Fires of Eden

  The hissing moan came again.

  “Almost there,” grunted Marty. He could feel the sea spray in the air now. The cliffs must be around here somewhere; low cliffs, only twenty feet or so to the water. He’d better watch it. The stars were out overhead. All he needed to make this stupid vacation a perfect fuck-up was to pitch headfirst off a cliff into the fucking Pacific Ocean. “Coming!” he wheezed as the moan came again. It was just around this heap of black rock.

  Marty came into a slight opening in the a’a and stopped on the sand. There was a body lying there. It wasn’t Nick or Tommy. And it was a body, not a live guy. Marty had seen dead bodies before, and this one was dead. Whoever’d been moaning, it wasn’t this schmuck.

  The form was almost naked, with only a short, wet cloth of some sort wrapped around its middle. Marty stepped closer and saw that it was a man—short, stocky, the calf muscles well defined as if he were a runner or something. It looked like he’d been lying around for some time: the skin was rubbery white, almost flaking with decomposition, and the guy’s fingers looked like white grubs that would start wiggling back into the sand at any second. A couple of other ways that Marty could tell that the guy hadn’t been the one to do the moaning: the man’s long hair was matted with seaweed, his eyelids were up and one eye reflected starlight like glass while the other was completely gone, and there was a fucking baby crab or something crawling out of the guy’s open mouth.

  Marty fought off the surge of nausea and took a step closer, holding his 5-iron out ahead of him. He could smell the guy now, a sickeningly sweet mixture of ocean smell and rot. The waves must have washed him up this high, because the corpse was lying on some of those short, sharp lava rocks that looked like little stalactites or stalagmites or whatever the hell they were.

  He touched the corpse with the head of his 5-iron and the body shifted slightly, rolling heavily as if sloshing with seawater.

  “Jesus,” whispered Marty. The corpse was some sort of hunchback dwarf. Unless his spine had been all smashed and twisted like this by being beat up against the rocks after he’d died, the guy’d had a hump like fucking Quasimodo.

  And there was some crazy tattoo on the hump.

  Marty leaned closer, bracing himself with his 5-iron, trying not to let the smell make him sick.

  There was a wild tattoo on the hump all right—an image of a shark’s mouth that spread across the wide bulge between the corpse’s shoulder blades and disappeared under the arms. It was really weird, almost three-dimensional: whoever had done it had used jet-black ink for the open shark’s mouth and had filled in the teeth with white.

  Some native guy, thought Marty. He’d go back with Nick and Tommy, have a couple of Scotches, and then tell the hotel people that some native had fallen out of his outrigger or whatever. He’d tell them there was no hurry, that the guy wasn’t going nowhere.

  Marty stood up and prodded the hump with the head of his 5-iron, sliding the metal to the black ink of the mouth.

  The head of the club slid into a cavity.

  “Shit!” said Marty, and jerked his club back. Not fast enough—the shark’s mouth snapped shut on the 5-iron. Marty could hear the clack of sharp teeth on graphite.

  He made the mistake of wasting a precious few seconds tugging at his club—it had been a present from Shirley, his current squeeze—but then he realized what he was doing, felt himself losing the tug-of-war, and he let go of the handle of the 5-iron as if it were a hot poker and turned to run.

  Marty had not taken three steps before movement in the rocks stopped him. “Tommy?” he whispered. “Nick?” Even as he spoke, he saw that it was not Tommy or Nick.

  The shapes slid into the opening between the a’a.

  I’m not gonna scream, thought Marty, feeling his courage leak away with the urine that ran down his pant leg. I’m not gonna scream. This ain’t real. It’s some stupid joke like that time that Tommy had the hooker dress up like a cop at my birthday party. I ain’t gonna scream. He took a careful step back, his mouth open, breath rasping in his throat.

  Shark’s teeth clamped onto his ankle.

  Marty began to scream.

  Tommy and Nick have just reached the golf carts when the screams begin. Both men stop and listen. The wind noise is so loud, the surf sound so great, that the screams must be something to be heard over all that racket.

  Tommy turns toward Nick. “Probably broke his fucking leg.”

  Nick is sitting in the golf cart, face pale now that it is shielded from the volcano glow. “Or a snake, maybe.”

