Chapter Twenty Eight - Gabrielle

It was stuffy in the tiny cinderblock tomb and Raven didn’t deal well with confinement. She lay on the harsh metal bed and closed her eyes to escape to a better place in her head. How ironic that she was imprisoned by the man that she had once vowed to kill and she wondered now if she had been wrong not to keep that vow.

Her mind drifted to her beautiful older sister and a tiny smile found her lips. Five years older than Raven, Gabrielle was already a top fashion model by Raven’s sixteenth birthday in 1974. She had been in Paris for a photo shoot so Raven and her parents were surprised when she showed up at Raven’s sweet sixteen party in a brand new BMW 2002.

“Nice car.” Raven said as she hugged her sister.

“You like it?”

“I love it. It’s totally cool.”

Good thing, since it’s yours. Happy birthday little sis.” Gabrielle said as she held out the keys.

“No!”

“Yes!”

“No way!” Raven shouted.

“Way!”

“You can’t afford to give me this.”

“Actually, I can.” Gabrielle replied. “You cannot imagine how much money I get for a shoot.”

When the party ended, Raven and Gabrielle went for a long drive. They talked and laughed and neither had a care in the world. Raven jumped with glee when they passed a magazine stand and they found Gabrielle’s picture on the cover of Glamour.

Gabrielle stayed only a couple of days before she left for a shoot in the Caymans. After the Cayman shoot, it was back to Paris where Gabrielle met a young man with a mysterious underworld air about him. She had no idea what he did for a living but she was pretty sure it was illegal and, to be honest, she found his dark gangster world fascinating.

It wasn’t long before the two of them were inseparable, living life in the fast lane with the help of the white powder that was so fashionable at the time.

Her beau was a small time coke dealer with big time aspirations by the name of Leonard Azeri. It would be a couple more years yet before Azeri would start going by Leonardo in an attempt to appear more exotic. Azeri had grown up in the streets of New York but was learning to speak and act like a real blue blood. His practiced aristocratic demeanor fooled some people but the old money usually saw through his act. Not that they cared; his coke was the best in town.

If Gabrielle had been naïve about her boyfriends’ occupation in the beginning, it wasn’t long before she was fully aware and fully immersed in the life. They ran with the Jet Set, a fast crowd of good-timing idle rich; beautiful people with too much time and too much money and too little substance.

Perhaps she’d burst on the scene a little too quickly, gone from obscurity to fame and fortune too fast, and she lacked the maturity and perspective to deal with it. It was all too easy for an impressionable young girl like Gabrielle to get caught up in the scene.
For all of her charm, for all of her personality and intelligence and her big heart, Gabrielle still fell for the white powder as big and as hard and as fast as anyone ever has. It was astonishing to see how quickly a beautiful young girl can go from good-time party girl to nosebleeds on her satin gown to sticking a needle in her arm.

Leonard kept her supplied for as long as she was pretty, looked good on his arm and could satisfy his sexual appetite. When the coke took its toll on her looks and her personality, he put her out on the street to fend for herself, penniless and strung out. She boomeranged back, begging for coke and making a scene, so he had his goons take care of her.

A month before Raven graduated from High School, her parents got a desperate call from Gabrielle. She was strung out and sobbing and begged her parents to wire her some money, which they quickly did, on the promise that she call again as soon as she received it. In the meanwhile, they would make arrangements for her to enter a rehab clinic close to her in Paris. A few hours later they confirmed that the money had been picked up but they never heard from Gabrielle again.

They contacted a private investigator to find Gabrielle. Her father made plans to fly to Paris to assist the investigator but her mother was so distraught that he was hesitant to leave her. Raven convinced them to let her go instead. When other kids in her graduating class were getting drunk and celebrating their passage into the next phase of their lives, Raven was boarding a plane for Charles de Gaulle airport.

She was met at the airport by the investigator and he told her that he thought Gabrielle had been located. He had taken her picture to the Jane Doe section of the Paris morgue and believed that a young, unidentified girl with a bullet in her brain was Gabrielle. Her body had been found in a dumpster in a part of town dominated by run down warehouses.


