Surfing Detective 02 - Wipeout

trip here.” She slid the bills back my way. “I trust you’ll return what you don’t use.”
    I decided not to argue with her. I gathered up all that green and shoved it behind the swaying palm on the pocket of my aloha shirt.
    “Where are you staying?” I asked, in a lighter mood now. “Can I give you a lift?”
    She pulled a paper from her purse and handed it to me. The phone number on it began with 739-. Kahala?Ritzy Kahala?
    “The Mandarin?” I asked. “That’s a posh hotel.”
    “No, a private home,” she said. “You can call me there.”
    “You have friends in Kahala?”
    She nodded but didn’t explain. As she struggled up from the table, I handed her my card. “I’ll phone you as soon as I have anything to report.”
    Summer glanced at the longboard rider on the sand-toned card and slipped it into her purse.
    My eyes returned to her bulging middle. “When is your baby due?”
    “Early March—so the doctors say.” Summer made a cute smirk that almost turned into a smile. “They’re never right, you know. My mother tells me I came three weeks early.”
    “Three weeks early for your baby would mean just a few days from now . . .”
    Summer shrugged. “The baby will wait until you find evidence of my Corky.” Her complete confidence worried me.
    She started to walk away. Before she got out of earshot I couldn’t help saying, only half joking, “Delivering babies is not in my standard contract.”
    She turned around, shrugged again, and then duck-stepped past rows of mostly empty booths and out the door. A few minutes later, on the street below, I saw Summer climb awkwardly into a hearse-black Mercedes sedan. A door closed and she disappeared behind darkly tinted glass. The Mercedes turned toward Diamond Head and soon vanished.
    Later when disentangling the green bills Summer had left behind, I counted not twelve, but sixteen. Sixteen hundred dollars.
In cash.
More than I would need, no doubt, since this case was most likely going nowhere.
    Better than a month had passed since Corky wiped out. If he had died in the huge surf, by now his bones would be licked clean, if any bones remained at all. I could try to find his board and track down his credit card purchases and maybe even locate the BMW he was allegedly seen driving. But evidence of his body? No way.
    Unless, of course, Corky had pulled off one of the most daring skip traces in recorded history. But to play dead in Waimea’s massive winter surf would have amounted to suicide. Twenty-foot waves are not make-believe. That Corky would go to such lengths simply to escape paternal responsibilities seemed unlikely—unless he and Summer together were trying to defraud the insurance company to the tune of two hundred grand.
    If this was their game, the pregnant blonde was well coached—her trembling hands, her misty eyes. But her story didn’t match her bankroll. If Corky had left her broke, how was Summer underwriting her trip to Hawai‘i? And what about her friends with the Kahala phone number and black Mercedes?
    I pocketed the cash again and, despite my qualms, found myself sympathizing with the violet-eyed widow.
    Whatevahs.
I had a case. Or it had me.

Two

    Located on Maunakea Street above Fujiyama’s Flower Leis, my office is about the size and sturdiness of a Cracker Jack box. It boasts one window overlooking the bustle and varied aromas and questionable charm of the storied old ramshackle street. Just one block down, amidst ambience of legendary Chinatown, is notorious Hotel Street. Once the province of pimps, prostitutes, porno palaces, and flop houses, these days you’re find more art galleries and ethnic eateries.
    I pulled open the bottom drawer of my battleship grey filing cabinet, on which sits a tarnished surf-rider trophy: Classic Longboard . . . Makaha . . . Third Place.
My faded glory
. Way in the back of the musty bottom drawer where I store personal files, I reached for a manila folder of news clippings labeled Big-Wave Wipeouts.
    The first story my eyes fell on eulogized Tahiti surfer Malik Joyeux who died at Banzai Pipeline in December 2005. The lip of a powerful wave had hit him dead on, broken his board in half, and ripped off leash. Joyeux was found under water, about two hundred yards from where he had wiped out. The treacherous Banzai riptide carried him away.
    The next clipping recalled the drowning of Todd Chesser near Waimea Bay in February 1997. A faded photo showed Chesser—glistening shaved