1 --Life is not a warrior's spear-- Andrew Chase stared at the words he had just written on his yellow pad. They were a good opening for the novel he was setting out to write, but in his semiconscious state he was having trouble figuring out what should follow them. Medium height, standard Caucasian features, not athletic but trim and good looking in his clothes, Andrew was in a distinct minority in his present environment, surrounded by ebony-haired, tawny-skinned people. He could feel them eyeing him guardedly from behind their shielded lids as he suffered through his private morning-after misery, laboring against fatigue, nausea and shame to present a picture of the self-contented, prominent American lawyer, in case someone who knew him walked into the lounge. "Not a warrior's spear"? Sounds great, but what the hell does it mean? he asked himself. Why did I...? Maybe....The Mont Blanc began to move again, but not very far. --said the hula master, whose course-- Okay. So we start out in Hawaii. But, "Whose course"? Strike that. Objection, Your Honor: grammatical error. His head ached, his eyes wanted to close. His brain, too exhausted to rebel against the urge to create so long as creation entailed no more than writing down the dreamlike phrases that came into his head, seemed equally prepared to shut itself down at any minute. It had been a bad night. A bad week, actually. And the new day was off to a rotten start. A loud, rattling, rumble in the lounge drew Andrew's attention from his tenuous effort at authorship. The plate glass window separating the room from the elements was bowing in and out ominously in its steel frame, as rainwater sprayed against it in angry blasts. Stuck here for who knows how long, Janet counting on his being there when she arrived. He sighed and looked down at the ruled page again. --the course of which-- Jesus, that's better grammar, but now it sounds like a goddam trust agreement. I can't-- Oh, hell, just write, will you, and fix it up later if it's worth anything. --Life is not a warrior's spear, said the hula master, the course of which, from the time it is loosed until the time the point buries itself in the target's dark belly, is determined at the instant of release-- There you go. Wait till Stella hears this. In his weakened state, Andrew indulged in the fantasy that his younger daughter would be persuaded by eloquent contradiction to abandon what he viewed as her radical spiritual beliefs. --No, my children, life is a series of accidents, some fortunate, others unfortunate. Its ultimate path is not determined until the last breath of it is exhaled, which is why the words "determined" and "terminated" have the same root-- Nice touch, old man. How'd you dredge that up, firing on only one cylinder? No, wait a second, dammit. Those words probably don't have the same root in Hawaiian. --You mean, Lokia asked doubtfully, that what we call "fate" is nothing but a series of happenstances that turn us this way or that?-- Andrew Chase stopped writing and capped his pen. The question he had just written made it clear to him which Muse had him in thrall. It was Guilt. His present circumstances, he realized, were a perfect example of the way the chaos that rules human existence can skewer the reckless. Today was September 8, 1992 in Hong Kong; September 7, 1992 across the dateline in Honolulu. Cathay Pacific flight 121, scheduled to depart that morning from the former city to the latter, was delayed because of weather, and that simple glitch foiled his plan to preside over a cheerful, well-organized family reunion in the Honolulu airport. It had been important for him to get this particular vacation off to a good start, a fact that had obviously been lost on Mother Nature, whose vagaries he had not anticipated. Andrew looked confident and comfortable, a trick good lawyers learn early. Underneath that collected exterior, though, simmered a hopeless emotional mess. Memories of last night's debauch stalked the corridors of his mind: the naked Chinese teenager stepping from the stage on which she had just performed a full repertoire of sex acts with a variety of other "actors;" stepping down from that stage and coming unclothed to him, kneeling at his feet, and then caressing his knee, his leg, and more, as he drank with his client, Harry Wong; the reprobate Harry Wong, who surely had arranged the sordid encounter without telling him. That and other disgraceful memories mingled with thoughts of his longer-term troubles: matters about which, at the moment he was too tired to do more than simply feel the weight of worry. The weather at Kai Tak airport was beastly. A typhoon had blown in as Andrew returned to his hotel in the pre-daylight hours. Gale-force winds and driving rain had made air traffic impossible by the time he had checked out, and it appeared that the suspension would be in effect for a few more hours. Powerless to get his vacation back on track, Andrew had no alternative but to wait. As rain beat against the heaving windows of the Cathay Pacific first class lounge, and wind shrieked in through chinks in the outside walls, the normally sedate preflight rummery in which he sat had transformed into an overcrowded holding pen for surly voyagers. Andrew watched the room fill up with smoke, the Chinese inhaling reverentially as though drinking a magical elixir, and then blowing great grey puffs politely toward the ceiling. The only silver lining in his situation, if there was one, was that he was too weary to be frustrated. Instead, he daydreamed about Kauai, which, even though this visit would be his first since adolescence, he distinctly remembered as a place of surpassing beauty, purity and gentleness. A small disturbance at his feet distracted him. A boy of about two years, with spiky hair and an undeveloped sense of propriety, crawled over Andrew's shoes while his mother, separated in the crowd but apparently unconcerned either about her son's wandering or about Andrew's wing-tips, called to the child in high-pitched Cantonese. Her words, like the buzz of conversation around him, were all but incomprehensible to Andrew, who had taken private lessons in Mandarin in order to win a client in Beijing, but found it unnecessary to learn Cantonese, the dialect of Hong Kong, because Harry Wong considered it a mark of superiority to be able to speak to the foreign devil in its own tongue. As a result, the chatter in the lounge was to him just so much random noise, like the sound of the ocean. Little by little, it lulled him into a stupor, and in due course, he put away his pen and his note pad, and allowed his eyes to shut. Moments later, he was jolted out of his slumber by an eruption of terrified screaming and the crashing of furniture. He opened his eyes to full-blown pandemonium. Everyone else in the lounge was either diving for the floor or lunging madly toward the rear of the room, where he was sitting. He turned toward the window in time to see blowing toward him on the storm a plywood panel behind which a barely fastened corrugated tin sheet gyrated wildly. The infant was again scrambling over Andrew's feet, greatly agitated by the sudden ruckus. There was just time to reached down, grab a miniature arm and swing the child to safety behind his chair. With fatalistic detachment, Andrew watched the flying remnants of a utility shed roof shatter the half-inch glass plating. Crystalline shards sailed rapaciously into the lounge on a gush of rain and wind as he jerked his arms up in front of his face. Cries of pain erupted around him, but he himself was not struck by the knife-like projectiles. Instead, it was the plywood panel that hurtled at him, trailing the corrugated sheeting. The high winds faltered inside the lounge, and gravity quickly dragged the panel downward. It struck the back of an armchair opposite Andrew and flipped over. With a sound like rolling thunder, the roofing tin came down on him abruptly, like a sprung trap. Its trailing edge slammed into his knees, letting out a gong-like ring, and the leading edge swung at his face. Still holding his arms up, he jerked his head back. The ribbed edge of the sheeting scraped the undersides of his jacketed forearms, thrusting them sharply back beside his head, and struck against his throat just above the knot of his silk necktie. For a few seconds, Andrew Chase thought he had been decapitated. He felt no pain, but only an extreme pressure in his Adam's apple. Even though his life hadn't passed before his eyes, even though he hadn't had the presence of mind to say an unheard good-bye to his family, even though he hadn't seen the bright tunnel, and even though he believed that life is nothing more than a series of happenstances, he would not have been surprised if a Greater Force had just administered capital punishment for his dissolute behavior during the week just past. Gradually, the shock subsided. Regular connections between his senses and his brain were reestablished. He wasn't dead, just temporarily frozen in place. Though he couldn't breathe, it was not because his head had taken leave of his body. With trembling hands, he reached up, pushed the executioner's blade away from his neck and took a rasping breath. His fingers slid over his throat and discovered that the skin, though raw, had not been broken. Suddenly conscious of the moaning, writhing bodies around him, acutely aware that something --a quirk of physics?