1 The full winter moon burned with cold fire. It glared down at Li-Ann Low, and its smile struck her as uncharacteristically sinister. Ghostly luminance glistened from the broad, smooth leaves of the octopus trees that rose alongside the forest path. Not far away, mature bamboo growing in tight ranks clattered like hollow bones even though there was hardly a breeze. Around Li-Ann's neck, the Hasselblad hung on its wide strap, all elegant clumsiness as she walked. The tripod in her hand was just clumsiness, no elegance. It was easy to see her way in the moonlight, except where inky shadows cast by overhanging trees obscured the trail. At those places, she had to move slowly, her hand waving in front of her so as to avoid smacking into an unseen obstacle, her feet shuffling until she came into the clear again so that she didn't trip,. Through openings in the forest canopy, she could see the sky's northeastern expanse where stars were slowly being gobbled up by a silvery cloud bank. A fine rain sprinkled over her now and again, as puffs of gray gossamer sailed through the forest, on and off occluding the moon. Down the ridge to her left, the quiet lights of the Nu'uanu Valley twinkled through the filter of vegetation past which she was walking. Roofs of the valley neighborhoods bounced moonlight faintly back onto the steep, defining hillsides. She thought she saw her home down there, the first house occupied by a Chinese in Nu'uanu, the house built by her revered ancestor, white against the darkness down the hill. Though there were few dangers in the Hawaiian rain forest, she would rather have been inside that house, looking out on almost as expansive a view through its large windows. But a clear moonlit night in Nu'uanu was a rarity, and she'd been waiting for years to photograph the wrecked landmark under a full moon. A pair of wild pigs snuffled brazenly past her, their wiry pelts scraping against her leg. She gasped, jumped back and almost tripped over the exposed roots at trailside. A shiver seized her body, triggered by the boars, but grounded in even more elemental fears: Nu'uanu had its beauty, but it also had its ghosts. Reports of supernatural sightings were commonplace in this region. Some of the stories were benign, but some were horrifying. In the benign category, one of Li-Ann's neighbors swore that her garden was haunted by the spirit of an old woman who whistled her way up and down the path at least once a week. Sometimes the crone borrowed a tool from the shed for a while, but always brought it back within a week or so. Most of the sightings, though, were connected to a very dark event in the valley's history. The rugged terrain here had been the scene of fierce fighting almost two centuries earlier, during King Kamehameha I's campaign to achieve dominion over all the Hawaiian Islands. Screams of countless warriors being pushed to their deaths by the king's army from the Big Island had echoed from the pali, or steep ridge lines, during that campaign. Many accounts of the battle have it that the victims were not only warriors, but also women and children. If that event were not enough to fill Nu'uanu Valley with ghosts, there was also the fact that the royal mausoleum sat near the foot of the highway that bisected the Valley on its way up from downtown Honolulu. The royal families, like all Hawaiian families during the monarchy, had been ravaged by diseases brought to the islands by interlopers from the East and the West. Most of Hawaii's rulers died prematurely. Some of their homes still stood in Nu'uanu. The most elegant of these, Queen Emma's summer palace, a fine plantation-style home surrounded by beautiful gardens, still kept stately watch over the drive through Nu'uanu up the Pali Highway. The most foreboding, the summer quarters of Kamehameha V, was now a disquieting skeleton that haunted a lonely clearing in the rain forest toward which LI-Ann was now headed. For various reasons, then, ectoplasm with attitude -- the shades of former queens, kings, warriors and innocent victims from a time before Hawaii became an extension of mainland America-- were now widely believed to stalk the Nu'uanu Valley at night. The path that Li-Ann was traveling now took her to the clearing that hosted the ruined summer home of the fifth Kamehameha. The remains of the stone and stucco structure loomed jagged and roofless, like a rough-hewn Stonehenge, as she came into the grassy yard that ethnic Hawaiian volunteers cared for on a sometime basis. A pathway of smoothed lava rocks led to the yawning main entrance. She stood staring at the wrecked walls for a moment, then spread the legs of her tripod and set it on the ground. She removed the camera from around her neck and screwed it into the mounting head. She was concentrating on how to bracket her exposures -- intervals between five and thirty seconds, she thought --, and looking for the right angle -- low, but not so low as to make the scene grotesque --when all at once, she noticed a glow emanating from deep within the forest. Very faint at first, it grew slowly in intensity as she watched. That's no flashlight, Li-Ann thought. It was too diffuse, and it was flickering. Perhaps someone was carrying a kerosene lantern. Whatever it was, it was moving toward her. Li-Ann felt the skin tightening all up her back and across her scalp. This was crazy, she thought. I should have waited until Barry could come with me. The sound of the wind moving on the ridge had grown louder, yet she felt only a whisper on her uncovered arms. Where she was standing seemed to be a becalmed area, a dead zone. Even the trees at the margin of the clearing appeared motionless, as best she could tell, while a roar like a gathering storm was mounting above her. The cloud of flickering light grew, and as it did, she could hear above the tumult a rhythmic stomping, faint at first, but quickly becoming so loud that eventually she shuddered with each footfall. The apparitions emerged into the clearing. And then she knew. Li-Ann had neither believed nor disbelieved in ghosts. A hard-headed businesswoman, she spent little time thinking about things intangible. At the same time, her childhood had been rich in spirituality. She was prepared to accept spirits if she saw them with her own eyes. And these spirits she now saw with her own eyes. They were not the type to be taken lightly. She knew that the legend gave her only two choices if she wanted to avoid a horrible death: either run as fast as she could before they saw her, away from the light, away from the clearing, or strip off all her clothes and lie naked and still in the underbrush. The latter choice was completely unthinkable to Li-Ann, despite the legend's guarantee that it would work. But for the moment, she couldn't run either. She was pinned in place as if by an invisible restraint. All she could do was watch them come: the Night Marchers. One by one, they floated into the clearing, the spirits of ancient Hawaiians. Big and muscular, they carried spears, ax-like war clubs and shields made of sea-turtle shells. Their faces were hidden beneath gourd masks. Torchlight bounced from their glistening bodies as they approached. According to tradition, Li-Ann recalled, if one of the Marchers was an ancestor or a friend, she might avoid the wrath these shades invariably felt on being observed by a living person. But no Low ancestor would be marching in a procession of Hawaiian warriors. She threw her camera and tripod into the bushes and turned to run. With the moon going in and out of the clouds, it was impossible to see where she was going. The tight business suit out of which she had not changed after coming home late from work also worked against her. The first time she tripped, she fell into the mud. The second time, she fell against a large rock, a hard fall. Her arms couldn't prevent her head from striking the rock, and the blow shattered her consciousness. When she awoke, she was sitting in a hard-backed wooden chair that had long since stopped being comfortable. She started to shift her weight to get the blood flowing to her legs again, but caught a glimpse of her situation in the big windows around her, and stopped cold. Her heart began pounding from the fear of what she had almost done, and her mind was thrown into a chaotic state. Calm down, Li-Ann, she told herself, but it was impossible to calm down when a movement of more than a few inches in any direction would put a bullet in her back. Tantalus, they called it now. A hundred years ago, it was known as Mount Baldy. Then, the face of