Restless Waters (4 page)

My mind continued to wander until Santou removed the fish from the grill and divvied it up on our plates. That, along with the enticement of fresh corn and cold macaroni salad, helped bring me back to reality. I opened a bottle of cold beer and listened to it fizzle. A ghost wind blew from off the Ko’olau Mountains, as if the island were exhaling behind us.

“You know those reptiles that I mentioned having caught?” I asked between bites of corn.

Both men nodded as they continued to eat.

“I just want to give you fair warning. They’re stashed in the bathtub. I’ll take them in to work with me tomorrow morning.”

“No problem, chere.” Santou chuckled. “I’ve been liv
ing with you long enough to know its always best to look twice before stepping into things at home, or slipping under the covers.”

“Sounds as if you lead a charmed life,” Kevin softly sniped.

“You bet I do,” Santou said, and drew me close.

There he was, my knight in shining armor. I’d come to realize it was a tacit agreement between couples. You were always there to protect each other’s backs. I also knew that one good turn deserved another.

“How about showing me those surfboards you painted today?” I suggested, once dinner was over.

“Absolutely,” Santou agreed, sounding pleased.

We walked to a shed behind the house that served as Kevin’s workshop. Inside were sawhorses, tools, and drying hardwoods, along with finished surfboards that hung from the walls and the rafters. Each had been polished to a glistening finish and was a beautiful work of art.

Jake reached under a table and pulled out two of his own creations. One surfboard was adorned with a Hawaiian girl strumming a ukulele, while the other bore the likeness of a shark. An involuntary shiver rolled down my spine at the remembrance of today’s excitement. I ignored that board, and focused my attention on the babe in the grass skirt.

“Dolph thinks he can sell your boards if you paint them with these kinds of images,” I relayed, wondering how hard it would be to shake ones hips and strum an instrument at the same time.

“Sounds terrific. In that case, maybe I’ll find myself a couple of models,” Santou suggested with a sly smile.

“Like hell you will. The only one that will be modeling for you is me,” I advised, trying to figure out where to get a grass skirt and grab a couple of hula lessons.

Santou laughed at my response. “You’ve got a deal, chere. How about you show me a few of those moves tonight?”

“I’ll do my best,” I replied, quickly offering a prayer to the goddess of hula.

“That’s good enough for me,” Jake eagerly agreed.

We headed inside the house, leaving Kevin alone to contemplate the sea.

D
awn woke me early the next morning. Shades of rose and fuchsia lazily stretched their limbs across the water before ascending to turn the sky an incandescent pink.

I rolled over and Santou pulled me toward him. I snuggled there for a moment, luxuriating in the breeze of the ceiling fan and the caress of his hand on my body. Then I gently brushed away a curl and kissed his forehead.

“I have to get up,” I whispered, and reluctantly began to drag myself from under the covers.

However, Santou didn’t let me go very far.

“Not so fast,” he protested, and firmly drew me back into bed.

I gave in, held captive by the rhythm of his heart against my skin, as if it were pulsating for the both of us.

“I think you should find a line of work that has better hours,” he murmured, his breath seductively warm in my ear.

“Oh yeah? Then perhaps you’d like to pay me to model as a hula girl for your surfboards,” I lightly bantered.

“If I do that, we’ll have just about enough money to crash in two hammocks on the beach,” Jake drowsily responded.

“Exactly,” I confirmed with a throaty laugh. “Which is why one of us needs to get up.”

I tore myself away as Spam continued to snore up a storm on the other side of the bed.

I ambled into the bathroom to be greeted by the three lizards, who eyed me suspiciously. They were probably wondering what I was up to now, and where in hell their breakfast was.

“It’s coming,” I promised, and carefully placed them back inside their traveling sacks.

Then I showered, quickly got dressed, and the lizards and I hit the road.

My Ford soared past fields of red earth carpeted with long green strips of pineapple. Farther down the two-lane stretch stood an array of little wooden houses all in a row. Each was perched on stilts, as though it were a shore bird. Their corrugated tin roofs blazed bright as silver dollars under the morning sun. This was where Del Monte housed their field hands. A few waved to the passing cars as they marched off to work.

I traveled the saddle between the Ko’olau Mountains and the Waianae Range, making surprisingly good time. That is, until I hit the H-2 freeway and came to a dead stop. My vehicle was promptly swallowed up in a line of bumper-to-bumper traffic. There was no need to turn on the radio and listen to Howard Stern or Rush Limbaugh in order to be entertained. Just like every day, the usual crazy mix of drivers was all around me.

There were the Japanese, who adamantly believed they were on the wrong side of the road, while vacationing New Yorkers cut off other cars and flashed them the finger. Marshall Islanders drove their vehicles as though they were on water buffaloes, and Filipinos honked their horns in order to say hello. That angered the Koreans, who took it as an insult, and threatened to kill them. Rounding it off
were the usual number of junkies, high on crystal meth and crack cocaine, that were ensconced in stolen vehicles. Worse yet, they were the only ones driving properly on the road.

