Riptide

CHAPTER 29

Jake Lassiter was afraid of drowning. Taking a bullet was a secondary concern. Tangled up under the sail, still hooked into the boom, he flipped the quick-release bar on the harness and swam under the board and out the other side. He was just surfacing when he heard the popping of the Uzi, and after a quick breath, he went under again. He held his breath until his lungs gave out, and then he held it some more, exhaling air until there was nothing left. When he came up a second time, Keaka was gone, though his voice could be heard, a maniacal wailing in the night.

The waves pounded Lassiter and spun him around. He lost his sense of direction, tried to figure out where he was, finally deciding somewhere between the devil and the deep blue sea. Treading water, he bobbed in the waves, knowing it would take a superhuman effort to swim to shore and avoid being sliced to ribbons on the coral. He took a breath, stretched out, and body-surfed fifty yards on the next good-sized roller. He stopped, treaded water again, and tried to locate the boulders in the moonlight.

Then another voice, only this one familiar and sweet, and for a moment Jake Lassiter wondered if the bullets hadn’t really hit him, and maybe he was drifting off to wherever you go if you haven’t been a saint but you never strangled kittens either.

“Jake, are you all right?” Lila’s voice, a whisper among the waves. He turned to find her and caught a breaker in his open mouth and swallowed salt water again, but there she was on a board, talking to him. “Climb up. Just grab the last foot strap, pull yourself up to your knees, and hang on.”

It was a bumpy ride, the board bouncing in the surf, his extra weight fouling up Lila’s balance like a little brother on the back of a kid’s bike. Then the shore break caught them and slammed the board hard against a rock at water’s edge. There was a cr-ack, and they tumbled into the water, the board nosing up on a boulder. Her fin had snapped in two. She retrieved the broken piece, nearly a foot long, curved and sharp as a saber, and hauled the rig onto the beach. The beach was narrow and rocky and ended in a black jungle of bushes, trees, and. towering ferns. Without pausing to rest, Lila dragged the board into the heavy undergrowth. She came back and knelt beside Lassiter, who was lying on his back at the water’s edge.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

Lassiter coughed and gave back some of the Pacific Ocean. “I’m alive and five minutes ago I didn’t think I would be, so I’m fine. What are you… how did you… why?”

“Jake, I knew you wouldn’t let me come along, but I wasn’t going to let you get killed. Do you understand now you have no chance here?”

He sat up but didn’t answer.

Lila said, “I was about a quarter mile behind you when I heard the gunfire. Keaka must think you’re dead. Somewhere in this vegetation, he has two or three boards and complete rigs. We can get some rest, then sail back before sunrise.”

“Sail back? No. I came to do a job, and…”

But he stopped himself, because he knew it was just talk, he was just jabbering away on autopilot. You start something, you finish it. Yeah, sure. Hit that line. Sis, boom, bah. Talk’s cheap, until you’ve been shot at and left for dead.

He surveyed the damage. His board and rig were gone. The harness and gun, too. All he had left were his boxer trunks and a million goose bumps. If he didn’t get shot, he might die of hypothermia. “All right. We’ll sail back. If I ever get back to the mainland, the closest I’ll get to the ocean will be Kansas.”

Lila crouched in the sand, her face luminous in the moonlight. “We should split up and look for those boards. Try not to make any noise. Keaka’s camp is only a mile up the slope and he’s often out at night, walking in the jungle.”

She used the sharp point of the broken fin to draw a map in the sand, showing Lassiter the location of Keaka’s path into the jungle and advising him to stay clear. Lila headed west along the beach, Lassiter east, poking into the bushes, looking for the boards. His feet were cut from the rocks and he was freezing. The black boulders lining the shore took on shapes of strange animals and seemed to follow him. The wind picked up and died, and sounds came from the rocks, howls and shrieks and taunting laughter. He thought of all the places he would rather be, the list filling a dozen yellow legal pads in his mind. Who would go on a mission like this? A putz, Sam Kazdoy would say.