the mountain had been almost barren. The low vegetation left after the sandalwood forests were chopped down for foreign trade had been overgrazed by imported cattle. Mount Baldy had been reachable only by the sinuous trails that snaked up either side of a valley formed by the erosion of the south flank of an ancient volcano. With the sandalwood depleted and the ranching gone bust, the remote area proved to be of little economic value, and was eventually given back to Nature, which wasted little time in cloaking the land again in dense rain forest. From the heights of Tantalus, there was a view that stretched to the east past Diamond Head and to the west past Pearl Harbor, with Honolulu spread out between like an intricate toy city. To most visitors, it was a spectacular sight. At sunrise, there was only one visitor at the state park overlook. Kika Kilauea -- Sistah Tika -- leaned on the railing and glared down at the concrete and steel structures that blocked the view of the Pacific. To the young half-Hawaiian woman, the city bordering the ocean did not seem an intricate toy. To her, it was a great gray scab that dominated the 'aina, the land, between the volcanic head and the military harbor, diminishing those famous landmarks by its overwhelmingly unsightly presence. Adding insult to that injury, housing tracts now reached from the city into the verdant ridges to either side of her, and up the valley between, marring the sacred beauty of the pali. My Oahu, Sistah Tika wrote in her spiral notebook. The tune would come later. Cancer spreads across the belly of your lowlands. Its scars mount the breasts of your highlands. You are disappearing under the onslaught of civilization. She stopped to wipe a tear from the end of her nose; a tear of sorrow, but also a tear of anger, of frustration. Putting mere words on a pad trivialized a wrong to the environment that was in essence unspeakable. putting the words to music turned them into a meaningless jingle, depriving them of all force. Translating the words into flawless Hawaiian with the aid of her professor, as she must do in order to be able to sing them at all in public, changed them into a secret code accessible to a tiny minority of the island's residents. Her purpose was precisely to energize and radicalize only the native Hawaiians, but she was painfully aware that the consequence of not singing her songs in English was that she was losing the chance to affect a larger and more politically powerful audience. The truth was that there were so few native Hawaiians left that from the point of view of accomplishing anything with her music, she might as well be singing in her closet. If I had the bomb, I would cure you though your recovery might take ten thousand years. Can you not just summon Madame Pele? Her lava-blood would cauterize these wounds. Now tears were flowing down both cheeks. She was imagining herself on the lawn at Washington House, the governor's pillared white mansion in the middle of town, and the usurped home of Hawaii's last Queen, standing astride a great steel-encased explosive, swinging a sledge-hammer at the plunger that would detonate the device, martyring herself and vaporizing the city at the same time. Doing something big, in other words, rather than singing in a hotel bar to a bunch of mainland tourists who didn't understand a word of the Hawaiian lyrics.. "Thank you, folks. This next song is about the building of the City of Honolulu along the south coast of Oahu." A bus pulled into the parking lot, gleaming white, with the words "Encounter Paradise" emblazoned on its side, each letter a different color. Out came its contents, Japanese tourists all, preparing their cameras, herding toward the overlook. Like penguins, she thought derisively, even though her mother was Japanese. Or perhaps precisely because her mother was Japanese. A woman swam through the early morning light, her skin the color of milk-chocolate, streams of bubbles spewing from the points of her scalloped flippers as she kicked past, on the surface of the quiescent ocean. Andrew Chase hadn't seen her until she appeared like a vision above him, slender and lissome, moving smoothly through the water toward the sun, which was still low in the eastern sky. The effervesce she was kicking up caught the glancing light ahead of her. To Andrew, submerged and holding his breath, the effect was as if diamonds were being strewn by the millions into the pale blue, liquid void. Through the brilliant froth, he saw the glint of the empty spear gun in her hand. She was headed for the beach, and now so was he. He set off after her, keeping a respectful distance. Until he saw the woman, Andrew had been following a green sea turtle, alternately diving and surfacing to grab a snorkelful of air while the creature coasted silently along, perhaps fifteen feet below him, flying above the sandy bottom that separated anemone-fringed coral heads into small underwater islands, and occasionally rising to catch a breath itself. The creature's flippers propelling it through its environment of choice with a grace that was startling for such a beast of such ungainly construction. The expression frozen on its face, with the only emotion -- and precious little at that -- coming from the eyes, had reminded Andrew of himself in his former life. To the extent a lawyer had feelings, it was usually bad form, and sometimes malpractice, to let them show. How nice it is, he had thought, as he dove to come eye-to-eye with the stoic green amphibian, to emerge from that shell. He smiled at the animal., which did not smile back. Instead, it had veered off to keep a prudent distance between itself and the gangly mammal that seemed be threatening it. When it turned away, Andrew had noticed a yellowish growth near the side of its mouth. A tumor perhaps, evidence of contamination in its food source, or in the water. Instantly, the pristine moment had turned repellent. The water looked perfectly fine now, as the woman cut through it, her bikini leaving to the imagination only the most private aspects of her perfect anatomy The forceful movements of her legs sent shivers through her thighs and buttocks. Powerful kicks. Andrew rose to the surface, feeling the power in his own arms and torso. Five years into a rigorous exercise program, he felt a different man entirely. He had much more energy. He could run faster, lift more and swim farther than he could have twenty years earlier. Twenty years earlier, having lived the work-bound life of an associate and then junior partner at Fowler and Greide, his body was a mass of jelly. Now it was -- well, at least the muscles were defined, and could be seen underneath the persistent, irreducible layer of fat around them. Floating in the placid sea, he watched the woman's progress, which was marked by a small, receding region of churning water and the occasional flash of glistening back and yellow swim fin. She was headed for a quiet stretch of beach some distance from the spot where Andrew had dropped his shirt, towel and flops. The beach was empty, but in the pullout overlooking it sat a gray pickup truck stained with the red dust of off-road driving. A couple of "local guys" in baggy shorts and tank tops leaned against the cab, chatting. Andrew set a trajectory that would put him on the sand more quickly, so that he would have a chance to see the woman at closer range, maybe talk to her. Though his relationship with his former wife Janet was much improved now, even occasionally intimate, there was an irresistible impulse in all men, he thought as he stroked the water, to appreciate the beauty of nature, and to imagine. When he wanted to, Andrew could move fairly quickly in the water. The regular, mechanical throwing of his arms against the liquid resistance put him into a trance-like state, and in combination with a forceful, if awkward, flutter kick, allowed him in short spurts to outpace Janet, who was a fine swimmer. He came out of the ocean feeling good, his physique temporarily enhanced by the exertion: chest expanded, abdomen reasonably tight. The woman was still making her way in far down the beach. Across the road, hump-backed ridges snagged the glancing sunlight in the branches of the sparse winter foliage of the dry leeward side. He wiped the salt blindness out of his eyes and began to jog toward her, at a pace calculated to intercept her as she came out of the water. The curvature of the shore brought him within fifty paces of the truck, and the two dark-skinned fellows in the parking lot turned to look in his direction. It