Francis sat naked on the bed in his hotel room. He shoved the remains of his room-service cheeseburger off to one side and looked down at his crotch. Nothing was stirring. He tried gently stroking it, but his cock was still tender from the recent traumas and injustices perpetrated on it. Francis looked at the TV and watched as the long-haired blond ripped off his clothes and let the deliveryman blow him while the plumber was banging away on the other end. He looked back at his dick. Nothing was happening at all.
...
Baxter piloted the Jeep down the road. He was trying to follow Lono’s directions but was having trouble hearing. Lono would have to lean forward and shout to be heard above the wind and the roar of the engine as Baxter fumbled his way through the gears. Baxter wished Reggie had sat in back so Lono could’ve ridden shotgun. It would’ve been easier to hear, and it would’ve been cool to talk to a consummate professional like Lono. Maybe Lono could help hook him up with more jobs down the line. I mean, who knew? It’s good to network. Everybody knows that.
Reggie leaned forward and whispered to Baxter. “Dude, check it out.” He pulled a tightly rolled joint out of his pocket. “I scored it off those chicks from Kansas City.”
Baxter looked at him, his irritation growing. “Not now.”
Reggie pocketed the joint. “I’m saving it for after. We can celebrate.”
Baxter nodded like a bobble-head doll. Why couldn’t this fool just shut up? “Great.”
Reggie turned and looked out the window, watching the countryside whiz by. Lono had explained that they were going way out into the country so they could fire the guns and make sure they worked. That was so smart. Baxter wouldn’t’ve thought of that. He would’ve just trusted that the guns worked and the ammo was live. He could’ve busted in on the old guy with a starter’s pistol and a load of blanks. How would that look? Stupid, that’s how. They were lucky they’d found Lono. Who knows what kind of trouble they’d be in if they hadn’t?
...
Wilson was waiting by a big white van in a little scrap of clearing surrounded by dense tropical forest. It was pitch black out in the jungle, the only light coming from the van’s interior, and they were well off the main road. Baxter hadn’t seen a house or a streetlight for miles. He had followed Lono’s directions perfectly, bouncing down one muddy lane after another until they’d arrived at this desolate spot.
Baxter was so excited he could hardly contain himself; he wanted to jump out of the Jeep and try out his new gun. But he also wanted to be cool, so he forced himself to adopt a languid air, moving slow like that guy in the movies.
Wilson waved to them. “Hey. Cut your lights.”
Baxter nodded and turned off the Jeep.
Reggie turned to Baxter. “I want a .44, man.”
“Let’s see what they got. They might not have a .44.”
Reggie got out of the Jeep with a swagger. He looked over at Baxter. “Dude, I want a fuckin’ .44. The customer is always right.”
Lono had already climbed out of the back of the Jeep and was standing over by Wilson.
“Just don’t fucking say anything. Okay?” Baxter hissed at Reggie. “Let me handle it.”
Reggie recoiled a little. He was surprised by Baxter’s ferocity. “Relax, man. You sure you don’t wanna toke up now?”
Baxter ignored him and walked over to Wilson. He extended his hand.
Wilson shook it. “You good?”
Baxter nodded. “I’m good.”
Reggie had to open his mouth. “I’m good too. Scored some Maui Wowie from these chicks from Kansas City. You guys wanna fire up a joint?”
They ignored him. “You got the money?”
Baxter nodded. “Let’s see ’em.”
Baxter was pleased with himself for not just handing the money over. He wanted to wait until he saw the guns. It’s not that he didn’t trust Lono and the other guy, it was just the way cool dudes did business.
Wilson reached into the van. He pulled out a couple of handguns, a .38 snub-nosed revolver and a Beretta 9 millimeter semiautomatic.
“You said you’d like a nine millimeter.”
Baxter nodded. “Yeah.”
Reggie saw the guns. “Awesome. I got dibs on the nina.” He stepped forward to grab the Beretta out of Wilson’s hands. “I wanna see if it works, man.”
Wilson held the gun out. “It works.”
