Neil Plakcy - Mahu Surfer

“Dario’s about to run into a big problem,” Harry said. “See here, these are the store revenues. With business taking such a steep dive, there’s no way he’ll be able to afford the expense of running the store, paying for merchandise, paying his help, and paying the debt service on this equity loan. He must be sweating bullets right now.”

I got up and started walking around the living room. “I’m trying to get my head around this,” I said. “If Dario’s selling ice out of The Next Wave, why isn’t he rolling in cash?”

“Because he’s pumping it all into Ari’s real estate deal.”

“Why would he do that, though? Ice’s a profitable business. Why risk all his capital?”

“To make himself legit?” Harry asked. “Nobody arrests you for building condos these days.”

“Or it’s a place to put a lot of spare cash,” I said. “Until the deal with Bishop started running into trouble, and then suddenly Dario’s business dried up.”

“The ice business is probably sucking now, too,” Harry said. “With everybody leaving the North Shore.”

“Both his businesses are going south, to coin a phrase.”

I sat down on the sofa. Harry turned toward me and we both just sat there looking at each other for a long time.

Sharpshooter

The idea that Dario was dealing ice out of The Next Wave, and had been doing so literally under my nose for the last couple of weeks, threw me for a loop, and I was having trouble processing the information. Or maybe it was the beer. Either way, the best I could do was suggest we get some sleep, and try to think more about the problem in the morning.

Harry was suitably impressed with the guest room, and he was still asleep when I woke at first light on Saturday. I didn’t feel rested at all; I had spent most of the evening rolling around in bed, trying to get comfortable, thoughts about Dario moving back and forth across my brain.

“There’s something I think is really scary about Dario as a suspect,” I said, as I made pancakes for us for breakfast. “I had this weird idea the other day-which isn’t seeming so weird any more-that whoever killed the first three got scared when he or she found out I was investigating these murders.”

“Kimo, do you really think it’s possible a woman is the killer?”

I shrugged. “Probably not.”

“Then stopping being so English major on me. You don’t have to be politically and grammatically correct all the time.”

“Point taken. So I had this idea that maybe the killer shot Brad and Tommy Singer to throw me off the track.”

“Not such a weird idea.”

“No, I guess not. But suppose it gets weirder. Dario told me the other day that he likes me.”

“Yo, dude, the guy got you drunk and had sex with you ten years ago, and he’s been coming on to you ever since you got up here. I’d say he likes you.”

“Suppose he was jealous, though. Suppose he killed Brad and Tommy, and stripped them down and all, out of some weird jealous rage?”

Harry shook his head. “I don’t know why anybody does anything, brah. You want the touchy-feely, you’ve got to talk to Terri. You have any more hacking, you ask me.”

“How bout we just go surf, then,” I said, and we did. Since it was Saturday I knew it wouldn’t be easy to get hold of Ruiz or Kawamoto, so I thought I’d let my ideas about Dario gestate for a few days. He’d been around the North Shore for a long time, and he wasn’t going anywhere. Plus I had to practice restraining myself from telling the world about my long history with Dario Fonseca-or even about what had happened between us in his office a few days before. I didn’t want it to start looking like I’d had sex with every victim and villain on the North Shore.

The beaches were less empty than they’d been. Human beings have short memories, and surfers are only human. I could see from the number of cars on Ke Nui Road and the number of boards out in the water that people were starting to come back, even if there was a crazed killer out there. Good for business, if nothing else; The Next Wave would be buzzing again like it had before.

We surfed, with breaks, for a couple of hours. I saw people I knew-my cousin Ben; Frank, the bartender from the Drainpipe; even Tepano, the Hawaiian guy from the outrigger club. Everybody was delighted that the beach was so uncrowded, and nobody was particularly worried about a crazed killer on the loose. Harry and I went to Rosie’s Cantina for lunch, stopped at The Next Wave for our caffeine fixes, and then went back to Pipeline to surf some more.

From the top of a wave, you can often get a clear view of the shore, if you’re not too busy struggling to maintain your balance or place your next turn. I was surfing smoothly, so I had a chance to look up at the beach. I just had enough time to make out the barrel of a rifle pointing out at me before the wave dipped unexpectedly and I went down.

I’d like to say I heard the rifle, but since I was tumbling head over heels into the center of a wave, there’s no way I could have. But as soon as I surfaced, I walked the last couple of feet in to shore dragging my board, trying to figure out if what I’d seen was an optical illusion.

There are a number of palm trees up along Ke Nui Road, and some have various kinds of underbrush around them. I saw the rifle barrel protruding from a stand of pili grass, which grows naturally in two or three foot lengths-thick enough and tall enough to hide someone laying flat.

I stuck my board in the sand and trudged up to the road. The pili grass had been broken and pushed flat in one area, big enough for a person to lay down. The kicker was finding a spent shell, and then another and another, in the sand just in front of the grass.

I didn’t have anything resembling an evidence bag, but I did have an empty water bottle. I waved Harry in, and yelled for him to bring me the bottle.

“What did you find?” he asked, as he came up with it.

“Shell casings.” I pointed down. “Somebody’s been shooting at us, brah.”

Neither of us had much interest in going back in the water at that point, even though the waves were running high and the beach was still mostly empty. The idea of somebody pointing a rifle at you can wreck even the simplest pleasures, I guess. So we packed up and went back to Cane Landing around three o’clock, where I looked up Kevin Ruiz’s card. No beeper or cell number on it, which wasn’t surprising. After all, he’d given me the card when he considered me an informant.

I called the Wahiawa station to try and track him down. But because I couldn’t say I was still an on-duty officer, I got a run-around, the opportunity to leave a message on his voice mail. I did, though I didn’t expect him to check it til Monday morning.

I emailed Sampson, and told him I was holding the shells for ballistics. I knew, though, that they would match the gun that had shot Mike Pratt off his board, the one that had killed Lucie Zamora as she exited Club Zinc. Even if they didn’t match, I knew it had to be the same shooter.

“So what do we do now, brah?” Harry asked, as we lounged on the leather sofas in the living room at Cane Landing.

“Damned if I know. But I’m sure a beer would help me think.” I’d stocked up on Konas in anticipation of Harry’s visit, and we each had one and sipped in silence. We ended up grilling some gourmet burgers-a mix of ground beef, pork and lamb, topped with prosciutto and brie-on the major-league barbecue in the yard, and if we hadn’t been worried that the shooter might somehow find his way into Cane Landing, it would have been a near-perfect evening.

Sunday morning my cell phone rang as I was scrambling eggs with the leftover ham and cheese and we were debating whether to risk surfing again. It was Sampson. “I got your email,” he said. “I want to see you at nine tomorrow morning in my office. Let’s go over what you’ve got and regroup. I want to know everything about this surf shop owner. And bring those casings you found-you can run them downstairs to ballistics while you’re here.”