on the boat.”

  “Relationship?” Cobb asked. He was looking down the road at the approaching taxi.

  “You know what I mean. A… relationship.”

  “Ah. Who?”

  Freddie shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Don’t know. One of the women, I’d guess. There were two, that American girl and the French woman, the activist. She has had a public kind of life, that one. Guillaume. Very famous person, a celebrity. Known to have had a number of highly publicized affairs, she has, see, been in the gossip magazines. There was an article about her in a Paris Match folks here were passing around, very scandalous, of course not to the Tahitians, they are very easygoing about all that, but some of the more conservative folks. Sorry, it’s probably not important. I just thought I ought to pass it along—I knew that girl, the American one, when she was here. She was a pretty thing, and I think it’s a shame what happened. Even if I’m not political at all.”

  A taxi pulled up.

  “Goddammit,” Chazz grunted when Cobb tried to help him out of the wheelchair. “I am not an invalid.”

  He managed to stand and get in. “Home, James,” he said.

  The driver gave them a funny look as he lurched into gear. “I thought airport,” he said shortly.

  PART FOUR

  THE FIRE THAT SAITH NOT,

  IT IS ENOUGH

  TWENTY-ONE

  THE GANG OF FOUR

  When they emerged into the bright sun of the airport pickup zone, all four men put on aviator glasses that concealed their eyes. The biggest had a slight limp he took some pains to conceal. Another, a darker man, wore a knit cap over a bandage stuck to his temple.

  They flagged a taxi. Once inside they began talking in a rapid Marseille patois. The cab driver shook his head and grinned. Tourists like this, rubes, always tipped well.

  He was wrong. They did not tip well: when he dropped them at a small hotel in Manoa, they paid him carefully, adding a tip that calculated out to just under nine percent. The taxi left two streaks of black rubber on the pavement when it left. They paid cash for two rooms in advance. Two of the men stayed in the room and watched American television while the others went out for lunch at a small Chinese restaurant nearby. When they returned, the second shift went out. By one-thirty they were all asleep.