Chapter 3

Southwest Precious Metals was attracting a lot of interest. They claimed an area of desert basin that was filled to a depth of 400 meters with material eroded from an adjacent range--a mountainous area that had been mined for gold in the last century. The deposit, known as 'desert dirt,' contained gold, silver, and platinum in small concentrations. Small, that is, by the ounce. By the square kilometer, Southwest was sitting on the find of the decade. The problem lay in the extraction. There's a lot of gold in the Pacific, too, in the salt water, but no one has figured out how to extract it economically.

Arguments raged on the Internet. Gold and platinum are rarely found in the same deposit. Conventional fire assay methods are ineffective on desert dirt. The samples could have been fraudulently salted. A prestigious independent auditor was engaged to evaluate the deposit. Various explanations were advanced to counter the objections. Seasoned investors said that these companies were scams nineteen times out of twenty, so why bother at all? Optimists brought up investor resistance to heap leaching, an extraction method that had made fortunes in the 80's. Several mutual funds bought big positions after sending their mining aces to investigate first hand. The price was beginning to rise on larger volume.

The day after Joe had lunch with Mo, he bought 1500 shares of SPM at $4.75. The next morning, the price was $5.75 bid / $5.94 asked. A press release announced that an experimental extraction technique had yielded results that were higher than expected. Tests were continuing with larger samples. Joe jumped on the ask and bought 1500 more shares. "Damn it, Batman! We've got a live one." The price spiked to $6.75 before profit taking knocked it down. It closed at $6.25 after heavy trading.

For several months the price continued to move up, as larger samples processed with the new technique yielded consistently higher results. He bought 1500 more shares at $10.50. When the price rose over $11, Claude shocked the online bulls by selling most of his shares. "But Claude," Joe wrote, "if the extraction method is as cheap as most people think it will be, shares will go to $100, easy." ($450,000 to him.)

"Don't worry, mon ami," Claude answered. "I still have a position if that comes to be. I have my original investment returned with a profit. And my heart keeps the normal beat."

Joe thought about buying more but held back. One detail bothered him. The CEO, a thirty year mining pro, claimed to have a degree from an obscure college in the Northwest. Several investors had tried unsuccessfully to verify this. Joe e-mailed the company to inquire but received no answer. Kate had an academic friend in Seattle who checked and was unable to find a record of graduation. The closest any one could come was to determine that he had gone to school there for at least three years. The college had gone through many changes over the years. Degree requirements were different. Records had been moved many times. They failed to pin it down.

Joe didn't care whether or not someone had a degree. It is what one can do that matters. But he cared if someone lied about it; lying is a bad sign. SPM stock broke above $14 and began to correct. The short sellers piled on, selling borrowed stock, driving the price down in order to frighten investors into dumping their shares. The price held in the $10 range for a few weeks and then quickly fell to $8 and then $7. The short position grew larger by the day. The bulls argued that all those borrowed shares had to be bought back sooner or later and that the upcoming positive mining audit would trigger a massive short squeeze that would quickly put the price over $20. The company continued to release good news.

When the audit report was finally released, it verified only the original assay results, a year old, and made no mention of the extraction yields. The company made bland assurances about ongoing efforts to improve the extraction technique, but there were no hard numbers and they were running out of development capital.

Trading in SPM was suspended. When it resumed, the stock cratered to below $3 in seconds. Joe waited for a bounce, clamped his jaw, and sold out at $3.25, just below the high of the day. Over the next few months, the price dropped to a nickel and the company went bankrupt.

Joe was in shock. He had lost $17,160 plus commissions, half his savings. As he thought it over, he realized the mistakes he'd made. He'd broken the primary law of diversity. You should never have all your eggs in one basket. Secondly, he had wavered between the attitudes of the trader and the long term investor, ignoring the safeguards of each approach. If you are trading, you must wait for good entry points and you must exit immediately if the price moves against you. Gains more than compensate for losses, if the losses are strictly limited. Furthermore, Victor Sperandeo had cautioned never to give back more than half your profits--they are too hard to come by. At one point Joe had been $32,000 ahead. It hurt to remember.

