by Hughes, Chip
The surfer girl didn’t respond.
“Does Maya still live here?” I tried again.
“No.”
“Do you know where I can reach her?”
“No.”
“Did she leave a forwarding address? Or a phone number?”
“No.”
“Was Corky Maya’s boyfriend?”
“You’d have to ask one of my roommates.”
“May I?”
“They’re not here,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Would you please have them call me at this number?” I handed her my card, hoping the surfer image on it would reinforce my pose as Corky’s wave-riding buddy.
“I can’t guarantee they will.“ She shoved the card deep into a pocket of her jeans.
If she wasn’t hiding something, someone was. Why else would she be so rude?
I knew the North Shore wasn’t all good vibes and big waves. There were drug-related crimes and violence, like everywhere else. Recently at a birthday party at Laniakea two men were stabbed to death and several others beaten senseless. The culprits slipped away into a dark underworld the tourist bureau doesn’t advertise. That makes the North Shore not a place to go poking around into other people’s business, especially the wrong people. You might end up dead.
Up the road from Sunset Beach I stopped in at the Foodland in Pupukea, a chain supermarket, and larger than you’d expect in this country setting. I wandered around until I found the crack seed display. I pulled from the hanging rack a small package of my favorite Sweet Li Hing Mui—pungent, sweet-sour dried plum pits—and headed for the checkout line. A local guy, who from the width of his shoulders looked like he surfed, rang me up. I pulled out my wallet containing the photo of Corky. Handing a couple bills to the clerk, I flashed the picture.
“Evah see dis guy?”
“Dat’s da guy wen’ wipe out at Waimea . . .”
“Corky, yeah. Evah see his girlfriend? Redhead.”
“Maya? Ho, nice!” He smiled suggestively, almost a leer.
“Yeah, Maya. Know where I can find her?”
“She live on da beach at Sunset . . .”
“Yeah, but her roommate say she gone.”
“Gone?”
“Any idea where?”
“Maybe upcountry Maui?” the clerk said. “I t’ink she from Makawao.”
“You sure?”
“Dunno fo’ sure, brah.” He shrugged.
“T’anks, eh?”
He was still leering at the thought of Maya as he handed me my bag.
Ten
The bell tower at the Mission of Saints Peter and Paul loomed ominously over Waimea Bay as I glided by, heading for Hale‘iwa town.
About halfway there, a black Mercedes with dark windows flashed by in the opposite direction. I couldn’t have sworn it was Summer’s “escorts,” but the men in the front seat looked hauntingly familiar. Were they going where I had been? Ke Nui Road? Pupukea Foodland?
At Surf n’ Sea in Hale‘iwa I stepped into the repair shop in search of a shaper from Oregon named Skipper who surfed occasionally with Cousin Alika. Although not born in Hawai‘i, Skipper knew North Shore breaks and boards as well as many local surfers.
Surfboards in various degrees of ding repair leaned against the walls of the shop. The air was thick with the chemical odor of uncured resin. The floor felt sticky under my feet and was plastered with castoff strips of cotton-soft and resin-hardened fiberglass cloth. Skipper wore a surgical mask beneath his grey eyes and close-clipped hair of peroxide orange. A diamond stud in his left ear lobe glittered.
While I watched, Skipper squeegeed uncured resin onto the deck and one rail of a surfboard—a gun with a slot-like hole in the deck where another surfer’s fin had apparently dug in. In other words, the board had been “skegged.”
When he was finished I showed Skipper Corky’s poorly patched board and severed leash.
“Any idea who might have repaired this candy cane?”
“Ugly.” Skipper shook his head. “No shop in Hale‘iwa did this. I’d bet it was patched in somebody’s garage. Maybe that guy out in Mokule‘ia? I’ve never met him. He’s military—from Schofield Barracks.” Skipper eyed the board. “How much did you give for it?”
“Three hundred.”
Skipper rolled his eyes.
“I needed the board for a case I’m working on,” I explained, “the death of that California surfer who wiped out at Waimea on Christmas Eve.”
“I remember that guy,” said the shaper. “Too bad.”
“You knew him?”
“Not really. Just to say hello. He brought in his lady once.” Skipper raised his dusty brows. “Nice.”
“What was her name?”