He couldn’t tell how much time had passed. A few minutes, a half hour. He didn’t see Lila, and he didn’t find any boards. Then, a hallucination. What else could it be, a nude woman on the deserted coast of Molokai? There in front of him, not twenty feet away, backlit by the moon over the channel, a petite young woman emerged from the sea, water dripping over small breasts and onto her firm stomach. She looked directly at Lassiter but was silent. Even in the dark, she looked familiar. She looked to her left and Lassiter followed her gaze and as he turned, the moon burst into a thousand suns, his brain jolted as if hit by a sledgehammer. He was on his knees, fighting off the nausea, straining to focus his eyes.

Through the fog he heard Coach Shula yelling at him, or was it Paterno? “Keep your feet, Lassiter! Body square to the line, don’t get blindsided by the tight end. Damnit, eighty-two just cleaned your clock. Now get up and hit somebody!”

Lassiter stood up but didn’t see the tight end. They might have scored by now, who knows, you drift into the middle, the lights go out.

A voice again, rattling around in his brain, but not the coach. “What’s this neighborhood coming to? A man can’t take his wahine out for a midnight swim without some trash drifting ashore.”

Somewhere through the haze, Lassiter saw two Keaka Kealias and two nude women, and they were dancing around him as if he were the Maypole. “You surprised me, haole ” Keaka said, the Uzi still slung on his shoulder. “I thought you would stay in your air-conditioned office, but I learned that you were here, at first I thought for Lila, then I learn, for the bonds. You are a foolish man, because you can’t have either one. You should have stayed home with your big, cushy job and your flat water. You could have lived to be an old man, playing gin rummy at your country club. You are even more of a fool than the little man, Marlin. The goddess of the volcano spared you last night on Crater Road. It was a signal for you to leave, to go home. But you ignored it, violated the kapu of the gods, and now you must pay the price.”

Keaka seemed to be waiting for him to say something, but the cobwebs were still hanging on. “Why are you on Molokai, haole? The bonds are not here. They are in my favorite place, a place known only to me and that haole slut you like so much.”

“I came to kill you,” Lassiter said.

That made the Hawaiian laugh. “Good. You will die on the rocks like Captain Cook, a stupid haole like yourself.”

The world was coming into focus now, and Jake Lassiter saw that Keaka’s loincloth was gone. In naturalibus, Charlie Riggs would have said. The Hawaiian stood there with his feet spread apart, hands on his hips, a warrior king surveying his kingdom, now sullied by an intruder. Lassiter summoned a calm voice. “I should advise you that I left explicit instructions as to where I was going. If I’m not back in the morning, there’ll be a search party.”

Keaka laughed again. “Who did you tell, Captain Kalehauwehe? You seemed to tell him everything else.” He gestured with the Uzi to start walking toward the jungle.

Then another voice. “Keaka, don’t do it. Let him go, he can’t hurt you.” Lila Summers was there, coming out of the darkness, trying to rescue him again.

Keaka was startled, but only for a moment. “What a pleasant surprise. My two wahines together. Lila, unlike you, Little Lee knows which side to choose in a fight. Even after what happened in Miami, she is with me, though she doesn’t care much for you.” He turned toward Little Lee. “Lila used to be my friend and lover, but lately the bitch has been hanging around with haole scum.”

“Let him go,” Lila said again, firmly. But whatever power she once had over him was gone. Keaka just smirked at her, enjoying the situation, his two women there to witness his power, his unsheathed masculinity on center stage. Lee Hu had wrapped a towel around her small body and glared at Lila. ‘

Keaka held out his arms as if to embrace both women. “We will all go to the camp, to my hale. It will be like old times. It is a fine place for a man and his wahines to make love.”

“Has it come to this?” Lila asked. “Are you conquering me, too?”

“If you had been loyal to me, it would not have been necessary.”

He gestured with the gun to begin moving. Keaka stayed at the rear, holding the Uzi lightly by the vertical clip. The path was rugged and uphill, strewn with rocks and overgrown with barbed limbs. Every step brought a branch in the face, sharp twigs cutting across neck and shoulders. Lassiter’s feet were bleeding from tiny cuts and his head throbbed with pain. His legs barely moved. His mind kept playing tricks on him, black-and-white footage from World War n, the Bataan Death March.

