A Place of Refuge

Chapter One

Chapter OneThe Big Island of Hawaii — 1986

The two boys hid their bicycles in a tangle of brush beside the dusty path and scrambled down the hillside toward the shore, where crystal-blue waves rolled in from the Pacific and slapped themselves into foam against black lava rock. They had pedaled to this spot from their homes in the small village of Mokolea, located on Hawaii's southwest coast. Both boys were ten years old, and both were black-haired, brown-skinned descendants of the original Polynesian islanders.

The boys halted a few feet from the water. Here and there the falling tide revealed wet furry patches of brownish algae that filled the air with a musky odor.

The smaller boy took two empty juice cans from a sack. "Wan' sta't ovah deh brah?" he asked, pointing. His English was a rapid flow of words dropping sharply in tone at the end, a pidgin vernacular peculiar to Hawaii.

"Shu," his friend said.

They removed their sneakers and stepped barefooted into the glass-clear water. Wading through the shallow surf to the nearest exposed lava rocks, they crouched down and used short knives to pry opihi from the bare areas where they clung tenaciously. The mollusks, which grew shells in the shape of flattish fluted cones a couple of inches across when fully mature, were good eating either steamed or raw.

The smaller boy had gathered nearly half a can of opihi when he spied something floating on the waves, bobbing in the water perhaps fifty yards from where he stood. It looked like a bundle of rags.

"Ey," he said, pointing with his knife, "what you tink is?"

His friend stood and shaded his eyes with one hand, squinting and frowning. Careful of his footing, he stepped onto another rock for a better view.

"Look like gobbij," he finally said, shrugging.

"I'm gon see." The smaller boy wedged his can into a crack in the rocks and set off, clambering expertly across the lumpy lava.

The taller boy moved down to the water's edge again. He'd seen drifting garbage before. Plenty of it. Plastic sacks of crap from ships at sea, hunks of busted styrofoam, blobs of crude oil, swarms of plastic bottles, s**t-stained Pampers, all kinds of horrible stuff that ended up on Hawaii's shores by the ton.

He had just spotted a patch of five good-sized opihi when he heard a shout. He looked over his shoulder and saw his friend hurrying back, moving across the lava like a frantic crab and yelling about something. With a last glance to mark the location of the opihi the taller boy climbed a few yards away from the soft slap and hiss of the breakers and shouted, "Ey! What you fine?"

His friend stumbled and fell as he ran but got up immediately and kept coming, ignoring the cuts on his knees as he leaped from one rock to another. He stopped a few yards away, clinging to a lava crag for balance and gasping for breath. His face was strangely blank.

"What?"

"Is a guy, brah!" the small boy blurted out.

"What you mean?"

"Is a guy!" the boy shouted. "Somebody dead in da watah!" Tears sprang from his eyes. He had never seen a dead person before, and this one—even though it was swollen and chewed by fish—looked like someone he knew.

Chapter TwoThe '75 Chevy Cheyenne sped south along the Queen Ka'ahumanu Highway, following the coastline. Slouched behind the wheel of the rust-eaten pickup, Neal Tate took off his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes, blinking at the endless azure sprawl of the Pacific Ocean off to his right. He was struggling out of a torpor brought on by sun, heat, and the steady mutter of the engine. The highway itself was sleep-inducing; most of it was as smooth and straight as a runway as it sliced through miles of dry yellow grass and gray-black lava flows of the Kona Coast.

Tate glanced at his watch when the sign for Honokohau Harbor came into view. He was running late.

The truck's balding tires complained as he wheeled into the entrance, followed suddenly by plumes of steam streaming from beneath the truck's buckled hood.

"Ah, hell." Nothing new but always a pain in the ass.

At low speed Tate followed the paved road to a fork, bore right, and bounced across the acre or so of bare ground that served as the harbor's parking lot and dry dock. To his left a forest of masts and towers seemed to sprout from the earth. The harbor wasn’t natural; it had been blasted from solid lava and sea level was several feet below the surrounding land.

Tate parked his steaming vehicle near the middle boat ramp, directly above the Suzy Q's slip. He took a plastic jug from the back of the truck and walked down the ramp to the slip.

