Surfing Detective 02 - Wipeout Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Foreword

  Acknowledgements

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  About the Author

  Wipeout!

  Chip Hughes

  Island Heritage™

  PUBLISHING

  copyright 2007

  For Mark Foo, Todd Chesser,

  Donny Solomon, Malik Joyeux,

  and other big wave riders

  who have lost their lives

  in the pursuit.

  “If you want to experience

  the ultimate thrill,

  you have to be willing to pay

  the ultimate price.”

  —Big wave rider, Mark Foo

  Foreword

  by Big-Wave Pioneer, Fred Van Dyke

  Wipeout! will grasp you from the very beginning. No details have been overlooked. The characters, the events are woven together in an inextricable mystery that unfolds slowly, and it is not until the very end that you realize what has taken place. There is really no second guessing the author. Many times when you are expecting one thing to happen, the opposite occurs.

  I am a big-wave surfing legend who lived thirty years adjacent to the famous Pipeline break, having the experience of nearly losing my home on a number of occasions to the huge waves that sweep the beach during winter months. I have wiped out at Waimea and all the other big-wave breaks on O‘ahu. I passed into the other world on a wipeout, but it was not my time to lose my life. I feel deeply what Chip writes and describes.

  As I was reading, I totally became a part of the narrative. The scenes out at Waimea Bay happen similarly. The people who live on the North Shore are depicted in a real fashion. I have lost friends to the Waimea ferociousness--closest to me was Mark Foo, who handled Waimea beautifully but lost his life at Mavericks.

  Chip was able to fully wrap me into the story by this authenticity of description. I could feel the dry throat, the anxiety of waiting for a closeout set on the horizon, the flushed face, being caught in the riptide and washed seaward after losing your board.

  The relationship you feel between the board and yourself is an important part of surfing and Chip caught that, nearly making the board seem like a friend or an extension of body and mind.

  Whether you’re a surfer, a mystery lover, or both, Wipeout! is a read I think you will enjoy.

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks once again to my wife,Charlene Avallone, whose inspiration guides my writing and my life, to my mother, Kathryn Cooley Hughes, for her unflagging support, and to Stu Hilt for sharing his nearly fifty years’ experience as a Honolulu P.I.

  Mahalo to big-wave legend Fred Van Dyke for his generous forward; to my writing group—LaRene Despain, Sue Cowing, and Felix Smith; to Les Peetz, Lorna Hershinow, Ku‘ualoha Ho‘omanawanui, Ian MacMillan, Steven Goldsberry, and Rodney Morales; and to my invaluable editor, Kirsten Whatley, and my webmaster and e-book wizard, John Michener, at Mediaspring.

  Note on spelling of Hawaiian words

  In this e-book edition of Wipeout! the kahako, or macron, over certain vowels in Hawaiian words has been omitted, due to the limited fonts available at the time of publication. For correct spelling of Hawaiian words, please refer to the hard-copy edition.

  Mahalo.

  One

  “Are you the Surfing Detective?” she asked in a voice as soft as trade winds whispering in bamboo.

  “Yes . . .” I wondered if this was yet another crank call.

  “Good, because you’re the only one who can help.”

  That got my attention.

  She kept details to a minimum, then made an appointment and promised an advance.

  A few mornings later I waited for her in a red vinyl booth at the second-floor Denny’s in Waikiki. The aroma of lattes and espressos wafting up from the Starbucks below made me wish I was down there on Kapahulu Avenue, or on my way to a morning surf session.

  But she had chosen Denny’s. She didn’t say why. And she was late.

  I sat there in my most flamboyant aloha shirt—hula dancers, Diamond Head, swaying coconut palms and, yes, surfers—watching the sun shimmer on glistening Kapi‘olani Park and the damp, cocoa-colored sands of Waikiki Beach. The campy aloha shirt was to help her recognize me, along with the mostly true description of myself I had given: sun-bleached brown hair, six feet even (a stretch), and a perpetual tan from surfing. I didn’t mention my age, thirty-four, nor did I claim Hawaiian ancestry. Though my name, Kai, means “sea” and though I was hanaied, or adopted, by a Hawaiian family when I was eight, my Cooke ancestors were about as New England as you can get. Anyway, all my client seemed to care about was that I was both a surfer and a detective.

  By 10:15 most evidence of the morning showers had vanished, but the pavement on Kapahulu still ran blacker than usual to the beach. There were few surfers out today. This morning’s gloomy grey canopy—coupled with small surf on the South Shore—had kept all but the diehards at home. Most had gone up to the North Shore, where a huge winter swell was thundering in from storms in the North Pacific—off Japan, off China, off the Aleutian Islands, off who knows where in that immense, blue, fathomless ocean.

  We’d had some enormous days in December and January. Twenty-five feet. Thirty feet. February figured to bring more really big ones.

  Today was Monday, February third. I stared through the steam swirling up from my coffee. If I were a smoker, I would have lit up about now. Instead, from the pocket of my aloha shirt, behind a swaying palm, I slipped a Sweet Li Hing Mui crack seed onto my tongue and instantly the sweet-sour plum pit exploded with pungent flavor.

