Venom: A Thriller in Paradise (The Thriller in Paradise Series Book 3) (22 page)

“Yes. It impresses me also.” Cobb smiled at Charlie Song.

“The Chinese built ships in the fourteenth century. Did you know? The rudders were fifty feet high. The ships the Portuguese built to explore the world could sit sideways on a Chinese ship’s deck. The Chinese discovered India, east Africa, sailed all around, explored. Before the Portuguese, the Spanish. Before the white man. Then they stopped. They pulled all the ships up on the beach and left them to rot.”

“Why?”

“They thought about the consequences, the bureaucrats in Peking. They thought all this knowledge would change them. So they stopped.”

“What is a
tabua?”
Cobb asked. They were in front of the Chinese store again.

“A priest, a healer.”

“A
kahuna.
Yes.”

“His name is Ari. It’s short for
ari’i
, a sort of king or priest or something. A leader. It’s not his real name.”

“No, I can see that.
Ali’i
in Hawaiian. Same word.”

“We can talk to him, if you like.”

“Okay. I was waiting…”

“For the other one, the big man?”

“Chazz Koenig. He is a… friend. A colleague, too, though he is not a policeman.”

“Not a policeman the way Duvalois is not a policeman?”

“No. Just not a policeman. He’s a scientist. He helps out.”

“Ah. You have a scientific problem, then.” Charlie smiled. His teeth were very white and even. He was young and had a lot of energy. It made Cobb Takamura feel old, seeing him smile like that.

“I don’t think he’s coming,” Cobb said after a time. “Let’s go.”

They got in Charlie Song’s car, an ancient Renault wagon with strips of the lining dangling from the roof. The car had once been green; now it was gray.

The shocks were gone. Cobb bounced wildly, holding on to the door. “Wait’ll we hit the dirt,” Charlie laughed.

The pavement ended, and the dirt was worse. Fortunately, they did not have far to go on the unpaved road.

Ari was a thin young man in torn jeans and a T-shirt that announced he was in favor of protecting mollusks. The picture showed an oyster displaying a large black pearl. He did not look like a priest.

He shook Cobb’s hand by leaning forward from the waist and grasping it. His hand was dry and strong. When he let go, he leaned back again, upright. He did not smile, but Charlie Song never stopped.

“This is the American policeman,” Charlie told him. The young man nodded. He was tall and broad shouldered, thin.

“He is interested in the man you met.”

The
tabua
nodded again. “Narcisse,” he said. His voice was very low, as if he was unsure of his English.

“Yes, Narcisse.”

Ari’s house was lost in foliage behind them. They sat around a small table in flimsy aluminum folding chairs with tattered plastic straps on the seat and back. Ari had disappeared into the house, which showed only fragments in the trees: a window, half a door, a slope of roof, all green like the leaves, hidden and secretive. He came back with a plastic pitcher of a liquid he claimed was
kava.
Cobb tasted it. It was not good.

“It is made by chewing a root,” Charlie Song said. Laughing again. “Ferments, you see, with saliva. Tasty.”

“Narcisse,” Cobb urged.

“A strange man,” Ari said. He told them about Narcisse, how he came from Papeete using another name, Jean Prévert, then another name, Cal something, he could not remember, because to Ari the man was Narcisse. Ari used a name he was not born with also, it did not matter. Names were important to a man’s work, not in themselves.

But Narcisse was dark. Ari could see the darkness around him, like a cloud over the sun. He was interested in Ari’s work.

Cobb asked how he met Narcisse. “Teavai,” he said. “She was a student too. Healing. She was interested in healing, because she could not have children, and she was a little crazy too. She met the man down on the south side of the island, and she was drawn to him because she said he had a power.”

Ari thought so too, yes. He had a power. Drawing people to him, he was interested in Ari, in what Ari did, in what Teavai did. They studied the old ways, the religions, the power of Oro. There were old family or clan gods in the hills and along the coast. Oro was the most important when this was Havai’i.

At first it went well. He helped them. He knew about plants, could find them, pick them out. From time to time, he would say mix this with water and let it stand three days, and it can kill. Things like that. Ari thought it was strange he would be so interested in killing, but that was what knowing about plants meant, sometimes. And he would say this is good for the toothache, this for the belly.

