1 Murder on Moloka'i (19 page)

twelve

(longer version)

By ten that morning I was driving down Glenoaks Boulevard back to the Red Lion hotel. I gathered my things, checked out, and headed for L.A. International, retracing my path on the now less choked Ventura and San Diego Freeways. My flight to Honolulu departed at two, so I had plenty of time to surprise Niki and, if she was home, call the airline to extend my stay another day. Having gained little from the business part of this trip, I would at least redeem the
pleasure
part.

Mid-morning freeway traffic barreled along at seventy-
plus.
Some
lōlō
maniac in a Buick cut in front of me, nearly forcing my rented Taurus onto the shoulder.

L.A. freeways always shatter my nerves. I scanned the radio for some soul-soothing Hawaiian music–Brothers Cazimero, Mākaha Sons, Iz, Sistah Robi, Keali‘i Reichel, Cecil & Kapono, and
da kine
–predictably finding none. I settled instead for a call-in talk show hosted by an eloquent British man. Coincidentally, the topic was raising the California speed limit to seventy-five.
Bad idea.

Not surprisingly, some callers were all for it. “Cars are better built today,” they said. “Freeways are safer,” etc. I wasn’t buying it. Some callers sounded pretty brash. Others were
hūhū
–very upset.

I tried to imagine such a talk show broadcast in the islands. Callers would be more soft-spoken, I imagined, if not more humble. In Hawai‘i being loud and opinionated is not necessarily considered a virtue.

More brash voices battled on that L.A. talk show.
Later.
I switched off the radio and mulled over my perplexing case: Adrienne doesn’t speak to her sister for five years, then upon her death inherits everything. She blames the accident on Sara’s ex-husband, but has hardly a shred of evidence. Parke’s visiting Kalaupapa the day before Sara’s fall looks suspicious, but how in the world could he have killed her? Only one witness, Milton Yu, admits to knowing J. Gregory Parke. Another witness, Heather Linborg, though she denies it, probably knows him as well. But none of this, so far, leads anywhere. If Yu and Linborg did conspire with Parke, the same problem:
how could they have committed murder with a mule?

Maybe Adrienne simply had too vivid an imagination. Maybe she felt guilty about her sister’s death. It was hard to tell. I was beginning to wonder which was the bigger puzzle: the case or the client? I decided to put the whole thing out of my mind for next few blissful hours that I hoped to spend with my
‘ono wahine,
Niki.

Before reaching the LAX airport turnoff, I left the San Diego Freeway at Venice Boulevard and drove west to Pacific Coast Highway. Descending jets hung in the airport’s glide paths like glinting beads. I pulled into a Chevron station and topped off the Taurus, then drove through a McDonald’s for a Quarter Pounder with cheese and a shake. Just thinking about seeing Niki again had made me hungry.
Yes!
And the two thousand miles of ocean between Adrienne and me had begun to assuage my guilty conscience. Besides, Niki and I had never pledged undying faithfulness. We’d only known each other six months.

I sped along the Coast Highway toward Niki’s condo, balancing my burger and shake. My pulse quickened. My heart thumped. I got crazy just thinking about my
fun-fun-fun
California blonde. Less than a mile’s drive south brought the back bay of Marina Del Rey, a pleasure boat harbor only two miles from the airport and lined with yachts, trendy restaurants, and swanky condos.

Marina Del Rey is a lively place. In these condos, among sun-tanned boaters, reside pilots and flight attendants from the many airlines that serve LAX. Most are young and single and on the prowl, the married ones having moved to inland suburbs to raise their families. Niki lived in such a condo called
La Casa Nova.
Though flight attendants frequently share their apartments, Niki had told me she lived alone, preferring privacy and quiet to catch up on sleep after long night flights.

La Casa Nova
I’d never seen, but she had described it to me in such detail that I easily found the rambling stucco buildings across from the bay-front “Chowder House” restaurant with a dozen slips filled with yachts. I parked my car and approached the condominium on foot. Its wrought iron security gate, as I expected, was locked. Since I wanted to surprise Niki, I didn’t use the intercom. I waited for a resident to come along with a gate key.

