Hot Lava (13 page)

“Can I finish, please?” he asked, clearly enjoying his newfound seniority. We nodded silently. “Anyway, so Jackie, I know she’s got this weakness. See, she might not sell drugs no more, but that don’t mean she doesn’t take them when her mom’s not looking.”

“And her mom wasn’t at Liko’s today, right?”

His grin was wide, dazzling, contagious. “No. Home sick. What’s that word? Oh yeah, fortuitous. So I told her I had me some good shit to share. Now, if it was me, I’d have asked why I wanted to share some good shit, but she just heard
good shit
and
share
and she’s inviting me over in a heartbeat.”

“But you don’t have any shit,” I reminded him. “Not since Makani got busted.”

He chuckled, as did Briana. “Arm and Hammer, best shit on the market. Luckily, I could still scrape together some real and true blow, enough so she’d feel some effects. Besides, when you think you’re getting some good shit, your body reacts like it is, at least sometimes.”

“Either way,” Brandon said “you’ve made it into Liko’s.”

“Exactly,” Koni said. “And then she gives us his address. Easy as poi.”

“You mean pie,” I said.

“Not in Hawaii. Anyway, so me and Briana, we hop a cab and tell him to wait for us out of sight for thirty minutes. And then comes the first surprise.”

“Liko had a big house?” I interrupted, my own smug smile rising up my cheeks.

“Understatement,” corrected Briana.

It was Koni’s turn to kick the sand. “Yeah, understatement. Place was huge and oceanside. Big bucks.”

“You said first surprise,” Brandon interrupted, leaning in, his interest now piqued. “What was the second?”

Koni continued. “So she invites us in. I tell her Briana’s a friend of mine and she’s cool. Jackie just shrugs, her eyes, her body movements, telling me she was hot for the blow. She takes us into the living room. I spread the shit out on the glass table. Chick shovels the junk up her nose. Fine by me; we had what we came for in the first five minutes there.”

“What? What?” I practically screamed.

“Pictures,” he replied, cool, calm, and collected. “Dozens of ‘em, nicely framed on every table.”

“Fuck,” Brandon said. “Let me guess: him and Lenny, right?”

“Yep,” Koni told us. “Every last one of them. So I ask Jackie who the cute dude is, and she says it’s the owner’s boyfriend. Guys are tight. Big time in love.”

“Fuck,” Brandon reiterated. “And lovebirds don’t cut each other’s throats and dump them in the Pacific, right?”

“Back to square fucking one,” I appended.

“Almost,” said Briana.

“Yeah, almost,” Koni agreed. “See, I figured that Jackie knows two people we’re interested in.”

“Liko and Makani,” I said, offering up the short list.

“Yep. So bonus surprise: I asked her about our old supplier, Makani. I figure she knows about as much as me, but what the hell, no harm in asking. Only Jackie was closer to the dude than I was, and this was news to me. See, this island is real small. Everyone knows everyone else. Shit, most of us are related somehow or another.”

Brandon’s and my face lit up. “No joking?” I asked. “You mean Jackie and Makani are related?”

“First cousins. And blood being thicker than water, she knows shit about him. Shit that a half a bag of blow later, we now know.”

Again I shouted, “What? What?” (I know, our lives our better than a soap opera, right?
Days of our Leis
.)

“Well,” he said, almost at the end of his tale, “she said, just between me and her, Makani knew he was going to get busted. He was tipped off three weeks earlier.”

“I don’t get it,” I said, “If he was tipped off, why didn’t he just scram?”

“To where?” Koni replied. “Plus, by then he knew that the police were already watching him. If he tried to leave, he’d have been nabbed.”

Brandon snapped his fingers. “Ah,” he ahed. “Now it makes some sense. If he knew he was going to be busted, he’d have some time to find a patsy, someone he could finger for a lighter sentence without directing a watchful eye to any of his real associates.”

“Lenny,” we all said in unison.

“And,” I added, “it was about three weeks prior to his arrest that Lenny started flashing his money around. So, if it wasn’t Liko that set him up, it must’ve been Jed. Jed has immediate access to him. Jed had cash to plant on him. Jed could fuck him and get the traces of cocaine up his ass.”

“So,” Brandon also added, “we, at least more than likely, know who set up Lenny. But why would Jed do that? What’s his connection with Makani? And if someone tipped off Makani, why not his boss, Edward Beles? And who ratted out the boss and why? Pretty dangerous to do such a thing, I’d imagine.”

