Spider Bones

RYAN CHOSE THE RESTAURANT. HIS CRITERIA? PROXIMITY TO Waikiki was the only thing I could come up with.

We ate at the Ha’aha’a Seafood and Steakhouse, the Hawaiian Walmart of dining establishments. My first misgivings came with the table.

We were seated in a dark corner, inches from a band whose repertoire was probably fixed right out of Moanalua High. I placed the graduation year at circa 1965.

My second clue came with the menu. Six of nine pages were devoted to drinks, most with names formed from incredibly bad puns. Son of a Beach Daiquiris. I Lava Party Bacardis. O’Lei Margaritas.

Ryan ordered a Kona beer and jerk mahimahi. I went with a virgin colada and cilantro shrimp.

The drink wasn’t bad. Hard to mess up pineapple juice and coconut cream.

Ryan and I chatted while awaiting the food. Shouted, actually. Over such memorables as “My Waikiki Mermaid” and “Pearly Shells.”

Ryan apologized for Lily. I apologized for Katy. He offered to relocate from the Lanikai house to a hotel. I told him that was unnecessary.

Overhead, a mirrored disco ball sent fragmented light spinning the room. Groovy.

“Not exactly the way to a girl’s heart.” Ryan’s face went sapphire as a colored spot aimed at the stage lighted our table.

“Depends on the girl. Why did you pick this particular place?”

“Proud Seafood and Steakhouse. What could disappoint?”

“I’m pretty sure ha’ahea means proud.” I’d seen the word in English and Hawaiian on a headstone at the Punchbowl. “I think ha’aha’a translates as humble.”

“Oh.”

The band picked up tempo. The lead singer crooned, “Oh, how she could yacki hacki wicki wacki woo.”

Ryan’s neon brows climbed his neon forehead.

Forty minutes after ordering, we were served by a waiter different from the one who had handled our drinks. This man had a leaping tiger tattooed the length of one biceps and a central incisor inlaid with what looked like a gold martini glass. His name badge said Rico.

“Careful.” Rico lowered towel-held plates to our table. “These suckers are hot.”

Doubtful. My shrimp were trapped in a pool of congealed grease.

“That it?” Rico asked.

Ryan ordered another beer.

“Enjoy the show.”

Ryan and I nodded politely.

“It’s hapa haole music.”

“Didn’t think it was the gospel hour.”

Rico and I both frowned at Ryan.

“Really?” I flashed Rico my most disarming smile. “What is hapa haole music?”

Rico hitched one feline-enhanced shoulder.

“Sometimes the song’s done traditional, you know, four-four time, but the words are in English, so that makes it half English, half Hawaiian. Sometimes the words are in Hawaiian but the beat is hyped, so that makes it hapa haole.” He thought a moment. “Not all Hawaiian songs with haole words are hapa haole. Sometimes the words are Hawaiian and the music isn’t.”

All righty, then.

The cuisine lived up to my expectations.

As I chewed shrimp the texture of all-weather radials, the band played the inevitable “Tiny Bubbles.”

“Did you know that Don Ho served in the air force?” Ryan asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Did you know that he had ten kids?” Ryan spoke between bites of incinerated fish.

“Impressive,” I said.

“As am I.”

“Indeed.”

Ryan reached over and brushed my jawline. My pulse jumped as fire burned a path below his fingers.

“Have you thought about giving it another try?”

“It?” I swallowed.

“Us.”

And Lutetia? Hadley Perry? I restrained myself by a thin, thin strand.

“Mm. Tell me more about Don Ho,” I said, wanting safer ground.

Ryan settled back in his chair. “Ho started singing at a bar called Honey’s out at Kaneohe. The joint belonged to his mother.”

“Honey,” I guessed.

“Yes, sugar lump?”

The quip hit like a hot poker to the heart. Buttercup. Sweet pea. Though I’d always chided Ryan for his goofy endearments, secretly I’d loved them. I wondered who else was being so honored.

“Honey’s was a hangout for marines from the base out there,” Ryan continued, oblivious to the emotions he’d triggered. “Ho moved the business to Waikiki back in the sixties.”

“I thought he performed at a place called Duke’s.” My steady voice belied nothing.

“That was later. Then he hit the big time.”

“And the rest is history.”

“Hi Ho.”

I gave up on the crustaceans and laid down my fork.

“Is Ho still alive?”

Ryan shook his head. “He died a couple years back.”

At that moment, a sequence of unrelated events coincided on the great space-time continuum that forms reality as we perceive it.

As Rico placed a coaster on our table, a swirling light particle danced off his tooth. Glancing down, I noticed the coaster’s sole design element, a cheesy male totem from another time.

Bang!

The previous night’s dream flashed in my brain. A horse’s white blaze gone gold. Equine teeth.

More images popped.

A maxillary fragment.

Crumbling adipocere circling a drain.

