Diamond Head (22 page)

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Authors: Charles Knief

BOOK: Diamond Head
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“I will come back,” I said. “After I take care of some business in Honolulu.”
He nodded. “The land is sacred and can heal. Even though a Cain is cursed and must wander the earth, you're welcome on this land. You're family now, a kane. You're not cursed on this island. Give your
mana
to the land, and the land will make you strong again.” He embraced me. “I will be waiting.”
 
 
I
parked my Jeep in the five-dollar lot near the taxi stand off Beretania. Taking my briefcase, I walked to the restaurant on River Street. It was late afternoon and the restaurant was nearly deserted. I took possession of a corner booth, ordered tea and waited. Chawlie wasn't in, but I expected he'd show up soon enough.
Twenty minutes later the old man came in from his back room, blinking in the light like a displaced owl. He saw me at once and shuffled to my booth.
“You really are a barbarian now, John Caine,” Chawlie said, fingering his own chin whiskers.
“I got lazy in captivity.”
“You live dangerously,” he said, sliding into the seat across from me.
“No longer, Uncle,” I said. “I have a business proposition for you.”
Chawlie's eyes narrowed. “No do business with you anymore. You die tomorrow, tonight, mebbe next week, I don't know. You let people shoot you again, sink your boat, burn you up. What next? You very bad risk. You are very unstable man. Not good for business partner.”
“I'm alive. Thompson is not.”
“You kill him?”
“Yes.”
He considered it. “Still. No deal. You find someone not as old as you, he can take you easy.”
“I know some that probably could,” I said. “This is different.” I opened my briefcase and removed a handful of the little manila envelopes. His eyes widened when I shook their contents onto the table. The glistening stones lay in a pile, quickly swept together, hidden by deft hands while his eyes searched the room for witnesses to my foolish act.
“These real?”
“Yes.”
“Most of these two carats!”
“If you say so,” I said. “I'm no expert on diamonds.”
He picked one and held it to the light. A kaleidoscope of color burst from the stone. In spite of himself, Chawlie smiled.
“Where you get this?”
“Thompson. I stole them.”
His smile widened. “You steal these before you kill him or after?”
“Before.”
“He know you did it?”
“Yes.”
“You good man, John Caine! You be my partner!”
“How much are these worth?”
He moved the diamonds around the tabletop, arranging them in patterns, losing himself in the game. I'd counted one hundred forty-eight stones, all approximately two carats. Some were bigger. I'd made a quick stop at a jeweler at Ala Moana and asked what a two-carat VVSI stone was worth, reading what was written on the envelope. I figured wholesale at around four thousand dollars a carat. That would make each stone worth from sixty-five hundred to ten thousand dollars.
“Oh, diamond market not very good these days,” said Chawlie at last. “Can probably get five hundred a carat.”
I started picking up the stones from the scarred tabletop. One became lodged in a deep gouge in the wood and lay there reflecting the afternoon sun. I saw why people became enamored of diamonds. It held a beautiful cold fire, like a portable rainbow you could call up at will.
“No! I find out! I mebbe wrong, John Caine!”
“Yeah. You're maybe wrong. Try again.”
“Two thousand! Tops, mebbe three.”
I continued picking up the diamonds, one at a time, lingering when my fingers brushed the slanting beam of sunlight that came through the front window.
“I give you five thousand each stone! I take all risk on selling.”
I thought about it. Five thousand dollars a stone. Close to three quarters of a million dollars. About half what they were worth. Chawlie was offering to split the take with me fifty-fifty. It wasn't as much as I could have received if I sold them one at a time, but it was better than expected and nearly what I needed.
“I'm no merchant,” I said. “Cash. Three days.”
“I can do, John Caine. You give me now, I pay you three days time.”
“Of course, Chawlie. You good risk. Nobody ever shoot you, eh?”
He smiled, a wide, toothy grin. “Thompson make you rich, yah? He always talk winners and losers, winners and losers. He big loser.”
I nodded.
“As big as it gets,” I said.
 