The Suzy Q was gone, which meant that its owner, Tate’s friend Big Jim Perkins, was probably out fishing with a client. Tate located the end of Big Jim's cheap vinyl garden hose and cranked open the valve, causing the hose to swell up and hiss like a snake, but a couple of kicks at the twisted heap straightened the kinks and produced a steady flow of water.

As the jug filled Tate caught his reflection in a cracked boat windshield propped against the rock wall of the harbor. He looked a lot better than he had in LA. Tanned. Healthy. The karate and weight lifting were filling out his muscles again. He turned his head, letting the hard light fall across his face. The cheeks weren't as gaunt as before but otherwise his features looked the same as always. Hawkish, Susan said, and he could see it. A heavy brow hooding his eyes, a nose just large and broken enough to suggest a beak. She also said he was cute but he had to take her word for that.

The jug filled with a gurgle and he turned off the faucet and climbed up the ramp to his truck.

A hot geyser spewed upward when he knocked off the truck’s radiator cap. He let the steam subside, refilled the radiator, then restarted the truck and rumbled across the parking lot to the far end, where he turned onto a short, unpaved road near the harbor mouth. Parking at the end of the road, he looked across a quarter mile of flat lava shoreline and saw small specks moving on a gleaming crescent of sand. The specks were naked humans. They were throwing Frisbees, smoothing on tanning oil, taking in the sun at what was called, for lack of a better name, the Nude Beach.

Tate opened the door and propped his foot on the hinge, getting comfortable. Four months ago, when he and Susan first came to the island, he had not been enthusiastic about lying naked on the sand with equally naked strangers only a few yards away. But after a few visits he'd gotten used to it. More or less.

The Nude Beach was one of several good things about Kailua-Kona, but it was fate and not planning that had brought them to this town in Hawaii. Before the state's bureaucracy had tracked him down with notice of George Akoki's bequest, Hawaii had been mostly a mental abstraction for Tate—beaches, palm trees, hotels, tourists. He thought that Honolulu was located on the biggest island before looking at a map, but the state’s capital city was actually on the mid-sized island of Oahu. The island called Hawaii—the Big Island—was located some 130 miles southeast of Oahu along the Hawaiian archipelago.

In the last four months Tate's knowledge of the Big Island had grown considerably. In the first place it was indeed big—nearly twice the size of the seven other major islands combined. From above it looked vaguely like a turtle swimming northeast in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, head extended, left foreleg stroking, two webbed rear feet splayed. The turtle's shell had two high humps located approximately in the middle: Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, volcanic mountains over thirteen and a half thousand feet tall, nearly as high as Colorado's loftiest peaks. In general the turtle's left side—in the lee of the trade winds—was dry and covered with grass or scrub growth at lower elevations, while its right side was wet and covered with jungles and forests.

As a whole the island was sparsely populated. The biggest city, Hilo, was located just above the turtle's right rear flipper. With its seaport and airport, Hilo had formerly been the island's uncontested center of activity, but tourists now flocked to Kailua, located directly across from Hilo on the sunny west coast, the Kona Coast. Kailua had its own jetliner airport now, just a little ways up the coast. If not for the advice of the travel agent who sold them their tickets they would have flown into Hilo to await the probate proceedings.

Tate saw Susan coming up the sandy road ahead, identifiable by her khaki shorts and pink tank top. As she got closer he saw sweat shining on her long, tanned legs. Time on the island hadn't hurt her either. Her hair had lengthened and the sun had turned it a streaked auburn that looked good against her caramel skin.

Susan saw him and waved. He lifted a hand in return, watching her approach. He liked looking at her. Especially her face. After ten years and dozens of portraits he could draw her from memory. The strong, straight nose. The wide, gently downturned mouth, lower lip slightly fuller. Her eyebrows, smoothly tapered arcs, black like the heavy lashes that made her hazel eyes seem pale and feline.

As she strolled up to the truck Tate tapped his watch and said, "You're late."

Susan pulled off her sunglasses and arched an eyebrow. "Oh, really? How long have you been waiting?"