didn't concern him. I'm the only moving thing on the beach at this hour, what else are they going to look at? He ignored them as he passed. The sun shone warm on the side of his face and down his arm. There was a slight breeze. It evaporated the sea water and sweat from his torso, chilling him comfortably. The woman was floating not far from the shore now, pulling off her flippers, the spear gun under her arm. He stopped for a moment, then began walking when she began frog-kicking in. There's no harm in just appreciating and imagining. In the shallows now, she rose up, her back arching as she strode against the angle of the sandy bottom, her face still obscured by a diving mask that also blocked him from her sight. Water streamed from the long, matted mane of her hair across her rounded bottom and along her flexing thighs. She pushed toward the beach with a swaying gait. Andrew drank in her glorious body as she came, wondering whether to pick up his pace so as to pass in front of her, and perhaps start a conversation, or to slow down slightly and pass behind her, so as to watch her silently from behind. This kind of thinking used to make him feel guilty, but at fifty-five he had come to realize that his days even of vicarious pleasure were numbered. Dirty old men weren't dirty, he now knew, just desperately clinging to life. Carpe diem, dude! He quickened his step. Ten feet. Five feet. He took a breath before speaking. Next thing he knew, Andrew was face-down in the sand with a foot pressing against he back of his neck. He turned his head to one side and found himself staring at five dusky toes. He would have struggled to get up, but his feet were being held off the ground so firmly that he couldn't even wiggle his legs. "Andy?" He knew the voice. "Is that you? 'Eh, leggo da man, Braddahs," the woman said, as embarrassment replaced his fear. The "braddahs" turned him loose, and Andrew stood slowly, brushing his shame away with the sand. "Hello, Niki," he said as he came upright. Even with mask-marks across her forehead and upper lip, Niki Makana was at least as beautiful as she had been five years earlier. "You're looking well." The muggers were standing on either side of the bride-to-be. She was smiling, but they weren't. "Not really. Ever since I had the twins, I haven't been able to get rid of this pot belly." She thrust her hips toward him. If she was referring to the part of her abdomen that rose out of her bikini bottom like a silken shield around her belly button, she was grossly exaggerating, Andrew judged. "Bodyguards?" he asked, motioning at her companions. "Oh, I'm so sorry. This is Puna," she said, gesturing gracefully to her left. The shaven-headed Hawaiian gave a curt nod and held out a meaty hand, which Andrew shook warily. "And this is Ka'u." Even more lethally-muscled than his counterpart, Ka'u glared at Andrew from under his dreadlocks. "They're not bodyguards, silly. They're just friends of mine. They misinterpreted your intentions, that's all." Andrew thought he heard a little tremor in her voice. "Liz?" "Mmm." "Want to go down and get some breakfast?" "Not yet, Stel'. These beds are comfortable, aren't they?" "Oh, sure, but I've been awake for an hour already." "Well, great, but you didn't spend yesterday traveling through five time zones." "It's one in the afternoon in New York, Sistah. Time for lunch where you live, and we haven't even had breakfast yet." "Okay, okay. Just give me another five minutes." It was a large suite. Each of the sisters had her own double bed, which was sufficient to allow Liz her space. The large casement windows looked out over Waikiki Beach and the ocean. Open at the bottom, they let in a light morning breeze that caused the sheer curtains to billow into the room. Sunlight brightened a small stripe of a side wall, stealthily spreading across the intricately-patterned blue wallpaper. Stella, sitting on her bed, her short hair sun-lightened almost to blonde and her skin richly tanned, fell silent again. Relax, and enjoy the free time, she told herself. George was occupied with the harvest on Kauai, and with baby-sitting the kids. She could finally let go of her responsibilities for a few days, a luxury that had been a long time coming. She and Liz had no fixed schedule until the wedding. There wasn't any reason why she couldn't just lie there as her sister was doing. Except that she was hungry. "There's a concert tonight," she said, coming at the problem indirectly. Step one, wake her up. Liz sighed. "What kind of concert?" she asked, her words muffled by the pillow. "Hawaiian music. Sistah Tika and the Makawao Cowboys." "Really?" Liz rolled over onto her back. "I really liked that CD you sent me. Especially that song about Kauai. So haunting." "They're even better in person." "You've seen them?" "Several times. Tika plays an electric guitar that looks like a pineapple and sounds like a ukulele going through a voice change. She comes out wearing a muumuu, but sooner or later during the show she slips it off. Underneath, she's wearing a coconut bra and a skirt made of ti leaves, and at that point, she'll always do a really provocative Tahitian hula. The Cowboys are not exactly what you expect. Except for the drummer, they're on the rotund side, always cracking jokes in pidgin, but great musicians." Liz was up on her elbows. "You go to a lot of Hawaiian concerts?" "Oh, I have," Stella chuckled. "Well, George's brother being a bassist, you know; he backs up a lot of the local stars, and whenever he plays on Kauai, we would go to see him." "But not anymore?" "Not so much." "So," Liz said with a sly smile, "you got into those wild backstage parties, huh?" "Not like the ones you used to go to in New York, Liz. They end earlier, for one thing. A lot of the musicians have to get up and go to work the morning after. And the Hawaiian musicians don't separate themselves from the audience that much, for the most part. I've gotten to know some of them pretty well." "If we go to the concert tonight, will we, you know..." Liz made a circling motion with her hands. "Hang with the band? I don't know about that, but maybe we can have dinner with Tika before the show. I'll call her later." Liz sat upright on the bed. "Wow." Step two. Get her out of bed. Stella roused herself, went to the window and tapped lightly on the glass as she searched for something that would interest Liz. The ocean was pretty, but flat. No waves, no surfers. The south shore in winter. On the opposite side of the island, forty foot rollers were predicted for today. Nothing of particular note on the beach. The terrace.... "Hey, there's Mom with Mr. Freeman. Gosh. He looks decrepit." "Really? I haven't see him for five years." Liz threw her legs over the side of the bed, stood up and shuffled to the window. "Jeez! His hair is all white. And he's lost a lot of weight." "Well, I think he must be seventy-six or -seven, don't you?" "But I had no idea. What is Niki doing, marrying him, for God's sake?" "You know what she's doing, Liz." "Well, yeah, I thought I did. But I was imagining him more or less as he was when we met him. He's really aged." The younger Chase daughter shrugged. "It'll happen to you, too, if you live long enough." "Don't talk dirty. Seriously, how can she marry a guy like that? Even with the best intentions in the world, there are limits." "You're looking at the exterior person." Stella touched her forehead to the window glass, felt its warmth. "He's an extraordinary man, even in old age. You remember how he engages with you when he talks to you, how those eyes draw you in. I think there'd be something nice about living with him for a while." Liz rarely saw things from the same perspective as her sister. "I don't," she shuddered. "Come on, let's get dressed. I'll go downstairs with you." "I can't believe you're getting married, C. B." "Why not? Too old?" Janet Chase and C. B. Freeman were sitting in the outdoor restaurant at the Royal Hawaiian, having a late breakfast. Janet was facing Diamond Head. Visual cliché it might be, but Janet had not seen it live before, and sitting there crouched like a tawny sphinx at the edge of the green ocean, it made her think, How perfect it would be without the high-rise hotels and condos. "No, no. Of course not, C. B." A lock of hair fell across her eye as she shook her head, and she reached up to push it back, glimpsing several gray strands of her own as she did so. "Too eligible." Freeman laughed. "You're too kind." "How big is the wedding?" "Janet, you know that's like asking how big a thunderstorm is going to