  Glancing up I saw a woman who was very hapai, very pregnant, at the entrance. She caught my eye and made her way toward me in a pale lavender maternity dress. I ditched the crack seed in my napkin.

  “Summer?” I stood and clasped her trembling hand, whiffing the flowery scent of her perfume. She nodded as she slipped her hand from mine and edged slowly into the booth.

  “Want some coffee?” I peered into her eyes. They were violet—not blue, but intensely violet like orchids. Then I gazed at her protruding tummy. “Uh . . . Orange juice? Milk?”

  “Nothing, thank you,” she replied in that whispering voice I’d heard earlier on the phone. I leaned toward her so I wouldn’t miss a word.

  Summer’s hair was blonde, wheat blonde, turned under in the golden roll of a pageboy. She had a cute cheerleader nose and a dimple in her chin. Back in California, she would have been that knockout in high school every guy had a crush on at least once.

  “How difficult this must be for you,” I said. “I’m very sorry about your husband.”

  She tried for a smile that didn’t even reach the corners of her mouth. Her delicate hands were folded neatly on the tabletop. Her violet eyes looked misty.

  “You said on the phone you wanted me to look into his death?”

  She nodded.

  “It happened in December at Waimea Bay?” I prompted.

  “Yes, on the day before Christmas at sunset, almost Christmas eve.”

  “Did you see him wipeout?” I recalled the incident from ne
ws coverage. Corky McDahl had been pounded by a succession of twenty-foot waves and not seen again.

  “No,” she glanced down at her tummy. “We thought with the baby due soon and all . . . .“

  “So you stayed behind in . . . . Where is it you live again in California?”

  “Newport Beach.”

  “And you didn’t mind staying home while he surfed in Hawai‘i?”

  “I’m very independent. So was Corky.” She pulled from her purse a snapshot and handed it to me. “My husband.” She introduced him as if he were still alive and sitting with us in the booth.

  I glanced at the photo of a deeply tanned man in his middle twenties. Under a thatch of straw yellow curls, green eyes dominated. Mirrored sunglasses, the expensive kind some surfers wear, hung from a cord around his neck. His adolescent smile turned downward on one side, revealing a hint of attitude. He looked agitated, like a guy about to throw a punch.

  “Corky took out a two hundred thousand dollar life insurance policy before his trip,” Summer said. “The time lapse clause, or whatever they call it, matured just a few days before his accident, but the insurance company hasn’t paid. Mr. Gold, the adjuster, is very apologetic.”

  “Surfers do unfortunately sometimes disappear. Your Mr. Gold must know that.”

  “Oh, he does. It’s not just the short time the policy was in effect. Mr. Gold says Corky’s case raises several red flags.”

  “What red flags?”

  “Corky withdrew all our savings before he left,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Did he tell you he was going to clean out the account?”

  “No, not at the time. But he probably needed the money for his trip.” She seemed unconcerned by an action some spouses might consider treacherous and disloyal.

  “What else?”

  “Corky charged our credit cards over the limit. A few charges came through even after he died.”

  “The card could have been stolen,” I conjectured, “or the purchases posted late.”

  “Well, we have low spending limits, so it’s no surprise he went over them. Another thing,” Summer went on, “Mr. Gold asked me why Corky would have been seen driving a BMW convertible—an expensive new model.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I said Corky didn’t own a BMW. We couldn’t afford one. But he had an auto detailing business in California. He may have earned extra money in Hawai‘i by working on that BMW, and just took it for a ride.”

  “That’s a possibility. Anything else?”

  She shook her head. “Corky always wanted to be a big name surfer—a sponsored surfer—and he looked at his trips here as investments in his career—and in our future. He dreamed that someday, somehow, a sponsor would discover him. He even changed his name from Charles to Corky after a legendary California surfer . . .”

  “Corky Carroll?”

  “Yes, I believe that’s the one. Corky . . . er, Charles . . . talked about his idol constantly, though he never actually met him.”

  I caught myself gazing at her again. I was thinking about her baby. If she were my wife, and in the last months of her pregnancy, would I abandon her to ride the world’s biggest, most dangerous waves?

  Maybe Corky didn’t want to be a father after all. Maybe he preferred to go out in a blaze of glory, rather than face his parental responsibilities.

  “Summer, I have to ask you this.” I hated to say it out loud. “Do you know any reason why your husband would fake his own death?”

  She shook her head. “It wasn’t like him to do something so desperate.”

  “Not even to defraud the insurance company of two hundred thousand dollars?”

  “Not my Corky.”

  The waitress came by and refilled my coffee. “Would you like anything?” I asked Summer again.

  “Nothing, thanks,” she said.

  “It won’t be easy to prove your husband died.” I tried to be realistic with her. “When surfers disappear, a shredded wet suit or torn board shorts may be all that turns up. Some vanish without a trace.”

  She didn’t respond, but kept looking at me hopefully.

  “‘Course Waimea on a big day is like a huge outdoor arena with hundreds of onlookers and photographers, so we may come up with something. A bobbing surfer might have been spotted, though maybe not after sunset when your husband wiped out. But even if I find evidence of your husband’s . . . ,” I groped for words, “evidence of your husband, I can’t guarantee the insurance company will accept it as proof.”

