Riptide

by Paul Levine

  “It’s not poetry, it’s history,” Keaka shot back. “The English came two hundred years ago to build ports for their ships in the Pacific. Then the American missionaries, who thought nakedness was sinful, so they covered our bodies with heavy clothes and made us stink like them. The haoles stole our land and brought disease and killed the whales and swallowed the fish in huge nets. They planted that damn weed, sugarcane, for what, to make Coca-Cola? Then they burned the cane in the fields and blackened the sky.”

  Any rebuttal, Counselor? a faraway judge whispered in Lassiter’s ear. He tried to remember what he knew of Hawaii. The college football team was called the Rainbows, or was it the Pineapples, and a long time ago he had read the Michener book, or did he just see the TV movie and think he read the book?

  “Even before the Europeans, weren’t there constant wars on the islands?” Lassiter asked. “It wasn’t exactly Camelot.”

  “Right,” Lila said, patting Lassiter’s arm. Her fingers lingered, and Lassiter’s pulse quickened. “Keaka’s ancestors used to get all painted up like Indians in a B Western and ride around in war canoes. The Big Island had five or six chiefs ruling different tribes, and they’d cut each other’s hearts out.”

  Keaka narrowed his eyes and gestured toward both of them with a table knife. “It is an honor to be a great warrior, to die a warrior’s death.” Then he silently examined a claw that was not cracked, apparently overlooked by the kitchen crew which used mallets to break the hard shells that give the crabs their name.

  Lassiter said, “Don’t worry, we’ll send it back and they’ll give it forty whacks.”

  “No need.” Keaka scooped up the claw and it disappeared into a thick brown hand. The fingers closed and Lassiter watched ribbons of muscle pop from Keaka’s forearm.

  “That’s not a walnut,” Lassiter warned. “The shell’s too thick …” A sharp crack interrupted him, the shell splitting into pieces. Blood spurted onto the tablecloth, a piece of jagged shell sticking from Keaka’s thumb. Expressionless, he sucked at the wound for a moment, then devoured the meat from the claw.

  The show of strength seemed intended for him, Lassiter thought, a primitive warning, a staking out of territory. Had he telegraphed his thoughts about Lila, or did every man?

  “I didn’t think that was possible,” Lassiter said.

  Keaka grunted. “It’s easy. First you find the weak spot, then you apply pressure.” He jutted out his chin and smiled, the look of a barracuda. Then he rubbed his right elbow with his left hand.

  “Keaka here is hard as a rock everywhere,” Lila said, squeezing Keaka’s thigh and simultaneously harpooning Lassiter’s morale. “But his elbow tendons are like spaghetti. He doesn’t complain, too Hawaiian macho for that, but I know how much it hurts. I wonder how much longer he can go on. We’re looking for easier ways to make money.”

  Keaka shot her a murderous glance. “Listen, I’ve heard enough about my elbows. It takes more than a sore elbow to stop a Hawaiian. More even than three bullets.”

  “Three bullets?” Lassiter asked.

  Lila sighed. “A Hawaiian fable.”

  “No. True story,” Keaka corrected her. “Haven’t you ever heard the saying ‘Never shoot a Hawaiian three times or you will make him really mad’?”

  “No, must have missed that one,” Lassiter conceded.

  “Right after Pearl Harbor,” Keaka said, “a Japanese pilot tries to get his plane back to its carrier but has engine trouble, so he puts it down on Niihau, one of the small islands. The local constable is a native Hawaiian, big-boned and a barrel for a stomach. He’s unarmed, but he puts the little Jap pilot under arrest. The pilot takes out a pistol and shoots the Hawaiian in the gut, but it doesn’t stop him. Bang, he shoots him again, but the Hawaiian’s big and strong and just getting madder, then bang again, a third shot in the stomach. Then the Hawaiian picks up the Jap and crushes his skull against the plane.”

  Lila wore the look of a wife who has heard her husband tell the same golf yarn a hundred times. “Moral of the story,” she said, “if I ever get mad at Keaka, I won’t shoot him, I’ll chop his big fat head off.”

  “You’re the only one who would have a chance at it,” Keaka said somberly. He turned to Lassiter, his black eyes humorless. “Lila is strong, quick, and fearless as a pu’ali, a great warrior.”