 
T
here was an unoccupied table in the corner of the Marina, the open-air restaurant at the top of the slip where
Duchess
used to dock. The sun had vanished behind the Waianae Mountains by the time I got there, and there were no breezes in the warm summer night. The Kona winds had come again, bringing a close, sticky humidity without the cleansing trade winds that usually grace these islands. The night was black. Only the orange sodium lights of Makakilo and Pearl City lined the great darkness that was Pearl Harbor.
Max had called me on my cellular telephone as I was leaving Chawlie's place. He was on the island, he had my money, and the admiral wanted to talk to me. I agreed to meet them at the Marina. I didn't know why, but when I thought about it I guessed it was because it felt comfortable there. It had, after all, been a part of my life for more than a decade.
Max and Admiral MacGruder arrived ten minutes after I did. Max was in full dress uniform, wearing all his ribbons, and carrying a briefcase. He was impressive. I recognized the admiral immediately, even though he'd lost considerable weight since I'd last seen him. He had graying, close-cropped hair on a narrow skull. His build was spare and skinny, like a marathon runner or a terminal cancer patient. He saw me and smiled. It
was a sad kind of smile. This man did not naturally view the world as a happy place. When I stood at his approach, I noticed he no longer had the ramrod posture I'd remembered.
“Mr. Caine.”
“Call me John, Admiral.”
“Call me Winston, John. You're no longer in uniform.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
It was a little joke, meant to relax him. It was also intended to let him know the depth of respect and affection I had for him. A waitress came and the admiral ordered a bottle of Opus One cabernet sauvignon. Max shook his head and ordered a Corona Extra.
“Max told me your story. At least part of it. I can't tell you how much I appreciate … what you did. There are no words, John. No words.”
“I owed you, sir.”
Our drinks arrived, and we sat in silence while the bottles were opened. When the waitress left he said, “Most people wouldn't understand that.”
“Some debts cannot be discharged any other way,” I said.
“That's true, as far as it goes. But now I am in your debt.”
I shook my head. “Not at all.”
“You suffered great loss.”
“You have, too.”
“It is impossible,” he said, “getting through life without some loss. The chief here has something that belongs to you.”
Max reached under the table and handed me the black leather briefcase. “It's all there, John,” said Max. “Plus a little.”
“There's no way for me to adequately reward you, John. The money you gave to Max for safekeeping is there, as is a check to compensate you for the loss of your home.” When I began to protest, he put up his hand to stop me. “It's only right,” he said. “I've enough money. It's the right thing to do.”
So what do you say to that? I said thank you and took another sip of the cabernet.
“You suffered another loss, I'm told. Kate Alapai, the detective, wasn't it? I met her. She was a fine woman. I'm sorry for your loss. I know what it's like.”
“It all hasn't hit me yet, Admiral. I'm just taking it one day at a time.”
“Yes,” he said. “That's the only way to do it. Have you had a chance to make any plans?”
I shook my head. “I'm going to Kauai in a couple of days. I'll spend as much time as it takes. There's a heiau there, and some of Kate's people are restoring it. They invited me to work with them. Work on the stones, weed the taro patch. You know, carry water, chop wood. Right now it sounds good.”
“Weed taro? Like Scipio Africanus, the general-farmer who saved Rome from Hannibal? I can see you doing that for a short time. Then you'll have to do something else.”
“It will do for now. I need to find some peace.”
The admiral nodded, his lips pursed into a thin line. He too needed peace. I hoped that I'd given him a chance, now that there were no longer uncertainties about his daughter. “Max tells me you do this kind of thing for a living,” he said. “When you feel up to it, give me a call. I might have something for you.”
“I might retire.”
“You may, but I doubt it.” MacGruder stood up. “I've taken enough of your time, John. Finish the bottle. Max and I have to get back to Coronado. There are some things that need our attention, or at least that's what people believe. We don't wish for them to find out otherwise, now do we?”
“Thompson tried to blackmail you, didn't he?”
There was a pause, and then he said, “Yes. He sent me a copy of a tape with Mary in it. It was, ah, not a pleasant experience. He followed up with a phone call, demanding money, threatening to ruin me.”
“Is that when you sent Max to see me?”
His gray eyes became steely. “Max did that on his own,
John. I would never have considered asking you to do what you did. I could never do that. Max didn't tell me about your involvement until you had left Pearl Harbor and were out chasing Thompson. By then all I could do was smooth the waters for you a little and get the law enforcement types off your back when you returned.”
“Thank you for that.”
“I didn't send Max. He came on his own. Sometimes he listens to my telephone conversations. He heard Thompson's threat. And I found that out only after the fact. Max knew Mary and it hurt him to see what had happened to her, and what Thompson was trying to do to me.”
Max had been quiet up to this point, and he leaned forward on massive forearms. “John, the man's telling the truth. He didn't know I was here. That's why I only had one day to find you. And here you are. Guess I had the right idea. You know if Thompson had been arrested, and he got one of those asshole lawyers they have these days, he'd put Mary on trial. Thompson would have dragged everybody down with him, and the admiral would have gone down, too. This way it's over, and it stays over.”
I nodded. Except Kate wasn't with me, and never would be again. “I understand,” I said. “You did the best you could. Goodbye, Admiral. I hope to see you someday. Under better circumstances.”
He shook my hand. I was happy to see he still had a firm grip. Maybe he would get better. That's what this was supposed to be all about, anyway. “Call me if you get bored, John, or if you need anything.”
As he left, Max patted me on the shoulder. “Well, sailor boy, you did good. I'm sorry about Kate. These things don't always work out for everybody.”
“She was doing her job, Max. That's all I can say right now.”
“You can reach the admiral through me. I'll be there if you ever need anything. And so will he. He owes you now, John.
And so do I.” He followed MacGruder, leaving me with my thoughts and the bottle of wine. And the briefcase. I opened it and saw neat banded stacks of currency. It looked like the same money I'd given Max. There was an envelope, too; a slim, cream-colored no. ten, and it was unsealed.
I picked it up and lifted the flap. Inside was a light blue certified check from something called WMG Holding Company payable to me in the amount of two hundred fifty thousand dollars. It was more than
Duchess
was worth, including the contents. I closed the briefcase and locked it. There would be time to consider it. There would be time to consider all of it. But not now. Not tonight. Maybe not for a long time. I reached for the bottle and filled my glass.
 