Raven made the ID. Though the skinny, greasy haired corps bore little resemblance to her glamorous sister, Raven knew her too well to be fooled. She made the agonizing call home to her parents and then accompanied the body on the long journey back to Kauai.

Raven had already made plans to attend the University of Hawaii in Honolulu but had yet to decide on a major. Now she knew that she would major in Criminology and become an agent for the recently formed DEA. She would see to it that the kinds of people who used up beautiful young girls and left them dead in dumpsters would get what they deserved.

Upon graduation in 1980, she put the BMW that Gabrielle had given her into storage, and she joined the DEA as a deep cover agent, supposedly a Dental Hygienist in the Army. For the next 12 years she chased drug lords all over Central and South America. She had a stellar career in the DEA, was instrumental in some of the largest busts in history, participated in many fire-fights and learned how it felt to have the blood of another human on her hands.

In 1990, she participated in a bust gone bad in Bogotá and found herself face to face with a 12 year old who had a gun pointed at her head. She fired first to save her own life. That night she made a solemn vow to herself and the Universe that she would never shed a drop of human blood again, not for any reason.

She had joined the DEA to avenge her sister’s death and to save others from the same fate as Gabrielle. What a naïve little fallacy that had been. The system was corrupt; the Government was using the War on Drugs as an excuse to wage war on the civil rights of Americans, while the CIA was running the same drugs that the DEA was supposed to be stopping, to finance their secret wars.

In addition to all of that she began to believe that she had failed to consider the question of personal responsibility. All the drug busts in the world could stop neither the supply nor the demand. No one had forced Gabrielle to do what she had done. There were those who enabled her but no one had made her do it.

She had come to the slow realization that it would be impossible to stop the supply so long as there was a demand. The real question, she realized, was what caused so many people to seek their happiness and satisfaction in chemistry?

Raven had had a gutful of the DEA, of the Federal Government and of the angry vengeance that had consumed her for a dozen years. It was time to let go of the anger and bitterness that had driven her for so long.

The next day she requested a desk job and was reassigned to a regional office in San Antonio. Once there, she rented a small shop space and spent her nights and weekends and vacation time procuring the exotic woods and making the “Olsson Originals” that would soon make her famous.


She had seen too much for a beautiful, 33 year old artist and she put all of the anger, all of the passion and all of the heartbreak that she had seen into her work. She’d always known that she had inherited her mother’s artistic talent but had chosen not to paint because she wanted to find her own path. Now, in this new medium of wood and kilns and tools, she had found the outlet for her artistic expression and her social conscience.

Now here she sat, locked in this little tomb on Leonard Azeri’s property. During her time with the DEA she had investigated her sister’s murder and had come to believe that Azeri was behind it. When she came to the realization that she could not make a case that would hold up in court, she had vowed to kill him.

Before she could act on that vow, the incident with the 12 year old had happened and she made a new vow that there would be no more bloodshed in her life. Now she wondered which of these competing vows she would keep.

Chapter Twenty Four - All the Way to Guam

The following day Rudy agreed to meet Circe and bring her back to Punaluu after she dropped off her rental car. She had left early to shop for some clothes and then they were to meet at the Ala Moana Mall that afternoon. He would follow her to the rental agency and bring her back.

Rudy arrived at the Mall early and headed to the book store. He’d been busy recently and hadn’t been in a book store in months. He was enjoying browsing the New Arrivals when a book called “Growing Up Behind the Zion Curtain” caught his eye. The lost manuscript that he’d written several years before had been similarly titled.

He picked up the book and promptly dropped it when he saw the author’s picture on the dust jacket. It was Circe, though she’d used the pen name Holli Rudolph, an obvious dig at Rudy.

He picked it up again and thumbed through it. It was the missing manuscript with a different gender bias. He was astonished! His pulse quickened and he felt hot blood rush to his head until he felt dizzy.

