He called out two more times to no response before turning and opening the canvas door to Billy’s two-room tent. Everything looked untouched and much the same as before. The air was dense with heat and a musty smell.
The last he had heard, Billy had been swept up by the policia for questioning about Jappy the Killer. Since Billy didn’t know much at all, it seemed likely they would have let him go. Billy was a bit of a mainland celebrity—a renown surfer who had experienced fame in his earlier life. Kazu had been secretive with him about his past and involvement in the killings for money.
“It’s Kazu,” he spoke loudly into the tent eyeing the drape that was the second room door.
No sign of his friend in the second room—only Billy’s clothing, storage boxes, and supplies. He sat down at Billy’s desk in the front room and lay his backpack on a cleared spot to the right.
“Where are you?” he asked the room. The air was stifling hot. Perperation was beading his brow and dampening his shirt.
“You okay? Mind if I hang out with you for a while?” he called to the tent door.
A bead of sweat ran down his nose.
“Gotta get outside,” he licked salt from his lips.
Standing, he was turning away when he saw the cover of his friend’s passport under a coffee cup. He pulled it out, realizing that Billy hadn’t made one of his seasonal, money-making trips to the States.
A folded brochure showed from the top and bottom of the passport. He opened the passport first, and there was Billy’s face, tan with a twinge of his ever-ready grin. His clear blue eyes were aimed straight at the camera, the rest of his face shrouded by sun-streaked hair.
“You’re okay, right?” he asked the photograph.
Sliding the twice folded brochure out, he was struck by the vibrant colors and bold writing and image. The brochure was for a surf resort, the kind of place that liked to import famous surfers to charm the guests. The top of the page read, ‘Surf Or… Hotel’ in large coconut letters, but what captured Kazu’s eyes was the photograph of the hotel itself. Shot from the backside of a perfect forming wave beyond a long beach of clean, smooth white sand, the hotel structure rose boldly from its hem of the jungle. The building face was lined by white wood doors and walkways and unadorned with a sign which, in any case, wasn’t needed, the color of the hotel was its own advertisement—a striking, hot rise of brilliant yellow.
18
During the following nine days of fear and caution, Kazu settled into something rare in his recent, short life—routine. Knowing he couldn’t live in Billy’s camp forever, he relaxed as best he could in the belief that the path to his next life would make itself available. Occasionally looking at the brochure for the yellow hotel, he began to imagine Billy living there hosting surfing sessions and entertaining the guests with long-ago adventures.
He was up at sunrise each day, his memory clock having reset to his earlier life with his family on their wheat farm six miles from a small town in Kansas.
“Breakfast first and then chores.”
The crashed and destroyed gondola car was still up in the strong branches of the big tree at the edge of Billy’s garden. The metal parts up in the branches were a reminder of his last arrival at the camp and prompted a memory of the policia hut at the airfield atop the high eastern bluff.
“Another place to avoid.” He looked up in that direction.
A cooling breeze swept in from the sea as he weeded and tended to the garden, staying in the shade as much as practical. He selected two ears of corn each day while walking quietly through the five rows. He sliced off a melon when he found one looking ripe, using one of Billy’s well-sharpened machetes. The corn and melon were a nice addition to the canned meats he took from his friend’s stacked crates.
Eating his midday meal under the canopy alongside the tent, Kazu turned on the radio and listened to the noonday news in Spanish. Over the past nine days, news of the search for ‘Jappy el Asesino’ thinned with no new leads. When the radio batteries gave up the ghost on the ninth day, he didn’t search for replacements. He hadn’t heard a single mention of his nickname.
With the arrival of the afternoon rains, he stripped and washed himself in the downpour out back in the clearing of the vegetation behind the camp, a few yards away from the privy.
Three days before, he had chosen one of Billy’s surfboards from the rack on the side porch and braved a one-hour session in heavy rain and wind. Having spent most of the hour repeatedly looking at the rocky bluff, he decided it was too risky. Even with the squall graying the air, he could be spotted from many different directions. He returned the surfboard to the rack where it would stay.
