Fires of Eden Page 16

  Trumbo merely shook his head and Will went off to deal with the bitch by himself. Ten minutes later he was back and whispered, “She insists that it be tonight. She says that it’s important. Koestler will be with her. If you don’t come to talk to her, she says that she’ll come over here and interrupt the dinner. She knows about Sato.”

  “Fuck,” Trumbo whispered, and smiled at Dr. Tatsuro across the table, who looked up startled. Trumbo’s own divorce lawyer, Benny “Raw Meat” Shapiro, was still in New York. Caitlin was not playing by the rules.

  At seven forty-five, while they were having sherbet between the soup and the fish courses, Will whispered, “Ms. Richardson has just arrived at the hotel. We’ve given her the Premiere Tahiti Hale on the Point.”

  Trumbo nodded. The Point of the peninsula was as far from the Big Hale and Caitlin as they could put Maya. Luckily, the ex-model was used to luxury and being waited on—the Premiere Tahiti Hale had its own pool, chef, and full-time butler—so Maya should not have any reason to come up to the main building.

  “She says that she needs to speak with you,” whispered Will Bryant.

  “Tonight?”

  “Immediately,” said Will.

  “Fucking Christ,” Trumbo whispered back, and smiled again at Dr. Tatsuro, whose head was now bobbing like one of those dashboard doll’s.

  At eight-thirty, during the main course of prime beef raised at the Parker Ranch just up the Kohala Coast, Will Bryant whispered, “Bicki’s landed. She’s on her way here.” Usually, Trumbo’s assistant preferred titles and last names, but Bicki had been—at least for the time Trumbo had known her—only “Bicki,” a rising model who had joined the ranks of Prince, Madonna, and the other one-namers. Trumbo had liked the simplicity of that—it counterbalanced the nose ring and pierced tongue that his newest interest had sported in the past month or so. Trumbo hated the feeling of kissing Bicki and encountering the tiny steel balls on the upper and lower surfaces of the girl’s tongue. She insisted that he should think of it like rock candy, but Trumbo didn’t much like the idea of kissing someone with lumps of candy in her mouth either. So he just skipped the kissing part—it had never been that important anyway. But he did order her not to pierce her nipples or any parts south. Bicki had sulked, but complied.

  “Where are we going to put her?” he whispered to Will.

  “We have the old construction shack,” said his assistant.

  For a second Trumbo thought that Will was joking, but then he remembered the comfortable home they had erected on the extreme south end of the bay during the construction of the Mauna Pele. The “construction shack” was actually a three-bedroom home sitting just beyond the fourteenth hole, a few hundred yards beyond the edge of the lanes of hales. No one had used it but Trumbo during his visits while the resort was being built. The shack had no beach, but it was on a low rise with a beautiful view of the bay and the south peninsula. The house was now used only for the occasional visits of lecherous VIPs like Illinois’ Senator Harlen, who wanted to stay totally out of sight with their underaged companions.

  “Good idea,” said Trumbo. “Bicki’s too stupid to notice how isolated she is. Make sure that the place has a cook and valet.”

  “I’ve seen to it,” whispered Will, and started back to his place at the table.

  “Oh,” said Trumbo, wiggling his finger to bring his executive assistant back. “Who has Briggs assigned to watch Bicki and Maya?” Trumbo didn’t care if the Mauna Pele Killer carried off Caitlin and her fucking lawyer.

  Will Bryant came back to his boss’s side, crouched next to the chair, and seemed to hesitate a moment before whispering, “I’ve assigned Myers to Ms. Richardson and Courtney to Bicki.”

  “You’ve assigned them? Where’s Briggs?”

  “Well, we have a bit of a problem there.”

  Sato, Dr. Tatsuro, and Sunny Takahashi were all looking at Trumbo across their haunches of beef. Trumbo sincerely believed that if he heard the word “problem” one more time he would throw up. He leaned closer to Bryant, trying to look totally calm and indifferent as he did so. “What problem?”

  “Mr. Briggs and Mr. Dillon seem to have disappeared,” whispered his assistant.

  Trumbo concentrated on not ripping out clumps of hair—his own or Will Bryant’s. “I told Briggs and Dillon to knock down that wall in the astronomy office.”

