Moonlight Cocktail

by William Cassidy

  Jack carried his canoe back to its storage rack outside the locker room, showered and dressed, and then walked to the Club’s dining room for his second breakfast of the day.

  “How was your workout?” Noa asked.

  “Pretty good,” Jack responded. “I’m getting the hang of it, and I feel stronger in the right places. You know, I’m forty-five, Noa, and it’s not as if I haven’t put some miles on this body.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  Jack opted for his usual breakfast of guava juice, mango with lime, whole wheat toast, and Kona coffee prepared in a French Press. As he shared this exotic coffee with Noa, Jack asked, “Do many members of the Club order Kona coffee here in the dining room?”

  “A fair number do. You’d be surprised. It’s expensive, but people seem to be willing to pay for it.”

  Jack nodded, a half smile crossing his lips. “That’s great, Noa. Music to my ears.”

  “I’ll bet,” Noa replied. “You’ve got a whole plantation full of Kona coffee over on the Big Island. I know you don’t worry about the price — the more it costs, the more you make!”

  “Spoken like a veteran Club Manager. By the way, I see from the menu that the coffee you’re serving was made from beans grown on my place. Unassailable evidence of your discriminating taste!”

  “Jack, you’re the best example I know of the old adage that these islands choose you; you don’t choose them. When did you give in and decide to move to Hawaii?” Noa asked.

  “The first time I saw Diamond Head; it just took me a while to get here,” Jack said. “I’m a Pacific guy, Noa. I was meant to live here. Katherine feels the same way. This is the place for us.”

  “So what’s on your mind, Noa? You said you wanted to talk.”

  “I did. I’ve got a great opportunity for you. You’ll be in my debt forever.”

  “I already am; you’re serving my coffee at Hawaii’s most famous club.”

  “No, I’m not kidding, Jack. Hollywood has come to Honolulu. You may have seen it in the Advertiser. They’re filming a big flick out here starring Hypatia Adams, the most elegant actress since Grace Kelly, and the producer is that movie mogul Derek Reynolds. He came out from Los Angeles for a few days, and his production company is honoring him with a party here at the Club tonight. They called this morning and asked me to invite some interesting locals to the party, and I immediately thought of you and Katherine.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, and you should come. Besides, how many other Monday night parties do you know of?”

  “All right. We’ll be there. Aloha attire?”

  “Yes, we want them to feel the real Hawaii.”

  “Who are the other ‘locals’ you’ve invited?”

  “Oh, some you know and some you probably don’t know. Arthur Fairbanks, the author, is coming. You know Arthur. I thought we needed a British component. After all, the Brits were here in Hawaii for a while, and our state flag does incorporate the Union Jack.”

  “Sort of a gesture to Captain Cook,” Jack observed.

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, I do know Arthur. He lives at The Royal and he’s quite a character. He’s eccentric, but one hell of a writer and a good guy to boot. Arthur’s either the Somerset Maugham or the Graham Greene of his generation, I’m not sure which. I guess it depends on what he’s writing about on any given day. I’ll tell you this, Noa. I think he’s got an MI-6 background, but he’s been mum about it with me so far. Who else is coming?”

  “Sidney and George Lane. Do you know them?” Noa asked.

  “I met them at the Grant’s but I really don’t know them well. Anybody else I should know about?”

  “Well, I’ve invited some Navy guys from Pearl Harbor. Maybe you’ll run into an old shipmate.”

  “I doubt it, but I’ll look forward to meeting them.”

  “They’re bringing a political guy with them,” Noa added, “an Assistant Secretary of the Navy who’s in town to meet with the Pacific Fleet commander.”

  “Okay. We’ll look forward to it, Noa. Thanks for thinking of us.”

  “You’re welcome, Jack. By the way, I’ll bet Katherine will look better than the movie stars here tonight.”

