I also saw stacks of foam blanks in sizes from six feet up to ten-feet longboards, and cans of resin. When Palani looked up and saw me approaching, he turned the sander off, pulled down the mask and flipped up the goggles.
I introduced myself. “I remember you,” he said. “You used to be a pretty decent surfer. You still surf?”
It was amazing how good it felt to be remembered for something other than coming out of the closet. “Try to.”
“You looking for a board?”
I shook my head. “Information. About Mike Pratt.”
“Poor son of a bitch,” Palani said. “I wasn’t surprised to hear he died. Still a shame, though.”
He put the goggles and the mask down on a table and we walked behind the garage. The air was fresher there, a nice breeze coming up off the ocean. He pulled a pack of Marlboros from his pocket, and offered me one, which I declined.
“Why weren’t you surprised?” I asked, as he lit his cigarette.
“He got himself in with the wrong crowd.” Palani took a deep drag on his cigarette. “I’m not opposed to recreational drugs. Hell, I smoked enough dope in my life to save a ward full of cancer patients. But the drugs these kids do today, they’re bad news. Crack cocaine and X and crystal meth.”
“Nothing like the heroin of the good old days.”
Palani laughed. “You got me there.” Then his face saddened. “But Mike got himself on the business end of the deal somehow. He was a good kid, you know, a real talented surfer. Had a feel for the waves you can’t train into somebody.”
“So I’ve heard. What made him go bad, then?”
“Money. Makes us all do things we shouldn’t sometimes. He was determined to be a real competitor, and to do that you need backing. Entry fees, travel, training time. Somebody offered him the money he needed, and he took it.”
“He ever tell you who that was?”
Palani shook his head, and his ponytail swung from one side to the other. “I didn’t want to know. But I knew he was in trouble.”
“Did he ever come up here with something wrong with his board?”
Palani looked at me. “You know a lot about him, don’t you?”
“I’ve been learning. Somebody asked him to smuggle drugs in his board, didn’t they?”
“Yup. Really pissed him off, because he loved that board. He customized it himself, right here in this shop.”
“The board wasn’t fixable?”
Palani laughed. “Not with the center of it cored out,” he said. “You can fix a broken plug, a stringer. Something simple. No way to fix something like that.”
“What I still don’t understand is how that could get him killed.”
“It was him complaining about it. I told him to shut his mouth, it was going to get him in trouble, but he kept on. I guess whoever it was got worried he’d bitch to somebody who would listen.”
We made small talk for a few minutes, and then Palani showed me around his garage. I’d done a little shaping when I was in high school, trying to customize my own boards, and it was cool to see a master at work. But eventually I had to tear myself away-I had the information I’d come for.
Leaving Palani’s place, I felt like I was getting somewhere. At long last, a real motive for Mike Pratt’s death. He was pissed off that his board had gotten ruined, and he couldn’t keep his mouth shut about it.
I dragged myself back to Hibiscus House. I thought I might take a nap and then think about going over to see Brad, but my nap stretched all night, until I woke up Saturday morning as fingers of light were beginning to crawl through the window that looked out over the driveway.
The next morning, as I waited for waves, I couldn’t help trying to organize what I had been discovering. There were certain pieces of evidence. All three of the murder victims had been to Mexpipe, though that was the only thing, beyond surfing and murder, that seemed to link them. Therefore it was probably an important fact.
Mike Pratt knew Lucie Zamora. After a trip to Mexico, a trip Lucie had also made, Mike returned with the money for travel and entrance fees. Trish believed he’d gotten that money by bringing crystal meth back from Mexico, and that he’d used his board to hold it. Palani confirmed that a hole had been cored in Mike’s board. Shortly after he returned, after he’d complained about the condition of his board to anyone who’d listen, he was dead.
According to Jeremy Leddinger, who had a drug addict ex-boyfriend, Lucie Zamora sold ice, the powdered form of crystal meth. I had found a stash behind her medicine cabinet, and I doubted it had been left there by a previous tenant. Further evidence was provided by the cash she had to spend on designer clothing at Brad Jacobson’s boutique, Butterfly, and on shopping trips with Brad’s friend Larry Brickman.
Larry and George had also verified that Lucie knew Ronnie Chang, the computer nerd slash weekend surfer, who had also gone to Puerto Escondido for Mexpipe. A sexy woman has been known to draw even the straightest guy into troublesome waters, and Jeremy had said Lucie led Ronnie around by his dick.
A huge wave washed over me and knocked me into the cool Pacific, reminding me that I was in troublesome waters as well. I kept on surfing, all day long, though I couldn’t stop turning over the questions I had about the three dead surfers. Whenever I was on the beach, I tried to talk to other surfers, looking for anyone who had known Mike, Lucie or Ronnie, or anyone else who had gone to Mexpipe. I didn’t have any luck.
That night, I thought about calling Brad, but I decided first to head to the Drainpipe, the Hale’iwa bar where Lucie’s one-time boyfriend Frank worked. I was hoping he could shed some more light on where Lucie got her drugs from, and how her dealing might tie in with her trip to Mexpipe. I wasn’t sure how much he could tell me, particularly if the bar was busy, but it was Saturday night and I was thirsty, and the Drainpipe seemed as good a bar as any.
Jeremy had said that dating Frank was just a cover so that Lucie could hang around the Drainpipe and meet up with customers. Perhaps someone there had bought from her-or someone had moved into her territory.
Frank wasn’t on duty, which was disappointing, but I got myself a beer and relaxed. I got roped into a darts game, talked to a couple of guys and girls, and remembered what my Saturday nights had been like before I came out of the closet.
I had a good time, partly because there was no sexual agenda going on-at least not on my part. I wasn’t sizing up the wahines-or the guys, for that matter-and trying to figure out my chances of scoring. While there might have been a girl or two checking me out, none were blatant, so I didn’t have to do anything to discourage anyone. I played darts, I drank my beer, and I laughed. A lot.
It was obvious to me, though no one said anything directly, that people knew who I was, so I couldn’t be too blatant about asking for drugs, or asking if anyone knew Lucie, Mike or Ronnie. Around ten o’clock I was surprised to see Brad’s friend Jeremy, but we did nothing more than shout hellos before he appeared to have left the bar. I figured there were probably few gay places he could go, and if he was bored at Sugar’s it was worth checking out the straight bars to see what kind of action was going on.
About a half hour later, George and Larry, the macho guy and the cute guy, came in together, and my radar went into overdrive. Sure enough, as soon as they both had beers, they were heading my way.
I was a little drunk by then. Still able to function, still able to drive, but my defenses were dangerously low. They clinked their bottles up against mine and made their greetings, and I followed them to a dark corner of the bar.
“How’s it going?” George asked. “You finding anything out about Lucie?”
“Still picking up information,” I said. “Haven’t really processed it all yet.”
“If there’s anything we can do to help,” Larry said.
“Anything at all,” George said. His leg brushed against mine, so casually that it might have been nothing, but my adrenaline level soared. I decided I could put my homicide investigation on hold for one Saturday night and enjoy myself.