“I don’t know, but I heard they were getting married and all. Then he wipes out at Waimea.” He shrugged. “Foxy lady too—leggy, long red locks. She was older, but nice.”
“Older? How much older?”
“Older than him. In her thirties, maybe.”
“Any idea where I can find her?”
“Sunset Beach, I think.”
“She’s not there anymore,” I said.
“Then I don’t have a clue.” Skipper shook his head.
As I left Hale‘iwa town I turned west toward Mokule‘ia, beyond which the paved road ends and the Waianae range drops down to a remote stretch of craggy coastline. Luckily, I didn’t have to go that far. On oceanfront Crozier Drive in Mokule‘ia, I searched for a novice ding-meister working out of his garage.
On the mauka side of the street in a carport, a crew cut haole kid in a surgical mask was sanding a surfboard. He looked barely eighteen, skinny, and red-faced above the mask from too much tropic sun on fair skin. I pulled in front of the carport and removed Corky’s board from my roof racks.
“You patch surfboards?”
He put down his sandpaper and flipped off the mask. A ring of white resin dust circled his mouth and nose like the outline of a goatee. “You bet. You need a ding repaired?”
I flipped over Corky’s gun to display its mottled bottom. “This board has already been patched. I’d just like to know who repaired it.”
“It’s not the best repair job.” He observed its wavy contours. “Hold on . . .” The novice ding-meister rubbed the freckles on his nose. “I remember that board.”
“You patched it like this?”
“She was in a big hurry,” he explained defensively. “She didn’t want it done fancy. She wanted it done fast. She said she would pay extra if I could finish in two days, instead of my usual week.”
“Who was she?”
“A good look’n babe.” He flashed a salacious smile.
“Did you ask her what happened to the board?”
“Didn’t need to. She told me she hit a reef at Rocky Point.”
“That so?” I replied straight-faced, trying not to betray my disbelief. Rocky Point is a popular winter break between Sunset and Pipeline. Everybody and his dog is out there on a good day. The reefs at Rocky Point could certainly damage a board, but not this one.
“Hey,” said the teenager, “where did you get the board?”
“I bought it in town at a surf shop on Kapahulu.”
“Oh.” He rubbed the resin dust around his chin. “I figured she was going to sell it before she went to Maui.”
“Maui?” I said, recalling that the Foodland clerk had said the same. “Did she say where on Maui?”
“Nah.” He wrinkled his freckled nose. “Does it matter? Why are you asking all these questions?”
“Just curious.”
“Ooohh,” he uttered, as if we shared some kind of secret. “Yeah, she makes me curious, too.”
Back in my office, there was a message waiting for me on my machine.
“Kai, I’m worried.” It was Leimomi, with that edge in her voice. “I’m really late now. And I feel funny—kind of sick to my stomach. Maybe I’m just worried sick, but I don’t feel like eating. And when I do eat, n
othing tastes right. All I can keep down are saltine crackers—the only food mother could stand when she was pregnant! Call me.”
Auwe. I decided to wait until I got home to call her back, or maybe swing by to see her on my way.
I figured I should also check in with Summer, since my next move might be a long-shot trip to Maui and I’d be consuming more of her retainer. I dialed her Kahala number and got that foreign voice on the machine again. “Leave message at tone . . .”
“Summer, I’ve made some progress but may need to fly to Maui to follow up on a lead. It’s Wednesday afternoon at four. Please let me hear from you by tonight, either at my office or at home.”
That evening I arrived at Ah Fook in Chinatown before Tommy Woo did. Inside the dinky chop sui house there was no place to wait for a cramped table except behind the swinging glass door, and Ididn’t want to stand there. So I joined the line of a half dozen customers outside on infamous River Street, where colorful thieves, con artists, drug runners, and occasional murderers once plied their dark trades.
Ah Fook’s best-kept secret was a fancy menu for such a funky place: Shark Fin Soup, Stuffed Clams with Crab Meat, Peking Duck Dim Sum . . . Regular customers like Tommy and me never praised Ah Fook, for fear it would be overrun. Instead we embellished its deplorable reputation (which had some slim basis in fact): cockroaches roaming the walls, ants crawling on the tables, dog meat in the pork fried rice, payoffs to the health department and liquor commission.