“Deadly,” Koni said. “
Fortuitously
, we may have our answers soon enough.”

“David Schwartz,” we all said, in unison. (Cue the scary music again. Not because bad shit was about to happen, but because we were now officially all on the same wavelength. Four lunatics, all connected.)

“So,” Briana chimed in, “that leaves one more burning question.”

“What? What?” I hollered, for the third and final time.

She grinned, chewing on her last bite of salad and taking a swig of her cocktail. “Who, pray tell, is making the massage appointments? That pain in my neck is traveling all the way down to my ass.”

I pointed to Brandon, who replied, “I did it when we got back from our meeting. Four hot stone massages at the Royal Hawaiian in one hour, then we come back and get changed, then dinner at the Hula Grill upstairs from Duke’s, then we meet/stalk one Mister David Schwartz.”

“Wow, impressive,” she said. “You planned all that on your own, Brandon?”

He leisurely shook his head. “Concierge. I was taking a quick shower while he did all the work. Our morning made me feel, well,
dirty
.”

“Really?” she asked. “What exactly did happen this morning?”

“Someday, dear Briana, we’ll tell you,” he replied. “Someday.”

Never, dear Briana, in a million years
, I thought.
Never
.

***

We downed another round of drinks, then walked the short distance between hotels. The Royal Hawaiian, also known as the Pink Palace of the Pacific or the Pink Lady -- because, duh, it’s pink, all pink, from the mission-style bell towers all the way across its wide expanse of luxury rooms -- is the second oldest hotel in Waikiki, our own hotel, the Moana, being the oldest. Now, normally, you’d think that an all-pink hotel would appeal to my, well, gayer sensibilities, but you’d be mistaken. There is something to be said for the notion of too much of a good thing. Brandon is a good case in point. Still, the place is lavish, in an austere sort of way. Mostly, I found it kind of dark and sobering. And we all know my opinion of sobriety. (On a side, related note, the hotel has a bar that claims to have invented the Shirley Temple -- as if a virgin drink is something you’d want to lay claim to.)

In any case, we weren’t there to sightsee; we were there for a well-deserved break from the turmoil we found ourselves in. Did I feel guilty about getting a massage while Will was being held prisoner somewhere? Yes. Did I let that stop me? Come on now, I think you know me better than that. Hell, no. Besides, we had a ton of time to kill, for lack of a better word, until our evening rendezvous, and I figured it’s what Will would’ve wanted. Um, okay, it’s what I wanted; so shoot me. (Figuratively speaking, I mean.)

We quickly found, now get this, the seven-thousand-square-foot Abhasa Spa in the right wing of the hotel, complete with treatment cabanas in a well-manicured garden setting. Tinkling, new-age, crappy music welcomed us as we entered, as did the equally tinkling, new-age attendant dressed in a white, blousy, two-piece ensemble that billowed as he walked up to us.

“Welcome,” he said, sounding like he’d just taken a bottle of Vicodin or had been shot in the butt with a horse tranquilizer.

“Thank you,” we replied as peacefully and serenely as possible.

He checked our names off and ushered each of us into our own private cabana. “Undress, please,” he whispered to me. “Klaus will be with you shortly. There are towels to your right. Help yourself to the ice water with cucumber strips.”

“Um, anything stronger? My liver gets confused if it’s not assaulted every few hours.”

“I can cut a lemon if you like,” he replied in all seriousness.

Seeing as the exertion might kill him, I politely declined. Besides, I had an emergency mini-bottle of gin in my pocket, compliments of our suite’s mini-fridge. (Yes, I fully intended to get one of those when I returned to the mainland. God willing. Talk about convenience.)

In any case, I spiked my cucumbery water and hiked off my tank and dropped my knickers in about two shakes of a lamb’s tail. (For those of you not so mathematically inclined, that’s about double the blink of an eye.) I wrapped myself in a towel and hopped up on the table just before my masseur entered the room.

“Hello, my name is Klaus.” He sounded like a gay version of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I nodded and smiled. “I’m Chase.”

“Chase. Odd to have verb for name. Is short for something else?” he asked.

“Chase. It’s short for, um, Chase,” I replied, clearly confusing him.

“I see,” he said, but I didn’t think that he did; all the blood in his brain was apparently fueling his massive chest and bulging (seriously bulging) biceps. “First, I give you light massage, then I place hot stones on back and legs, then between toes, then rub tension out of tired muscles with the stones. You relax. You like.”

