Mahu Box Set

by Neil S. Plakcy

  “It’s not that I doubt you, Trish. I believe you. I just have to learn everything I can.” I paused. “The girl who was killed after Mike appears to have been an ice dealer. He didn’t use drugs, did he?”

  “Nope.”

  “Do you know if he knew a girl named Lucie Zamora?”

  “Sure. Most of the pretty decent surfers know each other. Is she the one who roped him into smuggling?”

  “I don’t know. There may be somebody above Lucie, who put it all together.”

  She fingered a gold surfboard on a thin gold chain around her neck. “What are you going to do now?”

  “Keep asking questions.” The sun passed behind a cloud bank that was rolling in off the Pacific, and it got suddenly chilly on the beach. I stood up. “I’m going back in the water. You coming?”

  She shook her head. “I gotta work in an hour. But I’m out here most mornings. If you hear anything else, will you tell me?”

  “Sure.”

  I walked her back up toward Ke Nui Road, and watched her drive off toward Hale’iwa. I remembered that Mike Pratt had worked for a board shaper when he first came to the North Shore, and put that together with the fact that something had gone wrong with his board after coming back from Mexico. It made sense to me that before throwing the board away, he’d try to salvage it. And who better to go to than his old boss? The shaper was an old hippie named Palani Anderson; I’d read about him but had never met him. Maybe it was time I did.

  The Old Hippie

  I found Palani’s workshop in Mokule‘ia, just off Pu‘uiki Beach. The first thing that struck me was the aroma of polyester resin, which I could smell from a block away. When I approached the open garage, I heard the noise of an orbital sander, and I saw Palani standing in front of a shaping rack, working on what looked like a nine-foot board. His white hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and he wore goggles and a dust mask.

  The room behind him was painted black, with lights mounted on the walls just above the shaping rack to highlight any bumps in the white foam. Scattered around him, on the floor and on shelves along the wall, were the tools of his trade: a dozen different types of planes; a spokeshave, used for shaping curved work; a Japanese curved planer; several different kinds of surforms (used to shape noses, tails, and rails); and piles of different grades of sandpaper.

  I also saw stacks of foam blanks in sizes from six feet up to ten-feet longboards, and cans of resin. When Palani looked up and saw me approaching, he turned the sander off, pulled down the mask and flipped up the goggles.

  I introduced myself. “I remember you,” he said. “You used to be a pretty decent surfer. You still surf?”

  It was amazing how good it felt to be remembered for something other than coming out of the closet. “Try to.”

  “You looking for a board?”

  I shook my head. “Information. About Mike Pratt.”

  “Poor son of a bitch,” Palani said. “I wasn’t surprised to hear he died. Still a shame, though.”

  He put the goggles and the mask down on a table and we walked behind the garage. The air was fresher there, a nice breeze coming up off the ocean. He pulled a pack of Marlboros from his pocket, and offered me one, which I declined.

  “Why weren’t you surprised?” I asked, as he lit his cigarette.

  “He got himself in with the wrong crowd.” Palani took a deep drag on his cigarette. “I’m not opposed to recreational drugs. Hell, I smoked enough dope in my life to save a ward full of cancer patients. But the drugs these kids do today, they’re bad news. Crack cocaine and X and crystal meth.”

  “Nothing like the heroin of the good old days.”

  Palani laughed. “You got me there.” Then his face saddened. “But Mike got himself on the business end of the deal somehow. He was a good kid, you know, a real talented surfer. Had a feel for the waves you can’t train into somebody.”

  “So I’ve heard. What made him go bad, then?”

  “Money. Makes us all do things we shouldn’t sometimes. He was determined to be a real competitor, and to do that you need backing. Entry fees, travel, training time. Somebody offered him the money he needed, and he took it.”

  “He ever tell you who that was?”

  Palani shook his head, and his ponytail swung from one side to the other. “I didn’t want to know. But I knew he was in trouble.”

  “Did he ever come up here with something wrong with his board?”

  Palani looked at me. “You know a lot about him, don’t you?”

