Keaka narrowed his eyes and gestured toward both of them with a table knife. “It is an honor to be a great warrior, to die a warrior’s death.” Then he silently examined a claw that was not cracked, apparently overlooked by the kitchen crew which used mallets to break the hard shells that give the crabs their name.
Lassiter said, “Don’t worry, we’ll send it back and they’ll give it forty whacks.”
“No need.” Keaka scooped up the claw and it disappeared into a thick brown hand. The fingers closed and Lassiter watched ribbons of muscle pop from Keaka’s forearm.
“That’s not a walnut,” Lassiter warned. “The shell’s too thick…” A sharp crack interrupted him, the shell splitting into pieces. Blood spurted onto the tablecloth, a piece of jagged shell sticking from Keaka’s thumb. Expressionless, he sucked at the wound for a moment, then devoured the meat from the claw.
The show of strength seemed intended for him, Lassiter thought, a primitive warning, a staking out of territory. Had he telegraphed his thoughts about Lila, or did every man?
“I didn’t think that was possible,” Lassiter said.
Keaka grunted. “It’s easy. First you find the weak spot, then you apply pressure.” He jutted out his chin and smiled, the look of a barracuda. Then he rubbed his right elbow with his left hand.
“Keaka here is hard as a rock everywhere,” Lila said, squeezing Keaka’s thigh and simultaneously harpooning Lassiter’s morale. “But his elbow tendons are like spaghetti. He doesn’t complain, too Hawaiian macho for that, but I know how much it hurts. I wonder how much longer he can go on. We’re looking for easier ways to make money.”
Keaka shot her a murderous glance. “Listen, I’ve heard enough about my elbows. It takes more than a sore elbow to stop a Hawaiian. More even than three bullets.”
“Three bullets?” Lassiter asked.
Lila sighed. “A Hawaiian fable.”
“No. True story,” Keaka corrected her. “Haven’t you ever heard the saying ‘Never shoot a Hawaiian three times or you will make him really mad’?”
“No, must have missed that one,” Lassiter conceded.
“Right after Pearl Harbor,” Keaka said, “a Japanese pilot tries to get his plane back to its carrier but has engine trouble, so he puts it down on Niihau, one of the small islands. The local constable is a native Hawaiian, big-boned and a barrel for a stomach. He’s unarmed, but he puts the little Jap pilot under arrest. The pilot takes out a pistol and shoots the Hawaiian in the gut, but it doesn’t stop him. Bang, he shoots him again, but the Hawaiian’s big and strong and just getting madder, then bang again, a third shot in the stomach. Then the Hawaiian picks up the Jap and crushes his skull against the plane.”
Lila wore the look of a wife who has heard her husband tell the same golf yarn a hundred times. “Moral of the story,” she said, “if I ever get mad at Keaka, I won’t shoot him, I’ll chop his big fat head off.”
“You’re the only one who would have a chance at it,” Keaka said somberly. He turned to Lassiter, his black eyes humorless. “Lila is strong, quick, and fearless as a pu’ali, a great warrior.”
“But can she type?” Jake Lassiter asked, and the blond warrior rewarded him with a knee-weakening smile.
A cool ocean breeze whipped across the Rickenbacker Causeway as they drove back to Key Biscayne, the lights of downtown Miami bouncing off the bay, the moon high overhead on a cloudless night. Traffic was light and in twenty minutes they were back at the hotel.
“Li’a, I’m going to make a call,” Keaka said, heading for the front desk and leaving Lassiter and Lila standing together in the lobby.
Lassiter’s look asked the question.
“Li’a was a forest goddess to the native Hawaiians,” Lila said.
“Li’a,” Lassiter repeated, letting the name linger on his tongue.
“In Hawaiian, it means desire or a powerful yearning. That’s why the Hawaiians wrote so many love songs about Li’a.”
“Goddess of Desire,” Jake Lassiter said. “The name fits. The spirits of the forest are still alive in Li’a, beautiful Goddess of Desire.”
“You’re a very sweet man, and a very attractive one,” she said with a provocative smile.
Now what did that mean? A thousand men must have complimented her name, her face and perfect body, but she was Keaka’s alone, Lassiter thought. He looked toward the front desk, where Keaka was using a telephone.
“Probably calling his cousin Mikala on Maui,” Lila said. “They’ve got business deals together. Will you wait with me?”
Only for a million years, he thought, and they sat down in cushioned chairs surrounded by ficus trees in the courtyard.
“Do you really want to get out of windsurfing?” Lassiter asked, his mind spinning.
Lila smiled a soft, wistful smile. “I’m not going to give it up to work in an office somewhere, but I’ve swallowed water from nearly every ocean in the world. I’ve been stung by jellyfish, cut by fins, and been catapulted onto rocks and coral. If that isn’t bad enough, it’s gotten boring. Some days, I just don’t want to load my equipment, pack six different sails, rig and rerig all day long. It’s become routine and dull, sort of…”
“Mundane,” Lassiter suggested.
“Right, mundane. That’s the word.”
“Like going to the office, whether you want to or not,” Lassiter said.
“Right, or making love to someone just because he’s there, whether you want to or not.”
He tried to decipher the message on the parted lips that half smiled and half pouted at him. She looked at him for a response. He thought a thousand things and said none. No follow-through. He let the ball slip through his hands with the clock ticking down. Then it was too late, Keaka heading toward them, smiling his barracuda smile, the call apparently a success.
“Mikala agrees we should take care of our business as soon as possible, tonight even,” Keaka said to Lila, and his look told Jake Lassiter it was time to say good night, which he did.
“So long, Jake,” Lila Summers said. “Thanks for a wonderful evening. When you come to Maui, you’ll become a kamaaina — a native — or almost one. You’ll blend into the surroundings, become part of the mountains and the sea.”
She laughed and her eyes danced and Lassiter wondered again if they held a promise or if he was the foil in a private game between these two strangers. He said good night a second time and walked outside, where a different valet looked at his ancient convertible as if it were a two-ton cockroach. Then the wind from the ocean slapped Lassiter’s face and he told himself not to be such a goddamn fool.
CHAPTER 14
Two years earlier, the hurricane had buried the marshy hammocks of the coastline under a ten-foot wall of water. The tidal surge, pushed by raging winds, ripped out seawalls and tossed boats onto lawns of waterfront homes. The winds cleaved at the vegetation, shattered roof tiles and rent asphalt felt from its plywood sheathing, splintering trusses from their hurricane straps. Roofs were blown to neighboring zip codes. Road signs were recovered twenty miles away. In an office near the bay, a five-hundred-pound desk flew through a window and was never found. In four hours, the winds and water created three million cubic yards of debris.
Along the southern shore of Biscayne Bay, gusts toppled giant oaks. The eye wall of the storm tore from the ground the shallow-rooted ficus trees and shredded the aerial roots of sprawling banyans. But when the water receded, the red and black mangroves — propped on roots aboveground — were still there, matted with sea grass and debris, gnarled as before. If royal palms were regal in their bearing, the mangroves were the crippled outcasts of a primitive society. Stunted, bent into impossible shapes, rooted in sand and salt, they were the sturdy survivors of eons of evolution and countless storms.
At night, the bowed and hunched trees of the swamp take on ghostly shapes, their silhouettes appearing as the arms of the tortured, reaching out in pain.