chance to cheat death.
Harry looked out the window and saw the breakers that tumbled close to shore, and with one hand he unbuckled his seat belt and with the other reached for the handle with the spring grip and twisted it. The door opened a crack. The big man made no move to stop him. Harry pressed against the door with all his weight but the pressure from the wind pushed back, closing it. Harry twisted the handle and pushed again but the door wouldn’t budge beyond an inch or two and then they were over a rocky coastline and the fall would kill him. He slumped back into his seat.
Keaka laughed and this time his teeth showed and his black eyes danced. “If you want to leave, just say so. Mikala can hover and the door will open easily, no wind resistance to keep it closed.”
In a moment they were over the lower slopes, on a detour around the massive peak of Mauna Loa flying toward the eastern shore. They rode in silence until they were above Kilauea and the helicopter bucked and pitched in turbulent air currents.
Harry pressed his face against the window, the glass hot against his cheek. He looked down and what he saw was a vision of hell, a lake on the summit of the volcano churning with red lava, a pot boiling with molten rock at two thousand degrees, torrents of heat rank with sulfur rising around them. The helicopter hovered now, Mikala trying to hold it steady in the updrafts.
“Say hello to Pele,” Keaka said. “Would you like to visit her? She is always looking for new lovers.”
Harry was silent, sick to his stomach from the turbulence and the fear.
Keaka grabbed Harry by the back of his neck, and pressed his face to the scorching window. “The fools built houses on the coast road below, all haoles like you. They thought they were safe there, ten miles from a sleeping volcano. But Pele sleeps restlessly, and when she awakes she lets out a roar. Each day the flow comes from the bowels of the earth. Sometimes the lava is fluid like a river out of control, the pahoehoe. No man can outrun it. Then there is the ‘a’a, full of rocks and cinders, and though it is slow, the haoles cannot stop it, not even with all their machines and technology. Pele adds to the island, gives us a new coastline. Probably somewhere in California, even before the lava has cooled, haoles are planning stupid condominiums for the new land of Hawaii. But Pele has issued her warning. Already, she has breathed her fire on the haole houses along the sea, big stupid houses like the big stupid haoles. And little stupid haoles like you, Harry Marlin from Miami Beach. You were born stupid and you will die stupid.”
“No, please,” Harry whimpered.
“Do not fear, little man. I will make you immortal. In a few weeks the lava will cool and harden. In months it will become rock. In years wind and rain and dust will carry spores and seeds into the crevices, and from the smudge of grease that had been your worthless body, a flower might grow. And in ten thousand centuries, the same wind and rain will eat away at the rock and the rock beneath it, and the Big Island of Hawaii will disappear into the sea from which it came. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.”
There was a rapping on the wall separating the passengers from the cockpit. Keaka looked up and rapped back, twice. “Mikala’s in a hurry. The fumes will corrode our engines. haole, are you ready to meet Pele, to love her forever?”
Lomio reached over and grabbed Harry Marlin under each arm. Harry neither resisted nor uttered a sound. He just wanted to get it over with, what he knew was coming, to replace the agony with the pain that would be short and the nothingness that would be forever.
Propping him half out of the seat, Lomio used one hand to turn the spring-loaded door handle, and the pneumatic plunger pushed the door wide open while they hovered. A blast of sulfur, harsh and hot, filled the compartment. With two hands, Lomio swung Harry out the door holding onto his wrists, and Harry did something he had not done in three days on Maui. He unlocked his rectal sphincter and let it go, soiling his pants. A second later, he was hanging there, swinging back and forth by his wrists, his sports coat blowing in the wind from the props. Harry felt the heat through the soles of his shoes, the rising steam from the blast furnace burning his face. He looked up at the big man, who was smiling broadly, his face lathered in sweat.
Lomio let go, the copter hung there a moment, then lifted skyward. At the same time, Harry Marlin fell, arms flailing, trying to fly, Icarus on his way to the sun. Then, spread-eagled, he dropped straight and landed facedown, his descent into hell barely causing a ripple in the flow of boiling red and black lava. In an instant Harry Marlin’s clothing was incinerated, and in another second his flesh melted and then the flames of centuries consumed every bone and organ, and having swallowed him, the molten river moved slowly down the mountain and what had been Harry Marlin became a piece of the island itself.
CHAPTER 26
Another day down the drain. No sign of Keaka, no sign of Lila, and damn sure no sign of Sam’s coupons. Jake Lassiter returned to the Makawao Inn to find two messages. The first one had to be from Cindy:
Long days without lawyer,
Long nights without biker
Call home at last light.
The other… holy smokes… Meet me on top of Haleakala by the observation building, five o’clock today. Lila.
Lassiter found the desk clerk who took the call. A retiree from Arizona with leathery skin, a gravelly voice, and a good memory, he said a woman called just before noon. “Left no number, what she said is right there on the slip, word for word.”
“Five o’clock,” Lassiter said aloud, but mostly to himself.
“Kinda funny time to meet up there,” the desk clerk said. “Nearly dark, colder than my ex-wife’s bosom.”
Someone from the board shops in Paia told Lila he was there, Lassiter thought. And she wants to see him but doesn’t want to be seen. Things are looking up. But something about the message bothered him. What? So impersonal. On Bimini, the note had said “Love, Lila.” No love here, maybe it’ll take some misty rain for that.
It was almost three o’clock, and Lassiter knew they would have to get going. In his room, he tossed a sweater into a gym bag. Then the phone rang. Maybe Lila.
“Hey, jefe. You takin’ care of my big guy?”
“It’s supposed to be the other way around, Cindy. You calling him or me?”
“You mostly. Tell the Tubber I been cleaning his trailer, throwing out all the junk he doesn’t need.”
“Better wait till he gets home, then you tell him. What else?”
“Well, get a load of this. Seems they identified the boatnapper, the guy who says you’re his pal, one Harry Marlin.”
“Never heard of him,” Lassiter said.
“Keep listening. According to Sergeant Carraway, the Rodriguez kid identified Marlin’s mug shot as the guy coming out of the theater that night with the crowbar. Marlin has a record, just un poco of this, un poco of that, bolita and gambling stuff mostly, but he’s the number one suspect in the burglary.”
“Great, they arrest him?”
“Can’t find him, but Carraway says to tell you that a guy named H. Marlin booked a flight, Miami to Maui, about twenty-four hours before you two adventurers left town.”
Lassiter thought about it. The boatnapper Marlin yelling that Keaka double-crossed him. Now Keaka, Lila, Marlin, and Jake all on Maui. Okay, we’ve got enough to play bridge. “I’ll be looking for him. Talk to you tomorrow. Have to — “
“There’s more, Jake. Carraway interviewed Violet Belfrey, and guess what, she’s got a boyfriend named Harry Marlin. She says she casually mentioned to her beau that Mr. K. gave her a bunch of bonds in his office, never dreamed old Honest Harry would do anything like this, he being a hardworking guy and all. She’s just sick to death about the whole thing.”
