THE INFORMATION
Back at the hotel, the three of them parted ways. Russi had only grunted simple yeses or nos along the way, and the glint of blue sky was hard on the eyes after being in the dark cave. They passed the third hole just in time to see Big Joe and Bobby Dean Dixon drive their golf balls across the cove and onto the green. Senator Fuchs was not so lucky. His ball splashed into the ocean.
Mr. Rapoza promised to get back to them with any information. Lu let Russi go without a fight, and went back to her room to see if Dylan had called. He hadn’t.
After a quick dip to cool off, she still felt heat rising off her skin, so sided up to the Hau Tree Bar for an ice cold chocolate malt. Next to her, the senator’s wife was sitting with June Cosgrove, sipping drinks with pink umbrellas. They were dressed in starchy white tennis outfits, and both had turned twelve shades darker than when they’d first arrived at the hotel. They looked like clones.
“Hello, ladies. How was your game?” she said as cheerfully as she could muster.
June smiled. “Splendid. I daresay those courts have one of the finest views in the world.”
Lynette sipped her drink and said, “Hot.”
“I went out for a hike this morning. Have I missed anything? Any news on Joni Diaz?” Lu asked.
“Nothing that I know of, but they’re being rather tight-lipped about the whole thing,” June said.
Lynette added, “It seems pretty straightforward to me. The woman was high, she went in the water—or maybe she fell in—and she drowned.”
The coldness in her voice chilled Lu off right away. “No one deserves to drown, especially someone as young and vibrant as Joni,” she said.
June cut in. “Oh, they’re probably just crossing their t’s and dotting their i’s. When it’s someone hugely famous, there’s always a big to-do.”
Lynette was wearing sunglasses, so it was hard to see her eyes, but her mouth seemed to droop, and the smile lines in her cheeks looked deeper. Lu noticed an ashtray full of butts in front of her.
“Has anyone said anything about being able to leave?” Lu asked.
“Mr. Rockefeller said he’d brief us all this afternoon,” Lynette said.
In the room, Lu went straight to the typewriter. She typed every thought that came into her head about the hotel, about Russi, about Joni. They were each their own story, yet they were so intertwined she couldn’t imagine writing one without the others. Styles would probably hate it, but she could edit it later. Just as she was about to head out looking for Russi, Dylan called.
“Any news?” he asked.
Lu told him the latest.
“Sounds like quite a morning. I wish I had more for you. John Walsh happened to be in the office and he used to cover the DC beat. He said Fuchs was known to piggyback on a few of JFK’s trips. Rumors also floated that he bagged an intern or two of his own.”
“Just rumors?”
“Isn’t that what they always are? What woman is going to come forward and talk? Besides, that’s part of the deal. They know it going in,” he said.
Her feathers ruffled. “If I was that intern, there would be a front page story about it the next day.”
He laughed. “Oh, yeah, that was the reason I love you. Now I remember.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know you are.”
A lizard appeared on the glass door, big eye watching her. Seeing it made her happy. Geckos had always been good luck in her family. “The more I think about it, the more I feel like Fuchs is somehow to blame, even if it was just by toying with her heart,” she said.
“If they were having an affair, someone would know about it, wouldn’t they? What about the wife—isn’t she there?” Dylan said.
“Yes, but wives don’t stop these kinds of guys, you know that. I feel like talking more pointedly to the senator. I’ll ask Russi what he thinks.”
Dylan coughed. “Um. Sounds like you and Russi are pretty tight over there. Is there anything I should know about?” he asked.
Was that jealousy she heard in his voice? “Be real, Dylan. The guy is almost twice my age.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. It didn’t stop Olivia Bell from hanging out with him. Or Daisy Lopez. Or a dozen other high-profile women.”
“I guess I’m not high-profile enough. But seriously, there has been no weirdness between us whatsoever. He feels like a cool uncle or something,” she said. “Did you know he also dated Joni Diaz?” she added.
“Doesn’t that make him a suspect?” Dylan said.
“It does, but that was years ago. Plus, Russi is not a killer. I know that.”
“Do you?”
“Without a doubt.”
