On the fifteenth day Roberto took flight and Tuck watched him until he was nothing but a dot on the horizon, then nothing at all. Tuck didn’t blame him. He accepted his own death, but he didn’t want to watch Sepie go before him. At sunset he tied off the steering oar, took Sepie in his arms, and lay down in the bottom of the boat to wait.
Sometime later—he couldn’t tell how long, but it was still dark—he woke with a parched scream when a tube of mascara dropped out of the sky and hit him in the chest. Sepie sat up and snatched the tube from the bottom of the boat.
“To make you pretty,” she said. Her voice cracked on “pretty.”
Tuck was too disoriented to recognize what she was holding. He took it from her and squinted at it. “It’s mascara.”
“Roberto,” Sepie said.
Tuck looked around in the sky, but didn’t see the bat. It was beginning to get light. “You brought us mascara? We’re dying of thirst and you brought us mascara?”
“Kimi teach him,” Sepie said.
Tuck didn’t think he had the energy left for outrage, but it was coming nonetheless. “You…”
Sepie put a finger to his lips. “Listen.”
Tuck listened. He heard nothing. “What?”
“Surf.”
Tuck listened. He heard it. He also heard something else, a rhythmic stirring in the water much closer to the canoe. He looked in the direction of the noise and saw something moving over the water toward them.
“Aloha!” came out of the dark, followed by a middle-aged white man in an ocean kayak. “I guess I’m not the only one who likes to get out early,” he said.
In their first hour at the Waikiki Beach Hyatt Regency, Sepie flushed the toilet seventy-eight times and consumed two hundred and forty dollars’ worth of product from the minibar (five Pepsis and a box of Raisinets).
“You poop in here and it just goes away?”
“Yes.”
“In this big bowl?” She pointed.
“Yes.”
“You poop?”
“Yes.”
“And you push this?”
“Yes.”
“And it goes away?”
“That’s right.”
“Where?”
“To the next room.” Plumbing. They hadn’t talked about plumbing.
“And they push this and it goes away?”
“Look, Sepie, there’s a TV in here. You push this and it changes the picture.”
Tuck couldn’t be sure because they’d never had sex and because she’d told him about how she could fool a man, but he thought she might have come right then.
He made her promise not to leave the room and left her there flushing and clicking while he went to the police.
The desk sergeant at the Honolulu police department listened patiently and politely and with appropriate concern right up until Tuck said, “I know I look a little ratty, but I’ve been at sea in an open boat for two weeks.” At which point the sergeant held up his hand signifying it was his turn to talk.
“You’ve been at sea for two weeks?”
“Yes. I escaped by boat.”
“So how long ago did these alleged murders happen?”
“I don’t know exactly. One about a month ago, one longer.”
“And you’re just getting around to reporting them now?”
I told you. I was trapped on Alualu. I escaped in a sailing canoe.”
“Then,” the sergeant said, “Alualu is not a street in Honolulu.”
“No. It’s an island in Micronesia.”
“I can’t help you, sir. That’s out of our jurisdiction.”
“Well, who can help me?”
“Try the FBI.”
So Tuck, on the cab ride to the FBI offices, changed his strategy. He’d wait until he got past the front line of defense before spilling his guts. The receptionist was a petite Asian woman of forty who spoke English so precisely that Tuck knew it had to be her second language.
“I’m sure I can help you if you will just tell me what it is that you’d like to report.”
“I can’t. I have to talk to an agent. I won’t be comfortable unless I talk to a real agent.”
She looked offended and her speech became even crisper. “Perhaps you can tell me the nature of the crime.”
Tuck thought for a moment. What did the FBI always handle on television? Al Capone, Klansmen, bank robberies, and…“Kidnapping,” he said. “There’s been a kidnapping.”
“And who has been kidnapped? Have you filed a missing persons report with the local police?”
Tuck shook his head and stood his ground. “I’ll tell an agent.”
The receptionist picked up the phone and punched a number. She turned away from him and covered her mouth with her hand as she spoke into the mouthpiece. She hung up and said, “There’s an agent on his way.”
“Thanks,” Tuck said.
A few minutes later a door opened and a dark-haired guy who looked like a mobile mannequin from a Brooks Brothers window
display entered the reception room and extended his hand to Tuck. “Mr. Case, I’m Special Agent Tom Myers. Would you step into my office, please?”
Tuck shook his hand and followed him though the door and down a hallway of identical ten-by-twelve offices with identical metal desks that displayed identical photos of identical families in identical dime-store frames. Myers motioned for Tuck to sit and took the seat behind the desk.
“Now, Rose tells me that you want to report a kidnapping?” Special Agent Myers unbuttoned the top button of his shirt.
“You allowed to do that?” Tuck asked.
“Casual Fridays,” the special agent said.
“Oh,” Tuck said. “Yes. Kidnapping, multiple murder, and the theft and sale of human organs for transplant.”
Myers showed no reaction. “Go on.”
And Tuck did. He began with the offer of the job on Alualu and ended with his arrival in Hawaii, leaving out the crash of Mary Jean’s jet, the subsequent loss of his pilot’s license and pending criminal charges, anything to do with cargo cults, cannibals, transvestites, ghost pilots, talking bats, and genital injuries. As he wrapped up, he thought the edited version sounded pretty credible.
Special Agent Myers had not changed position or expression once in the half hour that Tuck had talked. Tuck thought he saw him blink once, though. Special Agent Myers leaned back in his chair (casual Fridays) and templed his fingers. “Let me ask you something,” he said.
“Sure,” Tuck said.
“Are you the Tucker Case that got drunk and crashed the pink jet in Seattle a few months ago?”
Tuck could have slapped him. “Yes, but that doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
“I think it does, Mr. Case. I think it affects the credibility of what is already an incredible story. I think you should leave my office and go about the business of putting your life in order.”
“I’m telling you the truth,” Tuck said. He was fighting panic. He worked to stay calm. “Why would I make up a story like that? As you pointed out, I’ve got enough on my plate just rebuilding my life. I’m not so stupid that I’d add charges for filing a false crime report to all the others. If you have to take me into custody, do it. But do something about what’s going on out on that island or a lot more people are going to die.”
“Even if I believed your story, what would you like me to do?”
And there Tuck lost it.” ‘Special agent.’ Does that mean that you had to take the little bus to the academy?”
“I was at the top of my class.” A rise.
“Then act like it.”
“What do you want, Mr. Case?”