Riptide

by Paul Levine

  “Burglar,” Jake corrected her listlessly. “That’d be Marlin.”

  “Jake, wake up. You’re in shock or something from last night. You’re in danger.”

  He remembered her note. Do not follow me. It is dangerous.

  “Jake, what can I tell you to make you understand? In Miami, before the race, Keaka killed someone, a coke smuggler we were going to do business with, strangled him with his bare hands, do you understand?”

  “Yeah, he killed a doper, it happens all the time.” As Lassiter was saying it, a thought crept into his head, a druggie in Miami… strangled. “What smuggler?” he asked.

  “I don’t know his name. He wanted to get a few keys into Miami, a small deal really. Brought it from Bogota to Bimini, was going to fill one of Keaka’s old boards with it. They’d re-seal the board, glass it over, and Keaka would bring it into the States by seaplane after the race.”

  “Why’d Keaka kill him?”

  “Because the Cuban double-crossed him.”

  Oh no. “What Cuban?” Lassiter asked.

  “The smuggler. Keaka got a call from Mikala, who had set it up. Some guy in the DEA in Miami who used to fly with Mikala in Vietnam warned him the Cuban was a snitch. Keaka was being set up — customs, DEA, everybody would be waiting to rip open the board. So Keaka strangled the snitch and hung him in a swamp by his gold chain.”

  Jake Lassiter was coming awake, the fog clearing. “Where are you, Lila? Can you lead me to Keaka?”

  “Jake, what are you talking about? Just get out of there. Get a cab if there’s one in that town. Anything … borrow a car, steal one, just get off the mountain. Mikala is probably on his way to Makawao right now. Do you understand? Meet me in Kihei at Paradise Fruit. Ask anybody for directions to the fruit stand. I’ll be there in an hour.”

  Maybe it was the wild West character of the town that made him do it, Jake Lassiter thought. Tumbleweed blowing down the street, dust covering the sidewalks, ranchers and farmers tending to business in their quiet way, cowboy hats pulled down, sheepskin collars turned up. In the upcountry town of Makawao, Jacob Lassiter, Esq., attorney-at-law — admitted to practice by the Florida Supreme Court, three federal district courts, plus the United States Supreme Court — became a car thief. Or, more accurately, a pickup truck thief.

  There were no taxis in town, but a pickup truck with its engine running — a sooty gray Mitsubishi packed with sweet Kula onions — was parked in front of the Upcountry General Store. While the truck’s owner was buying a fifty-pound bag of fertilizer, Lassiter hightailed it down the mountain past herds of Angus, across the Central Valley, through towering stalks of sugarcane, and into the south shore town of Kihei.

  Paradise Fruit sits across the street from the Pacific Ocean

  on Kihei Road, an unsightly stretch of condos and strip shopping centers built by Californians who strive to make Maui look like Burbank. Lila Summers wasn’t there. Lassiter ordered a banana smoothie, a rich drink made with sweet stubby bananas, fresh pineapple, and orange juice.

  The smoothie finished and still no Lila.

  Maybe being set up again, he thought. Maybe Keaka would come crashing through the plywood walls of the fruit stand in his tanklike truck, squashing pineapples and papayas and Jake Lassiter with a reinforced-steel bumper.

  He bought a coconut macaroon and ate it in two bites. What was making him hungry — thoughts of Lila or death, or were they one and the same? Boy, the mind plays tricks after you’ve seen a friend killed. Jake Lassiter was fondling the passion fruit and munching a second macaroon when he turned around and there she was. Sun-streaked hair pulled straight back, her face tanned, full lips slightly parted, gold-and-emerald eyes still innocent and inviting.

  “Lo-li-laa,” he mumbled, mouth full of macaroon.

  “Jake, you have a milk shake mustache and crumbs on your chin. You really know how to knock a girl off her feet, don’t you?”

  “Bad timing,” Lassiter said, wiping his mouth with a bare arm.

  “Good choice, very filling and healthy, good to have in your stomach before a flight.”

  “We going somewhere?”

  “You, Jake. You’ve got to leave. Go home, get out of here before Mikala and Keaka find you. Mikala will kill you to get you out of the way. Keaka will do it for fun.”

  “Nice crowd you hang around with, or isn’t hang around the right description? Nice crowd you conspire with, carry their garbage, take a cut.”