  “But can she type?” Jake Lassiter asked, and the blond warrior rewarded him with a knee-weakening smile.

  * * *

  A cool ocean breeze whipped across the Rickenbacker Causeway as they drove back to Key Biscayne, the lights of downtown Miami bouncing off the bay, the moon high overhead on a cloudless night. Traffic was light and in twenty minutes they were back at the hotel.

  “Li’a, I’m going to make a call,” Keaka said, heading for the front desk and leaving Lassiter and Lila standing together in the lobby.

  Lassiter’s look asked the question.

  “Li’a was a forest goddess to the native Hawaiians,” Lila said.

  “Li’a,” Lassiter repeated, letting the name linger on his tongue.

  “In Hawaiian, it means desire or a powerful yearning. That’s why the Hawaiians wrote so many love songs about Li’a.”

  “Goddess of Desire,” Jake Lassiter said. “The name fits. The spirits of the forest are still alive in Li’a, beautiful Goddess of Desire.”

  “You’re a very sweet man, and a very attractive one,” she said with a provocative smile.

  Now what did that mean? A thousand men must have complimented her name, her face and perfect body, but she was Keaka’s alone, Lassiter thought. He looked toward the front desk, where Keaka was using a telephone.

  “Probably calling his cousin Mikala on Maui,” Lila said. “They’ve got business deals together. Will you wait with me?”

  Only for a million years, he thought, and they sat down in cushioned chairs surrounded by ficus trees in the courtyard.

  “Do you really want to get out of windsurfing?” Lassiter asked, his mind spinning.

  Lila smiled a soft, wistful smile. “I’m not going to give it up to work in an office somewhere, but I’ve swallowed water from nearly every ocean in the world. I’ve been stung by jellyfish, cut by fins, and been catapulted onto rocks and coral. If that isn’t bad enough, it’s gotten boring. Some days, I just don’t want to load my equipment, pack six different sails, rig and rerig all day long. It’s become routine and dull, sort of…”

  “Mundane,” Lassiter suggested.

  “Right, mundane. That’s the word.”

  “Like going to the office, whether you want to or not,” Lassiter said.

  “Right, or making love to someone just because he’s there, whether you want to or not.”

  He tried to decipher the message on the parted lips that half smiled and half pouted at him. She looked at him for a response. He thought a thousand things and said none. No follow-through. He let the ball slip through his hands with the clock ticking down. Then it was too late, Keaka heading toward them, smiling his barracuda smile, the call apparently a success.

  “Mikala agrees we should take care of our business as soon as possible, tonight even,” Keaka said to Lila, and his look told Jake Lassiter it was time to say good night, which he did.

  “So long, Jake,” Lila Summers said. “Thanks for a wonderful evening. When you come to Maui, you’ll become a kamaaina — a native — or almost one. You’ll blend into the surroundings, become part of the mountains and the sea.”

  She laughed and her eyes danced and Lassiter wondered again if they held a promise or if he was the foil in a private game between these two strangers. He said good night a second time and walked outside, where a different valet looked at his ancient convertible as if it were a two-ton cockroach. Then the wind from the ocean slapped Lassiter’s face and he told himself not to be such a goddamn fool.

  CHAPTER 14

  The Snitch

  Two years earlier, the hurricane had buried the marshy hammocks of the coastline under a
ten-foot wall of water. The tidal surge, pushed by raging winds, ripped out seawalls and tossed boats onto lawns of waterfront homes. The winds cleaved at the vegetation, shattered roof tiles and rent asphalt felt from its plywood sheathing, splintering trusses from their hurricane straps. Roofs were blown to neighboring zip codes. Road signs were recovered twenty miles away. In an office near the bay, a five-hundred-pound desk flew through a window and was never found. In four hours, the winds and water created three million cubic yards of debris.

  Along the southern shore of Biscayne Bay, gusts toppled giant oaks. The eye wall of the storm tore from the ground the shallow-rooted ficus trees and shredded the aerial roots of sprawling banyans. But when the water receded, the red and black mangroves — propped on roots aboveground — were still there, matted with sea grass and debris, gnarled as before. If royal palms were regal in their bearing, the mangroves were the crippled outcasts of a primitive society. Stunted, bent into impossible shapes, rooted in sand and salt, they were the sturdy survivors of eons of evolution and countless storms.

