Paul Levine - Riptide

She picked up the pack and tossed it over an arm. “For a second I thought… you know… if I were gone, all the bonds would be yours. If it had been Keaka instead of you, he might have just let go, then laughed about it.”

Jake’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not Keaka.”

Lila used a pay phone at a tourist information booth to call her girlfriend. Then they drove out of the Iao Valley and through Wailuku, passing only a few blocks from the County Police Department. Inside the building at that moment, Captain Mikala Kalehauwehe was reviewing transcripts of wiretaps on half a dozen telephones. He had no warrant for the taps, but he had a friend at the telephone company who owed him a favor for looking the other way when the evidence had disappeared in his son’s cocaine case. Nothing had turned up on any of the lines from the windsurfing crash pads around Paia on the north shore. Nothing from the girlfriend Lila used to hang around with in Kihei. Nothing anywhere until the phone rang. They’d just picked up a call.

Signing the register as “Mr. and Mrs. R. Bonds,”Jake Lassiter and Lila Summers checked into a small motel in Maalaea, a tiny town wrapped around the shoreline of a flat bay. They looked over the Crooked Rainbow at the marina. Twin diesel engines ready to power them out of Maui at first light. With Lila on the flying bridge checking the console, Lassiter crawled into the engine compartment.

“Clean, tanks full, fuel lines in good shape,” he called out. “Let’s see if the battery is topped up.”

He popped the battery cover and inspected the chambers. “Everything fine down here.”

He hoisted himself out of the engine compartment onto the deck. Lila was above him on the bridge, staring at the horizon. “Great boat,” he said. “Maybe we’ll get one like it. Catch some grouper and snapper in the Keys. Find an uninhabited island, watch the sun set in the Gulf — “

“Jake,” she interrupted him, “I was thinking it might not be such a good idea to go to Miami.”

“What?”

“If we go to Miami, you’ll have to give back the bonds.”

He crawled the ladder to the bridge. Lila settled demurely in the captain’s chair, knees tucked under her chin, the picture of innocence. She swiveled the chair toward him and cocked her head, waiting.

“I give back half, we keep half,” he said. “That’s my deal.”

Her smile was backed by iron. “No, Jake, you keep half. That’s your deal. The half is yours, not ours.”

“What do you mean? If it weren’t for you, there’d be no coupons at all, none. What’s mine is yours.”

“What if you get tired of me? What if you do what Keaka did, find someone else, and all of a sudden the money’s yours, not ours?”

Jake Lassiter took a moment. “That’s what happened? I thought you left Keaka because of the violence, the murders. That’s what you told me.”

She was silent. The jury shall not infer guilt from the fact that the defendant remains silent. That’s what a judge would say. But in the real world, it’s just the opposite. Cum tacent clamant, Charlie Riggs used to tell him. When they remain silent, they cry out with guilt.

“You lied to me,” Lassiter said.

She looked past him, toward the open sea. “A white lie. I wanted to stop you from going after Keaka, to keep you from being killed. I thought if you knew how dangerous he was…”

“So what did happen with you and Keaka?”

“He was flipping out on his Hawaiian king crap. He wanted to have twenty-one wahines to serve him like Kamehameha the Great. Lee Hu and I were the start of the harem. I told him thanks but no thanks, I didn’t think he was that hot one-on-one.”

First the killings, then a lie, now the bonds, he thought. What other surprises would there be? Time for cross-examine, starting with a leading question. “So what do you want to do with the bonds, keep them?”

“Of course. We earned them.”

“Like Hitter earned Poland.”

“Jake, don’t be foolish. We’ve got them. Why would we give them back?”

“Because they’re not ours!” he thundered in his courtroom voice.

She looked at him as if he were a slow learner. “Jake, we killed two men to get them.”

The we hung there, taunting him, but he ignored it and went back to basics. “Lila, we’ll get half, maybe eight hundred thousand. Isn’t that enough?”

“How much would that be after taxes? And how much income would we earn on what’s left if we just invested it?”

Now she’s angling for an M.B.A. from Wharton. “I don’t know, Lila, I’ll ask my accountant. What difference does it make?”

“It wouldn’t be much, would it, I mean for two people to live on.”

“Maybe enough for a boat, some papayas and wine. Just drift to wherever the trade winds take us.”

“Oh, Jake.” She moved next to him and touched her fingers to his lips. Her warm breath brushed his cheek. “I want more than that. Sometimes you just see me in a bikini on the beach.”

Her breasts pressed against his rib cage. He fought off the distraction. “What’s wrong with that? It’s a glorious lifestyle and you fit there, outdoors, au naturel.”

Lila Summers smiled, an indulgent smile. “All of us have to grow up. Keaka understood. What he did wasn’t legal, but there are worse things than growing pakalolo. Then he started looking for a big score, and frankly, so did I.”

“Why? For the money? For material things?”

“Jake, it’s such a big world. There’s Paris and London and wonderful hotels and restaurants and shops.”

So that’s what the money means to her, he thought. Not just the time to read great books and drop a line in the water to catch your supper. No, she wants supper served by white-gloved waiters.

“Look, Lila, if you’re worried about us, about me, let’s make a deal. When we get the money, the half, let’s split it down the middle, four hundred thousand for you, four hundred thousand for me. Fair enough?”

She wrinkled her forehead and walked to the rail, turning her back and staring again at the horizon. Lassiter’s mind raced. What if she says no? They’re ours, Jake. We earned them. All of them.

He didn’t want to face the question. Would he give it up for her, turn his back on Tubby, who died helping him, and on Sam, who trusted him? Overhead a half dozen black-crowned herons circled the shoreline, their bleats mocking him.

But then Lila turned back to him and said, “Okay, Jake. We’ll do it your way. We’ll take the boat to Honolulu, then fly to Miami. The eight hundred thousand is all yours. And so am I, for as long as you want me.”

A quick turn, Lassiter thought. Slashback. One second she’s going one way, up a wave, then slash, she jibes and rockets down again. First she’s the Goddess of Desire, sun-drenched hair flying in an ocean breeze, then with a blade or hot rock in her hand, she’s a one-way ticket to the morgue. Another turn, the air calm after a squall, all sweetness and springtime.

He reached for her, and she kissed him, and he closed his eyes and lost himself in the kiss. When their lips parted, she smiled and laughed. “Hey, what’s a girl got to do to get some dinner around here?”

They showered and ate at a small restaurant, feasting on seafood Provencale — shrimp, scallops, and calamari cooked in a casserole with tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, and wine — and Lassiter had the waiter dust off a bottle of Cristal champagne.

When they returned to the room, Lila’s cheeks were glowing and she kissed him with an exploring tongue. They were both exhausted, but they made love as they had in the crater. She locked her heels behind his buttocks and demanded all of him, her grip loosening only when her moans built to a crescendo and she exhaled a series of short cries that caught in her throat.