be. You got a taste of that at Stella's wedding. The cousins will bring their cousins, unannounced. And their friends. And they'll go out on the road in front of the ranch we hired for the reception and invite strangers in. It'll be a classic 'aha'aina male, a wedding feast." "What about your side of the family?" "There's only my kids, and they're not coming." The beach was just beyond their table, separated from the patio by a low iron fence. It's sandy expanse was ornamented with surfboards, boogie boards, physiques, jewelry, hairdos, caftans, umbrellas, folding chairs and the other busyness of leisure on Waikiki Beach. Janet's gaze drifted along the shoreline while she absorbed this new bit of candor. "They're pissed," Freeman continued. "The estate?" "Hell, no. They're richer than I am. They were all shareholders in the magazine when we sold it, and since then they haven't been pouring their profits into money-losing island newspapers like mine. No, they find my behavior unseemly. Degrading, whatever. Her age, you know. And her race. I can't believe May and I raised a flock of goddam bigots." "Oh, I'm sure you didn't...." Freeman waved a hand at her. "Believe it." He sighed. "Nobody understands what I'm doing, or what she's doing. You know, I'm, well, nearly eighty, and Niki's just thirty. They think she's after my money and I'm after her body." Janet watched the parade along the beach for a moment., then turned and smiled at Freeman. "But that's true, isn't it?" "Well, yes, it's true, but not in the way you think. It's more noble. More -- innocent. We're just two people with complementary--" "--Needs?" "Situations." "Situations. What's Niki's situation?" "Well," Freeman began, looking down at his wrinkled, spotted fingers, as he ticked them lightly against the table, "she wants the idea of Hawaiian sovereignty to become mainstream thinking. Frankly, I don't know how that can happen, but as my wife she'll be helping with the newspapers and I'm sure the native voice will begin to speak from their pages. She's also got the twins. I suppose an old father figure for the kids is better than none." He glanced up at Janet, a wistful look in his eye. "And finally, I'm haole," he croaked. "Niki has this love-hate thing for haoles. I'm sure she'll enjoy dominating the roost." Janet stared back at the publisher. She hadn't expected such a frank answer, and didn't really know what to do with it, except to follow the symmetry of the discussion. "And you, C.B. What's your situation?" "Me?" Freeman turned his hands palms upward on the table, and shook his head slowly. His eyes scanned her face. "I'm dying, Janet." She had brokered the sale of the penthouse apartment several years earlier, in a rare departure from her specialty, commercial real estate. The three-sided view was spectacular, giving out, from left to right, over the ocean, the beach park, the boat basin, the idiosyncratic high-rises of the city, and the ridges that rose from the coastal plain to become the verdant Ko'olau Mountains , their flanks now dotted with one- and two-family homes. From where she was sitting, in the middle of the living room, she could not see the palace or the government buildings, but if she were able to get up and walk to window, they too would be visible. Getting up was not in the cards, though. She was sitting in a heavy wooden chair that had been brought in from the dining room. In that chair, she had watched the sun set over Ewa and waited in darkness until morning began to give texture to the sky again. She had kept herself calm and escaped the prison of her body as best she could, trying to remain motionless, to ignore the pain and the escalating discomfort. This is what Harry felt, she thought. Harry Lilikoi was the buyer of the condo. At the time, he had been at the peak of his career. A big man with a lilting tenor voice and hands that flew over the guitar like lightning, Lilikoi was the most successful Hawaiian popular musician ever. They had been standing in this very room when he decided; she, Harry and a pretty, Japanese-Hawaiian girl with almond eyes that he called "Tika". This was in the high time of Hawaiian real estate, when Japanese buyers were trolling the island in stretch limos, buying indiscriminately, building or renovating profligately and driving prices past the moon. Despite Harry's success, Li-Ann had been struck speechless when he told her he would pay cash for the penthouse. Even the most successful island singer would not be raking down the kind of money that would allow him to write a check for $3.5 million. Lilikoi had been one of the few who was able to let go of his day job, and that was only a couple of years before he bought the penthouse. Li-Ann knew that the music business had not put that kind of cash at Harry's disposal, and sure enough, four years after he moved in, Harry Lilikoi had been murdered right in this condo, a victim of success not in the music business, everyone concluded, but in the drug business. Light from a single floor lamp had shone on her all night. After sundown, she had stared at her reflection, bright in the plate glass window, small and alone in the cavernous space. Her crimson silk suit was filthy, and its trim silhouette was violated by stripes of gray duct tape that crisscrossed her chest and shoulders and held the muzzle of the pistol against her back. A second chair sat back-to-back with the one on which she was sitting, and the handle of the revolver was suspended by tape between its slats. A circle of tape was also stretched taut against the trigger and around the slats. Her arms and legs were free. There was nothing restraining her except the sure knowledge that if she attempted to rise from her seat or pull at the tape, the gun would move forward slightly with her, but the trigger, restrained by its own stripe of tape, would not move. The gun would fire, and that would be the end. Happy Birthday, she said to herself when the first sunlight raked the distant mountains. Forty. When I was young, I wanted to die by this time. As the sky brightened, the reflection in the window faded. At forty, Li-Ann thought, she had every reason to live. A new and interesting career, a wonderful man in her life. The prospect of children, finally.... Half Chinese, they would be, and half Japanese. The older members of her family would not approve, nor would her relatives in China, but she didn't care. The idea that life would finally be created inside her, would spring from her, need her, love her; that was enough to sweep aside any criticism. Once, when she was a little girl in the late 'fifties, Li-Ann had brought a Japanese classmate home to play. Her mother had been pleasant enough to Miko, but later she had sat Li-Ann down to explain what she had done wrong. "They're not like us. They have different values, a different sense of right and wrong. The things they did to Chinese people during World War Two were so awful, I can't even describe them to you." Her mother's views were probably the same today , but what did events over half a century ago and in another country mean as between Barry Saga and herself? Nothing. Nothing at all. The city was coming to life below her. Traffic on the H1 was already stop and go. Airplanes were headed for one continent or another, lifting off the airport runway every minute or so, it seemed. A gray destroyer made its way along the coast toward Pearl Harbor. Life asserted itself everywhere she looked. Yet for her there seemed to be no escaping the pale rider. It was a thought that did not come easily to her, and it took a while to accept. When she did, though, she didn't hesitate to act. Filling her lungs with air, slowly, sadly, she closed her eyes and held her breath as long as she could. Then with a scream of rage and a violent lurch, she twisted herself sideways in the chair. "Do you really like private investigation work," Freeman asked, obviously not able to put himself in that particular place. "You know, C.B., I'm a painter. That's what I really like. But I can't do it all the time, it's too intense. Bringing the colors, textures, the shapes to where I want them -- figuring out where I want them, and then changing my mind as I go along, and having to give up my vision when I can't bring it out, and finally recovering it or taking the piece in a wonderful new direction... It just drains me. And while I'm doing it, I'm totally antisocial. I don't talk to anyone. Won't even answer the phone even if it's in my pocket." "Sounds intense, all right." Janet gave a helpless shrug. "Investigations are interesting. First of all, you never know when they're going to come up; every one is a surprise. And then you have this ...this mystery. You have a goal, often a timetable. You engage your wits. You have, well,...." "Danger?" "Mmm, more like the possibility of danger, that frisson, you know? We really don't take cases we know are life-threatening.. We certainly try not to, anyway. No, what I was going to say is that you have successes. We've solved every case so far except one." "Really? And the one that got away was...." "Andrew's former law client Harry Wong disappeared several months ago. He was -- conceivably still is -- a Hong Kong Chinese, very wealthy. His yacht was found off Phuket Beach, in fact we've just come from there, but Harry is as disappeared as they--" Janet's cel phone rang under the table. "The world was so much better before those things," she sighed, bending to grab it out of her woven lauhala bag. "Yes?" she said into the little bump that passed for a mouthpiece. "Jan?" "Barry, hello! How are...?" "It's Li-Ann. She's been shot." "What? What! Is she--" "She's at Queen's Medical Center. They're trying to save her." "Omigod! 