Surfing Detective 02 - Wipeout

passengers who boarded with us—not a large crowd, and none of them looking the type to run drugs. Maya and I took comfy velour seats on the lower deck. Soft fusion jazz—Kenny G’s mellow sax—wafted through the air-conditioned cabin. I thought of Tommy. The pseudo-soothing ambiance inside the ferry was at odds with the increasing tension I felt every minute we remained docked at Lana‘i harbor. I looked up into the wheelhouse, where the captain’s digital clock said “7:58.” I took a deep breath.
    One minute later the twin diesels started up with a roar, then settled into syncopated hum. The steward removed the boarding plank. Maya put her head on my shoulder. “It’s almost like being on vacation,” she said.
    “Almost,” I replied, unconvinced. She was sure taking this mad dash for our lives in stride.
    I scanned tiny Manele Harbor, a lava rock breakwater sheltering a half dozen sailboats and small fishing vessels, but saw no evidence of Frank O. Sun or his well-dressed lieutenants. Not on the breakwater. Not on any nearby boat.
    Then up on the distant rise, I caught sight of a Jeep weaving down toward us in a hurry. No, two Jeeps. Moving fast.
    Maya clutched the sunscreen bottle in the pocket of her aloha shirt. As the ferry chugged toward the harbor’s mouth, the two Jeeps stormed into the parking lot. A man in dark glasses and suit jumped from one of the Jeeps and waved his arms. He shouted something at the boat. I couldn’t hear his words over the throbbing motors.
    “Captain,” the steward shouted up to the wheelhouse, “More passengers?”
    I looked at Maya. She looked at me. Neither of us said a word.

Twenty

    The steward shouted again. “Take the passengers aboard?”
    The cabin clock read “8:01.” The captain cranked the wheel toward the open sea and revved the twin diesels. In a cloud of salt spray and billowing exhaust, the ferry roared from Manele Harbor.
    As we began climbing swells outside the breakwater, the two Jeeps became mere specks behind us. Soon the ferry swung around the rocky southern tip of Lana’i and into the channel to West Maui. Lahaina was not yet visible, only the green cane fields scaling the mountain behind it. The drone of the diesels, the bow rising and falling over the swells, and my lack of sleep would normally have made me doze off. But not today. My mind was racing.
    Before we hit Maui we needed a plan.
How to get back to O‘ahu?
    We could try to evade Sun by boarding a flight from Kahului to Kaua‘i or Moloka‘i or the Big Island, then connecting to O‘ahu. Wandering Kahului Airport, however, could be risky. Or we could drive to remote, tiny Hana Airport in East Maui where Sun surely wouldn’t go. But the trip would set us back half a day. Our best bet was to try the commuter airport at Kapalua—just up the road from Lahaina. Island Hopper flew Twin Otters from Kapalua almost hourly. Even if Sun pursued us there, we would most likely take off before he arrived.
    As the ferry cruised across the channel, we were surrounded by islands: Lana‘i fading behind us, brooding Kaho‘olawe on our right, cliffy Moloka‘i on our left, and cloud-wreathed Maui dead ahead.
    Maya was missing this awesome array of islands. The twin diesels’ rhythmic hum had put her to slack-mouthed sleep. I heard a clack on the floor under her seat, then spotted an object near her feet the size of a cigarette pack. I plucked it off the deck.
A cell phone.
There was a call-back number on the screen, but no messages. I watched Maya’s even breathing as I tried to memorize the number before returning the phone to the floor. Then I peeked into the pocket of her aloha shirt. The bronze sunscreen bottle was still there.
    The crossing from Lanai’s to Maui took every one of the scheduled forty minutes. But before long the engines quieted down again to a syncopated idle. Ahead, Lahaina harbor’s antique lighthouse pointed skyward like an ivory needle. Coconut palms and spreading banyans stood sentinel over the old whaling port, with its vintage square-rigged ships and legendary Pioneer Inn. I’d never been so glad to see the red roof of that storied old inn—a place where whalers once imbibed their grog, and whale-watchers still do today.
    At nine on Saturday morning in prime whale-watching season, Lahaina Harbor was jumping. Sunburned
malahinis
lined the decks of dozens of vessels, powered and sail, that ply the sea in search of those leviathans. Near the harbor’s