Paul Levine - Riptide

Lila wore the look of a wife who has heard her husband tell the same golf yarn a hundred times. “Moral of the story,” she said, “if I ever get mad at Keaka, I won’t shoot him, I’ll chop his big fat head off.”

“You’re the only one who would have a chance at it,” Keaka said somberly. He turned to Lassiter, his black eyes humorless. “Lila is strong, quick, and fearless as a pu’ali, a great warrior.”

“But can she type?” Jake Lassiter asked, and the blond warrior rewarded him with a knee-weakening smile.

A cool ocean breeze whipped across the Rickenbacker Causeway as they drove back to Key Biscayne, the lights of downtown Miami bouncing off the bay, the moon high overhead on a cloudless night. Traffic was light and in twenty minutes they were back at the hotel.

“Li’a, I’m going to make a call,” Keaka said, heading for the front desk and leaving Lassiter and Lila standing together in the lobby.

Lassiter’s look asked the question.

“Li’a was a forest goddess to the native Hawaiians,” Lila said.

“Li’a,” Lassiter repeated, letting the name linger on his tongue.

“In Hawaiian, it means desire or a powerful yearning. That’s why the Hawaiians wrote so many love songs about Li’a.”

“Goddess of Desire,” Jake Lassiter said. “The name fits. The spirits of the forest are still alive in Li’a, beautiful Goddess of Desire.”

“You’re a very sweet man, and a very attractive one,” she said with a provocative smile.

Now what did that mean? A thousand men must have complimented her name, her face and perfect body, but she was Keaka’s alone, Lassiter thought. He looked toward the front desk, where Keaka was using a telephone.

“Probably calling his cousin Mikala on Maui,” Lila said. “They’ve got business deals together. Will you wait with me?”

Only for a million years, he thought, and they sat down in cushioned chairs surrounded by ficus trees in the courtyard.

“Do you really want to get out of windsurfing?” Lassiter asked, his mind spinning.

Lila smiled a soft, wistful smile. “I’m not going to give it up to work in an office somewhere, but I’ve swallowed water from nearly every ocean in the world. I’ve been stung by jellyfish, cut by fins, and been catapulted onto rocks and coral. If that isn’t bad enough, it’s gotten boring. Some days, I just don’t want to load my equipment, pack six different sails, rig and rerig all day long. It’s become routine and dull, sort of…”

“Mundane,” Lassiter suggested.

“Right, mundane. That’s the word.”

“Like going to the office, whether you want to or not,” Lassiter said.

“Right, or making love to someone just because he’s there, whether you want to or not.”

He tried to decipher the message on the parted lips that half smiled and half pouted at him. She looked at him for a response. He thought a thousand things and said none. No follow-through. He let the ball slip through his hands with the clock ticking down. Then it was too late, Keaka heading toward them, smiling his barracuda smile, the call apparently a success.

“Mikala agrees we should take care of our business as soon as possible, tonight even,” Keaka said to Lila, and his look told Jake Lassiter it was time to say good night, which he did.

“So long, Jake,” Lila Summers said. “Thanks for a wonderful evening. When you come to Maui, you’ll become a kamaaina — a native — or almost one. You’ll blend into the surroundings, become part of the mountains and the sea.”

She laughed and her eyes danced and Lassiter wondered again if they held a promise or if he was the foil in a private game between these two strangers. He said good night a second time and walked outside, where a different valet looked at his ancient convertible as if it were a two-ton cockroach. Then the wind from the ocean slapped Lassiter’s face and he told himself not to be such a goddamn fool.

Two years earlier, the hurricane had buried the marshy hammocks of the coastline under a ten-foot wall of water. The tidal surge, pushed by raging winds, ripped out seawalls and tossed boats onto lawns of waterfront homes. The winds cleaved at the vegetation, shattered roof tiles and rent asphalt felt from its plywood sheathing, splintering trusses from their hurricane straps. Roofs were blown to neighboring zip codes. Road signs were recovered twenty miles away. In an office near the bay, a five-hundred-pound desk flew through a window and was never found. In four hours, the winds and water created three million cubic yards of debris.

Along the southern shore of Biscayne Bay, gusts toppled giant oaks. The eye wall of the storm tore from the ground the shallow-rooted ficus trees and shredded the aerial roots of sprawling banyans. But when the water receded, the red and black mangroves — propped on roots aboveground — were still there, matted with sea grass and debris, gnarled as before. If royal palms were regal in their bearing, the mangroves were the crippled outcasts of a primitive society. Stunted, bent into impossible shapes, rooted in sand and salt, they were the sturdy survivors of eons of evolution and countless storms.

At night, the bowed and hunched trees of the swamp take on ghostly shapes, their silhouettes appearing as the arms of the tortured, reaching out in pain.

Berto splashed through the shallow water, ducking under the branch of a red mangrove, not seeing a curved root. He tripped and fell, banging his knee against the trunk of a submerged, long-dead tree, and dropping the duffel bag into the water. He cursed under his breath, picked up the bag, and kept going. Above him, through the branches of the mangroves, low silvery clouds scudded across the sky, obscuring a slice of moon. He swatted at a mosquito and succeeded in smacking his own ear. Gnats buzzed around his neck and tickled his nose. An unseen animal splish-splashed away in the darkness.

What a place to meet, he thought. Like one of those old black-and-white movies. Creature of the Black Lagoon or something like that. Man, the sooner you get your citified ass out of here, the better. That’s the trouble with the assholes in this business. Too many movies. Passwords on the phone, hand signals, always afraid of wires and bugs. Dress this way, blink your lights three times, meet in the goddamn swamp. What bullshit he had to put up with. If he had it to do all over again…

That made him laugh.

If he had it to do all over again! Man, he’d change everything. Maybe he would have stayed in the practice of law, let clients sign the personal guarantees to the banks. Didn’t he talk to Jake about that in the old days? Hernandez-Zaldivar and Lassiter, P.A. Or was it the other way around? But they never did it. What was it Jake always said?

“Berto, the courtroom’s too small a stage for you. You’ve got to have your name in lights.”

“With my name, it’ll take a lot of lights.”

He laughed again, took two more steps and stumbled.

Shit.

The water splashed onto his trousers. Three hundred bucks in Bal Harbour. Not that Franklin would care in his Sears polyester. Where was the guy? Was he so good at his job I won’t know he’s here?

Berto thought he heard something — a movement, a broken twig. He turned in the darkness but saw nothing, his Gucci loafers sinking into the mud. He strained to hear over the pounding of his heart and the buzz of mosquitoes around his ears. Then a jolt from behind, his feet out from under him, and he landed in the muck, his first thought a wild incongruity — could the dry cleaner get the mud out of his bird’s-egg pleated Italian slacks? A moment later a vague feeling that his neck hurt.