Paul Levine - Riptide

“Right you are. Now where’s that damn imu? I always piss on it for good luck.”

“What? No! That would be a health code violation. You know, I’m a wholesale butcher back in Des Moines. Those damn regulations can drive you crazy, temperature controls in the freezer, rodent hair counts. But pissing on the pork, I mean, that’s gotta be verboten everywhere.”

“Just a little hosing on top of the leaves, that’s all.”

Jake Lassiter scowled, an angry tourist now. “Well, I’m supposed to take the little woman to that looey-ow tonight and she’ll be damn sure unhappy if I tell her what you use for barbecue sauce.”

Guy Ryder threw up his hands, revealing his still unzipped fly. “Okay, okay,” he said, looking for a nearby bush to finish the task.

Lila Summers could hear every word of the baritone voice of Guy Ryder. She had replaced Lomio’s gag and at the same time removed the banana leaf from under the stone. Then she put two more stones on his chest and one on his stomach, and ripping open his pants, jammed one against his testicles. The heat singed Lila’s fingers through the gloves. Lomio writhed in silent agony. His skin sizzled and the acrid smell of burning flesh rose from the pit. Lomio’s face was crimson; then the color drained to a ghastly pallor. Sweat poured from his body and his jaws were clenched in pain.

Lila listened as Guy Ryder’s voice grew faint, saying something now about how lazy the Hawaiians were, sometimes he had to help clear the tables, think of it, Guy Ryder, a former Top 40 deejay in a semimajor market, a busboy for Christ’s sake. Lassiter kept him company all the way back to the pavilion.

Lila removed the gag. “The bonds, Lomio. Where’s Keaka’s favorite place?”

Through parched lips caked with dried blood and spittle, Lomio said something. Lila Summers leaned close, her ear near the big man’s mouth.

“Ooo-lay,” Lomio seemed to say, then fell into unconsciousness.

Guy Ryder was counting place settings as Jake Lassiter walked back, just moseying along, another tourist with time on his hands. By the time he got to the trees, Lila was shoveling dirt into a mound on top of the imu.

“Where is he?” Jake Lassiter asked, knowing the answer even as he said it.

“Having high tea with Queen Kapiolani. Come on, Jake, I’ve put all the stones back in. Help me with the dirt and leaves, then let’s go. If you’re hungry, take a couple sweet potatoes.”

Jake Lassiter didn’t want sweet potatoes. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Jake, lighten up. He killed your Mend, burned him to a crisp. As they say, what goes around comes around, a little symmetry in life… and death. I’ve given your friend some justice, something you wouldn’t do. If I had more time, I’d have cooked him medium-well, poached the bastard real slow.”

“You buried him alive?”

Lila shrugged. “What difference does it make if he was dead earlier or later? Dead is dead.”

Lassiter stared at her blankly, his mind faying to work up a rationalization. Sure Lomio deserved to die. He tried to kill us, helped kill Tubby, Lassiter thought. But there are laws. We’re not in the jungle, he thought. Or is that exactly where we are, and not just here in the islands, but everywhere?

He thought about Lila. She was right about one thing — dead is dead. No use dwelling on the huge Samoan; he was on his way across the river and Lassiter hoped there’d be a burning sulfur pit waiting. But later, Jake Lassiter knew, he would face his own trial, the moral questions of Lomio’s death, the determination of his own culpability.

“Jake, snap out of it. He talked.”

“He told you where the coupons are?”

“I think so.”

“What’d he say?”

Lila laughed. “I’m glad you haven’t forgotten about the money. For a while, you seemed more interested in playing nursemaid to somebody who wanted you dead.”

“I’m still Sam Kazdoy’s lawyer. I’m supposed to bring the coupons back.”

“We can talk about that later. He told me Keaka’s favorite place was his ule. It means penis.”

Lassiter shook his head. “Your boyfriend could’ve been a chapter in Freud’s Pleasure Principle.”

“What he must have meant is the Iao Needle. It’s a pinnacle of volcanic rock in the West Maui Mountains. Keaka used to say it reminded him of his ule. What he said to you about his favorite place was a play on words, a joke, or as close to a joke as Keaka ever came.”

“So where are the coupons?”

“Putting two and two together, probably buried on top of the Iao Needle about twelve hundred feet above the floor of the valley.”

“How’d he get up there?”

“The top of the Needle isn’t really sharp. It’s sort of a nob, just like…”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“Keaka would have climbed to the top.”

Lila’s cheeks were flushed and strands of her hair were slick with sweat. She seemed animated, alive with excitement. Maybe the killing breathed life into her, Lassiter thought. The thought hung heavily on him. Two deaths by their hands. Okay, with Keaka, it was us or him. But Lomio? Lassiter told himself Lila did it to avenge Tubby. But she didn’t even know Tubby, so maybe she did it for good old Jake Lassiter. But she did it, he now believed, for the thrill. Maybe the money, too. And that was eating at him. The bonds belonged to Sam Kazdoy. Bring them back and half belong to Jake Lassiter. Lila Summers hadn’t said anything about bringing them back. They hadn’t talked about it. They hadn’t talked about much; they just did things, and every time they did something there seemed to be a body on the ground.

Holding the microphone loosely as he’d seen Neil Diamond do in Vegas, Guy Ryder led fifty tourists from the pavilion to the imu under the pink Tecoma trees. This was a shitty job, worse than being a disc jockey in Quad City, Illinois, but after you skip town eight months behind on the alimony, you have to feel lucky to be the assistant entertainment director at a second-rate hotel on Maui.

“This is Hawaii’s most authentic luau, an experience you won’t forget,” Guy Ryder was saying in his booming voice. “Get those cameras ready. But first let me say mahalo, a big Hawaiian ‘thank-you’ to these great guys who did the cooking. In ancient Hawaii, the men cooked and the women did the serving, and it’s the same here. Not like the mainland. Know what my ex-wife made for dinner? Reservations.”

The tourists tittered and gathered around as three local teenagers wearing made-in-Taiwan loincloths pulled off the leaves.

“When Captain Cook discovered Hawaii,” Guy Ryder intoned, “he didn’t call room service. No siree, the chiefs — and all the Indians — invited him to a feast. Of course, after feeding Captain Cook, the Hawaiians had him for dinner, but we won’t be too authentic, eh? Now have your luau coupons ready when Leilani comes to your table.”

Guy Ryder didn’t get too close to the imu. The black dirt would have stained his white cotton slacks, and the smell of scorched pig always made him nauseous. He stepped away as the teenagers hauled the blackened carcass out of the ground. There was a rush of air, fifty tourists sucking in their breaths. Then a management consultant from Newport Beach who would have rather been playing golf said to his wife, “First time I ever saw a pig wearing Reeboks.”

Before Haleakala existed, there rose from the sea the shield volcano that was to form the West Maui Mountains. For the next million years, molten rock erupted beneath the Pacific and exploded two thousand feet into the air, its boiling rain cascading down the mountain. Time and again the hot magma withdrew into the earth and a caldera, a depression, formed. Carrying the magma to the surface were dikes, channels in the rocks, and with time, they grew hard and the eruptions ceased. Then clouds pushed by trade winds were snared on the craggy peaks and the rains came, torrents streaming down the rocky landscape, and after twenty thousand lifetimes, the rains had carved an amphitheater into the ancient volcano.