Molokai Reef (19 page)

Prostitution
carried an ugly connotation in too many religious-retentive cultures.
Euphemistically, it was referred to as marriage or dating or
cohabiting, distinguishable only by length of contract. Regardless
of the term, it involved the exchange of services, often quantifiable
by economic measures.

Andrea’s
girls were more apt to be researching red light districts for their
dissertations than they were to frequent those districts. At the
minimum, an applicant must possess a Bachelor’s degree, but
most knew that postgraduate work improved ones chances. After
passing the second interview, Andrea hired consultants who tested
their conversational abilities and physical fitness. As a condition
of employment, each girl had to pass a top-notch finishing school in
Provence, France. A recent check of the Web site database showed
Gybe that one hundred thirteen girls were on the employment waiting
list.

On
the client side, an existing client must have referred each new
client. The potential client completed a multi-page questionnaire,
slightly more complicated than required to buy a new home and then
submitted it via the Web site along with a non-refundable ten
thousand dollar application fee. After review, Andrea forwarded the
application to San Francisco.

In
San Francisco, Jennifer, a former associate, headed the Northern
California office of the largest nationwide personnel recruiting
firm. Using the extensive resources available to headhunters, she
vetted each new client before their first invitation to
Lagoonabago
.
If accepted, the client signed a two-page document acknowledging
rules and penalties and remained on probation for three visits. The
waiting list for new clients was almost double the length of the list
for the girls.

Clients
paid by credit card. Gybe set up the system so that the statements
would show transactions billed to fictitious hotels, resorts, travel
agencies, restaurants, spas, etc. On each visit, the client could
specify the type of transaction and location. The tactic diminished
the curiosity of homebound spouses, pesky accounting firms, and
satiated the IRS definition of legitimate business expense.

There
was pressure to accept purchase orders but Gybe convinced Andrea that
payments would be slow, especially with government purchase orders.

She
never accepted checks from campaign funds nor accept politicians as
clients. After all, the girls had their standards too.

The
group moved inside and one of the girls brought drinks. Until the
clients arrived, drinks were non-alcoholic. Andrea introduced the
girls as Gybe tried to build memory associations between them and
their names. Perkiest breasts belonged to Pamela. Lindsey’s
legs went from the deck to heaven. Amber’s ass was a nice
double handful. Perky Pamela, Legs Lindsey, and Amber’s Ass.
Got it.

“
So
Andrea, I was on the Web site last week cleaning up the database and
uploading some fixes. You are busy. Have you thought anymore about
franchises?”

“
Yes
and no. If you looked at the finances, you saw that the cash flow is
substantial. And thanks to your computer wizardry and my knowledge
of international banking, taxes have been minimal.”

After
graduating magna cum laude at Wharton Business School in
Philadelphia, a Fortune 100 corporation headquartered in the
northeastern United States had hired Andrea. Unknown to Andrea at
the time, the company was building an elite team tasked to move the
corporate headquarters to the Caribbean. Preliminary calculations
predicted that the move could save the company upwards of three
hundred forty million dollars per year in federal, state, and local
taxes.

Andrea
rose to the challenge and soon to the head of the team. After the
successful relocation of that HQ, Andrea convinced her team to join
her in starting a new company rather than meld into some innocuous
position with the old company. All but one of her coworkers agreed.
Over the next three years, the team relocated seven other Fortune 500
companies offshore earning very handsome consulting fees. Andrea was
thirty-two and no longer challenged when she sold her company to a
big accounting firm who unclear on the concept relocated themselves
to Liberia and disappeared.

“
I’ve
decided to expand as you suggest, but I will maintain ownership. No
franchising. I have the cash to keep control. I’ve talked it
over with the girls – the ones here and the ones who’ve
worked with me in the past. I’m concluding the purchase of two
more Lagoon 470 catamarans from the Caribbean bareboat fleet. Pamela
has the Caracas shipyard ready to begin as soon as the boats are
delivered.” Practicing his memory techniques, Gybe nodded to
the perky breasted Pamela.