I got off the H-2 freeway and made my way to the Fish and Wildlife office in downtown Honolulu. Before going up, however, I stopped for my morning dose of coffee. One Venti latte, along with two biscotti, and I was ready to face the world. I walked out the door of the local Starbucks, better known as the American embassy among government employees, and entered the federal building.

The elevator slowly creaked up seven flights. My footsteps echoed as I trod down the hallway. The Fish and Wildlife door was still locked, a clear sign that Norm Pryor had yet to arrive. Using my own my key, I opened the door and walked inside. I’d been assigned the smaller of two offices, in which the prior agent had thoughtfully left behind a poster.

It was of Donald Duck holding a tropical drink and wearing sunglasses while twisting around in a beach chair. What he saw obviously gave him a fright. There were seven bullet holes lodged in the wall directly behind his head. I couldn’t have come up with anything better, myself. It conveyed everything that needed to be said.

The other memento he’d left was a note, attached to the computer, which read
This place is Apocalypse Now without the war.

I was still trying to figure out what that meant.

My boss meandered in at 8:30
A.M
. sharp. He was rarely too early and rarely too late, but usually right on time. It was a trick I had yet to learn. What I had discerned was that he liked to think of himself as a cross between Dennis Hopper and Rachel Carson. Probably because he rode a Harley hog, and pretended to be an environmentalist. Truth be told, he was closer to the older
version of Marlon Brando or Jaba the Hut. Norm Pryor tipped the scale at close to two hundred eighty pounds. At least he was smart enough to dress accordingly.

Today he was a model of tropical fashion attired in a colorful Hawaiian shirt, loose camo pants, and white leather moccasins without socks. A pair of soft pursed lips were set in a puff-pastry face, and his eyes blinked at me with the slightest hint of recognition. A hard-core bureaucrat, he’d left a cushy position in D.C. and come to Hawaii for one simple purpose: to add “resident agent in charge” to his resume.

Fieldwork was a necessary element when it came to climbing Fish and Wildlife’s career ladder. However, Pryor’s enthusiasm for hands-on experience had lasted all of one day. It ended abruptly after checking out a complaint that someone was housing an illegal piranha. Pryor discovered it was true by sticking his hand inside the aquarium and nearly having his thumb bitten off. The result was that he no longer had use of it.

“I thought we had an understanding, Porter,” he growled, sticking his head in my doorway. “You don’t stir up trouble, and I don’t make you do more paperwork than is absolutely necessary.”

I lifted one of the burlap bags from the floor and handed it to him.

“You might want to take a look inside and see what’s running around up on Tantalus these days.”

Norm Pryor snuck a peek and nearly had a coronary.

“Don’t ever just hand me something like that! What in the hell are those things, anyway?” he asked, quickly closing the bag.

“A pair of Egyptian spiny tails. There’s a panther chameleon in the other sack,” I said, offering to show it to him.

“I’ll take your word for it,” he responded, thrusting the bag back into my hands. “Maybe a zoo will take them.”

Okay, so perhaps not warning him hadn’t been very smart. Still, I’d expected a different reaction.

“Don’t you think we should keep them in a cage in the evidence room?” I suggested.

“What the hell for?” Pryor snapped.

It was then I saw the piece of pastry he held, and realized I’d probably put him off his breakfast.

“Well, there’s a good chance that someone has started a breeding colony in the wild,” I explained. “I nearly nabbed a guy with a veiled chameleon on Tantalus last night. We’ll need these lizards in order to build a case.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Porter. They’re probably just someone’s pets that got loose. I know these things are illegal, but we can’t arrest every kid on the island that gets hold of one. Besides, it’s puny stuff not worth our time.”

“I really think there’s more to it than that,” I insisted. “The kid was passing himself off as a Fish and Wildlife agent. He also seemed to know exactly where to find these chameleons, and what he was after. I have a hunch they’re being bred here on Oahu and shipped over to be sold on the mainland.”

Pryor’s stomach must have felt better. He took a bite of his gooey cherry Danish.

“You really are one for conspiracy theories, aren’t you?” he scoffed, licking a strand of jelly from his lips. “This is a small place without much action. I’d have thought you’d realize by now that people make up crazy stories and start to believe them. You can’t let yourself get sucked into that kind of thing. For chrissakes, some nut even called here the other day claiming that a cougar was running around loose in the mountains.”

“I think he might be right,” I remarked, recalling the large cat that had crossed my path on the road last night.

“Then you’re becoming as nutty as the rest of the islanders. Tell you what, Porter. You prove to me that there’s a cougar up in those mountains and I’ll eat its scat,” Pryor vowed.

Jaba the Hut was on. His challenge was too good to turn down.

