The Butcher's Granddaughter (25 page)

By midnight I had come up completely dry. I had met six surfers, countless beautiful women wearing more makeup than clothing, a dozen losers of various types and sizes, and a bull-dyke bartender who wanted me to party with her and some friends on the beach after her shift ended. I’d had seven beers in four bars; learned that “mahu” is the Hawaiian word for homosexual (and a club on Kuhio called Hula’s is the best place to find them); and dropped almost a C-note pasting five-spots into the palms of street vendors for information I could have tripped on a sidewalk crack and gotten by accident. I couldn’t figure out what my problem was, though it should have been pretty obvious.

I was lost.

I was also hungry, and the bartender at the last joint I was in recommended a little Italian place called Guccinni’s as the only restaurant on Kuhio with trustworthy food. It was right across the way at the end of a little crack in the street called Alligator Alley. I had taken ten steps down it when a voice behind me said, “You been made, cuz.”

It was neither sinister nor innocent. It was simple and matter-of-fact. I turned around slowly and met the back of Lou’s head.

He was crouched over an easel at the mouth of the alley with an airbrush in his hand. Built out from the wall behind the easel was a low planter with some bushy ferns that seemed to lean forward in appreciation of his company. He had used them to prop up some of his better work to attract customers. There weren’t any. It didn’t look like there very often were. Nonetheless, talk like that made me nervous. I put my hands in my pockets to make him wonder and walked up behind him.

The airbrush paused almost imperceptibly, and then continued. I said, “Did you say something?”

“I said you been made, man. Noticed, recognized, labeled.” He didn’t turn his head to talk.

There was a spot on the planter wall next to his easel that wasn’t occupied by paintings or fern fronds. I planted myself there and waited for him to say something else.

His seat was a blue plastic milk crate filched from one of the restaurant kitchens that had their doors on the alley; I could see stacks of them back in the gloom. Within arm’s reach on the bricks was a large box of wooden kitchen matches with a pack of Carltons on it. The edges of the cigarette pack were perfectly matched with the box. Above them a small sign hung over the corner of one of the surrounding paintings. It read, “Portraits In 15 Minutes 25 Dollars.” The lettering was ornate calligraphy done in about six different colors that must have taken longer to finish than an average portrait. I finally said, “I know what it means. Who are you?”

“Lou.” Again, the matter-of-fact tone.

“You got a last name?”

He turned and looked at me for the first time. His face went a little bleary and then he said, “Yeah.” And that was all.

I tried again, more gently. “Be cute some more. Who the fuck are you?”

“I could be a friend, little lost one, if your mouth don’t screw you over.” He returned his attention to his canvas, and punctuated this last bit with a short hiss of red onto the cloth.

“OK,” I said, “I’ll quit being an asshole if you quit being one.” I put out my hand.

He looked at it, set the airbrush down, and then took it in the brotherhood handshake that everyone uses in the islands. “Lou,” he said once again.

I smiled and tried not to look cunning. “Bird.”

He didn’t ask me about my nickname. His concentration went back to the apparently troublesome red portion of his most recent creation. “How long you been in town?”

“Less than a day,” I offered, busting a smoke.

He didn’t look at me but his eyebrows went up. The expression wrinkled his forehead and made him age. “And you already find your way to Kuhio? Not bad, friend, not bad. But whoever you looking for ain’t here.”

“How do you know I’m looking for somebody?”

“’Cause you been fallin’ all over the street for hours like you was drunk and can’t find the can, man.” He laughed deeply at that one, and his thin, pale body shook. I noticed that he hadn’t moved or done anything with his left hand since I had sat down. It lay in his lap, carelessly, like a damp towel draped over the edge of a bathtub. “I told you what your problem was.”

“Yeah, I’ve been made.” I studied the ash on my cigarette. “Too many questions?”

“To the wrong people.” He nodded in agreement with himself. He put the airbrush down and sat back on the crate. His good hand massaged his neck. “How much you give Tinker there?” He pointed to a guy at a hot dog cart I had braced about two hours earlier. Four inches of cocoa-colored stomach protruded from between the bottom of his t-shirt and the top of huge yellow shorts. He was barefoot, smiling at nothing in particular and not selling any hot dogs. Part of the reason he was smiling was because he had twenty of my dollars in his pocket. I told Lou how much.