That’s when he pulled the trigger. Twice. Pumping two shots into Reggie’s chest, aimed to tear into his aorta and cause him to die instantly without a lot of bleeding. Reggie was dead before he hit the ground.
The shots took Baxter by surprise. He couldn’t believe it. Was it some kind of accident? He wanted to say something. But he heard the gun go off a couple more times, maybe three or four more, and couldn’t really think of anything to say.
Baxter fell to the ground too, his face slapping into the soft Hawaiian mud.
...
Keith had been paddling for hours but he wasn’t tired. He’d stopped and coasted down a swell for a minute and guzzled some fresh water, but otherwise he was jamming straight through, staying right on course. He was far enough away from shore that when he cranked his head around and looked back he couldn’t see any sign of civilization. No lights. No distant glow. Only a big ship on the horizon and a couple of planes in the sky.
It was quiet out there on the water. The only sounds were the soft slap of the paddle and the deep primordial rumbling of the waves. The pull of the swell going down, the push of it rising. It was a Jurassic sloshing, life and death in all its fantastic spin-cycle glory. It was the in and out of copulation. It was positive and negative, yin and yang. It was the universe, constantly changing and thrusting and unkempt.
Keith was in it. On top of it. Under it. He felt like he was napping on a dragon’s belly. Rising and falling. Bigger than anything he’d ever seen, stronger than he could ever describe. It took Keith a little while to get in tune with it; he had to work hard to control his breathing. But as he pushed on into the moonlit blue-black world of the ocean at night, he kind of synched up with it.
And that’s when the dolphins appeared. He didn’t know how long they’d been with him. They arrived without a sound. He caught a glint of moonlight off the back of one of them, like a living piece of obsidian moving silently through the water. The pod embraced him, closing in around the little canoe and leading him onward.
The first flash of lightning was beautiful. It left latent images of silver-white tracers in the sky. The image of Zeus standing on Mount Olympus hurling thunderbolts sprang into Keith’s consciousness. Bolts of energy delivered direct from a god. That’s really what it looked like. The flash was followed by the electrical crackle and crunch of the atmosphere being torn in two. The shock wave resounding from the thunder shook Keith’s stomach, and the air around the canoe sparkled alive with static electricity. His hair stood on end, like an electroshocked Einstein.
Keith was surprised that the rain wasn’t bothering the dolphins. He thought they might dive deeper under the water to avoid getting pelted. But there they were, right alongside him, taking him along. It was a good thing, too. The sky had grown dense with clouds, and Keith couldn’t find the moon or stars to guide him. He just plowed ahead, confident in the dolphins.
The first big wave woke him up. Keith realized he’d fallen into some kind of ecstasy trance. He’d been cruising along, stroking his paddle through the blackness. Dipping it in, pulling as hard as he could, repeating again and again. But the wave snapped him out of it. It descended on the canoe like a down comforter, gently billowing above him, blotting out anything but its roiling curls, and then it swept over him. It felt like a truck had been dropped on him. It knocked the wind out of him and swept his canoe clean of supplies. Keith held on as tight as he could, but the wave got his paddle and sent it swirling off toward Australia.
The canoe got heavy fast. But before Keith could react, he was rising up on the tip of a massive swell. The ocean lifted him up, high,
to its apex. Keith looked over the side. It was a mistake. He saw that he was maybe forty feet up in the air and there was nothing to do but fall.
The canoe broke in two on impact. Keith felt the ocean grab him and yank him down, sucking him deep under the surface. The water was warm and felt surprisingly good, although Keith wished he could breathe. In fact if he didn’t get back to the surface pretty soon, the breathing issue was going to become critical. But the ocean loved him and pushed him back up to the surface like he was rocket propelled.
Keith burst to the surface, gasping for air. He treaded water for a moment, trying to think what to do. One of the dolphins came up to him and gave him a nudge. They wanted him to follow them. Keep going. Keep swimming. Keith did a reasonably good breaststroke and followed the dolphins as well as he could.