  “I’ve been learning. Somebody asked him to smuggle drugs in his board, didn’t they?”

  “Yup. Really pissed him off, because he loved that board. He customized it himself, right here in this shop.”

  “The board wasn’t fixable?”

  Palani laughed. “Not with the center of it cored out,” he said. “You can fix a broken plug, a stringer. Something simple. No way to fix something like that.”

  “What I still don’t understand is how that could get him killed.”

  “It was him complaining about it. I told him to shut his mouth, it was going to get him in trouble, but he kept on. I guess whoever it was got worried he’d bitch to somebody who would listen.”

  We made small talk for a few minutes, and then Palani showed me around his garage. I’d done a little shaping when I was in high school, trying to customize my own boards, and it was cool to see a master at work. But eventually I had to tear myself away—I had the information I’d come for.

  Leaving Palani’s place, I felt like I was getting somewhere. At long last, a real motive for Mike Pratt’s death. He was pissed off that his board had gotten ruined, and he couldn’t keep his mouth shut about it.

  I dragged myself back to Hibiscus House. I thought I might take a nap and then think about going over to see Brad, but my nap stretched all night, until I woke up Saturday morning as fingers of light were beginning to crawl through the window that looked out over the driveway.

  The next morning, as I waited for waves, I couldn’t help trying to organize what I had been discovering. There were certain pieces of evidence. All three of the murder victims had been to Mexpipe, though that was the only thing, beyond surfing and murder, that seemed to link them. Therefore it was probably an important fact.

  Mike Pratt knew Lucie Zamora. After a trip to Mexico, a trip Lucie had also made, Mike returned with the money for travel and entrance fees. Trish believed he’d gotten that money by bringing crystal meth back from Mexico, and that he’d used his board to hold it. Palani confirmed that a hole had been cored in Mike’s board. Shortly after he returned, after he’d complained about the condition of his board to anyone who’d listen, he was dead.

  According to Jeremy Leddinger, who had a drug addict ex-boyfriend, Lucie Zamora sold ice, the powdered form of crystal meth. I had found a stash behind her medicine cabinet, and I doubted it had been left there by a previous tenant. Further evidence was provided by the cash she had to spend on designer clothing at Brad Jacobson’s boutique, Butterfly, and on shopping trips with Brad’s friend Larry Brickman.

  Larry and George had also verified that Lucie knew Ronnie Chang, the computer nerd slash weekend surfer, who had also gone to Puerto Escondido for Mexpipe. A sexy woman has been known to draw even the straightest guy into troublesome waters, and Jeremy had said Lucie led Ronnie around by his dick.

  A huge wave washed over me and knocked me into the cool Pacific, reminding me that I was in troublesome waters as well. I kept on surfing, all day long, though I couldn’t stop turning over the questions I had about the three dead surfers. Whenever I was on the beach, I tried to talk to other surfers, looking for anyone who had known Mike, Lucie or Ronnie, or anyone else who had gone to Mexpipe. I didn’t have any luck.

  That night, I thought about calling Brad, but I decided first to head to the Drainpipe, the Hale’iwa bar where Lucie’s one-time boyfriend Frank worked. I was hoping he could shed some more light on where Lucie got her drugs from, and how her
dealing might tie in with her trip to Mexpipe. I wasn’t sure how much he could tell me, particularly if the bar was busy, but it was Saturday night and I was thirsty, and the Drainpipe seemed as good a bar as any.

  Jeremy had said that dating Frank was just a cover so that Lucie could hang around the Drainpipe and meet up with customers. Perhaps someone there had bought from her—or someone had moved into her territory.

  Frank wasn’t on duty, which was disappointing, but I got myself a beer and relaxed. I got roped into a darts game, talked to a couple of guys and girls, and remembered what my Saturday nights had been like before I came out of the closet.

  I had a good time, partly because there was no sexual agenda going on—at least not on my part. I wasn’t sizing up the wahines—or the guys, for that matter—and trying to figure out my chances of scoring. While there might have been a girl or two checking me out, none were blatant, so I didn’t have to do anything to discourage anyone. I played darts, I drank my beer, and I laughed. A lot.

