by Chris Bauer
“There are no words,” Evan said, sounding spent. “You have to see this. I’ll pick you up.”
Philo and Patrick slid into a military Jeep, Evan driving. Evan’s additional input: wear long pants, comfortable hiking shoes, long sleeves and hats, and soak yourselves in bug spray. He’d followed his own advice, his gear all Navy issue, including his sidearm.
“You carrying?” Evan said.
Philo rode shotgun, his bulky shirt resettled over the holstered handgun tucked under it, above his ass cheeks. Patrick was buckled up in the back seat. “You sounded serious,” Philo said, “so yes.”
“It’s fucked up, Philo, it’s all so seriously fucked up. I wouldn’t tell you not to. We’ll be there in twenty minutes. Then we walk.”
Their destination: Kauai’s Alakai Swamp. Evan steered onto a highway, began giving them a short verbal sketch of the terrain they would encounter.
“One of the wettest spots on the planet. Otherworldly. The world’s highest rainforest and swampland. People hike two miles through an open valley on dirt trails to get to the swamp, where the terrain changes. We’ll bypass the dirt, head directly to the boardwalk in the swamp itself. A few miles of skinny planks and terraced platforms and steps, and rocks. As the tourists say, ‘fun.’”
It was on Philo’s list of touristy spots for Patrick and him to experience. In Philo’s way of thinking, terrific postcard-worthy scenery.
“We won’t need to hike the entire trail,” Evan said. “Part of what’s out there is on the first half of the boards only.”
“Part of it?” Philo asked. “It’s spread out?”
“Across a few miles of it. What you’ll see when we get there is an all-Navy response so far, no police.”
“Why no cops?”
“No cops yet. That early-warning crisis event I had to attend to—what shorted out our taco lunches—we thought it was saber rattling by the North Koreans, showing off new missile capabilities. It wasn’t. Took us a bit, but we figured it out. It was drones. A fucking squadron of them.”
“Doing what?”
“Deliveries.”
They reached the entrance to a state park. Evan idled the truck, showed his credentials to a saluting Navy seaman behind a wooden roadblock. They parked amid other military Jeeps and vans, got out. Evan snagged a small thermal-lined shoulder bag with bottled water and an ice pack in it, gave them each a flashlight. Still twilight for their walk on the way in, but it would be dark on the way out. “Let’s hit the boards.”
Cloud cover had moved in, was met at ground level by an enveloping mist. Evan’s boots clip-clopped along the planks, Philo and Patrick in sneakers behind him. “Eyes open, gentlemen. Hoary bats in these parts. It’s getting dark, so they’ll be out. You won’t miss them. Wingspans of a foot or more.”
Philo knew about them from SEAL exercises throughout the islands, way back when.
“Ōpe‘ape‘a,” Patrick said. “That’s what they’re called in the islands, Commander sir.”
“Exactly,” Evan said. “As long as there are enough insects, the bats won’t be a bother. And God knows there are enough insects out here.” He swatted at his face, leaned forward, squinted into the distance. “Up ahead is our first stop.”
Two armed seamen stood side by side on the middle of three small, cantilevered wooden platforms. They snapped to attention when their CO got close. Between them, an electric lantern. Behind them, tangled in the overgrowth, head high, was a drone the size of a go-kart, with four black rotors outboard of a plastic body. Its payload was firmly in the grasp of its mechanical red claws, a Styrofoam cooler that had snapped apart at the bottom like it was a wafer cookie.
“At ease, sailors. Step aside, we need a closer look.”
Evan marched Philo and Patrick to the edge of the platform, their flashlights blazing. Philo’s jaw dropped. The cooler had birthed its contents onto the muddy floor of the swamp.
“That what I think it is?” Philo asked.
“If you’re thinking it’s a woman’s severed head,” Evan said, “then yes.”
Dark skin, short black hair, open black eyes, swollen cheeks, unhinged jaw. Polynesian-Hawaiian. The decapitation appeared clean, a one-and-done blow across the neck as effective as a guillotining. Philo got into a crouch, focused his torch to examine it more closely.
