"I'm telling you, he was there." "The boy from Atlantis." "Smiling and waving at old Uncle Thomas." "Until you showed up, I'd almost gotten used to not seeing Keli'i." "Keli'i Parker led you to this Corsair so you could find whoever is responsible for his murder?" "Thomas!" "Jeez." "You could've gotten us killed." "He found you." "Don't let him down." "There's something very soothing, almost mystical, about the world under the sea." "I've always felt drawn to it." "And even though T.C. and I had learned to identify all kinds of sea life over the years we'd been diving together, each time had its own surprises." "You're drifting, Magnum." "Okay!" "Slightly higher." "The holes must be properly aligned." "Honestly, Magnum, if you can't see the markings, perhaps you'd better let T.C. do it." "I can see the markings." "Oh, yeah, there's nothing wrong with his vision." "T.C." "Unless you want to count seeing things that aren't there." "I'm telling you he was there." "Who was where?" "Nobody." "The boy from Atlantis." "Oh, him." "Look, T.C., I'm not so sure Rick and Higgins are real interested in hearing about this." "Swimming 100 feet down, no scuba, no air, just smiling and waving at old Uncle Thomas." "He wasn't waving." "He was gesturing." "He wasn't there." "I'm afraid I must agree with T.C. At 16 fathoms, it would be impossible." "I know it seems impossible." "You merely experienced an episode of nitrogen narcosis, more commonly referred to as "the rapture."" "Please don't talk to me about diving, Higgins." "I've done it all my adult life." "I know what the rapture is, but I also know what I saw." "That's precisely what Lieutenant Crossley said when we pulled him from the Gulf of Martaban." "We removed his diving helmet, he immediately started babbling on about the beautiful women he'd seen living beneath the sea." "I believe "Sirens" was the term he used." "No kidding." "Where is this Gulf of Martaban?" "I'm not talking about a mermaid." "Neither was he." "Lieutenant Crossley claimed he saw an entire city of them, including a caravan of elephants." "No elephants, Higgins." "No cities and no mermaids." "Yeah, just one little kid." "Yeah." "One little kid, and he was real." "Yes, of course he was." "Delicately." "Delicately." "You don't want to splinter the wood." "All right, Higgins." "Storeroom cleaned out, books brought upstairs from the den, moose head mounted..." "It's a keg buffalo." "Any more urgent chores?" "No, no." "I think that will take care of it." "Good." "Later, Higgie." "Higgins, where's the Gulf of Martaban?" "Thomas!" "Thomas!" "Jeez." "Where the hell are you at, man?" "You could've gotten us killed." "I'm sorry, Rick." "I didn't see him." "Hey, look." "You want to daydream, let me drive." "No, I'm fine." "Really." "You know, I used to date this girl that used to read dreams." "She kind of interpreted them." "She told me that daydreaming was really something special because it was close to the conscious mind." "I wasn't daydreaming, Rick." "No?" "Then, what would you call it?" "I mean, you see this kid on the freeway, you see him underwater." "Look, maybe there's something weird stuck in your subconscious mind." "Maybe, just maybe, she could help you figure out what this fantasy kid represents." "Look, Rick." "The kid is real." "I don't need help with my subconscious." "What I need is help finding out who he is and why he needs me." "Okay, okay." "I thought that's why we were going to see this friend of yours." "It is." "Look, I know Wesley can help us." "He's been with the newspaper for 12 years." "He knows every family on the Island." "He's an investigative reporter, right?" "Yeah." "Something like that." "I just wrote my 20,00oth obituary." "You write obituaries?" "And that breaks the Press Telegram's old record set in '58 by Max Mitchell." "That's great!" "Isn't that great, Thomas?" "Yeah." "It's terrific." "Hey, did you win a trophy or something?" "I'm not in it for the trophies." "Okay, I got one for you." "Born August 12th, 1923." "Died April 4th, 1978." "No runs, no hits, no errors." "Um, uh..." "Johnny Matthews, the shortstop." "Okay, okay." "Born December 3rd, 1948." "Died May 1st, 1980." "Stepped on the gas instead of the brake." "Stepped on the gas and not the brakes." "Wayne Makini, the racecar driver." "You're good." "You ever consider getting into this line of work?" "Makini." "I should've had that one." "You know, it's amazing the stories you run into doing the kind of writing I do." "Take your request, for example." "I cross-indexed every known death at the Kahuku Lagoon, computer gave me 22 different items." "That's 22 different stories." "I categorized them for you." "Natural causes, accidental and unexplained." "What exactly