  Will nodded. He was also smiling, just another Trumbo lackey whispering happy trivia to his boss. “Yes. The wall’s gone. So are Briggs and Dillon. There’s some sort of cave there. Mr. Carter asked if you wanted to send someone in after them.”

  Trumbo considered this for two seconds. “Fuck ’em,” he said. He turned back to his guests. “Damn good meat, isn’t it?”

  “Very tender,” said Hiroshe Sato.

  “Very good,” said Sunny Takahashi.

  “Very dericious,” said Old Man Matsukawa.

  “Very bad for arteries,” said Dr. Tatsuro.

  With the coming of the storm, Eleanor, Cordie, and Paul Kukali had moved their discussion from the Shipwreck Bar to the main dining room just inside the Whale Watching Lanai in the Big Hale.

  Paul had been shy about approaching them, but he felt that he had to apologize for what they had seen and been through that afternoon. Before Eleanor could speak, Cordie had invited the curator to join them and the discussion continued into the dining room. Outside, a strong wind from the east was whipping the palm trees and shaking the bougainvillea.

  Paul explained that he had stayed over the extra night to make sure that there was some follow-up to their report.

  “We should call the police ourselves,” Eleanor said.

  Paul smiled. “I did. Charlie Ventura, the sheriff in Kona, is a friend of mine. He said that it would be in the state police’s jurisdiction…”

  “Yeah,” Cordie interrupted. “Hawaii Five-O. Book ’im, Danno.”

  Paul smiled again. “That’s a slightly different department. But anyway, Charlie wasn’t sure that the state police would get anyone up here today. Their people are busy with the problems the road closing is creating between here and Hilo, and Charlie’s people are busy with the influx of tourists on the North Kona Coast…”

  “But they’ll send someone?” said Eleanor.

  Paul nodded. “Charlie did point out that no one has been reported missing here for a while. And he mentioned that Samoan boy who drowned…”

  “Three weeks ago.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” said Eleanor, “at least you’ve gone around Mr. Byron Trumbo. I hope you don’t lose your job for it.”

  Paul Kukali showed his strong, white teeth again. “It’s no great loss. I still have my teaching job at the university. The extra money has been nice…it’s allowed me to buy a place of my own near Waimea…but that wasn’t the real reason I took the job anyway.”

  They had chatted a bit about his property near Waimea, about preserving archaeological sites, about this and that, and then the rising wind and hunger drove them into the dining room.

  “I guess it’d take more than a hand to put us off our feed,” Cordie said as they walked to their table near the window. “Maybe if the dog’d come back with more pieces we’d’ve been put off enough just to have a snack, but as it is, I’m hungry enough to eat a horse.”

  “I can’t recommend the horse here,” said Paul, “but the a’u is quite good.”

  “Isn’t that the lava stuff?” said Cordie. She put on black-rimmed glasses to peruse the menu.

  “No,” said Paul, “that’s a’a. A’u is marlin or broadbill swordfish. It’s expensive, but excellent.”

  Cordie set the menu down. “Okey-dokey. I ain’t payin’, as the owner of the whorehouse used to say. Mr. Trumbo is. A’u it is.”

  Paul also ordered the a’u and Eleanor decided on ulua, a large, flat-headed fish she had tried under different names in South America and elsewhere.

  The waiter asked if they would like a drink, and before anyone could d
ecline, Cordie ordered them all another Pele’s Fire. After a moment, the talk turned to Eleanor’s job.

  “Dealing with the Enlightenment philosophes,” said Paul, “you must be put off by the mythopoeic universe of my ancestors.”

  “Not at all,” said Eleanor. “The philosophes were put off by the mythopoeic mind-set that had preceded them—that is, the Christian and Judaic—but they labored to return to an essentially pagan point of view.” She sipped the tall red drink and smiled as the warmth spread through her. “Albeit, with a rationalist twist.”

  “Yes,” said Paul, “a turn toward the rational-scientific.”

  Eleanor nodded. “For the philosophes, the mythopoeic mind-set was a veil to be pierced by a systematic criticism such as the Greeks had codified and the Romans had mandated.”

  Cordie Stumpf watched them like a spectator at a tennis match.

  “But the mythopoeic was a phase to grow out of,” insisted Paul, toying with his salad. “A veil which clouded as much as protected.”