Then he started telling them, always in French, about how it was possible to take over a man’s soul. He said it in French,
âme
, but then he changed it a little.
Ti bon ange
, he said. It meant the little good angel. What was this? He said he could make something that would take over
ti bon ange
, make it his creature, and the person so taken would do what he said. Always and forever, for they would be dead, and brought back to life through his power.

Takamura looked at the trees, the slanting sunlight, and was cold. He thought Chazz should have returned. Probably he was at the hotel.

Ari went on. The man wanted to find some special plants, some animals. He was angry because he could not find some of the animals. What kind of animals? Toads, mainly. Some others. They don’t live here.

Then he asked about human bones.

Ari could see Teavai falling under the man’s spell. She said
te metua tane faaamu
had died and they had just buried him in the hills. There would be bones there, and Ari was shocked when he heard this. It was not good that she should say such a thing; they were also Christians here. But it is for Oro she told him, and he admitted he said nothing then. What was there to say? She was under the man’s spell, she could see his darkness and she embraced it, but it would trouble her, as it troubled Ari.

Could Ari see it too?

Yes, but it did not touch him. He had his own power. He grew to dislike this man, yet he was flattered. He believed any time a Frenchman was interested in the old Tahitian ways, it would be a help. They would get government support; that is what Ari hoped. Now he understood that was foolish. Tahitians must find their own support. They did without the
Farani
a thousand years before there were
Farani.
They could do without them again. They must.

He thought that the man and the woman went into the hills, because that was when Teavai disappeared. The man came back after a few days, but she did not. The man said she was studying in the hills for him. She was looking for certain plants, certain small things. But the man was lying. Ari knew she was not studying, she was doing his bidding. She had lost her
ti bon ange.
She was the creature of Narcisse.

Yes, he heard M. Queneau was dead. He had heard that Teavai had killed him. It was not her, of course; it was Narcisse. He was glad to see the dark man leave.

A darkness gathered like spider webs in the trees, woven strand by strand of haze, an indistinct and repellent absence of light. Cobb Takamura shook his head. What would Charlie Chan say about all this talk of souls and creatures and killing? Cobb had no ready aphorism. It was dark superstition and foolishness.

Charlie Song said nothing as the darkness gathered around them. Soon their faces were indistinct, without feature or form. Without identity. Only Charlie Song’s teeth were visible in the gloom. Ari had fallen silent, contemplating the wreckage of his hopes for the Frenchman, Teavai gone into a dark place, the perversity of his revival of the cult of Oro.

“So he did go?” Takamura asked.

“He went on the boat,” Ari said. “I helped him, and he repaid with evil. He was bad in the end, not interested in healing at all. A sick person, I think.”

“He likes islands,” Cobb said softly. “And now he is loose on mine.”

“But there is some good,” Charlie Song said. “From this. Some possible good. A few people do not like the bomb testing here. At first everyone loved it; there were new jobs, lots of money. But now we think it isn’t so good. All the jobs are for the French. There is poison in the earth, in the water. Maybe this will bring more attention. We must be very careful, you see.”

“Careful?” Takamura was growing restless here in the gloom, with the tops of the trees swaying against a violet sunset. The palm trees were rustling. A clutch of birds suddenly clattered up from the fronds, making a strange ratcheting cry, and circled out to sea, where they dipped low over the water to feed. Cobb could see them through the palm trunks across the road. They circled back, circled one another, landed, and took off again, screeching.

Charlie Song followed the vague outline of his look. “Oa,” he said. “You call them brown noddy.”

“Not me,” Cobb Takamura said. “I’ve never seen them before.”

“It is a little bit against the law to complain about atomic testing. A sensitive issue. The French are fussy about New Zealand complaining. Bad publicity. They are… defensive, I think you would say.”

“Yes. I guess we’d better get back.”

“Sure.”

They left Ari sitting in nearly total darkness. He did not move when they said good-bye. His voice was soft, almost inaudible.
“Pārabi,”
he said. “Good-bye.”

They were almost back to Uturoa before Cobb spoke. “Something’s wrong,” he said.

“Eh?”

“Something’s wrong.”

