Chapter Thirty Four - The Molokai Minstrels

Look at you.” Soon-Li laughed at Rudy seated next to her in the back seat of the Jeep. “You face all paint black, clothes black. You look like Minstrel.”

“That’s it,” Wally agreed from the driver’s seat. “We should call you guys “The Molokai Minstrels.”

“Why you paint your face when you have mask?” Soon-Li asked.

“Um.” Rudy started. “Um, I’m not sure. Cause Charlie said to?” It sounded more like a question than an answer. They all laughed, still giddy and punch drunk after their ordeal.

Rudy had forgotten about the greasepaint and now he was wiping his face on his shirt. He wished that Raven were here in the Jeep instead of piloting the plane but they had been separated in all the commotion as they scrambled to get off the ranch. Maybe she could dress his wound, if she were here; so far the only first aid he’d received consisted of wrapping Pete’s t-shirt around his shoulder.

Mostly, though, he just wanted to talk to her and sort out their troubles. He was hopeful that they were alright now that this was done but he wasn’t sure and he desperately needed to know.

When they were on board Nevermore and Wally was piloting them safely away from the island, Soon-Li cleaned his wound with alcohol, which hurt more than getting shot in the first place had. Then she wrapped it with clean gauze from the boat’s first aid kit.

“Don’t worry. I clean bullet wound before, much more worst than this.” She said. Rudy smiled at her interesting use of English. He remembered her stories of escape from Laos and her brothers’ wounds and almost felt silly about this minor injury.

The Cessna went to Charlie’s hanger at the Kahului airport on Maui and Nevermore docked at Kahului Bay, a couple of miles down the road. Raven found Rudy lounging on the Nevermore deck with his Walkman on. He didn’t see her come aboard.

Pete and Raven exchanged glances and burst out laughing at the sight of Rudy in the lounge chair, sunglasses, headphones and remnants of grease paint on, screeching at the top of his lungs to Neil Young.

“Why do ah-hi, why do ah-hi, why do I keep fuckin’ up?” he wailed. Rudy had a lot of talents but singing was clearly not one of them.

Pete discretely made his exit while Raven tiptoed up to Rudy and kissed him on the cheek. He smiled, eyes still closed behind the sunglasses as he wrapped his arms around her. She climbed into the lounge chair and cuddled up with him as he pulled the headset and sunglasses off.

“I don’t know,” she said, “why do you?”

“Huh?”

“Nothing.” she laughed. “Ready for that talk now?”

“Yeah. Please.”

She started with her 16th birthday and told the story of the present her sister had given her and then went through Gabrielle’s whole, sad story.

“I can’t believe it. All the times I’ve visited your parents, they’ve never said a word about her. I’ve never even seen a picture of her. I don’t get it.”

“My mother fell to pieces and my father tried to hold it together for the both of them but he was barely hanging on himself. As time went on, we all began to live our lives again and we never really talked about what had happened. We just sort of pretended that everything was alright, just to get through another day.”

Raven went on with the story of her college years and the years with the DEA. As she talked, the little pieces that hadn’t made sense to Rudy began to fall into place. He’d always had a hard time picturing Raven as a Dental Tech and now he knew why. She ended with the story of the raid that went bad and the 12 year old and her vow to herself.

If Rudy had misjudged Charlie, he was ten times off the mark with Raven. Her attitude about Azeri and their recent troubles suddenly made perfect sense. He had forced her to choose between him and compromising herself. He realized, not for the first time, that he was a simple man who often missed the complexities in others.

“But why didn’t you just tell me all of this in the first place?” he asked.

“I was in deep cover for 12 years.” She answered. “I’ve never told anyone the whole story, not a soul. My parents still think I was a Dental Tech in the Army. I didn’t know what to say to you or how to say it or when to say it. You don’t just walk up to the man you’ve recently fallen in love with and blurt out, ‘Did ever tell you that I’m a child killer?’ And, I mean, it wasn’t just that boy; I saw a lot of action in my years with the DEA. I was afraid I’d lose you if you found out the things I’ve done. I’ve killed people, Rudy. How do you reconcile with that?”

“That’s ridiculous. Do soldiers stop being loved because they were in a war?”

“Not everyone sees what we did in the DEA as a war.”

“But you did. You were a soldier, doing your duty, right?” He needed to hear her say it.

“I did see myself as a soldier at the time but I gradually came to see things differently. It got harder and harder to live with myself until, eventually, I had to get out.”

“I think I was so angry at everyone who had anything to do with drugs after Gabrielle that I joined the DEA to make them all pay. As I grew up and saw more of what life is really like for so many people, I began to realize that most people are just trying to get by. I met some evil people, don’t get me wrong. But the little guys, the everyday people, are just doing the best they know how. We sit in judgment but we don’t have a clue what life is like for most of the world.”

“It was really Gabrielle that I was mad at for being so stupid and leaving us all in our grief to try and make sense of it.” She was speaking through sobs now and wiping her tears with the back of her hand.

“It was just such a waste, you know? She was so beautiful and bright and kind and it was just such a stupid, asinine waste. It broke my heart to see my parents grief and for a long time I hated her for that.”