Tommy was coming from a rehearsal for one of his jazz gigs and warned me he might be late. How he managed to wrap up a late-night session at 2:00 a.m., then cruise into his legal offices—eyes wide open—by eight the next morning is anybody’s guess.
I checked my watch—ten after seven—just as a familiar black profile emerged from the darkness and joined me at the front of the lengthening line. Tommy.
“Hey, Kai, what do you call a guy who hangs out with musicians?”
Tommy Woo always wore black and always had a joke on the tip of his tongue. Over my shoulder I scanned the waiting customers lining River Street for ears that might be too tender or young for one of Tommy’s doozies.
“Cooke, party of two.” Fortunately, the hostess stepped out and led us inside. Our cramped corner table was so close to our fellow diners that I could smell their perfume and aftershave, but it was thankfully too loud inside the tiny restaurant to distinguish their words. A dozen animated conversations bouncing off the walls drowned out one another, making Ah Fook an unexpectedly intimate place.
I watched my friend’s loose-jointed and lanky form squeeze behind the tiny round table. Divorced, pushing fifty, with a shock of grey hair and tortoise shell glasses, Tommy resembled a cross between a parish priest and Yo-Yo Ma. An only child, his father had been Chinese, his mother Jewish; he attended Catholic schools, and was exposed from infancy to the jazz and blues of Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, and B.B. King. Tommy Woo had the wisdom of Confucius, the funny bone of a rabbi, the pomp and circumstance of the Pope, and the musical soul of an African. He could spin ethnic and off-color yarns until your face turned blue, then thrill and inspire you at the piano with “Take the ‘A’ Train” and “Body and Soul.”
“A drummer,” Tommy said while taking his seat.
“What?”
“That’s what they call a guy who hangs out with musicians.”
“Oh.” I scratched my head at the tamest tale Tommy had ever told. “You must not think much of drummers, I guess.”
“Actually, I do.” Tommy cracked a wry smile. “Good ones.”
After two more of Tommy’s salty and unrepeatable humdingers, we ordered the “usual”—the $8.95 dinner special: Egg Drop Soup, Sweet Sour Spareribs, Shrimp Fried Rice, Lemon Chicken, Fortune Cookie (a rarity in Honolulu), and hot tea. The tea arrived almost instantly.
“So what’s new with your practice, Tommy?”
“Jus’ laugh’n n’ scratch’n,” he joked. “Actually, I’m defending a mainland guy who sold some ‘ice’ to an undercover cop. The Narcs were laying a trap for the Sun organization, and my client—who has no connection to Frank O. Sun—got busted. He comes from a good family, has a good job here, and has never been arrested. Just thought he’d try a little ‘meth’ on a lark. Then he got engaged to a nice local girl who reviles drug users and he tried to recoup his investment by selling the stuff to some other sucker.”
“He should have flushed it down the toilet.” I shook my head as the Egg Drop Soup arrived. “Do you expect a judge to believe him?”
Tommy sipped the hot soup and shrugged. “No, the Narcs want to make an example of him.”
“Frank O. Sun. What’s his story? I’ve heard the name.”
“Sun?” Tommy brushed back his shock of grey hair. “He comes from nowhere and everywhere. He’s ubiquitous, my lad, ubiquitous. He wears his trademark Panama hat and sun glasses—always—day and night. Some say he’s Korean, others that he’s German or Bolivian. I doubt his real name is Sun. It may be Sonne—German, you know. But no one of my acquaintance has actually seen him in the flesh.”
“Ubiquitous, huh?” I tried on Tommy’s big word.
“Sun has a fairly complex organization of suppliers, distributors, dealers, money launderers, strong arms—the whole tamale. His group reaches from the islands to the Orient, California, and into Mexico and South America. Sun Imports, his front business, is a warehouse off Ward Avenue. The place has atmosphere—straw on the floor and steamer trunks full of pottery and exotic foreign goods. It’s a popular store.”
“I’ve seen it, just never dropped in.”
“You’re not the pottery type, Kai.” Tommy grinned. “Neither am I.”
The waitress brought our ribs and fried rice. Tommy went first for the meat. “And what these days occupies the Surfing Detective?”