Those nine days were helpful in settling his nerves and calming him down. If there was anything besides the worry of being spotted, it was the constant, simple desire that came upon him at moments with craving—ice. A dreamy desire for anything poured over ice. Not ice cubes but a glass filled with the crystals of shaved ice. Ideally, a Fanta Grape, but most any soda would be wonderful.
Twice a day, free-roaming cows passed through the camp going north in midmorning and crossing back along the rocky path in the southern cliff in the evening. The cattle were practiced at stepping over the south yard trip lines and only occasionally rattled the tin cans.
“Thought of naming you…” he spoke to the cows, ‘… but I don’t think I’ll be here long.”
Each evening, he lit the desk lantern only after the tent door was drawn, leaving the camp dark and still. His previously completed image-novels were sealed inside resealable bags resting forward on the desk. He had begun a new work sketching with pencil, welcoming his imagination by drawing in streams of conscience, letting the random sketches form the start of a story. He roughed-in ideas for locations and dangerous situations which began to define the obstacles for his main character not yet chosen.
Unlike the last image-novel which was an autobiographical show-and-tell of each of Jappy the Killer’s seven scenes of murder, the new story was fictional. Fictional, but resonating with his own experiences and hopes. The dime-size bullet hole at the base of his thumb no longer affected his abilities with pencils and fine-tipped black pens. Equally important to the twelve-year-old, the bullet wound no longer spark visions of the near-death shoot-out.
Wishing the lantern light was white instead of amber, he was grateful that he had it at all. Other times, he was frustrated by the yellow glow’s effect and tainting of his desired crisp contrast of fine black ink on icy white, heavy bond paper. As with his prior image-novels, he looked forward to carefully choosing a pallet of pastel pencil colors to be used, knowing that clear light would be needed. Adding colors could wait, but he looked forward to what they would give the story, like waiting for dessert.
“Dessert?” He pondered with a half smile, “Soda over shaved ice.”
Five nights in, the pages of sketches surprised him by saying that there would be two main characters, not one as presumed.
‘A friendship between two young people. Partners in crime.’ He wrote his first story note off to the side.
Kazu thought about their shared goal or goals. Money, perhaps gold or silver coins.
As he sketched and inked, he realized that his two main characters would share a belief in the freedom that only trunks of coins could give. Money would be their king, and, ideally, their path to a happy ending.
Three possible settings came to him—a carnival, a mental hospital, and a ship. A ship resonated the most. He chose to go with a self-contained pirate ship on troubled seas, not unlike the island he was on. His imagination was kindled. The title came to him while he was inking different areas and angles on the ship, but he didn’t ink it, knowing from his prior books that it might well change. That understood, he began to think of the story as Jappy the Avenger.
Jappy’s partner, a girl not yet named, was brilliant at problem-solving and a smart ass. She was beautiful and large chested and often preoccupied with sex.
Wi
th the choice of a pirate ship in modern-day seas, his sketches also decided for him that all the characters in the book would be short in stature, no matter their age. His style from previous works of sparse facial details remained, emotions were told through slight eye and mouth variations, a style he had adopted years before, inspired by his delighted studies of Bill Watterson.
Before a single page of the first draft began, another choice was made for him by his sketches—each character would have vicious physical injuries. Missing eyes under patches, lopped off limbs and faces half melted by fire—cruel wounds for all from machinery accidents and fights.
With no clock in the tent for reference, Kazu extinguished the lantern early each morning when his head began to nod.
A sense of respect wouldn’t allow him to take Billy’s bed, so he again lay down on the canvas floor with a borrowed pillow and two blankets. Beside him each night was a sketch pad and pencil to capture the twilight images and dialogue that often came to him just before slumber or on waking. He no longer woke from dreams of his family or departed friends. Sippi and Angel had each been rescued by their parents and whisked out of Mexico to loving homes. For Angel, it was a flight with her single mom to Michigan. For Sippi, there had been a private jet with her famous dad to what she always called, “That run-down farmhouse in France.”
