Read 1 Murder on Moloka'i Online
Authors: Chip Hughes
1 Murder on Moloka'i (16 page)
III: Chapters One though Four: The Deadbeat Dad
Once Kai’s “People are like waves” monologue was removed from the first pages of the 1998 draft, the revised first chapter began with the discarded subplot mentioned above. This subplot involves a deadbeat dad named Leonard Souza whose wife has retained the Surfing Detective to collect delinquent child support. Souza has not only failed to support his own children, but has also taken up with barely a child himself, cohabiting with her in a rusting fishing boat at the Ala Wai Yacht Harbor in Honolulu. The confrontation that results when the PI serves papers on the deadbeat was intended as a day-in-the-life vignette. But it was thought to draw away too much attention from the main plot. The piece was later published as a short story entitled “Hijinks Aboard the
Hōkūlani”
in
Spirit of Aloha
(March/April 2008), the in-flight magazine of the now defunct Aloha Airlines, and in a double issue of
Hawai‘i Review: A Special Tribute to Ian MacMillan
(Vol. 28-9; No. 1-2; 2008). Note that in this early draft Kai was not merely
hānaied,
as in the published version, but is part-Hawaiian. And that his attorney friend is named not Tommy, but Harry.
Wednesday, October fourth. Six a.m. Ala Wai Yacht Harbor.
I was on a stake out by Waikīkī’s famed Ilikai Hotel, atop whose aqua towers Jack Lord posed for the opening sequence of
Hawaii Five-O.
In my memory I could almost see the famous cascading wave that started the show and hear the drum roll and twanging guitars of The Ventures, as Lord’s character, Detective Steve McGarrett, turned steely eyes to the camera.
My assignment this morning lacked the glamour of most of McGarrett’s. (Glamour would arrive later in the day.) I was tracking a deadbeat dad named Leonard Souza. Souza and his seventeen-year-old girlfriend, a high school truant named Lei, were shacking up in a fishing boat called the
Hōkūlani.
A friend of the truant girl aboard had told me she was pregnant. That’s why she didn’t return to school.
Wackos.
Where do they all come from? And slimy deadbeats. The
Hōkūlani,
it turned out, wasn’t even Souza’s. From what I could gather, the dilapidated boat’s absentee owner allowed him to live on board in exchange for making repairs. He and his seventeen-year-old baby-sitter got themselves a love nest, though a foul one, rent free. I could see no evidence from my stakeout position of any repairs to this rust bucket.
In my lap lay the manila envelope I had come to put into Souza’s hands. It contained a court order–more precisely, a “Motion and Affidavit for Post-Decree Relief ”–compelling him to appear at Family Court. A year behind on his child support payments, Souza had violated the terms of his divorce decree.
Several days of turning over rocks led me here to the yacht harbor at this ungodly hour, hoping to catch Souza off guard and deliver the affidavit. I was being cagey because his former wife had warned me in pidgin: “Leonard
like beef.”
Meaning: If provoked, he could get nasty.
Mrs. Souza, his ex, was my client. I should never have taken her on. She couldn’t afford my hourly minimum. She called me daily, sometimes twice a day. But how could I not feel sorry for her? She and her three kids were about to lose their home. So I made my habitual mistake.
“Avoid getting emotionally involved,” all my P.I. training taught me. Trouble is, I’m a soft touch. My father’s missionary ancestry and my mother’s Hawaiian
aloha
compel me to lend a hand to every hard luck case that knocks at my door. Though my parents died long ago, their influence remains. Thus, I’ve helped my share of penniless clients and gotten sucked into some unprofitable, not to mention dangerous, cases.
Serving papers on hostile deadbeats like Souza can be a dicey business. My favorite strategy is to play dumb: I don’t mention what’s in the envelope until it’s safely in the bad guy’s hands.
Though I’d never admit to deliberately misleading anyone, sometimes my subjects get the mistaken idea that they’re about to win the lottery or receive a check from an anonymous benefactor or a reward for a good deed done long ago but not forgotten. Once the court order has been duly served, I mention this disagreeable fact on my way out. By the time any tempers flare, I’m heading for the surf.
Aside from an occasional glitch, this strategy works.
Usually.
Soon the rising sun cast its mango hue on two snapshots Mrs. Souza had given me: one of her ex-husband, the other of the baby-sitter.
Leonard Souza was a scurvy looking fish with
salt-n-peppa
whiskers and shadowy circles under his charcoal eyes, the kind of scum you’d want to keep miles from your sister or daughter or girlfriend. Lei’s picture, autographed in her feminine teenaged hand “To Mr. & Mrs. Souza,” must have been taken at her junior prom. She wore an orchid corsage, frilly mauve dress, and an innocent smile. On her beauty-shop bun perched a rhinestone crown.
Queen for a day.
She was girlishly slim, with the telltale curves of a blossoming woman. Her pimple-faced boyfriend stood two inches shorter than his queen. From the nervous look in his eyes, she was obviously too much for him. Way too much.
