Hot Lava (21 page)

And again she nodded. “Yep, so we better leave while we’re ahead.”

We immediately downed what food remained (and drinks, of course) and skedaddled on out of there, an ample tip left on the table and two sets of jumpsuits in hand.

“I still don’t get it,” Will admitted when we were back on the beach, heading to our hotel.

“Watch,” she told him, then looked at Brandon and I. “Wanna see some titties, boys?” she asked.

“Do we have a choice, sis?” Brandon groaned, kicking the sand with the point of his toe.

“No,” she replied, pushing her jugs together to double her already ample cleavage. “Now come closer.” We reluctantly moved in. “Closer,” she commanded. And we obeyed, getting within an inch of her impressive knockers.

“Not too hard, please,” I pleaded, just as she grabbed our heads and knocked them together.

“Ouch,” Brandon howled, falling to the sand.

“I said not too hard,” I yelled up at her.

“Trust me,” she admonished, offering a hand to help me up. “You wouldn’t still be able to stand if that’s what I wanted.”

I rubbed my noggin and told her, “Thanks. I think.”

She turned to Will and asked, “Does it make sense now?”

He grinned, the smile reflecting in the brilliant moonlight. “They didn’t know what hit them?”

“Nope,” she said with a laugh. “Then I just had to remove these nice duds and beat a hasty retreat. All in a day’s work, fellas.”

“If you’re from Shanghai,” I told her.

“Or in Oahu and desperate,” she corrected, and rightly so.

And with a final nod, we headed back inside our hotel.

***

Briana and Brandon, exhausted from the day’s activities, practically ran to the elevator and back up to their respective rooms. Will and I held back. “Wanna go for a walk?” he asked, a sly grin peeking out of the corners of his mouth, eyes sparkling.

“A walk, huh?” I asked, already turning back around, kicking off my sandals, and digging my feet into the wonderfully cooling sand. “Sure. A walk. I mean, because I don’t get enough walking in a given day. Just a walk, though?”

He laughed and grabbed my hand. “Brandon is up in your room and Briana is up in hers. Mine is too far to get to in a reasonable amount of time. And, well, I have been locked up in a basement for the past several days, and a hotel bathroom seems less than, um, well,
nice
.”

“Okay,” I said. “Then a walk it is. A
nice
walk.” I winked at him and threw him a sly leer, completed by my batting eyelashes and all the accoutrements.

He tightened his grip on my hand and led me down the beach. The moon was now high in the pitch-black sky, reflecting silver in the peaceful ocean that lapped at the shore to our right. Couples walked up and down the beach, arm in arm, leaning up close to one another. “Romantic,” he whispered in my ear.

“Uh huh,” I replied, turning my head toward his, our mouths instantly meshing as one. “
Nice
,” I moaned.

“
Nice
,” he repeated, his big, strong arms wrapping around me, pulling me in.

“I missed you,” I sighed, my heart so full of emotion that I felt it would burst at any second.

“Ditto,” he said. “And thanks for, well, saving me.”

I grinned, my hand sliding in front of me to cup his burgeoning prick. “No worries on that front,” I told him.

His grin mirrored my own, glinting in the moonlight, radiant. “Sweet talker.”

“One of my strong points.” I gripped his hand and fell into his embrace. “Now when can I get a gander at that billy club of yours?”

He chuckled and nuzzled on my neck. “You’re right. That is a strong point you got there.” He looked around and came up with a reply quickly enough. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” His head nodded behind us to several rows of surfboards. Rows you could climb in between. Rows cast in utter darkness.

“Naughty boy,” I chided, hurrying him over.

“Guess I have my own strong points,” he retorted, now running to the destination.

I stopped him just before we reached our trysting place, however. I had to tell him what I’d done to help rescue him. That is, what I and, of course, Judy had done. It wasn’t, after all, sex for the sake of sex I’d had. In other words, I had to clear my conscience. (Well, my recent conscience, at any rate. It would’ve taken a truckload of erasers to clear absolutely everything, if, in fact, I could even remember half of it.)

He grinned when I was done with the sordid tale. “And I’m the naughty boy?” was all he could say.

