Riptide

by Paul Levine

  “Do you still care for me, Jake?”

  He wasn’t proud of the answer, but there it was just the same. “Does the sun still rise in the east?” he asked quietly.

  * * *

  Lila Summers arose before dawn and silently gathered her belongings. She looked down at Jake Lassiter, lying on his side, clutching the pillow where she had been. She reached into her duffel bag and pulled out a dive knife, felt the jagged edge, cool to the touch. Kneeling by the bed, she placed the sharp point within an inch of Lassiter’s jugular and held it there. Seconds passed. She held the knife steady, studying him, listening to his breathing. She moved the knife to his temple, then brushed back his shaggy hair over an ear. She leaned close, grazed his ear with a soft kiss, and whispered, “I love you, Jake, as much as I can love.”

  Lila carefully placed the knife on the nightstand, making no sound, pulled on a pair of shorts and a halter top and quietly left the room. Over one shoulder she carried a duffel bag with her clothing. Over the other shoulder, just as it had been in the race to Bimini, was a waterproof yellow pack crammed with treasure.

  * * *

  Jake Lassiter thought he was dreaming. He heard Lila’s voice saying she loved him. Must be wishful thinking or wishful dreaming, his mind was saying, shaking off the sleep. He stretched out a leg to find her.

  Nothing. He reached with a hand.

  The bed too cool.

  His eyes opened.

  Nothing.

  He got up. No Lila in the bathroom. A quick look around, no yellow pack.

  It was happening again, Lila gone, the emptiness spreading. He jumped into his pants. Barefoot, he ran outside and stopped. The dock was only two hundred yards away. It was not quite dark and not quite light, a slice of the sun behind him rising over the peak of Haleakala in the distance. Puffy clouds dappled the calm bay with pale silver shadows.

  Barely twelve hours since he’d saved her life, and she chooses the money instead of him. His mind racing, the image from the top of the Iao Needle flashed back. How strange that the great athlete would stumble. How unlike her to show such fear.

  Then he saw it all for the first time. Her eyes were pleading with him not to let go.

  He’d had a good grip on her and the leverage to haul her up. And he was strong. No way he would drop her. Unless he meant to. Which is what she feared. Keaka Kealia would have dropped her, she said. And she would have pushed Keaka off the cliff, too. Or anyone who happened to be in the way at the time. Including Jake Lassiter. Because there wasn’t much difference between Keaka and Lila, and Jake Lassiter had known that for longer than he cared to admit.

  And now he knew it all. She had killed Berto and tried to kill him. She had tried to push him off the cliff and, dangling there, thought he knew. But he hadn’t known until now. He never figured she would kill him for slips of paper that could be exchanged for more paper that could be exchanged for cars and furs and jewels. Now he stood paralyzed in the ashen morning light.

  Seconds passed.

  Then he ran after her. Or after the bonds. He didn’t know which.

  He ran toward the end of the dock, his feet picking up splinters from the wooden planks. He heard the engines turn over before he saw the Crooked Rainbow. It began to pull away, Lila on the flying bridge, guiding the big boat into open water, leaning a little on the throttle. He neared the end of the dock and had to slow down to keep from falling in.

  He yelled her name.

  She didn’t turn around.

  Jake Lassiter would remember many things about the next few moments of his life. One was that Lila Summers didn’t turn around. She must have been able to hear him, even over the rumble of the twin engines. She wasn’t that far away and he had good pipes. But she didn’t turn, she just watched the water in front of her and kept heading toward the open bay. Later, remembering the scene, he decided she had heard him but wouldn’t turn, because tears were running down those granite cheekbones. He wanted to believe it, but he would never know.

  The rest was frozen. Slowly, so slowly, like a dream. Jake Lassiter stood there yelling, but no words came out.

  First he saw the flash.

  Next he heard the roar.

  Then he felt the concussion.

  The flash was orange, the smoke black, a fireball from within the Hatteras, reaching to the sky, scattering a dozen gulls, drowning out their cries. A splintering of wood, fiberglass, canvas, plastic, and metal.

  The huge gas tanks exploded, one after another, launching a thousand missiles of shrapnel, the boat tearing itself apart, leaving nothing above the water, and what was left floating was disintegrated or burning, tiny pieces of indistinguishable matter disappearing into the tomb of a black sea.