-- had spared his life by a fraction of an inch, he watched rain invade the lounge to mix with the blood of the injured, and heard the little Chinese boy crying for his mother. Not a warrior's spear, he said to himself, less convinced than he had been moments earlier. The interior of the bungalow was painted white, inside and out. The front door --the only door-- was also painted white, and black metal numerals nailed to the wood at eye level announced the unit's luckless number, 13. There came a knock. Inside, Adibi, a slender, swarthy, nervous man, crushed the joint he had been smoking and frowned. Though he was already wearing his business suit, the visitors he had been expecting weren't due for hours. The housekeeper again? He waited. Outside, he could hear traffic rolling by on the coast road, the surfers calling out to one another the conditions at this or that beach, the children playing in the sand on the other side of the road, the subdued whoosh of late summer waves swirling in the cove. Presently, the knock was repeated. "Who is it?" "It's me, Adibi. I have something for you." A man's voice. He recognized it. Adibi's frown deepened as he cast his eyes around the room. Resignedly, he pushed himself out of the vinyl-cloaked armchair and walked over to open the door. "Hello, my friend." The visitor was an unsmiling figure in a tee shirt and cutoff jeans, wearing a grimy backpack. "What the hell are you doing here?" Adibi demanded, his r's rolling in the accent of his home country. "Brought you a present," the visitor replied. "From the boss. Gratitude for all your hard work." He unslung his backpack and pulled out a bottle of cognac. Instead of handing it to Adibi, he held it in the air. "Let me in, Adibi. We'll have a toast." Adibi stood in the doorway, looking at the man fearfully, as though he were the Red Death. "For Christ's sake, let me in," the caller repeated with a frosty laugh, and pushed past the dark-skinned man. "Just leave the bottle and go, please. I'm expecting company," Adibi said. "Not for a while, you're not." The interloper sank into the vinyl armchair, picked up the stub of the reefer, made a little show of examining it and dropped it back into the white plate. "Will you please just leave? You and I have no business today." "Be more charitable, will you, Adibi? Look at the date on this bottle." He thrust it toward the frightened man. "Can you read that? Nineteen-twenty-seven. Sixty-five years old. When will I get another chance to taste something like this?" He picked at the lead coating at the top of the bottle until it separated, then pulled it off, exposing the old cork. "I--I can give you money. I can disappear. Never come back." The cadaverous man chuckled. "I don't want money. I don't want you to disappear. I just want glasses. Shall I get them myself?" As Adibi retreated to his bedroom, the other man fished in his backpack for a corkscrew and a small vial. He opened the bottle quickly, poured the amber content of the vial into it, put his thumb over its mouth and shook it. It was Janet Chase's first trip to Hawaii. She walked down the jetway slowly, drained of energy by the long flight and more than a little apprehensive. What if Andrew wasn't waiting for her? The contingency plan was that she would round up her daughters as they arrived, and collect all the baggage, so that when he came in they could immediately take off for Kauai where Andrew had rented a house for two weeks. It sounded simple enough, but she was completely unfamiliar with the airport and had been flying for more than half a day. He had better be here. The gate lounge was already full of people waiting to return to the mainland, many wearing leis or hula shirts or shell necklaces, and most wearing glowing tans and smiles. Noticeably absent from their ranks, however, was Andrew. Janet stood in the middle of the crowd for a moment, not sure what to do. Her fellow passengers deplaned around her. Perhaps she should wait here for a while, since Liz's plane wasn't due for an hour, and Stella's not for an hour and a half. Or maybe she was supposed to meet Andrew somewhere else. Had she forgotten? After a while, she noticed an overweight couple in Bermudas and bulging tee shirts staring at her, and she realized that she looked confused, perhaps close to panic. With a grimace of self-reproach, she pulled herself together, stomped through the little shopping area, and headed down the open-air corridor toward the main terminal. The afternoon was warm and humid, but the trade winds were blowing. Bathed in the lovely breeze, Janet felt relieved, energized, and once more in control at least of herself, if nothing else. Once in the terminal, she encountered a more elaborate shopping mall, which normally would have drawn her interest but at the moment did not. She was looking for a security guard, and when she found one, she asked him to direct her to the Cathay Pacific ticketing area. "Can you tell me the arrival time of Flight 121?" she asked the agent at the counter, a middle-aged Oriental woman. Without even looking at her computer screen, the woman answered, "That airplane is still on the ground in Hong Kong, ma'am. There was bad weather. A typhoon-- you know, like a hurricane? They expect the flight to take off in about an hour." "Oh, dear. And how long until it gets here?" "We don't have an ETA yet, but I guess about six and a half hours after takeoff." Janet looked around for a clock. There was a digital time readout on the board in the middle of the terminal that displayed departing flight information. "You mean nine o'clock this evening?" The woman nodded. "Nine, nine-thirty, earliest. "But-- I'm supposed to wait for someone on that flight who's coming to Kauai with me." "I don't think that flight will be at the gate in time for you to catch the last shuttle, ma'am. I'm sorry, but the weather--" The woman shrugged. Two years into the divorce, Janet liked fending for herself instead of relying on and being subjugated to Andrew. Yet there were limits. Information is power, and Andrew hadn't told her where on Kauai their vacation house was, or how to find out. Now she was stuck in a strange airport half a world away from home, it was the middle of the night by her internal clock, and she faced the prospect of having to sit around the Honolulu airport for another seven hours. It's my own fault, she chided herself. I know he's a control freak, yet I didn't ask for the address. Oh, she'd deal with it, all right, but this was not an auspicious beginning to what was supposed to be a mature reunion of two people who had grown irretrievably apart from each other and, as an unforeseen consequence, from their children as well. Cathay Pacific Flight 121 surged upward toward cruising altitude through a low-hanging curtain of silvery cumulus clouds, the remnants of the morning's storm. Andrew was relatively unscathed by the departure lounge accident that had injured so many others, and to that extent, he was pleased with his good fortune. But he could still felt the bite of the corrugated panel against his throat. Another fraction of an inch and I'd have been a dead man, he thought. You just never know. There was a lesson in that brush with mortality, but he needed some distance from the event-- and some rest-- before he could work it out. He settled back against a burgundy leather seat that had been polished by the prior use of thousands of other privileged passengers. Sleep was out of the question until the nervous energy spawned by the