They came to a clearing where a small fire glowed orange. Lee Hu threw two logs into the coals and sparks flew into the night. Keaka stood by the fire and Lee Hu knelt before him as if she were his subject, and he the king. The image brought something back to Lassiter. What was it Lila had said that first night in the restaurant? Keaka thought he was the reincarnation of Kame-ha-ha the Great or something. Another crazy thought, Lassiter said to himself, wondering if he was delirious from the salt water and one smack to the head. And then suddenly, it became clear to him, so clear that he laughed.

“What’s so funny, haole? Do you find your own death humorous?”

Keaka stood there with legs spread, hands on his hips, his Hawaiian manhood thick and proud, tumescent from the excitement of a kill, maybe more exciting than the other kills because two women were here to watch.

“Lila said you think you’re a king,” Lassiter said. “And what you look like is the king of Siam, Yul Brynner in The King and I. Strutting around with your hands on your hips, only difference is he wore silk knickers, you’re letting your pecker hang out, but either way, I keep waiting for you to sing ‘Shall We Dance?’”

Lassiter laughed again, a wild laugh, and Keaka studied him silently. Lassiter looked him square in the eyes. “What’s the matter, King Cantaloupe, do you find this a puzzlement?”

And then Jake Lassiter began singing. And dancing. Hands on hips, feet splayed east and west, he pranced around the clearing and belted it out, an old show tune filling the jungle half an octave off-key, Lassiter describing the King’s “confusion in conclusions he concluded long ago.”

“What about it, Keaka?” he asked when he was done warbling. “Will you fight to prove what you do not know is so?”

Keaka self-consciously took his hands off his hips. It was working, Lassiter thought, a distraction from what Keaka wanted, which was for him to grovel and beg for his life. Forget it, Lassiter thought, he would die first. Then a rueful smile. Yes, that’s exactly what he would do. But for now he was onstage in the clearing, a space about the size of the area between the bench and the bar. He had performed there before for judges and juries. Now Keaka was the court of last resort, and Lassiter was acting for his life.

Lila knew what was happening, was laughing and applauding. Lee Hu looked confused, and Keaka was sullen.

Lassiter kept up the patter. “What’s the matter, Keaka, don’t you like Rodgers and Hammerstein? Too bad, they’re my favorites. When I was in college, I played Jud Fry in Oklahoma! Hey, you’d be good in that role, it’s the villain, but I guess you’re not into Americana. Wish I could remember the last verse of the king of Siam’s song, maybe you could join in, something about doing his best to live just one more day.”

“Shut up, haole!” Keaka barked. For the first time his eyes betrayed doubt, fear that he was the butt of some joke.

“No, I’m going to keep talking. And you can shoot me if you like. If that’s what great warriors do — strike down shivering, unarmed men. Will that impress your wahines?”

Keaka crossed his arms in front of his chest to make the biceps stand out and said, “You deserve to die. You miserable haoles stole our land and diseased our women and — “

“Don’t look at me,” Lassiter said with a shrug, interrupting the diatribe. “I don’t even own a condo and my urologist will testify I’ve never had crotch rot.”

Keaka raised his voice. “You made kala, money, your god. You are descended from pigs and goats — “

“There you go again,” Lassiter said, “insulting my ancestry. Reminds me of a trash-talking tackle from the Jets. Yo momma this, yo momma that.”

Lila Summers was laughing again, signaling Lassiter that this was the right approach: show no fear, mock the king. Lassiter wondered how long he could keep this up, when would Keaka end it with a short burst from the Uzi?

“Whadaya going to do, Keaka, kill me? I can see the headline, JUNGLE MUSICAL CLOSES; ENRAGED CRITIC KILLS STAR.”

“ Haole, you think you are so funny.” Keaka’s eyes were black slits. “Do you want to die laughing?”

“Sure, laughing or screwing,” Lassiter said, and Lila roared. “A dying man gets one last wish and Lila knows what mine would be. You don’t have any red satin sheets in your tepee there, do you, chief?” It was going so well Lassiter planned to come back in another life as a stand-up comic.

Keaka scowled. “Lila, you like the haole ‘s jokes, maybe you’d like to die with him.”

“If that’s what you want, it’s your gun,” Lila Summers said without a trace of fear.

Turning to Lee Hu, Keaka said, “The slut is only half a woman. She has no soul, so she cannot reach climax. Li’a, Goddess of Desire, hah. She is without desire. She is dead inside.”