Clearly, I was forgiven. Thank goodness. So, with a renewed spring to my step and a boner as hard as granite in my shorts, we hopped over the chains and walked five feet in, the boards towering over us, hiding us from prying eyes. He lifted his arms and I helped him off with his shirt. Mine followed suit and both were tossed to the sand. Two pairs of shorts followed, then two pairs of underwear, until we stood there, two naked, naughty boys with nothing on but devious grins.

We could hear the voices of the people along the beach, of music from the nearby restaurants, of the surf not thirty feet away. None of that mattered. It was just him and me, the moon high overhead, causing his slick prick-head to glow like a beacon in the night.

“Damn,” I groaned, sinking to my knees as he worked his rod in and down my throat, pumping my face with his musky crotch as I reached around to splay his cheeks apart and tease his sweat-rimmed hole.

“Fuck,” he exhaled, his sigh low and deep like a growl, while he worked my face and I began to finger his hole, first with one, then two fingers. In deep, up to the hilt. “Fuck,” he repeated.

I popped his prick out of my mouth and stood back up, my fingers still entrenched in his butt. My lips found his lips, soft as down, his tongue swirling inside. He reached below to stroke my dick. My free hand did the same with his. Slow and easy. All the time in the world.

Only that wasn’t the case. (Damn!)

We heard two voices approaching from behind us and we froze, mid-stroke. They drew nearer. Two men, stopping at the edge of the row of boards. They’d come from the opposite side from where we had walked in. We couldn’t see them. Thankfully, they couldn’t see us, either.

They talked in hushed whispers. To our benefit, the breeze carried their conversation the few needed feet. It was difficult but not impossible to hear them.

“Where is he?” asked the first man.

“Fuck if I know,” said the second. “We were just about to grab him, and he ups and vanishes. Someone must’ve tipped him off. Told him to stay low until the trial.”

There was silence for a few seconds. “But that doesn’t make sense,” continued the first. “There’s nobody but us. Unless Mister Yamasuka’s got someone else on the payroll.”

“No, that can’t be it. If that was the case, that person wouldn’t have tipped the limo driver off. The only other person that Mister Yamasuka had on the payroll, related to all this, is dead.”

The two chuckled, their voices growing only slightly louder. “Thanks to you,” said the second.

“Fell right into my lap,” laughed the first man. “Guy probably would’ve been offed after five minutes in prison, anyway. Fuckin’ Hawaiian was dumber than dirt. Still, he served his purpose, right?”

The laughter abruptly stopped. “Only, one man down, the other missing. We finally got everything pieced together for Mister Yamasuka, and we can’t finish the job. No limo driver, no payoff.”

Again silence, and then, “Nah, he’ll show up. Small island. And we got our tracers out everywhere. Can’t lie low for too long. He’ll show his head before the trial, and when he does, it gets cut, just like his boyfriend’s.”

The conversation ended. We heard the two men turn around and walk away. We moved in their direction, to the end of the row of surfboards, still hidden by darkness. They, however, were now cast in the light of the building ten feet up and over, their uniforms clearly visible from behind as they disappeared back into the substation.

“Oh, fuck,” I cursed.

“You got that right,” Will agreed. “A dead Hawaiian, dumber than dirt? Can only be one of them right about now. Which means...”

“Which means,” I interrupted, “Lenny was indeed up to no good. Maybe innocent of drug smuggling, but not so innocent of other illicit activities. But what? What was he doing with all that money? And why was he set up as a drug smuggler?”

We moved back into the middle of the boards, away from nosy ears and eyes. We quickly got re-dressed, the mood clearly over, then we walked back to the beach and plopped our asses down in the soft sand, staring out at the moonlit ocean. “I think I get it,” Will eventually said.

“Then that makes one of us,” I sighed. “Please, continue.”

He nodded and held my hand, his index finger caressing mine. “Lenny was dating Jed.”

“Got it, and?”

“Kind of odd to be dating two competing pimps. Dangerous, in fact. Unless you had a compelling reason.”

“Jed mentioned that Lenny liked money. Money that couldn’t be made on a measly flight attendant’s salary.”