"Seems like forever."

Susan rolled her eyes. "I saw you drive up, pal. They don't call you Mr. Late for nothing."

"Are they calling me that again?"

"Among other things." Susan tossed her bag and beach mat into the truck and got in. The dented pickup belched blue smoke as Tate coaxed it into motion.

When they were on the highway headed for town Susan said, "How did it go?"

"Painting? Great." In fact things had gone remarkably well that morning. He had somehow crossed a hundred yards of sharp a'a lava, backpack and all, without a single stumble, and within a few minutes of reaching the isolated cove on the far side he found an excellent vantage point. After setting up, leveling the easel and stool with hunks of lava, tying the umbrella down with nylon cord, and clamping down the canvas, he penciled in the rocks and water, squeezed fat lines of paint onto the palette, and got to work, starting on the sky with quick, short strokes of a one-inch filbert. Two hours later he was working on another view of the cove.

"It seems like you've been working a lot," Susan said. "If you—" A mongoose suddenly scurried across the highway, looking like a stretched-out squirrel on rollers. Susan yelped and stamped on a phantom brake pedal. Tate guided the truck through an easy swerve, watching the animal shoot into the brush. "Those things drive me crazy when they do that," Susan said, exasperated. "I think they wait until you're close on purpose."

Tate grunted. "Could be. No cobras in Hawaii so they do this for kicks."

"I was going to say if you keep this up you'll have enough stuff for a show before long."

"Well, it'll be a while," he said. He had a list of places on the Kona Coast he wanted to paint, compiled during the time they spent in Kailua, and he had about half of them done. Unfortunately a number of the remaining sites were north of town and now that they lived near Mokolea it was a long drive. On the plus side the weather up north was nearly always perfect, they liked to visit Kailua, and they made a lot of side trips to places they hadn't seen before.

Susan shifted her position on the seat and Tate glanced at her. She was leaning out of the window, fluffing her hair in the breeze.

"What?" she said, pulling her head in when he laughed.

"You remind me of a dog with your head out like that."

"That's so sweet."

"A really cute dog."

"Keep working on it," she said. She took a brush from her bag and ran it through her hair. "So, what's the plan here?"

Tate hitched himself up in the seat. "Personally, I'd like to hit the Kona Inn and eat a grotesquely large meal."

"Sounds good. I wouldn't mind hanging out in town for a while after that. Sort of wean myself from civilization gradually."

Tate snorted. "I'm still not convinced Los Angeles is civilization. Which reminds me—I wanted to stop by the GYRO office."

"Oh? How come?"

He lifted a shoulder. "I thought we'd give 'em a few more bucks."

The brush stopped. "More? Good grief, Neal, we already gave a hundred dollars."

"What they're up against, that's nothing."

"It's not nothing. What brought this on, those trucks?"

Tate shrugged again. "I guess so. I thought we were finally getting away from everything. First there's the launch site madness and now this, right next door. They're probably putting in a fifty-story hotel."

"Not way down there, Neal. I still think they're just fixing up the ranch."

"I hope you're right," Tate said grimly. "I'll flag down one of the trucks and ask when we get back."

He turned down Kaiwi Street into Kailua's industrial area. Four blocks down, after stopping to let a dusty mongrel trot across the driveway, he pulled into a small, half-full parking lot in front of a row of storefront offices.

Susan lifted her sunglasses. "Looks like they're gone."

The sign over the unit that had housed the GYRO Hawaii office was gone and the plate glass windows, now missing their bamboo blinds, were dust-dulled.

Tate got out. "Right back."

He went up to the office door and peered through it with his hands cupped around his eyes. There was nothing inside but bare carpet and a few scattered papers. He stood in the sun a moment, then entered the office next door.

Susan was fanning herself with a magazine when he returned to the truck. "What's the deal?"

"I don't know," he said, looking puzzled. "The people next door say the GYRO office was open last Saturday and empty when they came back Monday. Looks like they moved."

"Maybe they closed down."

"I hope not. Or if they did I hope it's for the right reason. I'll try to track 'em down later."

