I heard a shot fired up at the house, and saw both Dario and Ari fall. Mary rose to one knee, sighted her rifle and released the safety. I pulled my pistol up and sighted her myself.
I was a fraction of a second too late. She got a shot off toward the house just as I shot her. I caught her in the chest and knocked her backward. She dropped the rifle and I ran toward her. It appeared I’d only winged her shoulder; she reared up from the pili grass and shakily pointed the rifle at me, but by then it was too late for me to stop charging. I took a big jump and landed on her.
We wrestled back and forth, and she was a tough opponent. The rifle was kicked away, but I still clutched my Glock in my hand. Finally I was on top of her, and I took that opportunity to knock her on the head with the gun. She went out cold, and I popped the cuffs on her.
I couldn’t tell what was going on up at the house, but I couldn’t wait any longer. I heard more sirens in the distance, but knew I had to get up to the house as soon as possible. I jumped up and ran for the side of the house; fortunately, no one seemed to be firing at me. I ran around to the side door and found it locked, then ran around to the makai side, the one facing the ocean.
Terri was leaning over her uncle, who lay on the floor. I didn’t see any blood coming from him, but that didn’t mean anything. Ari sat cross-legged on the floor next to them. Dario sat on the floor a few feet away, shakily training his pistol on them.
“Kimo,” he said. “Nice of you to join us. I knew you had to be around somewhere.”
He nodded toward his leg. “Your aim sucks, you know.”
“I didn’t shoot you, Dario. Your wife did.”
Blood was leaking out of a wound in his leg, spilling all over Bishop’s hardwood floor. There was a hole in the window where Mary’s bullet had come through. Looking around quickly, I saw other bullet holes in the walls. I tried to count, to see how much ammunition Dario had left, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Dario for too long.
I didn’t want Dario to realize that there was a cabinet full of weapons and ammunition, so the only thing I could think to do was keep him talking until reinforcements arrived.
“Mary wouldn’t shoot me,” he said. “Mary loves me. My little piece of America.” He laughed bitterly.
“She’s outside. She had a rifle. Are the ballistics on that rifle going to match the gun that killed Mike Pratt and Lucie Zamora?”
Dario burst into tears. “I could never make enough money to make her happy.”
“Who? Lucie?”
“No!” Dario said angrily. “Mary!”
“Is that why you started dealing ice out of The Next Wave?”
“I never did.” His hold on the gun wavered. “It was always Mary. She got the idea, get surfers to smuggle the drugs in for us, and use surfers as dealers. They were hungry for cash, just like she was.”
He looked up at me. “I was trying to get us legit,” he said. “I was taking the money Mary made from dealing and putting it into this deal.” He aimed at Bishop again. “This stupid project, which never seemed to take off, and just needed more money, more money. Until there wasn’t any more money left to put in.”
I heard Terri whispering to her uncle. “Hold on, Uncle Bishop,” she said. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
“Everything’s not going to be okay!” Dario shouted.
“Calm down, Dario, we can work things out,” I said. “How did everything get so bad?”
“That idiot Pratt couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Mary heard him bitching at the outrigger club. She came home and told me. But shit, I didn’t know what to do. I said I’d talk to him. Mary said no, she’d take care of it.”
He looked up at me. “She used to sit right in front of him in the canoe,” he said. “I thought she’d talk to him, convince him it was better to shut up.” Tears dripped down his cheeks. “The next time I heard his name it was somebody at the store saying he’d been shot.”
He waved the gun a little. “I swear, I didn’t know she was going to kill him. But what could I do?”
“Did Lucie find out?”
“Stupid little bitch. She tried to shake Mary down. Wanted enough to finance a year around the world, going to surf competitions. Mary told her she was a dumb cunt.”
“How did her friend Ronnie get involved?”
He snorted. “The idiot hacked into the store’s accounts, thinking he could find the money she wanted and take it out. But there wasn’t any money-we’d given it all to Ari.”
Ari finally spoke. “You should have told me, Dario. We could have worked something out. You didn’t have to do… this.”
“I didn’t have a choice,” he said. “Shit, I haven’t had a choice about anything for eleven years.”
Oh, Jesus, I thought. I knew what was coming.
“It was almost eleven years ago, you know that, Kimo?” he asked. “I still remember the first time I saw you.”
I had to keep him talking. At least he wasn’t shooting. “Yeah, Dario? Where was that?”
“At the Surfrider. You had just come home from college and moved up here. You were with Dickie Yamassa, remember him?”
I did. Dickie had gone to Punahou with Terri, Harry and me, but instead of going to college on the mainland the way we all did, he had stayed at UH, surfing the North Shore every chance he had. He was an amazing surfer by then-he had dropped out of UH the year before, started entering tournaments, and started winning.
I slept on Dickie’s floor the first three months I was on the North Shore. He had a girlfriend he stayed with most nights anyway, but we often surfed together during the day, then cruised bars together at night.
“The Surfrider has a lot of memories for us,” I said.
“Jesus, Kimo, I thought the sun rose and set on you, and you hardly knew I was alive. For months- months -I knew where you were all the time, I followed you around, just waiting for you to notice me.”
“I noticed you, Dario. We used to surf together all the time.”
“But you ignored every hint I gave you.”
“I was scared, Dario. I didn’t want to be gay, and the way you kept coming on to me, touching me, saying stuff-what did you expect me to do?”
“I expected you to tell me you loved me, that you wanted to be with me,” Dario said. “Then I finally got the chance to show you how I felt, and you ran away.”
“I’m sorry if I hurt you, Dario.” I started inching closer to him. “I never wanted to. Honestly, I didn’t know how you felt. But maybe things can be better now.”
The noise he made in his throat sounded oddly like the one my father did, when he didn’t believe what I was saying. “I’m serious, Dario. Things can be different. I’m out of the closet now. I’m here on the North Shore.” I inched closer to him. “Give me the gun, and I’ll look after you. Mary is going to have to go to jail, but then you and I can be together.”
“Mary! Where’s Mary? I have to talk to Mary!” He tried to stand up, but he fell back to the floor.
I was close enough that I could tackle him. “Give me the gun, Dario,” I said. We wrestled on the floor, and then another rifle blast shattered one of Bishop’s big glass windows. Dario’s attention was distracted enough that I got my body on top of his, got my hand on his gun hand. I had a knee in his crotch and I was close enough to smell the raw scent of fear and perspiration coming off him.
I mustered up a final burst of strength and wrenched the gun from him, pushing myself back from him. Another rifle burst split the air. “Everybody okay?” I called. “Terri?”
“Okay,” she said shakily.
“How’s Bishop?”
“Dario shot him, and he’s going in and out of consciousness. Kimo, I’m scared. Who’s shooting at us?”
“I thought I knocked Mary Fonseca out and handcuffed her, but either she’s gotten up or somebody else has gotten her rifle. See if you can drag Bishop under the table. Ari, can you help?”
I kept one eye on Dario, who was crying on the floor in front of me, and the other focused on the window. Mary Fonseca was a damned good riflewoman if she was able to shoot with her hands cuffed together.