The Pallbearers

Chapter 42

Pop's house was a white bungalow with a red tile roof in a middle-class neighborhood not too far from Huntington House, and it was exactly as I had remembered. After his wife, Elizabeth, died, Pop had continued to live there alone.

He always kept the hide-a-kev in the same place-inside the feed drawer in the base of a large wooden birdcage that now hung empty from a chain on the far end of his front porch.

He used to sit out here on summer nights while a big green and yellow parrot sat in that cage squawking loudly. The bird spoke only pidgin and was named Hang Six. Pop had bought him in the early-seventies on the Hawaiian North Shore. Hang Six had to be at least forty by now, if he was still alive.

On nights when some of us were over here visiting Pop, having one of Elizabeth's home-cooked meals, we were always fascinated by the bird's island patois.

Hey hapa haole, boy. Surfs up, bra!" He would screech that stuff incessantly.

I thought it interesting that despite our age difference, every one of us knew that the hide-a-key was always kept in the feed drawer under the cage. Pop hadn't bothered to change its location in almost four decades.

That told me he hadn't been too worried about security. If his killer knew him, then he probably also knew where the key was and could have used it to get in here and lie in wait.

We opened the front door, turned on the lights, and stood in Pop's small living room. There was a lot of surfer art adorning this space. Over the fireplace hung a large painting of a forty-foot windswept wave, a magnificent aqua green crescent with white foam blowing off the leading edge. There were all kinds of surfer knick-knacks on the walls, along with half a dozen photographs under glass of huge storm breaks on the North Shore of Oahu.

Hang Six's indoor cage was also empty, standing in the corner. Diamond said the cops had taken him to animal control after Pop died.

"Where do you want to start?" Sabas asked.

"Yard sale. Let's look at the backyard," Vicki suggested.

I was sort of humoring this idea as we all trooped to the back and stood on Walt's wood porch, the same porch where he'd died.

"You know, I used to come here from time to time with two or three of the other kids," Seriana said wistfully. "It was ten years ago, when I was thirteen. We'd sit on this porch and drink lemonade. It was such a treat to be chosen to come. Before she died, Mrs. Dix would cook a meal for us. It felt for just a few hours like we had a real home."

"It's why Pop brought us here," Vicki said. "He wanted us to see what a normal family life was like."

Seriana nodded. "Did Pop ever let you take Hang Six out of his cage?"

"Yeah," Diamond said. "He'd sit on our shoulders while Pop told stories about Hawaii."

"Sometimes when I was here, we'd get to help him shape one of his surfboards," Vicki remembered.

The garage was Pop's board shop.

"Let's go see. Maybe that's the yard sale-the boards," Seriana said.

We wandered across the little patch of lawn. Since Pop died, nobody had been watering it. We stopped in front of the garage.

"Where'd he keep the key?" Sabas asked.

"Never locked it," Diamond said.

Sabas tried the door, and found it was open.

We entered and turned on the overhead light. In front of us, lying across two sawhorses, was a newly shaped, almost finished, nine-foot cigar-box board. It had already been sanded, and the first coat of varnish had been applied. It looked as if it had been left there to dry. I crossed to the board and traced the rough, unsanded first coat of varnish with the fingers of my good hand.

"Leash drag," Diamond said. "He kept those in here."

She crossed to a cupboard where Pop's surf equipment was stored and opened it. Inside were some old leather-and-rope ankle leashes, some board resin and wax, half a dozen small-sized wet suits for kids. There was nothing else inside the cabinet. We all stood there, beginning to feel a growing sense of futility.

"These big old rhino chasers have large air pockets in the front to keep them from being too nose heavy," Vicki finally said. "I remember Pop had to drain them at the end of each day. Maybe he built this to hide something in there."

Sabas walked over to the board and tapped his knuckles on the nose. It sounded hollow. Empty.

"Kinda hate to bust it open," he said. "It seems kinda special. The last board Pop ever worked on."

"We can come back to it if we don't find anything," I suggested. "I could probably arrange for somebody at CSI to get it x-rayed."

I wanted to get them off the idea that Walts suicide note contained a message. What I really wanted was to do a thorough search of this place, looking for anomalies, some small piece of evidence that had been missed by Kovacevich and Cole but would make sense to the five of us.

I finally got that organized, and we began to look through the rest of the workshop. Then we searched the yard. After that we went back inside and searched the small two-bedroom house. We worked for an hour, and before long, failure to turn up anything was causing a pronounced loss of energy.

We took a break, and everyone gathered on the back porch. Vargas and I leaned on the railing, Diamond sat on the wooden chair, Vicki and Seriana on the big porch swing.

We were all quiet, gazing out at the backyard and remembering those times when we came here as kids. As I looked out across the dying lawn, it just seemed so damned much smaller than it had when I was nine.

Vicki went inside to use the bathroom, and Sabas spoke to what all of us were feeling. "It's hard to believe Pop died right here on this porch," he said softly. "Maybe even in that very chair."

Everyone looked down at the wooden chair Diamond was sitting on. She got up quickly, abandoning it and moving over to the porch rail.

"I just never thought Pop would check out that way," Seriana said. "Never thought somebody so mellow could die so badly."

As we sat there, I began to feel a little lost. Looking out over the yard I had a sudden overpowering feeling that I had failed Pop again, that I had let him down now, just as I had during all those years when I'd rejected him. I looked at the faces of the other pallbearers and saw the same defeat reflected in their eyes.

"Hey, you guys. Come in here for a minute," Vicki called out from inside the house.

We trooped into the living room and saw that she had pulled a large Hawaiian kahuna tiki statue away from the wall where it had always stood. Kahunas were usually little shelf-sized figurines sold in surf shops. You could also buy replica good-luck kahunas that were inch-high wood carvings, often worn around a surfers neck on a leather cord.

This one was much larger and stood almost three feet high. It was hand carved out of pinewood, with a big nose, oversized lips, and bushy hair made of dried straw.

"Something back there?" I asked, and moved over to look at the wall behind where the kahuna had always stood.

Sabas said, "I don't remember him from when I used to come over, but that was almost forty years ago."

"He was always here when I was a kid," I said. "It's a kahuna, the Hawaiian god of the surf."

"Isn't that what Pop always called the source?" Vicki asked.

I nodded. "Pop said Kahuna is the source of good waves. He lives in the middle of the ocean and makes the big double-overhead tube rides. He told me that when he was a kid, all the surfers on the North Shore would sit on the beach at night, smoking blunts, praying to this little guy for big rhino waves to ride."

"He said if we want the answers, we should tap the source," Vicki said. "That's how Walt signed his note, right? 'Tap the Source, Walt.'"

I shook my head. "I think all he meant was…"

"You don't know what the fuck he meant, Shane," she snapped. "Let's get this little asshole's head off and see what's inside."

Before anybody could stop her, she had leaned over the kahuna and was pulling and yanking on the statue's head, rocking it back and forth. Suddenly, it popped off and flew out of her hands and landed across the room next to the sofa.

There was a carved wooden peg that fit into the statue's torso to hold the head in place. Seriana removed the peg, revealing a hole.

We could all now see that the carved headless torso was hollow inside. Vicki stuck her small hand down through the opening, reaching deep into the body of the kahuna god, and began rummaging around.

When she pulled her slender hand out, she was holding a fat manila envelope.

I'll be damned, I thought.