Jack felt slightly numb. The only other people who knew about the rakoshi and the necklaces were the two most important people in the world to Jack—Gia and Vicki. And one other.
"Did Kolabati send you?"
"No. I wish I knew where she was. You see, it is Kolabati and those necklaces that I wish to discuss with you." He smiled at Jack. "Still have to run off on those errands?"
"They can wait," Jack said. "You like beer?"
"I love it."
"Come on. I know a place where we can talk."
* * *
"I like that sign over the bar," Veilleur said.
Jack glanced up at Julio's "Free Beer Tomorrow" logo. It had been there so long, Jack no longer noticed it.
"Yeah. Gets him in trouble sometimes."
They were each on their third pint of John Courage. Julio had put it on tap as a special favor to Jack but it had quickly become a favorite of the regulars. Unfortunately, its availability had attracted the attention of the area's abundant yuppy population, and for a while Julio's had seemed in danger of being overrun.
But it was relatively quiet here tonight and Jack and the old guy had the rear section pretty much to themselves. An arrangement Jack preferred on most occasions, but especially tonight. He wouldn't have wanted anyone he knew overhearing this Veilleur character's story. It was crazy. No, it went far beyond crazy. It was to crazy what a .45 prefragmented full load was to a BB.
But there was something about the old guy that Jack couldn't help liking and trusting. On a very deep, very basic, very primitive level he didn't understand, he sensed a solidarity with Veilleur, a subliminal bond, as if they were kindred spirits. He wouldn't lie to Jack.
But that didn't mean he wasn't a few bricks shy of the proverbial full load.
Yet he knew about the rakoshi, those dark, murderous, reeking demons from Bengali folklore, and about Kolabati and her pair of necklaces, with their power to heal and prolong life.
"I wore one of those necklaces for a while. Bati offered it to me."
"And you refused? Why?"
"Didn't like the price tag."
Veilleur nodded his approval and somehow that gave Jack a good feeling. What was it about this old dude?
"So this problem with the sun they've been talking about all day is really this guy Rasalom's doing? He made the sun rise late?"
"And set early. Apparently you haven't heard the evening news. Sundown was a little over ten minutes ahead of schedule."
The idea that the sun was no longer following its own rules gave Jack a queasy feeling.
"But assuming you're right, what it all mean?"
"I told you—"
"Right. 'The end of life as we know it.'" Jack was almost afraid to ask the next question. "Why were you looking for me?"
"I'm trying to locate Kolabati."
Kolabati…Jack was devoted to Gia, now more than ever. But there were times when memories of Kolabati and her long, dark, slender body floated back to him.
"Afraid I can't help you. I haven't seen her for years."
"Oh, I realize that. I'll find her eventually. And when I do, that's when I'll need your help."
"What for?"
"I need the necklaces."
Jack suppressed a laugh. "You don't know what you're asking. Kolabati will never give them up. Not in a million years. You might talk her out of one, but never both."
"I'll need both. And soon."
"Then forget it. The necklace keeps her alive, keeps her young. She's a hundred and fifty years old."
"Not quite," Veilleur said. "But close."
"Whatever. But she only looks thirty or so. All because of the necklace. Do you think she's going to give that up?"
"That's why I've contacted you. So you can convince her once I've located her."
"She'll die without it."
"I have faith in you."
Jack stared at him.
"You really are crazy, aren't you?" He rose and dropped a twenty on the table. "I don't think we can do business."
Veilleur reached into his breast pocket and produced a card.
"This is my number. Please take it. And call me when you reconsider."
Reluctantly, Jack took the card and tucked it away.
"You mean if I reconsider."
"Will you reconsider if Central Park shrinks?"
"Sure." That seemed a safe bet. "When Central Park shrinks, I'll give you a buzz."
"Fine," Veilleur said, smiling and nodding. "I'll be waiting."
Jack left him there, sipping his Courage. Nice old guy, but he'd developed a few loose wires in his old age.
As he walked home, he thought about Kolabati and wondered how she was. Where she was. And what she was up to these days.
4 • KOLABATI
Maui—upcountry
The wind stopped.
Kolabati put down her book and rose from her chair. Not sure at first what had happened, she took her coffee cup and stepped out on the lanai; she stood there for a moment, listening. Something was wrong. Too quiet. In her years on Maui she could not remember a truly silent moment. She had no neighbors to speak of, at least none within shouting or even bullhorn distance, but even when you were too far from the ocean to hear the surf, even when the birds and insects were silent, there was always the Maui breeze, child of the tireless tradewinds rolling from the northeast, a constant sussurant undertone varying in pitch but always there, perpetual, interminable, timeless, relentless.
But it paused now. The ceramic wind chimes hung silent on the corners of the unscreened lanai. The air lay perfectly still, as if resting. Or holding its breath.
What was happening? First the news of the late sunrise this morning, and now this.
Kolabati looked down the slope of Haleakala past the rooftops of Kula to the valley spread out below her in the late afternoon sun. A gently curved, almost flat span between the two volcanic masses that defined the island of Maui, the valley was a narrowed waist checkered with the pale green squares of sugar cane, the darker green of pineapple plants, the rich red-brown of newly tilled earth, and the near black of a recently burned cane field. She spent part of each day out here on the lanai, staring across the valley at the cloud-capped West Maui Mountains, waiting for her daily rainbow, or watching the cloud-shadows run across the valley floor thousands of feet below. But the shadows weren't running now. The streaming tradewinds that propelled the clouds had stalled. The clouds and their shadows waited.
Kolabati waited too. The air should have grown warmer in the wind's absence, yet she felt a chill of foreboding. Something was wrong. The perpetual Maui breeze occasionally changed its pattern when the kona winds came, but the air always moved.
Krishna, Vishnu, she said, silently praying to the ancient Indian gods of her youth, please don't let anything spoil this. Not now. Not when I've finally found peace.
Peace. Kolabati had searched for it all her life, and it had been a long life. She looked thirty, perhaps a youngish thirty-five, yet she had been born in 1848.
She had decided that she would cease counting her birthdays after the one hundred and fiftieth, which was fast approaching.
A long time to be searching for contentment. She thought she'd found a chance for it a few years ago with a man named Jack but he had spurned her and the gift of longevity she'd offered him. She'd left him sitting in a pool of his own blood, dying. He was probably dead, and the thought of that saddened her. Such a vital man…
But I'm different now. The new Kolabati would have stayed and helped Jack, or at least called a doctor for him despite the cruel things he had said to her.
Maui had helped make the difference in her. Maui and Moki. A place and a man. Together they had given her what peace there was in this world.