It was nearly two so he headed off to meet Circe, walking quickly and fighting hard to get a handle on his temper while imagining several very elaborate ways to inflict harm upon her person. If whatever was going on weren’t already his problem, it sure was now.

When Circe shows up, I’m gonna kill her, he thought. Better yet, I’ll feed her to the goons that are after her and let them do the job.

He paced the floor in front of the food court until four o’clock but there was no sign of Circe. She hadn’t mentioned what rental agency she was going to and he kicked himself for not finding out. Not knowing where to look for her only added to his anger and frustration until he finally had to admit defeat and head for home.

Kicking things around in his head while driving back to Punaluu, he remembered hearing Circe slip out the door during the night. He’d assumed that she was going for a walk on the beach until he’d heard some noises under the floor joists.

Like a lot of houses in Hawaii, his duplex was built on stilts and people often used the space under the house for storage. The duplex was a little to close to the water to make that a wise idea but there was a removable access panel in the rear.

He’d been groggy and had decided that the noises were just his imagination or the result of a half-awake dream but now he realized that he hadn’t imagined it at all. He dropped the BMW down a gear and picked up the pace.

When he got home he found the back door swinging on its hinges. The furniture was turned over and the drawers were pulled out of the cupboards and dresser. The place had been thoroughly and carelessly ransacked.

He went back out the rear door and crawled under the floor. A sand crab scurried past his head as he crawled around under the house and then he saw them. Wedged between the floor joists and their supports were two briefcases. He pulled them out of their hiding place and crawled out. At least Circe had been smart enough to find the one hiding place that the goons didn’t think to check, more proof of her devious mind.

He quickly headed for the car, eyes wide open and scanning the horizon in a fit of paranoia. In seconds he was on Kamehameha speeding toward Raven’s house.

He fumbled through his key chain until he found her key, his heart pounding as he stumbled through the door. He ran to Raven’s bedroom and rummaged through her jewelry box until he found the key to Nevermore and then he locked and double checked the front door and sped away.

He and Nevermore were ten miles off shore before he cut the motors and let the boat drift in the open water. He ws glad that Raven had a practice of topping off the fuel whenever she got back from a trip. He opened the first case and it was full of sealed plastic bags of what he was sure was cocaine.

He latched the briefcase and opened the other one. It was full of crisp, new $20 bills, neatly banded together in bundles. He had no idea how much was there but he was sure it was well over a hundred grand. He wasn’t about to take the time to count it right now. Instead, he stashed the briefcases, opened the fuel cocks and fired up the diesel engines.

He ran through every scenario he could come up with trying to make sense of recent events; the book, the dope, the money, Circe’s disappearance, the break-in. He tried to stick with what he knew for sure. There had been two things missing from his safety deposit box; the stock certificates and the manuscript. It was pretty clear now what had happened to them though he had no idea how, even with the key, Circe had been able to talk her way past bank security.

Obviously Circe had stolen his manuscript and John had arranged it’s publication with Circe claiming authorship. And it had been published! He’d friggin’ been published! A little satisfaction crept into the cauldron of his emotions with that realization. Now he knew. Even if he never got credit for his work, he knew that he wasn’t a poser.

Back to business; John and Circe had attempted a major drug buy and the money must have come from the book and/or his stocks. Either way, it had been stolen from him. No way did that kind of dough come from an advance on a book from an unknown author. It had to be the stocks. Somehow they’d managed to sell his stocks.

Something had obviously gone wrong. Since John had ended up with a bullet in his belly and Circe had ended up with both the money and the drugs, it was a good bet that Circe was behind whatever it was. She’d believed that John was dead and Rudy hadn’t corrected her. She hadn’t seemed particularly concerned about John’s apparent demise.

Wasn’t that just like her? Anyone else would have been satisfied with stealing his money but not Circe. She had let her greed ruin the perfect crime. Rudy would have a tough time proving that the book was his, since he’d only shown it to Pete. Still, it was pretty dumb to publish it with her picture all over it. Rudy was bound to see it at some point.