“Exactly,” agreed Will. “But let’s backtrack on that issue. Liko somehow finds out that Mister Yamasuka is up to some shady business, probably while Mister Yamasuka was in his limo at some point. Liko tries to trade that information with the police, but ends up being a forced witness, and one unaware that not all the police are on the up-and-up. Mister Yamasuka finds out that Liko is going to testify against him but doesn’t know what Liko knows or exactly what he’s already told the police. Liko’s a dead man, either way, but better to know what he knows before he’s taken out. Now, then, how do you find out what Liko knows without tipping him off that you’re on to him?”

“A cute Hawaiian boyfriend?” I tried.

“Better yet, one who has inside knowledge of the competition, Jed. Meaning, one who’s hard to pass up. A bird in the fucking hand.”

I nodded my head, at last understanding. We had, it seemed, been trying to solve one case, when, in fact, there were two, minimum. “So Lenny is recruited by Mister Yamasuka to pursue Liko in exchange for a hefty salary. Liko falls for Lenny and, we can only assume, spills some beans. But, before Lenny can tell Mister Yamasuka what he knows, his jealous boyfriend, namely Jed, frames him as a drug smuggler, thereby helping out Makani. Liko figures this out and, in turn, frames Jed with the incarcerated Edward Beles.”

“Right,” Will said. “Only Jed has a certain lawyer for a client, who promptly warns him that Edward Beles is after him because of a certain letter Beles received in prison. So, Jed is on to Liko, and Mister Yamasuka is on to Liko, only we hand him over to Jed before Mister Yamasuka can get his dirty mitts on him, or, that is, before Mister Yamasuka’s stoolie policemen can get their dirty mitts on him before he can testify.”

“Makes sense,” Will said.

“It does?”

“Much as anything. Only, no one knows that there are multiple games afoot. Either way, though, Liko’s a dead man, either by Jed’s own devices or Mister Yamasuka’s.”

“And Lenny was dead either way, too. Mister Yamsuka would’ve gotten to him, either in prison or outside of prison. He knew too much.” I paused and sighed. “Poor guy. How could he have known that the long arm of the law had a knife hidden up its sleeve?” Again I paused, taking it all in. “So, now we know who killed Lenny.”

“Yep. Mister Yamasuka, however indirectly.”

“But how do we get to Mister Yamasuka?” I asked. “We have no proof, no evidence. A rich Japanese businessman, with, I’d assume, strong ties to the community. No one will believe us, or want to.”

“Unless we really do rescue Liko.”

“If he’s even still alive,” I said, my head now sunk low to my chest.

“My guess is he is. Liko’s proven to be a smart cookie thus far. And so has Jed. I bet those two will come to some sort of agreement that will be beneficial to the both of them. Liko, after all, probably has a ton of valuable information.”

“But we have to reach Liko, and soon, just in case. I mean, we can’t wait until the morning now; it’s too risky. We have to get to Liko first, so he can testify against Mister Yamasuka.”

“Looks that way,” Will agreed. “Looks that way.”

“Looks what way?” we heard, both of us turning our heads around, only to see Brandon and Briana standing directly behind us.

“I thought you both went to bed,” I said.

“We did,” Briana replied. “But then we got worried when you didn’t return, what with everything that’s been going on and all.”

“Didn’t you consider that Will and I were, well, doing what Will and I do when we’re not with you?”

They both nodded. “Yep,” Brandon said. “Only that usually takes you about five minutes. You were gone much longer than that. So we came looking for you, just in case.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I suppose.”

They both sat down on either side of us, staring out at the rolling waves, black as pitch. “So, what looks what way?” Briana asked.

Again I sank my head down to my chest. “You don’t want to know.”

“Fuck,” Brandon said, hearing the obvious dread in my voice.

“Yeah, fuck,” Briana reiterated.

“Yeah,” I said. “We tried. But then a new twist to all this presented itself.”

“Fuck,” Brandon repeated.

“Yeah, fuck,” Briana, too, repeated.

“Yeah, fuck,” I thirded. “Fuck, fuck, fuck indeed.”

Chapter 9

Sarongs Bought (Yet Again)

So we filled them in, their faces blanching beneath the moon’s glowing rays. “Guess we’ll be needing those telephone repairmen uniforms sooner than expected,” Brandon groaned.

“Looks that way,” I agreed, raising him a moan to his groan.