Then he remembered the ecstasy. It wasn’t going to last long in all this water. He stopped, kicking hard to keep his head above the waves. He opened the little plastic bag. It appeared that the pills were still dry but Keith didn’t want to take any chances. He emptied the entire bag into his mouth and washed them down with an accidental swallow of seawater.
Then he checked his position. He could see a sliver of moon breaking between the storm clouds. He was right on course. Keith ducked his head under a wave and began to swim. He followed the dolphins.
...
Lono had never seen a dead body before. Not really. Not one freshly executed right in front of him. It was something, he realized, that unnerved him. He’d never wanted to be involved in any kind of homicidal endeavors. It wasn’t the way he did business. It wasn’t his thing at all. But in his heart of hearts Lono knew there wasn’t any other way to deal with these guys. What could they do? Beat ’em up and send ’em home? Lono had thought about turning them in to the police. He had some friends who were detectives. But what proof did he have? It was their word against his, and he knew from experience that in battles between tourists and pimps the tourists always won. The killers would just make bail and be back on the streets. They would persist and eventually find someone to buy a gun from. They weren’t the type to back down and go home; they were too stupid.
Lono helped Wilson strip the bodies and load them into the back of his van.
“What’re you going to do with them?”
Wilson shrugged. “I don’t know, brah.”
That wasn’t what Lono had expected. “You don’t have a plan?”
“I’m gonna get rid of dey clothes an da guns an’ stuff.”
“What about them?”
Wilson turned and looked at the two corpses stacked in his van. “Chop ’em up?”
Lono put his hand on Wilson’s shoulder. He did it in a friendly way.
“Listen, brah, you got to be smart about this. You can’t just chop ’em up and make a big mess. Why don’t you ask Joseph to help? He’ll figure something out.”
Wilson nodded. “Okay.”
...
Joseph had just finished packing his CD collection into a box when Wilson and Sid knocked on his front door. The two men peeped in through the screen.
“Look like you goin’ den.”
Joseph could only nod; he really didn’t know what to say to his uncle.
“You got a job somewhere?”
“New York.”
There was an awkward pause, Wilson and Sid unsure whether or not they’d been invited in.
“So we pau?”
“You fired me.”
Sid nodded. Joseph thought about saying that Sid would always be his uncle, they were his family; they would never be pau, finished, done.
Wilson broke the uncomfortable silence. “We need to talk.”
“Door’s open.”
Wilson and Sid entered, and that’s when Joseph could tell something was wrong.
“Do you guys want a beer or something? You look terrible.”
“No, thanks, brah.”
Wilson flopped onto the couch. Sid kind of paced, turning his massive hulk one way and then another.
“Is everything all right?”
Wilson snorted. Sid tried to figure out a way to explain the situation.
“You know dat guy from Vegas, Jack Lucey?”
Joseph crossed his arms. “Of course. You know that.”
“You know he hired some guys to come fo’ whack me?”
“What’re you talking about?”
Wilson spoke up. “Killers, brah. Murderers for hire.”
Joseph laughed, shook his head, and started for the kitchen. “You sure you don’t want a beer?”
“It’s fo’ sure true. We got dey bodies in da van.”
Joseph stopped in his tracks. “What?”
“We had to kill ’em fo’ dey kill us.”
Joseph turned and looked at Sid and Wilson. He could tell they weren’t joking; they were serious as a heart attack.
“You wanna see ’em?”
...
Lono drove the pink Jeep into the airport car-rental return lot. He pulled into a specially marked spot. A young man in a baseball cap and knit shirt bearing the logo of the rent-a-car company came bounding out of a little kiosk holding some kind of computer thing. He had already typed in the license plate number when he got to Lono.
“Did you fill up the tank?”
“Just did.”
Lono handed the kid the keys. The kid walked around the Jeep, looking for damage. Then he put the key in, started the car up, and checked the gas gauge. Satisfied that everything was in order, he pushed a little button on his hand-held computer and a receipt came rolling out.