If you are a long term investor, on the other hand, you must know that the company is sound. Joe failed to follow through on his investigation of the CEO. He had been too cheap to go to the annual shareholder's meeting where he would not have found the qualities he looked for in management.

He had been neither trader nor investor. He had been a loser. Not only that, he had spent months staring into his monitor, living on the Internet, reading the Wall St. Journal every day and Barrons every weekend, and dreaming about how he would invest $450,000. He asked himself how he could have been so stupid, so inept.

He went to a Korean bar. Gorgeous women paraded continuously past his table. When he tired of sitting with one, the next slid in against him and put her hand on his leg. "Buy me drink? You want pu-pu's?" The music was loud, hypnotic, non-stop. They danced. They accepted MasterCard. Joe staggered home with further losses.

He was in deepest day-after shambles when the phone rang.

"Ugh, hlo?"

"Hi, Joe."

"Max! How ya doin', buddy?"

"Fine. I'm at the airport."

"Great! Come on over, or are you just flying through?"

"I thought I'd stay a couple of days. Kate told me you were here."

Half an hour later, there he was. "Max, you look terrific . . . growing up, man, getting stronger."

"Thanks, you don't look so great," Max said.

"Nah, long night, never mind. A walk, rice and eggs, it will all be history." Max put his pack down in a corner. "That's not the lightest looking pack."

"It has everything I own in it. Carried it all over New Zealand."

"Yeah? Both islands? What do they call them?"

"North and South," Max said, smiling.

"Right, right. Always wanted to go there, supposed to be a great place."

"The Kiwi's, man . . . awesome!" Max was short with wide shoulders and large dark brown eyes. He had filled out since his school days, but he had the same earnest expression. Max had gotten through the University of Vermont, studying this and that, anthropology mostly, but he'd gone walkabout instead of buckling down to graduate school. Joe had been glad at the time, and now he could see why: Max was calmer, more sure of himself after a couple of years of knocking around.

"Let's go get some breakfast."

"Lunch," Max said.

At the coffee shop on King Street, Joe asked, "Remember that week we spent on Kauai? That was a good time."

"Yeah, the Na Pali coast," Max said.

"Some place," Joe said. "The whole damn island should be a world park."

"I remember that story you told us about the leper who wouldn't go to the colony."

"Koolau," Joe said. "He defeated the British Navy. They couldn't get him. He warned them, too. One sick guy with a rifle against marines and cannon--he killed, what? . . . three of them before they gave up? He wasn't doing anything, just he and his lover in the valley."

"Yeah," Max said.

"One of the great love stories," Joe said. "Made for Hollywood. She stayed with him until he died and never caught leprosy. A few years later, she climbed back over the pali and started all over again, lived a long life. If I were a drinking man, I'd propose a toast to her--and all women like her."

"Women," Max said, just like a grown up, holding out his coffee mug. They clinked mugs.

"So, what next?" Joe asked.

"I've been thinking . . . look at this." Max reached into his pocket and pulled out a little wooden box, deep red with a dramatic black grain. He removed a rubber band, placed the box on the table, and lifted off the top. The box was rectangular with an oval center; a thin piece of stone lay in the oval, tawny and flaked. "It's an arrowhead. Found it in Vermont." Joe put the arrowhead in his palm and looked at the indentations near the base and at the rounded but definite point. The slight weight of it shocked him. Whoever made it had felt the same weight; it had been in his or her palm as well.

"I carried it around in my wallet, and then when I was in New Zealand I made the box out of Kauri wood."

"Beautiful wood," Joe said. "The oval is perfect for the arrowhead."

Max nodded. "I'm going to make things," he said. "That's what I want to do. Furniture, maybe."

"Good idea!" Joe put the arrowhead back in its box.

"I'm going to stop and see Kate when I get to the mainland," Max said.

"Check out her new boyfriend, Jackson. He's into working with his hands. Nice guy." Joe had an idea. "Look, Max, why don't you take the truck?"

"Truck?"

"My truck. It's at Kate's, at Kate's mechanic's. I'm not using it. I don't know how long I'm going to be here on the island." Max was starting to look excited. "It's registered and the insurance is good for another six or seven months. Here." Joe found the registration in his wallet and gave it to him. "Just take this. That way all you have to do is put gas in it and go. When it expires, I'll send you a bill of sale. Or you can mail it to me and I'll sign it over to you. It's got a bed in the back, too."