  At night, the bowed and hunched trees of the swamp take on ghostly shapes, their silhouettes appearing as the arms of the tortured, reaching out in pain.

  * * *

  Berto splashed through the shallow water, ducking under the branch of a red mangrove, not seeing a curved root. He tripped and fell, banging his knee against the trunk of a submerged, long-dead tree, and dropping the duffel bag into the water. He cursed under his breath, picked up the bag, and kept going. Above him, through the branches of the mangroves, low silvery clouds scudded across the sky, obscuring a slice of moon. He swatted at a mosquito and succeeded in smacking his own ear. Gnats buzzed around his neck and tickled his nose. An unseen animal splish-splashed away in the darkness.

  What a place to meet, he thought. Like one of those old black-and-white movies. Creature of the Black Lagoon or something like that. Man, the sooner you get your citified ass out of here, the better. That’s the trouble with the assholes in this business. Too many movies. Passwords on the phone, hand signals, always afraid of wires and bugs. Dress this way, blink your lights three times, meet in the goddamn swamp. What bullshit he had to put up with. If he had it to do all over again …

  That made him laugh.

  If he had it to do all over again! Man, he’d change everything. Maybe he would have stayed in the practice of law, let clients sign the personal guarantees to the banks. Didn’t he talk to Jake about that in the old days? Hernandez-Zaldivar and Lassiter, P.A. Or was it the other way around? But they never did it. What was it Jake always said?

  “Berto, the courtroom’s too small a stage for you. You’ve got to have your name in lights.”

  “With my name, it’ll take a lot of lights.”

  He laughed again, took two more steps and stumbled.

  Shit.

  The water splashed onto his trousers. Three hundred bucks in Bal Harbour. Not that Franklin would care in his Sears polyester. Where was the guy? Was he so good at his job I won’t know he’s here?

  Berto thought he heard something — a movement, a broken twig. He turned in the darkness but saw nothing, his Gucci loafers sinking into the mud. He strained to hear over the pounding of his heart and the buzz of mosquitoes around his ears. Then a jolt from behind, his feet out from under him, and he landed in the muck, his first thought a wild incongruity — could the dry cleaner get the mud out of his bird’s-egg pleated Italian slacks? A moment later a vague feeling that his neck hurt.

  “Heavy links,” said the voice from behind him. “Gold? You would like gold, wouldn’t you?”

  The grip tightened on his chain and Berto swallowed and tried to look over his shoulder. A snap on the chain, a knee in the small of the back, and he was staring straight ahead into the blackness. “You’ll turn when I tell you,” the voice said in a controlled tone barely above a whisper.

  Dense clouds covered the moon now, the curtain of mangrove trees closing around them, drawing them nearer in the muck of the swamp.

  He strained to talk. “What do you want?”

  “The money,” the voice ordered.

  “In the duffel bag,” Berto whimpered. He kicked at the canvas sack at his feet. “Por favor, some air.” ,’

  The gold noose loosened a bit and Berto sucked in a long, greedy breath. At the same time he rubbed his neck, wondering if he could reach the pistol in his ankle holster. It was not going the way it should, not the way it had been planned. Where the hell was Franklin? Another absurd thought — maybe the budget-crunching feds refused overtime for a DEA bodyguard.

  “Is it all there?” Another whisper in the darkness.

  “Twenty thousand now, the rest when you bring the stuff in. Plus a bonus.”

  “Liar!” The voice startled him, strange and unfamiliar, and another yank from behind. The chain lifted Berto to his feet, the links digging into his neck, drawing blood. “Turn around,” the voice commanded, a firm grip steering him. Berto staggered in a circle, gasping, blinking through tears from the pain, a blaze of lights behind his eyelids, torches of agony igniting the darkness.

  Silence, then a whisper again, frightening in its softness. “Are you afraid to die? Maybe you will come back as a warrior, instead of the worthless little snitch you are.”

  Berto shivered with cold fear. “Please, just take the money,” he begged, the words barely audible above the crazed song of a million insects.

  “Of course I’ll take the money.” A hint of amusement now.

  The pressure on the chain loosened. Then a hard punch, palm upward, knuckles clenched, aimed precisely at the Adam’s apple. In the dark Berto never saw it coming, never flinched. There was a crunch, then a sickening gurgling sound. Berto collapsed into the mud, gasping for breath that would not come.