accident had subsided, nor did he feel like wading through a newspaper or working on the novel. The only activity that seemed to fit his state of mind at the moment was worrying, something at which he excelled and which he had ample cause to do. He was concerned, for example, about his largest client, the Asian multinational, Paracorp International. This week's meetings with its chairman, Harry Wong, had been less open and more discordant than usual, with no real explanation for the heightened dissonance. Wong was a difficult man under the best of circumstances. One expected a certain amount of yelling. One was prepared to be kept waiting, to be criticized, hectored, and otherwise treated like a serf. One suffered without objection the endless bouts with depravity in Hong Kong's seamy underbelly, seeing and doing things that, at the time and even more so on reflection, induced the urge to retch; things that, ironically, had cost him his marriage even though he had indulged his client's taste, he continually told himself, only to build the career that he thought was the foundation of his marriage. What troubled Andrew Chase about the experience of the past few days was something different: an unusually hard edge to the discourse with Wong, a constant bickering and a seeming difficulty in keeping his client's attention. These things may have been warning signs. He could not afford to risk deterioration of the Paracorp relationship, because of another of his big problems: the precarious health of his law firm. Fowler & Greide, one of New York City's oldest law firms, had also been one of its most prestigious, in the days when prestige was a valuable commodity. Unfortunately, those days were over, and it was the profession's own fault. Andrew had seen it all coming. During the nineteen-eighties, when the business world went deal-crazy, merging, divesting, joint-venturing and cross-licensing on a scale not seen since the days of the robber-barons, law firms across the country turned themselves into merchants, seeking out profit centers within their operations and finding ways to charge clients separately for the activities of those centers. Did they provide the client with sweet rolls at that breakfast meeting? Charge for the food. Was that brief typed by the word-processing department rather than a partner's secretary? Charge for the typing. Did an associate use an electronic research service to check a point of law? Charge not only for the associate's time, but for the on-line service's time. And be sure the charges are marked up to include a profit. The conversion of legal bills into bills for business services was regarded by most in the profession as a brilliant insight into the business of lawyering, and the practice of profit-center billing spread like wildfire. In the short term, it did in fact improve the profitability of the firms-- but at a price. Over the long term, the practice shone a spotlight on a range of services provided by law firms that corporate clients either didn't want or could obtain more cheaply elsewhere or could do for themselves. Profit-center billing also made it easier to compare law firms against one another and tended to disrupt the good will between lawyer and client. As a result, the great patrician firms such as Fowler & Greide were forced to compete like bazaar traders for business, shaving their prices and reducing the hours they billed on client matters substantially below hours actually worked. The financial glow of the eighties turned into financial desperation in the early nineties. It happened so swiftly that by the time the lawyers figured out what was going on, it was too late to do anything about it. Firms that had been prominent in corporate practice faltered, shrivelled, and in some cases simply disbanded. In the case of the Fowler firm, partners' income shrank dramatically, leading to a profound and unhealthy discontent that threatened to sunder the institution. In that environment, Andrew Chase could not afford to lose a large client like Paracorp. He had to find out what was eating Harry Wong. The company's general counsel was a friend, and as he sailed eastward over the Pacific, Andrew debated how best to raise the subject with him from Kauai. Adibi sat in one of the straight-backed wooden chairs, head bowed, while his visitor, across the little Formica dining table, poured cognac into two tumblers. I don't know whats wrong with you, my friend," the visitor said, as he pushed one of the glasses across the table. Adibi raised his head. "I want my life," he hissed through clenched teeth. "Do you think a glass of vintage cognac will kill you?" "Don't mock me." The dark-skinned man looked away, surveyed the cheap little bungalow, watched the leaves of the banana tree outside the window dance quietly in a gentle breeze. Whenever they parted, there was a flash of orange and blue: bird of paradise flowers, caught in a spray of sunlight. One of the small delights of daily life. He was not in the habit of paying attention to such things. "Are you a religious man, Adibi?" "Moreso than you, bastard." "Oh, I'm not religious at all. But I've seen the light, I have." Adibi didnt comprehend. "Will you really leave after we drink?" he asked, hoping but not believing. "I'm a man of my word." "Then lets drink." He picked up his glass. The other man did, too. "A toast to Adibi, gambler extraordinaire, snatcher of opportunities! May you live in peace." They held their drinks aloft and stared at each other. Adibi hesitated in that position. The visitor made a little encouraging motion, but Adibi did not bring the tumbler to his lips. His unwanted guest laughed heartily. "Oh, ye of little faith." In a swift movement, he tossed down the cognac, caught it at the back of his throat, gargled gently and then swallowed. Holding his arms out like wings, he said. "Believe, Adibi. It is a libation of transporting savor." Adibi looked at him quizzically. Then he swirled the fortified wine around in the tumbler, sniffed its bouquet, and drank it down. Its taste was exquisite, smooth yet potent, delicately piquant, with a slightly sweet aftertaste. It caused a little tightening in his throat. He sank back in his chair and looked out the window again. It began almost immediately, as an involuntary cough. Then another, and then an uncontrollable fit of coughing. The tightening in his throat worsened, and his breathing became an audible rasp. He stood up and started for the bathroom. It was too great an effort. The dark-skinned man fell to his knees, gasping loudly, staring in wide-eyed horror at the smiling visitor. A moment later, the bird of paradise didn't matter any more, nor the banana leaves, nor the bungalow. The spear of Adibi's life was plunging headlong into the darkness. Liz Chase arrived from New York at three o'clock. In her halter top, iridescent boxer shorts and glossy black running shoes, she looked like a raffish model. Janet watched the men's heads turn as her oldest daughter moved self-confidently through the arrival area. Feelings of disapproval, envy, and protectiveness all welled up in her at once, but were quickly overtaken by an expression of love as the two women came together in a hug. "We should have been on the same flight," Liz groaned. "There was this Marine sitting next to me on the Dallas leg who kept asking me to marry him." "What do you expect?" Janet answered with a wry smile, gesturing at Liz's attire. "Mom, I wore a sweatsuit the whole way out. These were underneath." Janet shrugged. "Anyway, we had to settle for what was available for frequent flyer tickets. Your father's firm is struggling again this year, I guess." Forty minutes later, Stella disembarked from the Portland flight, grace and serenity flowing from the angular features of her face like a corona around a sun, her lissome figure hidden under a flowing tie-dyed caftan. Liz made a peace sign with her fingers and waved it vigorously to attract her sister's attention. The women met in a three-way embrace. "Oh, Stella!" Janet sighed, squeezing her daughter's shoulder. "You're so far away from us." "I know, Mom, I know. But it makes the reunions more meaningful, no?" "How was your flight, Stell?" Liz asked, stepping back. Close physical contact made her uncomfortable, except in the case of her boyfriend Harlan. Or other suitable males. "Okay, although there was a sailor in the next seat who--" Janet raised a hand. "Maybe you two should accept a marriage offer from