“So where does that leave us now?” he wondered aloud. John was in rehab and couldn’t be reached anytime soon. Circe was God-only-knows-where, and Rudy was in possession of the goods. Wherever Circe was, one thing was certain, she would be back for the briefcases and since she was obviously strung out, it was likely to be sooner rather than later.

The thing to do, he decided, was to stash the briefcases where no one else would ever find them until Circe returned and he got some answers. It was called leverage.

He knew exactly where to stash them. He pulled the throttles back and the big diesels roared, lifting Nevermore’s nose high out of the water. What a rush.

He was feeling much better now, realizing that the scales had just tipped in his favor. He couldn’t help feeling a bit smug, anticipating the look in Circe’s lyin’ eyes when she crawled under the house and found the joists empty.

Must have been high tide, washing them out to sea, he chortled, all the way to Guam.

Chapter Twenty Two - That Ain't Opportunity Knocking

The waves crawling up the beach outside Rudy’s open window lulled him quickly to sleep though he’d needed little help tonight. He was having sweet dreams of swimming in the ocean with Raven when every now and then Elder Sea Nettle would swim by with a smirk on his face. Suddenly this bizarre dream was interrupted by a loud banging on his back door.

He rolled over and tried to go back to sleep but the banging persisted. He was barely conscious and not quite aware of what was intruding on his dreams. When the banging started for the third time he bolted straight up and headed for the door, still in his boxers. It was the loud bang of trouble.

“Who is it?” he yelled from behind the door, clutching his baseball bat.

“Rudy Davis?” The voice was familiar but he couldn’t place it.

“Maybe, who are you?”

“John.”

“John who?”

“John Preston.”

Rudy opened the door and there stood John, looking like he’d been hit by a car. If a brick had fallen from the sky and hit Rudy in the head, he couldn’t have been more surprised. John was dirty, covered in blood and had something that might have once been a white shirt tied around his waist. Rudy was too shocked at the sight of him to speak.

“I know I’m the last person you ever wanted to see,” John began, “but you always struck me as the decent sort and I don’t know where else to go.” It came off sounding remarkably like the way he’d rehearsed it.

“What the hell happened to you?” Rudy asked, still clutching the bat.

“It’s a long story,” John said, “can I tell it to you inside?”

“You must be kidding. Why would I want any part of what ever trouble you’re in?” Rudy asked incredulously.

“I can’t give you a good reason but I’m desperate. Please. It’s a matter of life and death and I know you’re not the type to turn you back on another person in need.”

Oh please! Rudy thought. Skip the transparent flattery. He desperately wanted to send this trouble on down the road and climb back in bed but something told him it wouldn’t go away that easily.

“Okay,” Rudy said, against his better judgment, “come in. You need a Doctor, let me throw some clothes on and I’ll get you to the emergency room.”

“No.” John said sounding panicked. “I can’t go to the Emergency Room. Do you know a Dr. who could just dress my wound without making a report?”

“Oh, sure John, got a whole list of people like that.” Rudy smacked the back of Johns head. “The hell do you think, moron? What kind of trouble are you in, anyway? What happened to you?”

“If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you.” Rudy fixed an unamused glare at him. “Suffice it to say,” John continued, “that some very bad people are after me and I need to lay low until I can get off the island. Plus just one other thing…”

“Yeah, what?”

“I need some cola.”

“Cola?”

“Yeah, cola… coke, you know.”

“You need coke.” Rudy repeated in disbelief.

“Big time. Look at me, I’m wounded and I’m crashing hard to boot. I’m desperate. You must know where to score some.”

This was too much. The man shows up on his door step with a bullet hole in his side and his biggest concern is where he’s going to score some coke. Rudy very nearly threw him out of his house and locked the door behind him.

He thought for a moment and he realized there was only one person who would know how to deal with this. He picked up the phone and called Charlie. Not a problem, Charlie told him, one of his golfing buddies was a Doctor. Charlie said he’d arrange for him to look at John. Like most people Charlie knew, the good Doctor owed him a favor, and now, so did Rudy, thanks to the scumbag that was currently bleeding on his furniture.