“
I’ve
picked two former girls to captain the cats when they are ready. My
attorney is drafting papers for a stock distribution plan.”

“
Great!
Andrea, that’s terrific.”

As
the two caught up on events, the girls drifted away to read, listen
to music, and rest. Gybe told Andrea about Susan and her plight.
Andrea offered her help; she had clients from the biotech corn
industry. Several were attending a mini-convention at the Papohaku
Resort, the same resort on the west end of the island that Gybe and
Kara had driven to yesterday.

“
I
think one of them is scheduled for tonight.”

She
motioned Gybe to follow. At her laptop, they reviewed the
backgrounds of tonight’s clients. Gybe noted that Les of
SynCorn was on the list.

“
Les
is a first-timer?”

“
Jennifer
in San Francisco checked him out. Why? Do you know him?”

After
relaying to Andrea his knowledge of Les, Andrea insisted that Gybe
return for cocktail hour as her personal guest.

He
was rowing back towards
Ferrity
when he heard shouts from
ashore.

35

Ashore,
a man waved both arms above his head motioning Gybe to come over.
Two women and another lad stood nearby. Backstroking one oar and
forward stroking the starboard oar, Gybe spun the dinghy shoreward.

The
face of the old wharf, lathed with horizontal planks, rose five feet
from the water. Randomly hung tires formed makeshift rub guards
protecting either the wharf or docked vessels - steel hulled working
vessels, not fastidiously maintained yachts. Every fifty feet,
bolted securely to the deck of the wharf, large mooring cleats, two
feet from tip to tip, stood awaiting the next hawser or mooring line.

Standing
in the dinghy, holding on to the wharf, Gybe spoke with the people.

They
told him they had found a jetski on the beach down by the old Boy
Scout Camp. “Looks like it run up on the beach.” On an
earlier day, Gybe had walked the beach. He knew they were referring
to an old pavilion, slowly falling into the sea, about a mile east of
Lono Harbor. The people were worried that someone had fallen off in
the ocean, allowing the jetski to beach itself. He doubted this
theory since any sensible rider attached the kill lanyard to their
body. If a rider fell off, the lanyard would either kill the engine
or cause the jetski to idle in tight circles.

“
I’ll
notify the Coast Guard when I get back to my boat.”

Gybe
rowed to
Ferrity
and called the Coast Guard on VHF radio
channel 16. He knew that here in Lono Harbor cell phone coverage was
poor to non-existent.

When
the Coast Guard answered, he suggested they switch to a working
channel 22A. This was not an emergency so he did not want to tie up
the main frequency. He told the Coast Guard the story and told them
he would investigate and report. They agreed to stand by. The
nearest Coast Guard vessel was at least an hour away. With what
little information was available, the Coast Guard decided not to
dispatch a helicopter until Gybe reported.

The
south swell ran too high to take the dinghy outside the harbor and
then attempt a reef crossing to the Boy Scout camp, but if he walked
the old jeep trail instead of plowing along the soft sandy shore, he
could be there in less than twenty minutes.

Gybe
put on his hiking boots and threw the portable VHF, first aid kit,
and some water into a daypack. He stopped by
Lagoonabago
on
his way ashore and apprised Andrea of the situation. It was unlikely
that the handheld VHF would reach the Coast Guard radio towers. He
asked Andrea to stand by for a relay.

At
the wharf, he tied the dinghy to an old barge cleat and walked
towards the jeep trail. A padlocked gate prevented cars from
entering the trail. Bullet riddled signs warned against trespassing
on the private property of Moloka‘i Ranch. Gybe climbed the
gate and dropped to the ground.

Closer
than he remembered, he arrived at the camp in less than fifteen
minutes. The jetski was far up on the beach, above the high tide
line. The unit appeared new. Good riddance, thought Gybe.