  Summer’s determined look suggested she wasn’t fazed by what I’d said.

  “How soon can you start?”

  “About the retainer . . .” I reminded her of her promise. “In a case like this confined to O’ahu, five hundred would be OK for starters.”

  She reached into her purse and pulled out a handful of crumpled green bills—all Ben Franklins—setting them on the table. There must have been a dozen hundreds easily, all wadded up and wrinkled.

  I separated out five crumpled notes and slid the others across the table to her.

  “I wish you would take them all, so I don’t have to make another trip here.” She slid the bills back my way. “I trust you’ll return what you don’t use.”

  I decided not to argue with her. I gathered up all that green and shoved it behind the swaying palm on the pocket of my aloha shirt.

  “Where are you staying?” I asked, in a lighter mood now. “Can I give you a lift?”

  She pulled a paper from her purse and handed it to me. The phone number on it began with 739-. Kahala?Ritzy Kahala?

  “The Mandarin?” I asked. “That’s a posh hotel.”

  “No, a private home,” she said. “You can call me there.”

  “You have friends in Kahala?”

  She nodded but didn’t explain. As she struggled up from the table, I handed her my card. “I’ll phone you as soon as I have anything to report.”

  Summer glanced at the longboard rider on the sand-toned card and slipped it into her purse.

  My eyes returned to her bulging middle. “When is your baby due?”

  “Early March—so the doctors say.” Summer made a cute smirk that almost turned into a smile. “They’re never right, you know. My mother tells me I came three weeks early.”

  “Three weeks early for your baby would mean just a few days from now . . .”

  Summer shrugged. “The baby will wait until you find evidence of my Corky.” Her complete confidence worried me.

  She started to walk away. Before she got out of earshot I couldn’t help saying, only half joking, “Delivering babies is not in my standard contract.”

  She turned around, shrugged again, and then duck-stepped past rows of mostly empty booths and out the door. A few minutes later, on the street below, I saw Summer climb awkwardly into a hearse-black Mercedes sedan. A door closed and she disappeared behind darkly tinted glass. The Mercedes turned toward Diamond Head and soon vanished.

  Later when disentangling the green bills Summer had left behind, I counted not twelve, but sixteen. Sixteen hundred dollars. In cash. More than I would need, no doubt, since this case was most likely going nowhere.

  Better than a month had passed since Corky wiped out. If he had died in the huge surf, by now his bones would be licked clean, if any bones remained at all. I could try to find his board and track down his credit card purchases and maybe even locate the BMW he was allegedly seen driving. But evidence of his body? No way.

  Unless, of course, Corky had pulled off one of the most daring skip traces in recorded history. But to play dead in Waimea’s massive winter surf would have amounted to suicide. Twenty-foot waves are not make-believe. That Corky would go to such lengths simply to escape paternal responsibilities seemed unlikely—unless he and Summer together were trying to defraud the insurance company to the tune of two hundred grand.

  If this was their game, the pregnant blonde was well coached—her trembling hands, her misty eyes. But her st
ory didn’t match her bankroll. If Corky had left her broke, how was Summer underwriting her trip to Hawai‘i? And what about her friends with the Kahala phone number and black Mercedes?

  I pocketed the cash again and, despite my qualms, found myself sympathizing with the violet-eyed widow.

  Whatevahs. I had a case. Or it had me.

  Two

  Located on Maunakea Street above Fujiyama’s Flower Leis, my office is about the size and sturdiness of a Cracker Jack box. It boasts one window overlooking the bustle and varied aromas and questionable charm of the storied old ramshackle street. Just one block down, amidst ambience of legendary Chinatown, is notorious Hotel Street. Once the province of pimps, prostitutes, porno palaces, and flop houses, these days you’re find more art galleries and ethnic eateries.

  I pulled open the bottom drawer of my battleship grey filing cabinet, on which sits a tarnished surf-rider trophy: Classic Longboard . . . Makaha . . . Third Place. My faded glory. Way in the back of the musty bottom drawer where I store personal files, I reached for a manila folder of news clippings labeled Big-Wave Wipeouts.

  The first story my eyes fell on eulogized Tahiti surfer Malik Joyeux who died at Banzai Pipeline in December 2005. The lip of a powerful wave had hit him dead on, broken his board in half, and ripped off leash. Joyeux was found under water, about two hundred yards from where he had wiped out. The treacherous Banzai riptide carried him away.

  The next clipping recalled the drowning of Todd Chesser near Waimea Bay in February 1997. A faded photo showed Chesser—glistening shaved head and seal black wetsuit—shooting a mammoth green tube during the filming of In God’s Hands. Another photo pictured the memorial service for the wave rider at Ali‘i Beach Park in Hale‘iwa attended by hundreds of fellow surfers and family and friends.

  Next came a raggedly torn and yellowed Star-Bulletin clipping about Mark Foo’s wipeout in 1994 at Mavericks in Half Moon Bay near San Francisco. More stories about Foo’s drowning lay beneath this clipping and some glossy magazine spreads commemorating his life.