  Eleanor nodded again. “Yes. But with the loss of that veil we also lost the iridescent sheen of immediate experience, the quality of reification that imbued everything—in your ancient culture and mine—with the excitement of knowing things as living powers.”

  “Your ancient culture?” said Paul.

  “Pre-Christian Europe,” said Eleanor. “The mystical Scots. And some of my lineage is Native American… Sioux, I believe.”

  “Still,” said Paul, “to the Hawaiians, everything was a living power…a source of mana. It seems difficult to imagine Diderot or Voltaire or Lessing or Rousseau or David Hume having any understanding of this epistemological worldview.”

  The waiter took their salad dishes away. The three sipped water from long-stemmed glasses. Beyond the open windows, the wind had brought the surf up to audible dimensions, the sound as strangely lulling as the movement of palm fronds.

  “The struggle between the mythopoeic and the rational certainly predates the Enlightenment era,” said Eleanor, feeling the warmth from the silly Pele’s Fire drinks filling her entire body now. Part of her mind thought it was strange to be wearing a short-sleeved silk blouse and to be dining by open windows in a warm breeze on what was still a winter evening. “In Lucretius’s De rerum natura, his constant theme was repeated thus—‘This dread and darkness of the mind therefore require not rays of the sun, the bright darts of day; only knowledge of nature’s form dispels them.’”

  Paul smiled again. “Yet the ancient Hawaiians who lived along this very shore fifteen centuries ago had an intimate knowledge of nature—plants, animals, the creatures of the sea, the volcano.”

  Leaning forward as if awaiting her opportunity to join in, Cordie said, “Tell us about the volcano.”

  Paul Kukali blinked. “Kilauea or Mauna Loa?”

  “Both.”

  “It’s unusual for them to be so active at the same time,” said the curator. “Those of us on the Big Island get used to the eruptions. They’re more or less constant, and usually threaten only the structures that people have put in foolish places.”

  “Is the Mauna Pele in a foolish place?” asked Cordie.

  Paul hesitated only a second. “Not according to most of the studies done. This area has had volcanic activity…even lava flows…but not in this century. As you can see, even during the heavy activity, all you see here are the ash cloud and reflected light.”

  Cordie slurped the last of her Pele’s Fire. “I saw this movie once…it starred, I think, Paul Newman and Ernest Borgnine and James Franciscus and a bunch of those stars that used to be in those old disaster movies like The Towering Inferno and Airport…and it was all about some tropical resort that got buried in lava.”

  Both Paul and Eleanor waited for the punch line.

  “Well,” said Cordie after a moment, “it seemed to fit in with what we were talking about.”

  Paul shook his head. “It was a mistake to build the Mauna Pele, but I don’t think it will be buried in lava anytime soon.” He sounded almost regretful.

  “I would like to see the volcanoes up close,” Eleanor heard herself saying. She realized that the alcohol in the drinks had affected her more than she had noticed.

  “It’s difficult,” said Paul. “Volcanoes National Park is closed now due to the severity of the eruptions…people were flocking there by the thousands and many of the gases from the volcano can be deadly.”

  “Wasn’t there a case of King Kamehameha’s enemies once being struck down by such poison gases?” asked Eleanor. It was beginning to rain softly, the noise on the roof of the lanai quite pleasant. The smell of wet vegetation was almost erotic.

  “Yes,” said Paul. “In 1790, Chief Keoua was returning from an attack on Kamehameha’s allies and decided to divide the army into three parts and meet again at the caldera to make offerings to Pele. When two of the groups caught up to the first third of the army, they found them all dead—men, women, and children—from a cloud of poisonous gas that had rolled down the mountain-side.”

  Eleanor said, “That can’t have done much for morale.”

  Paul shook his head. “The next year Keoua surrendered, he was murdered and his body was offered as sacrifice, and Kamehameha consolidated his control over all of the islands.”

  Cordie finished her drink. “Was that far from here?”

  “What’s that?” said Paul.

  “Where the army was gassed?”

  “No. Actually, it’s up the slope on this same southwest rift zone. The footprints of Keoua’s retreating army are still visible in the solidified mud.”

  Their food arrived. For a few moments, the only conversation was in praise of their fish courses. Then Eleanor said, “I can see why it’s hard to get close to the volcanoes now.”

