fruit stand in his tanklike truck, squashing pineapples and papayas and Jake Lassiter with a reinforced-steel bumper.
He bought a coconut macaroon and ate it in two bites. What was making him hungry — thoughts of Lila or death, or were they one and the same? Boy, the mind plays tricks after you’ve seen a friend killed. Jake Lassiter was fondling the passion fruit and munching a second macaroon when he turned around and there she was. Sun- streaked hair pulled straight back, her face tanned, full lips slightly parted, gold-and-emerald eyes still innocent and inviting.
“Lo-li-laa,” he mumbled, mouth full of macaroon.
“Jake, you have a milk shake mustache and crumbs on your chin. You really know how to knock a girl off her feet, don’t you?”
“Bad timing,” Lassiter said, wiping his mouth with a bare arm.
“Good choice, very filling and healthy, good to have in your stomach before a flight.”
“We going somewhere?”
“You, Jake. You’ve got to leave. Go home, get out of here before Mikala and Keaka find you. Mikala will kill you to get you out of the way. Keaka will do it for fun.”
“Nice crowd you hang around with, or isn’t hang around the right description? Nice crowd you conspire with, carry their garbage, take a cut.”
Lila took a step backward and turned toward the ocean. She stared at the horizon, keeping her thoughts and her expression hidden. “I’m not with them, not anymore. There isn’t time to explain everything to you. I know I’ve hurt you and now you’re striking out at me. Try to put yourself in my position. I met Keaka when I was a kid. He was different from the other boys.”
“So was Ted Bundy.”
“Listen, Jake. In the beginning, he wasn’t violent. He just wanted to return to an earlier time, to live off the land and the sea. Somewhere it went wrong. His disgust with the haoles led to disrespect for their laws. The drugs, the violence… it started slowly and got worse. Sure, I went along, I admit it. But I got out after Miami.”
“What do you mean, got out? You were the mule, you carried Sam Kazdoy’s bond coupons to Bimini.”
“I didn’t know whose they were, that you were involved in it.”
Lassiter laughed a hollow, sad laugh. “It doesn’t matter whose bonds they were. It’s still a crime. But it so happens the bonds belong to my client.”
“So you came for the bonds, not for me.”
He could have told her the truth but the truth hurt too much. “That’s right. Does that disappoint you, Lila, that I’m not the romantic fool you took me for?”
“I was sort of hoping that you were,” she said wistfully, her eyes moist. “Romantic, I mean. I thought you were, and it made me realize how little I was getting from Keaka.” She put both arms around his neck and drew herself up to him, the fullness of her breasts against his chest. He kissed her, wanting her more than ever, knowing the bonds had never been as important as this. But at the same time his mind was working overtime, the brain rattling off the charges against her — conspiracy to transport stolen property, grand larceny, buying, receiving, and concealing stolen property, and the biggie, maybe accessory to first-degree murder. Her rap sheet could be a miniseries. And Keaka — two first-degree murders, Berto and Tubby, three if he killed Marlin. The two of them were Bonnie and Clyde at the beach.
“Jake, it’s wonderful to be in your arms again,” she whispered in his ear. “I’ve missed you so. That morning, leaving you on Bimini, it was awful. I cried all the way to Nassau.”
“It’s a twenty-minute flight,” he said.
“I mean it, Jake. It was the worst day of my life. I kept thinking about what I did, and I don’t mean carrying the bonds. That was no big deal, but leaving you that way…”
“What’d you do with the coupons?” he asked, Sam Kazdoy’s lawyer again.
“Keaka met me on Nassau. No hassles with the Bahamian government, no searches or anything. We flew Air Canada to Toronto. Same thing, they don’t bother Americans. I had them in a carryon, could have been my toiletries. Only things we declared were two bottles of duty-free rum. Then we went to Vancouver on the same plane. We spent the night and took a Continental flight to Kahului. No problem there, just a couple tourists coming home from Canada. But, Jake, the whole trip, I kept thinking of you.”
He wanted to believe her, wanted to hear more about how she missed him, but part of him was on assignment. “Where are the coupons now?”
“Keaka has them. I don’t know where, probably stowed away until Mikala figures out what to do with them.”
“Where’s Keaka?”
“Forget about Keaka,” she said, kissing him again. Why did he get the impression she used her kisses as tools of distraction, the same way he fouled up witnesses with irrelevancies? Was that it, were her kisses irrelevant?
A voice inside forced him back, took him somewhere other than where his body wanted to be. The voice told him there was unfinished business and a score to settle, told him to use his wits and maybe a weapon, too, told him things would never be the same. Finally it told him he could kill.
“Where’s Keaka?” he repeated.
“Jake, can’t you understand? You’re out of your element here. If Keaka pulls a gun, you can’t object like it’s a courtroom. Even if you found him, even if you had a gun, what would you do? I don’t see you shooting anyone. And Keaka won’t surrender. His greatest wish is to die a warrior, to join his ancestors and be reincarnated as a king.”
“Maybe I can grant his wish. Look, he killed Berto, a friend of mine for a long time. Berto made some mistakes, screwed up his life, but he didn’t deserve to die. And Tubby Tubberville. Tubby was a big teddy bear. I blame myself for bringing him along. I was riding shotgun without a shotgun, and I was useless. Now, where is Keaka?”
She looked at him through misty eyes. “Not on Maui.”
“Where?”
Lila shook her head sadly, as if already regretting what she would say. “In the jungle on Molokai. He has a campsite in a clearing.”
“How do I get there?”
“You don’t. He’s on high ground above the beach. He can see a boat approaching during the day or hear it at night. Besides, there’s nowhere to land a boat.”
Keep asking questions, fast and simple, no time for a witness to take a breath or fabricate an answer. “How’d he get there?”
“Windsurfs across the Pailolo Channel. He fishes and hunts and picks fruits. But he also has weapons — not native spears either — guns, and he’s good with them.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Because I used to go there with him. That’s always what we did after a job, sort of a native celebration at beating the haoles. He would have sailed there early this morning, after killing your friend.”
“His job isn’t finished if I’m still breathing, is it?”
“No, but now that Mikala knows you’re alive, he’ll probably handle that himself. They’d consider it fairly easy — you’re just not in their league when it comes to this — and they’d want Keaka to lay low.”
“Does Keaka have a telephone or a shortwave radio on Molokai?”
“No, that would be too modern, too much haole influence.”
“So he would have gone there believing I’m dead. Mikala couldn’t tell him I’m alive. I’d have the element of surprise.”
“It would be your only advantage,” she said quietly. “Everything else favors him, including the fact that he’s a killer and you’re not.”
Jake Lassiter was already planning. “Last night there were two men in the truck, a bigger man driving.”
“That would be Lomio, part Samoan, part Hawaiian. He works for them. Lomio loves the truck and doesn’t mind hurting people. He’d still be on Maui, on the farm.”
So three enemies out to kill him — Keaka, Mikala, and Lomio. And Jake Lassiter didn’t know whether he could trust Lila Summers. He went fishing. “Why aren’t you with Keaka?”
