“What in the hell was that?” Beth Curtis appeared in the cockpit doorway. “Why are we so low?”
A wave of panic akin to being caught smoking in the boys’ room swept over Tuck, but he couldn’t think fast enough to come up with a viable lie. He said, “You haven’t surfed until you’ve surfed in a Learjet.”
Much to his amazement, Beth Curtis said, “Cool!” and strapped herself into the copilot’s seat.
Tuck grinned and eased the jet down to fifty feet. Beth Curtis clapped her hands like an excited child. “This is great!”
“We can’t do it for long. Burns too much fuel.”
“A little while longer, okay?”
Tuck smiled. “Maybe five more minutes. We can catch a tailwind at altitude that’ll save us some time and fuel.”
“Is this what you were doing the night you crashed?”
Tuck winced. “No.”
“Because I could understand if it was. What a rush!” She reached out and grabbed his shoulder affectionately. “I love this. How could you let me sleep through this?”
“We can surf some more on the way back,” Tuck said. And with that his resolve was gone. He’d planned to ask her about the music and explosions from last night. He’d planned to ask her about Jefferson Pardee’s notebook, which he carried in his back pocket, but he didn’t want to break this mood. It had been too long since he’d had any attention from a beautiful woman, and he gave himself to it like a jonesing junkie.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but you’ll have to wait here.” Beth Curtis retrieved her briefcase and cooler from the back of the plane and met the dark-suited Japanese on the tarmac. There was another Lear spooling up nearby and a couple of workmen in coveralls waited beside a large cardboard carton.
Tuck watched as Beth Curtis handed the cooler to one of the suits, who ran to the waiting Lear. Within seconds, the door was pulled shut and the other Lear was taxied out to the runway. Another one of the suits handed Beth a thick manila envelope, which she stashed in her briefcase. She turned and ran back into the plane. She stepped into the cockpit and put her briefcase behind the copilot’s seat. “I’ll be right back, ten minutes max. I’ve got to make sure these guys get my TV on board unbroken.”
“TV?”
“Thirty-two-inch Trinitron,” she said with a smile. “To replace the one that you’re using.”
“I want a thirty-two-inch Trinitron,” Tuck said to her back, but she was already out the door.
He looked out the window to make sure she was busy with the television, then pulled her briefcase from behind the seat and threw the latches. To his amazement, it was unlocked. He removed the manila envelope. Under it lay a small automatic pistol. He could take it, but then what? Hold it on Beth Curtis until she confessed to whatever she and the doctor were doing? And what was that? Research?
There was no law against that. He left the gun untouched and opened the envelope.
He wasn’t sure what he expected to find: research notes, bearer bonds, stock certificates, cash, something that would shed some light on all this clandestine behavior for sure. What he found was four issues of People magazine and four issues of Us. Beth Curtis was smuggling American cheese out of Japan and that was it.
He put the envelope back into the briefcase and slid it behind the seat, then pulled Jefferson Pardee’s notebook out of his pocket. Perhaps there was something inside that would tell him how the notebook had gotten to a beach some seven hundred miles from where its owner was supposed to be.
He flipped though the pages where Pardee had scribbled phone numbers, dates, and a few notes, but the only things he recognized were his own name, the names of Sebastian Curtis and his wife, and the word “Learjet,” followed by “Why? How? Who paid?” and “Find other pilot.” Pardee was obviously asking the same questions that were circling in Tuck’s mind, but what was this about another pilot? Had Pardee come to Alualu looking for the answers? And if he did, where was he now?
“What’s that?” Beth Curtis said as she came through the cockpit door.
Tuck flipped the notebook shut and stuffed it in his back pocket. “Some flight notes. I’m used to keeping a log for the FAA. I guess I brought this along out of habit.” In the midst of the lie, he almost panicked. If she asked where he had gotten the notebook in the first place, he was dead. Maybe better to confront her here in Japan anyway—while he knew where the gun was.
She said, “I didn’t realize there was any paperwork to flying a plane.”
“More than you’d think,” Tuck said. “I’m still getting used to how this plane handles. I’m just writing down things I need to remember, you know, climb rates and engine exhaust pressures, fuel consumption per hour at altitude, stuff like that.” Right, he thought. Baffle her with bullshit.
“Oh,” she said with what Tuck thought was indifference until she reached behind her seat and pulled out her briefcase.
He held his breath, waiting for the gun to appear. She took out an issue of People and opened it on her lap. She didn’t look away from the magazine until they were well over the Pacific, heading home.
“You know, we haven’t seen much of you lately. Maybe you should come up to the house and have dinner with Sebastian and me tonight.” She had slipped on her fifties housewife personality.
Tuck had been thinking about Pardee’s notebook and where he’d found it. He wanted to get back to the village tonight. If Pardee had come to Alualu, maybe the old chief knew something about it.
“I’m a little tired. We got a pretty early start. I think maybe I’ll just fix up something quick at my place and get to bed early.”
She yawned. “Maybe tomorrow night. Around seven. Maybe we can try out my new TV.”
“That’ll be fine.” Tuck said. “I have a few things I’d like to discuss with you and the doc anyway.”
“Good,” she said. “I think we should spend more time together. Now explain to me what all these gauges mean.”
41
What’s a Kidney?
Privacy is a rare commodity on a small island and secrets weigh heavy on their keepers. Malink was weary with the burden of too many secrets. If he could only go to the drinking circle and let his secrets out, let the coconut telegraph carry his secrets to the edges of the island and let him walk light. But that wasn’t going to happen. Secrets sought him out now, even from the old cannibal.
He stood with Sarapul and Kimi examining an eighty-four-foot breadfruit tree with a trunk you couldn’t get your arms around. Kimi held an ax on his shoulder, waiting for Malink’s judgment.
“Why so big?” Malink asked. “This tree will give much breadfruit.”
“This is the tree,” Sarapul said. “The navigator has chosen it.”
Kimi said, “We will plant ten trees to take its place, but this is the one.”
“Why do you need such a big tree?”
“I can’t tell you,” Sarapul said.
“You will tell me or you won’t cut the tree.”
“If I tell you, will you promise not to tell anyone else?”
Malink sighed. Yet another secret. “I will tell no one.”
“Come. We’ll show you.”
Sarapul led Malink and Kimi through the jungle to an overgrown spot piled with dried palm leaves. Malink leaned on a tree while the old cannibal pulled away the palm fronds to reveal the prow of a canoe. Not just any canoe. A forty-foot-long sailing canoe. Malink hadn’t seen one since he was a small boy.