'Save her?' Omigod." She stood up. Diamond Head faded into insignificance. "C. B., your car. Let's go." She began running. Freeman pushed himself out of his seat, threw some money on the table and shambled after her. "How did it happen, Barry?" Janet shouted into the phone. "She was shot in the back. The gun had been taped to her body. That's about all I know. I'm on my way to the hospital now." "I'll be there as quickly as I can." She hung up, and turned around, looking for Freeman. He wasn't keeping up. "I'll take a cab," she shouted. "Meet me at the Queen's Medical Center. Emergency Room." As she ran, she dialed Andrew's cel phone. There was no answer. In the back of the taxi, Janet gathered her thoughts. Li-Ann Low hadn't been working for Chase & Chase very long, just a few months. She was still learning the business. Barry had let her follow him around for the first several weeks, then gave her some records-searching and analysis work. She had landed her first solo job on her own; a friend of hers, suspicious of her son's new-found wealth, had asked Li-Ann to determine its source. Andy and Barry had discussed whether Li-Ann should be assigned a case with such fuzzy dimensions, but in the end had bowed to Li-Ann's wishes. "I know the family," she had argued. "There's no risk here." Andy had come up with the idea of bringing her into the agency. To put it mildly, Janet had been against it at first. "What is your fascination with that woman?" she had yelled at him. "For five years, you've been paying more attention to her welfare than to your own kids'." "You're exaggerating, Janet. Li-Ann's smart, confident, self-possessed. Tenacious. She knows the islands, she's well connected. With Barry's guidance, she'll be a great investigator." "And she'll be oh so grateful to you for having given her the opportunity." "You're jealous, aren't you. Not of Li-Ann having me, she doesn't and never has, but of Li-Ann having Barry." Of course she was jealous. She knew that Li-Ann would insinuate herself into Barry Saga's life; indeed, she knew, rationally, that it would be a good thing for Barry and his sons if that happened. Because she wanted Barry to be happy, she had consented to bringing Li-Ann into the firm, even promoted the idea. On an emotional level, though, the notion tore her up. Barry Saga was the only man other than Andy whom she had really loved, and giving him up pained her to the point of despair. Andy and she were back together, to an extent, but after what he had done to her, she couldn't give herself over to him completely, even if he were a match for Barry as a lover. "That's ridiculous," she said. "Barry's just a friend and a business partner now, Andy. You know that." Andy had smiled sympathetically. "Wouldn't it be great if we could both be completely honest with one another." The cab deposited her at the emergency entrance to the Queens Medical Center She ran in, and there he was. "Barry." The former police captain turned to her, and she saw it in his eyes. He put his arms around her, and she felt it in his touch. It was over between them. Not friendship, that would always be there. But passion; passion was over. Maybe I'm overreading, she thought. Maybe it's just the situation.... "How is she?" "Barely alive. The bullet missed her heart, but made a mess of one lung, and she lost a lot of blood before the security guard got to her." Saga turned away. "Can we see her?" Still with his back to her, Saga shook his head. "She'll be in the operating room for hours. I don't know what to do, Jan. I want to stay here, but I also want to get over to the apartment where she was shot." "It's a crime scene now, Barry. You won't be able to get in." Janet ran her fingers along the back of his arm. "No, but I'll be able to get information." "The police will always be two steps ahead of you." "Not really," Saga replied, turning around. "I'm already ahead of them. I know what Li-Ann was working on." Janet grabbed his hands. Touching them made her weak, but what she said was, "You need to be here. I'll go to the apartment and pick up whatever the use of your name will get me." He nodded, and a moment later she was gone again. "Mr. Freeman!" Stella had recognized the publisher from the rear by the little hitch in his step as he walked from the beachfront cafe toward the lobby of the pink-stuccoed hotel. "Why, Stella. Good morning. Haven't seen you on Kauai for I don't know how long, and now we meet in Waikiki." "We thought we'd join you and my mother for breakfast, but I guess...." "She ran off, I'm afraid. Asked me to meet her at Queen's Medical Center. Somebody's been in an accident, I guess, but I don't know who." "Not Dad," Liz said as she joined the other two. "I think it was a woman," Freeman shrugged. "Perhaps you'd like to join me." "Of course," Stella said, but Liz grabbed her arm. "Why don't we call Mom first," she suggested. "We don't want to make an unnecessary crowd at the hospital. You go ahead, Mr. Freeman." Back in their room, Liz raised Janet on the speakerphone. "Instead of coming to the hospital," Janet said from the rear of a cab, after telling them what little she knew of the situation, "I think you should find your father as quickly as possible." "Where did he go," Stella asked. "Snorkeling." "Um, can you be more specific, Mom," Liz asked. "Believe it or not, Oahu is surrounded by water." "No. As usual, your father has put his whims ahead of his responsibilities." "Didn't he take his cel phone?" "Not into the water, Liz. Oh, we're coming to the building where Li-Ann was shot. Just use your heads, okay? Bye." Liz and Stella stared at one another helplessly for a moment. "Use your head," Stella laughed at length. "I used it already, didn't you hear me. Got any other ideas?" "It's amazing that you'd be out here this morning, Andy," Niki remarked as they stood toweling off on the beach. "What a coincidence!" "I.... Well, yes it is, isn't it." It wasn't, really. Andrew had called Niki's hotel room to invite her to lunch with the family, and her mother had told him that the bride-to-be had an early morning meeting with some sovereignty activists in Makua. "You've buffed up since I saw you last." Niki rapped her knuckles against Andrew's abdomen, which he had been holding taut since he had gotten up off the sand. "Well, I've been exercising," Andrew tossed back lightly. "You know, I was hoping to talk to you some time this week. Do you have to get right back to town?" "Not really. Janet is having a late breakfast with your fiancée, and the girls are probably still asleep." "Good." She dropped her towel in the sand, and put her arm in his. Andrew felt a little thrill, as if electricity had passed between them at that instant. "Let's take a walk. No, not you two," she added to her shadows. Ka'u scowled and folded his arms, and Puna rolled his eyes, but neither of them moved to follow. "So, Andy, what are you doing way out here on Makua beach so early in the morning?" "Snorkeling, like you. I heard an early morning surf report -- 'flat at Makua' -- and decided to try it out. What brings you and your friends here at this hour." "This is a Hawaiian beach," Niki shrugged. "Aren't all the beaches in the state Hawaiian beaches by definition?" "I mean this is a beach where Hawaiian people come. This whole area is special to Hawaiians." "Is that a Hawaiian artifact," Andrew asked, pointing to a white dome on a dusky bluff across