“Mauka – toward shore, inland. Makai – towards the sea or ocean.” She mimed.
Gybe explained the method of giving directions in Hawai‘i, as he understood them. Because the islands tend to be high and rugged in the center, most movement was along roads or trails that followed the shoreline. Magnetic directions – north, south, east, and west – meant little. As you drove along a road, the road might change from southeast to east to north to west in twenty miles. Instead of using magnetic directions, islanders who traveled along a shoreline, either traveled towards the next point of land or away from the previous.
Kara seemed interested, so Gybe gave an example. Traveling along the shore between Honolulu and Waikiki, for example one drove either towards Diamond Head or towards Ewa – somewhat in the direction southeast or northwest.
On the west side of the causeway, Gybe pointed out the boat ramp used to launch trailer-bound boats followed by the dinghy dock. Beyond the dock, several private fishing boats bobbed in their slips. As they drove past the last slip, the causeway melded into the concrete pier.
The parking lot was at the head, mauka end of the pier near the ferry terminal. Kara parked in a marked slot in front of the harbormaster’s office. Gybe, always curious about other sailboats, walked to the east side of the pier.
Seventeen sailboats rested in slips that they reached through a narrow channel. The channel, blasted through the solid coral, was less than eight feet deep. It led from the main harbor channel around the makai end of the pier and along the east side. Behind the slips, east of the pier, a breakwater helped calm the water and protect the boats. In Gybe’s seafaring eye, few of the boats had left their slip in the past year. At the mid point of the pier, just makai of the last sailboat, a small loading dock was available to commercial fishermen.
Gybe recognized two boats but their owners were not aboard. He strolled back across the parking lot and joined Kara who was waiting beside his dinghy.
When Kara and Gybe had motored to Kaunakakai earlier that morning, they had left Ferrity at anchor seaward of Makani, Mongoose’s schooner. “I want to swing by Makani and talk with Mongoose.”
“Mongoose?” Kara questioned.
“That’s his name or at least that’s what he’s called. I don’t know his real name. He once told me that a mongoose when caught young is very easy to tame, very clean, and easy to keep.”
Kara’s right eye half-closed as her left eyebrow arched.
As an afterthought, Gybe added. “The ’goose was raised by a pack of street urchins after his mother abandoned him at the age of four. She left him standing outside a feeding kitchen for the homeless in Iwilei and drove off with her drug supplier.”
Kara asked about the boat. Although she had been around the water, she was not a sailor and did not recognize the types of sailboats. Gybe explained that a schooner carried two or more masts, the foremost of which was shorter than the other masts. Almost no one built them anymore. Most new sailboats carried either sloop or ketch rigs. Rarely, did anyone build a yawl.
Gybe had stepped into the dinghy when Kara said that she wanted to tag along.
Gybe wasn’t sure that he wanted her company, but he had failed to formalize the working arrangement when he agreed to help Kara and her friend Susan. He hoped that Mongoose’s habits and behavior might discourage future visits, so he agreed to take her out to Makani.
Looking back at the causeway, he noticed a steady stream of vehicles driving out to the pier, around the parking lot, and back into town. Island fever.
Kara boarded the dinghy while Gybe unlocked the chain that he used to discourage theft. His Nissan outboard started on the first pull. The lines were off, so he flipped the transmission lever forward and idled away from the dock. It was dark and according to the rules of the road, he should have switched on the running lights. He didn’t.
Nearing Makani, he saw the a head prairie dog up from the amidships hatch.
Having not seen the movement, Kara asked if anyone was aboard.
“He’s there. And he knows we are coming.”
Gybe slipped the engine into neutral and glided to the starboard quarter of Makani.
“Ahoy Makani, anyone home?”
Mongoose popped from the hatch. “Hey Gybe. Come on aboard.”
Since Kara was sitting in the bow, he asked her to hand the painter to Mongoose.
Mongoose tied the painter to the aft cleat. Kara scampered up the boarding ladder. She was in good shape and displayed the agility of a raccoon reaching a tree three feet ahead of the hounds as she moved from the tipping dinghy to the rolling schooner.