Tate started the truck and turned it around. As they pulled into the street Susan said, "Since we're near, you want to stop by Harry's and say hi?"

Tate stuck out his lip. "How about later? Maybe we can get together at pau-hana time and have a drink."

They drove down Palani and turned onto Ahi Drive, entering the heart of Kailua. The streets and sidewalks teemed with the first wave of the post-Christmas tourist horde. Tate turned up a narrow street across from the Kona Inn and pulled into the parking lot at the end, where, miraculously, he found an empty space in the shade of a kiawe tree.

"Give me a minute," Susan said when he killed the engine. "I want to fix my hair."

Tate slumped against the door, sliding down in the seat enough to ease the pressure on his back, which was tight from sitting in front of the easel. While Susan braided her hair he stared through the truck's cracked windshield. The quiet inside the cab was soothing. His eyelids began, slowly, to droop. Outside, in a world colored amber by his sunglasses, a mynah bird swooped down to the parking lot to peck at a rotten papaya. He moved his eyes; yellow rays sprayed off chrome and glass, dazzling and hypnotic.

Susan touched his shoulder. "Hey," she said in a whisper. "I’m ready. What are you thinking about?"

It took a conscious effort to tear his eyes from the light and turn his head. "I...nothing, really."

"Come on."

"I don't know. I just had this weird feeling. Like this was all a dream, us living here. Like I was going to wake up and..." He shook his head.

Susan leaned across the seat and kissed him. "It's real all right. Look." She tapped the dashboard with a finger. "This truck is proof. Something this bad couldn't exist even in a nightmare."

They got out. "You know," Tate said, shoving his door closed with a creak that sent the mynah bird flapping into the air, "sometimes I get the feeling you don't like my truck. But when the market for iron oxide picks up you'll see how clever I was."

As they strolled down to Ahi Drive Tate absent-mindedly plucked cans, wrappers, and bottles from cracks in the rock wall bordering the sidewalk where slobby tourists and natives had stuffed them. He deposited the trash in a receptacle across the street in the Kona Inn Shopping Village. "Haven't been here in a while," he said. For a tourist trap, the Village—an old resort hotel converted into a tree-shaded, open-air boutique mall—was not unpleasant.

They bought two iced teas at Billy Boy's and took them out to the lawn overlooking Kailua Bay, where a steady breeze stirred the palm fronds overhead.

Settling onto the grass, Susan made a moaning sound of contentment. "Boy, I had a great day doing nothing."

Tate stretched out beside her. "Well, hell, after a three-week vacation a person needs to relax a little."

They sipped their tea, watching a line of sailboats rock at their moorings. The breeze, smelling of salt and chlorophyll, gradually cooled them off. Tate finished his drink first and rolled into a sitting position. "I think I'll try to find out what happened to GYRO," he said. "Want to wait here while I use the phone?"

Susan moaned again. "You couldn't move me. Take your time."

He found the pay phone near the restrooms already in use. A local kid attired in lime-green baggies and orange sandals was tugging at his crotch and shouting angrily into the receiver. "s**t, brah, how you broke? Don' broke a boogie wit' one fuckin' hammah, brah, s**t!"

Tate waited on a bench. When it became evident conversation was just warming up he headed for the coffee shop c*m bistro farther down the mall.

He paid for a cup of Kona Dark and took it to a table shaded by a small banyan. He dumped a packet of sweetener and two containers of half-and-half into the coffee and stirred it thoughtfully. The sweetener was carcinogenic, the half-and-half was loaded with artery-clogging cholesterol, and the caffeine would disrupt the functioning of various internal organs. As he sipped the steaming toxins he reflected on the fact that, correctly applied, science could suck the joy out of anything.

He was staring into space when a blazing orange aloha shirt appeared in front of him. "Well, well!” a familiar voice bellowed, "Look who's back in town!"

Tate raised a hand to shield his eyes. "Hey, man, you could blind somebody with that shirt!"

James “Big Jim” Perkins bent down and peered from under his shapeless Panama hat. "Wait, now," he said in his plodding tones, "is it Paul Gauguin or...Vincent Van friggin' Gogh?"