"Really?"

"Sure. Keep the tools. Just leave my clothes at Kate's." Max sat back and considered. He stretched his arm forward and slowly slid the arrowhead across the table.

"Swap," he said.

"Oh, Max, I can't."

Max shook his head. "That's the deal."

"Well . . . O.K." Joe put the top on the box, wrapped the rubber band around it, and put it in his pocket. They walked to Waikiki and hung out for another day before Max caught a plane to Seattle.

At the airport, Joe thought of Mo and asked Max if he'd ever had a professor at Vermont named Soule.

"Soule . . . Sounds familiar. An old guy? Yeah, Soule. He gave a couple of guest lectures in an economics class. I remember now--he was steamed about the Romans. They had tax laws that screwed everything up. Then the currency collapsed. He was interesting about that."

"His daughter lives here. I met her by accident." Max's flight was announced for boarding. "There it is," Joe said. "Sorry to see you go. But you're headed in the right direction. That's a joke. You'll see a cookie fortune taped to the dash in the truck; that's what it says. But you are, actually. Listen, that truck has two gas tanks--there's a switch--you'll see it."

"O.K. Joe, thanks. Take care of yourself, man."

"You too, Max." And he was gone. That's the way it is with kids, Joe thought.

"Damn it, Batman, " he said when he got home much later that day. "You and me. They don't have a chance." That night he dreamt of a campfire and coyotes calling in the night.

5

Two girls with clear Asian faces and long black hair were waiting at a bus stop on King Street. One was about fourteen, carrying school books; the other was several years older, heavier. Joe stopped at Coco's, ordered coffee, and tried to describe the girls in a notebook. They were so beautiful, so similar, sisters maybe . . . yet different. The older was a woman, really. Hours went by like minutes as he searched for the right words.

He wandered into Waikiki and sat on a bench by the beach. A woman with smooth brown skin walked into the water. Her body was like a torpedo in a blue one piece suit. She went out a few yards, waited, and dove quietly under a three-footer, bobbing up on the other side. The locals live in the water, Joe thought, they don't fight it. He remembered a story in The Advertiser about a sampan that sank in the Pacific. A fisherman, rescued twenty-four hours later, was asked by a reporter, "What did you do all that time out there with no life jacket?"

"Wen' sleep when I got tired," he said. He was one of those big laughing Hawaiians who float like buoys, heads up out of the water.

Joe strolled through the zoo. The gorilla was famous. He sat near the front of his cage mugging at tourists, carrying on, drawing them closer as they took pictures. Locals grinned from the sides. When enough people had gathered, the gorilla would sneak one hand behind and below him and without warning blast the tourists with a shit ball that hit the bars and scattered for maximum effect. He would leap to his feet mightily pleased, as the crowd screamed and the locals bent over laughing.

The elephants were patient and knowing. Joe trusted elephants. And dolphins. Sometimes he walked all the way to the Kahala to watch the dolphins zoom around their salt water pool. They came right to him at the edge of the pool, wiggling, excited as puppies.

He walked up Kapahulu Avenue and stopped at Zippy's where he had a bowl of saimin and worked on the description of the two girls. At home, in the mail, there was a card from Mo announcing a show of her photographs. The print on the card was deeply silvered. It showed the base of a banyan tree by a bus stop: high roots radiated out and sank below the sidewalk; a man was asleep, cradled between two roots, a lunch box by his waist, one arm stretched out along the top of a root, fingers dangling, the angles of his knees and elbows blending with the bends in the roots.

"Not bad, Batman," Joe said. "Next Friday."

The days before Mo's opening passed quickly. On Friday, Joe walked down Ward Avenue to a gallery and camera shop, and, for once, he wasn't early. Empty wine bottles, a few pupus on bare trays, a glass punch bowl, paper cups and napkins were scattered across white tables. Conversation hummed and collided around the room. A blues guitar kept time in the background. Mo was smiling down at a bearded professorial type.

"How do you do?" A young Japanese man shook Joe's hand.

"Thanks for the invitation," Joe said, flashing the card.

"Are you a friend of Winifred's?"