“OK, here’s the deal,” Rudy said when he hung up. “I’ve got a Doctor on his way, a friend of a friend and he won’t make a police report. After the Doc treats your wounds, my friend is going to fly you over to the Big Island in his Cessna and get you in a rehab program he works with.”

It was the first Rudy had ever heard of Charlie working with any rehab program.

“No one will know you’re there; you’ll be safe from the boogie man, or whoever the hell is after you.”

“Hey, I don’t need rehab, Okay? Just score me some friggin’ coke and let me hang out here for a few days until things cool off and then I’ll be gone and you’ll never hear from me again.”

“Not gonna happen like that, Paco. My way or the highway, plain and simple.”

“Fine, I’m outta here.”

Rudy walked to the front door and held it open for him. “Okay, good luck.” he said.

From the look on John’s face, it was obvious that he hadn’t expected this. He got slowly to his feet and walked to the door, trying to decide what to do now.

“Shit.” He said. “I got no where else to go. Shit.” One last try; “Just score me some coke and I’m gone.”

“See ya.” Rudy said, still holding the door. “You’re letting the bugs in, hurry up.” In all honesty, he hoped that John would leave and he could go back to bed and pretend like this had all been a really lame dream.

John stood in the doorway staring at him. “Man, you just don’t understand, I need…”

“Hey,” Rudy cut him off, “I don’t need to understand, brah, what’s it going to be?”

“Shit.” John said again. “When does the Doc get here?”


The morning sun woke Circe and she blinked and shaded her eyes with her hand, then pulled on the lever to raise her seat and sat up behind the steering wheel. Her back ached from her short nap in the rented Nissan and she desperately needed a little wake-me-up. She was parked at a beach park a few miles from Honolulu. The dashboard clock read 6:30, way too early to be up as far as she was concerned.

She had worked it out so carefully, but nothing was going quite like it was supposed to. She was just too damn soft. If only she’d killed Tiny and John like she’d planned, she’d be on the mainland right now, money and drugs in tow. She could easily have done it last night and she was certainly a better shot than that, but when it came right down to it, murder was tougher than she figured. Just too damn soft.

Still, Plan B had gone pretty well. She smiled at the thought of how she’d played both John and Tiny for the fools that they were. Neither had ever suspected that she was up to anything; each had thought that it was they who were using her and in fact, she had needed John to help her cash in the stock certificates.

She really hadn’t planned to mess with Tiny but when he started calling and hitting on her a couple of months ago, it had all made perfect sense. It wouldn’t hurt to make sure that she covered all the bases and her soft spot at the moment of truth last night had proven that to be a wise idea.

She had no idea how Tiny could have gotten out of the handcuffs so quickly but she had recognized one of his associates at the Hawaiian Airlines terminal when she’d showed up for her flight to Seattle last night. She managed to slip away unseen and she knew that she was lucky to be alive.

Now she was going to have to come up with a plan to get off the island with the goods before the goons caught up to her. Either that, or find a place to lay low for a while. Even Tiny’s boss, whoever he was, couldn’t watch the airport forever.

First things first, she thought as she pushed the trunk release to get the cocaine out of the trunk and fix herself a hit.

When she walked to the rear of the car, a silver Buick cruised slowly past and then turned around. She’d been made. She jumped back into the Nissan, fired it up and headed toward the highway. As she sped away, she checked her mirror and saw the Buick stop at a scenic turnoff. A silver haired woman got out of the passenger side, camera in hand and took a picture of the beach.

Tourists... If the goons didn’t get her, the paranoia would.


Once the pain subsided, Tiny got pissed. He was a large man and, although he was seriously overweight, he was still very strong. Back in his days as an offensive lineman at the University of Utah, he could bench press more than any man on the team. That was before he got caught dealing and thrown off the team.