He saw my moan and raised me a sigh. “Let’s get going, then.”

And so we got up, retrieved the uniforms, and got down to the task at hand. Sadly, we were holding a crappy hand, but the pot was so big, so important, that we had little choice but to keep on playing for it.

***

With the help of a map, and a cab driver who didn’t seem to mind, or care, that we asked to be dropped off in the middle of a road, in the middle of the night, in the middle of an extinct volcano’s mountainside, we found ourselves about a hundred feet directly below the house we were searching for. It was on the smallish side, two stories, dark, with evidence of stalled construction scattered around it, a road still in transition, uprooted trees waiting for a new home.

We flicked on our flashlights and began the trek up. The path was rocky, unkempt, difficult at best. We huffed and puffed and, fifteen minutes later, made it to just outside the house. As we had noticed from the road, it was dark, but not from lack of electricity. The windows had been blackened out, covered from the inside with some sort of opaque paper. Still, hints of light poked out in small slits along the sides.

“Someone doesn’t want to be seen,” I made note.

“Or found,” added Brandon. “Again.”

I gulped. “Then they’re not gonna be too happy seeing us.”

“No,” Will agreed, “they’re not. Maybe we should turn around and go home. I can’t ask you to do this. Too dangerous.”

“Too late,” I said. “We’ve come this far, might as well see it through. Besides, I think I have an idea.”

“Oh, goodie,” Brandon groaned. “Because your ideas are always so spot on.”

I punched him in the arm. “Asshole. Do
you
have any ideas how to proceed?”

He looked around. “There a bar around here?”

I, too, looked from side to side. “Nope.”

He shook his head. “Then, no, no ideas. Please, do continue.”

I sighed and said, “Look at the side of the building.”

Our group all stared in that direction, the full moon illuminating what I was indicating. “The phone lines go in over there,” Will said, already catching on. He tiptoed to the box before yanking on several of the wires. Then he returned to our little group. “Done.”

“What?” asked Brandon. “Now they can’t order a pizza?”

Again I hit him on the arm. “Idiot. Now they need a telephone repairman. Two, in fact.”

He looked to me, then to the jumpsuits we were holding, then back to me. “Oh,” he ohed.

“Yeah, genius. Oh.” I paused, shaking my head. “Now let’s wait a half hour and go make some noise by that telephone box. If we can’t bring Mohammed to the mountain, we’ll bring the mountain to Mohammed.”

“You mean two mountains, right?” Briana asked. “Two big, Hawaiian, Mormon mountains?”

I smiled. (At least one of my friends had some sort of brains. I was relieved it didn’t have to be me anymore. Mine was severely overworked as it was.) “Yep. And they’ll be bringing us inside soon enough.”

We sat on the ground and counted the stars. That lasted about ten whiny minutes. Then we counted Brandon’s tricks, which most definitely filled the remaining twenty. Then Brandon and I got dressed in our jumpsuits. Comfortable, if completely unstylish. A few seconds later, we were standing by the telephone box, making a racket as Briana and Will hid behind a tree with two large limbs as weapons, just in case. Though, in truth, the Hawaiians would’ve done way more damage to the sticks than the other way around.

As expected, not five minutes later, they came running out. (Well, lumbering out, anyway.) “Who the fuck are you?” the bigger one asked.

“Better question,” I managed, trying my best to hide the fear in my voice. “Who the fuck are you? This is state-owned property. Closed for repairs. Vacant. Our monitors showed an unexpected interruption of service and we came out to see what the deal was. What’s your excuse?”

I stood there, arms akimbo, legs spread apart, trying (failing) to seem bigger, more threatening. “Yeah,” added Brandon, mimicking my pose as best he could, nelly queen that he is. “I’ll just run back to our truck and call this in, if you like. They can send out security.”

“No,” the second one practically shouted. “I mean, no, no need for that. We, um, are security. This ranger station has been experiencing, um, vandal attacks lately. They sent us out to, um, to, um, prevent such attacks.” The second so-called security guard nodded, as did we.

“Fine. No problems, then. We just need to get inside to have a quick look,” I said, going for broke.

“Inside?” the second one asked. “Why inside? The wiring is obviously out here.” He pointed to the box we’d been messing with, the wires still dangling down.