  It was obvious to me, though no one said anything directly, that people knew who I was, so I couldn’t be too blatant about asking for drugs, or asking if anyone knew Lucie, Mike or Ronnie. Around ten o’clock I was surprised to see Brad’s friend Jeremy, but we did nothing more than shout hellos before he appeared to have left the bar. I figured there were probably few gay places he could go, and if he was bored at Sugar’s it was worth checking out the straight bars to see what kind of action was going on.

  About a half hour later, George and Larry, the macho guy and the cute guy, came in together, and my radar went into overdrive. Sure enough, as soon as they both had beers, they were heading my way.

  I was a little drunk by then. Still able to function, still able to drive, but my defenses were dangerously low. They clinked their bottles up against mine and made their greetings, and I followed them to a dark corner of the bar.

  “How’s it going?” George asked. “You finding anything out about Lucie?”

  “Still picking up information,” I said. “Haven’t really processed it all yet.”

  “If there’s anything we can do to help,” Larry said.

  “Anything at all,” George said. His leg brushed against mine, so casually that it might have been nothing, but my adrenaline level soared. I decided I could put my homicide investigation on hold for one Saturday night and enjoy myself.

  I knew I could play coy with them, ignore the subtext, come up with another excuse to leave. But what was stopping me from heading out with them, enjoying what they had to offer? Some outdated code of ethics that said sex should be only a two-person sport? Or some deeper programming, which indicated that sex had to be involved with romance, which had to lead to me and Mr. Right living together behind a white picket fence?

  I didn’t think either of those should control me, and frankly, I was horny, so I said, “That offer you made the other night. That still stand?”

  “You bet,” George said.

  “Didn’t think you’d be so easy,” Larry said.

  I licked my lips. Might as well go for the gusto, I thought. “I’m not easy,” I said. “I’m hard.”

  Both George and Larry laughed out loud. “Well, that’s a good state to be in,” George said. “You’re staying at that sleazy old Hibiscus House, aren’t you?”

  “Yup.”

  “Well, let’s get over there and make it a little sleazier.”

  They’d come in George’s pickup, in response to a phone call from Jeremy, as I thought, so Larry came with me, and George followed. His truck was a lot like mine, banged up and yet still serviceable.

  Larry sat next to me, playing first with a bit of my black hair, then stroking one finger down my thigh as I drove. “You’d better not do too much of that, if you want us to get there in one piece,” I said. I could feel my erection straining against my jeans, and thought if he touched it, I’d probably explode right there.

  “We’ll get there,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

  Fortunately, Hibiscus House wasn’t too far away, and shortly the three of us were standing in my slightly-messy room. I’d learned from Brad’s visit that I had to keep it neater, so the only thing I had to do was move some dirty clothes off the chair and the place was fit for company.

  George and Larry didn’t wait for hospitality, though. George was behind me and Larry in front of me, one stroking my back and the other kissing me. In short order, and almost without my noticing it, I’d shed my clothes and stood there, nude, between them.

  “If you guys don’t strip down, we aren’t going to have much fun,” I said, in between my tongue’s dueling with Larry’s.

  “Oh, we’ll have some fun,” George said.

  There was something quite erotic, on the edge of dangerous, about my being naked with the two of them fully clothed. I’d exposed myself to them completely, while they had exposed nothing at all to me. I’d relinquished all the power, and that was a powerful aphrodisiac itself.

  I felt Larry’s stiff dick rubbing against mine through his pants fabric, and George’s finger, magically lubricated, exploring my ass, and I gave myself up to the pleasure. Soon enough, both of them were naked, too, and Larry had turned his ass to me. George handed me a rubber and squeezed some lube onto my hand, and I began doing to Larry what George was doing to me.

  In short order, we were making a Kimo sandwich. Larry’s hole was loose and slippery, and I slid right in. Mine was more difficult for George to penetrate, but he seemed to have a lot of experience. I felt the rubbery head of his condom-enclosed dick knocking up against my back door, and then in one strong push that sent waves of pain through my body, he was inside me.