“Twenty bones to find out the names of ten or fifteen hookers and a worse than average weed connection. That’s funny. I don’t know how you do it on the mainland, but over here that approach gets you grief.”

Suddenly Lou decided he wanted a smoke. This was a big decision for him. He looked forlornly at the deck of Carltons for a minute, hoping they would get up by themselves and jump to his lips. Then he took the pack, shook it, put a stick precisely in the center of his lips, and laid the pack gently back on the planter. Then he stared at the box of matches the same way, but added a little sigh. He picked up those, slid the cardboard drawer open, placed it on his thigh, and pulled out a match. The match went next to the cigarette between his lips so that he could place the box between his knees, striking side up. Then he retrieved the match, struck it, lit up, and let out the first exhale of a satisfying lung-full. He earned every one.

While he was adjusting the cigarette pack to even up with the sides of the box, I let out a breath and said, “What happened to your arm?”

“That’s the way,” he said, smiling. “Get folks to talk. You don’t need to be shovin’ money everywhere.” Through the smile he told me the story easily, like a well-rehearsed scene in some play. “First job I ever had in the islands was on a private fishing trawler out of Kahului Bay on Maui. Hardest motherfuckin’ work I ever done in my life. Anyway, one day we pull up a net, and there’s a thresher shark tied up in that thing and whippin’ around like a loose fire hose. It’s chewed the net all to shit and we can’t get close enough to it to cut it out, so I grab the baseball bat we used to stun tuna and wade in there to pacify the sonofabitch. Fucker’s on its back, and I wind up to give it a good one in the face when he flips over and sends his tail up into my arm. Ever felt raw sharkskin?”

I shook my head.

“It’s like a coarse grade grinding wheel. Severed the main nerve that goes through my shoulder.” Lou reached in the collar of the cheap flower-print shirt he wore and pulled out a leather thong with a shark tooth on it. “This’s one of his teeth.” He tucked it away and snatched the cigarette from his lips so his eyes wouldn’t water. “Right after that’s when I took up art.”

I sat and watched for a minute while he worked out some of the kinks on his canvas. Five feet from us people walked by in a haze, not noticing, not caring. The ocean was less than a quarter-mile away, but you couldn’t smell it for all the sweat and perfume and tanning lotion. I said, “You want to do a portrait of me? Or is this some special project you’re working on?” I tapped the corner of the canvas.

He pointed to the sign and said, “No, I don’t particularly
want
to do your portrait, but for the regular price I certainly
will
do it.”

I shook my head and pulled a hundred out and gave it to him. He looked at it like both me and the bill suspiciously. “I don’t want one of those flat, stupid tourist portraits,” I said. “Really paint. Let’s see what you can do when you’re properly motivated.”

He stared into my right eye for a while and then said, “OK, haole. But you don’t get to look ’til I’m done.”

I nodded and sat up straight. I just wanted to keep him talking. I would have offered him the money without the painting, but I knew he wouldn’t take it. It also protected him. He had to live here. He didn’t know me from Judas, and somebody throwing him C-notes might not be taken lightly by people who pay attention to that sort of thing. He knew the money wasn’t for the painting—it was for the conversation. I let him start it.

He popped a small reservoir of black paint onto the airbrush and said, “You got a girl?”

“No,” I said, but the answer came too fast. Tanya jumped through my head. Then Del. His eyes caught mine while I was remembering her in the water off of Malibu. Lou just smiled, didn’t press. “Yeah, nobody does down here.”

“You?” I said.

He motioned over his shoulder with the brush. “Works right back there at Herman’s Hideaway.” I squinted. The end of the alley was a wall of short palms, and through the leaves I could vaguely make out cocktail tables. “She’s a waitress. Name’s Moonbeam.”

That was too good
not
to be true. His eyes sparkled when he said it, a combination of love and gratitude. It was an expression out of place in this neighborhood. “That’s nice, man. That’s real nice.”

“Yeah,” he said humbly. “She is.” He let a few seconds pass and then said, “So who you after?”

I said, “Why?”

“See man, that’s your fuckin’ problem, right there. You wanna find this dude, but you too scared.”

“What do you mean, scared?”