  Lila took a step backward and turned toward the ocean. She stared at the horizon, keeping her thoughts and her expression hidden. “I’m not with them, not anymore. There isn’t time to explain everything to you. I know I’ve hurt you and now you’re striking out at me. Try to put yourself in my position. I met Keaka when I was a kid. He was different from the other boys.”

  “So was Ted Bundy.”

  “Listen, Jake. In the beginning, he wasn’t violent. He just wanted to return to an earlier time, to live off the land and the sea. Somewhere it went wrong. His disgust with the haoles led to disrespect for their laws. The drugs, the violence … it started slowly and got worse. Sure, I went along, I admit it. But I got out after Miami.”

  “What do you mean, got out? You were the mule, you carried Sam Kazdoy’s bond coupons to Bimini.”

  “I didn’t know whose they were, that you were involved in it.”

  Lassiter laughed a hollow, sad laugh. “It doesn’t matter whose bonds they were. It’s still a crime. But it so happens the bonds belong to my client.”

  “So you came for the bonds, not for me.”

  He could have told her the truth but the truth hurt too much. “That’s right. Does that disappoint you, Lila, that I’m not the romantic fool you took me for?”

  “I was sort of hoping that you were,” she said wistfully, her eyes moist. “Romantic, I mean. I thought you were, and it made me realize how little I was getting from Keaka.” She put both arms around his neck and drew herself up to him, the fullness of her breasts against his chest. He kissed her, wanting her more than ever, knowing the bonds had never been as important as this. But at the same time his mind was working overtime, the brain rattling off the charges against her — conspiracy to transport stolen property, grand larceny, buying, receiving, and concealing stolen property, and the biggie, maybe accessory to first-degree murder. Her rap sheet could be a miniseries. And Keaka — two first-degree murders, Berto and Tubby, three if he killed Marlin. The two of them were Bonnie and Clyde at the beach.

  “Jake, it’s wonderful to be in your arms again,” she whispered in his ear. “I’ve missed you so. That morning, leaving you on Bimini, it was awful. I cried all the way to Nassau.”

  “It’s a twenty-minute flight,” he said.

  “I mean it, Jake. It was the worst day of my life. I kept thinking about what I did, and I don’t mean carrying the bonds. That was no big deal, but leaving you that way …”

  “What’d you do with the coupons?” he asked, Sam Kazdoy’s lawyer again.

  “Keaka met me on Nassau. No hassles with the Bahamian government, no searches or anything. We flew Air Canada to Toronto. Same thing, they don’t bother Americans. I had them in a carryon, could have been my toiletries. Only things we declared were two bottles of duty-free rum. Then we went to Vancouver on the same plane. We spent the night and took a Continental flight to Kahului. No problem there, just a couple tourists coming home from Canada. But, Jake, the whole trip, I kept thinking of you.”

  He wanted to believe her, wanted to hear more about how she missed him, but part of him was on assignment. “Where are the coupons now?”

  “Keaka has them. I don’t know where, probably stowed away until Mikala figures out what to do with them.”

  “Where’s Keaka?”

  “Forget about Keaka,” she said, kissing him again. Why did he get the impression she used her kisses as tools of distraction, the same way he fouled up witnesses with irrelevancies? Was that it, were her kisses irrelevant?

 
A voice inside forced him back, took him somewhere other than where his body wanted to be. The voice told him there was unfinished business and a score to settle, told him to use his wits and maybe a weapon, too, told him things would never be the same. Finally it told him he could kill.

  “Where’s Keaka?” he repeated.

  “Jake, can’t you understand? You’re out of your element here. If Keaka pulls a gun, you can’t object like it’s a courtroom. Even if you found him, even if you had a gun, what would you do? I don’t see you shooting anyone. And Keaka won’t surrender. His greatest wish is to die a warrior, to join his ancestors and be reincarnated as a king.”

  “Maybe I can grant his wish. Look, he killed Berto, a friend of mine for a long time. Berto made some mistakes, screwed up his life, but he didn’t deserve to die. And Tubby Tubberville. Tubby was a big teddy bear. I blame myself for bringing him along. I was riding shotgun without a shotgun, and I was useless. Now, where is Keaka?”

  She looked at him through misty eyes. “Not on Maui.”

