“Yup. Really pissed him off, because he loved that board. He customized it himself, right here in this shop.”
“The board wasn’t fixable?”
Palani laughed. “Not with the center of it cored out,” he said. “You can fix a broken plug, a stringer. Something simple. No way to fix something like that.”
“What I still don’t understand is how that could get him killed.”
“It was him complaining about it. I told him to shut his mouth, it was going to get him in trouble, but he kept on. I guess whoever it was got worried he’d bitch to somebody who would listen.”
We made small talk for a few minutes, and then Palani showed me around his garage. I’d done a little shaping when I was in high school, trying to customize my own boards, and it was cool to see a master at work. But eventually I had to tear myself away-I had the information I’d come for.
Leaving Palani’s place, I felt like I was getting somewhere. At long last, a real motive for Mike Pratt’s death. He was pissed off that his board had gotten ruined, and he couldn’t keep his mouth shut about it.
I dragged myself back to Hibiscus House. I thought I might take a nap and then think about going over to see Brad, but my nap stretched all night, until I woke up Saturday morning as fingers of light were beginning to crawl through the window that looked out over the driveway.
The next morning, as I waited for waves, I couldn’t help trying to organize what I had been discovering. There were certain pieces of evidence. All three of the murder victims had been to Mexpipe, though that was the only thing, beyond surfing and murder, that seemed to link them. Therefore it was probably an important fact.
Mike Pratt knew Lucie Zamora. After a trip to Mexico, a trip Lucie had also made, Mike returned with the money for travel and entrance fees. Trish believed he’d gotten that money by bringing crystal meth back from Mexico, and that he’d used his board to hold it. Palani confirmed that a hole had been cored in Mike’s board. Shortly after he returned, after he’d complained about the condition of his board to anyone who’d listen, he was dead.
According to Jeremy Leddinger, who had a drug addict ex-boyfriend, Lucie Zamora sold ice, the powdered form of crystal meth. I had found a stash behind her medicine cabinet, and I doubted it had been left there by a previous tenant. Further evidence was provided by the cash she had to spend on designer clothing at Brad Jacobson’s boutique, Butterfly, and on shopping trips with Brad’s friend Larry Brickman.
Larry and George had also verified that Lucie knew Ronnie Chang, the computer nerd slash weekend surfer, who had also gone to Puerto Escondido for Mexpipe. A sexy woman has been known to draw even the straightest guy into troublesome waters, and Jeremy had said Lucie led Ronnie around by his dick.
A huge wave washed over me and knocked me into the cool Pacific, reminding me that I was in troublesome waters as well. I kept on surfing, all day long, though I couldn’t stop turning over the questions I had about the three dead surfers. Whenever I was on the beach, I tried to talk to other surfers, looking for anyone who had known Mike, Lucie or Ronnie, or anyone else who had gone to Mexpipe. I didn’t have any luck.
That night, I thought about calling Brad, but I decided first to head to the Drainpipe, the Hale’iwa bar where Lucie’s one-time boyfriend Frank worked. I was hoping he could shed some more light on where Lucie got her drugs from, and how her dealing might tie in with her trip to Mexpipe. I wasn’t sure how much he could tell me, particularly if the bar was busy, but it was Saturday night and I was thirsty, and the Drainpipe seemed as good a bar as any.
Jeremy had said that dating Frank was just a cover so that Lucie could hang around the Drainpipe and meet up with customers. Perhaps someone there had bought from her-or someone had moved into her territory.
Frank wasn’t on duty, which was disappointing, but I got myself a beer and relaxed. I got roped into a darts game, talked to a couple of guys and girls, and remembered what my Saturday nights had been like before I came out of the closet.
I had a good time, partly because there was no sexual agenda going on-at least not on my part. I wasn’t sizing up the wahines-or the guys, for that matter-and trying to figure out my chances of scoring. While there might have been a girl or two checking me out, none were blatant, so I didn’t have to do anything to discourage anyone. I played darts, I drank my beer, and I laughed. A lot.
It was obvious to me, though no one said anything directly, that people knew who I was, so I couldn’t be too blatant about asking for drugs, or asking if anyone knew Lucie, Mike or Ronnie. Around ten o’clock I was surprised to see Brad’s friend Jeremy, but we did nothing more than shout hellos before he appeared to have left the bar. I figured there were probably few gay places he could go, and if he was bored at Sugar’s it was worth checking out the straight bars to see what kind of action was going on.
About a half hour later, George and Larry, the macho guy and the cute guy, came in together, and my radar went into overdrive. Sure enough, as soon as they both had beers, they were heading my way.
I was a little drunk by then. Still able to function, still able to drive, but my defenses were dangerously low. They clinked their bottles up against mine and made their greetings, and I followed them to a dark corner of the bar.
“How’s it going?” George asked. “You finding anything out about Lucie?”
“Still picking up information,” I said. “Haven’t really processed it all yet.”
“If there’s anything we can do to help,” Larry said.
“Anything at all,” George said. His leg brushed against mine, so casually that it might have been nothing, but my adrenaline level soared. I decided I could put my homicide investigation on hold for one Saturday night and enjoy myself.
I knew I could play coy with them, ignore the subtext, come up with another excuse to leave. But what was stopping me from heading out with them, enjoying what they had to offer? Some outdated code of ethics that said sex should be only a two-person sport? Or some deeper programming, which indicated that sex had to be involved with romance, which had to lead to me and Mr. Right living together behind a white picket fence?
I didn’t think either of those should control me, and frankly, I was horny, so I said, “That offer you made the other night. That still stand?”
“You bet,” George said.
“Didn’t think you’d be so easy,” Larry said.
I licked my lips. Might as well go for the gusto, I thought. “I’m not easy,” I said. “I’m hard.”
Both George and Larry laughed out loud. “Well, that’s a good state to be in,” George said. “You’re staying at that sleazy old Hibiscus House, aren’t you?”
“Yup.”
“Well, let’s get over there and make it a little sleazier.”
They’d come in George’s pickup, in response to a phone call from Jeremy, as I thought, so Larry came with me, and George followed. His truck was a lot like mine, banged up and yet still serviceable.
Larry sat next to me, playing first with a bit of my black hair, then stroking one finger down my thigh as I drove. “You’d better not do too much of that, if you want us to get there in one piece,” I said. I could feel my erection straining against my jeans, and thought if he touched it, I’d probably explode right there.
“We’ll get there,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
Fortunately, Hibiscus House wasn’t too far away, and shortly the three of us were standing in my slightly- messy room. I’d learned from Brad’s visit that I had to keep it neater, so the only thing I had to do was move some dirty clothes off the chair and the place was fit for company.
George and Larry didn’t wait for hospitality, though. George was behind me and Larry in front of me, one stroking my back and the other kissing me. In short order, and almost without my noticing it, I’d shed my clothes and stood there, nude, between them.
“If you guys don’t strip down, we aren’t going to have much fun,” I said, in between my tongue’s dueling with Larry’s.
“Oh, we’ll have some fun,” George said.
There was something quite erotic, on the edge of dangerous, about my being naked with the two of them fully clothed. I’d exposed myself to them completely, while they had exposed nothing at all to me. I’d relinquished all the power, and that was a powerful aphrodisiac itself.
I felt Larry’s stiff dick rubbing against mine through his pants fabric, and George’s finger, magically lubricated, exploring my ass, and I gave myself up to the pleasure. Soon enough, both of them were naked, too, and Larry had turned his ass to me. George handed me a rubber and squeezed some lube onto my hand, and I began doing to Larry what George was doing to me.
