At the rear were Harry, his girlfriend Arleen next to him, her son Brandon strapped into a car seat, Harry’s longboard strapped to the roof of his BMW, and Terri in her Land Rover, with her small son Danny. It struck me that we probably had every variety of luxury car on the islands represented, along with my father’s beat-up old truck, the previous beat-up old truck which he’d passed down to me, and Haoa’s landscaping van.
The parking, hugging, kissing and unloading seemed to take forever, especially with the kids all clamoring to get out on the water. Harry and Terri finally volunteered to chaperone the lot of them, and while the rest of the adults unloaded, they trooped down to the Pacific to check out the surf conditions. The littlest kids had boogie boards, but Ashley and Jeffrey, who were already teenagers, both had graduated to real surfboards.
I helped Haoa lift the pig out of his van, and noticed him wincing. “How you doing, brah?” I asked. He’d gotten banged up pretty badly over the last month, between getting himself into a variety of fights, and then redeeming himself, at least in my eyes, by rushing to save me when a bad guy was about to shoot me.
“I’m getting old, Kimo,” he said. “Forty. Jesus.”
“Cool,” I said. “So I can beat your ass when we go surf.”
“You never do dat,” he said.
“I’ll beat both of you,” Lui said, coming up to join us. “When we go surf?”
“Soon as we get rid of this stuff,” I said. Lui helped Haoa and me carry the pig over to where the women were putting the food together, and then the three of us dropped our shirts, grabbed boards and raced each other to the water’s edge, then out into the surf.
“Go, daddy!” Ashley cried.
“My dad’s the best surfer,” Jeffrey said.
“Uncle Kimo’s the best,” Keoni said defiantly. “You watch.”
“You don’t know anything,” Jeffrey said, cuffing his brother.
“Loser buys everybody shave ice,” I called, launching myself into the waves.
My brothers were always so much older than I was, Lui by ten years, Haoa eight, that I never got to hang out with them as equals. Even once I returned to the islands from college, both of them were so busy with their families and their careers that sometimes they seemed more like uncles than brothers, though I felt a visceral closeness to them whenever we were together.
For the first time that day, I felt like we were three brothers. I hadn’t seen Lui shirtless, in board shorts, since he was a teenager; my oldest brother is rarely seen without a suit, or at least a sports jacket.
Haoa’s more relaxed; in his landscaping business he usually wears polo shirts embroidered with the name of the business, khakis or chinos, and deck shoes or sandals. But I hadn’t been on the water with him in years, either. The three of us raced through the breakers, laughing and talking stink, as the rest of the family gathered on the beach to cheer and watch.
I knew I was the best surfer in the family, at least in part because I was the only one who’d kept on surfing, year after year, and because I secretly thought I was the one with the most talent, too. But my brothers gave me a run for my money. I remembered being a little kid, watching Haoa and Lui surf and being amazed at their prowess. Those feelings came back to me as I watched them both jump on their boards, catch waves, even do a little carving. They were both rusty, sure; and the waves at Waimea Bay, though nothing like Pipeline, were still pretty strong. But my brothers, like me, were Hawaiian to their core, and for us, surfing is like riding a bicycle; you never forget how to do it.
The kids on shore exploded into laughter any time one of us fell, and cheered wildly as we bobbed, turned and rode the waves in. We must have surfed almost an hour like that before we called a truce. “So who wins?” I asked, as the three of us trudged up the shoreline, dragging our boards.
The kids had obviously been practicing together, because with one voice, they shouted, “Uncle Kimo!”
I gave an exaggerated bow, and one of my brothers kicked my behind, knocking me head first into the sand. Immediately, all six of my nieces and nephews, along with Danny Gonsalves, were on top of me. Ashley and Jeffrey wanted a private surfing lesson, and then I had to fool around with the other kids and their boogie boards. It was almost noon by the time I dragged them all up the shore to the picnic area so we could start the luau.
I found myself in line next to Terri. She was wearing a navy polo shirt and black shorts, and when she pulled off her dark glasses for a moment I saw dark circles under her eyes. Her husband Evan had died just a month before, and the grief was still wearing on her. “How are you holding up?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I get through the days. Tatiana’s been great. She’s always inviting Danny over to play. He and Ailina go to kindergarten together. They’re like little sweethearts.”
“Good for them.” I smiled. “I’m glad you guys could come up here today.”
“I wasn’t going to, but Tatiana insisted. I didn’t want to intrude on a family thing.”
“You know you’ve always been part of our family.” Terri and I had gone to Punahou, a Honolulu prep school where both my brothers had preceded me, and even though her family was one of the wealthiest in the islands, we’d always been great friends.
“I know, and I appreciate it, now more than ever.” She paused. “I know that you’re working undercover,” she said in a low voice. “Harry told me. I know he wasn’t supposed to, but I was feeling so miserable about what happened to you that he thought he had to tell me.”
“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about,” I said, loading my plate with lomi lomi salmon, kalua pork, long rice and vegetables. I saw Harry coming toward us. He looked as skinny as ever, though his mop of black hair seemed to have been cut at a fancy salon, instead of with a bowl and a pair of scissors. “I left the force. I’m just up here surfing, trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life.”
“Harry,” Terri said darkly, as he arrived in line behind us. Back in Honolulu, I had counseled him to start working out, to bulk up some of the muscles he would need to improve as a surfer. After not seeing him for a couple of weeks, I noticed the workouts were starting to have an effect; his arms seemed at least a little more muscular under his short-sleeved aloha shirt.
He looked from my face to Terri’s. “Shit,” he said. “Were we not supposed to know?”
“Get some food, Harry. We’ll talk.”
Terri and I walked over to a picnic table under a stand of palm trees, and sat down. Harry joined us a few minutes later. Across the way, I could see Arleen, a sweet Japanese girl Harry had met through me, holding Brandon, all the moms swarming over the new baby in our midst. “What makes you think I’m working undercover?” I asked.
Harry looked sheepish. “As long as you’re not a cop any more I can tell you,” he said. “I hacked in to your bank account.”
“You did what?” Terri and I both said, almost simultaneously.
“I was worried you’d run out of cash. You know with all those patents in my name, I’m running a big surplus. So I was going to transfer some money to your account. I figured if you didn’t know where it came from, you couldn’t complain.”
“That’s a really-nice-sentiment,” I said. “Strange, but nice.”
“Once I got in-and by the way, your bank’s site isn’t very safe from hackers, any teenager could break through-I saw that your paycheck was still being deposited. But some of the codes on the deposit changed two weeks ago, and just for my own amusement, and to see if I could do it, I decoded them. You were switched from District 1 to District 2, on temporary assignment undercover.”
I shook my head. “Jesus, Harry. How many crimes do you think you committed just doing all that?”
“Well, if you’re not really a cop any more then you aren’t obliged to report me, are you?”