14
“Howgozit Mongoose? This is Kara. Kara, Mongoose.”
Kara took a seat in the cockpit opposite Gybe.
“Brewski, anyone?” Mongoose offered.
Kara and Gybe nodded and Mongoose disappeared below. Moments later, cold beer in hand, Gybe told Mongoose about Susan. He explained how Kara had flown to Hawai‘i from Mendocino and was here to help her friend Susan. Gybe guessed that Mongoose knew more about the murders than Gybe had learned, but he wanted to watch the ’goose’s reaction.
Unable to take her eyes off Mongoose, “What’s with the teeth?” Kara blurted.
“Subtlety is not your middle name, I take it. You don’t like my teeth?”
“I’ve never seen fluorescent orange teeth before.”
“Well, I’ve never seen a …”
Gybe sipped his beer as he listened to Mongoose and Kara exchange barbs. Most visitors to Makani waited until they had Gybe alone before asking about the ’goose’s teeth. Kara didn’t seem to fit the most category.
Not long after they first met, maybe even the first time they met, Mongoose had told Gybe the story of the teeth. When the ’goose was young, he had sought refuge from a rival street gang by climbing a banyan tree. When he slipped and fell, the leader of the gang kicked out his two front teeth. A dentist at a public health center fitted him with a partial plate. He wore that plate and successive plates until he was in his early twenties. Then, in a fight – this time in the New Jolos bar in Subic Bay – he lost his newest plate.
At the time, he was working as a deckhand on the log carrier, M/V Mongla, out of Chittagong, Bangladesh. His contract did not include dental coverage. One night after several San Miguel beers, a street vendor offered to make him a new set of teeth.
When Mongoose returned the next day to pick up his new teeth, he was so pleased that he purchased the mold from the street vendor. Using a blemished and discarded tiki god carved from monkeypod wood, the vendor had whittled a mold for the two missing teeth. Into the mold, he had positioned two retainer clips over which he had poured an epoxy resin, the same epoxy used in the manufacture of surfboards. Over the years, Mongoose had built up an extensive collection of teeth in many colors and often with embedded jewels, flora, fauna, or trinkets.
Today, Mongoose’s two front teeth were fluorescent orange. Gybe thought that he could see a small insect embedded in the left tooth.
“So ’goose, what have you heard about the murders?” Gybe asked.
Gybe knew that Mongoose was a man of the people, especially the people in the bottom strata – welfare bums, ordinary bums, drifters, druggies, drunks and nomads. By choice, the ’goose floated atop the lowest socio-economic layer of American society.
He confused many people with his attire and habits. Judged by his appearance, Mongoose was a bum. But Gybe knew that the ’goose possessed a depth and breadth of knowledge that surpassed anyone he had known. Beyond his street smarts, Mongoose had taught himself many skills. Few knew, but Mongoose was a millionaire many times over.
Mongoose paused to organize his thoughts then presented a concise timeline of events. Several young people on the pier had seen Susan board her workboat around 7:30 p.m. on Monday. She motored out of the harbor and headed west. Around midnight, she returned and tied up to the loading dock on the east side of the pier.
Elaborating, Mongoose told them
that the pier was a popular destination for young people who came to drink, party, and screw. Not necessarily in that order. Officially, the pier was under the control of the Harbor Patrol within the Department of Transportation. The Maui County Police didn’t have jurisdiction on the pier. They would, however, wait at the mauka end of the causeway for intoxicated drivers.
That explained the witnesses, Gybe thought. It is only circumstantial since no one saw her at the scene of the crime, at least no one that he was aware of. The media reports put the time of death between nine and midnight, which would mean that if Susan were involved, the victims either had to be with her when she departed the pier or she had picked them up somewhere along shore.
“Was Susan alone when the kids saw her?” Gybe asked.
According to what Mongoose had heard, no one reported seeing anyone with Susan. But, he added, her boat had a small cabin. The victims may have been in the cabin when Susan arrived on the pier.
