THE PHOTOGRAPH
Lu placed a call to Styles. She’d been avoiding calling him as she worked through story angles in her mind. And even though this wasn’t a Sunset story, he deserved to know about Joni from her. Before the rest of the world. She dialed his home number, and the operator put her through.
“Where the hell have you been? I’ve left fifty messages,” was the first thing he said.
Five, not fifty. Styles had always been prone to exaggeration.
“Sorry, Mr. Styles. Rockefeller had us on a tight schedule and I was working on my story late at night, and then, well, we’ve had a situation unfold. The sheriff gagged us until he notified the next of kin.”
She could hear him blowing out cigarette smoke over the line. “Next of kin? What kind of situation are we talking about?”
“Joni Diaz is missing and presumed dead. It looks like she may have drowned.”
A glass shattered on the other end, and suddenly he was yelling into her ear. “You are shitting me. The Joni Diaz?”
She felt sadness at the thought that, to him, Joni was a news story, not the lost heartbeat of a woman gone far too young.
“The one and only. Saturday night was the last time anyone saw her.”
His voice rose. “You’ve known about this since Saturday?”
“Sunday morning, but—”
“Never mind, forget about it. Give me a sec and I’ll take down what you’ve got. I can send this along to my buddy at the Chronicle,” he said, rattling something around in the background. “Okay, ready.”
She read from the paper she’d typed out.
Singer Joni Diaz has disappeared and is presumed dead. Diaz was a guest at the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel, Laurance Rockefeller’s grand new resort, when she failed to turn up for a morning swim Sunday morning. Later that day, after an extensive search, her shoes were found on the rocks near the ocean. Diaz is a competent swimmer, but on Saturday night, the surf rose quickly. Authorities believe that she may have been swept off the rocks and drowned.
Diaz had befriended the Rockefellers while at Caneel Bay Resort, another Rock Resorts property in the Virgin Islands, and was invited to be part of a VIP grand opening weekend, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Bobby Dean and Mina Dixon of Readers Monthly, oil magnate Big Joe Wallace, philanthropists June and Leonard Cosgrove and Senator Fuchs and his wife. Sources state that there has been no sign of foul play, but all guests at the hotel are ordered not to leave the property until authorized by the police.
Diaz was born in San Diego to Mexican parents, later moving to Los Angeles where she landed a record deal with Icon. The world fell in love with her soulful voice and never looked back—
Styles stopped her. “I’ll cut it at police. Is there anything else you can tell me? Are they sure there was no foul play?”
She kept her hunches to herself. No use implicating anyone until she had something concrete.
“Not right now. Without a body, there’s nothing to go on.”
“What about the hotel story?”
She lied. “Everything is great on that front.”
“You don’t sound too sure about that.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll have your story.”
Everyone was on their own for dinner. Lu was relieved because the last few days had caught up to her and all she wanted to do was sit on a beach chair, watch the sunset and sip a cold drink. Not think about anything. The muscles on the right side of her neck were in knots, and her heels were blistered from the new tennis shoes she’d bought to play golf and tennis in, but instead had only worn hiking in the lava.
Jerry made her a rum-and-pineapple concoction and sent her on her way. Armed with sunglasses and a Time magazine, she unrolled her orange towel with the white Mauna Kea flower—everything here was stamped with it—and lay down under the beach umbrella. Her brain ached from turning over scenarios in her head. Drawing a connection between Joni and the skeleton in the lava tube was a stretch, but she couldn’t help herself. Who was this Gloria woman, and more importantly, who was the man that had been with her? She felt a compulsion to tell Rapoza, but owed Russi a day or two.
A couple of teenagers were jumping off the raft anchored offshore, doing cannonballs and belly flops, and several women stood with their legs in the shore break engrossed in conversation, but aside from them most of the guests had left the beach for the day, probably all pink and crisp, and would be readying themselves for dinner. Fancy dresses would be worn, hair would be styled and drinks would be had. When one traveled all the way to Hawai‘i, you made the most of every minute.
When she opened the magazine, which she’d borrowed from the front lobby, she flipped through the pages. It was an old habit, always starting somewhere in the middle. The cover shot of air force pilot Robbie Risner had caught her attention. He was just the kind of man who intrigued her—squadron leader of the Rolling Thunder attacks in Vietnam and an ace in the Korean War. She found the article and marked the page. There were stories about Ed White’s spacewalk last month, and how Lyndon Johnson wanted to ramp up US troops in Vietnam.