"Yes. Joe Burke."

"Wendell Sasaki."

"Nice place you have here," Joe said. A well-dressed couple entered, and Wendell excused himself. Joe drifted along a wall of Mo's photographs. There were several of old sugar mill buildings and one taken of the sky through the branches of a koa tree. There was a large one of the city at night, lights running high up the ridges. His favorite showed two young women walking toward the camera on Kalakaua Avenue. The light was gray, pre-dawn. One had her arm around the other's shoulders. They were bent forward laughing. Their bodies and clothes were used and tired, but their faces were innocent, flooded with relief; the night was over.

Most of the subjects were conventional; it was the detail and the light on them that was interesting. They were all black and white but one--a close-up of bamboo stalks and leaves. "What do you think?" Mo asked from behind him.

"I like it." Joe turned partially. "How come it's the only one in color?"

"I have problems with color," Mo said. "It's always off. But in this case, there are really only two colors, bamboo and that tender green. They're both off in the same way, so the relationship works. And the color is so much of the story . . . " Wendell Sasaki called her over to confer with the well-dressed couple.

Joe stood in front of the picture of the young hookers, if that's what they were. Looking at them seemed more helpful than talking to anyone. Mo worked the crowd. After a time, Joe thanked the owner, waved at Mo, and left. All artists love light, he thought, walking up Ward Avenue. Mo was no exception.

The next day, he called. "Mo? Nice show."

"Thanks."

"You have won the Joe Burke award--excellence in photography."

"Why, never did I dream," she said in a Southern drawl.

"Lunch!"

"Joe, honey . . . " She dropped the drawl. "I'm busy today, let's see . . . How about Tuesday? I want to check something out on the windward side. We could eat over there."

"Good deal."

On Tuesday, she picked him up by the sandbox on the lower level of the shopping center. As they drove toward the pali, Joe said, "I'm sentimental about that sandbox. Kate used to play there." He was surprised to see pain flicker on Mo's face. "What's the matter?"

"I had a child, once. He died--when he was two--from a condition my husband forgot to tell me ran in his family. His nerves didn't work."

"How awful."

"I don't think about it much," Mo said. They were silent for a few minutes. "So, what have you been doing?"

"Losing money. I got completely involved in the market. I made a major mistake, but I learned a lot."

"I'll show you where I took the bamboo picture," she said, turning onto the old pali road. She turned again and stopped by a weathered concrete bridge. They got out and walked to the other end of the bridge where a tall grove had grown from the bank below. Mo put her elbows on the side wall of the bridge, and leaned out, midway up the grove. Joe leaned out beside her. A breeze stirred and they were enveloped by melodious knocking, a hundred percussionists set free.

"Wow!" Joe said. "A bamboo orchestra. I've never heard that before." They listened for a few minutes and then drove through the pali tunnel, emerging high over Kaneohe Bay--planes of pure light green, turquoise, dark blue. "Just another day in paradise," he said.

"Kailua isn't paradise, exactly. I've got to stop a moment in town and then we'll go over to Kaneohe."

"Sure." They wound down off the pali, and Joe waited while Mo accomplished her errand. She drove along Oneawa Street past the Racquet Club. Joe pointed. "See that hedge? I planted it!" A tall oleander hedge curved along the club drive. "A hundred small bushes," Joe said, "took me almost all day."

"Your roots in Hawaii?"

"Yok. I used to live there with Sally and Kate. I was the manager."

"How old is Kate?"

"Twenty-seven. Hard to believe. Where are we going?"

"Tops."

"That's pretty exciting. We can eat breakfast again."

"I hope she's there--a picture I'm thinking about." Mo pulled into the Tops parking lot and they sat at the counter. Joe didn't need to look at the over-sized plastic menu; he'd read it dozens of times in the Ala Moana Tops. A tall woman wearing a cook's apron stood in front of the grill. Her black hair, gathered behind her head, was held by a tortoise shell comb. Her face was long and utterly calm. Eggs, homefries, and burgers sizzled in front of her. She dropped slices of bread into an industrial toaster, flipped and scrambled, stirred and buttered, served and cleaned with untroubled movements of her arms and hands. Occasionally she turned or moved a step sideways without changing expression. She was like a reflection of herself in a still pond.