  “You can count on that.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Jack left the Club and headed for Kapahulu Avenue and downtown Honolulu. He was on his way to the Bishop Museum, Hawaii’s best collection of Hawaiian artifacts and books about the islands, to do some research on coffee bean production along the Kona coast. As he wound through Honolulu’s streets to H-1, which was nearly bumper to bumper as always, Jack reflected on his decision to move to Hawaii. While the seed had probably been planted twenty years ago during his days as a Naval Officer, that experience was not, as lawyers like to point out, the “proximate cause” of his decision to move five thousand miles from the east coast to the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He was an accomplished lawyer, had tried criminal and civil cases, argued important appeals, and enjoyed the law for many years. He probably would have stayed with it if he hadn’t taken the six-month sabbatical that every partner took after fifteen years at the firm — and if he hadn’t spent it in Hawaii, where he and Katherine had also gone on their honeymoon.

  The sabbatical gave Jack time to realize that he wanted to do other things with his life than just practice law. It had begun to gnaw at him several years earlier, and the intensity of the idea grew as the years flew by. Once he conceded that he was not going to live forever, he realized that if he didn’t make the break now, he never would.

  Approaching the exit from H-1 to the Bishop Museum, Jack recalled the anguish he had experienced before telling the managing partner of his law firm, an austere man who could be difficult. Paul Caldwell Brand, known to the firm as PCB, was a tall, thin man in his early sixties whose wire-rimmed glasses and thick gray hair framed a dark stare fueled by a quick temper. He had survived the cyclical ups and downs of a corporate practice to rise to the top of the firm. But, privately, he knew how fortunate he had been, and this knowledge tempered his occasionally dyspeptic behavior toward those in his charge.

  Jack liked him. Paul appealed to his sense of discipline, and imposing discipline on lawyers is like herding cats. Nevertheless, when Jack went to see Paul to tell him that he had decided to resign from the firm, move to Hawaii and grow coffee beans, he expected a tirade followed by the recommendation of a good psychiatrist. Instead, after Jack told PCB of his decision, there was a long silence and an equally poignant exhalation of cigar smoke. Paul looked at him and gently placed his omnipresent cigar on the crystal ashtray at the front of his desk.

  “Jack, you’re a damn good lawyer,” Paul said. “Hell, for the past fifteen years, you’ve tried the biggest cases this firm has been involved in. On top of that, everybody here likes you. So I’m goddamned sorry to see you leave. But I understand that everyone has their own destiny in life. Everyone has to play the cards that life deals them. You know the hand I was dealt. I played it the best way I knew how and I’ve been lucky in some ways. In other ways, I haven’t been so lucky.”

  Jack was surprised at Paul’s candor but not at the substance of what he had said. PCB had been part of the group that had moved the firm from the traditional practice of law to the modern business world. He had been the point of friction between the old-line lawyers and the new-age, business lawyers, and the former knew that he favored the latter. Now PCB was left with the product of his management - more money and less peace than he had ever had in his life.

  “You’ve obviously persuaded your beautiful and talented wife to leave her law firm as well. And you made a mint on that case you tried a couple years ago. So, why not? But do me a favor. Every once in a while, let me know how you’re doing. And Jack, if you change your mind, there will always be a place here for you. Just give me a call.”

  “Thanks, Paul. I will.”

  “I’ll have the accounting department calculate your share of the partnership, and it wil
l be paid out to you within the month. Now, tell me about that coffee plantation you’ll be putting all this money in, Jack.”

  “It’s a small farm on a hill on the Kona Coast of the Big Island of Hawaii. A friend of mine out there showed it to me during my sabbatical. It’s got fertile volcanic soil and enough coffee trees to make money, but it’s been badly managed over the last few years by some dotcommers who had more money than sense. I’m sure I can turn it into a profitable operation, and Katherine plans to test the fashion waters of the Pacific. She’s a dress designer at heart and wants to try her hand at her own dress shop in Honolulu.”

  “Sounds idyllic, Jack. Send me some beans from your plantation, will you? Kona coffee is hard as hell to find here on the east coast. Almost as hard as these Cubanos are,” Paul said, as he opened his humidor and pulled out a fistful of Havana Montecristo Number Six cigars.