A lopsided gold sliver with two tapering points.

An open-beaked duck.

A pointy-stemmed mushroom.

Rico.

My hand flew to Ryan’s wrist. “Ohmygod! I know what it is!”

“My arm?”

I released my grip.

“The gold thing Danny and I found. I found.” I was totally psyched. “The fragment we thought was part of a dental restoration. Well, I did. Danny wasn’t sure. But the dentist didn’t think so. Craig Brooks. He was right. Well, he was wrong and right. It was dental but not a restor—”

Setting his fork on his plate, Ryan raised two calming hands. “Take a breath.”

I did.

“Now. Slowly. In English. Or French. But comprehensible.”

The band segued into a way-too-twangy rendition of “Hawaii Calls.”

I reeled in my thoughts.

“I’ll bet the bandstand the thing we found with 2010-37 is a broken dental inlay.”

“Whose bandstand?”

“Look.” I spun the coaster and pointed to the logo. “What’s that?”

“A Playboy bunny.”

“The whole Playboy shtick is passé now, but it was huge in the sixties. Did you notice Rico’s tooth?”

“Shaken, not stirred.”

I rolled my eyes, a gesture wasted in the dark.

“I had a North Carolina case in which the victim had a dental crown with a gold symbol shaped like a Playboy bunny. It’s how we finally got him ID’ed.”

“Did he also have Eat at Joe’s tattooed on his—”

“The crown was strictly decorative. I did research. I learned you can get them as full gold crowns with cutouts shaped like crosses, martini glasses, stars, half-moons—”

“The ever popular bunny.”

“Yes. Or you can get what’s called a sparkle. That’s an acrylic crown that looks like a natural tooth with a gold shape affixed to the front.”

“Are these little gems permanent?”

“You can do it either way. Rough-backed sparkles are permanently bonded to the tooth. Smooth-backed sparkles can be slipped on or off at will.”

“For that special night-on-the-town look.” Said with disdain.

“Different people, different tastes.”

“J. Edgar loved marabou trim. Doesn’t mean fluffy pumps will be filling my shoe rack.”

I ignored that.

“The North Carolina guy was a migrant worker missing since nineteen sixty-nine. He was Latino. My research suggested that the wearing of ornamental gold caps is popular among Hispanics. Some articles talked about the pre-Columbian roots of the custom.”

“The Mayans also cut out people’s hearts. Doesn’t mean we should give that a whirl.”

“That was the Aztecs.”

Ryan started to comment. I cut him off.

“Spider Lowery’s Huey went down with four crew members aboard. Three were recovered and ID’ed straight off. The fourth, the maintenance specialist, was never found.”

“I’m guessing he was Latino.”

“Luis Alvarez. He was Mexican-American.”

“Wouldn’t gold hardware be mentioned in Alvarez’s dental antemorts?”

“His file contains no dental or medical records. Besides, if Alvarez added the sparkle after his last checkup, that wouldn’t be in his record.”

“Or he might have removed the thing when reporting for duty.”

“Exactly.”

Rico appeared at our table.

Ryan requested the check.

Rico pulled out his pad. As he summed, I tried observing his tooth. No go. His lips were compressed with the effort of the complex math.

Finally a slip hit the table.

Ryan and I reached for it. Argued. Our usual ritual.

I won. Handed Rico my Visa.

Smirking at Ryan, Rico headed off.

“What about Spider Lowery?” Ryan asked.

“What about him?”

“Might he have slipped into something a little more gold? He could have picked the thing up in Nam.”

“He could have.”

“Or he might have gotten the little doodad before shipping out, but removed it when he was around Mommy and Daddy.”

“Another possibility.”

“Is there anyone he might have told?” Ryan asked. “A buddy? A sibling?”

I remembered the photo session in my car.

“The brother’s dead, but Plato said Spider was close to a cousin. They played on the same high school baseball team.”

“The cousin still live in Lumberton?”

“I don’t know.”

“Might be worth a phone call. You know, cover all bases.”

True.

The band launched into “If I Had a Hammer,” the singer trying hard for Trini Lopez but missing badly.

“But Spider Lowery died in Quebec,” I said.

“Or the FBI screwed up the prints. I’d say the first step is to establish that your gold duck-mushroom thingy is, in fact, a broken gold sparkle. Then go from there.”

True again.

Rico returned with my card. I signed and added a tip. A big one, hoping for a smile.

Nope. With a mumbled “Mahalo,” Rico was gone.

“Does Alvarez’s file contain photos?” Ryan asked.

“Several.”

“Any smiling shots?”

In my mind’s eye I pictured the three black-and-whites.

A head-and-shoulders portrait of a uniformed young man.

A grainy reproduction of a high school graduate.

Nine sweaty soldiers, one glancing away from the camera.

I looked at Ryan.

Suddenly I was in a frenzy to reexamine that snapshot.