"Something else," Joe said.

"How am I going to get a picture of that?" Mo asked.

"I don't know."

Mo swiveled on her stool. "I've got to stop staring."

"You could ask her to model."

"I suppose so, but then . . . You mean in some other setting?"

"Yeah," Joe said, "naked in a waterfall--I'll help."

Mo ignored him. "Part of it is the contrast with the grill. But there's all this other clutter."

Joe shook his head. "How can she be so busy and so serene at the same time?"

"I don't think I can catch it," Mo said. "But I'm going to try."

"Jade Willow Lady," Joe said on the way back over the pali. "That's what I'd call her. I have to admit, Mo, I like looking at things. Why don't we go over to Kauai some time? Day trip. Catch an early plane, drive around, look at things, and be back by dinner? Mo pursed her lips and considered.

" I have a client over there; I could write it off. It would be nice to see the canyon. I have to go to the mainland next week. How about the week after, say Friday? That would give me time to get something done before we went."

"Sounds good. Closest flight to seven o'clock, two weeks from Friday?"

"Which airline?" Mo asked.

"I don't know--Aloha?"

"O.K. It's easier for my books if I get my own ticket," she said.

"Great. If I don't hear from you I'll see you at the terminal. Good luck with Jade Willow Lady." Mo dropped him off at the shopping center and drove into traffic without looking back.

He took the escalator to the upper level and walked into Shirokya, drawn by Japanese muzak and pretty packaging. The Japanese were incapable of bad design, he thought. It was in their genes or something. Or maybe it was just that they cared. He almost bought a porcelain doll to keep Batman company on the lanai, but he decided that might be pushy. He called Aloha and bought a ticket for the 7:10 flight to Kauai. He and Mo hadn't agreed on a return time, but the 5:45 seemed most likely.

It was nearing pupu hour at The Chart House. He walked over in time to get a table by the open windows, ordered a Glenlivet, and stretched out to enjoy the view of masts in the marina. The trade wind kept up an aluminum chatter, not as nice as the spirit of the bamboo grove, but pleasant in its own way.

At the next table, three boat owners in their thirties were drinking, talking story, and laughing loudly. As the first group of well dressed office women came through the door, one of the men leaned back in his chair. A grin spread his mustache across his red face. "Bogeys, three o'clock," he announced.

The squadron adjusted for combat. Most would become prisoners of war, Joe thought. He'd been one himself, not unhappily. Perhaps it was the habit of being coupled that was pushing him in Mo's direction. She wasn't as natural as Sally, his first wife, or as cheerful as Ingrid; she was more independent, focused, more like him in some ways. Too bad about her child--that explained some of the seriousness in her face. She wasn't bowled over by the great Joe Burke, but she was interested. He pulled back on the stick and began to climb.

6

If a globe is turned in just the right way, nothing can be seen but the Pacific and the far off edges of continents. The Hawaiian Islands are specks in the middle of this immensity. Kauai is a hundred miles from Oahu, practically next door. The Aloha Airlines jet climbed and then descended into Lihue before Joe had time to finish a glass of juice. Green sugar cane and red earth swept past lowering wings. A bump, a screech of tires, and they were down, taxiing to the small terminal.

Mo put away a small day planner in which she had been making notes. "Canyon first?" she asked.

"Banana pancakes? Hard to explore on an empty stomach."

"I brought some fruit," she said. They rented a Toyota sedan, and Joe drove into Lihue.

"Too early for saimin," he said. "Too bad. There's a great place--Hamura's--biz people from Honolulu have been known to fly over for lunch to cure their hangovers." He parked by Kenny's. "O.K., this won't take long." They ordered breakfast.

"When I lived here," Joe said, "there was only one traffic light on the island, and it wasn't on a highway; it was in the middle of a cane field, for the trucks."

"It's changing fast," Mo said. "Too beautiful not to be discovered."

"If they stop the sugar subsidies, it's all over." Joe pushed his empty plate away. Mo was wearing a black sweatshirt, tan jeans, and running shoes. He had on his Filson bush jacket, Levis, and his all purpose Clarks shoes. They looked good together, he thought, Mr. and Ms. Competent.