one of these guys you meet in passing. Nothing definitive seems to be happening with the men you know best. Let's find a place where we can sit." The three women strolled into the nearest snack bar, bought some mineral water and commandeered stools around a tall, formica-topped cocktail table. "We have a problem," Janet announced when they were seated. "Your father's plane is late. He won't be here for another few hours, which means if we wait for him we miss the shuttle to Kauai." "Hey, Waikiki Beach by night!" Liz made hula motions with her arms. "No, I have a better idea," Janet said. She had been thinking about the problem while she waited for the girls. Staying at the airport was out, even though that's what Andrew would expect them to do. Going into Honolulu might be fun, but she hadn't packed an overnight bag and assumed Liz and Stella hadn't either, which meant they'd have to paw through their suitcases for a day's clothing. "I think we should go straight to Kauai. Right now. Leave a message for your father to take the first shuttle in the morning. That way, we don't have to drag our things back and forth to Waikiki, and we get to bed early instead of waiting up for Dad. Plus we'll have some time for just the three of us." "Do you know where we're staying on Kauai?" Stella asked. "No, not where the house is. But we can stay in a hotel." "Which hotel?" "Here, let's pick one." Janet reached into her satchel and brought out several guidebooks, which she plunked down on the table. They each took one and began leafing through the pages. "Here, listen to this," Janet said after a moment, running her finger along the text as she read. "'The Sheraton Kauai.' It's in Poipu, which I think is where our house is located. 'Immediately adjacent to a beautiful crescent beach. Oceanfront rooms include Italian marble bath, separate dressing room.'...Blah blah blah... 'Three pools, including a keiki pool,' whatever that is, 'jacuzzi, open air lobby, several shops on the property.' Sounds fine, doesn't it?" Liz had a see-yours-and-raise-you-fifty look on her face. "Sounds ordinary, Mom. For one night, we should do something out of the ordinary." She began to read: "'The Westin Kauai. Start by picturing a two-acre swimming pool surrounding seven charging marble horses and a sixty-foot geyser. Then imagine a twenty-six thousand square-foot swimming pool comprised of almost two million mosaic tiles, reminiscent of Hearst Castle and surrounded by five Grecian jacuzzi temples separated by cascading waterfalls.' Um, 'Five hundred acres,' 'carriages pulled by Clydesdales or Percherons.' 'Take one of eight mahogany launches or forty canopied outrigger canoes over the forty-acre lagoon.'" "I don't think--" Stella began. "o, wait; there's more. 'Fcials, steam rooms, saunas, herbal body wraps.' 'Islands filled with zebras, kangaroos, wallabies, monkeys, flamingos, llamas." And three shopping complexes, Mom. Three! One night of complete decadence before Dad arrives. The sybarite stirred in Janet, but the mother in her knew that her younger daughter was temperamentally indisposed to decadence. She turned to Stella. "What do you think, Sweetheart?" A mirrored wall behind Stella threw Janet's image rudely back at her. It was not a pretty sight. Her hair lay matted against her head as a result of half a day spent in the desiccating air at cruising altitude. Her water-blue eyes were sunk back in their sockets, peeking out through half closed lids. On the positive side, she thought, grasping for something to cheer her, she was a good deal trimmer and fitter than she had been at the time of the divorce. "It doesn't sound very Hawaiian, Mom," her younger daughter replied. "More like Versailles. Why don't we pick something with local color? We can always visit this Westin place later, if we want." "Have you found one, Sweetie?" For Stella's benefit, Janet had brought along a copy of the Backpacker's Guide to Kauai. "The Pakala Inn," Stella replied with a hopeful smile. "It's in Poipu. 'Across the street from a good snorkeling beach,' it says. 'Tin-roofed bungalows with living rooms.' It sounds really quaint." Liz rolled her eyes. "What kind of rating does it get?" "This guide doesn't rate. It's for people who aren't interested in the number of stars. There's only a description." Lizs eyebrow headed for her hairline. "And--" "'A semi-gentrified shantytown. Rotten with character, and the proprietors are, too,'" Stella read enthusiastically. "Come on, guys. Let's have an adventure!" Once the jumbo jet had reached cruising altitude, the first-class cabin crew began to serve their premium-fare passengers. A young Chinese woman of surpassing charm, who looked sixteen but was probably in her late twenties, Andrew guessed, brought him chilled Aloxe Corton. There were only five passengers in first class, which gave her the opportunity to practice her English. "You stay Hawaii," she began, "oah--" She made a flying motion with her hand. "Continuing on? No," Andrew replied. "I'm meeting my family in Hawaii." Since the divorce, he was more open to bantering with flight attendants than he had historically been. Truth be told, he was more open to women in general, because the one he wanted continued to reject him. "Oh. Big famiry, you--. You have big famiry?" "I have two daughters, and one ex-wife." "Ex wife? That mean--?" "My former wife. We're divorced." "Ah. So, you, two daughtahs and one divoahced wife, alrh togethah in Hawaii?" "Yes, were all vacationing together." The woman nodded, her brows knit as if she weren't sure she had grasped the concept correctly, but her full lips turned up in a kind of grin. "I see. That vehlry--, vehlry--" "Very progressive, perhaps? Or 'open-minded,' 'liberal,' 'tolerant;' you could use any of those. Or--," Andrew sighed, "--you could go in a completely different direction; for instance 'foolhardy,' 'hopeless' or 'unwise.'" The attendant nodded uncertainly and moved on, but Andrew's thoughts continued to hover around his former wife and daughters. He pictured them sitting unescorted and impatient in the airport in Oahu. They would by now be experiencing the Pacific crossroads for the first time. Dazed travellers of every epidermal hue, religious persuasion and culinary preference would be wandering through the open-air corridors, ogling one another with race-based curiosity and suspicion. The Chase women would have to forego the last flight to Kauai in order to wait for him. Given the delay, it would not take Janet long to conclude that his plan for an airport rendezvous was grounded not in good sense but in his view that the vacation shouldn't start until he arrived-- only because he knew Kauai and could see to it, he thought, that the two weeks would go smoothly. Instead, Andrew knew that as the girls dozed uncomfortably on the unyielding benches nearest his arrival gate, Janet would begin plotting some sort of retaliation. The visitor rummaged in his backpack and retrieved a pair of latex gloves. He secured the deadbolt on the door. Grabbing Adibis body from behind, under the shoulders, he dragged it into one of the two small bedrooms. The room was clean and the bed already made; the housekeeper had come and gone. Adibis briefcase was on the bed, his hat resting on top of it. There was no other luggage. A closet protruded from the back wall. The visitor maneuvered the dead man into the closet, knees up, arms resting at its sides. He turned the dead man's head toward the wall. Then he returned to the living room. In the backpack was a sealed plastic bag, and inside the bag, an ice pick with a decorated sandlewood handle. He brought the bag into the bedroom and knelt down. Adibi stared at him with sightless eyes as he slid the ice-pick out, pocketed the bag and rose up on his knees. With a push on Adibis chin, he turned the head to one side. Then he gripped the handle of the pick with both hands, took a deep breath and plunged the instrument into Adibis ear. There was no spurt of blood, just a welling inside the ear. He stood up and considered his handiwork. The blood brimmed, overflowed and began to trickle down Adibi's cheek. Drops fell onto the crisp white shirt. Eventually, a bright stain would spread across the fabric. The scene met the requirement set for it, but was lacking in panache. It needed a flourish, something to elevate its gruesomeness, to suggest callous cold-bloodedness. The visitor looked around the room, and then smiled to himself. With a gloved hand, he