Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings Read Online Free PDF Page B

pinnipeds playing in a slide show behind him. Since he was conducting a job interview, he had put on his very best $5.99 ABC Store flip-flops. Kona stood in the middle of the office wearing sunglasses, his baggies, and, since he was applying for a job, a red-dirt-dyed shirt.
    "Your application says that your name is Pelke – ah, Pelekekona Ke -" Clay threw his hands up in surrender.
    "I be called Pelekekona Keohokalole – da warrior kine – Lion of Zion, brah."
    "Can I call you Pele?"
    "Kona," Kona said.
    "It says on your driver's license that your name is Preston Applebaum and you're from New Jersey."
    "I be one hundred percent Hawaiian. Kona the best boat hand in the Island, yeah. I figga I be number-one good man for to keep track haole science boss's isms and skisms while he out oppressing the native bruddahs and stealing our land and the best wahines. Sovereignty now, but after a bruddah make his rent, don't you know?"
    Clay grinned at the blond kid. "You're just a mess, aren't you?"
    Kona lost his Rastafarian, laid-backness. "Look, I was born here when my parents were on vacation. I really am Hawaiian, kinda, and I really need this job. I'm going to lose my place to live if I don't make some money this week. I can't live on the beach in Paia again. All my shit got stolen last time."
    "It says here that you last worked as a forensic calligrapher. What's that, handwriting analysis?"
    "Uh, no, actually, it was a business I started where I would write people's suicide notes for them." Not a hint of pidgin in his speech, not a skankin' smidgen of reggae. "It didn't do that well. No one wants to kill himself in Hawaii. I think if I'd started it back in New Jersey, or maybe Portland, it would have gone over really well. You know business: location, location, location."
    "I thought that was real estate." Clay actually felt a twinge of missed opportunity, here, for although he had spent his life having adventures, doing exactly what he wanted to do, and although he often felt like the dumbest guy in the room (because he'd surrounded himself with scientists), now, talking to Kona, he realized that he had never realized his full potential as a self-deluded blockhead. Ahhh… wistful regrets. Clay liked this kid.
    "Look, I'm a water guy," Kona said. "I know boats, I know tides, I know waves, I love the ocean."
    "You afraid of it?" Clay asked.
    "Terrified."
    "Good. Meet me at the dock tomorrow morning at eight-thirty."
    * * *
    Now Nate rubbed at the crisscrrossed band-aids on his forehead as Clay went through the Pelican cases of camera equipment under the table across the room. The break-in and subsequent shit storm of activity had sidetracked him from what he'd seen this morning. It started to settle on him again like a black cloud of self-doubt, and he wondered whether he should even mention what he saw to Clay. In the world of behavioral biology, nothing existed until it was published. It didn't matter how much you knew – it wasn't real if it didn't appear in a scientific journal. But when it came to day-to-day life, publication was secondary. If he told Clay what he'd seen, it would suddenly become real. As with his attraction for Amy and the realization that years' worth of research was gone, he wasn't sure he wanted it to be real.
    "So why did you need to send Amy out?" Clay asked.
    "Clay, I don't see things I don't see, right? I mean, in all the time we've worked together, I haven't called something before the data backed it up, right?"
    Clay looked up from his inventory to see the expression of consternation on his friend's face. "Look, Nate, if the kid bothers you that much, we can find someone else -"
    "It's not the kid." Nate seemed to be weighing what he was going to say, not sure if he should say it, then blurted out, "Clay, I think I saw writing on the tail flukes of that singer this morning."
    "What, like a pattern of scars that look like letters? I've seen that. I have a dolphin shot that shows tooth rakings on