“Jesus, Evan.” Philo leaned left, tilted his head to see it at a different angle. Flies and other insects were starting to accumulate on the skin, wandering inside the nose. “When will the police be here?”
“Probably like right now. We held off calling it in long enough. Orders from my superiors, trying to gauge if there was a national security threat.” Evan gestured at the planking laid out in front of them, leading north. “This was one delivery that didn’t work. There were others that did. We need to keep moving.”
“Is there? A national security issue?”
“Someone’s screwing with the U.S. Navy, but we think no. Let’s go.”
Fifty yards into the next leg, Evan spoke freely, Philo shadowing him step by step. “We’ll take the drone, let the police examine it at the base if they want to. We’ve already confirmed the protocol.”
“I have to say, Evan,” Philo said, “if someone is using drones like the one I just saw, this seems like a local breach.”
“Right you are, Chief, one might think that. And the Navy thinks they know who it is, generally speaking. Me, I have my own theory. Here we are, the next platform.”
Two more armed seamen, another lantern between them, more saluting. No drone, but another Styrofoam container, this one sitting uncovered and flat in the mud, abutting the platform, the lid missing. Three flashlights provided a look inside. A jumble of arm and leg parts, two of each, had been cut to fit the container.
“We’re not done yet, men.” Evan handed them each a bottle of cold water. “Hitch up your jockeys,” he said, sipping, “our next stop is about a mile away.”
Sparse chatting between the three of them, their flashlights swaying, their bug spray bath failing to keep away the insects they walked into. Evan gestured with his flashlight at a swarm of hovering bugs of unknown species. Within seconds a flurry of flapping wings announced their predators, swooping in for a nighttime meal.
“Hoary bats, two o’clock. Keep moving.”
A flickering lantern beckoned them forward to the next stop. Same M.O., guards, guns, salutes, and an open Styrofoam container sitting on the ground within reach of another platform, and again, no drone.
“The final delivery, men.”
They illuminated the inside of the white cooler with their flashlights. Buzzing flies feasted on their swampy picnic: a headless, armless, legless female torso. And on closer inspection—
“The internal organs are gone,” Philo said.
“And this, my good Chief,” Evan said, “is why I want Wally Lanakai’s head on a silver platter.”
Philo and Patrick leaned in, looked over the cooler’s gory interior, the remainder of the woman unceremoniously dumped into the wild. This whole situation—someone had a flair for the dramatic, was Philo’s assessment. The three containers spread out along this swamp trail—again, like with the other bodies, no one was trying to hide anything. On the contrary, someone was making a point.
“I don’t think it’s Lanakai, Evan. It might be someone trying to call attention to him, but it’s not him.”
“Not buying it, Philo. You yourself said he’s into organ trafficking…”
“In Philly he cleaned up after himself. He had people to do that for him, to make crime scenes disappear, like what I do legally. This… this is nuts.”
“Goddamn it, Philo.” Evan paced the planks. “I am losing my mind over this—”
“Give me the other theory, bud.”
“What other theory, damn it?”
“What does the Navy think is going on?”
Evan removed his naval cap, un-gritted his teeth. Exhausted, he surrendered to the question. “It cou
ld be the Yakuza. Or an offshoot of the Yakuza.”
A blast from the past. A rumor as old as Philo’s early SEAL training days in Hawaii. A ruthless, dangerous cult, with origins among the Samurai, and organized to the hilt in Japan. But in Hawaii?
“In Kauai and around the other islands. They’ve terrorized the Japanese population here. Occasional beat-downs that make the news. They make examples of people, especially if someone helps the Navy in any way, for reasons unknown. I also heard that they’re crazy brutal. A severe, more radical strain.”
Which was what Philo also remembered hearing. “No ceremonial hara-kiri or seppuku, like in the old days,” Philo added. “They behead people, even their own.”
“Rumored, yes.”