“Hey, pal,” Lassiter heard himself saying, “if you can’t cut it in the sack, don’t blame her. When we played hide the sausage in Bimini, I had her lit up like a slot machine hitting jackpot. The birds fell from the trees and the fishes leapt from the sea. I’ll tell you, Keaka old buddy, when that woman comes, she registers a ten on the Richter scale, shock waves all the way to Pasadena.”

Lassiter was running out of tales, but he didn’t want to stop. Somehow, he thought that Keaka wouldn’t shoot a babbling man. “I’m not one to kiss and tell, but that’s the way it is. And from what I hear, you’re just a little quick on the trigger. Slow down. You’ll enjoy the scenery more.”

Lila picked up the cue. “Keaka always thought it was my fault that he couldn’t satisfy me. Jake, you’re the most exquisite lover a woman could ever want. In Bimini, I thought I would die from the pleasure. What do the French call it… petit mal, the little death.”

“Liars!” Keaka fumed, but his voice exposed doubt, and his manhood dropped a bit. Lassiter decided against making a crack about that. It was a fine line he was walking — one insult too many or too deep and the Hawaiian’s confusion could turn to rage. But it was working, Keaka’s mind occupied, thinking of the shame of the haole unlocking the mystery of his wahine, while his warrior’s body betrayed him.

Jake Lassiter used the time to size up the situation. As long as Keaka had the gun, there would be no chance. Even unarmed, Keaka would be the odds-on favorite to retain his title as king of the jungle. When’s the last time he had even hit anybody, Lassiter tried to remember, figuring the grief-stricken sergeant in a carpeted conference room didn’t count. Then there was the bearded guy in the bar, big guy with a big mouth. Should have figured he was a cop, needed a friendly judge to quash the assault charge. And how many years since he had hit a blocking sled? Latest physical contact was shoving around a paunchy bank lawyer, not worth any points here. Still, hand-to-hand was his only chance.

“C’mon, Keaka. Drop the gun. You’re a tough guy. Show the ladies how tough, just you and me, mano a mano, like in the swamp in Miami.”

Keaka looked puzzled. “The swamp?”

“He was my friend. Berto.”

A look of confusion gave way to recognition. Keaka smiled a cruel grin. “The Cuban in the swamp.”

“That’s right, tough guy. Why don’t you try to strangle me like you did him?”

Keaka lowered the gun barrel to think about it. Finally he laughed and said, “You haoles haven’t gotten any smarter in two centuries.”

Lassiter didn’t know what that meant, but no matter because he was busy measuring distances. Keaka stood fifteen feet in front of him. Lila had moved, a step at a time, closer to Keaka, almost in the line of fire. What was she doing? Did she think he wouldn’t shoot her? Was she trying to give Jake a chance to make a break into the jungle? Keaka still held the Uzi lightly by the clip, the shoulder strap carrying most of the weight. Lassiter wondered how long it would take — what millisecond of time — for the great athlete to turn the barrel toward him and squeeze off a rapid burst. And how long would Lassiter need to take two steps forward and dive at Keaka, knocking him into the fire? Too long. Keaka would catch him in midleap with a fusillade through the chest.

Lassiter saw it then. How could he have missed it? Six feet away from Keaka was a machete jammed into the exposed stump of a banana tree, handle angled up, blade glowing orange in the light from the fire. He could dive for it, the stump would give some protection. If only Lila would take one more step toward Keaka, he could leap behind her, two pass receivers on a crossing pattern. Okay, then what? Hit the ground and roll, yank it free from the stump — young Arthur about to be king — then come up swinging.

Keaka glared at him. “Are you ready to die, haole?”

“Not till I answer the pressing questions of our time. In the song Moon River, who the hell is ‘my huckleberry friend?’”

Can I do it? Is he too quick for me?

“And if a train leaves Chicago heading west at eighty miles an hour, and another leaves Los Angeles heading east at ninety miles an hour, which one gets to Omaha first, and why not stop in Kansas City, instead?”

“Are you through?” Keaka asked.

“No, I’d like to consider the question of how the iguana evolved over several million years on the Galapagos Islands when the islands themselves are only two million years old.”

No choice in the matter. Die either way, at least there’s a chance if…

“I am going to kill you now,” Keaka said, calmly.