Instead of dreams of Sippi and Angel, he was plagued by frightening nightmares—his kills going wrong or being pursued by the ghosts of his victims, somehow reanimated. The worst were of his terrified capture and imprisonment.
On his ninth day, Kazu was back in the trees with a shower towel and soap bar in hand, listening to the heavy thunder booms and the rising wind in the high branches. The sky was going gray with the afternoon storm. Stripping off his black clothing, he looked across the small clearing to the east. The smell from that direction had grown more pungent and foul. Something was dead back in the green tall brush and rocks, and it was not one of the cows—their number was still seven. A dead calf, perhaps. He didn’t know, but something about that size. Although familiar with death, having seen so much, a visceral fear compelled him not to look. It wasn’t the disgust of maggots and wounds torn by rats and wild animals, it was the avoidance of the possibility of the remains being recognizable.
Turning away, he kept his eyes upward to the sky as the clouds boiled and churned before opening and offering rain for bathing.
An hour before sunset, the camp was warmed by golden light and long shadows. Kazu was up on the roof of the stream-fed cistern taking a measurement of the water supply. He had the cap off and Billy’s six-foot stick in his hand. Rather than using the stick, he plunged his hand and forearm into the round hole and grinned. His skin chilled in the cool black water. Setting the measuring stick aside, he was twisting the cap back on when the hot and sticky air at his back began to buzz.
What at first sounded like the start of mosquito hour grew louder, a constant droning, unlike the insects’ off and on pulsing buzz. Kazu turned around on the tank roof and traced the noise to the southern sky.
It was a small aircraft, blocked from view by twisted tree limbs, a single prop craft coming in steady and low.
Climbing down, he walked to the outskirts of the clearing in time to see the orange and white Piper cross low overhead, aimed for the airstrip at the top of the ravine. He noted that the airplane was a private craft, not military or policia.
He remained completely still, listening to the engine whirl as the airplane disappeared beyond the bluff. It went silent a few minutes after landing.
“What do you bring?” he asked the airplane before going in search of Billy’s .22 rifle.
19
The tin cans on the steep southern hill rattled. A few seconds later, the trip line was hit again. Kazu was sitting in one of the sun-bleached canvas chairs in the morning quiet on the shade porch alongside the big tent. He looked across the clearing expecting to see the seven cows having a clumsy morning. When another trip line clattered, he set aside his plate of Spam slices and corn. There wasn’t any wind, so when the tall corn stalks began to sway as they were parted, he stood up fast with Billy’s rifle. He retreated out the rear of the sun porch toward the outhouse.
Circling the back of the tent quietly, he climbed a tree at the base of the cliff until he had a high ground view of the clearing. He was camouflaged by the vines and leaves and shade.
The intruder stepped into view coming around the gondola tree and across the vegetable rows, minding his step and swearing. Seeing that the man wore civilian clothing and didn’t have a rifle or sidearm, Kazu exhaled and waited to see what the man did next.
“Billy boy-o, you around?” the man called to the tent and side porch.
“Name’s Carson Staines. I’ve written to you about the book. Can see the problem now, your house is missing a mailbox.”
Kazu watched Staines cross the rock and weed clearing, taking in the man’s casual stride and too bright smile. From his shoulders hung aluminum side packs and a camera swayed from his neck, sweeping across his floral bowling shirt. Then the camera was raised, and Carson Staines fired off a few shots collecting first impressions of Billy’s camp.
“Disgusting policia say you high-tailed it to the States. I’m thinking ‘no.’ You never made your flight, and the gang at Bill Hamil Surfboard Shop haven’t seen hide nor hair of you.”
He crossed the rocky clearing the rest of the way and stood between the tent door and the shade porch.