They learned that on Wednesday morning Mongoose had witnessed the return of the Maui Police boat with the bodies aboard. The police transferred the bodies to the Moloka‘i Princess, the interisland ferry, for transport to Maui. Moloka‘i was too small to warrant a medical examiner, so the Maui Medical Examiner would conduct the autopsies.
“You should talk to the M.E.” Mongoose suggested.
“Good idea, but will he give us the autopsy report?”
Not surprisingly, Mongoose had researched the availability of the autopsy report. On the Internet, he had found reference to an opinion issued by the Office of Information Practices for Hawai‘i. In their opinion, “the right to privacy is a personal right that is generally extinguished upon an individual’s death.” However, there was a caveat about releasing autopsy reports during an ongoing police investigation.
Gybe grabbed this factoid and set his left-brain adrift. Whether through genetics or learned habits, Gybe often wondered about what seemed obvious to most people. He supposed that to many, the dead had no right to privacy. But could this be right? Fair? Ethical?
A person had rights before birth. That is, if you believe or belong to one of the hundreds of organizations and religious cults lobbying, demonstrating, and murdering for fetal rights.
Who was defending a person’s rights after death? If life didn’t begin with birth, why should it end with death?
A corpse rights organization could address one of the biggest cons of all time. They could hold religions accountable for their promises of post-death rewards. The rewards, he had read, ranged from managing your own planet to living on a cloud to a daily supply of virgins. Today, this multi-billion dollar industry went unregulated.
Suppose someone bought into the religion program, then discovered that instead of virgins as rewards, they received viragoes due to a translation error made by an old date-noshing cleric in the desert. If the dead had rights, they could sue.
Voting rights for the dead, once widely used in Chicago, could be re-instated. The dead would be perfect citizens. The government could tax their investment income yet wouldn’t have to pay Social Security or Medicare benefits.
Gybe saw endless opportunities for activists and social support systems. ACLU would form a new division. NAADP could parallel the NAACP. The National Organization of Women might spin off NODW. AARP would morph into AARDP or form a separate activist organization.
There could be a new talk show with the theme “No live zone.” Bumper stickers, T-shirts, billboards, and airplane-towed banners might read ‘Dead have Rights Too,’ ‘I CAN take it with me.’ A slew of new magazines and tabloids would hit the newsstands. Books with titles like Death for Dummies, Dr. Reaper’s: The Death Diet, E-mailing from Beyond would require a new section in bookstores.
Neurons fired at random and eyeballs raced around their sockets until Mongoose’s voice jolted Gybe back to the universe shared by the so-called sane people aboard Makani; the people who lived in the space-time continuum supported by many of the world governments.
“Privacy rights after death are irrelevant because this afternoon they scheduled Susan for a preliminary hearing. Under the rules of discovery, her attorney has access to the autopsy report.”
“She doesn’t have an attorney.” Kara interjected.
Exchanging glances, they knew that it was time to find an attorney for Susan – someone other than the court appointed one who had represented her during the video hearing.
“By the way,” Mongoose continued, “she was transferred to Maui just before sunset.”
After her stormy start with the ’goose, Gybe noticed that Kara sought to leave on a positive note. Since guys always liked to talk about their toys, she asked Mongoose what Makani meant.
“In Hawaiian, it means the wind or breeze.”
They thanked Mongoose for the brews and information. “Keep your ears open and let me know anything else you hear.”
Gybe and Kara had re-boarded the dinghy and were casting off when Mongoose suggested that they think about the wife of the dead man.
Gybe rotated the throttle until the dinghy was up on plane and immediately idled back to coast alongside Ferrity. Without asking, he was taking Kara back to Ferrity for another night. He knew that tomorrow they had to visit the M.E. on Maui. Might as well get an early start. Kara wanted to find an attorney and Gybe wanted to see the autopsy report. The widow could wait until their return.
The sun had long since departed this side of the blue orb when Gybe nestled the dinghy alongside Ferrity. From the liquor locker he retrieved a bottle of Courvoisier and poured cognac into two snifters. He handed one to Kara and motioned forward to the foredeck. Kara grabbed two cushions and followed him to the bow.
