Ken Douglas - Gecko

“ Isn’t there a pill you can take?”

“ Yes, prednisone, it’s a steroid. It usually works, but we generally don’t like the side effects.”

“ Which are?”

“ Weak bones, enlarged head.” She made an oval with her thumbs and index fingers around her head. “And a hump on your back.” She held her right hand over her shoulder, just below the neck to indicate where the hump would be.

“ Three things I don’t want,” he said.

“ I believe your story,” she said, changing the subject back to her daughter.

“ You believe me?”

“ Nobody, except the females in my family, knows the end to that story. It’s something that’s been handed down from mother to daughter throughout the generations. We’ve been waiting a long time for Ngaarara to exact his revenge. Now he’s come.”

“ And your husband, does he believe me?”

“ He doesn’t know what to believe.”

“ Where is he?”

“ Not far, I sent him out when you started to wake, so that I could talk to you alone. He doesn’t believe in the old ways, like I do. Is my daughter’s spirit still in you?”

“ No.”

“ Taawhiri-maatea, the god of the winds, carried Donna’s spirit so far, halfway around the world, to find you. It’s almost too much for even me to believe, but who knows the ways of the Gods. The only thing I can think of is that the connection binding you and my daughter must be great for her spirit to be drawn over the seas like that.”

“ Okay, Linda, what did you find out?” Mohi Tuhiwai came through the front door. His strong stare bore into Jim. His patience was clearly worn.

“ If we want Donna back, we should help this man,” Linda Tuhiwai said.

“ I think we should call the police.”

“ Then we’ll never find her, can’t you just this once admit that there might be something in this world you don’t understand,” she said.

“ Listen,” Jim interrupted, “I want her back as badly as you, but if we go to the police, they’ll put me in jail and we’ll lose any contact we have with her.”

“ Are you sure she’s not still with you?” Linda Tuhiwai asked again.

“ Yes.”

“ Why not?” Mohi wanted to know.

“ How do I know. I don’t know anything about this kind of stuff. But while I was asleep I was with her, where she is.”

“ Give me a break,” Mohi said.

“ Listen to him. We’ve already lost Danny. I don’t want to lose Donna, too.”

“ I think they’re going to burn her, Sunday, at midnight.”

“ Midnight, Sunday morning or midnight, Sunday night?” she asked.

“ I don’t know, but I’m guessing Sunday morning. He wants his revenge. He wants her to burn, like he did. I can’t swear that’s his plan, but I feel it.”

“ Like Danny,” Linda Tuhiwai said, and she told Jim that her son and his new bride burned to death when his car went off the road and struck a lamp post. “Maybe it wasn’t an accident, the car going out of control, and the fire. Maybe it was Ngaarara.”

Mohi Tuhiwai still looked skeptical.

“ I know you want to call the police, but there’s nothing they can do. We’re her only hope. There is no one else. Until I came you were just sitting around waiting for news. If you keep that up, the only news you’re going to get will be bad. I don’t want bad news for her, not now, not ever. I need your help.”

“ Listen, darling,” Linda said to her husband, “he’s right, at least we’d be doing something. He wants to save our daughter and he needs our help.”

Mohi Tuhiwai was silent for a moment, then said, “He’ll have it.”

“ She’s on a boat that’s being refitted, in a port somewhere. An old iron sailboat, probably big, the refit is being cheaply done. They’re using pine where they should be using teak. We find the boat, we find her. Also there is a man working at the Park Side Motel that might know something.”

It had been dark for almost an hour when Jim Monday and Mohi Tuhiwai drove into the parking lot at the Park Side Motel. They had spent a discouraging six hours checking out the sailboats in and around Whangarei and found only two that looked like they might be what there were looking for. One, the Sundowner, an iron clipper in the marina, hadn’t seen a refit in the last ten or fifteen years and the other, the Reptil Rache, an old iron Dutch schooner converted into a cruising boat, but it had a new teak deck, a new paint job and new sails. It looked first rate, a very expensive refit. Not the cheap job he had witnessed earlier. Either the boat he was looking for wasn’t in Whangarei or it had sailed earlier in the day.

Jim felt he was missing something.

Mohi shut the engine off and they got out of the car. It was raining hard and he held his hand above his forehead in a futile attempt to keep some of the rain out of his eyes. Jim, with a quick dash from the car to the office, didn’t bother.

“ Remember me?” Jim asked, shaking water from himself.

“ You were here yesterday. You left without paying.”

“ If you think I came to settle my bill, you’re mistaken. I want to know who you called.”

“ I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The left eye started flapping, but only for a few seconds, because before he could say anything else Mohi’s left hand shot forward like a striking cobra, grabbing the taller man by the hair. He pulled down in a swift jerking motion, bouncing Phil’s head off the counter with a thud that sounded like a handball coming off the wall. Phil started to scream, but before sound could escape his lips, Mohi, with his left fist still balled firmly in Phil’s hair, held his head up and slapped him in the face, causing Phil to flush red. That out of control left eye stopped flapping.

Jim was stunned at the smaller man’s speed, but there was more to come. Mohi’s hand shot into his jacket pocket and came out holding a scaling knife. He slammed Phil’s head back onto the counter and held it there. He flashed the sharp steel in front of the frightened man’s eyes.

“ I will end forever your nervous little tick if you don’t answer, my friend.” He held the knife a mere centimeter from the left eye, which was flapping again, “Then I’ll give you a second chance. If you still don’t answer, I’ll put out your right eye. Then I’ll pop your eardrums and leave you blind and deaf.”

“ They’ll kill me,” Phil squeaked.

“ I’d rather be dead than the way I’m going to leave you, but then I’m Maori.”

“ I have the number taped to the cash register,” he said. Jim saw it and pulled it off. “It’s a mobile phone, on a boat somewhere. I don’t know where. That’s all I know, I swear.”

“ I think you lie.” Mohi lowered the knife from Phil’s eye and ran it lightly along his cheek. Phil shivered, and Mohi continued playing with him, running the knife along Phil’s jaw, bringing it to rest under his chin for an instant, then moving it down his neck, over his Adam’s apple and down to his throat, where with an easy flick, he pricked the neck, causing a droplet of blood and a quivering gasp from Phil. “What else do you know?” Mohi asked.

“ They have a place ten minutes out the Tutikaka Road. Big house, secluded, lot of land, several acres.”

“ How will I know it?”

“ The entry is right before a sharp bend in the road. There’s a red mail box on a post by the entry. You can’t miss it if you know what you’re looking for.”

“ How can I believe you? How can you know this?”

“ My brother delivered parts there. He recognized them from the description I gave him.”

“ What description? What parts?

“ German, they’re German. Boat parts.”

“ That’s quite enough, Phil.” A man entered, pointing a gun at Mohi. One of the men Jim had seen through the window from his hiding place in the bushes. He was still wearing the black seaman’s cap and wool sweater “You can drop the knife, little man.”