I looked up. Nothing doing on Souza’s boat. To stave off hunger and tedium I sucked on my favorite “crack seed,” a local delicacy. “Sweet Li Hing Mui” is a pungent, sweet-sour plum seed that puckered my lips with such intense flavor that I quickly forgot my appetite and boredom.
Glancing again at the morning paper, I flipped to the weather page to check out the waves. Despite the confused shark at Laniākea who once mistook me for his lunch, I ride my longboard every chance I get. Surfing relieves the stresses of detective work and helps me explore the delicate balances that make up my job.
Sherlock Holmes had his pipe–I have my surfboard. Floating on the glassy sea, scanning the blue horizon for the perfect wave, sometimes I drift into a kind of trance. Then I can disentangle the most intricate web. When my wave finally rolls in, an instinct takes over. In one fluid motion I swing my board around, stroke like the wind, and rise. Slip-sliding down the thundering cascade–perched on a thin slice of balsa and foam–I find a precarious balance.
That’s what surfing (and my job) is all about:
balance.
The
Advertiser
forecast waves in Waikīkī at two to three feet. Elsewhere, a paltry flat to one. To Waikīkī I would go, once I served the affidavit on Souza.
Then I remembered a nine o’clock appointment with a woman from Boston whose name escaped me. I don’t usually forget client names, but she had been referred during a long and rambling phone message from an attorney friend of mine.
“Oh, Kai, Ms. So-and-so from Boston may stop by …,” Harry had said offhandedly, as if he wasn’t sure she would. Then he added cryptically: “If she shows, you’ll be damn glad she did.”
Whatever Harry’s meaning, I was stuck with the appointment. Surfing would have to wait.
I glanced up again at the
Hōkūlani,
portholes still black as night. A typical stakeout. Sometimes I sit for hours sucking on my sweet-sour crack seed. But as I said,
balance
is the name of the game. Watching and waiting have to be as active as my moves, or I might miss something. Inevitably, when my vigilance slips, the case gets bungled. When my guard goes down, things turn dangerous.
So I stayed alert as I flipped pages in the
Advertiser–
from that chilling story about the plunging death from a mule of Sara Ridgely-Parke–to the sports pages, checking the baseball playoff scores and sumo standings from Japan.
After glancing at those alluring ads for tires and Korean hostess bars that follow sports–“ONO PUPUS & EXOTIC GIRLS!”–I turned to the business section and checked out an artist’s sketch of a proposed Moloka‘i resort called “Kalaupapa Cliffs.” The resort loomed grand and blindingly white, an art deco Taj Mahal with marble spas and meandering pool and hundreds of ocean-view suites. “Kalaupapa Cliffs” promised to be a luxury palace designed for the super rich.
Like we really need one more of those!
Because of a technicality concerning the building site, the Moloka‘i resort’s construction awaited a vote of the Land Zoning Board.
Still no movement on Souza’s boat. The climbing sun sent bars of intense light between Waikīkī high-rises, illuminating the drowsy harbor in jailbird stripes. Would Souza and his girl never crawl out of bed?
I started to worry that this stakeout might drag on into my nine o’clock appointment with the woman from Boston. It was now nearly seven thirty. An hour and a half had gone by and, although other fishing boats chugged one by one out to sea, on the
Hōkūlani
nothing had happened. Nothing.
If Souza didn’t show his scurvy face pretty soon, I might have to start something.
At twenty past eight, my patience wearing thin, a naked yellow bulb inside the slanting cabin of the
Hōkūlani
finally flashed on. Through the two portholes I saw movement. Tossing my crack seed into a planter of fragrant
lauwa‘e
ferns next to my teal Impala, I grabbed the manila envelope and strolled down the dock toward the rusty hulk.
My Dockers shorts, polo shirt, new pair of Raybans, and rubber
zoris
would have fit in well with the yachting crowd–had they been out of bed yet.
I wear a number of such outfits for protective coloration, trying not to stand out. At six feet even (well, almost) and one eighty, I have a fairly deep chest and well-developed shoulders and arms from surfing. Despite my year-round tropic tan, my skin looks light for a
hapa.
I seem to have inherited my sandy-haired father’s fair complexion and my brown-eyed mother’s Hawaiian soul. Truth is, she was one quarter Hawaiian, which makes me only one eighth.
So that Souza wouldn’t get instantly suspicious, I folded and slipped the envelope containing the affidavit into my back pocket.
“‘Morning,” a sun-burned crewman said, mopping the deck of a spotless cabin cruiser.
“Howz’it?” I smiled and walked on. Beneath my feet that lime green sea lapped between planks in the dock. Sleek sailboats and motor yachts graced the countless slips.
Striding across the dock planks I wondered what Harry had said that Boston woman’s name was. His message on my answering machine had been vague about why he referred her. Though I would have rather spent the morning surfing three footers in Waikīkī, I began to feel curious about this potential case. I don’t get many clients from Boston.