“Come out, come out wherever you are. I’ve come with tidings. Well, contracts that’ll splash a lot of cash in your lap.”
Kazu’s view of Staines was blocked by the tent roof. He shouted, “He’s not here. He’s at the Surf Or… Hotel,” he lied.
“Been there to background that. They’re quite pissed by his no-show. You’re lying.”
Kazu frowned and looked left and right.
“You just missed him. He left in the middle of the night.”
“I think not. Not that climb in the dark. And who you be?”
“Just a kid. I mind the cattle.”
“Good English for a local Mexican. Try again.”
Kazu climbed down the tree and made his way to the back of the tent and entered the shade porch. He stood beside the food crates with the kitchen table to his right.
Carson Staines stepped into the shade porch taking a business card from the pocket of his cargo shorts.
“Hey there. You know my name,” he said, studying Kazu, “Photojournalist. And you be?”
“Kazu Danser. I live nearby. Just swung past to make sure the well pump and all are working.”
“You live nearby? On this sun-blasted rock of an island? Try again.”
“No. You try. Why are you here?”
“Surely. I like that. Kazu? You do look like you have a healthy dose of Japanese. Do you?”
“My father was.”
“And he’s here? Nearby?”
“No. Kansas. Burned, dead, and buried.”
“That’s terrible,” Staines said without feeling.
“If you say. I got a second dad. He’s a good guy.”
“I’m overjoyed for you.” Staines’ voice was flat. “You a thief?”
Kazu ignored that, keeping his eyes on the man’s tan face and forced pleasant smile. He stepped across to where the kitchen knives lay on a cutting board.
Staines lowered the two aluminum cases to the dirt and stepped closer.
“Mind if I sit?” he asked.
Not waiting for a reply, he took the first canvas chair.
“Doing a book on Billy. In Search of Billy Hamil. Can I have a glass of water? Make that ice water, if you would.”
Kazu pointed to the water barrel and the few cups beside it. “No ice.”
“Makes me sad.” Staines got up and filled a cup. He sat back down and drank it off.
“You trying to interview Billy?” Kazu watched the man lick his lips.
“Why would I do that? I’m a pho
tojournalist. I use my own creative brilliance with images to tell his story. Famous Pipeline and Ala Moana surf stylist… Shucks the contests and money and all and poofs. I’ll paint his story, the mystery, the questions in collages. Need to talk to him about a small matter, a stick in my spokes if you like. I need his signatures. Well, not a need, I can go ahead without them, but it would be preferred by the publishers I’m pitching.”
“He’s not here. I’m sure he caught a different flight.”
“I think you’re wrong. And lying again. Recognize you, by the way. So, the plot thickens. Newspapers were having quite a time with your image and story. You’re a bit deadly for a boy. Your face is infamous even with your missing long black hair. Nasty thumb, there. If it’s a comfort, the ‘Jappy the Killer’ story is in a fade. Everyone’s now breathless and panting about this sad country’s currency and that border wall.”
“I don’t know anything about all that.” Kazu stepped from the cutting board and poured himself a cup of water.
“So, I came in search of Billy Hamil and found you. The stars spin and align. Perhaps I should do your story? Sit and tell, and I’ll decide how to shoot it if it’s worthy.”
Kazu sat down beside Staines, looking at his own bare feet rather than at the man beside him.
“Not interested,” he said.
“No? Well, that’s a pity. Could be profitable for you. Can I take a few shots of you?” Staines raised his Nikon.
“No.” Kazu stood quickly and turned away.
“Right. Notoriety and hiding out and all. Just as well. Crime-bios are not really my genre, even if the money is big. Way bigger than for has-been surfers.” He leaned across and placed the business card on the table. “Change of heart.”
Looking into the crisscrossing tangle of limbs and vines out the back of the porch, Kazu said, “He hasn’t been here for a long time.”
“How long?”
“A month or more. The policia took him.”
The Girl in the Hotel Page 11