“I mean scared. Here I am, willin’ to help, and you won’t tell me nothin’. ’Cause you scared. You scared I’m gonna go run tell somebody, ‘Hey, we gotta dumbass, fresh-off-the-boat haole down here, whack him and I’ll take twenty percent of what’s in his wallet.’” He shook his head loosely. “You gotta relax, man.”

I smiled a goofy smile. He ignored it and went on.

“So, what you know about this guy? Not much, it sound like.”

“Yeah. All I know is what he looks like, and where he was flying to. So I decided to follow him out here and flop around in front of the locals until somebody decided to shoot me and put me out of my misery.”

Lou laughed. “So this dude could be on one a the outer islands, maybe fuckin’ Guam, for all you know. Sounds to me like you got some ass-sittin’ to do. Good thing you got a mentor like me.” He shook his head disdainfully.

“Hey, now, that’s not fair.”

“Cool your jets. You should learn to take a little criticism.”

I let his smirk fly.

“You wanna find somebody, Mr. Bird? You ain’t gonna. So just relax.”

It was out of my mouth before I realized it. “And what, let him find me?”

In answer, he turned the canvas around. There was nothing on it but a field of black with two huge, blue, astonished and staring eyes. Below them was a disembodied cigarette, the smoke drifting up past the right eye and out of the frame. I told him he could keep it.

The next time I saw Lou, the painting was gone.

“Room 1724.”

“Thank you, sir. One moment, please.”

I stood at a payphone that was pretty much
in
the sand of Waikiki Beach. Subtle clicks came over the line as the Hyatt’s switchboard routed the call to Tanya. I watched pretty people with tans and pale tourists without them wander back and forth on the boardwalk. She picked up on the third ring. Her groggy voice mumbled, “Zis you?”

“Get a pen.”

“What?” she said, her voice quickly losing its sleepy edge.

“
Get a pen
.”

“All right, all right, Christ,” she muttered. I could hear a drawer being slid open as she breathed heavily into the receiver. “When did you lan—”

“There’s a place called the Newsroom Café a few blocks away, just south of Beverly Boulevard on Robertson,” I said, cutting her off. “There’s a payphone next to the bathroom inside. Go there right now and call me at this number.” I read the phone number off the payphone. “If it’s busy, keep trying. Keep an eye out for tails. Talk to you in fifteen minutes.” I hung up before she could protest.

I planted myself on the low wall separating sand from concrete and watched Asian surfer girls, their skin glowing in the early morning light. Li’s image tore through me like hot steel. Fifteen minutes went by. Two people used the phone, making me nervous. Twenty-two minutes later it rang. No one seemed to notice as I answered. People who ruled their worlds from payphones were probably fairly common on the beach.

“You’re lucky I’ve got a phone card,” Tanya snapped.

“I checked your purse before I left,” I shot back. “You doing OK?”

She softened a little. “Just cranky is all. You could’ve called when you landed. That would’ve been nice.”

“Sorry. I had stuff to do. You still got that pen?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m at the Ala Moana Hotel in Waikiki, room 811. If you call me, here’s the drill: let it ring twice, then hang up. Call back and let it ring again once, and hang up. I’ll call you in twenty minutes at the phone you’re at now.”

“OK. You find that lawyer yet?”

“No. That’s why I called you. I’m coming up empty.”

“What can I do?”

“You can look behind you, for one.”

Tanya was silent for a minute. “OK. What am I looking for?”

“Is there a heavyset black guy in there somewhere?”

“Yeah. A couple.”

“This guy is about sixty, sixty-five. Gray hair, spotty gray beard. Looks a little bit like Uncle Remus. Wears a porkpie hat pushed way back on his head.”

Tanya said, “Hold on,” and the receiver went silent. Sounds of breakfast in a quiet café floated over the line—glasses clinking, muted conversation. “Nope. Nobody here older than about forty.”

“All right. What time is it there?”

“A little after nine-thirty.”

I noted the three-hour difference. “Well, he’ll be there. He has breakfast there almost every morning about now. His name’s Cain. His friends call him Big Daddy.”

“Big Daddy Cain?” Tanya snorted. “What is he, a pimp?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact. And he takes care of his girls, too, and is just about the nicest old man you’ll ever meet, so don’t even go there.”

She huffed disgustedly. “I can’t believe you want me to talk to some fucking pimp. That’s sick.” We were silent for a second and then she said, “What am I supposed to ask him?”