“Be careful, Lu. I know you want to impress the boss. But your own safety comes first,” he said.
“I’ll be fine.”
When Lu hung up, she walked out onto the patio and looked down on the bay. It was the perfect bird’s-eye view. In the sandy middle, where the water was translucent turquoise, anything dark stood out. On the edges, lined with coral shelfs, not as much. The yellow and purple hues of coral, accented with red pencil wana, created a vibrant underwater palette. She scanned for any signs of a body. It was natural instinct. Part of her still in denial, the other part wanting an answer.
Joni, what happened to you?
The afternoon was shaping up to be a stunner. The royal poincianas showed off their red blossoms, bees hummed in the kiawe and the ocean sparkled. Lu fanned herself with a newspaper as she went in search of Russi. He wasn’t in the bar or the lounge or even on the beach, so she went back up and knocked on his door.
A muffled voice came from inside. “I don’t need anything.”
“It’s me, Lu,” she said, resting her cheek on the cool wood and listening for footsteps.
Silence. She was about to give up on him when the door swung open. “What do you want?” he said, with no move to let her in.
“I spoke to Dylan and came by to fill you in,” she said, looking up at him.
“Any dirt?” he asked.
She smelled alcohol on his breath.
“Nothing especially concrete, but plenty of rumors about Fuchs being inappropriate with interns. He was also friends with Jack Kennedy and partook in some of his so-called ‘trips.’ Have you heard anything?”
Russi cocked his head. “Not girl related. My source did tell me that the reason the Nazi stuff got shoved under the rug was because someone—an unknown player who could only be one of a few influential people—shut down the investigation cold. Even more interesting is that Fuchs has ties to the American Academy of Human Genetics, an organization that many believe is really a new take on eugenics.”
“How can that even be possible after the Nuremberg Trials? I thought eugenics has been outlawed.”
Russi poked his head out and looked up and down the hallway. “Come inside.”
His room was spic and span—the bed all tucked, no clothes or papers or bikinis strewn about as in hers. There were three yellow legal pads stacked on the table, and a cold Primo beer. Next to that was a blue Lettera 22 typewriter. Of course he’d have an Olivetti. Russi was dressed in swim trunks and a tight T-shirt. He smelled of coconut suntan lotion.
“Tell me you’re not naive enough to think that Nazis are gone and the world is peachy again,” he said, pulling out a chair for her.
“No. But I would expect it in Germany, not here.”
“Where do you think they got their ideas?” he said.
“What do you mean?”
Growing up in Hawai‘i, Lu had been sheltered from much of the white supremacy theories. Dark-colored skin was considered a blessing here, and she couldn’t fathom it being any other way. It wasn’t until she moved to the mainland, where people thought she was Mexican and treated her differently, when she finally understood that some people did not approve of who she was simply based on her darker tone.
Russi took a swig of his beer. “You’ve never heard of the Eugenics Record Office, aka the ERO? They were responsible for forced sterilizations across our fine country to improve our gene pool, get rid of those pesky Indians and poor people. They also outlawed immigration from southern and eastern Europe. Read—where the darker-skinned people are.”
Lu was floored. “I had no idea.”
“This was all halted in the late thirties, but evil has a slippery way of showing up again under other names. Most genetic research is for our betterment, so they say. But not all. And it may seem like a righteous cause, as I’m sure it did back then, until it gets into the hands of the wrong people,” he said.
“So how is Fuchs involved?”
“By drumming up funds. Sitting on the board. It all sounds up-and-up, but there’s a dark side. Make no mistake, Aryan supremacy is still espoused on our shores.”
“So, we know he is a bad man. Just how bad, is the question,” she said.
Russi offered her a beer and popped open another for himself. “Time will tell. Or maybe we should. What do you think? We could team up on a story, uncovering the hidden life of Senator Richard Fuchs.”
“You would do that?”
He waved her off. “Aw, come on. It’s no big deal.”
“Do you remember how it was when you were just starting out? When you had to take the first job offered you? This is a huge deal, Russi, and you know it.”
