Molokai Reef

by Dennis K. Biby

  Of all the theories they had batted around over the past week, this one made the most sense. Kara retrieved another round of drinks as the discussion continued.

  The sun had fallen to within an hour of the big splash in the ocean. It was too late in the day to go after Les now. Flyn saw a fisherman return in a small boat. She excused herself, hopped in the dinghy, and buzzed ashore. Fifteen minutes later she returned and handed four thick mahimahi steaks to Gybe. “Fire up the barby, baby.”

  63

  While enjoying the fresh fish steaks the night before, they had decided that Flyn and Gybe would drive to SynCorn this morning and confront Les. Kara wanted to go, but Gybe firmly refused her offer. In a pout, she spent the night at Susan’s house. Though he occasionally lost his teeth in barroom brawls, the ‘goose was a non-violent person. He did not ask to go. But in honor of the event, he wore crystal clear teeth. In the left one, Gybe could make out a dollar sign. The right tooth contained a leaf of either the Canadian maple or a marijuana plant.

  At SynCorn, Gybe parked the ’vair in a slot angled steeply uphill before he and Flyn entered the reception area. The once friendly receptionist told them that Dr. Spooner was in a conference and could not be disturbed. The conference would last all day.

  Flyn followed Gybe through the door as he ignored the receptionist and walked into the director’s office. Inside, they found Les fellating a fat stogie with his feet propped up on the desk. If Gybe could have read smoke signals, he might have seen that the stogie was signaling an imminent attack. Les’s nose was heavily bandaged as a result of the Lono experience. Two blackened eyes complimented the bulbous nose.

  “You are one rude sum bitch Gybe. I’ll have you and the bitch arrested.” Les leaned forward and punched the intercom button.

  “While we wait for the police, tell me about caramel corn. Then we can talk about the Tonto Group.”

  Sensing no bluff, Les squawked “never mind” to the receptionist as he released the intercom button.

  Les stood and started around the desk. “I’ll throw you and that bitch out myself.”

  Once again, the testosterone underestimated the estrogen, Gybe thought. Les hadn’t spoken to Makaha of shattered knee fame. Flyn would be ready, stoked by the epithet tossed her direction.

  As Les rounded the desk, he spun around and plucked the spear gun from behind the corn plant. In one motion, he nocked the spear and pointed it towards them.

  “Step away from the door.”

  “You got one shot Les. One of us will get you.”

  “Move. Now.” He aimed the spear at Flyn’s starboard nipple. “The question is Gybe, will you come after me or will you try to save your girlfriend with the perforated lung?”

  Les closed the door behind him as he left his office. A futile effort, since like most offices, there was no way to lock the door from the outside.

  Gybe waited for a couple counts, then squatted down and cracked open the door. Les had taken only one spear. Gybe didn’t want to see that shot. The hall was empty.

  Behind him, Flyn shouted from the window. “Les is headed out in the Navigator.”

  Racing from the office, Flyn blocked the receptionist, knocking her on her butt, before following Gybe out the door.

  Gybe jumped in the ’vair and released the brake to start the backward roll while he started the engine. The impatient Flyn leaned against the hood and pushed hard. The engine caught as Gybe cranked the wheel to the left. Flyn jumped in and the ’vair chirped out of the lot. Must have been the backward momentum, Gybe thought, as he mashed the accelerator.

  “Looks like he’s headed for the pier.” Flyn yelled. “He doesn’t know that the ferry won’t leave until this afternoon.”

  “Or he’s got a boat.”

  Gybe locked both hands to the wheel as the floor-boarded engine pegged the speedometer at 47 mph. The car vibrated like an Egyptian belly dancer’s navel ring.

  Halfway down the causeway, Flyn pointed to the dimpled SUV parked by the boat ramp. A blue four by four Dodge Ram pickup was backing down the ramp preparing to launch a new WaveRunner FX. By the time Gybe and Flyn jumped from the ’vair, Les was astride the jetski. He was attempting to start it as the personal watercraft drifted away from the ramp.

  Gybe headed for his dinghy. “Call the cops.”

  The outboard started on the first pull. Gybe flipped the shifter forward and twisted the throttle. He swung the dinghy in a tight circle and aimed for Les.