  A second later, powerful, gloved hands circled his wounded neck. The hands pressed steadily. Deprived of air, Berto’s body began to shake, his feet dancing a palsied jig. Pinpoint hemorrhages popped out on his eyelids and scalp, then the cartilage of the larynx cra-acked like a chicken’s wishbone, and finally, his tongue, elevated by the pressure of the hands on the neck, shot out of the mouth, at first bloody and red, but by sunrise, long after the killer had left, black and grotesque as death itself.

  CHAPTER 15

  Your Basic Police Work

  Thursday already. The race two days away. Time to take inventory, Jake Lassiter thought, knowing he’d come up a few items short. No leads on the missing coupons. No word from the Miami Beach cops, what could you expect? And Lila on his mind, clouding the sky. A vague feeling of uneasiness. Paying too little attention to work. Thaddeus G. Whitney had been calling all day, and Lassiter had ducked him. A bunch of other phone messages piled up, but then Cindy buzzed.

  “Your favorite policia on line dos, jefe.”

  “G’day, Lassiter,” Sergeant Carraway announced cheerfully.

  “Picture was clean, no prints. I’ll keep it in my wallet as a souvenir. Hey, the slut’s got some pair.”

  The cop sounded so happy Lassiter wondered if he’d been drinking. No, he was probably a nasty drunk.

  “Here’s something else might interest you, Counselor. Last night, me and my partner spot a couple greasers prying open a soda machine at Alton Road Texaco after hours. I don’t move so good anymore, but Georgy boy, excuse me, Whore-hay, he thinks he’s fast, runs on his toes like the girls are watching. Fact is, he’s muscle-bound and a meathead, would never have caught up except one of the punks is limping like a horse kicked him — shit, at first I thought he was crippled. Anyway, my partner grabs him halfway down the block, poor kid musta tripped ‘cause his collarbone seems to have fractured by the time he’s put in the blue-and-white which, by the way, is where I been waiting ‘cause I ain’t chasin’ no more greasers down alleys.”

  What’s he getting at? The fat sergeant didn’t move fast and he sure as hell didn’t tell a story fast.

  “Anyway, while Whore-hay is working up a sweat catching one out of
two, I do what you might say is your basic police work.”

  “Sergeant, spare me the details. What the hell’s this got to do with Sam Kazdoy’s coupons?”

  “I’m getting there, Counselor. I look over at the soda machine, figure I might have me a diet Coke, ‘cause I’m watching my girlish figure, and of course, caffeine-free ‘cause I’d like to get some shut-eye. Well, what do I see on the ground but a little crowbar they were using to bust open the machine.

  Wouldn’t have thought nothing about it, except we’re Mirandizing the kid and Whore-hay, he’s a stickler for the rules, tells the little prick he’s being charged with malicious mischief, attempted larceny, trespass, resisting arrest with violence, and possession of burglary tools, to wit, one crowbar. So the kid, who’s dumber than a lump of yeast, he says it’s not his crowbar, some guy gave it to him the other night. And where’d this guy give it to you, I ask real innocent. He says, in the alley behind the South Side Theater.”

  Carraway paused, letting it hang there, basking in the silence. “You like this story, Counselor?”

  “It’s getting better. He give you a description?”

  “Not much a one. Short guy dressed like those assholes in the Everglades, you know, the ones throwing grenades at the snakes, training to overthrow Fidel?”

  “Bay of Pigs Brigade,” Lassiter said.

  “Right, a dark little guy in a camouflage jacket, probably Latino. This mystery man supposedly comes out the back door of the theater, has a … discussion with our two soda banditos, ends up giving them his crowbar as a gift.”

  “What about the crowbar?” Lassiter asked. “Any prints, any scratches?”

  “Good questions, Counselor. Very good. You could be a dick. Maybe you are a dick, eh?”

  Let him have his fun, Lassiter thought. Making you drag it out of him. Still pissed at the way you rubbed his face in it at the theater.

  “Only prints are the kid’s. Name’s Rodriguez, ain’t they all? Lassiter, you know how many pages of Rodriguezes in the Miami phone book. No? Take a guess. Okay, I’ll tell you, fifteen fuckin’ pages, a septic tank full of Rodriguezes.”