To shut her up, he handed her a box of half-melted chocolate-covered macadamia nuts and she happily savored four of them, even if every finger was brown when she finished. Russi had started jotting down a note on his yellow pad and was lost in thought for a while. The wind blew in the watery sounds of swell on rocks.
“I think I’m going to leave Sunset,” she said, not quite sure why she was telling Russi this, of all people.
“Either you are or you aren’t.”
“Well, then I am.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because my heart isn’t in it. You were the one who brought it to my attention the other day. My professor helped get me the job, and I’m forever grateful, but I’m just not interested in their kind of stories. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great magazine, just not for me.”
“Where do you see yourself? Be honest.”
“Time.”
To his credit he didn’t laugh out loud. “You know that women at Time are just fact-checkers. Researchers, right? All the writers are men.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“What makes you think you’d be different?”
“Maybe if I approached them armed with some stories they can’t refuse, I could get a foot in. Say, something about a corrupt senator? Or even better, a series of profiles of WWII veterans twenty years later.”
“I like how you think, kid, but your chances are less than slim,” he said, mouth curving up on one side. “I can’t grow a mustache to save my life, but would you look at that. A girl named Lu with a chocolate mustache. That’d get you hired, stat.”
Lu licked her upper lip and tasted chocolate. She ran to the bathroom, only to see two triangles of chocolate that had eluded her napkin. She tied her hair in a knot and wiped down her face with a damp washcloth.
When she came back out, Russi said, “I’ll help you any way I can. But just so you know, I think where you really belong is back here in Hawai‘i. New York isn’t really your cuppa joe.”
“But there’s nothing big here.”
“Big is not what matters. What matters is that you’re doing the work that feeds your soul. Trust me, you’ll be much happier and a much better writer if you write about what interests you, not what you think you should be writing to prove something to someone. Living in New York would shrivel you up and suck the life out of you.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I see the way you are. I came from New York, but you come from these islands. They’re under your skin in a way that makes your eyes light up whenever you talk about anything Hawai‘i. I see you in the ocean every morning, you’re a fish.”
She thought back to that morning on the beach. You have Hawai‘i written all over you, he’d said.
“I can always come back later,” she said.
He waved his hand around. “I know, I know. You spent all this time at your fancy school, getting your fancy job. You have your eye on the big prize. But just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should.”
Lu was floored. No one had ever spoken so bluntly to her. Could it be possible that something you thought you always wanted was not at all what you wanted?
“You’re wrong,” she said.
The words tasted bitter on her tongue.
“Dreams change. Nothing wrong with that. Be honest with yourself. Hawai‘i may be small, but what about Paradise of the Pacific? A great magazine.”
“How do you know about Paradise of the Pacific?”
One of the oldest magazines in the country, and a fine one at that.
“I do my research. At least consider it, will you?”
Lu didn’t answer.
“Oh, and I just checked with Rapoza. He’s still trying to reach next of kin for Joni. I’m calling this into a friend at the AP. Just the facts. I’m surprised the story hasn’t leaked yet,” he said.
“People in Hawai‘i are different. They watch out for each other,” she said.
“You remind me of myself when I was just starting off. Determined, starry-eyed, green as the grass on that golf course out there,” he said.
Lu blushed. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Since being green is an inevitable part of life.”
“As you should.”
“Are you going to tell me about the ring?” she finally got the nerve to say.
His eyes dipped to the table. “The ring belonged to my friend Izzy. I would know it anywhere. Don’t ask me how the fuck it got in that cave, but I need to find out.”
“Maybe it’s just a similar ring?” she said.
“It’s not.”
A moment of silence fell between them. For the first time, Lu noticed a small photo album lying on the coffee table. Leather-bound with fraying edges, it looked like it had seen a lot of use. Walt & Izzy was on the cover in faded handwriting.
“It seems unlikely that Izzy would be our skeleton, when her friend was the one that drowned nearby. And if her friend drowned, why would she be all the way up there in a lava tube?”
His voice sounded strained. “Unlikely doesn’t cut it. I need to know for sure. I’ve put out feelers. It’s something I should have done a long time ago but was too thick-headed to figure it out. I need to find her.”