  Les had the FX running and was pulling away from the boat ramp. Like the bull and the matador, Gybe and Les maneuvered the boats around the harbor. They made taunting starts and danced around each other.

  Tired of the game, Les broke away and headed for the harbor entrance.

  Gybe had heard that some jetski engines developed over 150 horsepower, no match for the nine point nine horsepower Nissan hanging from the transom of his dinghy.

  The WaveRunner schussed across the harbor towards the open ocean, the only escape from the harbor bounded on the east by the pier, the west by the reef and the north by the shore. Les cranked the throttle tighter until he saw the inbound tug and barge plugging the channel. He spun the FX in a tight circle and aimed straight for Gybe. Just before impact, Gybe faked to the left then spun Aweigh to the right. Les missed.

  Gybe idled Aweigh along the front of the reef while Les circled near the pier. The jousters eyed and taunted each other. Once again, the FX sprang forward towards Gybe.

  The reef was behind Gybe as the WaveRunner accelerated towards him. Les swerved the WaveRunner back and forth intimidating Gybe. The inflatable offered little protection from the heavy WaveRunner. Nor could Gybe outrun it. He considered bailing out.

  Les accelerated towards the dink. He would have creamed Gybe if not for the sudden distraction.

  Bill had watched the two gladiators circle for another pass. Just after Les cranked the throttle forward, the bird flew from Makani to Les’s head, where he curled his toes into Les’s kinky hair. “Yee hah. Yee hah.” Shrieked the scarlet macaw.

  Les never saw the reef. Not when the WaveRunner slammed to a stop. Not during his subsequent flight through the air.

  Like an eagle carrying a Chihuahua, or in this case a large pig, Bill rode the soaring SynCorn director. His claws released just as Les hit the water. The first time.

  Witnesses argued about whether Les skipped three or four times, but they agreed that he was de-pantsed on the second skip.

  64

  Kara waited for the Moloka‘i Princess to dock. She had talked Gybe into borrowing Aweigh. Susan was the third person off the ferry and embraced her friend Kara. Kara led her to the dinghy and motored out to Lagoonabago where the others waited.

  Lagoonabago had sailed into port early that morning. Gybe joined Andrea for breakfast during which he explained the events leading up to solving the murders and Les’s capture. Andrea, ever the host, offered to throw a party for the amateur sleuths.

  By the time Kara arrived with Susan, the girls aboard Lagoonabago had put together a party for the newly released Susan. Andrea had suggested that they dress ship so they strung signal flags up the forestay to the mast and then down the backstay. Lindsey arranged the flags to spell out ‘Oceans Now – Welcome Susan.’

  Andrea welcomed Kara and Susan. Gybe made the introductions as they walked into the saloon where Mongoose and Flyn sat. The girls brought drinks.

  Before speaking, Gybe noted that everyone sat comfortably in the catamaran’s saloon. Andrea and the girls – Amber, Lindsey, Pamela - sat at one end of the table. Flyn, Mongoose, Kara, and Susan sat on the other side. He could seat this many people in the saloon of Ferrity, but they wouldn’t all be sitting at a table. Nor, would anyone be able to get up and walk around.

  “Skoal. To Susan’s release.” Gybe hoisted his glass of champagne.

  After Susan’s brief discussion of her stay in jail, Gybe summarized the murders.

  Jean and Ray met after she moved to Moloka‘i. They hit i
t off as friends and were very interested in each other’s work. Starting as a practical joke, they decided to create a strain of corn that contained THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. Neither researcher believed that the current laws regarding pakalolo were enforceable or logical.

  Because of her official work in removing the minuscule amount of THC from hemp, it was easier to work on the reverse process of transferring the THC genes from marijuana to another plant. Since Ray worked with coloring corn, they agreed to make the green corn. Like two kids at the county fair, they dubbed the secret project ‘caramel corn.’

  Everyone listened without interrupting. The only sound was of champagne flowing, occasionally punctuated by the popping of a cork.

  The process was straightforward and not particularly difficult. Soon, they had corn that tested with a THC potency of eight to ten percent. “Similar to the potency of good pot.”