The bed was a wooden-framed piece of Ikea-looking crap and no match for a furious, oversized Hawaiian. It took less than five minutes of thrashing before the bed was demolished and he was free. He was so angry that he didn’t even notice how badly he’d bruised his wrists and ankles in the process.

When Circe had approached him with the gun that last time, he’d been more frightened than he’d been in a long time, certain that she was going to shoot his balls off. That fear was nothing compared to the fear that coursed through his veins now as he dialed his boss’s number.

“This better be good.” Leonardo Azeri said when he finally came on the line.

“We had a little problem with the exchange.” Tiny said, trying to sound as if the whole thing were just some minor misunderstanding.

“What kind of problem?” Leonardo asked warily. He listened intently as Tiny recounted the whole story. It was especially difficult to tell the part about allowing himself to be hand cuffed, be he’d learned long ago never to lie to his boss. Leonardo had a way of finding out the truth and lying was how you ended up dead.

“I’m sorry, boss. I screwed up bad, I know, I’m sorry.” Tiny waited for the explosion that was sure to follow.

“Okay,” Mr. Azeri said calmly, “I’ll send some people to the airport and we’ll start checking all the hotels. They won’t get off the island alive. Meanwhile, you stay right where you are. I’ll send Tony over to your hotel; you do exactly as he says.”

“Yes sir.” Tiny said humbly, and hung up.

He’d expected Mr. Azeri to come uncorked but he’d taken the whole thing rather calmly. Hey, things go wrong sometimes, right? Maybe this wasn’t as bad as it seemed.


“Speak.” Tony answered the phone in his usual way. He wasn’t known for being particularly friendly and he thought it made him seem no-nonsense to answer the phone like that. He was fiercely loyal to his employer and he had a mean streak you could drive a Mack truck through. Most of Leonardo’s men had killed when they had to but Tony was the only one who seemed to like it; and he had a gift for it.

“Tony,” Leonardo began, “Tiny had a little problem with the exchange tonight. I want you to meet him in his room at the Sheraton Waikiki. You two find the girl and her boyfriend and take care of them. Make sure you get the money and the goods before you take them out. When that’s done, take Tiny out. I can’t have this kind of incompetence, you understand?”

“Sure, Mr. Azeri, “I’ll take care of it.” Tony grinned. He could hardly wait to off Tiny. That worthless, overgrown Hawaiian was long overdue as far as Tony was concerned.

“Keep me informed.” Leonardo said, and hung up.

Chapter Ten - Makawao Madness

Rudy awoke to the sun pouring through the open balcony doors. His dreams had been filled with Raven, as they had every night since they’d met.

He sliced some fresh pineapple and took the phone out onto the balcony. From nine stories up you can see for miles and he watched the spout from a whale in the distance. He stepped to the telescope for a closer look and was awe-struck at the great beast.

It was hard to imagine that a week and a half ago he’d been hiking in the Utah desert with not a clue as to how his life was about to change. He stretched out on the lounge chair feeling like he hadn’t a care in the world and enjoyed the sun, the pineapple, the salty air and the view. Any day that started like this was going to be a good one.

In a while he got his nerve up and dialed Raven’s number. She answered on the second ring.

“Rudy!” she sounded genuinely pleased to hear from him. “I was just wondering how things turned out with Charlie and the duplex.”

“Yeah, well} Rudy laughed, “it’s a long story. Right now I’m on Maui, in Charlie’s condo. He says that he’ll make me a deal on the duplex if you sell him the piece he’s been after.”

Raven laughed. “I planned on letting him have it all along; I just have to bust his balls a little first. Rule number one, they always want what they can’t have.”

“In that case, I hope you know that you can’t have me.” He felt silly for saying it even before the words had left his mouth.

“We’ll just see. I generally get what I want.” He had little doubt about that.

“Did he tell you what he does with most of the pieces he buys?” Raven asked.

“You said he resells them.”

“Not to just anyone. He sells them to Leonardo Azeri. Azeri is infatuated with my work but I won’t have anything to do with him so he pays through the nose to get them from Charlie.”

“Who’s Leonardo Azeri? Rudy asked.