picked Adibi's hat off the bed and placed it on the corpse's head, cocked at a jaunty angle. A moment later, cognac bottle and drinking glasses safely in his backpack, the visitor was gone. Janet, Liz and Stella collected their bags, made their way to the inter-island terminal and caught the next shuttle flight to Kauai. In the spirit of abandon that had overtaken them, they rented an open-cab jeep and headed for the town called Poipu and the lodging called The Pakala Inn. As they drove toward the south shore, pillows of air, sweet, humid and still warm, buffeted them under a sky splashed with the peach, tangerine and mauve of advancing sunset. In the rear of the jeep, Stella pulled her long hair into a topknot to keep it from lashing her cheeks, then held her arms out as though she were soaring. "Doesn't the air feel wonderful here? So welcoming and restorative. We're going to have such fun!" she shouted. Janet turned on the radio. It was tuned to a station that called itself KONG. The music, a kind of surfer reggae, had them bouncing in their seats, in delight that a genre so perfect for three women at liberty in the tropics actually existed. When a syncopated cover version of a song from their youth burst from the loudspeakers, Liz and Stella began to sing into the wind. "Island Girl," they shouted. "Island Gi-i-irl, Island Gi-i-i-irl!" The Pakala Inn was at its best after dark. The main building looked downright charming in the spotlights. It was a large, two-story, wooden, quasi-Victorian structure, with an ample porch that fronted the ocean across a two-lane road. Behind the Inn, just visible through shadowy palms and hedge, simple bungalows on low stilts stood facing one another on either side of a generous lawn. The Inn benefited by comparison with the neighboring structures. Further along the road stood an unimaginative brick hotel that catered to vacationers on nine-day package tours of Honolulu plus three neighbor islands, airfare included. "Endless Beach," this glum structure was called. On the other side of the Inn, a simple fish restaurant, a dive shop and a "safari outfitter" occupied a modest commercial strip building immodestly named "Outrigger Mall." The Inn's large and well-lit porch hinted at tranquility and invited the traveler in, in contrast to the hotel next door, which was simply a hulking presence behind flaming tiki poles, and to the fish restaurant where patrons were enjoying themselves a little too loudly. Subdued laughter ricocheted from the lobby walls as Janet opened the front door. Inside, two people were sitting on aluminum beach chairs. There was no other furniture. The elder of the two, a woman, rose to meet them, still chuckling. She was in her middle years but clearly had done a lot of living in getting there. Her grey hair was cut short, quite mannish, and she hid whatever shape she had under a brightly-flowered muumuu. "Well, hello there," she said cheerily, in a voice like Lauren Bacall on meth. "You're the folks who called from the airport, I bet." "Janet Chase," Janet said, and held out her hand. "My daughters, Stella and Liz." "Carol Spencer. And this," the woman added, laughing again as her eyes met those of the stocky Filipino who was just getting out of his chair, "is Artemis." Janet estimated that the man was just on the carefree side of thirty. He wore a black tank top, a garish patterned swimsuit, a neat moustache and flip-flops. Although it showed some evidence of a combing, his jet-black hair clearly had a mind of its own. He wrapped his meaty hand around Janet's, then Stellas and Liz's. "Right this way," Carol said, and led Janet to a folding card table that stood in a hallway at one side of the lobby. Is this setup some peculiar affectation, Janet wondered, or is it a reflection of how little this woman really cares about appearances? "Rooms upstairs or a two-bedroom bungalow out back?" the proprietor asked. "Bungalow," Liz called out from behind. An impression of Janet's credit card taken, Carol handed her two keys and pointed down the hallway to the rear of the house, behind which she would easily find the bungalow. "Do you need help with your bags?" Carol asked. Janet nodded, but Artemis, whom his mother had perhaps unwittingly named after a Greek goddess, had already gone out to the car with the younger Chase generation. "I hope youre not superstitious, Carol yelled after her as Janet traced the back hall. "Fact is, the fellow who vacated number 13 today was sporting a wad of cash he said he won last night at the Flip cock fights." Bungalow 13 was a large wooden hut, roofed in tin, that stood perhaps eighteen inches off the ground on cinder block footings. A narrow living room occupied the front half of the interior. There was no television, nor even a radio, and the sofa and chairs were low-budget and tired. The construction was single-wall board and batten, with interior partitions but no ceilings below the vaulted tin roof except in the single bathroom. Doors near either end of the living room led down narrow hallways to the tiny bedrooms, and these connected through separate entrances to the bathroom. By the time Janet arrived, Artemis had dumped all the suitcases in the room the girls had selected for themselves. She joined the three of them there and identified her bags to the Filipino. After Artemis deposited her luggage in the other bedroom, Janet tried to tip him. He held up a hand, rejecting the offer. "Service included," he said. She persisted, which forced him to explain. "I know I look li' da bellboy, Ma'am, but da trut' is, I got one-half ownership o' dis place. Save yo' money for breakfiss. Carol, dere, she one good cook." With a toothy smile, he left her and waddled off on his boat-sized flip-flops. Liz and Stella had just opened their suitcases when Janet called out to them from her bedroom, "Let's take a walk on the beach before we unpack!" The girls gave little cheers of approval, and moments later the three of them were barefoot on the sand. Stella looked heavenward and began to read and interpret the constellations aloud. Her sister, though perfectly happy to study her own horoscope in private, objected. "Stella," she said, "let's not jump right into the New Age stuff, okay? It gets on my nerves." "Okay, Liz," Stella replied brightly. "You sound a little strung out, big sister. Maybe I could give you a massage later. You'd be amazed--" "Don't start, all right?" "Just a foot massage, then. It wont take very long, and you'll feel so relaxed. You know about reflexology, don't you?" Janet stepped in to head off trouble between her flower child and her city kid. "I wouldn't mind a back rub later, Stell. That long plane ride has made me stiff as a board. A walk would help, too. C'mon." She put an arm around each daughter's shoulder and propelled them forward. There was a three-quarter moon. In its glow the sand shone a pale, milky color. Wet underfoot, it felt good, and made the three of them feel good. They were liberated from their shoes, liberated from their workaday lives, in touch with the soft, mute goddess that is the earth as they strolled past the houses that commanded the beachfront, houses whose owners could not command the public away from the beaches, because access for all was mandated by law. Mother-daughter talk floated into the onshore breeze. Had Andrew been there, the conversation would have dazzled him with its extendedness, easiness and triviality. Eventually, Liz raised the subject that weighed so heavily on the minds of the younger Chases. "Mom," she murmured, "don't you miss living with Dad?" Janet Chase laughed gently. "Not really, Sweetheart." "Youre not just saying that to-- to--" Stella wasn't sure how to complete the thought. "Mmm-mmm. Divorce, child, was my salvation. Living with your father-- toward the end, there, I mean-- well, it was like living with an ice sculpture." A small dark cloud covered the moon briefly, and was for that instant outlined in silver radiance. The froth of an exhausted wave sighed between the women's toes. Liz felt New York leaving her lungs, Stella the transcontinental distance between her and the rest of her family shrinking and Janet her motherhood reviving. Are you dating yet? Janet squeezed her elder daughter's shoulder affectionately. "I go out to dinner or to a show every so often, but I'm not looking for a relationship, Liz. I didn't liberate myself from your father in order to subjugate myself to another Fairfield County