“Something?” Charlie Song’s broad face turned toward him in the darkness of the car. Approaching lights caught his cheek. He must have caught Takamura’s mood: For the first time, he was not smiling.

Chazz was not at the Hotel Le Motu. No one had seen him since morning. He had not left a message.

“Duvalois. Is he around?”

“Alas, no, Monsieur,” the clerk said. His sandy hair was almost invisible in the strident shadows of the lobby’s bad lighting. “He is gone.”

“Is he? Where’s he gone?” Cobb looked around the lobby. A standing ashtray, an almost archaic touch in this age. Linoleum, peeling at the baseboards, of an indefinite brown, covered by a square of carpet, equally indefinite. There was a vagueness to everything in this lobby.

The clerk shrugged. “Papeete. Noon flight, I think.”

“Call LeBlanc in Papeete. Please.” The clerk shrugged and picked up the telephone.

LeBlanc said he did not know Duvalois. Cobb knew better but said nothing. He asked politely if LeBlanc could check on him, find out where he was? It was important. LeBlanc asked him to hold, and Takamura stared at a calendar behind the reception desk. The illustration showed a ski slope in Switzerland, a few chalets, some people in parkas. Lights in the background bathed a snow-covered street in a yellow glow. The hill was deserted this late in the day.

LeBlanc came back on the line. He thought Duvalois had left for Hawaii. He did not learn this, he said, officially. A bureaucratic rumor, so to speak, that a man named Duvalois had taken the Continental flight to Honolulu. Perhaps Duvalois, whoever he was, had some business in Hawaii.

Cobb Takamura felt a sudden urgency about events. This was the wrong time for Koenig to turn up missing.

Chazz’s room was not helpful. The flight bag sat on a chair. His toothbrush lay on the washbasin. His return ticket sat on the top of the wooden dresser. Their flight back was early tomorrow.

Cobb hoped it was not going to leave without them.

“Come on, Charlie. Let’s ask around.”

They drifted along the street. People greeted Charlie Song and he greeted back. He was a popular figure in Uturoa. A civic leader. “They like me here,” he said. He taught school. He had a small concession in the market, selling ice cream. He made his own, five flavors. “Pineapple, passion fruit, that sort of thing. We do pretty well.”

Someone saw Chazz earlier, walking along the waterfront, the big man from
Marite
, from America. She remembered because her child stopped to stare at him. But the man was not friendly. He didn’t stop, didn’t seem to see them. He walked on, that way. She pointed south, out of town.

“He would go past Queneau’s house. It’s down that way,” Cobb said.

“Yes.” Charlie was serious now, not smiling. He laid a blunt finger on his enormous mustache, stroked downward. “Tepe would know. He knows everything.”

It took some time to find Tepe. He was at his cousin’s, someone said. But his cousin said he left around sunset. Try his adoptive children’s house.

Tepe was sitting in the yard, swinging a toddler up into the air, then down between his legs. The child squealed with delight. The yard was dark except for a long splash of yellow light from the open front door.

Tepe nodded, smiling. Sure, he saw him. By the house of the judge. He was a nice man, friendly. They talked, had a good talk.

“What did you talk about?” Charlie Song asked him.

“Talk about fish. He call blowfish.” He puffed out his cheeks again. “I find, give to man.”

“Man? You mean Prévert?’’

“Sure. Him. Funny man, not so nice. We talk about that. You from
Marite
also? My sister been there, to Los Angeles.”

“Marite
, yes. Where did Chazz go? The big man?”

“Up hill. What for I don’t know, but other men go that way too.”

“Other men?”

“Sure.
Farani
, four of them. Not friendly. Don’t even wave at Tepe.”

Charlie said, “What’s up that way, Tepe?”

“Same as before, when I find the judge, you know.
Marae.”

“That’s where Queneau was killed,” Charlie told Cobb. “We’d better take a look.”

“I take you,” Tepe said, putting the child down. “Bad road, hard at night.” He went inside and reappeared a few minutes later with an electric lantern.

“Good now,” he smiled.

But it was not good. The mist moved in again, and their shadows leaped and shrank as they walked. Light fractured against dark trees, against gray cloud.

A frozen fist closed around Cobb Takamura’s heart.