The closer I got to Souza’s listing craft, the worse it looked by comparison to its pristine neighbors. Soon I was standing near the two portholes that had appeared pitch black from my car. Now they were transparent. I caught a glimpse of the girl, who bore faint resemblance to her photo as prom queen. She wore only bikini panties and a sheer nightgown that stopped half way down her thighs. She was reed thin with little upturned breasts. The rounded bulge in her tummy confirmed what her high school friend had confided.
Behind the girl I saw the dark, whiskered man slipping on soiled denims and a black t-shirt with sleeves ripped out. Flecks of yellow-grey riddled his patchy beard and oily hair.
Scum.
That’s what flashed through my mind when I laid eyes on this cradle-robbing deadbeat. Even if Mrs. Souza could pay me nothing (a distinct possibility), I would relish busting up his scuzzy little boat party.
Since neither the girl nor Souza seemed in any hurry to leave their tiny cabin, I had to do something soon or stand up the woman from Boston.
The
Hōkūlani’s
sloping aft deck offering neither boarding plank nor ladder, I climbed aboard over a gunwale onto the badly caulked teak. Two fishing poles mounted in chocks on either side of the stern had lines out in the water. One pole bobbed. On deck lay a long, hooked gaffe. The gaffe gleamed in the sun the like chrome bumper of my Impala and looked razor sharp.
I tapped on the cabin door. No answer. Though I’m a veteran at serving papers, a few butterflies fluttered in my stomach. I wouldn’t exactly call this fear, just adrenaline. I knocked on Souza’s door again.
Silence in the cabin.
“Hello!” I announced in perfect mainland English. “You’ve got a nibble on one of your lines.”
The door opened and Souza swaggered out. He looked grubbier than his photo and he smelled rank, like stale sardines. A jagged scar, not visible in the snapshot, slanted up over his left eyebrow like a bent apostrophe. He’d been in a few
beefs,
all right. But despite my butterflies, he didn’t scare me. I could handle him, though laying him out wasn’t part of my job.
“Eh, brah!” Souza snarled. “What you doin’ on my boat?”
“So sorry,” I replied like a high-toned yachtsman. “Thought you might have a bite.”
He eyed me suspiciously. The bobbing pole went slack. Souza had lost his fish.
“What do you catch in this harbor?” I pointed to the murky, lime-green water.
“Kōkala
–Puffer Fish,” he replied grudgingly. “Why you like know?”
I glanced on deck again at that gleaming, razor-sharp gaffe.
“Bettah get off da boat, eh?” Souza said. “My insurance no cover you.” He turned toward the cabin.
“Another nibble!” I shouted. When he looked back at his poles I reached into my pocket and put the envelope in his hands.
“What dis, brah?” His coal eyes smoldered.
I glanced toward the dock, mapping my escape. Instinctively, my knees bent and my feet shifted, ready to jump. Once Souza saw the manila envelope he knew.
“Fuckah!”
he shouted.
“You Fuckah!”
He dropped the envelope on the deck and, sure enough, grabbed that vicious-looking gaffe.
Before I could leap onto the dock, he swung the gaffe. The fastest way out was over the stern.
Bail out, brah! Bail!
I dove down into the murky harbor as far from the boat as I could. But the gaffe came flying in after me, catching my right ankle. A sharp pain shot up my leg. I struggled under water, my polo shirt clinging like a wet blanket. My new Raybans sank into the murk. I kicked off my
zoris
and swam beneath the surface as long as my breath would hold. Behind me trailed a thin stream of blood.
Hungry sharks?
I wondered.
Coming up for air, I looked around to get my bearings. The
Hōkūlani
lay thirty feet away. My rubber
zoris
bobbed nearby on the water like two planks adrift. Souza glared at me from the stern.
“Fuckah!”
He waved the court order angrily. The long legal pages flapped in the air.
I dove down deep and swam under water again. When I rose for another breath the rusty boat looked smaller, less menacing. Souza was nowhere in sight. I swam on the surface to the nearest dock, patting my shorts for my wallet and keys. Luckily neither had gone south with my sunglasses.
Climbing onto the dock planks I limped barefoot and dripping to my car. The
zoris
I simply left floating by the
Hōkūlani.
My bleeding ankle stung. Like a shallow coral cut, the wound thankfully went just beneath the surface.
At the harbor’s edge I glimpsed again those aqua towers of the Ilikai Hotel where Jack Lord flashed his steely eyes at the opening of
Hawaii Five-0.
I tried to recall if his Detective McGarrett ever served papers on a deadbeat or got attacked by a gaffe.
Doubtful.
Or did I miss that episode?
I checked my watch. Quarter to nine. Fifteen minutes till my appointment. It would take me nearly that long in traffic to drive–soaked and bleeding–to my Maunakea Street office. Then ditch my sodden clothes.
I wished I’d never agreed to meet with that woman from Boston.