Paul Levine - Riptide

“Molokai?” Lassiter asked.

“The dude loves the jungle there. Gets high on it. Weird dude.”

Lassiter asked, “Where on Molokai would the dude be?”

“Don’t know. Big jungle.”

Molokai was only a few miles across the Pailolo Channel, but there was little development, just cattle ranches on the high plains and a jungle on the east end facing Maui. If Keaka was in there, no one could find him. And if Lila was with him? Lassiter’s spirits plunged. He decided to do what he hadn’t done in Miami.

The County of Maui police station in Wailuku sits at the foot of the West Maui Mountains, green and jagged, a beautiful backdrop to the small downtown. An old banyan tree shades the building, a sturdy structure with a red barrel tile roof, a holding cell downstairs, and a small office crammed with typewriters, communications gear, and computers upstairs.

A pleasant young woman in uniform ushered him into the captain’s office, a cramped room with maps on the walls, pictures of soldiers in a jungle, an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army, and a framed medal tarnished at the edges. The captain was swarthy and stocky, mid-forties, his uniform neatly pressed, short sleeves rolled up over solid biceps. His name tag read M. Kalehauwehe, and he watched Lassiter scan the mementos.

“Nam,” the captain said. “Flew a chopper, Cobra gunship, had three shot out from under me, two more burned up flying flat out. Loved those Cobras, like little bees buzzing, blasting the shit out of anything that moves. Got thirty-caliber machine gun, twenty-millimeter cannon, grenade launcher, aerial rockets, and TOW missiles. Shit, I could destroy a town with one Cobra.”

“You must have some memories,” Lassiter said, letting him play them back. He was going to anyway.

The captain nodded and settled back into his wooden chair. “Brass said I was hell on engines, the way I flew. After I was grounded, learned something new, ordnance specialist, C-4 plastique. Looks like clay the kids play with. Hit it with a hammer, nothing happens, but send an electric charge through it, ka-boom! Wired a toilet once, blew porcelain up a VC’s ass and out his Adam’s apple.”

“Guess he was really on your shit list,” Lassiter said, but the captain didn’t get it, just kept talking.

“Had a problem with VC stealing our jeeps. So we’d bait ‘em. Leave a jeep out but wire it with plastique. Bastard turns on the ignition, his balls end up on the far side the Ho Chi Minh Trail. But they catch on, get little kids — orphans, ragamuffins — to start the jeeps for ‘em while they hide in a ditch. Then we catch on. I rig up a gizmo, the ignition doesn’t blow the plastique, just starts a timer that sets a spark in three minutes. By then the kid’s gone, the VC slimeball gets in, ka-boom!”

Captain Kalehauwehe smiled with contentment. Time to bring him back to his job. Lassiter said, “Guess police work is a breeze after those experiences.”

“Yeah, just a bunch of Filipinos cutting each other up and tourists losing their wallets. What can I help you with?”

Lassiter told part of the story, held back part, told him a client was burglarized, lost a bunch of valuable securities — didn’t say how much — and circumstantial evidence implicated Keaka Kealia, did he know him?

Sure, everybody knew him, great athlete. No, he’d never been in any trouble, at least nothing more than the rest of the kids here, maybe a few fights when he was younger, never lost one. No, hadn’t seen Keaka in some time, usually with his girlfriend, what’s her name, Lila, right.

The captain asked if Lassiter had an arrest warrant or an extradition order. No, well, not much we can do for you, just coming in here accusing a well-known citizen of being an accessory to a felony. Where you staying? Makawao Inn. We’ll let you know if anything turns up, have a pleasant stay, Mr. Lassiter.

Okay, Jake Lassiter thought, the cop was a little defensive. Understandable, I come in here with a story like that. He’ll probably call Miami Beach and check it out. Shit, Carraway will tell him a skinny kid named Rodriguez took the coupons.

Captain Kalehauwehe escorted Jake Lassiter to the door and watched him walk to his car. Then the captain returned to his office, closed the door, picked up the telephone, and dialed a familiar number. A woman answered the phone.

“Hello, Little Lee,” the captain said. “Tell Keaka we’ve got some work to do.”

“More, Mikala, more besides the stupid little man?”

“First him. Then a smarter, larger one,” Captain Mikala Kalehauwehe said.

The islands that are Hawaii sit atop the largest structures on earth, volcanoes that extend five miles from the ocean floor to peaks ten thousand feet above the sea. The oldest of the islands, Kure, was formed more than twenty million years ago. Today, it is a tiny reef fifteen hundred miles northwest of Maui, eroded into a semicircle that will eventually disappear beneath the sea.

All these islands — from the largest and youngest, Hawaii, t the Big Island, to the smallest and oldest, Kure — were born from the same womb, a hot spot boiling with magma beneath the surface of the earth. When the pressure builds in this underground reservoir, steam surges upward, searching for the path of least resistance. Then molten rock erupts from the innards of the earth, and if the volume is great enough, a new land mass is formed.

The mantle of the earth moves slowly over the hot spot, a few inches each year to the northwest, and with the millennia each island moves with it. While Kure slowly disappears under the ravages of erosion, the Big Island of Hawaii grows even now as Kilauea continues to erupt and add silvery rock to the land.

The ancient Hawaiians, the Polynesians who crossed the ocean in giant sailing canoes, had their own explanation for the explosions and the crimson flow of molten earth. The fire goddess Pele lived in the heart of the volcano, shifting from Kauai to Oahu to Maui before settling in Kilauea on the Big Island in search of the perfect home and perfect lover. She thought the chief Lohiau would be that lover but he fell in love with her younger sister, Hiiaka, and when the couple tried to escape, Pele drowned them in the caldron of fiery Kilauea.

Pele, it seems, is a jealous lover.

Haleakala. Haleakala here, there, and everywhere, Harry Marlin thought. Postcards in the gift shop, a tourist film on the hotel’s TV channel, busloads of hicks leaving at four a.m. to see sunrise at the Haleakala crater like a bunch of friggin’ pilgrims. Four a.m., for Christ’s sake, time to call it a night, not start the day. Haleakala, that’s all there was here except for the beaches and Harry Marlin didn’t travel six thousand miles for a suntan or for a ride up a mountain to take snapshots of a burned-out volcano. A one-horse town, that’s Maui for you.

Harry studied the literature, as he called it, at the concierge’s desk. Haleakala, House of the Sun. Hale, “house”; La, “sun.” That’s where the girl, Little Lee, said the coupons wereand that was the only good reason to go up the mountain, as far as Harry could see.

He showed up fifteen minutes early. That was smart, he thought, take a look-see, scout the perimeter for wise guys. At seven o’clock sharp, Lee Hu pulled into the driveway. Hard to miss her, the engine of the Chevy Blazer 4x4 rumbling in the still morning air, awakening the snoozing cabbies. Now if this wasn’t a sight, Harry thought, the little dumpling driving a souped-up truck, actually a jacked-up truck, thirty-nine-inch wheels and a heavy suspension system lifting the cab high off the ground. The front bumper was a foot-high beam of thick steel with a heavy winch attached. Seven high-powered spotlights were attached to a rail across the roof, nearly enough wattage to play a night game.