“A drug lord, I guess you’d call him. We have a little bit of a history, Leonard and I. He’s said to be the biggest importer of cocaine into the islands and now he’s dabbling in Heroin. He funnels the stuff from South America, through Hawaii, to the mainland. Very bad guy.”

It didn’t occur to Rudy to ask why she knew so much about Leonardo Azeri or just what kind of history they had.

“I can’t imagine Charlie having anything to do with a guy like that. Last night he was carrying on about old-money jerks and how they stick powder up their noses and needles in their arms because they never learned how to work… or something like that.”

“Did he give you the ’I know an opportunity when I see one speech’?” Raven asked.

“Well…yeah.” Rudy replied, “How did you know?”

“The thing about Charlie is, he lives in a fantasy world. He has tons of money and plays his life away and he only sees what he chooses to. That’s one of the luxuries that money affords you, I guess. Leonardo is a very charming man if you don’t think about what he does for a living. Charlie says that he gets a bum rap, that he’s just an eccentric millionaire with an air of mystery about him so people conjure up wild stories. As far as Charlie’s concerned Azeri is just a rancher who has done very well for himself.”

“A rancher?”

“Yeah, he lives on a huge ranch on Molokai, away from prying eyes.”

“Wow. Shucks, ma’am, I’m just a poor country boy out in the world for the first time. I don’t know nuttin ‘bout no drug dealers.” Rudy said in his best Jed Clampett.

Raven laughed. “You’ve been over there with Charlie too long. You’re starting to sound like him.”

“Maybe you’d better just come over here and rescue me.” Rudy said. “Charlie says we can all go dancing and twist your arm together about that sculpture.”

“Is he with Jenny?”

“Yeah.”

“How that old coot landed her, I’ll never know. Despite hanging out with Charlie, she’s actually pretty cool.” She laughed. “I’ll tell you what, I need to take care of some business, and then I’ll get Nevermore and head out. Meet me at the pier in Lahaina around three, OK?”

“What’s a Nevermore?” He asked.

“My boat.”

“Well okay then, it’s a date.”

“Rudy?”

“Yeah?”

“I wouldn’t pilot a boat across eighty two miles of ocean just to sell a piece to Charlie.”

She broke the connection before he could reply.

Maui no ka oi!


Raven was sitting on the deck of her Cabin Cruiser, sketch pad and charcoal pencil in hand, when Rudy pulled up in Charlie’s Porsche. She didn’t notice him and he watched her as he approached the boat. She was wearing denim shorts and a black bikini top, had on no makeup, and she looked completely ravishing.

He began to ascend the ladder onto the boat and Raven looked up and met him on deck with a big smile and a gentle hug. Rudy stood very still, arms around her bare midriff and her soft hair in his face, savoring the moment. Her fragrance was gentle and feminine and irresistible. They stood there for what seemed forever, neither wanting to let go.

Eventually, they headed down the ladder and climbed into the Porsche.

A gentle rain began to fall as they headed out of Lahaina, toward Makawao, in what the locals call the Up Country. The road twisted and turned as they worked their way up the Haleakala Highway. They rolled past the greenest pastures Rudy had ever seen. From time to time, as they wound their way up the mountain, the late afternoon sun broke out from behind a dark rain cloud in dramatic bright fractured beams even as the rain continued to fall.

Eventually they reached the board-walked, tin roofed little town of Makawao. Charlie and Jenny were waiting for them at Cicero’s, a little Italian restaurant and blues bar. They dined on Linguini in clam sauce with wine and laughing and joked the evening away.

“They say you’re only supposed to have red wine with red sauce,” Charlie said, “Just the kind of stupid crap Yankees say. I’m feeling crazy, mixing my colors, just try and stop me.”

“Just knowing that much is what passes for culture on the ‘Guff’ Coast.” Jenny teased.

“You’re outta control, Charlie.” Rudy laughed.

“Yeah, a regular madman.” Jenny said.

