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They were about to walk over to the rental car agency when a police officer came up to them.

“Where do you think you're going?”

It was like a sucker punch in the gut; Baxter couldn't catch his breath. His heart skipped a couple of beats, and he burst out in a cool sticky sweat.

“I'm—uh, I'm. . . you know? On vacation?”

Baxter gagged. He turned and looked at Reggie. Reggie's face registered a mix of fear and flight, as if he couldn't decide whether to burst into tears and confess everything or just take off running.

The cop, a plump Hawaiian man in his early twenties, put his hands on his hips.

“You think you can get away with it?”

Baxter reminded himself to breathe, play it cool. They'd just arrived. They hadn't done anything wrong. This cop couldn't prove shit. A cool contract killer would just tell this guy to fuck off, but not in an aggressive way, in a clever Hollywood way. Baxter thought about it.

“I don't have SPF three hundred.”

The cop looked at him. “What did you say?”

“What're you doin', man?” Reggie whispered.

But Baxter was starting to feel it. He had the look; now he had to cop the attitude. “I don't have SPF three hundred. I can't stand here all day. Get to the point.”

It took Reggie a moment; then he picked up on the hard-guy act, although his voice quavered when he spoke. “Yeah. You wanna arrest us? Arrest us.”

The cop shook his head. “I wanted you to pick up that cigarette butt you threw in the street. But now I'm going to write you a ticket.”

Which is what he did.

...

Joseph got in his pickup truck and started driving. He didn't have a plan or a destination; he just wanted movement. He needed to get out of his house, away from the empty feeling he got when he was there. Driving helped. Just the simple act of going made him feel better. His stomach was knotted and felt like a block of ice, but the sun warmed his skin and took the edge off his pain. He rolled down the windows and let the wind blow through the cab. The air smelled sharp and fragrant, and after a while he began to feel slightly normal. Not happy, not sad.

After a few hours of aimless cruising, Joseph found himself near a farm where he got fresh papayas. He pulled over to the side of the road, climbed out of his truck, and stretched. His muscles were stiff from sitting, and it felt good to walk down the dirt path into the papaya grove.

Joseph's flip-flops slapped softly against the moist ground as he walked between the trees. Papaya trees are strange creatures, slender green trunks rising up to a frizzled top, fat papayas sprouting out of the trunk and dangling there like a supermodel's breasts. He spotted a ripe one, turning bright yellow against the green trunk, found a stick leaning against one of the trees, and used it to knock the papaya off. It hit the ground with a satisfyingly earthy thud. Joseph picked it up and carried it back to his truck.

He took a pocketknife out of his glove box—kept there for exactly this purpose—and expertly sliced the papaya lengthwise in half. Pinkish golden juice spilled out of the fruit as he separated the two halves to reveal a cluster of glistening black seeds nestled in the middle. Hawaiian caviar. Papaya pits. Joseph laughed. He realized that he was in the pits too.

But as he scraped the seeds out and let them fall to the ground, he suddenly began to feel better. What people call pits, the part of the fruit they worry about breaking their teeth on and discard, are really seeds. New life sprouts from seeds.

Joseph felt the tingle of liberation, the endless possibilities, that getting dumped can bring. It hurt, no question about that. But like the cliché says, every cloud has a silver lining. Like it or not, Joseph was now free of his
ohana.
He could do anything.

...

Love is funny. That's what Yuki was thinking as she lay on her side watching her lover—imagine that!—sleeping. Never in her wildest dreams would she have thought she'd fall in love with a pimp. Weren't pimps some kind of horrible urban monsters who preyed on innocent young women, got them addicted to smack, and then used and abused them until they were worn out or dead? That's what she'd heard anyway. She was sure some pimps were like that, but Lono wasn't. He seemed normal, not at all like Superfly.

Love is funny. It'll make you rationalize almost anything. Yuki could almost justify what Lono did for a living. If there weren't a demand for it, he wouldn't be doing it. Somebody's got to do it, right? Who would protect the girls, right?

