The potential for disaster is everywhere, and maybe that’s what makes Pipeline so much fun. The drops can be so high that you get giddy with exhilaration-yet that reef is waiting for you when you fall. You may have mastered a tall wave, but watch out for that guy cutting across in front of you. With every tube you face the possibility of getting sucked under the water.
Pipeline requires the most basic skills: getting in early and placing your turn just right. Those were things I knew I could do, if I worked at them long enough. I took the small and medium waves, often sharing them with other surfers when the beach was busy, and I let the really big ones go. If you aren’t prepared for those, you can end up hurting yourself on the rocky, coral bottom.
I alternated between Pipeline and Backdoor, a perfect right only about 150 feet away, and though every muscle in my body ached by the time I dragged myself back to my little room, I was starting to feel like a real surfer again. But all the time, I was thinking about the case, too, trying to come up with ways to learn about the dead surfers and who might have killed them.
Occasionally when I surfed, I’d run into my cousin Ben, who was about ten years younger than I was. He was doing what I’d done at his age, trying to see if he could make it as a professional surfer. My mother is the oldest of five daughters, and Ben’s mom was my Aunt Pua, the youngest. Pua was a hippie, far from my prim and proper mother. She was an aromatherapist at a posh resort in Hawai‘i Kai, and had been married and divorced three times.
Because of the age difference between us, and the attitude difference between our mothers, we didn’t know each other that well, but we recognized each other and made small talk about the family and the surf. He was a Pipeline expert, making it his home base, and I learned a few tricks from talking with him.
Some people seemed to know who I was, and sometimes they wanted to talk. A haole guy with Rasta hair and tattered board shorts wanted to know if I knew a good attorney-I didn’t. A middle-aged Japanese lady waiting with me to buy bottled water asked me if I knew where her son could get information about AIDS. I told her about an agency in Honolulu.
Nobody seemed aware that three surfers had been killed, and though I dropped names with everyone I met, I got no reactions to Mike Pratt, Lucie Zamora or Ronald Chang. I could see why the original detectives hadn’t made much progress, and started to doubt whether I could learn anything they hadn’t.
When I returned to Hibiscus House, I called Lieutenant Sampson to let him know I was settled in, and pass on my idea on how the shooter had brought the rifle to the beach. Then I called my parents, just to check in. They were full of well-meaning suggestions for my future. “You could come work with me,” my father said. “I could do big projects again, if I have you to help me. No more malasada shops.” The malasada is a kind of Portuguese donut, and of late my father had been building tiny shops to sell them around the island.
“Al, let the boy alone,” my mother said. “He should go back to school, get a graduate degree and become something-an architect, a businessman, a lawyer.”
“Pah, back to school,” my father said. “Why go back to school when he can learn everything he needs from his father?”
“I’m not making any decisions for a while.” I had already heard that my brother Lui was sure he could find me a job of some kind at KVOL, if I wanted it. My brother Haoa wanted me to join him in the landscape business. My sisters-in-law and my friends all had their own ideas.
And I had to lie to each and every one of them, telling them all I was still figuring out what I wanted, that I was enjoying just surfing every day. More lies than I had ever wanted to tell. And telling them kept getting harder and harder for me, and would only keep getting harder until I could come home with a solved case.
The Next Wave
By the end of my second full day of surfing, I was beat. I collapsed on the beach, catching my breath and massaging my calves, when a haole girl who couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen stuck her board in the sand and sat down next to me and said hi. She was wearing a neon yellow bikini, and had her sandy blonde hair pulled up into a pony tail with a matching ribbon. Her skin was the deep bronze of someone who spends a lot of time on the water.
“Hi,” I said back. I’d seen her surfing; she was pretty damn good.
“You’re that guy who used to be a cop, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Guilty as charged. Kimo.” I held out my hand.
“Trish,” she said, shaking it. “I saw you on the news.”
“My fifteen minutes of fame.”
She nodded toward the water. “Your form’s pretty good for somebody who hasn’t surfed for a long time.”
“I’ve been surfing since I was a kid, The last few years, though, not too much. Mornings, before work. Weekends. The occasional odd trip up here.” I paused. “How about you?”
“I was born in Iowa, but my mom wanted to be a movie star, so she divorced my dad when I was seven and we moved to LA so she could pursue her destiny.”
“And did she find it?”
“If her destiny’s waiting tables at the International House of Pancakes on La Cienega, then she found it, all right. Me, I found surfing.”
I had a gut feeling that Trish had something she wanted to tell me, something more than just the story of her mother’s failed attempt at movie stardom. I wasn’t in a hurry; my calves still needed a rubdown before I could stand up. And I’ve learned that when somebody has something they really want to tell you, they will, if you give them enough time.
“How long have you been in Hale’iwa?”
“Two years. I didn’t actually run away; I waited until I was sixteen, and I left a note.”
“A note’s always good.”
“And I talk to my mom every Sunday. Religiously.”
“Admirable.” I waited. Trish watched the surfers. Finally, I said, “You must know a lot of people around here after two years. You know any of the surfers who’ve been killed?”
She looked up in alarm. “More than Mike?”
Pay dirt. “Two others. Did you know Mike?”
She nodded. “He was my boyfriend. I was surfing just behind him, and I was the one who pulled him out of the water.”
“That’s tough.”
She looked like she was about to cry.
I was thinking about what to ask her next when a guy called “Yo, Trish!” from up the beach. “Come on, let’s go!”
“I gotta run,” she said, standing up. “I’ve got some stuff to think about, but I want to talk to you. You’ll be around?”
“I’ll be here.”
“Good. Catch you later.” She grabbed her board and started running up toward Ke Nui Road.
That was progress. I had seen Trish around, and I was sure I would see her again. There are, after all, a limited number of spots for serious surfers. Plus, surfing is an individual sport, but after you’ve caught a monster wave, you want to tell everyone about it. You want to hang out with other surfers, compare notes on gear and breaks. Pipeline was one good place to meet people who might have known the three victims, but I needed more sources.
I left the beach with a plan. Each night, I’d choose a different bar, ordering a burger and a beer and showing my face around. I started with the club where Lucie Zamora had been shot, but the crowd there was very young and only interested in drinking and dancing, and there was no way I could strike up a casual conversation with anyone about her or her murder. A couple of times, it was clear people recognized me-there was some whispering, and a guy pointedly moved away from me when I walked up next to him to order a beer.
Over the next few days, I saw Trish a couple of times, but the time was never right for us to talk. She always made eye contact, though, and I knew I just had to give her time. On TV, when they compress an entire case into an hour-long show (with time out for commercial breaks) the witnesses and the suspects always talk on cue. In life, though, people tell you the most when they’re ready to talk, and I was willing to wait.