Further in, she came upon a photo of Senator Fuchs. He always looked so smug, as if he knew something that the rest of the world didn’t. The title of the article stopped her cold: “Are There Nazis Next Door?”
The story discussed how the United States had imported German scientists and engineers, many believed to have been active members of the Nazi party during the war, to help ensure US military advantage over Russia. Not new information. More interesting, though, was the allegation that known Nazi war criminals were being allowed into the US as potential spies, and that their own intelligence had been expunging their files. For all anyone knew, they could be living next door in perfect anonymity. Fuchs name came up as someone who had been smoothing their way. When she finished the article, she closed the magazine and set it on her warm, lightly toasted thighs.
Then, as if summoned by her own mind, Fuchs came sauntering out of the water and up the beach. In swim trunks, he was the opposite of Russi. No wide shoulders and tapered waist, just a shirt tan and some dough around the middle. Lu picked up the magazine and pretended to be reading, while observing behind her shades. There was an arrogance to the way he moved, a look at me, I’m someone important vibe. When he passed by several beach chairs away, she noticed two long scratches on his side, running from his lats down to his hip bone. He bent over to pick up his towel. The movement was stilted, as if he were in pain. He dried off, then slung the towel over his side, covering the scratch. But Lu had seen all she needed to.
As soon as he was gone, she slurped down her drink and ran back to Russi’s room. This time, he opened right away and invited her in. He was halfway through a hamburger and nursing his beer.
“Gotta love the room service here. Can I order you something?” he said.
She was famished. “Sure, I could use some sustenance.”
Something about his demeanor had shifted, and he was almost giddy. He called in her order, while licking ketchup off his fingers.
When he hung up, Lu held up the magazine, open to the page on Fuchs. “Two things. First, this article. It’s not flattering—have you seen it?”
“No, what does it say?”
She told him.
“People are onto him. Good. But guys like Fuchs are slippery. They cover their tracks,” he said.
“Here’s the interesting part. I was on the beach reading and the senator came out of the water. When he passed me, I noticed scratches along his side that easily could have been from fingernails.”
Russi stopped chewing, and spoke with a mouthful. “Whoa, kid. You sure about that?”
“No, I’m not sure they’re from fingernails, but I’m sure he has suspicious-looking scratches.”
“We need to tell Rapoza,” he said, biting off another hunk of the burger. “Sorry to eat in front of you. I’m starved.”
“That’s another thing. We also need to tell Rapoza about the ring belonging to your friend. I don’t feel right withholding information like this,” she said.
“Don’t worry, I made some headway. It looks like she’s still alive. I had the operator put me through to Honolulu to see if she was still living there. But get this, she’s not on O‘ahu,” he said, face breaking out into that famous lopsided smile. “She’s here.”
“Here at the Mauna Kea?”
“No, Sherlock, a place called Kainaliu.”
Lu’s town. Kainaliu was small. She would have known someone named Izzy. “You sure? That’s where I’m from.”
“That’s what the operator said. Isabel Cooper was her name, and then she married a guy named Hoapili.”
The name took a moment to register. Lu didn’t know how long she sat there, synapses in her brain pinging around, staring at the photo album on the table. The room filled with a sticky stillness. She looked at Russi, his face eager for her to say something. Her Auntie H could not be his Izzy. Could she?
“Say the name again,” she said.
“Isabel Cooper, or Hoapili. Izzy to me.”
In the beginning, Auntie H had been plain old Mrs. Hoapili. As they became closer and their lives stitched together, she’d insisted on being called Auntie H. But names had a certain inertia. Once you knew someone by a certain name, it was almost impossible to shift gears. As though their essence was wrapped up in the letters and sounds of the word. Reluctantly, Lu made the switch. Now, she racked her memory for any mention of the nickname Izzy, and came up dry. Not to mention talk of codebreaking during the war.
“I know an Isabel Hoapili, but it can’t be the same person,” she said.
He frowned. “How many Isabel Hoapilis could there be in your town? Or anywhere for that matter.”
Lu nodded to the photo album. “Show me a picture of her.”
Russi looked at the book guardedly, as though it was some precious, secret thing. Unshareable with anyone else. He reached out and slid it across the table. “This was twenty-two years ago, mind you.”