The easterly breeze swung Ferrity on her anchor so that she pointed towards the rising moon. The waning moon was five days past full. Leaning against the cabintop, Gybe held Kara in one arm and his cognac in the other.
Like an upside down bowl into which the Menehune – Hawaiian Leprechauns – had spilled salt, stars littered the sky from horizon to horizon. Defying the International Rules of the Road for boats at anchorage, Ferrity showed no light at the top of her mast. An occasional fish crossing the water-air boundary in its attempt to escape a predator interrupted the silence, as did the occasional whale blow. The cognac and Kara warmed his core. Life was good.
15
Not to be caught with his pants off twice, Gybe awoke before Kara. The water he had drawn for coffee was heating on the propane stove when she slid out of the vee-berth, hair awry, eyes sleepy, naked, and pivoted into the head. He heard the water pump kick on as she started the shower. Would she heed his warnings about water usage?
Any boat away from the dock had to conserve water. Gybe had installed a reverse osmosis PUR watermaker last year, but he preferred not to use it in Hawaiian anchorages. The poor land practices resulted in runoff laden with silt and other detritus that could clog the pre-filters. His water tanks held eighty-nine gallons. He had topped off the tanks three days ago at Ke‘ehi Lagoon near Honolulu International Airport.
He heard a short scream – a girl screech – above the running water in the head. Nothing followed so he ignored it.
Gybe was sitting in the cockpit when Kara climbed through the companionway with a mug of coffee in her left hand. She wore one of his T-shirts, the one that said “Rehab is for Quitters”, and from the jostling beneath the shirt, little else. Kara had towel-dried her low maintenance hair. Across from him, she sat and folded her legs beneath herself.
“Morning.” She smiled and tossed a small black object in his lap. “Found your pet in the sink.”
A black crab, slightly larger than a quarter, sidled off Gybe’s lap and dropped to the sole of the cockpit. “You didn’t hurt him, did you?”
Gybe thought about the sink in the head. It drained through a three-quarter inch hose that exited through a hole just above the waterline. Sometimes, crabs crawled up the hose and rested in the sink.
“You ready for a sail?” Gyb
e watched the crab fall into the scupper. The scupper led straight to the water beneath the boat. If a breaking wave crashed into the cockpit, the four scuppers would drain the water back to the ocean.
“Maybe when I finish my coffee. How long will it take? Are we in a hurry?” Kara moved across and sat next to Gybe, shoulders and thighs touching.
He had better watch this one, Gybe thought. Bed her a couple of more times and she would start nesting. “The marine weather forecast predicts light winds this morning, which is good because we have to sail east – into the wind – to get to Maui. It’s about fifteen miles.”
Reviewing his earlier foreboding, Gybe caressed her thigh. “We have enough time to…” From physics, he knew that for every charm there was an equal and opposite anti-charm. He could get rid of her when the time came but as they used to say in old movies “light ’em if you got ’em, boys.”
After a second shower and a quick breakfast, Gybe was anxious to set sail. Before he could get underway, he needed to stow the dinghy. Although the passage to Maui was short, about fifteen miles, it involved crossing Pailolo Channel, which separated Maui from Moloka‘i. Experienced sailors respected the channels between the islands of Hawai‘i regardless of the weather forecast.
From the dinghy, Gybe handed life jackets, oars, and fuel tank up to Kara. She sat them on deck until he could stow them later. He slipped the harness onto the outboard. A small block and tackle connected the harness to the motor lifting davit. Kara pulled the line and the outboard lifted clear of the dinghy. Free of the motor and gear, the dinghy weight was down to a more manageable eighty pounds. From the foredeck, he pulled it over the lifelines and laid it on deck. He unscrewed the air release valves.
Back in the cockpit, he stowed the oars and gear then lashed the motor to its mount on the stern pulpit. By this time, the dinghy had deflated. Kara helped him roll it into a tight cylinder. He threw a line around the giant rubber cannoli and stowed it in the port sail locker.
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