“Because,” said Brandon, thankfully coming to my rescue, “the, uh, box is working fine. The disconnect must’ve occurred internally, at the source, in the, uh, the basement.”

“The basement?” asked the first behemoth.

“The basement,” Brandon repeated.

“The basement?” echoed the second Hawaiian.

“The basement,” I said, making it a complete go-around. “Should be a quick fix. Just lead us to it and we’ll be out of your hair in no time. Either that or a whole crew stops by tomorrow. We wouldn’t want that, would we?”

They moved a few feet away to converse in privacy, returning a minute later. “Fine,” the larger of the two agreed. “We’ll take you down to the basement. But please make it quick. Oh, and our boss is inside and he hates to be disturbed, so if you could be extra quiet, we’d really appreciate it.”

“Extra quiet. No problem,” I told them, the two of us already following them toward the front of the house. I turned around and gave our cohorts a thumbs up, and, seconds later, we were inside the belly of the beast.

The place was dark, deadly (gulp) quiet, the furniture covered in sheets. Only a few lights were lit, the windows, as we’d already seen, covered in black paper. We ignored all this and headed to the basement, silent as church mice. (As if we’d ever encountered one of those before. The church variety, at any rate.)

We descended the stairs, down, down, down. One of the Hawaiians flicked a switch from the top. They didn’t, thank goodness, follow us down. I stared up at them, a lump in my throat the size of Cleveland. Trapped like a bug in a rug. (Or a queen in a dungeon. Two queens, that is.) “Thanks,” I hollered up. “We’ll be done in fifteen minutes, tops.”

The smaller Hawaiian shook his head. “Fine. Stay here. We’ll come back and get you. And, please, be quiet. No noise.” He put his sausage-thick finger to his lips, the universal sign for
shut the fuck up
.

I nodded and mirrored the gesture. “No problem,” I whispered.

But, of course, there was a problem.

There’s always a problem.

Always.

We heard them lock the door behind them.
Click
. We waited a few seconds and checked, just in case the noise was the sound of our last collective brain cells going
click
inside our heads. Sadly, as suspected, we were officially, terrifyingly locked in.

“So close,” I moaned.

“Which is only good in horseshoes and hand grenades,” Brandon quipped.

“Got one?” I asked. “A hand grenade, I mean.”

“I left it in my other pocket, sorry,” he said. “Now what?”

Only the
now what?
abruptly became a
what now?

Bang
, came the first shot, quickly followed by another, both overhead, both loud and jarring. Thirty seconds later, two more,
bang, bang
.

“Fuckin A,” I shouted, loudly, the sound echoing from one cement wall to the other.

“Shh,” Brandon whispered, covering my mouth. “I doubt they’re out of bullets. Hide.”

Did I neglect to mention that the basement had been partitioned off? No windows, no walls, no hiding places? Well, it was, and there weren’t. “Where?” I asked, the question muffled by his sweaty hand.

Not that it mattered much anymore. Not two minutes later, we heard the door go
click
yet again. We threw our arms up, dropped to our knees, and I shouted, “Don’t shoot us; we’re too young to die!”

“And too pretty!” added Brandon.

“Our mother would be so proud of you,” Briana shouted back down.

We looked up in stunned surprise. “Better a live sissy than a dead hero,” I retorted as she and Will ran downstairs.

“You’re okay?” Will asked, an obvious look of relief splashed wide across his face as he grabbed me in a big bear hug, his cheek pressed up tight to my cheek.

“Seems so,” Brandon replied. “Now where’s mine?”

Will reached his arm out and pushed Brandon into our group, soon joined by Briana, all of us smiling and clinging on, until I thought to ask, “Um, don’t get me wrong, this is quite lovely and all, but, well, who was shot upstairs?”

To which Briana replied, “Everyone, it would seem. Jed, Liko, and both Hawaiians. Whoever did it must’ve come in from a side door or window because we didn’t see anyone. We heard the gunshots and came running, spotted them all upstairs, and then found you both down here, all in a matter of minutes. Guess the shooters didn’t know about you two or didn’t care.”

“Holy fuck,” I managed. “So we weren’t the only ones looking for them. Little good that information does us now. No more evidence, no more clues, all the suspects shot and killed.”