  “A British client of the firm who knows of my penchant for Cuban cigars dropped these off yesterday. Take a few. They’ll be hard to come by where you’re going.”

  “Thank you, Paul. Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye, Jack, and please give my regards to Katherine. I’m sure her dress designs will be a huge success out there if they even remotely resemble the ones she wears around this town.”

  “I will.” Jack got up from the leather chair, shook Paul’s hand, and walked out of the professional life he had known for fifteen years.

  Jack snapped out of his reverie just as he reached the entrance to the Bishop Museum. While walking toward the dark red-stoned structure that reminded him of an old university library, he called Katherine on his cell phone to tell her about the cast party that evening at the Club. Then he waded into books about soil conditions, rainfall, sunlight and all the other conditions that affect the growing of coffee beans on the Kona Coast of Hawaii.

  At the same time, the Reader was arriving at a field near the Windward Shore town of Kailua. Armed with a sharp knife, shears and a copy of the photograph from the Bishop Museum book, the Reader pulled off the road onto the field and began searching for a particular leaf. Not finding it after ten minutes, the Reader lit a cigarette and surveyed the perimeter of the field. Noticing a clump of brush not evident initially, the Reader walked toward it and discovered the object of the search. Kneeling down and leaning into the bush, the Reader cut several branches of the bush and folded other branches over them to cover the marks. The Reader then walked briskly back to the car, placed the branches in the trunk, grabbed a wet rag to soak up the dangerous fluid that had leaked from the broken branches, and drove away hurriedly. There was not much time to prepare for this evening’s party.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Royal Hawaiian Hotel, known as the Pink Palace, has always been one of the great hotels of the Pacific. It was built on property that had once been the home of Hawaii’s royalty, and its beach was once the playground of the islands’ kings and queens. Since the day it opened in 1927, the Royal has reigned over Waikiki Beach.

  When Jack and Katherine decided to move to Hawaii, they faced a dilemma. Their coffee farm was on the Big Island of Hawaii, but Katherine’s dress business would flourish only if she had access to an urbane and cosmopolitan market. Since they both loved Honolulu and had a circle of friends there, they decided to live in both places.

  Katherine would rent space in one of the elegant Waikiki hotels where she could display her designs to tourists and islanders. Jack would visit their coffee plantation during the week, leaving daily management to Keoni Campbell, an experienced coffee farm manager who lived on the Big Island. And, since the farm came with a traditional Hawaiian plantation house overlooking the Pacific, they would make that their second home, spending weekends and holidays there.

  Intrigued by the idea of living on Waikiki Beach, Jack and Katherine went to see the Royal Hawaiian’s manager, Peter Dillingham, whom they knew from previous stays at the hotel, and asked if they could rent a suite for a year.

  Thinking it might be good for the Royal’s atmosphere to have a small cadre of interesting full-time residents, he offered them the choice of a suite on the fifth floor that had a very nice view of Waikiki Beach or a suite in the tower just above the fifth floor that the elevators did not serve but which had a panoramic view of the Pacific. They chose the tower.

  Jack made the trip back to the Royal in record time, weaving through the Waikiki traffic that begins to build at four o’clock each day, and dropped his Jeep off at the hotel’s entrance. He bounded up the steps to the open air lobby and walked briskly to elevators flanked by old maps depicting the Hawaiian Islands when Captain Cook discovered them in 1778 and named them the Sandwich Islands after one of his patrons. He took the elevator to the fifth floor and walked down a short corridor and up a half flight of stairs to their tower suite. Its location and height afforded Jack and Katherine a wide-angle lens’ view of the Pacific from Diamond Head on the left edge to Waikiki Beach in the foreground to Barbers Point on the right edge of the frame, eighteen miles west of the Royal.

  “Hellooo!” Jack called as he opened the door to their suite.

  “Hellooo!” Katherine responded from the direction of their bedroom.

  Hugo, their Maine Coon cat, barely stirred from his perch on top of the chintz-covered chair in the living room and didn’t shift his gaze from Waikiki Beach.

  “How was your day, Hugo?” Jack inquired as he scratched the cat’s head.