baronet." "You must miss being close to someone, though," Stella mused, "after all those years." "You mean sex?" "Jeez, Mom," Liz protested. "Oh, sorry, Dear. I didn't mean to offend your delicate sensibilities." Janet mugged. Her daughter, who was living with her boy friend in Manhattan, fell silent. "Andy and I weren't close in any emotional way at the end, and by then various sex workers in the Far East were at least as close to him physically as I was. No, what I miss most is the other kind of closeness, the kind we just didn't have during the last several years of wedlock: companionship." She exhaled audibly. "Can we talk about something less morbid, please? What do you girls want to do while we're here?" "Oh, boy," Stella exclaimed. "I really need to get centered. I heard about a spa here that specializes in energy work." Janet glanced at her daughter. Stella's face, pale by nature, looked positively ethereal in the moonglow. "What do you mean, 'centered,' Stell?" Stella smiled wanly. "Got an hour, Mom? The short answer is that the energy flows in our bodies get out of balance because of the way we live, and they need to be re-centered once in a while." Janet nodded. "I apprehend, but don't comprehend, as my eighth grade English teacher used to say. You can give me the long answer while we're beaching it one day. And what about you, Wonder Woman," she queried, turning to Liz. "Not parachute jumping, I hope!" "No, Mom. I checked. They don't do that here," Liz responded. "Parasailing, then?" "Oh, please, Mother. Being dragged on a line behind a speedboat, like some kind of kite? I don't think so. A glider trip, maybe. What would really be fun would be to go over to Maui and hang-glide off the top of the volcano." Janet slapped her hands against her thighs. "Oh, that would be great," she exclaimed sarcastically. I'll never understand why you equate fun with mortal risk, Liz." "You've said that once or twice before, as I recall. I don't equate fun with risk, Mom. I equate living with adventure. The feeling when you take that step out into thin air-- it's all the fragility, wonder and exhilaration of life exploding inside you at once." "Sounds like an addiction to me." "Umwhat do you want to do, Mom?" Stella asked, changing the subject. "The three S's?" "Swim, snorkel and sun. Especially swim. I'm up to sixty laps in the pool now." After half an hour the threesome walked back to their bungalow. Across the lawn on the steps of Number 12, Janet saw a seated couple embracing and murmuring, backlit by the open doorway behind them. He was wearing only a whisper of a bathing suit; she, an unbuttoned man's shirt over breasts encumbered by nothing other than the man's right hand reaching over her shoulder, and a bikini bottom unobtrusive almost to the point of invisibility. Between the fingers of their free hands, they each held half smoked cigarettes that gave off the unmistakable aroma of hemp. At once the old protective instincts bubbled up in Janet, even though they had been long-since rendered obsolete by her daughters' life experiences. She tried to focus the girls' attention on the birds-of-paradise, lobelias and orchids ornamenting the bungalows opposite the lovers. Her energetic nattering was futile, however, because when the women had achieved the steps of Number 13: "Ello-o!" "Bonsoir!" Ah, French, Janet thought. The public display of ardor was suddenly explained, if not excused, in her mind. "Bonsoir," Stella replied, turning and squinting in the direction of the greetings. Before Janet could say anything, her Francophile daughter was strolling across the commons to meet the neighbors. The other Chase women followed a few yards behind. The young man's name was Luc, the woman's, Chantal. They were from Lyon, they said, but had been away from France for about a year, bumming around the Pacific. In a few weeks they would have to return and work for another year or so before setting off on their next low-budget, high-hedonism adventure. "Well, Ay must say zat zis ees a vahst ahmprovemohn," Luc told the Chase women cheerily. "Ze lahst residahn of numero treize was a beezinessmahn who dressed ze wole time een a sooht ahnd tie." "What kind of business was he in?" Liz asked, not out of interest but just to make conversation. The French duo weren't her kind of people. Too openly libertine. Libertine was okay; she leaned in that direction herself. Openly libertine was coarse, and inconsiderate of the hang-ups of others. "We dauhn't knouh," Chantal said with an innocent snigger, "except zat 'e sohlde us zhees." She held up the back of her right hand, with the custom-rolled cigarette protruding between her index and middle fingers. "Just the two joints," Stella asked. Janet raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. In her college years, she had had her fill of cannabis. Unlike the current Democratic challenger to President Bush-- if he could be believed-- she had inhaled, and frequently. At the time, she felt that the liberating effects of cannabis was a healthy counter to the complex formalities that shaped the thinking of women raised in the Deep South, as she had been. At this stage in her life, she had come to the view that those formal complexities were not so bad, after all. "Mais, non. Des kilos," Luc responded in French, with an echo of the surprise he had felt when the transaction was offered. "Drole de business," Stella replied, using a dated colloquialism. "Tu parles le Francais, alors. Genial! Est-ce que tu veut un coup?" Chantal's romantic ardor of a few moments earlier easily sublimated into a spirit of gregarious generosity. "T'es tres gentille." Stella plopped herself down on the stoop next to Luc. As Chantal stood up languorously to retrieve the stash, she asked, "Et les autres?" Janets command of French was not terrific, but she had got the drift of the conversation. "No, thank you," she said, with a polite smile. Then, to Liz, with a look that telegraphed the answer she expected, "Are you staying out for a while, too?" Janet and Liz returned to their bungalow where they could discuss Stella in private. The Chase women played any available two-cushion carom with abandon. The daughters talked about Janet freely in her absence, and Janet readily gossiped with either of them about the other. It was, they all seemed to understand, a way of releasing family tension that might otherwise build to an unhappy flash point. "I don't know what goes through her head any more, Liz." "What makes you think anything does, Mom? She's just floatin' on the current, man." Liz swung her arms in front of her, hands waggling. "Floating. That's it exactly. She's floating through life." For some reason, Stella-bashing didn't seem as much fun in person as it was over the phone. Liz yawned and said she felt like turning in. Janet kissed her good night and asked her to set her alarm clock so that they could be back in Lihue to meet the first flight in from Honolulu at seven. With that, mother and daughter retired to their respective chambers. In Stella's absence, Liz felt free to choose the bed nearest the window. She moved her suitcase onto the thin white coverlet. A leather bag, it was much too heavy, but it had been to the ends of the globe with her. A clasp was bent as a result of a fall off a freighter onto a dock in Manaus. A smile cut into the skin on one side reminded Liz of the tall, blond Piedmontese who had rammed a ski into it at a hostel on an Italian Alp. She had immediately forgiven him, and after a week of skiing together they had spent a romantic weekend on the Italian Riviera near Sanremo. Every corner of the bag had been rendered to some extent concave by the abuses of airlines on five continents. Ungainly and unlovely, this suitcase was the story of Liz's fortune-spattered young adulthood, and she wouldn't think of replacing it. As she opened her memory bag, the breeze at the window subsided, and she noticed a slightly repellant smell in the room. She resolved to check for its source as soon as she had found her toiletry kit. The sundresses were on top of the jumble of contents of her bag, cloaked in dry-cleaners plastic in a vain attempt to prevent wrinkling. They should be hung for the night, Liz felt, even though the plan was to vacate in the morning. She took them out, shook them out and carried them to the closet, thinking about whether she should try on her bathing suits again before she went to bed. The blue bikini made her bottom look fatter than