  Tommy pulls the dead cigar from his pocket and clamps it between his teeth. “There ain’t no snakes in Hawaii, dipshit. I was just kidding.”

  Nick fires him a glance.

  Tommy sighs and begins walking toward the lava maze.

  “Hey,” says Nick. “You going in that sheep shit?”

  Tommy stops just at the edge of the a’a. “What do you suggest—we leave him?”

  Nick thinks a second, “Go for help, maybe?”

  Tommy makes a face, “Yeah, and come back and not find him in the dark and have to fly home and tell Connie and Shirley that we left Marty out here to die? Uh-uh. Besides, the stupid shit’s probably just got his foot stuck in a rock or something.”

  Nick nods but stays in the cart.

  “Coming?” says Tommy. “Or you gonna stay there and let Marty think of you as prime pussy for the rest of your miserable life?”

  Nick thinks a minute, nods to himself, and gets out of the cart. He starts walking toward the lava, then goes back to the cart, pulls out an iron, and crosses the dark grass to Tommy.

  “What the shit’s that for?”

  “I dunno,” says Nick. “Maybe somebody’s in there.” The screams from the lava field have stopped now.

  “Yeah, Marty’s in there.”

  “Somebody else, I mean,” says Nick.

  Tommy shakes his head in disgust. “Look, this is Hawaii, not Newark. Ain’t nobody gonna be in there that we can’t handle.” He walks into the rocks, following the faint trail left by Marty’s golf shoes in the white sand.

  A moment later the screaming begins again. Two voices this time. There is no one on the fairway to hear it and the resort buildings are only distant lights occluded by agitated palm fronds. The wind whistles through the porous a’a. The rising surf explodes on the unseen shore.

  In another minute or two the screaming stops and only the wind and surf fill the night with their banshee calls.

  TWO

  Famous are the children of Hawai’i

  Ever loyal to the land

  When the evil-hearted messenger comes

  With his greedy document of distortion.

  —Ellen Wright Pendergast

  Mele ’Ai Pohaku (Stone-Eating Song)

  It was snowing in Central Park. From the fifty-second floor of his steel, glass, and stone condo tower, Byron Trumbo watched the snow partially obscure the branch-black skeletons of the trees in the Sheep Meadow far below and tried to remember the last time he had walked in the park. Years ago. Probably before he had made his first billion. Perhaps before he had made his first million. Yes—he remembered now—it was fourteen years ago, he had been twenty-four years old and new in the city, fresh and cocky from his S&L bonanza in Indianapolis and ready to take New York by storm. He remembered looking up at the towers looming above the Central Park trees and wondering which building he would have his offices in. Little did he guess on that long-ago spring day that he would build his own fifty-four-story skyscraper and occupy the top four floors with his complex of offices and penthouse residence.

  Architectural critics called Trumbo’s condo tower “that phallic monstrosity.” Everyone else called it the Big T. Some had tried calling it Trumbo Tower, but the similarity to the name of Donald Trump’s buildings had caused Byron Trumbo to quash that name quickly and for good. He loathed Donald Trump and avoided any association with the man. Besides, “the Big T” best described the look of Trumb
o’s high-rise condo with its overhanging top five floors, the glass-and-steel superstructure that Trumbo had imagined would look like the bridge of the world’s tallest ship. And Big T had been Byron Trumbo’s nickname since he was thirteen years old. Now Trumbo was pedaling his exercise bike in the corner of the T overhang, right where two floor-to-ceiling glass walls met at a sharp angle, so that it looked and felt as if he were on a small carpeted promontory fifty-two stories above Fifth Avenue and the park. Snow flew upward inches beyond the glass, rising on updrafts along the face of the building. It was snowing so heavily now that Trumbo could barely make out the dark ramparts of the Dakota on the west side of the park.

  At the moment, he was not looking. He was on the headset phone, his head down, timing his comments into the small microphone between gasps for breath as he pedaled furiously. His cotton T-shirt was soaked across his thick chest and between his shoulder blades.

  “What do you mean three more guests have disappeared?” he snapped.