  CHAPTER 36

  Aloha

  Jake Lassiter was standing at the end of the dock, staring at the burning wreckage when the first police car pulled up. Captain Mikala Kalehauwehe got out and walked slowly toward him. The cop could have been checking parking meters the way he took his time. Behind him was Lee Hu. Found herself another beau, Lassiter figured later, her mourning taking its usual twenty-four hours.

  The captain stopped when he was four feet away. His eyes were hidden behind aviator sunglasses, and when he spoke, his voice was detached and calm. “Looks like you missed your boat, lucky for you.”

  Lassiter was silent and the captain continued, “Damn shame how some people forget to hit the blowers and clean out the exhaust fumes before turning the ignition. Those fumes ignite, they blow the fuel tank to kingdom come. A real shame, to die like that, but at least it’s quick, lot better than having your guts ripped open or being cooked to death.”

  Jake Lassiter moved a step toward him. He could take the cop right there, could crush his skull against the wooden piling. The cop spread his legs and rested his right hand on the butt of his revolver. He returned Lassiter’s stare.

  “Still investigating those two homicides. Seems the hotel’s entertainment guy spotted someone suspicious hanging around the imu that day. A malihini, a tourist, tall guy with an acre of shoulders, dirty blond hair. Hey, somebody puts out a BOLO, you could get picked up.”

  Lassiter kept an eye on the cop’s right hand and said, “Or maybe somebody talks to the FBI and DEA, they drag the bay, come up with evidence of plastiques and a timer. Wonder how many people on this island know how to rig something like that?”

  The cop’s voice hardened. “I could bust you right now if I wanted. Accessory to two first-degree murders, no bail, a guy could have an accident in the county jail waiting for trial.”

  Lassiter looked at the bay where orange flames still licked at black fuel spread across the water. A dozen bleary-eyed tourists gathered on the dock, gawking at the scene. Lassiter turned back, staring into the reflection of the fire in the cop’s sunglasses. “If that’s supposed to scare me, forget it, I’m done being scared. Nothing you can say, nothing you can do, means anything. Do you understand?”

  The captain studied him.

  “Go ahead, arrest me. I’ll sing a tune about a corrupt police captain that’ll get headlines all the way to Tokyo.”

  Lassiter watched Mikala Kalehauwehe sizing him up.

  Maybe figuring he underestimated the haole first go-round. I’m still alive and that beat the odds, Lassiter knew. A guy who could cause trouble. They both heard radios crackling, a woman dispatcher’s voice, two more police cars pulling up at the end of the dock.

  “You want to talk, go ahead,” the captain said. “Or if you want, it’s over, no more blood. There’s a flight to the mainland this afternoon. Be on it.” Which is what Jake Lassiter did, there being nothing to do on Maui but get framed for two murders, maybe get shot in the back by a cop in a holding cell.

  * * *

  Jake Lassiter returned to Miami the day somebody stole the mayor’s gun. And somebody else stole the fast-food bandit’s gun. The newspapers were brimming with stolen gun stories.

  Most readers hadn’t even known that Mayor Rafael
Benitez kept a city-issued 380 Beretta automatic in the glove compartment of his city-issued Buick. Apparently, the mayor needed protection in case citizens objected to an increase in cable television rates. Mayor Benitez lost the pistol when his car was stolen from his reserved parking place in front of Les Violins, a downtown nightclub where he solicited advice and cash from the Hispanic Builders’ Association.

  The fast-food bandit lost his gun and then some. Trying to hold up a supermercado on Lejeune Road, the bandit ran into two female vice detectives taking a break from a “John detail.” The bandit loped into the parking lot carrying $104.75 from the cash register and when he laughed at two women in leather hot pants who ordered him to freeze, they peppered him with five shots in the chest. In the confusion that followed, a bystander with a fine eye for firearms picked up the bandit’s Desert Eagle .357 Magnum and coolly walked away.

  Neither event would have mattered much to Jake Lassiter if Metro hadn’t cordoned off two lanes of Lejeune Road, backing him up into a vicious gridlock on the way home from the airport. Not that he was in a hurry. Jake Lassiter was in a fog. The flights from Maui to the West Coast, then to Miami, were a blur. He hadn’t talked to anyone, hadn’t touched the cardboard airline food.