did the zebra-striped one-piece, but it provided the maximum tanning surface one could have and still claim to be clothed. Tough decision. For years after, Liz would revisit the disjointed steps that had led to the moment when she opened that door. Had her father's plane not been late; had her mother known the name of the rental agency; had they chosen the Sheraton Poipu instead of the "Pakalolo Plaza," as they came to call the Inn after their experiences there; had she not urged that they take one of the freestanding bungalows instead of adjoining rooms in the Inn proper--. Had any of those things happened differently, she would have been spared the dubious honor of making the grisly discovery. Yick! What's that!" Barefoot, she had stepped into a puddle of dark, viscous liquid just at the closet door. "What's what?" Janet called from the adjoining bedroom. "I don't know. Somebody spilled something in the closet, and it's leaking out onto-- Aaaaaahh!" Liz's scream was loud enough to awaken the fire goddess Pele from her thousand-year slumber on Hawaii's oldest island. There, on the floor of the closet, its legs tucked up almost to its chin, was death itself. Outside, Stella jumped to her feet. She thought that she had heard all of Liz's screams. The who-took-my-earrings scream. The who-ate-all-the-ice-cream scream. The hairdresser-ruined-my-hair scream. Even though they no longer lived together, Stella would have said that, even with a slight buzz on, she could identify Liz's problem by the timbre, pitch, intensity and length of her cry. But not this one. This one was pure, undifferentiated terror, a sensation neither she nor Liz had ever experienced before. In a single, swift movement, Stella Chase leapt from the porch of Number 12 and bolted across the lawn into Number 13. More quickly even than Janet could run in from the next room, she was at Liz's side, staring down numbly at the body. It was a man of indeterminate age, in an inexpensive grey business suit. His shirt was white except for an ugly blood stain running from the collar all the way down his left side. His tie was dark, and unfashionably narrow. A snap-brim hat sat at a funny tilt on his head. Most significantly-- and unfortunately-- for him, an ice pick had been driven to the hilt into his left ear. "Dear God," Janet breathed through the hand that was raised to her lips. The French couple rushed in, and jumped onto the bed to see over the Chases' shoulders. "Eets 'eem! "Luc gasped. Stella looked up. The young Frenchman was making ocherous footprints across the spread with his filthy feet. Chantal had dropped onto all fours next to him. The room was rapidly filling up with guests from the other bungalows and the main house. With the closet door open, the stench was oppressive. Suddenly the warm, humid atmosphere of the Garden Island in summer seemed less than a blessing. With such presence of mind as she could muster, Stella grabbed her mother's arm and whispered, "Everyone has to get out of here." Janet nodded. "S-someone-- in the closet is-- dead," she announced loudly, an uncertain warble in her voice. "I think we should all--" "Let me through. Coming through." Carol Spencer had heard Liz's scream from the lobby, and was now elbowing her way into the tightly packed bedroom. "What the hell is going on?" Her maniacally husky voice silenced the others. "The cleaning people didn't do a very good job in here today," Stella replied with a little snort. The absurdity of the situation had overcome its horror and sprung her pot-loosened mind. Here was a roomful of people, all of whom had come to Kauai to escape reality, jamming themselves around a closet to soak in at close range the grimmest of all realities. No one else laughed, though; not even Chantal and Luc, which surprised her. She felt an elbow bump against her rib cage. "Shut up, Stella," Liz hissed, as Carol Spencer leaned over the bed and peered into the dark cubicle. "Ye gods and little fishes," the proprietress exclaimed, and wheeled around to face her wide-eyed guests. "Yes, folks, anything can happen at the Pakala Inn. Now, please, everybody out. The police will want this room to be as undisturbed as possible. Come along." Like a sheepdog, she herded the other guests lawnward, calling over her shoulder, "You, too, Chases." The three Chase women shuffled after the receding, gabbling clot of neighbors. Liz, was still numb, not only because of the murder, but also because of the substance that was causing her foot to cling to the floor as she moved. Platelets were decomposing into formless goo. The ruby splash of life was browning against her skin. Skin is an organ.... "I need to wash that guy's blood off," she said to Carol. In reaction to the woman's sudden, suspicious glare, she added, "I stepped in it when I opened the closet door." "Do it outside,« Carol replied brusquely. "There's a hose in the back." The faucet was under the window of Liz's bedroom. As she approached it, a large cloud darkened the moon and a gust of wind set nearby banana leaves and palm fronds clattering and clacking like an orchestra of dried bones. Standing there bathed in the unfamiliar sounds, Liz thought she heard movement inside the bungalow. He couldn't be, she thought, and not sufficiently unnerved to suppress her curiosity, she peeked in, half-expecting to see the corpse in motion. Instead, through the open blinds, reflected in the mirror on the opposite wall, she saw Luc. He was half into the closet, frantically pawing at the dead man's suit, searching for something, grunting and groaning under his breath. While Liz watched, the Frenchman straddled the body, slid both hands under it and, beginning to weep, grasped at the rear pants pockets. They were apparently empty, because a few seconds later he stood up again, shuddered and left the room, muttering a single word repeatedly to himself. "Merde!" Liz waited until he was out of the house, then took a deep breath, put her foot on the faucet and climbed as quietly as she could into the room. A quick look was all she wanted, just to see if she could tell what Luc had been up to. Or was she propelled, she half-wondered, by a morbid interest in the remains of the former occupant of Bungalow 13? The cadaver's expression hadn't changed, despite the recent mauling. Had she expected otherwise? Death isn't that repulsive, she thought as she stared into Adibi's eyes. Just consummately vacuous. She turned to go, the expressionless image seared into her consciousness. As is natural in the presence of death, she began reflecting on her own mortality. A bad jump, or a bad landing, and my eyes would look just like that. Mom thinks I have a death wish. Thats wrong; I'm in no hurry to end up like this guy. But then, why do I court the reaper? She felt her face knotted in a scowl, and realized that it wasn't because of the question she'd just asked herself, but because there was something wrong with the tableau that still hung before her mind's eye. Something missing-- the hat! The corpse was no longer wearing its hat. Luc hadn't taken it; she had seen him leave. Maybe he'd knocked it off in his ungentle mauling of the body. But then-- where? Liz bent over to peer around the floor. There it was, under her bed. She lifted it out, thinking too late about fingerprints. There was no blood on it, but when she turned it over, she saw a folded piece of notepaper protruding from the inside band. Using a corner of the bedsheet as a glove, she slipped it out, intending to put it back after examining its contents. What she saw caused her hands to shake uncontrollably. Instead of returning the note to the hatband, she slid it into her pocket. Trembling with the uneasy lightness that wrongdoing evokes, she lifted the blinds and climbed back out the window. "There you are!" Janet exclaimed when her eldest daughter reappeared at the front of the bungalow. Luc was standing some distance away, whispering to Chantal. Liz saw his head turn in her direction. "Just retching in the bushes," she replied. Carol Spencer laughed. "You and Frenchie, huh? That's what he says he was doing in the bathroom a minute ago." "Um, yeah, I guess he set me off. I heard him through the window." Coincidence or fate? Liz Chase was left questioning whether it was really fortuitous that she would be the one to discover the dead man in Bungalow 13 and then, having stepped barefoot into his blood, to spy Luc in her bedroom, which led to her finding a slip of paper that promised