the road. "No-o-o. Naturally, the American military has invaded our space here, as with many other parts of the island. The state rents them all the land on that hill." "'Rents'? So at least the feds didn't steal that land from your people." "Have you forgotten what I taught you up in Koke'e, Andy. The so-called Republic of Hawaii stole our nation with the support of the U.S. Government. Then, when that bogus haole Republic was annexed by the US, it ceded a huge amount of our land to the federal government. When Hawaii became a state, most of the ceded lands were given back by the government in Washington to the new state government, which turned around and rented some of it back to the U.S. The Republic of Hawaii flat out stole the land, Andy. So that radar dome is sitting on stolen land." Andrew nodded. Hawaiian history was not a subject he should have reopened with Niki. "Shall we talk about the wedding?" he asked. She didn't answer right away. When she did, it was clear that she didn't want to discuss the wedding with him. "I read your novel, you know." "You're one of the few." "Oh, give it a chance, Andy. It's only just come out." "And?" Andrew pursed his lips, not sure he wanted to hear her opinion. "Oh it's good, it's good for a haole novel." Niki flashed a sly smile. "One haole lady who read it told me that the sovereignty parts were too one-sided. In your favor." "What did you say to her about that?" "I said the other side would get its chance in the sequel." "What, equal time for the devil?" "It's not even written yet, Niki. Why don't we wait and see, rather than get heated up now." Niki shrugged. "Okay. The.... The part about me, about us, in your first book, Andy.... Well, it was surprisingly sensitive, relatively speaking." "What does that mean., 'relatively speaking'?" "I mean," Niki answered, moving her hand in a circular direction as if drawing the thought out of herself, "you had a much better understanding of what was going on between us than I thought you did at the time. Not a really good understanding, but better than I thought." She paused for moment while Andrew wondered about the relativity of the compliment. "Remember," she began again after a moment, "the morning after that night in Koke'e? You said we should stay friends, maybe talk things out with one another once in a while?" "Yeah, Niki. I mean, we were both in an emotional state that morning." "Even so, Andy, I could use a friend right now." Andrew glanced at her. His earlier entanglement with Niki was improvident at best, and had left both of them wounded. He was not anxious to repeat it, and yet he feared that all it would take was a crook of her finger. "What about Pali and Ka'u back there I thought they were friends of yours?" "If you don't want to hear me out, just say so, okay? Don't toy with me." There it was again: the surprising sensitivity, the unexplained defensiveness. "No, no. Don't get me wrong, please. It's just that I'm still carrying around all this baggage --" "Ha. Welcome to the club? Just listen for a while, will you. I...." She paused, took a breath and straightened her shoulders. By Herculean effort, Andrew managed to keep his gaze from dropping to her breasts. "This year is the hundredth anniversary of the annexation of Hawaii by the United States," she began. "Is this the Koke'e lecture again, then?" Andrew chided. "Fine. Just forget about it, then. Nice weather, huh?" Niki folded her arms under her breast and stared straight ahead. "I just meant to remind you that the 'movement' was an awkward subject between us when we -- last time, is all." "I hadn't forgotten. Andy, there's a strong feeling among many Hawaiians that the centennial year is the time for action." "Action? What action?" "Different people have different ideas, from suing for return of lands to setting up native reservations to lobbying for a kind of affirmative action program. The most extreme folks favor revolution." "You mean throwing out the US government? You've got the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines and the Coast Guard stationed here, and people are actually talking about overthrowing the government?" Niki turned to Andrew, an uneasy expression on her face. "Those people aren't stupid. They're not talking about warfare, Andy." He shook his head in incomprehension. "Well, if not warfare, then what." Niki's gaze wavered, and then fixed on something out in the ocean. Andrew turned around. Floating on the blue-gray expanse, perhaps fifty yards offshore, was a motionless figure face down in the waves. It was a common sight in Hawaii, and he immediately thought, snorkeler. Then he noticed that where a snorkeling tube should have been protruding out of the water near the fellow's head, there seemed instead to be a slender shaft of metal. A tug on his arm swung him around to face Niki as she said the word. "Terrorism." Liz grimaced. "No answer." "He's just not using his cel phone right now." Stella was sitting cross-legged on the unmade bed. A breeze floating in through the open window tousled her long, sandy hair. "Well, how are we supposed to find him, then?" "I'm sure if one of the senior partners at your firm asked you to find Andrew Chase, you'd figure out something to do." "Sure," Liz shot back as she sank into the chair behind the# writing table. "I'd hire a private detective." "Shall we do that," Stella asked in all sincerity. "How do we pick one out of the yellow pages, Stel'? And whose credit card do we charge?" Liz looked around the room, as though some clue to finding their father was hidden in a corner. Nothing revealed itself to her, and she raised her arms helplessly. "Maybe you could use your sixth sense, you know? Meditate or whatever, and see if you get a picture." "I've only done that once," Stella answered with a studied evenness, "and it was so long ago that I'm not sure it really happened." "Well then, get George on the speakerphone. Maybe he can help us out." Liz stared at her younger sister for a few seconds, during which Stella stared out the window. Stella's husband did have an uncanny sense of the order of unseen events. As to whether he was clairvoyant, or simply better at guessing, she and Stella might disagree. Either way, it couldn't hurt.... "That's not funny," Stella said at length. "I wasn't trying to be funny, Stel'. I was grasping at a straw." "I'm not going to call him. It would be insulting." Liz nodded soberly. "For you, yes; I can understand that. But not for me. What's the number?" They caught George Akamai on a tractor, taking time out from running the part of the Makai Ranch on Kauai that he and Stella still owned in order to help the farming collective run by the local chapter of the Kamehameha Society. "The kid's aren't on that machine with you are they," Stella yelled as George shut the engine off. "No, they're with Tutu Pelekai. She's teaching them how to fly," he laughed. "What does he mean," Liz mouthed. Stella seemed irritated, and just waved off the question. The cel phone hissed at them. "Stop moving around, George," Liz called out. "Is that you, Sistah. I understand your boy friend can't make it for the wedding." "No, he's on a photo shoot. Has to get them in while he can, you know. We found a wrinkle on his forehead the other day." Akamai chuckled into the phone. "I doubt that old age is keeping Race Kendall away from Niki's wedding. More likely it's the pangs of an old infatuation? Not to take the least bit away from his deep and abiding love for you, Liz." "Um, we need to cut the small-talk, Braddah-in-law." "Sweetheart, Li-Ann has been shot." Stella explained. "She's at Queens, and not in good shape. Barry is there, and my Mom." "Sweet Jesus!" "Listen, George," Liz called out. "We have to find our Dad right away, and we don't have a clue where to look." "Uh-huh. Wan't me to look into my crystal ball and tell you where he is, then, Liz?" "Oh, gee. I mean I.... I wouldn't have said it that way. But yes, I guess that's exactly what I want." Stella was staring out the window again. "Shall we show her how the magic works, Stel'?" George asked. He doesn't sound that angry, Liz thought. "Oh, George, Liz is only...." "Let's just do it, Stella. All right, Liz. You say you have no clues, but that's not quite right, is it." "Uh, no. But all we know is that he's gone snorkeling." "Well, that's a clue, isn't it? Now, where would he be snorkeling?" Liz thought a moment. Stella was now standing at the window, being no help at all. "I see," she said. "You mean, some beaches are better for snorkeling than others." "Right. Why?" "Better