Within minutes two arm-in-arm lovers, both in airline uniforms, strolled up as if walking on air. The bleach blonde woman and her glazed-eyed pilot were oblivious to me. The gate opened and I followed them in. They never looked back, beating a hot path to their apartment.

The lushly landscaped
La Casa Nova
consisted of a several stuccoed wings built around a pink, heart-shaped swimming pool.
Nice touch.
The effect reminded me of a Japanese “love hotel.” From Niki’s letters, I recalled that her apartment was “309-F.” I wandered the grounds until I found the “F” wing, huffed up outdoor stairs to the third floor, then hurried past the first few doors. My pulse was racing when I reached “309-F.” To drive Adrienne Ridgely and her case far from my mind, I chanted a love mantra:
Niki–Niki–Niki.
When Niki’s door eventually opened, I was sure my face would reveal nothing but
Pure Stoke
at seeing my
‘ono wahine.

Imagining the totally
out of control
scene that would soon take place in Niki’s condo–
Ho!
–I knocked on “309-F” and listened with anticipation to oddly heavy footsteps approaching the door. A smile tightened on my face.
“Niki–Niki–Niki.”
I uttered the mantra under my breath. The dead bolt cranked and the door swung open. My smile fell.

Standing before me was not my lovely Niki, but a pink-eyed, stubble-cheeked airline pilot in his mid-forties who looked as if he had just crashed-landed on an overnight flight. His pilot’s uniform was wrinkled, his ruddy face was shadowed by those mostly gray whiskers, and his eyes on closer inspection appeared not just pink, but bloodshot.

“Who are you?” I asked, more than a little curious.

“Captain Jacoby,” he said in a gravelly, brusque voice. “Who the hell are
you?”

I glanced inside the dark and disordered apartment. “Where’s Niki?”

“Flying to Denver.” The bedraggled pilot looked me up and down. “Why do you want to know?”

“Niki is ….” I hesitated. “She’s an old friend.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that one before,” he smirked.

The more this rumpled pilot talked, the less I liked him. My fists involuntarily clenched.
Like beef?

“Niki doesn’t pick up guys on airplanes anymore,” the pilot glowered. “She’s mine.”

“What makes you think she picked me up?” I shot back.

“Look, you’re not the first lovesick puppy to come sniffing after her.” His stance spread. His arms hung loose, ready to fight.

“Lovesick puppy!”
I puffed up my chest. About to swing on him, suddenly I saw myself being played like a chess pawn. The image looked comical.
What a stupid gremmie I’ve been!
I began to feel more sorry for this red-eyed pilot than for myself. After all, my worries about Niki were over. His worries, well, had maybe just begun.

“How long have you two been a couple?” I asked in a more conciliatory tone, expecting to hear:
“Only a month ….”
Or a few days, more or less.

“A year this November.” The pilot’s fists remained clinched.

“A
year?”
Suddenly I lost my wind.
So she’s been sleeping with the two of us all along? The whole six months I’ve known her?

“When did you meet Niki?” Captain Jacoby kept in his fighting stance.

“On Maui,” I said wistfully. “Long ago–so long I can’t recall.”

The pilot relaxed his stance and grinned. I was no longer a threat. “Who should I tell her stopped by?”

“Never mind.” I turned and started walking down the stuccoed hall. “She probably wouldn’t remember me anyway.”

IX: Chapter Thirteen: Surfing at Canoes

When Kai lands in Honolulu after his brief trip to Los Angeles, he returns to his studio apartment and finds a
Star-Bulletin
story about a missing fisherman, who turns out to be the victim’s assistant, Baron Taniguchi. In earlier drafts, however, Kai goes surfing at Canoes to unwind. This nearly three-page interlude contains Kai’s painterly description of a sunset in Waikīkī. Though an amateur painter at best, he tries to convey the glow on the water that he also feels inside himself. The last line containing “MISSING FISHERMAN’S TACKLE FOUND” is the point where the passage would have connected to the published version.