  * * *

  After working his way out of the traffic jam south of the airport, Jake Lassiter drove to Cindy’s place where they talked about Tubby. He held her while she wept and then he left.

  The next day, Lassiter lay in the hammock behind his coral rock house between Poinciana and Kumquat. He unplugged the phone and didn’t bother to read the mail. At sundown, he coaxed the old yellow convertible to turn over and drove toward Key Biscayne, where he parked on the sandy berm of the Rickenbacker Causeway and walked under the bridge. Leaning against the third piling from the end, a short man with bowed legs in canvas shorts expertly flicked a wrist, and his casting reel whined in the evening air.

  “If I were you, I’d use an oil-colored George-N-Shad rubber fish, maybe three-quarter ounce,” Jake Lassiter said.

  The man turned and waggled his bushy eyebrows. “If you were me,” Charlie Riggs said, “you would have called an old friend when you had some trouble out there in the islands. And I’m using a Bang-O-Lure shallow running plug, blue on the back, white underneath.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Cindy called last night. Figured you’d get around to me when you felt like talking.”

  Lassiter watched the water ripple over the plug. “I miscalculated, Charlie. I tried to help Sam and Berto and let them both down. Tubby, too. He was a good man, and he’s dead because of me. And a couple guys who weren’t so good. Plus a woman, a woman who was beautiful and fearless and lived by no rules except her own. Maybe I could have changed her, saved her …”

  “Did you learn from your experience?”

  “Yes, but too late.”

  “No. We give ourselves the name Homo sapiens, which means ‘wise man,’ but of course, We are not born that way, and we don’t gain wisdom from books. We learn how to live by living. Vive ut vivas — “

  A splash interrupted him, then a flash of silver erupted from the water, and Charlie’s rod bent violently toward the bay.

  “Tarpon, Charlie!”

  “Megalops atlanticus, a great game fish, eh?” Charlie Riggs jerked the rod tip straight up, and six feet of fighting fish exploded into the air, then began its run. “Deo volente, my twelve-pound line will hold.”

  After giving a hundred yards of line, Charlie turned the tarpon with thumb pressure on the reel, and the fish jumped, end over end, and hit the water again. Then it threw the hook and was gone.

  “Sorry,” Jake Lassiter said.

  “Doesn’t matter. Can’t eat ‘em. Too many bones. And I never mounted a fish in my life. Would have liked to land it, but sometimes, the big ones put up such a fight, they don’t survive it. With some animals it’s better to just enjoy their beauty, leave them alone.”

  “You trying to teach me about life, Charlie?”

  “Just about fishing, Jake. Just fishing.”

  * * *

  The next morning, Jake Lassiter drove to Kazdoy’s All-Nite Deli where he knew Sam would have his hot tea and prune danish at seven-thirty sharp. Lassiter spotted his friend’s bald head over the back of the red vinyl-covered booth. There alongside him was the platinum mop of Violet Belfrey. Just like a couple of kids sharing a soda.

  Jake Lassiter told Sam Kazdoy that the bonds were gone, torn to shreds in an explosion. It was okay, Kazdoy said, could use the write-off, lots more where those came from, and his stock portfolio was doing fine. And good thing too, because a married man’s got obligations. “A what?” Jake Lassiter asked him.

  “A married man,” Sam Kazdoy said again, and Violet Belfrey flashed a seven-carat rock and they each twirled gold wedding bands, shiny in the fluorescent lighting.

  Lassiter was about to mumble congratulations but the waitress called him to the phone.

  “Thought you’d be there,” Cindy said, trying to put the old bounce into her voice. “Got some good news for you. The partners’ executive committee says you’re to come back to work, pronto. They want you and need you.”

  “I suppose that’s good,” Lassiter said without enthusiasm.

  “It didn’t hurt your case that Thad Whitney called. Seems the wife of the bank president has a problem. Her poodle bit a neighbor down in Gables Estates. Well, the families haven’t spoken for years before this happened, some dumb dispute over whose yacht smacked the seawall. Now the neighbor hits them with a big suit over the dog, he wants punitive damages, the works. Thad the Cad says you’ve got to handle it or he’ll take the bank’s work elsewhere.”

