Chapter 29 The Friend
The Friend
Hoaloha: friend; literally, “beloved companion”
After the hospital, Nalu drove Minnow to the medical examiner’s office in Kona, but the secretary refused to let them in to
talk to him. There was a box of malasadas on her desk and she offered them up, as though that might somehow make up for her
lack of cooperation.
Minnow set her hands on her hips. “But I’m part of the shark task force. I’m the white shark researcher on the case. I need to look at any imprints on the bone.”
“I’m sorry. You’ll have to wait for Dr. Tenby’s report. Strict orders.”
“Orders from who?”
“Direct from Mayor Lum.”
Nalu shook his head. “Now he’s playing dirty. What a kook.”
Minnow stepped toward the desk. “Thank you, Renee. And actually, I will take one of those malasadas.”
Nalu followed suit, and by the time they reached the truck both of them had sugar lips and beards and Minnow was wishing she’d
grabbed two more. They were hot and doughy and oh so delicious.
“Lum is so typically passive-aggressive, it’s almost a joke. Don’t play his way and you get slowly iced out. Whatever,” she said, feeling worn out.
Nalu opened her door for her. “It’s not like the results will change anything, though, will they?”
“No, but I want to know if our shark is still around. Bite marks could tell us that, if they’re clear enough.”
“And if she is?”
“Even more reason to shut them down tomorrow.”
A beautiful shark—maybe even a Sister—taken by some dumb fisherman who couldn’t think for himself would slay her.
They regrouped at the house, and then Nalu left to pick up the other scientist. Minnow felt a sense of impending doom. The
gray skies didn’t help her shadowy mood. Woody was on the beach scrubbing off the barnacles from the glass balls they’d found
yesterday. When she came to the wall, he was so engrossed in his work, he didn’t look up.
“Hey,” Minnow said.
“How’d it go?”
She told him.
Finished with the glass balls, he walked over and handed her one. “A souvenir. Oh, and I called a few of my die-hard fishing
buddies and heard something interesting.”
“Yeah, what?”
He hopped up onto the wall and started walking back toward the house, cradling the two other now shiny green orbs against
this body. “Joe Apuakehau said there have been a couple boats anchored up the way in Pāpapa Bay. Couple old fishing shacks
down there, only accessed by a rough jeep road or by sea. If someone has the gate codes, they could be running a dive operation
out of there.”
“Do you know the families?”
“Yeah, but one of them sold to a guy from O?ahu a few years back. No idea about him. Keep in mind, taking people out to swim with sharks isn’t illegal.”
“I know. But chumming is.”
“So, how you gonna prove that?”
She wasn’t sure exactly. “Like you said, catch them in the act and take photos. Ask for witnesses to step forward.”
“You mess with someone’s livelihood, it could get ugly.”
“Maybe we go out with a bunch of other boats as backup. You must know people,” she said, unable to keep the desperation from
her voice.
“If I trusted DLWA, I would report it, but I don’t.”
It was feeling more and more like the Wild West out here. Vast and lawless and full of shady characters. The only thing missing
was cactus, but the thorny kiawe trees were good stand-ins.
“Is Cliff going to come back? Did he tell you what he’s doing?” she asked.
“All he said was to trust him, which makes me nervous. Because with him, things could either go really good or really bad.
It’s usually nothing in between.”
Wonderful.
Minnow went back inside and set her glass ball on the table and surrounded it by a few cowrie shells so it wouldn’t roll off.
She wondered how long the hand-blown float had been riding the ocean currents and how far it had traveled. Decades and probably
thousands of miles. Japanese fisherman were said to have stopped using them in the eighties. Replaced with plastic. Like everything
else.
She sat down, pulled out her address book and found Doc Finnegan’s number. “Hey, can I make a long distance call? I’m good
for it,” she asked Woody, who was rustling around in the kitchen.
“Shoots.”
She dialed, enjoying the feel of the old rotary phone. It made her feel like she’d walked back in time to when her mother
was here. Like maybe Layla would come through the door at any moment, dripping wet and sun-kissed.
He picked up right away. “Pete Finnegan.”
It was how he always answered, and my God, she wished he were here, big ego and all. He had a way about him that made people
listen.
“Doc, it’s me, Minnow.”
“My favorite student calling from Hawai?i. What the hell is going on over there?” he boomed.