  He led the rhythm; as he pushed into me, I pushed into Larry. Soon my ass got used to the intruder, and the pain melted away. I had my hands on Larry’s prominent hipbones, more for balance than for anything sexual, while George was balanced enough to let his hands roam around my body, tweaking my nipples, cupping my hipbones, running down the outer edges of my thighs.

  I shut off all thinking, opening myself to pleasure, and pleasure was provided. I felt incredibly connected to both of them, as if an electrical current that began in George pulsed through me and into Larry.

  I couldn’t control the noises I made, and it seemed George couldn’t control his, either. They worked together until, with one massive push into me, he filled his condom’s reservoir, and I did the same with mine. We held the position for a moment or two, and then with a squishy plop, George had pulled out of me, and I pulled out of Larry.

  Larry turned to face me and we began to kiss again. Then I felt George move between us down at crotch level, and realized he was blowing Larry, my limp dick nested in his hair. Larry came quickly, and then the three of us fell onto my bed, where we spooned up together. “Man, that was awesome,” I finally said.

  “That was pretty good,” George said.

  “You guys do this kind of thing… often?”

  “When we find somebody we both like,” Larry said. “Not so often as all that, but occasionally.”

  “Are you—together?”

  George laughed. “Tonight’s about as together as we get. I like a little pussy now and then, and Larry mostly likes to get fucked—as often as he can.”

  I didn’t pretend to understand. I loved what we did—while we were doing it—but I didn’t think I’d make a habit of it. After a while, Larry and George both kissed me good night, and slipped out the door.

  I looked at the clock. It was just midnight. I could get some sleep and then the next morning… I suddenly realized. The next morning was Sunday, and my family was coming to the North Shore for a big luau. My room was littered with condom wrappers and lube bottles, my ass felt like it had been reamed by a beer bottle, and my nipples felt like raw meat. Jesus.

  I hoped it would all be better in the morning, and went to sleep.

  Luau

  My cell phone woke me at eight. “We’re passing Helemano Plantation,” my brother Lui said.
“We’ll be in Waimea soon. You got the picnic area reserved?”

  “Shit.”

  “You still in bed, sleepy head? I figured you’d be surfing already, trying fruitlessly to improve your surfing skills before your big brothers show up and blow you out of the water.”

  “Rough night. I’m getting up. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  “Get lots of tables. We have a whole caravan here.”

  “Caravan?”

  “Mom, Liliha and Tatiana are each driving a car full of food. The three of them have been cooking for days—it’s like those three witches from Macbeth.” His voice turned away from the phone for a second. “Jeffrey, you tell your mother, your auntie, or your Tutu I called them witches and you get no Xbox for a month.” His voice returned to normal. “Dad’s got every surfboard this family owns packed into his truck. I’ve got a car full of kids and toys and so does Haoa. Harry’s back there somewhere, and so’s your friend Terri with her son.”

  “Jesus.”

  “He’s probably trailing along behind,” Lui said. “Get your skinny butt moving. I can almost see Matsumoto’s.”

  I stumbled out of bed, into the shower, and into board shorts and a T-shirt. I could just imagine the wrath of my entire family if they showed up at Waimea Bay Beach Park and I wasn’t there with a batch of picnic tables.

  Fortunately, the near-perfect surf conditions meant that everyone who’d considered heading up to the North Shore had gone directly into the water, and I was able to secure the perimeter of an area I thought was big enough for all of us. And only moments after I arrived, my father’s pickup, loaded with surfboards, entered the parking lot.

  There was indeed a caravan behind him. Lui had recently surrendered his pickup for a dark gray Mercedes sedan, which was in second place, filled with Jeffrey, his brother Keoni, and their sister Malia. Right behind was Lui’s wife Liliha in her gold Mercedes, which filled with food and picnic supplies.

  My mother drives a Lexus, and she and her load were sandwiched between Liliha and my brother Haoa’s panel truck, in which he had the kalua pig, fresh from the imu pit in his back yard, along with barbecue supplies.