Flashlights approached from farther up the trail. “This will be the police,” Evan said. “Our monopoly on the Alakai Swamp Trail is over, gentlemen. We’re better off taking the trail forward and saying hello to them. I can get someone to pick us up at the end—”
Craaack-craaack-craaack went a handgun, piercing shots from behind them, deafening, echoing, causing Philo and Evan to draw their weapons. The flashlights in front of them on the trail started forward in a rush. Philo and Evan turned to see one of his seamen standing with his arms extended, his gun pointed at the ground, in the direction of the cooler.
“Sorry, Captain sir,” the seaman said, “but the evidence was about to disappear into the swamp—”
The human torso had been dragged out of the cooler, onto the swampy mud. Three large, expired rats with bullet holes lay next to the torso.
“I hate those Pacific rat bastards, sir.”
20
Sunrise on Mii Landing, the north shore of Miakamii Island. Ella grabbed her spot on the beach, the fourth chair of fifteen, each chair decades old, jutting from the sand like the statues of Easter Island and distant enough inland from the shore to avoid the tides. Carved out of large redwood trees from California that came ashore worn but well-preserved, from transpacific trips on ocean currents pushed by the winds, the natives planted them upright near where they beached, then hollowed them out. The shell lei makers, called stringers, brought their blankets and down-filled cushions to lessen the discomfort of the hundred-year-old hardwood seating. The fifteen seats were arranged in a semi-circle on the coastline close enough to each other for socializing. But this morning, as was the case for so many mornings of late, Ella would be the only craftsperson plying the trade at dawn on the beach. Today she’d finish her work on two shell leis, stringing them together, then knotting and tying off these wonderful, colorful jewels of the ocean, these pupu O Miakamii.
Ella placed her tools on a soft cloth she’d set on the sand. First was a handmade poker five inches in length with a cylindrical burnished-wood handle, the metal poking end used to make the tiniest holes in the tiniest of shells for the insertion of nylon thread. Next to the poker was a metal awl with a thin needle used to thread the nylon. Next to the tools, she set up bowls of shells of various sizes, colors, and shapes. With the softest of touches she went to work, removing every grain of sand from each shell, some of them no larger than a piece of rice. The art of collecting and sewing these rare shells into leis had been handed down generation to generation from her ancestral kupuna. Ella was a master craftsperson in a long line of master craftspeople.
She missed her friends, the women who occupied the other fourteen chairs when times were better and work was plentiful, and who had abandoned the shell trade in favor of other endeavors. Ella would complete two leis today, each about eighteen inches in length so they would sit properly on the neck. It had been weeks of tedious work per lei, but these two were already sold, for three thousand and thirty-five-hundred dollars respectively, one for a Hawaiian wedding, the other to celebrate the birth of a child. Mr. Logan brokered the work for them, no middleman fees involved, a complete pass-through to the artist, part of the pleasure he got from helping his islanders with their livelihood.
Ella began her workday as she did every day, with a prayer to Jesus Christ Her Savior, and she would end her work on the leis with a prayer to Him as well.
She closed out two hours of tedious poking and stringing and put her tools down for a break. Calling to her was the food satchel she’d brought with her, a bushel of mollusks in a burlap sack. At eight a.m. the smelly bushel became Ella’s breakfast, some of the small shells viable for other types of leis after she consumed their contents. One shucking knife, one plate, one empty satchel awaiting shells that were too large for leis, and one hungry mouth awaiting the snail meat from the mollusks of all shapes and sizes. Ella shucked, pulled, sniffed, shuddered, slurped, and swallowed.
Ten minutes into her meal, Ella had surrounded herself with spent shells. She relaxed, releasing a hearty burp that brought with it a satisfied smile.
If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it…
Behind her, an animal snorted from the scrub brush. The philosophical had begotten a material response.
A wild boar stepped onto the beach, wandered in close to her chair, its curved tusks ominous, its eyes shifty. Another snort followed another step, its boar nose inching closer to her pile of mollusk shells surrounding her in the sand. It nudged the shells, hesitated. Ella and the boar eyed each other in silence, a long moment that ended with Ella speaking.
“Go ahead, have some,” she said.
The boar chomped into the pile, slurped at what remained of the mollusk meat, and crunched the shells with its powerful teeth. Seconds later it stopped, began gagging and sneezing and coughing. After a herky-jerky about-face it expelled the chewed bounty, squealed, and left the beach in a hefty trot.