  “I mean three more guests have disappeared,” came the voice of Stephen Ridell Carter, the manager of Trumbo’s Mauna Pele Resort on the Big Island of Hawaii. Carter’s voice sounded weary. It was 8:30 A.M. in New York, 3:30 in the morning in Hawaii.

  “Fuck,” said Trumbo. “How do you know they’ve disappeared? Maybe they’re just off the grounds somewhere.”

  “They didn’t check out,” said Carter. “We have a man on the gate twenty-four hours a day.”

  “So maybe they’re on the grounds but in someone else’s whaddyacallit—hale. Those grass shack thingies. Ever think of that?”

  There was a slight rasp of static that might have covered a sigh. “The three had gone out for a late game of golf, Mr. Trumbo. Right at twilight. When they didn’t check back by ten P.M., our boys went out and found their golf carts on the fourteenth hole. Their clubs were still there as well—some in the carts, some strewn around in the boulder field near the cliffs.”

  “Fuck,” repeated Byron Trumbo. He motioned Will Bryant closer and made a telephone gesture with his thumb and little finger. His executive assistant nodded and picked up a mobile extension. “The others didn’t disappear near the golf course, did they?”

  “No,” said Carter tiredly. “The two California women last November were last seen on the jogging trail through the petroglyph field. The Myers family—both parents and their four-year-old daughter—were walking by the manta pool after dark. The cook, Palikapu, was walking home along the cliffs south of the golf course.”

  Will Bryant held up five splayed fingers on one hand and four digits on the hand holding the phone.

  “Yeah, now we have nine,” agreed Trumbo.

  “Pardon me, Mr. T?” said Stephen Ridell Carter over the hiss of distance.

  “Nothing,” said Trumbo. “Listen, Steve, you’ve got to keep this out of the papers for a couple of days.”

  There was a noise that might have been an incredulous snort. “Keep it out of the papers? Mr. T, how can I do that? The reporters have contacts with the cops. The state police, local Kailua-Kona homicide cops, and Fletcher—that FBI guy—will be all over the place again. As soon as we report it in the morning.”

  “Don’t report it,” said Trumbo. He quit pedaling and took deep breaths. Below him, the clouds rolled up against the building.

  There was a silence. Finally: “That would be against the law, Mr. Trumbo.”

  Byron Trumbo covered the microphone with his sweaty hand. He looked across at Will Bryant. “Who hired this pussy?”

  “You did,” said Will.

  “I’m going to fire his ass, too,” he said, and took his palm off the mike. “Steve, you listening to me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You know about the meeting with the Sato Group in San Francisco tomorrow?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You know how much it means to me to unload this fucking white elephant before we lose half our capital propping it up?”

  “Yes, Mr. T.”

  “And you know how fucking stupid Hiroshe Sato and his investors are?”

  Carter said nothing.

  “These boys lost half their money buying up L.A. in the eighties,” said Trumbo, “and now they’re ready to lose the other half buying up the Mauna Pele and other Hawaii losers in the nineties, Steve, but… Steve?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “They may be stupid, but they’re not deaf and blind. It’s been three months since the last disappearance and maybe they think all that shit is past. They did arrest that Hawaiian separatist…what’s his name?”

  “Jimmy Kahekili,” said Carter, “but he couldn’t make bail and is still in jail in Hilo, so this couldn’t possibly be his…”

  “I don’t give a shit,” interrupted Trumbo, “as long as the Japs think that the killer is put away somewhere. Japs are chickenshit, Steve. Their tourists are afraid to go to L.A., afraid to go to Miami, afraid to come here to New York…shit, they’re scared shitless of most of the U.S.A. But not Hawaii. I guess they think there are no guns on Hawaii, or since they own half of it, that it’s not full of crazy Americans. Anyway, I want Sato and his group to think that Jimmy Kaheka-whatsis was the killer and that it’s all over, finito. At least until we wrap up these negotiations. Three days, Steve. Maybe four. Is that too much to ask?”

  There was silence.

  “Steve?”

  “Mr. Trumbo,” came the tired voice, “you know how hard it’s been to keep locals working here after the other disappearances. We have to bus people in all the way from Hilo, and now, with the volcano…”

  “Hey,” said Trumbo, “that volcano’s supposed to fill the place, right? Isn’t that what we said? So where are the fucking guests now that the volcano’s doing its thing?”