reefs?" "Yes. What else?" "No dangerous currents." "Fine. What do you think, Liz. Is Andy the type of guy who would have listened to the surf report this morning. "S-sure, I guess so." Out on the ocean beyond the window out which Liz was staring as she talked, a multicolored parasail floated by, its rider, barely visible, seated as if in a carnival ride. "Methodical type, your Dad, no?" "O-oh, yes. Methodical. Are you moving again, George? Your fading in and out." "I'm in my car. Going to catch the next plane for Honolulu. Now, the morning surf report was that there was no action on the leeward side of Oahu, Liz." "Wow!" "But, George," Stella objected, "there are miles of beach -- the whole Waianae coast. "Sure. That is where the magic comes in. What I think you should do is find out where Niki Makana is." "George!" Liz exclaimed. "You're talking about a one-night stand, five years ago," Stella added. "I know exactly what I'm talking about. One night stands can have lasting effects, don't you think, Stella? Look, for all I know, Niki is still sound asleep in her room. But if not.... Well, I don't know. It's worth checking out." A few minutes later, Liz and Stella were on their way to Makua Beach. In the back of the cab, Stella pulled a cellular phone out of her purse. Liz glanced at her sidelong. "Aren't you afraid you're going to irradiate your psychic powers with that thing?" "Yes, I am., as a matter of fact," Stella shrugged. "But there are times...." She dialed Andrew's number, but soon shook her head. "He's still not picking up." "Have you considered that we might get out to the beach and find out he's already left," Liz offered. "Mmm-hmm. But if so, he'll probably have his cel phone on again." Liz made a little face. "How about setting us up for dinner with Sister Tika?" she proposed, more to get her mind off the long ride and low-probability assignment she and her sister had drawn. "We don't really know what will be happening at dinnertime, Liz," Stella demurred. "Sure we do. Mom and Dad will be at the hospital, worrying over their new associate." Liz hadn't met Li-Ann Low, but knew enough about her father's preoccupation with the broker for the Makai Ranch whom he'd first encountered five years earlier to be unhappy that the woman had been invited into the detective agency that her parents owned. "Well, okay, let's see what happens." Stella picked up the phone and dialed again. Kika Kilauea was in her BMer when the call came in. A few years old now, it was Harry Lilikoi's last gift to her before he died. A good thing he'd given it to her while he was alive, too, given the lengths to which his family had gone to see that she did not participate in Harry's estate. When the warranty ran out, she'd have to sell it, since she couldn't afford maintenance. The only thing she'd miss, really, was the hands-free phone; it made her feel like a superhero. "Speak," she shouted. "Kika, is that you." "Who wants to know?" "Stella Akamai." "Oh, hello. Where are you calling from." Kika was negotiating the hairpin turns down from Tantalus; her mind wasn't fully on the conversation. "I'm on Oahu for a week; going to a wedding next Saturday." "Mmm. Coming to the show tonight?" I think so. Listen, my sister is visiting from the mainland. She's a big fan of yours, and she'd like to buy you dinner beforehand. "Hey, da's nice," Kika said, lapsing into Pidgin. No eat much befoah sing, dou'. How 'bout lunch, eh?" "Can do. We go' pick you up twel' a'clak, den?" "No, no. Go' meet dere roun' noon, Sis. Sam Choy's. Da kine on Nimitz. Okay." Kika liked Stella. Her name ended in "a", like her own. Names can determine the personalities of the named, Kika believed, and people whose names end in "a"-- which included most of the native Hawaiian community-- tended to be open, generous and sensible. Stella also had a soul that was very compatible with the Hawaiian spirit; obviously, or George Akamai would never have married her. And she spoke tolerable pidgin. She turned from Tantalus Drive onto Makiki Heights Road, and continuing her descent off the mountain, soon came to the driveway of the Contemporary Museum, a low, Mediterranean-style villa that had been transformed into a home for the kind of art museum. She turned in and parked under one of the large banyan trees in front of the building. There was a show that she wanted to see. "No open yet, Tika." The Vietnames gardener she knew only as "Pho" wagged his finger at her, his face lean and sun-darkened under his wide, conical straw hat. "I have an appointment," Kika called back, grinning at the diminutive caretaker as she strode past. A staffer was waiting for her in the courtyard, a tall, willowy young woman with close-cropped black hair and a crimson gash for a mouth. Her dress was black, too, and short, and she had perfected a hips-forward posture that gave her an air of detachment. "'Morning, Molly." "Hello, Kika. How are you." "Ah, I've had my morning cry, so I guess I'm ready for the day." "Crying is good," the curator said. "Crying's a start." She leaned forward and put her hands on Kika's shoulders. "We cry, then we act." "'We?' You always talk like it's your island, Molly. You've only been here two years." Molly Pratt drew the singer closer, until their faces were only inches apart. "It is my island, Kika," she answered, her lips parted to expose her perfect teeth, her breath warm and sweet on Kika's cheek. "I have part-Hawaiian blood. I love this place as much as anybody does. Every morning, I get down on my hands and knees and kiss the ground, like the Pope. I'm never leaving." Her breath was warm and sweet on Kika's cheeks. "And I long to give back to the 'aina, every bit as much as you do." They embraced briefly. Kika had tilted her chin up to clear the taller woman's shoulder, and as they parted, Molly turned her head, so that their cheeks brushed, and then their lips. Kika blushed and smiled nervously. "Come," Molly exclaimed, as though nothing had happened. "You'll enjoy this. No flash, right." "No, I borrowed an electronic camera. It can handle low light." They walked into the first gallery. The sheet rock walls were painted white above a hardwood floor, the art had either a controversial viewpoint or a challenging aesthetic, or both. In the middle of the room was a platform with a sewer grating in it. Lying next to the grating was a realistic plastic sculpture of a man with a wrench in his hand, and above the man was the cab of a full-sized pickup truck, raised on its undercarriage and sitting on monster wheels. Motor oil was pouring out of the drain hole in the crank-case, over the reclining man's hand and into the storm sewer. Kika fetched a small digital camera out of her fanny pack and took a picture. "Wanna see it?" She turned the camera around so that the two of them could see the frozen instant on the little display screen. Molly nodded in approval. The walls around them were commanded by a kind of art that would lead many viewers to the conclusion that the gallery walls would look better bare. "Difficult" art, art meant to shake up the viewers' political sensibility and her conception of art. An artist named Mana'a had gone around collecting the detritus of human existence and gluing it onto painted canvasses. The two women studied a Mana'a piece called, "Kailua Beach, 1/4/98-1/11/98". It consisted of samples of the variety of nonbiodegradeable marine garbage that the winter ocean had regurgitated onto the sand. "Important message, Molly," Kika said. "Conveyed with real power. But...." "...Is it art? Sure it is. Conveying important messages in a powerful way is what artists have been doing for centuries. If Mana'a had done a realistic painting of those scraps of fishing net, styrofoam, plastic containers and pvc pipe, arranged in the same way as she pasted the real things up there, would the painting be art?" "Yeah, I would say so." "Well, then! I'm surprised you even asked. You especially. I mean, aren't your protest songs art?" Kika looked at Molly, embarrassed. "I don't know," she answered. "I've never known." Koa wood has character. Polished, its usually-auburn surface glows as if with a warm inner light, its fine grain and swirling knots have a magical, multidimensional depth. Koa wood is a perfect reflection in nature of Hawaii's richly complex and inviting environment, and indeed koa is an endemic Hawaiian species. Growing at intermediate, well-watered elevations on the mountains of the island chain, the tree can be recognized by its yellow green, elongated leaves, which stand out against the darker greens