“Or you’ll break my neck?”

“I no break neck. Maybe crack neck. Rub neck. No break neck.” (His funny-bone had obviously been replaced by muscle. And then more muscle. Wrapped in muscle.) He rubbed some oil into his mitts and began to gently (?) work my neck and shoulders. “You are full of tension up here, Chase.”

“Yeah, about that, you see, my boyfriend, well, kind-of boyfriend, was kidnapped by an evil pimp after my kind-of boyfriend’s prisoner, an accused, but probably innocent, flight attendant drug smuggler escaped from custody and then was, um, um, never mind.” I paused to catch my breath. “Yeah, so, I’m kinda tense.”

“You mean Lenny?”

I jumped up and onto my side. “That you fucking understood?”

“Most of it,” he replied, cracking a hint of a smile. I think. Though it might’ve been a spasm from all his bulging muscle as it bulged and then bulged some more.

“How did you know I was talking about Lenny? And how do you know Lenny?” I asked as he pushed me back down. I felt much like a swatted fly.

His hands worked their way down my back to my thighs and calves, then to the arches of my feet. I exhaled sharply, feeling the stress drain from my muscles -- not the bulging type, mind you. “You said flight attendant drug smuggler,” he eventually told me. “Can only be Lenny. But Lenny was no drug smuggler. The press, the police, they are wrong.”

“I know,” I said.

“Lenny’s not bright enough to smuggle drugs.”

“I know. I know.”

“Too nice, too.”

“I know. I know. Salt of the earth.”

He paused, confused at the compliment. He placed the stones along the length of my body, small ones in between my tootsies. They were hot and heavy, though oddly comforting, pressing down on and heating up my pressure points. My lungs emptied and then filled. I sighed contentedly.

He began rubbing the stones into my flesh. In between grunts, I asked, “Again, how do you know Lenny?”

“Small island,” he replied, pausing as he worked me over. “Mostly I know his boyfriend.”

The bells and whistles went off. “Liko? You know Liko?”

Now it was his turn to grunt. “No. Who is Liko? Jed, I know Jed.”

The bells and whistles started to sound like gongs -- big, metal, deafening gongs. Then it hit me how he’d know Jed, seeing as there was probably only one way. I had to tread lightly, I figured, which wasn’t my forté. “Um, Jed, right. Haven’t seen him for a while.”

The stones dug in deep, hot and unrelenting. “No,” he said, “me, neither.”

He wasn’t giving me what I wanted, so I upped the ante. In other words, I lied. “I used to work for him. You?”

He laughed, finally. Though even that sounded like a grunt. “Ja, that’s how everyone knows Jed. No friends, just employees.”

No friends, just employees. Did that include
boy
friends? “So, Lenny used to, um, work for Jed, too?”

“Ja, ja. This is how they become lovers. Though I think Lenny was using him. Jed had nice apartment, big car, lots of money.”

And finally, it seemed, Jed returned the favor, using Lenny to help out Makani. But
why
was still the question. “Ja. I mean, yeah. Big apartment. Big empty apartment. I hear he’s still missing, though.”

The laugh/grunt returned, and my body started to feel like a lump of Play-Doh. “Nein, not missing, I hear through the vinegrape. Just moved shop. Jed likes his money too much; his employees follow him to new stomping grounds.”

My heart began to go pitter-patter from deep within my chest. If Jed wasn’t missing, then he was findable. Meaning Will was findable. Meaning we might have other options for his safe return. “New stomping grounds? Funny, I was just about to look him up. For work, I mean.”

The stones were removed one by one as his hands again worked down my body. “I hear he’s somewhere near La’ie now. Lying low after trouble at the North Shore.”

That trouble being us, apparently. And Will. “Thanks for the information,” I said. ‘”We boys have to stick together.”

“No boy,” he corrected, slapping my ass good and hard. Mostly the latter. “Klaus all man.”

“Ja,” I agreed. “All man.”

One final laugh/grunt and he was done -- thank goodness, as my poor body couldn’t take much more. He left me alone to get dressed, my mind now reeling. (Though that could’ve been from the body oil fumes.) I emerged soon after, joining my friends in the courtyard outside.

“Man,” Brandon said upon seeing me, “now that was perfection.”

“Perfection,” Briana echoed, her face quite tenseless.

“Sheer perfection,” Koni agreed.