 
“T
he wall looks good.” Ed Alapai delivered a slap on the back with his judgment. I was proud of my reconstruction of the ancient wall of the heiau and it gratified me that he approved. “This is good, Kane, you know?” Alapai always referred to me as Kane. Not since Kate's memorial service did he call me by my name. It was his way of showing approval, his way of taking me into the family.
I was sweating under a December sun. This far north the Hawaiian sun could still be brutal even in winter.
“Here, man, it looks like you need it.” He handed me a water bottle. “Come into the trees. Only a commoner works in the sun like that.”
“Well, call me a commoner,” I said.
“You're leaving,” said Alapai when we'd settled in the shade of a banyan tree. It wasn't native, but we'd decided to leave it as it shaded the heiau all year round. It even provided protection from rainstorms. Mosquitoes left us alone. That was one of the mysteries of this place. Mosquitoes always attacked in the shade. But they didn't here.
“You knew.”
He nodded. “I could see the signs, man. We're not done here, but we've made progress. You've helped.” The temple
site, on the northern flank of Anahola Mountain, had been covered by jungle growth and shrubs when Ed found it. He had already cleared an impressive area alone, with just his machete, before I arrived. Together we had uncovered more ancient structures, one of which I'd taken on as my project, and I reconstructed its black lava rock walls. It was hard work, demanding of both mind and body, just what I needed. As my injuries healed and my spirit mended it became easier.
“How long have you known?”
“When did you first think about leaving?”
“The thought hit me last week, when we went into town for groceries.”
“You were looking at the newspapers. I knew then.”
I nodded. He was right. That was when the idea solidified. It had been building over the past month, gaining strength, but I didn't recognize it for what it was. When I saw the headlines of the happenings away from this island paradise and felt a hunger for information, I knew that my isolation was no longer necessary.
“When will you leave?”
“Can you take me to the airport tomorrow morning?”
“Yes,” he said. He raised his arms to enfold the forest around us, encompassing the north shore of Kauai. “It will be here for you when you need to come back.” He smiled, a fierce, grim smile of a warrior-priest from outside of time. “And you will find the need to return. I know you, brother. You will come to miss Kauai as you do Kate. There will be always a longing for this place. And here you will always be welcome.” The big man got to his feet. “Wait here a moment. Relax in the shade while I get something.”
I slumped against the log and rested while he walked down to the little house where he lived with his family. The house was the first thing we built. Before I came they had been living in a rough A-frame that was little more than a tent. With some of the money recovered from the diamonds we built a
sturdy two-room pole house with indoor plumbing and a solar water heater. I split the rest of the diamond recovery with him fifty-fifty. That would have been Kate's share and since Ed Alapai was her closest living relative it was all I could do. As the admiral had said, it was only right.
I was nearly asleep when he returned. “I have a gift for you.” Ed handed me a small wooden object. It was smooth to the touch, and had a hole drilled through the small end for a string woven from rough fibers. “This is a
paloa.
That means ‘tongue.' It represents friendship and trust.”
I took the paloa and hung it around my neck.
“You will be Cain, again,” said the big man. “Condemned to roam the earth. That seems to be your curse. But always remember you now have a place to come home to.”
I nodded. I tried to say something, but my throat closed upon itself.
“It's to go with you on your travels and to remind you of us, of home. Someday, my friend, you will find what you are searching for.”
“And what's that?”
“Peace. And a good woman. You can't have one without the other, you know.”
“They keep killing them off.”
He nodded. “That's why the good ones are so rare.”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“There's a flight out of Lihue to Honolulu at seven-thirty. That early enough?”
“Sure.”
“Where are you going?”
“San Diego, I think. That's where I was headed when I came to Hawaii with
Duchess.
I think I'll buy a new boat. Maybe drop in on Max.”
“Kimo tells me he's a good man.”
“One of the best.”
“So you're a rich man,
Kane.
You got good friends, and you
had love. You got money. What more could you want?”
“She's out there,” I said, pointing toward the ocean beyond the green cliff face of Anahola Mountain. “Use your magic. Bring her back.”
“I wish I could. I miss her, too.” He shook his head. “Better get back to work. Clean your tools and we'll run down to the beach to clean off this sweat. Last time for you. On the way back we'll buy beer, chips, maybe a ham. Have some friends over tonight. Throw a party, a luau. Do a little dancing. Give you a send-off in style. That sound good to you?”
It did.

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