“Ha!” she called after it. “Same as last week, and the week before. Serves you right, my lovely puaa friend. You know better. Stick with the oysters and the potatoes.”
Snails from the waters surrounding the island became mollusk meat that was, at best, an acquired taste. It had taken centuries of digestive adaptation and intestinal fortitude by their harvesters to enjoy the delicacy without striking the entire Miakamii population dead from consuming it. The boar should have identified it from the pungent smell inside the shells, something that could take a person’s breath away: hydrogen sulfide, the “rotten eggs” odor, boosted by gases from volcanic eruptions and hot springs emanating from deep within the earth. Eons upon eons where the earth’s magma had coughed up its poisonous, dangerous content, with lava exploding into the atmosphere, lava colonizing the soil, and lava streaming into the ocean, all of it settling in the local ecosystem, in the flora and the fauna, and in the seafood.
Ella finished her parting words for the wild puaa’s retreat by chiding the boar for its short memory, thanking it for not partaking in her breakfast—“more for us Miakamiians, my lovely”—then adding her heartfelt condolences, with the Sign of the Cross, on the loss of its momma, one of the casualties of the helicopter crash.
21
They were met at the pasture gate for Mr. Logan’s Kapilimao Valley ranch by two paniolo on horses, the island’s version of cowboys, if Philo’s memory served, clearly with a strong Mexican influence. The horse and cowboy escorts accompanied their SUV slowly up the trail, dust scattering amid their slow trot.
“Mr. Logan can help, Patrick. He says he’s got tons of records. Maybe he can trace things back.”
“Maybe, sir. Those hats, sir. The paniolo hats?”
“The sombreros? What about them?”
“I just remembered something, sir. Where they keep their guns. Small holsters inside their hats, sir.”
One couldn’t miss their bandoliers, each cowboy’s chest crisscrossed with multiple bullet clips, but the corresponding guns weren’t visible on the cowboys’ persons. Handguns in hats was an affectation Philo always thought silly from his earlier days in training on the islands.
“Yes. One under their shirt, one inside their boot, one inside their sombrero, bud.” The SUV rolled along, Philo pressing only slightly on the gas
pedal. Funeral dirge speed. “Silly, right?”
“Nope. Lightweight Sigs. Plenty effective.”
Philo waited for Patrick to finish his statement, to close it off with a “sir” or a “Philo sir.” When it didn’t come—
“Tell me why, Patrick. What do you remember?”
“About what, sir?”
And they were back.
“Why guns inside a hat would be effective.”
“Head-to-toe firepower, sir. Waist, foot, head. I… I saw it work, sir.”
“When?”
A flustered Patrick picked at the hem of his shorts. “Collection day. When I was a kid. They… someone pulled the driver out of the car I was in.”
“They pulled out your dad?”
“Maybe. I was nine. No, ten. Someone dragged him out, took the laundry bag with the money, put a gun to his head. On Nawiliwili Road. He had, umm, just come out of the gym. We were stopped at a vegetable stand, and… and…”
“What, Patrick?”
“This guy… this guy holding a sombrero to his chest, talking with the vegetable farmer’s daughter, he… he dropped the hat, showed two guns in his hands, then shot the guy robbing the driver. Sir.”
Robbing your bagman dad, Philo thought, but he didn’t say it.
“He saved his life, sir.”
They pulled into Douglas Logan’s ranch home driveway. “We’re here.”
Douglas Logan spoke from behind his desk, small towers of file folders piled left and right of him, one folder open in the middle. Philo and Patrick occupied the chairs fronting the desk.
“Here are the results of the 2000 and 2010 censuses for Miakamii.” Mr. Logan removed paper from the folder, placed it in front of Patrick. “Take a look at it, Mr. Stakes, so we can get our bearings.”
Philo and Patrick leaned in.
Total Miakamii population had declined between the censuses by thirty people, from 160 to 130. The names and genders of all the inhabitants for both censuses were on the spreadsheet. Five had died. Which meant twenty-five had moved off the island. There had been no births.