to turn the murder she had discovered into something much more than a brief, unpleasant encounter for her family. But at the same time that she was having that debate with herself, a stirring in the atmosphere far distant from Kauai was setting in play a chain of meteorological events that would soon lead the entire population of that island to believe-- or at least to believe it possible-- that a sentient force had willed great disaster upon them. Several hundred miles to the southeast, a large atmospheric disturbance drifted toward the fiftieth state that night across warm Pacific waters, pushed on by gentle but persistent trade winds. It was making its way west from its birthplace, a placid stretch of ocean near the Baja peninsula. There, the temperature of the ocean had been in the neighborhood of eighty degrees or more to a depth of over two hundred feet. That enormous mass of heated water, undulating and splashing patiently off the coast of Mexico, was the world's largest humidifier, exhaling measureless quantities of vapor into the increasingly sultry air. A stormy low pressure bubble had floated into this superhumid zone. The bubble was an example of the phenomenon known in weather circles as a "tropical wave." It had originated near the coast of North Africa, sailed across the Atlantic on the current of air that circles the globe from east to west north of the Equator, and then trekked across the narrows of Central America. Once free of land again, the tropical wave began to gather sustenance from evaporation rising from the steamy ocean; evaporation supercharged with energy in the form of heat. When that hot, moisture-laden wave ballooned into the chilly upper atmosphere, the result was condensation on a grand scale. Rain fell in sheets back to the ocean, and the constant jostling of droplets-- and, at stratospheric heights, ice crystals-- created huge areas of electrical charge in the clouds. These eventually erupted in frenzied bouts of lightning and thunder. All the unleashed energy in turn increased the force of the winds blowing into the core of the disturbance, the Antaean inhalation of the tropical wave. Gorging itself on the abundant mist given up by the sweltering ocean, the tropical wave pupated. Air pressure at its center dropped even further, sucking still greater volumes of vapor upward from the ocean's surface, and these simple changes caused a physical transformation of the disturbance. Over the course of the next couple of days as the unsettled system floated away from the Americas and northwesterly across the Pacific, the loose cluster of thunderstorms that defined its seething body began to circle, like a group of juvenile titanics playing ring-a-roses. Coriolis forces, the same inertial magic said to make water swirl around in a draining bathtub north or south of the equator, had organized the storm cells into a slow cyclonic dance. That radial movement increased the chimney effect at the heart of the wave, and caused surface winds to spiral into its great, gulping, downward-facing maw with increasing vigor. On the night the Chase women arrived in Poipu, the energetic disturbance was sufficiently organized, with sustained winds of between twenty-five and thirty miles an hour, to be upgraded to a "tropical depression." From the space shuttle, orbiting overhead that night, it looked like a massive, murky gathering of clouds lit up from within by silent scintillations of lightning. But underneath the cloud cover, a growling beast was taking shape, building strength and biding its time. When the 911 call came in to the Kauai County Police Department, Officer Manny Gabriel was sitting in a patrol car at his favorite speed trap. As Highway 58 approached the former sugar-mill town of Koloa on the road from the county seat of Lihue to the south shore resorts in Poipu, the speed limit dropped quickly from fifty miles per hour to twenty-five. The limits were posted, and during the day there were other cues that warned drivers to slow up: a baseball diamond on the left, signalling the end of the cane fields; a "T" intersection ahead; a glimpse of shops. Only the occasional stoned teenager would be likely to speed through the area in daylight. Night time was a different story. The road was unlit for most of its length, lined on both sides with tenebrous domains of sugar cane that stretched away to the mountains. A driver turning south onto Route 58 from the main road travelled the gradual downhill in darkness, and saw nothing for miles, except the road under the glare of the headlights, until the lights of Koloa appeared at about the same time that the "25 mph." speed sign flashed into view. Permanent residents of this part of the south shore, having the rhythm of the route in their bones, instinctively slowed their vehicles in time. But the tourists-- Fuddled by the mid-ocean time zone, fogged by dinner and drink at distant restaurants, and unfamiliar with the road, tourists regularly missed the mark. And Manny Gabriel was there, on the dirt road just past the "25 mph" sign, to catch them. "No, it's not a speed trap,« he told his Filipino drinking buddies who accused him of shooting fish in a barrel. "It's community policing." They laughed, but Chief Nagato had taken a poll to see whether his force was serving the people of Kauai County as they wished to be served. What could the police do to improve the lives of the populace? he wanted to know. Surprisingly, investigation of robberies, arrest of rapists, quelling of disturbances, the meat and potatoes of police work, were not high on the list of citizen grievances. Rather, the list was headed by two persistent neighborhood problems: speeding and loose pets. Speeding, at least, was something the police knew how to control, and although there was a tension between sating the desire of Kauai residents for safe streets and sating the desire of the tourists-- on whom the island's economy depended-- to zoom from place to place in search of the maximum number of tropical splendors in the least amount of time, the Chief was keenly aware that the tourists did not vote on Kauai. The second-shift dispatcher was a young Chinese woman named May Chin. Her voice came over the two-way radio high and nasal. "Base to Car 12." "Yeah, May," the patrolman answered. "This is Manny." "Hey, Manny. You lucky tonight. We got one murder down dere." May giggled self-consciously for having made light of the macabre. "Yeah, sure, May." "Serious, Braddah. Look like one gangland killing." "You're not jokin'? Where 'bouts, then?" "Your cousin's place, Manny. Pakala Inn. The detectives are on deah way from Lihue now. Bettah you go and secu'e da area." Manny Gabriel fired up his cruiser. The lazily turning red and blue lights on its roof silently strobed the bushes on either side of his stakeout. It was starting to rain. He flipped on the wipers and pulled out of his hiding place. Artemis Gabriel, the cousin to whom the dispatcher had referred, was the black sheep of his family. Manny half hoped that whatever had happened at the Pakala Inn would be Artemis' undoing. It was not easy for the policeman to ignore his cousin's adventures in marijuana cultivation. Pakalolo growers were among the most dangerous people on the island, and sooner or later Artemis was sure to become a problem that could not be covered up. Maybe sooner, the policeman thought. Maybe tonight. Andrew had not been able to sleep much during the flight, even with the aid of the Aloxe-Corton, and was pleased to hear the captain announce that their jumbo jet was beginning its descent into Honolulu. He sighed to himself. In a little more than an hour he would meet up with his family, draped groggily around the nonergonomic circular benches in the main terminal. He would whisk them off to one of the hotels on Waikiki Beach for the day. The Surfrider, perhaps, with its plantation-style charm. Two rooms. Janet and Liz in one, probably, he and Stella in the other. Not that he was averse to sleeping with his ex-wife. To the contrary; one of the purposes of this trip was to gauge the prospects of the two of them getting back together. But that was a subject that could not be forced. The Surfrider, if we can get in, he decided. They would have a late, leisurely brunch overlooking Waikiki tomorrow morning, and then catch a flight to Kauai. He would make amends; everything would be all right. Andrew Chase enjoyed being the man of the family, even if it was a fractured family.