  “Makes me hungry. Andrea, do you have any of those green chips nearby?”

  She didn’t and Gybe paused while the ‘goose made an emergency run to Makani for chips.

  Ray and Jean never tried to sell hashish, Gybe continued. The coconut grapevine slipped up and somehow translated the pakalolo chips to hashish. Ray and Jean tried to sell the green chips to the drug brothers. As we’ve seen in our meetings with the brothers, they aren’t the swiftest fish in the pond.

  Flyn began laughing.

  “Wasn’t that funny Flyn.” Gybe scrunched his face.

  “I’m not laughing at what you said. I was remembering what I saw on the pier this morning.” Flyn had gone to the pier to top off the water tanks on her boat. While there, she had seen the drug brothers.

  “Makaha’s leg was in a cast and he was on crutches. He mumbled idle threats that he thought I couldn’t hear. Barely able to walk, he was in no condition to start a fight or tangle with me again.”

  Flyn paused for a swallow of champagne. “He wasn’t nearly as funny as his brother. Nahoa stood behind him wearing only a lava-lava, the loincloth that the Samoans wear. Anyway, Nahoa is standing there with his legs spread wide and his arms sticking out like a newborn penguin.”

  “When he walked he waddled like a duck.”

  For suspense, she sipped another bit of bubbly. Gybe spun an index finger in a circular motion, the universal speed-it-up signal.

  Gybe looked at Mongoose. Had the ring around Nahoa’s jewels gone off, he wondered. “Mongoose – you still have the control for that thing we put on Nahoa.”

  Mongoose nodded and retrieved the control hanging on a lanyard around his neck. He explained to everyone what the device was and that he could detonate it by pressing the green button. Pamela and Lindsey winced, Amber’s eyes widened.

  Flyn recaptured the floor. “Anyway, I asked around. The device had exploded.” Gybe and Mongoose covered their privates in a male-bonding gesture.

  “But how? I have the control.” Mongoose asked.

  “The story is,” Flyn couldn’t control her laughter, “the story is that Nahoa’s girlfriend was in bed with him the other night. She got so frustrated with his inability to focus and perform, that she pulled out a vibrator and took the matter into her own hands. Apparently the vibrator triggered the device.”

  When the laughter quieted down, Gybe looked to Mongoose for an answer.

  “I told you it was the Mod IV. Guess I’ll need to test the next one against female sex toys.” He shrugged. “Anyway, it didn’t blow off his nuts. Even I couldn’t do that. The explosive device was loaded with a concentrated powder derived from the poison oak plant. He’ll be fine in a week or month or so.”

  After the laughter and some speculation about the manhood of the drug brothers, Gybe continued his explanation of the murders.

  When the drug brothers refused the product, Ray and Jean dumped the chips at the Hotel Moloka‘i as the conclusion to their practical joke. Somehow, Les found out about the project. Probably from snooping on Ray’s computer. Mongoose had found several of Ray’s files on Les’s PC. Some evidence suggested that Les had stolen the computer from Elizabeth’s GeNesRus company during its first week of existence.

  “It’s very common for management to monitor files on employee computers.” Flyn offered. “It is especially common in research where every document is supposed to be archived daily.”

  “Anyway, as Mongoose found out,” Gybe continued, “Les was short on money. SynCorn was in deep financial doo-doo. He contacted someone in the drug trade and talked them into the scheme. Remember someone sent two million dollars to SynCorn a few months ago.”

  “So why kill Ray and Jean?” Lindsey asked.

  “They wouldn’t give him the recipe. He knew what they were doing but he didn’t have the exact procedure, nor did he have any of the result – no actual corn.”

  “He used the concrete helmets to torture them.” Mongoose guessed.

  “Probably. Andrea, remember that jetski that the hikers found down by the old Boy Scout Camp? It looks like Les used the inner tubes to tow his victims to the reef. Then, with the concrete on their heads, he dunked them until they talked.”

  “Talked? Their heads were encased in concrete and they had a snorkel in their mouths.” Flyn pointed out.

  “OK, wrote. Apparently, they only gave him the password to the files describing the technique. He never discovered the greenhouse full of live plants.”