  Hugo, a dark brown cat with swirls of caramel mixed in on his sides, a snow white chest and stomach, and white paws with a small black spot on his right rear leg, responded by slowly standing up and stretching in a yoga-like movement, first forward and then back. As soon as Jack stopped scratching him, Hugo returned to his strategic post, master of all he surveyed.

  “You know,” Jack said as he walked into the bedroom, “Hugo has a good deal.”

  “Well, of course he does. He deserves it; he expects it. This is his place. We’re just guests. In fact, as Hugo sees it, he owns this hotel and just lets the tourists stay here and use the beach. When are you going to realize who’s in charge?” Katherine said as she finished dressing for the evening.

  “Blonde One, you look great,” Jack exclaimed as he kissed his green-eyed wife and hugged her in the long silent embrace that was ritual between them.

  “So, who’s coming to this cast party?” she asked as Jack walked toward the shower.

  “Well, first of all, the producer, the director, and the stars will be there — Derek Reynolds, Mark Sandish, Hypatia Adams, and whoever else is in the movie.”

  “Anybody else?”

  “Some locals like us and some Navy people from Pearl Harbor. I think they’re bringing some political guy from Washington with them. Arthur Fairbanks will be there.”

  “Great. If all else fails, I can share a few laughs with Arthur,” Katherine said. “Are Gordon and Georgia coming?”

  “I hope so, because in my experience, these Hollywood types don’t socialize well with outsiders. They gather in one corner of the room and talk to each other.”

  “Really?” Katherine said. “Then why are we going when we could have a perfectly nice evening at home?”

  “Because Noa is the host and he wants us there.”

  When Jack emerged from the bathroom, Katherine handed him one of his brightly colored silk shirts with a Hawaiian pattern. This one had subtle green and yellow bamboo stalks set against a navy blue background - one of his favorites.

  “Do you think this will get Hollywood’s attention, Katherine?” Jack smiled.

  “Absolutely, my dear.”

  Jack put on his white cotton trousers and tucked the shirt in, tightening his belt one notch tighter than the last time he had worn it.

  “This paddling and running have really gotten me in great shape. I think I’ve lost another inch off my waist.”

  “Don’t lose too much, Jack,” Katherine said with a smile. “I like your body just as it is.”

  Jack looked in the mirror, brus
hing his hair and then straightening his shirt, and saw Katherine walking toward him, her image reflected in the full length mirror on the back of the closet door. She was wearing a black silk dress, oriental in its cut with thin straps over the shoulders and a modest slit on one side. Against the black background were splashed large pink Hibiscus and red Poinciana flowers in a colorful tropical pattern that suggested the lush beauty of Hawaii’s gardens and hillsides. Her blonde hair was up in a simple twist.

  They drove to the Diamond Head in Katherine’s white 1968 Mercedes convertible. As they approached the Club, there was a small crowd on the street, hoping to catch a glimpse of the stars. Noa had discreetly let the press know there would be a cast party at the Club, and word had gotten out that celebrity sightings could be had at the Diamond Head.

  Out on the beach, a Native Hawaiian band played traditional Hawaiian songs with ukuleles and slack key guitars while a beautiful young girl in a grass skirt performed the hula. All the trappings of a luau were set up in the dining room. The tables offered Kalua Pig, Chicken Long Rice, Lomi Lomi Salmon, Ahi Poke, Laulau and an array of Pacific fish that included the dolphin mahimahi, yellowfin tuna, known in Hawaii as ahi, wahoo, known in Hawaii as ono, opakapaka, a Pacific pink snapper, ehu, a Pacific red snapper, and onaga, a Pacific crimson snapper. There were plates piled high with freshly sliced mangoes, papayas, yams and tomatoes and, next to them, bowls filled with poi, brown rice and white rice.

  As Jack and Katherine walked toward the lounge, Noa Watson greeted them warmly.

  “Mrs. Sullivan, you look beautiful and, as always, your dress will be the talk of the party. Thank you so much for coming. Jack, you’re a lucky man.”