We switched serving plates. “Another crazy case.” I said. “This California blonde—very pregnant—who’ll only meet at Denny’s in Waikiki. No explanation why. She’s gorgeous, though. Never mind she looks as if she could give birth to a baby whale at any moment.”
“So what does this pregnant woman want with you?”
“She wants me to prove her husband is dead.”
“She doesn’t know if her own husband is dead?”
“It’s a life insurance claim for two hundred grand.”
“Ah.” Tommy nodded knowingly. “That ought to make her comfortable for a while.”
I gave him the brief version of Corky’s wipeout and the red flags that the insurance company was balking at.
“Any question in your mind that this surfer is dead?”
“If Corky was planning to skip, he couldn’t have done a better job of preparing his nest egg: empty bank accounts, maxed-out credit cards, a missing BMW. But, except for a sliced surfboard leash, there’s no real evidence. And I doubt he and the wife are in this together. I’d say she’s a victim of her husband’s irresponsibility.”
The Lemon Chicken arrived, followed by more hot tea.
“By the way,” Tommy asked idly, “what motive would your surfer have to skip?”
“To escape fatherhood, to keep on surfing free. That’s the best I can come up with. But no way could he ever become the sponsored, big name surfer he dreamed of—not without his wife and the insurance company finding out. So what’s the point in skipping?”
When our fortune cookies finally appeared, neither made sense to us, but they rarely do. My “An Exotic Companion Awaits You” was at least more intriguing than solo Tommy’s: “Family Always Comes First.”
Later that night, back at the Waikiki Edgewater, there were no messages waiting for me—not from Summer or Leimomi. Then I remembered, too late, that I had promised to call Lei. Once again, that unflattering parallel between Corky and me came to mind.
Eleven
I didn’t sleep well that night and awoke Thursday morning with a groggy head, fuzzy mouth, and a feeling of dread. The case was on my mind. So was Leimomi.
&n
bsp; I flipped through the wad of green hundreds. A flight to Maui and a rental car for the day would cost less than a few bills. Hardly a dent.
Two people had told me that Maya was from Maui. And one of them had a hazy recollection that she’d resided upcountry in Makawao. If these tips turned out to be true, it shouldn’t be hard to find her in the small mountain town. A few sloping blocks of wood frame buildings comprised the main drag of this commercial and cultural hub of upcountry Maui. Makawao could be canvassed easily in a few hours. I would have liked to discuss the trip with Summer first. But since she wasn’t returning my calls, I might as well just holoholo.
The Aloha 737 quickly left O‘ahu behind on this cloudless winter morning, crossed the wind-whipped channel to Moloka‘i, then skirted the sloping red plateau of its west end. Across from Moloka‘i lay the tiny island of Lana‘i. Gazing upon the rural and remote “Pineapple Isle,” I got this odd feeling that I was going there, rather than to Maui. The feeling made no sense and gradually faded away.
The jet glided over cane fields on the isthmus between Maui’s twin volcanic cones and touched down at Kahului airport at ten, leaving me the better part of the day to poke around. The sub-compact I had reserved from Dollar was sold out, so at no extra charge they gave me a silver-blue Mercury Grand Marquis,whose overstuffed leather seats could have accommodated Summer’s whole crew of dark escorts.
I pulled away from the airport and cruised toward Upcountry Maui, turning onto Baldwin Avenue at the former bustling sugar town of Pa‘ia. Dubbed “noisy” in plantation times, today this rustic country town hosted quieter tourism. As the Grand Marquis climbed Baldwin past a rusting sugar mill and, by contrast, spotlessly white churches, the shoulderless road twisted higher into wide-open acres, ranches, and secluded luxury homes. The Mercury leaned precariously around each hairpin turn, as the mountain air grew cooler and more fragrant. It smelled pine fresh up here. High-country fresh.
Along with Kamuela on the Big Island, Makawao was one of the islands’ last genuine cowboy towns and it looked the part: Old West wood-frame buildings with hitching posts recalled John Wayne movies. Settled near the end of the 19th century by Portuguese immigrants who raised cattle on upcountry slopes, this former rough and tumble mountain hamlet today boasted an eclectic blend of western, paniolo, Yuppie, New Age, and alternative. You could buy a saddle, have your palm read, attend a rodeo, order a veggie burger, and watch a glass blower. All in the same little town.