“In the meantime, I don’t appreciate receiving calls from irate congressmen at night, whose neighbors are bitching about my agent,” Pryor huffed. “You know perfectly well that word about this incident will eventually filter back to D.C., and neither of us needs to deal with that kind of controversy.”

Pryor was right about one thing. Oahu was a small place with very powerful politics, where almost anyone could bark and get my boss on my back. Oahu was proving to be my most contentious posting so far. Call me crazy, but when it came to Hawaii, the federal government morphed into a giant complaint counter to which everybody seemed to have twenty-four-hour access.

“If you want to do something useful, I suggest that you head over to the airport and try to get your stats up. That’s an endeavor that will make us both look good.”

It hadn’t taken me long to learn how that game was played.

A Customs agent would zero in on a tourist coming into the state with something they probably didn’t realize was illegal—say a sperm whale tooth pendant, or leaving with a piece of coral. Fish and Wildlife would then be called in to make the seizure. In turn, Fish and Wildlife was expected to bring the National Marine Fisheries Service in on the case. That way, all three agencies were able to generate
mucho
paperwork.

It amounted to the age-old ploy of,
I’ll scratch your
back with my tourist today if you scratch mine with yours tomorrow.
The tactic successfully made all three agencies appear to be busy without ever doing much in the way of real work.

I carried the two sacks of chameleons into the evidence room and placed them in a screened cage, along with a plant from my desk. They examined their new temporary home as I sprayed everything well with a mister.

Fortunately, there were still some live crickets inside an egg crate kept on hand for just such emergencies. I threw a handful of calcium powder into a small plastic bag and, gathering up the crickets, placed them in there as well. A few quick shakes and the bugs looked as though they’d just been through a snowstorm. Then I released the crickets inside the cage, and the lizards promptly set to work.

One by one, their tongues lashed out at the insects with the lightning-fast speed of a whip. A suction cup on the end of each tongue fastened onto its prey, and snapped the cricket into the lizard’s waiting jaws. The reptiles then slowly began to munch, methodically chomping up and down.

More than anything, they resembled a bunch of senile old men who’d not only forgotten to stick in their dentures, but also couldn’t quite remember that they still had food in their mouths. Eventually, all the little cricket legs and antennas disappeared from between their lips. The lizards looked so benign that it was almost hard to believe these same creatures were ruining the environment of Hawaii.

Having fed them, I then took off for the airport, aware that anything was better than spending the rest of my day at work with Pryor.

I followed Ala Moana Boulevard as it hugged the southern coastline, passing the Aloha Towers and blocks filled with fancy shopping strips. It was as the road transformed
into Nimitz Boulevard that Honolulu gradually became seedier. Sam Choy’s Restaurant flew past, as did Hilo Hattie’s, with its bargain-basement Hawaiian shirts and cans of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts. Soon I was driving through a section filled with industry and down-and-dirty commercial fishing boats, an area that few tourists rarely ever visited.

Without thinking, I abruptly veered off the route to the airport and turned onto Alakawa Road. It seemed to happen of its own accord. There was little choice but to follow the whim of my Ford.

The next moment, I was drawn toward a world far different from any dreamt of in Waikiki: the area by the piers. It was then I remembered. This was where that businessman had mysteriously gone for a swim and been attacked by a shark.

From here, I was able to spot three enormous Japanese ships in the distance, lined up along the harbor. All were stocking up on provisions, food, and fuel, along with changing their crews. I’d always known Honolulu was a vital port, but hadn’t realized it was so important to both domestic and foreign vessels. Then again, it made sense. Hawaii is the crossroads of the Pacific.

I focused my attention back to the dock I was on, and slowly made my way down along its piers. Each was filled with an array of longliners that had recently come in, their decks still reeking of fish guts and blood. These are the boats that traverse the ocean year-round, catching swordfish and tuna. Of equal interest was how longliners had earned their name.

Each boat sets lines laden with thousands of baited hooks. These nets extend for up to sixty miles. Though they’re after specific target species, their “bycatch” is huge. The long flippers of endangered sea turtles become entangled in them, as do dolphins and marine mammals,
causing the creatures to drown. Meanwhile petrels, albatross, and other sea birds end up impaled on their hooks, in what amounts to an indiscriminate killing frenzy. It’s the reason that leatherback sea turtles are now just ten years away from extinction.

Barechested men, doing maintenance work on their boats, stopped and stared as I drove by. I took little notice of them, or the sound of their tablesaws, my interest solely on the fishing equipment on board.

A large pink spool sat mounted on each longliner’s stern. Coiled around its reel was at least a mile’s worth of monofilament fishing line. Next to it was a box overflowing with large buoys, usually referred to as “titty balls” by the crew. A basket filled to the brim with lethal steel hooks sat nearby.

Different contingents make up the island’s longliner fishing fleet. It comprises boats from Hawaii, Alaska, and the West Coast, as well as those belonging to the Vietnamese, Taiwanese, and Koreans.