“I don’t know how much you’ve been following the news, but I gave it my all and they’re still sending out a fleet of boats
tomorrow and all through the weekend to kill as many sharks as they can,” she said with a quivering voice.
“I got back three days ago and I’ve seen the news, but I want to hear it from you.”
She told him everything. Her secret hope was that he would hop on a plane and come to her rescue. That he would somehow know
what to do.
Instead, he said, “All you can do is all you can do, kid. Sounds like you put up a good fight, but you also have to know when
to throw in the towel.”
His words sparked a rage inside her. “Not yet.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
Nalu called and said the flight from Honolulu was delayed, and it would be a couple more hours before the other scientist
arrived. Thunderstorms had settled over O?ahu. Minnow was at a loss for what to do, so she lay on the bed leafing through
the photo album. Layla looked so young and innocent. Cheeks full and round. Hair just as wild as Minnow’s, only hers was blonde
and down to her waist. She’d been six years younger than Minnow was now. A babe with a babe in her womb. Minnow ran a finger
over the photo in which her belly looked so round and ripe.
A flurry of inner warmth spread through her and for a few moments the fear and guilt of the past few days melted away.
She was swaddled in feathers and radiant sunshine and a mother’s undying love.
The sensation was intense and comforting, but the minute she grasped at it, it slipped away.
If only she could bottle the feeling and drink from it whenever life became too much.
She kept turning the pages, studying her mother for some sign of instability, when all she could see was this undiluted happiness.
It was hard to imagine her coming here in despair and considering leaving Minnow’s father. How quickly things changed. But
that was the way of her mind. Cycling through hills and valleys and mountaintops. And then falling into the abyss.
Woody walked in a few minutes later. “Think I’m going to head out too. I want to check in on Cliff and make sure he’s not
going to cause more trouble than good. But I’ll be back early in the morning. Wait for me.”
Minnow shut the album. “What kind of trouble are we talking about?”
He shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. Burn all the boats, slash the tires of the trailers. He has no trouble waving that rifle of
his around, either.”
Yeah, not good at all.
“He would do that?”
“Maybe.”
Maybe it was time someone did something radical if it was the only way to be heard. Animals and plant species were becoming
extinct by the hour, or something like that, and she suddenly knew how those Greenpeace guys felt, or the woman who’d camped
out for two years perched in the top of a redwood tree.
What happens if it never stops?
Alone with time on her hands, Minnow decided to take the boat to Pāpapa Bay and nose around for any signs of a shark-diving operation.
If nothing else, she could see the little black sand cove Woody said was a slice out of old Hawai?i.
The seas were quiet today and she opened up the throttle, appreciating the warm wind against her skin.
About twenty minutes later, once she hit the spot on the coast that was in from the sunken buoy, she slowed.
Up ahead she could see the green of treetops, and soon the cliffs gave way to a wide, flat shelf of tidal pools.
She drove in so she was hugging the rocks and putted along in amazement. According to Woody, pāpapa was a flat and expansive reef, and she could already see a proliferation of purples, golds and blues lining the shallows
beneath her. Fish swam in multitudes.
Once in the bay itself, she swung in along the sandy beach and spotted three semi-dilapidated houses tucked away in the trees.
Two boats were anchored—a small metal skiff with a ten-horsepower motor and sunbaked oars that no one would be using for shark
dives, and a twenty-eight- or thirty-foot Radon, anchored deeper in the middle of the bay. Was it big enough to carry a shark
cage on its long flat aft section? Maybe.
No one was in sight and the beach was clear of footprints, though with the tide high that wasn’t saying much. She passed close
to the Radon and saw nothing out of the ordinary. It was old but looked to be well maintained. There were traces of diesel
fuel in the air, as though the boat had been driven recently. She wished she could talk to someone, but she scanned the shacks
again and there was no sign of life. Weekday, early afternoon, gloomy weather. It made sense. The setting did resemble something
out of a painting, rusted tin roofs under coconut and kamani trees, and the black sand made it even more exotic.
Discouraged and not ready to go home, she beelined it back out to the buoy area. Today the current line was less obvious,
so she had to rely on her landmarks to find the submerged float. It took a bit of back-and-forth, but she finally found it.
She turned off the engine and floated for a while as a few random shafts of light beamed down from the heavens. Dark and light,
sea and sky doing their dance. In theory if someone had been chumming, the sound of a boat engine should draw sharks since
they’d be habituated.