It was then we heard a new noise: not a shot, as before, but a dragging sound from up above. We four tiptoed up the stairs and exited the basement, the only sound now our ragged breathing. And then the creak of a floorboard. We moved stealthily around a corner, and there he was, a trail of blood behind him, his skin now gray where once it had been a deep, dark tan.

“Liko,” I managed, my voice cracking.

He looked up but didn’t seem to recognize us. We ran over, two on either side of him. He grunted, his head collapsing to the floor, his breathing shallow.

“Who did this?” Will asked.

Liko moaned. “Two men,” he managed. “In masks.”

“But why?” Will asked, though obviously we knew the answer already.

“Information,” he grunted in reply. “Know. Too. Much.” The words just barely made their way out from between his cracked lips.

“What information?” Will asked. “Tell us, we’ll make sure to get them for this.”

There was no reply, at least not right away. Then, with what little energy he had left, he coughed, and rather cryptically replied, “Check the koi pond.” And with a final raspy exhale, he was gone.

We looked away, stood up, and started to make our way to the front door. Will walked over to the phone and called the authorities, disguising his voice. We bowed our heads, collecting our thoughts.

“Strange,” Briana eventually said, once we were outside. “There’s no koi pond around here that I noticed. Just these thin woods and this ranger house. And we were at Liko’s already; there was no koi pond there, either. Though, unfortunately for us, there’s one in just about every hotel in Waikiki. Meaning, we’re screwed.”

We all looked to each other, three frowns and one knowing smile. “What’s the shit-eatin’ grin for?” Brandon asked.

“I think I know which koi pond he was referring to,” I offered.

They stared at me in surprise. “You do?”

“Uh huh,” I uh-huhed. “Mister Yamasuka has one inside his house.” I blushed, looking at Will.

“Um, okay,” he said, keenly aware of how I knew this, but gentleman enough to let it go. “That makes some sense, I suppose. Liko must’ve heard Mister Yamasuka say something about his koi pond at some point. Must be a hiding place. A watery safe of sorts.”

“Sounds reasonable. But what if the cops already know about whatever is hidden?” Brandon asked. “If Liko was about to testify against Mister Yamasuka, then maybe he already told the police about the pond.”

“Nah,” Briana said. “Then he wouldn’t have told us to check it out. My guess is, he was saving that bit of information. A final bargaining chip. Just in case.”

I sighed. “Only Mister Yamasuka, it seems, isn’t interested in bargaining anymore.” I looked back at the house, instantly remembering the carnage, my stomach churning now that the shock had finally given way to disgust. “Still, it’s of no use to us. Liko was our only connection to Mister Yamasuka. I wouldn’t have the first clue where that house of his was. Not like I was writing down the directions on our way up there. And I seriously doubt he’s listed in the phone book.”

“Nope,” Briana agreed. “But Will could find it out. He could call his superiors and ask.”

Will shook his head. “I could, but then we’d be possibly tipping the bad guys off that we’re on to them. There’s too great a risk that they would find out that we were asking. It’s a small police force around here; word would quickly spread. Then Mister Yamasuka would be told, and hide whatever is in the pond someplace else.” He paused, thinking about our options. “There is, I think, one small ray of hope. Maybe.”

“Maybe?” I asked, my heart still pounding from all the recent activities that had befallen us.

“Maybe,” he repeated. “If
he’s
willing to help.”

“Ah,” I ahed, somehow guessing what he was getting at. “That’s a big maybe, though.”

“Better a big maybe than nothing at all,” said he, just as the ambulances and police cars arrived, their lights filling the dark void at the bottom of the hill.

***

Now’s where things got tricky. (Yeah, I know, as if things hadn’t already been thorny enough, right?) See, legally, we should’ve stayed and given the police some sort of report, Will especially, but four murders would’ve meant our being down at the station for hours and hours trying to explain why we were at the scene of the gruesome crime. Plus, we knew that not all the police were on our side. In other words, if this damn investigation was ever to end, Will would have to take it upon himself, with our support, to go commando (and not the fun, underwearless type either). And, really, we had little choice now. With so many people turning up dead, and the trial a scant few days away, it was either that or see all those deaths, especially Lenny’s, go unpunished.