“Damn straight, I’m a madman. Once, I went to a 7-11 and bought a pencil, just for the hell of it, didn’t even need one. Thirty seven cents down the drain, just like that. I’m an outta control red necked Guff Coast madman and damned proud of it.”

It wasn’t really that funny except for the delivery. Charlie’s straight face and perfect deadpan had the table in stitches.

Around 9:30 an up and coming blues band from San Francisco climbed onstage and began getting ready for the first set.

“So, Raven, did Rudy tell you about our little deal?” Charlie asked.

“He said that you were still trying to get that piece from me.”

“Well, I’ve already offered you forty thousand for it, how much more is it going to take?”

“Fifty thousand. Hell, I got that much for the first piece I ever sold.”

“Well yeah, it’s a classic now.” Charlie retorted. “This is just one a yer reg-lar run a the mill Olssen knock off's.”

“Fine, I sell it to one a mah reg-lar run a the mill customers.” Raven mocked.

“Forty-Five.”

“Come on, Chuck Connors. The med rifleman can do better than that. Anyone who can pony up thirty-seven cents for a pencil he doesn’t even need, can surely part with a little more cash than that for an Olsson original.”

“Okay, Okay. Forty eight-five, but that’s as far as I go.”

Raven was quiet for a few minutes, then finally said, “Fifty thousand Charlie. Your scumbag friend will gladly pony up.”

Charlie faked surprise. “Why Raven, why would you think it’s for Leo? Just what is your problem with him, anyway?”

Raven turned serious. “See, I say scumbag and you know exactly who I’m talking about. I don’t need drug money, even when you launder it first. I know what you do with my work. I’ve been to your house many times and I’ve never seen any of my stuff there.”

“It’s a big house; there must be a few rooms that you’ve never been in.”

Raven was clearly unamused but before she could speak again, Charlie quickly added, “OK, Fifty grand. You are one tough cookie, Ms. Olsson.”

Everyone at the table knew he'd intended to meet her price all along. He just had to mess with her a little first. Charlie reached in his pocket and pulled out a set of keys and handed them to Rudy.

“Well, Rudy, seems like all I ever do is hand you my keys. Here, take these before I change my mind. Looks like you’ve got yourself an apartment.”

Before Rudy could reply, Charlie nodded in Raven’s direction. “That’s one stubborn gal you’ve got there. Are you sure you can handle her?”

“Nope.” Rudy answered honestly, “But I’m a sucker for a challenge.”

The band started with an energetic, full bodied version of Leroy Carr’s ‘Blues Before Sunrise’. Raven grabbed Rudy’s hand and pulled him onto the dance floor where they were the only couple dancing until Jenny and Charlie joined them a few minutes later. They stayed on the floor through the entire first set.

During the break, Raven and Rudy, dripping in perspiration, strolled along the old west boardwalks of Makawao. Unlike other old west looking Hawaiian towns, Makawao is not pretentious; it actually is a cattle town full of Hawaiian cowboys called paniolos.

Inside Cicero’s, the clientele easily outnumbered the population of the town and most of the patrons looked like they’d be more like they belonged in a Wyoming cowboy bar. Appropriate attire meant Wrangler jeans, huge belt buckles, cowboy hats, boots and cowboy shirts and always, a buck knife strapped to the belt.

These guys looked like some bad dudes, Rudy noted. This was not a place you’d want to find yourself in a bar fight. He doubted that any of them had ever punched any cattle and he was right. Mostly, they were cocaine cowboys involved in smuggling.

Maui no ka oi. He thought. Where else could you drive 45 minutes into the mountains and dance to a San Francisco blues band at an Italian Cowboy Bar with a bunch of Paniolo’s?

The band was back on stage so they went inside and hit the dance floor again. Jenny tried to drag Charlie back onto the floor but he was worn out so she joined Rudy and Raven and the three of them closed the place up.

As they left, Raven told Charlie that they’d leave his Porsche at the pier in Lahaina. Rudy had no idea what she had in mind but he’d done alright so far by rolling with the flow so he followed along without a word.