“Thanks for choosing us. We appreciate your business.” He handed Lono the receipt.
“Thanks.”
“Have a good trip home.”
Lono nodded and walked off toward the terminals. He’d catch a cab back to Waikiki and see how Yuki was doing. He needed her. He wanted to feel human again.
...
Joseph didn’t want to go out and look at the bodies. He didn’t want to see them; he didn’t want to have anything to do with them. But Wilson and Sid were obviously in over their heads. They hadn’t known what to do so they’d turned to him. Joseph considered their options. They could go to the police and try to explain themselves, but the guys from Vegas would deny it and Wilson would go to jail for murder. They could take the bodies out and sink them in the ocean; that would get rid of them for sure, but what about Jack Lucey? Wouldn’t he just hire someone else?
Joseph needed to figure out a way to dispose of the bodies and, at the same time, send a message to Jack. And then he remembered the story of how the ancient King of Maui tricked an invading army. It wouldn’t be easy, but it had worked back then and maybe it would work today.
“We had to do it, brah.”
“I know.”
Joseph stood up and headed for the door. Wilson and Sid looked up from the couch.
“So where you goin’ den?”
“I’m gonna dig an imu.”
He couldn’t think of any other way.
Pau
Eighteen
Hundreds of blackflies swarmed the pile of bones laid out in the sun on Sid’s roof. The bones, long slender femurs with ball joints at the end, stubby ribs, a mishmash of vertebrae, tangled tibias, fibulas, and a couple of slightly dented skulls, were arranged to maximize their exposure to the sun, accelerating the drying process.
Sid stood on a ladder and nodded his head. “A couple days den. Should be good to go.” He looked down at Wilson, who was steadying the ladder. “You boys done good.”
Joseph wasn’t feeling that great. He stood in the kitchen drinking a cup of coffee, hoping the images would fade from his short-term memory. He’d barely managed to strip the meat off the bones, but he got through the process by imagining that they were butchering a couple of pigs. Getting a meal ready for a crew. He was a chef. He was just cooking. That’s what he kept telling himself.
Wilson, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy the work. Stripping off t
he meat, ligaments, tendons, and fat with genuine gusto, throwing it all back into the hole, turning the imu into a prefab grave. Joseph kept a close eye on him. He was sure he’d seen him sneaking another taste or two.
They’d had to beat the skulls against a rock to get the brain to come gushing out. That was the part that made Joseph vomit. But the other organs—liver, heart, kidneys, and intestines—separated from the bones without much fuss. They were able to shove the majority of the guts back into the hole without having to sort through them.
It was just like making kalua pig for a luau.
Joseph didn’t know why he was drinking coffee. It wasn’t helping him relax—he had begun trembling a few hours earlier and it wouldn’t stop—but he didn’t want to drink any alcohol, figuring that might push him over the edge and send him sobbing to the nearest police station to confess.
Wilson was the opposite. He was positively preening. Strutting around with that unique kind of gladiatorial test-osterone swagger that only comes from having vanquished your enemies and tasted their flesh.
Sid came into the kitchen and saw Joseph sitting at the table, staring off into space. Sid slapped a reassuring arm across Joseph’s shoulder.
“You did right. Eat or be eaten.”
Joseph simply shrugged. “We’re Hawaiians.” With that he got up from the table. “I’m going to go take a shower, Uncle.”
Joseph took his mug of coffee and padded out of the room.
...
Yuki carried a couple of small cardboard boxes into the office. On the advice of her lawyer, she was here to clean out her desk and leave without saying too much to anyone. She wasn’t supposed to give two weeks notice; it wouldn’t be good for her to stick around working in such a sexually hostile environment. Not that she had much stuff. Just a few things: an atomizer filled with diluted lavender oil—for when she felt stressed—and some assorted Tibetan incense, a collection of healing crystals, a small reproduction of a Buddhist painting, several books on self empowerment and positive thinking, a collection of inspirational poetry that she liked to look at, and a Magic 8 Ball she kept around for laughs.
Delicious Page 23