  “Where?”

  Lila shook her head sadly, as if already regretting what she would say. “In the jungle on Molokai. He has a campsite in a clearing.”

  “How do I get there?”

  “You don’t. He’s on high ground above the beach. He can see a boat approaching during the day or hear it at night. Besides, there’s nowhere to land a boat.”

  Keep asking questions, fast and simple, no time for a witness to take a breath or fabricate an answer. “How’d he get there?”

  “Windsurfs across the Pailolo Channel. He fishes and hunts and picks fruits. But he also has weapons — not native spears either — guns, and he’s good with them.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Because I used to go there with him. That’s always what we did after a job, sort of a native celebration at beating the haoles. He would have sailed there early this morning, after killing your friend.”

  “His job isn’t finished if I’m still breathing, is it?”

  “No, but now that Mikala knows you’re alive, he’ll probably handle that himself. They’d consider it fairly easy — you’re just not in their league when it comes to this — and they’d want Keaka to lay low.”

  “Does Keaka have a telephone or a shortwave radio on Molokai?”

  “No, that would be too modern, too much haole influence.”

  “So he would have gone there believing I’m dead. Mikala couldn’t tell him I’m alive. I’d have the element of surprise.”

  “It would be your only advantage,” she said quietly. “Everything else favors him, including the fact that he’s a killer and you’re not.”

  Jake Lassiter was already planning. “Last night there were two men in the truck, a bigger man driving.”

  “That would be Lomio, part Samoan, part Hawaiian. He works for them. Lomio loves the truck and doesn’t mind hurting people. He’d still be on Maui, on the farm.”

  So three enemies out to kill him — Keaka, Mikala, and Lomio. And Jake Lassiter didn’t know whether he could trust Lila Summers. He went fishing. “Why aren’t you with Keaka?”

  She looked away. There was something about the pause Lassiter didn’t like, another evasive witness framing a reply, testing how it sounds in the mind instead of just letting the lips speak the quick truth. Finally she said, “After he killed the Cuban doper, I told him I was tired of the violence. I wanted it to stop. He promised it would. Then we got home, and he said he would kill the robber, sorry, the burglar who hired us to take the coupons to Bimini. I knew then it would never end. Keaka didn’t want it to end.”

  “So you left him?”

  “Keaka pretty much guessed what happened on Bimini, called me a haole slut, asked me to choose sides. We said some nasty things to each other, then I left. I’ve been staying with a girl friend in Kihei. Keaka didn’t tell me about the setup on Crater Road last night. He would have been afraid I’d warn you.”

  “Would you have?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why? Why betray your first lover, the man who taught you so much?”

  “I wouldn’t look at it that way. I just want you to live a good life and be happy and grow old and die in bed and not on a rocky mountainside.”

  It wasn’t quite what he wanted to hear. An All-American because I love you would have done nicely.

  “Lila, I’m going after Keaka, with or without your help. It would just be easier if you’re on my team.”

  She looked away again, turning toward the ocean. She was silent for a long moment, and Lassiter stood there, smelling the sweet fragrances of the tropical fruits, waiting. Finally, she told him where to put a board in the water, at Makaluapuna Point on the northwest coast of Maui by the lava rocks called Dragon’s Teeth. It was nearly deserted there, she said, only the nearby plantation village of Honokahua framed by a double line of Norfolk pine trees.

  * * *

  At the house in Kihei where Lila had been staying, she opened the garage and hauled out an old eleven-foot board, her harness, and a rig.

  “Don’t drift too far downwind,” she told him, “and sail port of the lighted weather buoy to get through the rocks on the Molokai side.”

  In the fading light, she handed him a stainless-steel Colt Python to carry in the pouch of a harness. He wanted to ask what she was doing with the gun, and what jobs with Keaka ended in their jungle celebrations. But he didn’t ask. He just put the gun in a sandwich bag and pressed it closed by its plastic zipper, sealing it like an office worker packing his lunch.

  “You don’t have to do this to prove anything to me,” Lila said. Then she kissed him, long and slow, as if it were the last time, and as she turned away, Lassiter thought he saw a tear in the corner of her eye. But then again, maybe it was the light.

