Surfing Detective 02 - Wipeout

“I want to find Corky before the baby comes.”
    “You’re sure?”
    She nodded.
    “O.K.,” I sighed. “Back to Waimea.”

Twenty-Three

    On the ridge overlooking Waimea Bay I parked my Impala—leaving Summer sprawled in the passenger seat—and began searching for Corky McDahl, again.
    Stepping from the car I felt a tug of the Smith & Wesson I had tucked into the right front pocket of my khakis. It felt heavy and cold, and made a bulge in my pants that Summer could have easily noticed, had she been in any condition to look. I hoped I wouldn’t need it. Frank O. Sun had his ice, Summer was free, and Corky was God knows where—on Earth or in Heaven. Or maybe hell.
    So why did I need the revolver? I don’t know. I just didn’t feel comfortable showing up at Waimea without it.
    With my field glasses I scoped out countless surfers in Waimea’s lineup. The swell had gone down since this morning. The waves were big enough—twelve to fifteen feet—to attract a crowd, but not too big to frighten anybody off. A half dozen of surfers dropped down each precipitous face.
    In the unlikely event that Corky actually
was
out there, whose board would he be riding? His own patched candy cane sat safely in my office. I scanned the crowd and managed to pick out Cousin Alika on his sunshine yellow gun and a few of his friends. I also spotted a blond mophead here and there. But nobody who looked like Corky. After searching for several minutes, I gave up and walked back to the car.
    “I don’t see him,” I told Summer.
    Hunched over inside the Impala, she glared at me with an intensity that was almost scary.
    “Here, let me find him!” She lumbered from the car, reached for the binoculars, and took up a shaky position on the ridge overlooking the bay. I steadied her and suggested she sit down. But she wouldn’t.
    She swung the field glasses to one side of the lineup, then to the other—coming back again and again to the same spot in the thick of the farthest break.
    “Oooohh!”
She groaned.
    “Are you alright?”
Was she going into labor?
“You should really sit down.”
    “No.” She kept standing, focusing the binoculars.
“That’s him,”
she said. “That’s Corky. He’s grown his beard and he’s on an orange board. If I know him, he’ll stay out in the waves all day.”
    “Let me see.”
    She handed me the glasses and I checked out the surfers, focusing on a bearded blond guy on an orange gun. “Could be,” I admitted. “Looks a little like the photo you gave me.”
    “It
is
him.
Aaahh
—
Aaahh!”
Summer winced. Her paper white face bore an expression of pure pain.
    “Are you—“
    “A huge contraction . . .” She grimaced and then buckled over.
    “We’re finding a hospital.” I reached for her hand.
    Summer no longer resisted. Inside the car I stretched her out in the front seat, her head on my lap. She was beginning to writhe.
“Aaaaaaahh!
—
Aaaaaaahh!”
    Neither of us paid anymore attention to the surf or the scenery on the way to Kahuku Community Hospital, about five miles of Kamehameha Highway that passes some of the most famous breaks in the world. By the time we pulled up to the emergency entrance, Summer was breathing fast and hard. I have to confess, I felt totally helpless.
    The green-smocked medics wheeled her off in a flash, and so I waited. I thought about Leimomi. Her pleading voice was echoing in my head. I picked up a
People
magazine and flipped through it, without seeing a thing. I kept thinking about Leimomi. Time passed.

    Summer delivered a healthy eight-pound, two-ounce baby girl.
    “You’re the father?” one of the ER nurses said to me in the waiting room.
    “Y—” I started to say, then realized where I was. “No, the baby is not mine. The father is surfing at Waimea Bay.”
    “Oh . . .” she said.
    “Is she OK?” I interrupted any possible further questioning.
    “The mother and daughter are doing fine,” the nurse reassured me. “Both are doing fine.”
    “Can you tell her I’ll be right back?” I stood up. “She’ll understand.”
    “I . . . yes, I can.” The nurse looked at me curiously as I turned and made for the door.
    I fetched my Impala in the hospital’s lot and roared back to Waimea, even faster than the trip down. There was no place to park legally in the bay’s lot, so I double parked and walked across the beach, hoping the officer directing traffic was too busy to notice.
    Of the dozens of surfers we had seen earlier in the