(cut from)

thirteen

My plane landed in Honolulu at five. I knew only one way to clear my head. I rode a shuttle into Waikīkī, dumped my bag in my apartment, then toted my longboard to the beach. The sun hung low over the teal horizon–slipping slowly toward the surf.

I paddled out by the Moana Surfrider to that fabled wave-riding spot called Canoes. Catamarans, outriggers, and booze cruise boats having already cast off for their sunset sails, the beach lay empty except for a few late swimmers near shore. The ocean and air temperatures were the same–about eighty.
A warm bath.

As the sun dipped into amber tinted surf, the shimmering sea actually glowed. When I gazed toward Diamond Head, luminous in the flood of golden light, the rolling swells next door at Queens reflected like mirror. Only a few dapples on the liquid glass from a Trade Wind breeze proved I wasn’t dreaming.

As this amber calm settled on the lineup, I became one small figure on a vast impressionist canvas of glowing ocean and surf and sky–a sunset scene rendered in warm, passionate hues worthy of Renoir or Monet.
Awesome.
To me, each wave rolling in was an incredible gift. Sets of two and three welled up over the reefs, each comber luring a half dozen surfers. The swell rose slowly, feathering rather than breaking top to bottom. Despite the crowds, I got some nice rides.

When the sun’s amber arcs faded into a pearly twilight, it was time to head in.
Pau.
The next set looked promising, but I let the first wave go by. Several surfers paddled for it. The second wave came and lured those missed the first. I let the second one go by too.

Only a pair of us remained for the third wave. I stroked hard and dropped in, feeling my board scoot forward in a rush. Rising to my feet, I noticed I had company. The other guy suddenly dropped in right in front of me.
Hey, you!
I had every right to knock him off his board. Instead I gave him stink eye and turned into a broken section of the wave. When I glanced back he was walking the nose when his board pearled and shot tail-first–
Look out!–
into the air.

The wave was mine. It reformed and I rode it all the way in.

Longboard dripping under my arm I stepped with light feet up Waikīkī Beach–
stoked
from my last ride–toward the grand, white-columned Moana Hotel, home for forty years of radio’s “Hawaii Calls.” All along the beach, oceanfront bars and restaurants were hopping. The aromas of rum and coconut milk and pineapple filled the air. Slack key guitars twanged. A Hawaiian singer crooned in falsetto that classic kitsch tune still haunting me from my breathless evening with Adrienne:
“Moonlight and you in blue Hawaii ….”

The song’s effect was different now. Melancholy, it made me feel. And lonely.

Returning to my flat at the Waikīkī Edgewater, I took Niki’s photo in her string bikini at Sunset Beach from the night stand and slid it face down into the drawer.
My California blonde ….
I wasn’t angry anymore. I just preferred not look at her.

“Good-bye, Niki,” I said. “We had fun.”

My eyes moistened a little, but not for long …. Later, as I mechanically went through my ritual of reading Honolulu’s two daily papers, a story caught my eye. MISSING FISHERMAN’S TACKLE FOUND.

X: Chapter Twenty-Four: North Shore Surfing

Before his fateful interview with the prime suspect in Sara Ridgley-Park’s murder, Kai says: “With six hours until the interview with Dr. Goto, I did something not every detective would understand. I drove to the North Shore and went surfing.” The next line puts Kai in an elevator to the doctor’s office. No further mention of the North Shore or surfing. In earlier drafts Kai recounts his surf session in detail and tells us about his Hawaiian cousin Alika, his surfing mentor. Alika plays a more prominent role in
Wipeout!,
where his knowledge of big wave riding aids Kai in solving the case. Here Alika appears in an interlude, rather than in the central action.

(cut from)

twenty-four

With six hours until the interview with Dr. Goto, I did something not every detective would understand. I called cousin Alika, grabbed my longboard, and headed for the North Shore.