Lu opened the small book to the middle. The faint smell of flowers stuck to the pages. There, standing in sunlight with a surfboard next to her and smiling into the camera, was Auntie H. Her Auntie H. Younger and more angular, but not too different than the last time she’d seen her. Black hair, light eyes and an ethereal beauty that leaped from the pages.
“Wow, you were right about her being a stunner. She still is,” Lu said.
She turned the page, curious to see more, and still in disbelief. The next photos were taken on a white sand beach. Izzy lay on the sand with a piece of coral on her stomach, so full of peace—and grace. In another one, you felt she was looking through the lens and into the eyes of the photographer. A knowing flicker of a smile.
“So, mine and yours are the same person? You sure?” he said, shaking his head.
“Auntie H was my neighbor, the one who tutored me. The one whose husband I told you about with the night terrors. I should know what she looks like, she’s like a mom to me. In Hawai‘i we call it hana-i. It loosely means when you adopt someone into your family, like she did with me. She had no kids and I had no mom so it worked.”
“What about your dad?”
“I still lived with him. But I was at her house all the time. I stayed over on weekends a lot, kind of went between the two. Girls need moms, what can I say?”
Lu could have sworn his whole body was trembling. “Tell me everything you know about her. Start from the beginning,” Russi ordered.
She thought back. “From the moment I started school in kindergarten, I was terrible at it. I refused to wear shoes, I brought in stray animals constantly and I could not read or write to save my life. That went on until seventh grade, when we had new people buy the coffee farm next door. I thought I owned the whole mountain, so I used to roam around their property and pick lilikoi after school and hunt for sandalwood. One afternoon, she was at the vine, too, holding a big basket. I almost ran, but she smiled and said, ‘So you’re actually a real person. I was beginning to think you were just a forest nymph. What’s your name?’ We got to talking and before you knew it, she was showing me how to make lilikoi pie and blackberry cobbler. Somewhere along the way, she noticed I struggled with some of the words in the recipe, and she took it upon herself to fix that.” Lu paused, mouth watering just thinking about the pie.
“Did she tell you about her brother, Walt?” he asked.
“I knew he was shot down when the Japanese attacked O‘ahu, and I know they were close, but she rarely talked about him.”
Closing her eyes, Lu saw an old photograph on the wall in Auntie H’s kitchen. A young man standing with a surfboard, same as the one in the album. Walt.
Russi nodded. “Walt and I were like brothers. Izzy came looking for me when she got transferred to Pearl and we struck up a friendship.” His hand went to his scar, and she could tell he had gone back to some old memory. His lips folded in on themselves. “I was too dumb to notice that I was falling head over heels until it was too late. Course, in good old Russi fashion, I botched the whole thing. Then they shipped me off to China and that was that.”
“You loved her,” she said.
It was plain as day.
He shrugged. “What wasn’t to love?”
Lu knew all too well about the fine and blurry line between friendship and love. “Strange, though, she never mentioned being a codebreaker. But then she was always more of a listener than a talker, and I was a talker. I loved to tell stories, so we were a match made in heaven. Before she came along, the animals were my main audience, but she made me feel interesting. Even smart. I told you about her husband, Cliff. He was part-Hawaiian and the nicest guy. I could tell she was crushed when he left, but also relieved. Watching him go downhill had been rough on her.”
“Did she remarry?”
He was holding his breath.
“No,” she said.
“And she still runs the farm?” he asked.
“She loves that farm. I can’t imagine her ever leaving. I worked for her in the summers and earned money for school. I picked coffee beans all morning, and in the afternoons when the clouds came in we played chess,” Lu said.
Russi smirked. “Damn. No wonder you’re a hotshot player.”
“I never came close to playing like Auntie H—Izzy—though. You were right about her being the smartest person you know. Her brain works at lightning speed. Which is probably why I never pictured her as an Izzy. Did you come up with that?”
“Walt did. He talked about her all the time, so I just assumed that was her name.” He shoved the last bite into his mouth, and started talking with his mouth full. “I read somewhere a while back that she was teaching at the university. Does she still teach?”
Lu could have spoken until she was blue in the face, and Russi would have wanted more. “Why don’t you ask her yourself? Have you tried to call her?”
His eyes pinched together. “Hell, no.”
“Why not?”
“This isn’t something I can do on the phone, kid.”