But she wasn't stupid. She knew what he did was wrong. Maybe not morally wrong in the big picture of things, but it was illegal. He was a criminal.

Yuki thought about trying to change him. Ask him to go straight, do something different. But how many times had she read in books and magazines that you shouldn't go into a relationship thinking you can get your partner to change? It's disastrous. If Yuki really wanted to be involved with Lono, she'd have to accept him and love him for his true authentic pimp self.

Her life coach would've had a cow. He would've rattled off all the conventional reasons why the relationship wouldn't work, how it was actually a symptom of a self-destructive cycle of behavior that she needed to break out of if she really wanted to grow. He'd probably even hit below the belt and tell her it was just plain bad karma. He might ring bells and circle her with a burning clump of sage to cleanse her of negativity. He might prescribe a bath of mineral salts and fresh rosemary. He might light white candles and chant. He wouldn't be supportive, that's for sure.

But love is funny, and for the first time in her life Yuki didn't give a rat's ass about that kind of spirituality. She was finding the meaning of life, the ultimate answer to all the questions of the universe, and it was right here breathing warmly beside her in bed.

...

Keith was thirsty, really parched. His head was woozy from lack of sleep and residual amounts of N-methyl-3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine still coursing through his nervous system.
He slipped out of bed, feeling his kidneys creaking painfully when he stood up, and went to raid the honor bar. He fumbled with the key, trying to open the lock on the fridge, but managed not to wake Chad. He wondered why they kept the mini-bar locked. Does having a key make you more honorable?

The cool air from the fridge felt good on his hot feet. He sorted through the domestic and imported beers, sodas, and tropical juices and pulled out a bottle of Evian. He cracked it open and drained it. The water was painfully cold and made his teeth chime as it slid down his throat. But it made him feel better. He pulled out a second bottle and began sipping it, enjoying the sensation of being turned into a snowman from the inside out.

He turned and looked at Chad. In the half-light of the hotel room, Chad looked a lot older than he did in the drug light of last night. Not that Keith minded having his drink spiked or fucking a slightly older guy. He had no regrets. He'd had a good time. And he needed it. Stalking and planning a murder can make you tense, and it really helps to blow off some steam without blowing your cover.

One good thing about his stint in the marines was that Keith was exposed to all kinds of drugs: clinical-trial-quality amphetamines that his CO gave him to keep him awake for days on end when he was off on a covert op, and muscle-relaxing horror reducers to help him come down after he was extracted and debriefed. They were the finest pharmaceuticals the Pentagon could procure, but the best stuff he got was from his fellow soldiers—opium from Afghanistan, hashish from India and Morocco, LSD from Okinawa, mushrooms from the Costa Rican rain forest, ecstasy from some student scientists at Cal Tech.

A young man who puts his life on the line for his country should be allowed to party, and Keith and his fellow marines could party like the legendary Assassins of Alamut. They rode the line between psychosis and pleasure until they blurred and became one. And being die-hard marines, they never left anyone behind.

Keith had been impressed by the quality of the ecstasy that Chad had given him. Where did he get that stuff? There was none of the speedy teeth-grinding high he'd had with it before. This stuff was mellow, filling him with waves of euphoria. At one point, rolling around on the bed with Chad, feeling a hot wet tongue lighting his body up, he felt like he'd entered the pleasure dome of Xanadu. When he finally came, it was like an explosion of primordial life force being squeezed from every cell in his body and channeled out the end of his cock. He'd never felt anything quite like it.

Afterward, when he would normally throw on his clothes and depart, he lay in bed. He couldn't move. Didn't want to break the spell. He was feeling good. Good about himself. Good about the world.

Now that he'd come down, he wasn't feeling that good about anything. He was feeling downright cranky. He knew he had a tough day ahead of him, trying to dig up any and all information on Mr. Sidney Tanumafili without anyone suspecting that he was looking for information on Mr. Sidney Tanumafili. It was going to be boring. There was no way around that.

It occurred to Keith that perhaps he could take another hit or two of the ecstasy and still do his research. It might even make it fun.