“Some geologists think there are older islands that disappeared into the sea, and the animals drifted to the Galapagos on rafts of driftwood and seaweed…”

Waiting for the moment, a diversion.

“Isn’t that something?” Lassiter continued. “Just like your ancestors paddling canoes from Club Med or wherever to Hawaii.”

“You will suffer pain such as you have never known.”

Lassiter tried to dry his palm on his trunks but they were still wet. His feet ached from the cuts and his legs were concrete pillars. And Keaka was talking again. “Lila, you have offended me and you should be punished. I could let you stay with Lee Hu and me, and both of you could service me. Or you can die. The choice is yours.”

Lassiter worked up a laugh. “Isn’t there a third choice. Like a week in Philadelphia?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Lassiter saw the machete blade. Visualized it now. Two huge steps, the dive, the roll, the grab.

Keaka glared at him. “I am talking to the wahine. In a moment, I will deal with you, haole.”

“Take your time,” Lassiter said. “I charge by the hour, and my next lunatic doesn’t come in till noon tomorrow.”

Wrap your hand around the wooden handle, then a tight, compact swing to the gut.

“I choose to live,” Lila said, taking a long step toward Keaka, as if enlisting in the Army. It was a signal, Lassiter thought, and he bolted to the right, took two steps, then leapt toward the tree stump and the machete. He’d never had any speed — 4.85 for the forty on a good day, and that before knee surgery — but he didn’t have far to go. He would have made it, too, if his legs hadn’t buckled as he tried to launch, just plain gave out, and he sprawled in the brush, his mouth full of dark brown sand, briars scratching his forehead. The machete was five feet — a million miles — away.

Keaka watched without excitement. He swung the Uzi to his left, hefted it to just below shoulder height, and waited until he had a clear shot at Lassiter’s back. He never saw Lila’s hand come up hard, an uppercut, her fist full of a blue fiberglass fin, sharp as a saber, slashing upward. It caught him right below the navel, and with one fluid motion she slid the blade through his belly, a clean incision, luxuriating in the feel of the smooth tear, placid as a housewife trimming a pie crust. As the point dug in, Lila twisted upward, tearing muscle and tissue and organs, and the fin came to rest stuck in the bottom of his sternum. Keaka dropped to his knees and the Uzi fell to the ground. He stared in disbelief at his wound, blood pouring from his abdomen, staining the sand. Lee Hu gasped, then turned and ran into the jungle.

Lila picked up the gun and tossed it to Lassiter, who was still on all fours. “Take care of this,” she said, turning her back to Keaka who lay on his side, nearly in the fire.

Slowly Keaka came to his knees, keeping his innards from coming through the tear by pressing his hand hard over the wound. From deep within himself, from a thousand years of warriors and chiefs and steel-backed men who paddled canoes across raging seas, he blinked through the pain.

Lila took two steps toward the jungle in the direction Lee Hu had run. Lassiter turned and saw Keaka, a grotesque figure, hunched over, approaching Lila from behind, one hand pressed to his abdomen, the other high over his head holding a heavy log. In the light of the fire, Lassiter could see flames spurting from the log and could hear Keaka’s flesh crackling. Lassiter raised the Uzi but Lila stood between him and Keaka and he could only yell, “Lila, behind you!”

The warning was a second too late, and the flaming club began its descent, but then Keaka cried out and the torch fell harmlessly to the ground. Now the hand that had clutched his stomach was holding the elbow, the swollen tendons that had lasted so many hours in so many oceans, thickened and brittle, snapping like old guitar strings.

Catlike, Lila sprang to the tree stump and dislodged the machete with one hand. She brought her arms back, and with a left-handed swing, a slight uppercut — Ted Williams in his prime — she brought it around, right foot stepping forward, and Lassiter heard the air rushing by the thirty-inch steel blade.

The machete neatly sliced Keaka’s ear in two, the top half falling to the ground like a banana slice. Then the jungle exploded with the sound of a coconut axed in two, the blade fracturing Keaka’s skull. The machete broke, the blade lodged in his temple, the wooden handle still in Lila’s hands, a broken Louisville Slugger. The two of them stood there for a moment, Keaka’s eyes glassy. Then he crumpled to the ground.

The king’s greatest wish had been granted. He had died a warrior’s death and would join his ancestors for eternity.