of the ironwood, pines and other trees that inhabit the same slopes. Since koa prefers to grow with its own kind, stands of these trees tend to form patches of brightness on the walls of the steep ridges they inhabit. Hawaii's native bird populations favor the koa forests, a hint of an abiding familiarity among in the genes of the animal and plant species that evolved together in the splendid isolation of the islands. The native birds of the koa forest, the akiapolaau, the akepa and the Hawaiian creeper, are endangered. The koa, while not endangered, is a victim. The extensive koa forests of Hawaii were cleared in the eighteen-hundreds for the greater needs of the immigrant civilization of the time: cattle ranching, building, and burning as fuel. With the demise of ranching on most of the islands, however, the stately koa has been able to reassert itself in the uplands. The word "koa" means "courageous" or "fearless". The ancient Hawaiians valued the wood for its ability to withstand the rigors of ocean canoeing. Chants and ceremonies accompanied the choice of a canoe tree, the felling of the living wood and the making of the canoe from its remains. As noble in life as its wood is beautiful in death, the koa tree grows to heights up to a hundred and a half feet, with crowns almost as broad as the tree is tall. The dilemma of the koa -- it is worth far more dead than alive in money terms, and yet culled to extinction its loss would be beyond financial measure -- is like the dilemma of Hawaii: the more of it that is transformed by the hand of man to create monetary value, the more likely ts real value is to disappear. Primus Eldreth sat at his koa wood desk (monetary value, $40,000 plus) pondering the future. Honolulu was getting to be a very complicated place, and Eldreth did not like complications. It used to be that money solved problems, and big money solved big problems. These days, it seemed that money caused problems, and big money caused big problems. Wealth used to command respect because it could command power. Now wealth commanded contempt, and power was available to any kid with a computer, a modem and some hacking software downloaded from the Internet. The burnished surface of the desktop blazed in the sunlight that skimmed across it through the east-facing plate glass windows. The brown-skinned Eldreth imagined the glowing desk to be feeding raw energy into the palms of his downturned hands. He imagined the energy coursing through his veins to all his muscles, invigorating them like a silent fountain of youth. There was nothing on the desktop. No papers, no pens, no mementos, no photos, no docking station, no phone, no calendar. Nothing. Eldreth had taken the uncluttered look to its ultimate. Primus Edreth did not work, in the sense that most adults do. Nor was he an idler. He was a man who had risen beyond work; a man of ideas, of vision, a man with a whiteboard. The whiteboard was on the wall opposite his desk. To reach it, Eldreth had to rise out of his ornate leather chair, which surrounded him like a throne. He had to step around his desk and cross the oversized Beluchi carpet that covered much of the chocolate-toned koa floor. The distance gave him time to reflect on whatever idea had brought him to his feet. By the time he reached the board, the idea was usually sufficiently well formed for him to write out on the board with a marking pencil. If not, he would turn around, march back to his desk and sit down again. As he wrote, the pressure of the marking pencil against the whiteboard would close a circuit in the wall behind. That minor electrical feat had two effects: it rang a bell in Eldreth's outer office, and it transmitted the image of what he was writing on the whiteboard to his assistant's computer , also in the outer office. These signals alerted his assistant to summon whoever on Eldreth's staff she thought she should summon in response to the message on her screen. The staffer would hustle up to Eldreth's office, be graced with a few sentences explaining the new idea, and hustle out. That was the way Eldreth ran his businesses and his personal activities, and to his way of thinking it was a superior business methodology. The truth was, though, that it didn't much matter anymore what ideas Eldreth had. Underneath him -- literally, for his office was at the peak of Eldreth Tower-- was a staff of thousands who saw to it that his enterprises ran smoothly by fitting the boss' ideas into the existing operational matrix only if they could, and only as best they could. Since Eldreth was rarely inclined to revisit an idea he'd communicated in the past, the staff was reasonably sure that they wouldn't be found to have ignored or distorted his directives so long as the business continued to grow and prosper. However, it was also true that most of Eldreth's ideas were pretty good. He was a clever man. Most people would go stir crazy if forced to spend day after day as he did, but Primus Eldreth liked the way his own mind worked, and was content to think through one business issue after another, to the point either of resolution or of need for further information. And free from the obligation to respond to workaday necessities, he could concentrate on a problem for as long as it took to come up with a reasonable solution. Eldreth lifted his palms from the desk and placed them on the overstuffed arms of his chair. He pushed himself out of his seat and strode over to the whiteboard. Deliberately, he picked up a red marker, uncapped it, stuck the cap on the recessed bottom of the cylinder and wrote one word on the blank surface. Outside the office Kimee Kim heard the bell and looked up at the screen. She saw her name written in red, the tail of the final "e" pulled into a circle around the other letters. She sighed. "So early." She checked her makeup in the little mirror on her desk, stood and smoothed the lap of her miniskirt, pulled her shoulders back and started for the yellow koa door. Inside, Eldreth was seated on the hunter green leather sofa, his cotton-white main of hair blazing in the sun. "Good morning, sir," she said. "I'm going to fire you if you call me 'sir' one more time," Eldreth warned, shaking a finger at her. Kimee Kim smiled wryly. The light made her squint at the same time that it caused the skin of her broad forehead and wide cheeks to shine . "You wouldn't fire me even if I called you 'asshole,' Primus." Eldreth gave a throaty laugh and slapped his hands down on the leather-bound cushions. "Jesus, I love that. You goddam Koreans can be so direct." Kimee nodded. "And you goddam hapa-haoles can be so addled." "Come over here." "Close the shades, Primus." "More stimulating with the world watching, Kimee." "I don't find it that way at all. I find it degrading." "Oh, come on. You really think there's a battery of telescopes, binoculars and telephoto lenses pointed at us right now?" Kimee Kim looked around. Maybe the moment would pass if they talked a little longer. Not far from where she was standing, Eldreth's own spotting scope stood on a retro wooden tripod. It had been in the corner before Eldreth's arrrival that morning. "Whose privacy have you been invading this morning?" she asked. Eldreth sighed. "Curiosity killed the cat, Love. But have a look if you like." Kimee eased toward the telescope. She bent down to meet the eyepiece. In the bright circle, she saw another glass-walled enclosure. "It's the top floor of the Benningham," she said, looking back at Eldreth.. "Yes, and what's happening inside?" "Well, not.... Oh, there's someone. A guy. He seems to be checking the place out. Here comes another one,... carrying a plastic bag between his fingers,... showing the first guy." "Detectives, Kimee. They took someone out of there on a stretcher an hour ago." "'Somebody?' You know who it was, don't you?" Eldreth shrugged. "Only a realtor, My Dear. Too many of them on the island now anyway." He made a little beckoning motion with his fingers. "Could you tell what happened to her?" Kimee asked as she sidled to the sofa. "Looked as though she'd been shot. They're getting closer, Kimee. One day, you may open that door and find me...." He spread his hands apart, palms down toward the floor. Kimee Kim pressed her legs between Eldreth's knees. "They're closer, Eldreth, but not this close," she murmured. For a moment, Eldreth stared back at her, his mouth slightly ajar. Then he chuckled to himself. "No, not this close," he replied emphatically. "Now take off your clothes, Kimee, dear. I don't want to leave any DNA evidence on your blouse."