He
hated jetskis or personal watercraft or whatever the name du jour.
They were loud and obnoxious, the machine equivalent of mosquitoes.
OK, maybe a machine can’t be obnoxious, but in the hands of the
people who rode them, the jetski and rider combination became the
most abominable nuisance on the water. Several coastal cities and
counties had banned them. Like snowmobiles in the wilderness, Gybe
couldn’t fathom the attraction of rocketing through nature on a
noisemaker. Why didn’t someone flood football stadiums and let
them play there?

Ropes
connected to the beast trailed towards the water. Tidal action had
buried most of the rope. An old inner tube lay partially buried
where one rope disappeared under the sand. Gybe suspected the
machine had been there for a couple of days at least.

He
tried to contact the Coast Guard with his handheld radio, but got no
response. When Andrea heard no response from the Coast Guard, she
broke in and relayed his findings to them. He read the state
registration numbers into the radio.

Gybe
could hear Andrea relay the information, but he couldn’t hear
the Coast Guard’s response. After she finished, she called him
back. The Coasties had requested that he stand by for a few minutes.
A patrol boat from Maui was on its way and should arrive within ten
minutes.

Gybe
agreed. Remembering that Mongoose had mentioned a jetski theft, he
told Andrea to ask the Coast Guard to check for theft.

36

Two
hundred yards beyond the jetski, Gybe noticed a large dark shape on
the sand. It was well above the tide line. He wandered up the beach
to investigate.

Having
identified the mass, he stopped twenty yards away to watch the
resting Hawaiian monk seal. Had Gybe lain beside the dozing seal, he
would have found the seal to be up to a foot longer, possibly seven
feet in length. However, at two to four times Gybe’s weight,
he chose to estimate the sleeping animal’s length from afar.
Even as a protected species, the monk seal had achieved the dubious
distinction of being the most endangered marine mammal in America.
Estimates varied, but fewer than fifteen hundred remained. Most
survived around the uninhabited Northwest Hawaiian Islands. So far,
they had fared better than their cousins had. There were fewer than
a thousand Mediterranean monk seals and the last Caribbean monk seal
had been sighted more than fifty years ago.

As
Gybe walked away, he realized that the seals would disappear with the
reef. They fed on reef fishes, eels, octopi, and lobsters –
all reef inhabitants.

The
Darwin-challenged ancient Hawaiians had given the seal a name that
meant ‘dog that runs in rough waters.’ Today, many
scientists believed that the ancestors of pinnipeds, such as the
Hawaiian monk seals, had evolved from terrestrial animals related to
bears and wolves. Twenty million years ago, they returned to the
sea.

Gybe
knew that the reef would die before the seals could evolve back to
land. As carnivores, what would they eat? Mongooses, cats, dogs,
small children? His grin widened as he enumerated the opportunities.

He
ambled back to the jetski to await the Coast Guard. Near the beached
noxious beast he found an old fence post smoothed by its recent life
in the surf zone.

By
the time the Coast Guard arrived, the recently shiny carapace
appeared to have tumbled in the surf as well. They confirmed that
the owner reported it stolen a week earlier. No search for the
missing rider was necessary.

Fifteen
minutes after the Coast Guard left, Gybe returned to the gate at the
foot of the jeep trail. As he stepped up on the gate, his eye was
drawn to the chain. While the padlock, which was visible from the
other side, was intact, the chain on the backside of the gate had
been cut. Someone had used a twist tie like those found on a bread
bag to connect the ends of the chain.

37

Back
aboard
Ferrity
from the walk to the jetski, Gybe showered,
changed into pressed chinos, donned an aloha shirt, and slipped into
Rockport boat moccasins. Andrea’s operation was first class
and Gybe dressed to fit in.

With
neither socks nor blue blazer – he was a sailor not a yachtie -
he rowed to
Lagoonabago
.