  Paul paused in the act of lifting his fork. “The way to see the eruption is by helicopter. Of course, every chopper on the island is booked up for weeks in advance. They’re flying out of the mega-resorts north of here and out of Hilo. Air tours that used to cost a hundred dollars are going for five and six hundred now.”

  Eleanor shook her head. “Too rich for my blood. And I won’t be here weeks from now.”

  Paul lowered the fork. “I might be able to arrange something.”

  Eleanor glanced at the curator. There seemed to be nothing calculating in his eyes or demeanor. “Really,” she said, “it’s not important and I…”

  He raised a hand. “I have a friend,” he said, “who flies his own helicopter on Maui. He’s going to be on the Big Island tomorrow and he owes me a favor. Of course, it might be late in the day, but that’s the best time to see the eruption…at night.”

  “I wouldn’t want to inconvenience…” began Eleanor.

  Paul waved away her protests. “No, I think it’s a good idea. I’d like to see the eruptions myself, and this would be a perfect opportunity. Seriously, if you don’t want to go, that’s fine…but otherwise I’ll arrange a little tour for sometime tomorrow evening.”

  Eleanor hesitated only a second. “That would be marvelous.”

  She turned to Cordie. “You’d be interested in seeing the eruption, wouldn’t you?”

  “Not much,” said Cordie. “I don’t like fire, I don’t like explosions, and I hate flying. You go, and tell me how it was.”

  Eleanor and Paul both tried to persuade her, but she was adamant in her refusal. “My idea of vacation doesn’t include getting dropped into a lake of lava from no helicopter,” she said and the matter was closed.

  They paused a moment to listen as the storm roared more wildly outside. Palm fronds whipped back and forth just beyond the terrace wall. Lightning flashed and the lights went out. There were already candles on the tables, so there was no commotion among the few diners, but waiters quickly brought hurricane lamps with brighter candles. Soon the room was filled with a softer, more intimate glow. Lightning continued to ripple to the south and west now.

  “Does this happen often?” Eleanor asked the cur
ator. “The power, I mean.”

  “Occasionally. The resort has its own backup generators for vital things—refrigerators, the lighting in the catacombs, Mr. Trumbo’s executive suites…”

  “Catacombs?” said Cordie, perking up like a bird dog.

  Paul Kukali explained about the underground service areas.

  “I’d like to see that,” said Cordie.

  Paul sipped his wine. “I believe that there’s a tour on Wednesday.”

  “I don’t like tours,” said Cordie, “but I’d like to see these catacombs.”

  The curator smiled. “My office is down there. We can go that way after dinner, if you like. I’m sure that it’s against the rules to bring guests there, but I’m already in trouble with the boss today so…what the hell.”

  They toasted that with their wine. When they paused again, Eleanor said softly, “What can you tell me about Pana-ewa, Nanaue, and Ku?”

  Paul set his fork down. “Why do you list those names?”

  “I’ve read about them,” said Eleanor.

  The curator nodded seriously. “Monsters,” he said. “Gods. Spirits.” He looked at Cordie Stumpf. “There’s no old Hawaiian burial ground here, but these creatures were supposedly entombed near here.”

  Cordie’s eyes were bright. “Tell us.”

  Sighing, his face illuminated by the flickering candle flame, Paul told them about Pana-ewa, Nanaue, and Ku.

  TWELVE

  The stars, the moon are on fire;

  The cold months burn;

  Dust circles on the island, the land is parched.

  The sky hangs low, rough seas in the pit—

  The ocean tosses: lava surges in Kilauea

  Waves of fire cover the plain;

  Pele erupts.

  —traditional Pele chant,

  translated by Marjorie Sinclair

  Briggs and Dillon were a hundred feet into the lava tube, flashlights illuminating the trail of blood on black basalt, when Dillon said, “This is fucked.”

  Both men had their pistols out—Dillon his 9mm Glock semiautomatic, Briggs a .38 Police Special—and Dillon still held the flashlight. When the section of wall had finally tumbled outward, revealing the cave and the smear of blood leading away from the light, Briggs had set down the sledgehammer and stepped across the masonry and Dillon had followed. The lava tube was smoother than most caves, the ceiling about nine feet above the floor, with striated strips where lava had dried and receded on either side. The regular bunchings reminded Dillon of the muscular wall of an intestine. The thought was not reassuring.