  Only thing worse than a slip-and-fall, Lassiter knew, was a dog-bite case, the bargain basement of the legal profession. “It’s my penance,” he said. “Thad’s way of getting even.”

  “Jake.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Please come back. I miss you.”

  Lassiter hung up and returned to the table where Sam Kazdoy held each of Violet Belfrey’s bony hands. “You’re too late to be best man, but you can still wish us mazel tov,” Kazdoy said.

  “Sure, Sam.”

  “Jake, boychik, you look all farchadat, like you’re in a daze.

  Nu? We’re off on our honeymoon. Flying to Los Angeles tonight, then tomorrow, a cruise to Hawaii.”

  “Hawaii?” Jake Lassiter said as if he’d never heard of the place.

  “Hawaii,” Sam Kazdoy repeated. “Travel agent booked us into whadatheycallit?”

  “Maui,” Violet pitched in.

  “Right. Good to get away from all the crime around here, go someplace peaceful. Maybe you can tell us what to see, the sights, I mean. I know what I’ll be seeing at night, and I don’t need a tour guide for that.”

  “Careful, Sam,” Lassiter said. “At your age, sex can be risky, even fatal.”

  The old man’s eyes twinkled and he patted Violet’s hand. “If she dies, she dies.” He laughed and Violet Belfrey flashed a grin that would frighten a watchdog.

  Kazdoy reached out and gave Lassiter’s arm a grandfatherly squeeze. “Shalom, Jake.”

  “Aloha, Sam.”

  * * *

  Jake Lassiter rigged his board on a chilly December day, a northeaster sweeping across the coastline, the sky ashen gray. He bucked over the chop near shore then sliced into the open ocean, a hard rain piercing his skin like a million needles, the wind singing a mournful song through the sail.

  He sailed due east, far from shore until he saw no land. An Atlantic ray, six feet across, shot under his bow. A dolphin followed him, leaping gracefully alongside. The sun would set early now but still he went on, his back to land. Tiring, he dropped the boom and let the sail fall into the water. He sat down, straddling the board, his feet dangling in the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, drifting farther from shore. He wanted to keep going, to float into the abyss and let it swallow him.

  Suddenly a splash, the
dolphin leaping again, its silver skin gleaming in the late-afternoon sun. Once more, closer now, a silly dolphin smile grinning at him, inviting him to play. Then the dolphin turned and headed west, toward land. Follow me, the dolphin seemed to insist. Lassiter watched until it leapt one last time. Then he uphauled his sail, jibed, and headed back to shore.

  * * *

  Jake Lassiter returned to work. He avoided partners’ meetings and stayed away from bar association luncheons. He tried his cases without fanfare, deriving no pleasure from the victories, no pain from the defeats. And when he was alone he would think it through, step by step. What had he done wrong? Would Tubby still be alive if he had acted differently?

  Would Lila?

  Always Lila in his mind. He remembered the warmth of her body next to him in the crater, the sweetness of her breath visible as puffs of white steam in the mountain air. He could feel her pressed against him and could hear the short gasps catch in her throat. He could see the silversword bloom, but once, in the morning sun, Lila watching it in awe.

  Could he have changed her? Or would that have stripped away whatever it was that made her singular? The questions kept coming. And coming back to the same one. What had he done wrong? He figured out part of it. He had mistaken youth for innocence and beauty for purity. He had been swept away by the myth of a woman of beauty, grace, and talent, a woman without flaws.

  We are all flawed, Jake Lassiter thought, but Lila’s were fatal. In her the bad had swamped the good. He knew now that he had adored a totally amoral creature devoid of compassion. Where he saw the sun and a warm breeze, there were only shadows and a graveyard chill. But still he wanted her.

  After a while he tried to banish her but could not. So he gave in to it. Each night, just before sleep, he summoned up again and again, the image of a woman so young and beautiful, so beyond his reach as to be an image in a dream. He saw Lila then as he did that first night when a stiff breeze carried the salt air and gathered her skirt between her legs. He captured the image, focused it sharply, and erased everything else. So he had it always, a memory for eternity, Lila Summers standing there with eyes closed, back arched and long hair flying, listening to a silent song, laughing into the wind.