Rudy held her in his arms. “Anything else you need to get off your chest?” he asked after a long while.

“Well, I already told you that I was a groupie.” She laughed through her tears, wiping her cheeks. “So I guess that’s it. All of my secrets are out. It must be your turn now. I’m sure you don’t have nearly as many secrets as me but I would like to know how you managed to get us into this mess. I’m sure Circe was behind most of it but I’m having a really tough time understanding how you ever got messed up with that skank in the first place. I’ve met a lot of despicable human beings and she’s right up there with any of them”

Rudy flushed with embarrassment. He’d asked himself the same question almost from the beginning and he still didn’t have an answer that didn’t make him look like an idiot. He felt like a coward for wanting to duck this little bit of embarrassment when Raven had been so brutally honest in baring her soul.

“Horny?” he finally said.

Raven rolled her eyes as if to say ‘try again schmuck’ so he pushed forward. He told her how John and then Circe had shown up on his doorstep, how he’d heard Circe stash the briefcases under the house and had later found them.

“I’ve done plenty of things in my life that I’m not so proud of. You asked me what happened to my NBA career and as you know by now, I don’t like talking about it much but I guess I have to bare my soul too. I guess if we still like each other after this, we’ve got a real shot.” he said, smiling kindly.

“I was always the best player on the court, starting in the 7th grade and right on through college. By my sophomore year, I knew I was headed for the NBA. There was a lot of talk about whether I was big enough to compete at that level but I was young and brash and cock sure of myself. I was indestructible, you know?”

“But I had no idea just how good everyone in the NBA is. The worst player in the NBA is better than virtually everyone I faced in college. It seemed like everyone in camp was bigger and faster and stronger, and these were just the guys trying to make the team, not even the stars that I’d have to face in games.”

“I had never really been tested like that before and I didn’t know how to handle it. I didn’t have anyone around to help me, my old support system wasn’t around and I just didn’t know how to handle myself.”

“Hell, it’s 12 years later and just this week I learned that I still hardly know how to conduct myself under pressure. I mean, when they took you... I was so afraid. I was afraid I couldn’t or wouldn’t be able to come through for you and you’d die because of me. I was afraid for you because you were unfortunate enough to be dependent on me.”

She gave him a squeeze and he continued after a bit.

“Anyway, instead of rolling up my sleeves and just outworking everyone like I’d always done, I got into “the life”. Parties, women, limos and coke, lots of coke. I think I was afraid that I couldn’t compete so I just checked out and partied. Of course, the coke made me feel invincible again, for a while. Then the poster happened and that was pretty much it for me, psychologically.”

“20 games into the season the Clippers had had a gutful of my antics so they paid off my contract and sent me packing. That’s how stupid and cocky I was. I had a no-cut contract for the first year; it had never even occurred to me that they’d want to be rid of me so bad that they’d eat my contract.”

“Truth is, I’d give almost anything to have that chance back. If I’d just laid it all out on the line, given it everything I had, then I could have lived with the consequences no matter how it came out. Now I’ll never know if I could have made it or not and it never stops eating at me.”

“I went to Europe and finished the ’80-‘81 season there but I’d lost heart and by the end of that season I had a major coke problem. Somehow word had gotten back to my family and one day Colonel Davis just showed up in Turin, where I’d been hanging at a friend’s house and partying.”

“The Colonel was standing in the doorway in full dress uniform and I came stumbling in looking like I’d been run over by a gravel truck. I’ve never felt so small in my life as I did when I saw the disappointment on my father’s face. He’d always been so proud of me as my career progressed and I’d let him down to a degree that had been unimaginable a year before.”

“He stuck me in rehab and two months later I was back in Utah, licking my wounds and completely at a loss as to what to do with my life.”

“I had a grand total of $25,000 dollars left out of nearly a million I’d gone through over the course of that season. Someone told me about this hot, new stock in a company called Apple so I sank my last 25K into Apple stock and locked the certificates in my safe deposit box at my bank in Utah. The plan was to leave it alone until I retired and I’d have something to show for NBA career no matter what else happened.”

“When I got ready to move here, I went to the bank to clear out my box but the certificates were gone. I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to what the stock was doing but I know they were worth something in excess of $200K.”

“When I found that briefcase full of cash under my house, I knew where it had come from. It was my money that Circe and John were using to finance their plans to become big-time dealers. So I stashed both briefcases and waited for Circe to come back for them, figuring I’d confront her then, but she never showed.”

“Azeri called me that night demanding that I return his property but I knew that at least the cash was mine. I had no idea how long his reach really was plus I wasn’t convinced it was really him. I thought it might be more of Circe’s conniving and I pretty much just told him to stick it where the sun don’t shine. The next day, he repaid my arrogant stupidity by grabbing you. I’d have gladly forked over my 200K for none of this to happen but in my hubris, I had no idea how much trouble I’d bought. I guess you know about as much about it from there as I do.”

“I guess I do” she said as she snuggled in.

“So, we know the worst about each other now. Do we still like each other?”

“More than ever here. How about you?” Rudy asked though he sensed the answer.

“More than ever.”

At long last, they’d said all there was to say so they drifted away under the Hawaiian sun for a well-earned nap.