  He could have said that he wasn’t trying to prove anything to her, but he didn’t say that. He could have told her what it felt like to lie facedown in the cold gravel as your friend is dying in a burst of flames — dying instead of you — but he didn’t say that either. He didn’t say anything. He just threw the board, the boom, the mast, and the sail into the bed of her old Mazda pickup. Then, as the sun set over Lanai and the coast of Maui was bathed in a peaceful orange glow, he drove to Makaluapuna Point, looking for the rocks called Dragon’s Teeth, wondering if anyone is ever ready to die.

  CHAPTER 28

  Hello and Good-bye

  It was from early Polynesians — Tahitians, Samoans, and Tongans — that the seeds of Keaka Kealia grew. Lean and strong, Keaka surfed Maui’s north shore, another island boy dark as a kukui nut. Surfing taught him balance and agility, and a thousand years of history imbued him with courage and a love of the wind and sea. When windsurfing came to the island from California, he learned that too, first on an old twelve-foot floater without foot straps, a Model A relic of the sport. With his natural strength, Keaka sailed for hours in thirty-knot winds over rough seas.

  In the beginning he did not own a harness, the vest that hooks into a boom line and relieves pressure on the arms, so he developed stamina beyond that of the others, though the tendons of his elbows swelled from the constant strain. He luxuriated in the drag of stretching muscles, a blend of pleasure and pain, a natural euphoria from the sheer physical act of conquering the sea. While still an amateur, he completed a 360, a complete flip, lifting the bow off a wave, mast upside down kissing the water, then bringing the board all the way around, landing smoothly, and trimming the sail to pick up speed in search of the next wave.

  By eighteen Keaka Kealia had grown into a rugged, handsome man, dark eyes set on a wide face, lithe and graceful in every movement. He worked part-time in a rental shop, giving lessons to the tourists, occasionally bedding down teenage girls from L.A. who were lured, yet frightened, by his hard brown body and brooding demeanor. Unlike the other beach boys, his mind was not socked in by a fog of Maui Wowie. He read books, studying the ways of his ancestors. The old Hawaiian folk songs spoke to Keak
a, told him of the gods and of the spirits of the sea. He longed for that age, to gather fish from the ocean and ride above it on a board descended from the voyaging canoes of his ancestors.

  He watched with disgust as developers built condos hard by the beach. To find sanctuary from the tourists and the timeshare hucksters, he sailed nine miles across the Pailolo Channel to the island of Molokai and made a campsite in the jungle there. A century earlier, the island was deserted except for a leper colony, and Keaka, always aware of links to the past, appreciated the irony.

  He cleared an area on the slopes of the Molokai Forest Reserve and slowly built a hale, a thatched hut. He removed the bark from the timbers with a stone chisel and dried pili grass in the sun for the roof. He made water bottles and poi bowls from gourds, and he slept on a lauhala mat of woven leaves. He hunted pheasants and goats and cooked his prey over open fires. At night Keaka Kealia dreamed he was a warrior of King Kalaniopuu, and with weapons of stone, he attacked Captain Cook’s pale sailors, crushing their skulls and gutting them with sharpened sticks. Those he did not kill he drove into the sea, then watched with joy as they floundered in the surf, disappearing forever from view.

  * * *

  Jake Lassiter wished he had a wet suit. There was a chill in the night air, and the black water even sounded cold slapping the rocky shore. His feet felt it first, then his chest, as spray from the shore break hit him.

  He beach-started in the shallow water that broke across the volcanic shelf and, looking down, thought he saw a human skull wedged between two rocks, reflecting the moonlight. A wave pounded the rocks, and the skull, if that’s what it was, disappeared.

  The crossing shouldn’t be that difficult, he told himself. He had made longer trips, though not at night and not in unfamiliar waters. And not with murder on his mind.

  Is that what it would be if he crept into Keaka’s camp and pounced on him under a sky lit with stars? Sure it would, he decided. First-degree, too. Premeditated and cold-blooded. No, that’s wrong. His feet were cold; his blood was hot. Hot with thoughts of Berto strung up in a swamp and Tubby pushed over a cliff. And Lila — what had Keaka done to Lila Summers, what had he made her? A thief? Yes, surely that. They were in it together in Miami, and who knows what before then. A murderer? No, he couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge that Lila had anything to do with the killings. That was all Keaka’s doing, he told himself. Then told himself again, just to make sure.