  “…now that the volcano has cut Highway Eleven, we have to use temporary help from as far north as Waimea,” continued Carter. “The boys that found the golf carts have already told their friends. Even if I break the law and don’t report it, there’s no way we can keep this a total secret. Besides, these missing men have families, friends…”

  Trumbo gripped the handlebar of his exercise bike so hard that his heavy knuckles grew white. “How long were these assholes…these guests…booked for, Steve?”

  There was a pause. “Seven days, sir.”

  “And how long were they there before they disappeared?”

  “Just this afternoon, sir…yesterday, I mean.”

  “So no one expects them back for six days.”

  “No, sir, but…”

  “Give me three of those days, can you, Steve?”

  Static hissed. “Mr. Trumbo, I can’t promise more than twenty-four hours. We could justify that as an internal check to make sure the men are actually missing, but beyond that…it’s the FBI, sir. They’re not happy with our help in the previous disappearances. And I think we…”

  “Shut up a minute,” said Trumbo. He clicked off the mike with a button on his belt-pac and turned to Bryant. “Will?”

  His assistant muted his own phone. “I think he’s right, Mr. T. The cops’ll get it within a day or two anyway. If it looks like we’re covering something up, well…it will be worse than ever.”

  Byron Trumbo nodded and looked down at the park. Snow fell like black streamers of crepe across the meadows. The lake was a white shield. When he looked up, Trumbo was smiling slightly. “What’s the schedule for the next few days, Will?”

  His assistant did not have to refer to his notes. “The Sato Group will be landing in San Francisco late tonight. You’re scheduled to join them at our West Coast headquarters there tomorrow to start the negotiations. When it’s done, if we agree, Sato wanted to take his investors to the Mauna Pele to play golf for a couple of days before heading back to Tokyo.”

  Trumbo’s grin widened. “They haven’t left Tokyo yet?”

  Will glanced at his watch. “No, sir.”

  “Who’s with them? Bobby?”

  “Yes. Bobby Tanaka’s our best man the
re—both in speaking Japanese and negotiating with Sato’s kind of young billionaire.”

  Trumbo nodded impatiently. “OK, here’s what we do. Get Bobby on the phone and tell him that the meeting’s been moved to the Mauna Pele. We’ll do the negotiating there and let them play golf at the same time.”

  Will adjusted his tie. Unlike his boss, who rarely wore suit or tie, Bryant was dressed in an Armani business suit. “I think I see…”

  “Sure you do.” Trumbo grinned. “Where’s the one place we can control the news getting in? The resort itself.”

  Will Bryant hesitated. “The Japanese hate changes in their schedules…”

  Trumbo hopped off the bike and strode across the expanse of carpet, grabbing a towel from a rack near his desk and mopping his forehead. “Fuck what they hate. Besides…hey…the volcano’s acting up, right?”

  “Both volcanoes, I think,” said Will. “Evidently it’s been decades since…”

  “Yeah,” interrupted Trumbo. “It may not happen again in our lifetime, isn’t that what our volcano geek, Hastings, said?” He punched his microphone on line. “Steve, you still there, kid?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Stephen Ridell Carter, who was fifteen years older than Byron Trumbo.

  “Listen, you get us twenty-four hours. Carry out an internal investigation, turn the place upside down, do whatever you need to do to make it look good. Then call the cops. But give us twenty-four solid hours before letting the shit hit the fan, OK?”

  “Yes, sir.” The voice was not happy.

  “And brush off the Presidential Suite and my personal shack,” said Trumbo. “I’ll be there by tonight and the Sato Group should be arriving about the same time.”

  “Here, sir?” Carter’s voice seemed to have slammed awake.

  “Yeah, there, Steve, and if you want your one percent on this deal, not to mention your golden parachute, you’d better keep things as fucking clean and calm and normal as you can while we’re there admiring the volcano and settling this deal. Then—as soon as our lawyers finish dotting the i’s, you can let the fucking axe murderers get the Japs as far as I’m concerned. But not until we’re done with the deal, comprende?”