Moving quickly, Keith searched Chad's jacket until he found the small plastic bag loaded with pills. There must've been thirty or forty of the little devils. He shook one out and popped it in his mouth. Breakfast of champions.

He started to put the bag back in Chad's jacket when it occurred to him that two is always better than one, so he took another one, letting it melt under his tongue.

Keith stood there for a long time, naked in the middle of the room, sipping his water and waiting for the drug to kick in. He watched Chad sleep and mused. Life must be all right in Chad's world. He slept like a man without a conscience. No nightmares, no guilt. Just sweet, heavy dreams.

Keith looked at the bag of ecstasy in his hand and decided that, fuck it, he'd just take them all with him.
You give me one without asking, I take them all without asking.
That seemed like a fair trade to him. He got dressed quietly, pocketed the bag of pills, and slipped out the door as the first tingling rush of sensation began to emanate from his heart and flash through his brain.

...

They came for him. A nurse jammed a spike into his hand and started dripping something that felt chilly and weird into his veins. The doctors and residents stood around him and looked at his penis. They came and took Polaroids. Front, left, right, straight ahead. They even held a little ruler next to it for reference, like a mug shot. Francis groaned to himself. Great. Just fucking great. Now there's photographic evidence that I'm not even six inches.

They continued to poke, prod, and measure. They asked questions.

“Does this hurt?”

And then they'd pinch or squeeze or twist his dick.

“A little.”

But he was lying. The truth was he couldn't feel a thing. His cock was so numb it could've been dipped in liquid oxygen. Hit it with a hammer and it'd shatter into a million shards of frozen dick.

He heard the doctors conferring.

“I'm afraid if we don't act quickly, more tissue damage will occur and atrophy will set in.”

Damage? Atrophy? Francis wasn't a doctor, but he knew enough to know that those aren't words you ever want to hear, especially when it concerns your penis.

“Can you feel this?”

“No.”

“How about this?”

“Nothing.”

“Now?”

“Those are my balls.”

“Good. Just checking.”

The doctor looked at Francis.

“I'm sorry, but we have to take action. The drugs didn't work.”

“What are you going to do?”

The doctor smiled reassuringly. “We're going to insert a needle into your penis and drain the blood. It shouldn't hurt. We'll make sure we get the area good and numb.”

He patted Francis on the shoulder.

“It's like tapping a maple tree.”

Francis really didn't want a needle stuck in his cock. “Are there any side effects?”

“We won't know how much damage has already occurred until we get your penis back to normal.”

Francis closed his eyes. Defeated. Humiliated. Disgusted with himself. Back to normal. Fuck that. That was the last place Francis wanted to be.

...

Baxter threw his bag in the back of the Jeep and opened the driver's side door. He looked over and saw Reggie standing in the middle of the parking lot with a disgusted look on his face. Baxter waved him over.

“C'mon.”

“I thought we were gonna get a Mustang, man.”

“This is all they had.”

“You reserved a Mustang, you should get a fuckin' Mustang.”

“They gave us a discount.”

“Fuck that.”

Baxter was exasperated. The rental car place had been fiasco enough, and now his partner was giving him shit. “Do you want to do this or not?”

“Not in that.”

Baxter looked at the Jeep. “It's a convertible.”

“It looks like Barbie's car.”

Baxter had to agree. Bright fuchsia with a pink-and-white striped canvas top, it did look like Barbie's car.

“Honolulu Barbie's beach buggy.”

“I'm sorry, man, I don't know what the fuck you want me to do. You got a better idea? I'm all ears.”

Reggie, of course, didn't have a better idea. “We could get one of them little cars.”

It was hot out in the rental car parking lot, standing in the midday sun, dressed in black. Sweat beaded up on Baxter's forehead until it gained a critical mass; then it would roll off to the side and plunge down his sideburns to his neck, where it would be absorbed by the collar of his hot black shirt. This isn't what they should be doing; they should be in the car, cruising, AC blasting, top down. But no. They were arguing in the parking lot. Broiling under the tropical sun. How could he be a cool hipster hitman with this shit going on?