"You've been in the sun too long," Tate said. He slapped the bench encircling the banyan tree. "Have a seat."

Perkins circled around the table and lowered himself ponderously onto the shaded bench, which creaked under his weight. Perkins was just over six feet four inches tall and had the massive build of a defensive lineman, which he had been for the Raiders before a neck injury ended his football career. His huge frame was still heavily muscled but carried a noticeable layer of fat, the result of poorly restrained cookie and beer habits.

"So," Perkins said, dragging off his hat and clawing his hair and beard in a feeble attempt at grooming, "how's the paint dabbin' goin'? Used any good...pthalocyanine blue lately?"

Tate felt the first wave of Big Jim symptoms hit him. Perkins' sluggish mode of communication, with long pauses right in the middle of a sentence, seemed to drop people into low gear. It was Tate’s theory that Big Jim’s very being produced relativistic effects in his immediate vicinity. Time, motion, and biological processes actually slowed to a crawl. Remaining in the force field long enough caused important tasks to be shoved aside in favor of eating, drinking, bullshitting, and goofing off.

Tate sighed. "You never cease to amaze me, Large James. First you stun me by knowing Gauguin's full name and by making an effort to pronounce it correctly, and then you say 'pthalocyanine'. Who would imagine that a disheveled, semi-literate fisherman could come out with such a word?"

Perkins came precariously close to a laugh but caught himself and covered it with a cough into his hand. "So," he said. "You here to do a little...plein-air?"

Tate feigned shock. "There you go again!"

"What is it?" Perkins asked. "You're being more...cruel than usual."

"You think so? As cruel as the guy who gave you that haircut?"

"As a matter of fact," Perkins said, giving his chest a proud pat, "I cut it myself. It's the natural look. Who wants to look like a...TV newsman?"

"I'm fairly positive no one could mistake you for a TV newsman," Tate reassured him. He eyed the thick hair covering Perkins' arms and chest. "A gorilla, maybe."

"Oh, now that really slays me," Perkins said. "Scrawny little paint-dabber taunts..." He puffed out his chest. "...powerful sea god!"

Perkins checked the clock on the coffee shop wall and grunted. "Gotta cruise, dude. Clients to meet. Beer to drink." He stood up and clapped on his hat. "Glad to see you're back. Be in town awhile?"

Tate shook his head."We've got to get back and do some stuff, like finish unpacking. You want to come down? Take a break from this high-pressure scene here?"

"Can't," Perkins said. "I'm booked for the...next five days. When are you coming back in town?"

"I'm not sure," Tate said. "Two or three days."

Perkins' eyes lit up. "That's New Year's eve. We can party!"

"In that case we'll be here."

"We is right." Perkins pointed a finger. "Don't show up without the...broad."

Tate looked pained. "It makes me sick to repeat this but she actually said she missed you."

"Of course she did. Hey, when you come...leave a message with the...charter girls." Perkins flashed the shaka sign, thumb and little finger extended from his fist. "Aloha, brah." He strode off, his frayed tennis shoes slapping the fake cobblestones.

Tate took his empty cup back to the counter and strolled over to the pay phone.

The telephone directory hung from its wire like a shotgunned fowl, splayed pages soaked with a pink, sticky fluid. Using his fingertips he picked through the soggy mess and found a listing for GYRO—for Get Your Rockets Off—Hawaii.

When he dialed the number a recorded voice explained to him with false sympathy that it had been disconnected or was no longer in service.

Tate stood with the telephone in his hand, trying to remember the name of the woman who directed GYRO. Something with a B. Betty, Bobbi, Barbara, Belinda...

Bernice. Bernice what? Collins came to mind, but that wasn't right. He went back to the directory. He was peeling apart pages in the C's when the name popped into his head: Bernice Hollings.

A husky female voice answered on the third ring. "Aloha and hello-ah."

"Is this Bernice Hollings?"

"It most certainly is. Who has the pleasure of speaking to me?"

"This is Neal Tate. I met you at one of the GYRO meetings a couple of months back."

"Ah, Mr. Tate," Bernice Hollings sighed theatrically. "I've been expecting to hear from you."