Surfing Detective 02 - Wipeout

Narco-Vice, telling him succinctly what I had learned about Sun and his organization. If I didn’t make it through the day tomorrow, at least the authorities would profit from my investigation. I then hiked back to the campsite where Maya was gazing out to sea, as if searching for a lost and lonely speck in the boiling surf.

    For the rest of that day we laid low. Night comes quickly to the tropics in winter. After sunset, twilight briefly appears, then vanishes. Suddenly we were in the dark.
    I set my watch alarm for 6:00 a.m. and we slept under the stars, not on the beach, but on ironwood needles. The needles might as well have been cast from iron, for all the sleep I got.
    Maya made no overtures that night. She even stopped asking for my birth sign. Her game was over, I guessed. Or maybe last night’s hike had just taken the starch out of both of us?
    When my alarm rang Sunday morning, a razor-thin orange line glowed above the turbulent sea. By six-thirty we were heading north on Kamehameha Highway.
    The surf was still up. Following a pickup truck with a half dozen boards piled in back, we stopped just short of Waimea Bay and pulled into the mission. The car behind us also turned in. Then another. Early arrivers to seven-thirty mass.
    The mission’s doors, unlike yesterday, were wide open. We followed in a young couple and their pony-tailed
keiki
who walked down the center aisle, stopped by a pew, genuflected, stepped in, and turned down the kneeling bench to pray. The mission was as small as the typical side-chapel of a larger church, and was overshadowed by the massive bell tower behind it. The pews were polished dark mahogany with kneeling benches upholstered in red vinyl. Overhead, ceiling fans whirred. It was cool and quiet inside, except for the shuffling of parishioners’ feet and the crack of the wooden benches being turned down against the oak floor.
    “Find us a seat,” I said to Maya as I stepped toward the rear foyer. “I’m going to look around.”
    When I glanced up from the foyer’s skylight at that huge tower looming overhead like a medieval fortress, I couldn’t help thinking:
The view of the bay from up there must be awesome.
    One thing was clear: To climb to the top I would first have to break in through a solid wood door with an old fashioned keyhole lock, the kind you find these days only in antique chests and steamer trunks. A lock like that can usually be picked, but it would have to be picked quietly.
    I rejoined Maya in the chapel just as the priest rose in a long white robe, spread his arms wide like a cliff diver, and uttered in a deep, resonant voice:
    “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit . . .”
    “Amen,” the rising parishioners responded in unison. I said “Amen” too, hoping for divine intervention to guide me up that tower.
    I looked around us. The mostly local crowd filled the little church to the brim: babies in mothers’ arms, toddlers, teens,
tutus,
uncles, cousins. It was a family affair and the feeling was good. Behind the priest a vaulted arch was inscribed: “GOD IS LOVE.” And through open windows framing the bright blue bay I could hear the thunder of surf.
Big
surf.
    “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . be with you all,” intoned the priest.
    “And also with you,” the parishioners responded.
    On each pillar between the church’s open windows hung a bas-relief depicting one of the fourteen stations of the cross—Via Dolorosa, the way of suffering—seven stations on either side of the chapel. White marble statues of Mary and Joseph stood behind us, each adorned with a green
haku
lei.
Not the kind of scene for Sun in his Panama and shades.
    “The grace and peace of God our Father . . . be with you,” the priest continued.
    “And also with you . . .” the parishioners replied.
    Then the tuneful choir, a dozen strong, began singing their hearts out. I mumbled along. The Hawaiian
wahine
leading the choir broke into a solo, while strumming a guitar and directing three
keiki
playing
‘ukulele
. Soon everybody was singing merrily. Me, I kept mumbling and watching and waiting.
    Maya and I did our best to rise and kneel and pray with the faithful. Though we were always off a beat. Personally, I could have used some soul cleansing right then, but I had work to do.
    When the priest took up the sacred host, the chalice and the wafers for holy communion, I prepared to make my move. The priest raised the chalice and solemnly