Someone might reasonably ask, “Considering all that hung in the balance, how can you paddle out into the blue?”

My answer: “This is how I survive.”

At Sunset Beach Alika and I stroked hungrily into the lineup. A shoulder-high swell was forming up nicely into hollow, right-breaking peaks. Not bad for October.

I don’t usually trouble Alika with the details of my cases. He is a tall, sinewy, soft-spoken Hawaiian whose focus on surfing is nearly complete. Like his father, my namesake Uncle Kaipo, Alika is a born waterman. He has managed to live his entire thirty-eight years on the North Shore, working as a life guard, coral diver, chef, spear fisherman, and surfing instructor. He and his wife, Malia, and their two
keiki
still reside with the Kealoha
‘ohana
who, as I said, first adopted me when my parents died.

Alika knows all the North Shore breaks as well as anyone, but Sunset Beach is his special place. Out here he is my mentor. And on
these
waves, sometimes you need one.

Sunset can be a very intense, complex break with a quickly changing lineup, wicked rip currents, and a dangerous shallow coral reef. You don’t want to go out here unless you really know what you’re doing. Too often I hear surfers from town or the mainland boast, “I’m going to ride Sunset (or Pipeline or Waimea) just to say I did it.”

My response is always the same: Sit on the beach and watch the veterans. Where do they paddle out? Where do they sit in the lineup and take off on the wave? How do they battle the soup and deal with the rip? And when their session is over, where do they paddle in to shore? Until you can answer these questions, you’re not ready to get wet.

There is a big difference, you see, between waves in town and in the country. A four foot swell at Sunset is equivalent to about six feet at Waikīkī. The reason for this is that country waves are thicker and carry more water. And are more unpredictable. Due to their larger mass and erratic nature, when country waves break they can peak up suddenly and dramatically. Nearly
doubling
in height. Regardless of the surf forecast, bigger than anticipated sets may abruptly loom on the horizon and break far outside. As the boiling white water rolls in, all you can do is “duck dive” or “turn turtle.” After a set or two crashes in front of you, you’re totally
gassed.

Welcome to the North Shore!

The rips and unpredictable swells at Sunset that present problems in winter were fairly under control today. Or so it appeared. This was October when the North Shore can be flat as a lake. But we got lucky. A consistent four feet. And as we soon discovered–
higher.

“Outside!” Alika pointed on the horizon to an ominous swell–a rogue wave–more than twice the size of any we’d seen. This maverick was deep forest green and peaking fast.
Ho, brah!

We paddled like scared gremmies.
Arms throbbing. Adrenaline pumping.
The wave’s towering face was nearly vertical when we got there. Too late to drop in.
Way too late.
With one last gasp I paddled straight up over the top.

“Swoosh!”
went the curling lip, blowing back a white gauzy spray that hit me like hard rain.
“Boom!”
The wave exploded.
Lucky I wasn’t sucked over the falls,
I consoled myself. Then I looked around.
Where’s Alika?
He was gone. Had he eaten it and got washed into the reef? This could be bad.
Very bad.

Then in the distance near shore I saw the tiny figure of a surfer ripping on the very rogue wave that had almost pummeled me.
Alika.
Impossible!

“You miss one good wave, brah,” my cousin said as he paddled back–
stoked
–into the lineup. When I asked him how he caught it, he patted me on the back and simply said: “Show you
bumbye.”
In other words, soon enough.

Between sets later that afternoon we sat on our boards contemplating a thousand tiny sunbeams on the dappled sea. My eyes got so accustomed to these dancing lights that the ocean surrounding them began to look black as midnight. An optical illusion, no doubt. But the apparent blackness of the sea got me thinking. Suddenly I had a strong premonition about the Moloka‘i case.

Gazing across the inky water at a coconut palm on shore, I imagined one of its nuts falling and spewing sweet liquor on the sand.

Like that fallen coconut, this case was about to crack wide open.