  Noting the gender imbalance aboard Lagoonabago, a six-man canoe paddled alongside. More followed.

  Andrea counted twenty-three visitors when the lower edge of the sun touched the horizon.

  As the party moved towards midnight, the consumption of drinks and chips continued unabated. Mongoose seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of the green chips, now dubbed loco maize. He made frequent supply runs back to his Makani.

  Susan and Kara discovered that Andrea knew how Gybe got his name. Assisted by Amber and Lindsey, they begged her to tell. Andrea looked to Gybe who shrugged his eyes before leaving the saloon and heading to the bow.

  65

  Pamela refreshed everyone’s drink before Andrea began the story.

  Andrea told them that Gybe’s mother grew up in New England and learned to sail when she was six. His father was from the Midwest and had never sailed. Like many newlyweds, they were poor, but as a wedding gift Gybe’s father bought an old Cal 20 sailboat for his new bride. For a home, the couple had rented a small cottage, formerly a crab shack, on the Magothy River just north of Annapolis, Maryland. A small dock jutted out from the house’s front lawn.

  After returning from a simple and inexpensive honeymoon to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, his mother worked every evening cleaning, painting, and re-rigging the new-to-her sailboat.

  Two weeks after the honeymoon, at a small party on a warm Friday evening, his mother christened the boat. She named the small vessel, Ku‘uipo.

  The next morning while she readied the boat, Gybe’s father packed a picnic basket lunch. They sailed away from the dock before 10:00 a.m. It was his father’s first sail. The light winds blew from the west as his mother showed her new husband how to sail. After lunch, they had been sailing downwind in a gentle breeze just east of Thomas Point Lighthouse when the newlywed urge struck.

  It was too hot to go below into the small cabin. In the cockpit, they removed each other’s clothes but as the passion soared, Gybe’s mother scooched up onto the flat cabintop. She staked out the bottom position and slid a cushion under her butt. Her feet pointed forward and her hips lay just starboard of the mast. Dad was on top.

  Unlike bigger sailboats, the Cal 20 had a flat coach roof that began at the bow and gently rose towards the stern. There weren’t any lowered walkways along the side.

  A deep thrust caused his mother to open her eyes. Above her, she saw the top of the mainsail backwind and screamed “Jibe ho.” His father, still unfamiliar with sailing terms, raised his head to look around just as the boom swung across from the port to the starboard side of the boat.

  His Dad’s s
perm felt the jolt, abandoned ship en masse, and torpedoed towards his mother. Unlike the Titanic, it was every sperm for himself or herself with no preference to the girl sperms.

  The blow on the temple had killed his father. The body surfaced three hours later.

  Gybe’s newly wed, unknowingly pregnant, mourning but practical mother sailed Ku‘uipo back to the family dock.

  Gybe stood with one arm around the forestay, a fresh Lavaman red ale in his hand, and stared across the ocean. Susan came up alongside and put her arm around him. “Gybe, thanks for helping me.”

  Once again, Gybe reflected, he had drifted off-course. Yeah, he had helped the wrongly accused – how cliché. And he had received some financial compensation. The biotech writing assignment for the magazine was finished. However, illegible notes, misfiring thoughts, and unresearched questions littered his half-written novel like the flotsam on too many once-clean shores.

  Tomorrow, he would sail away from this paradise and continue his goal of sailing about the world.

  Susan cuddled closer. “So sailorman, want to shiver me timbers?”

  Meanwhile, there is tonight.

  The end

  Honolulu, Hawai‘i

  Author notes:

  Acknowledgments:

  Thanks to Dan Biby who offered a quick edit after I got stuck in an endless editing loop. Also, thanks to my friends and acquaintances who controlled their laughter when I began writing Moloka‘i Reef.

  Thanks to Della Sztuk for designing the cover.

  This is a work of fiction but Hawaiian reefs like other reefs around the world are dying at an alarming rate. Also, the turtle tumors, when witnessed firsthand will sadden even the toughest heart. I highly recommend Fire in the Turtle House by Osha Gray Davidson which describes the virus fibropapillomatosis in detail and its tragic effect on sea turtles.