does unexplained cover?" "Probably what you've been seeing in your dreams." "Unexplained means that the current got the corpse before the coroner did." "You know, the ocean has its little secrets." "I got one for you. "One if by land, two if by Big C."" "Admiral Gus Delmore." "That's an old one." "Oh." "Any luck?" "Thomas?" "That's him." "That's the boy in Kahuku Lagoon." "For me, the morning paper has always been an hour with the sports section or maybe the comics over a nice, hot cup of coffee." "I never could figure people who started the day with the obituary page." "But talking to Rick's friend, Wesley, made me consider that obituaries were as much about life as death." "A condensed version of dreams, achievements and loved ones." "And maybe in this case, a starting point to find out why a life had ended before the dreams and achievements could be fulfilled." "I didn't know how or why Keli'i Parker's death had crossed over into my life." "But I knew he was going to be with me day and night until I found out why." "Mrs. Parker?" "Yes?" "Uh, could I talk to you for a minute?" "Your child's having a problem with playground etiquette?" "No, uh..." "I'd like to talk to you about your son, Keli'i." "Who are you?" "My name is Thomas Magnum." "I'm a private investigator." "Look, we settled with the insurance company a long time ago." "Why don't you people just go away and leave us alone?" "Mrs. Parker, please." "I'm not going to talk to you." "I've seen your son." "At least, I think I have." "This morning, at Kahuku Lagoon, I was diving..." "I know this sounds crazy." "But even though I know he couldn't have been there..." "He gestured to you, to come closer." "I used to see him every night." "In my dreams." "He was underwater." "Swimming." "Happy." "He wanted to show me something." "Just out of sight." "At first, I'd wake up scared." "Then I started sleeping all the time, so that I could be with him." "I even went diving once to see if I could find him." "Working here, gradually, I started to wake up." "Finally, he quit coming to me." "Ilima?" "Stephen." "You ready to go home?" "Mr. Magnum, this is my husband, Stephen." "Honey, he's an investigator." "We don't need any more questions, Mr. Magnum." "We've put the past behind us." "Well, I can understand how you feel..." "No." "I don't think you can." "I'd appreciate it if you'd stay away from my wife." "Shirley, what about the C-46?" "Well, Willy says if he stays up the whole night and they put a few extra mechanics on the job, it ought to pass muster by tomorrow noon." "Think we can put off the inspection for just one more day?" "Hi, uh..." "Hi, F.A.A.?" "What?" "You're the examiner from the F.A.A.?" "Right." "Great." "Harry Granger." "Why don't we just get right into the paperwork?" "You know, safety records, maintenance reports, uh, get all that out of the way before we get into the aircraft." "Sure." "Well, uh..." "Great." "Follow me." "I think you're going to find everything you're going to need right in here." "Here we go." "Quite an operation here." "Yeah, well, we work at it." "You know, uh, I remember when this place used to be Moku Charters." "You really expanded, huh?" "I'll say." "You know, we've got records going back here five years." "That's when we took over this operation." "By the way, how far back do you want to go?" "Well, how about right at the top?" "You know, I never figured that old guy," "Kalihi, to be the type to retire." "Now that should do you for starters." "Damn." "Problem?" "My calculator." "Oh, we can get you anything you need." "I'll be right back." "Hello, may I help you?" "Vince Harris, F.A.A." "I couldn't stay away, either." "This was my father's favorite place." "His hideaway." "Whenever he needed a place to think, disappear." "Is that why you came here?" "I thought that maybe since Keli'i had shown himself to you..." "But he wasn't there." "Maybe I was trying too hard." "I'm not sure trying has anything to do with it." "Yesterday, how did you know where to find me?" "Your address was listed in an old obituary." "And a neighbor told me you were at the school." "After you left, I thought." ""You have to leave this alone." "You have to stop thinking about Keli'i."" "But I went to Moku Charters, instead." "What do you expect to find there?" "Something that would help me put this feeling to rest, but instead I found Granger Sea and Air and..." "I came here." "You've been here all night?" "Well, I can't sleep, anyway." "I keep dreaming about him." "It's always the same." "He keeps gesturing me to follow him down, and I keep following him." "He keeps getting farther away." "Magnum, do you think maybe we're both crazy?" "No." "You're the first person to say Keli'i's name out loud in so, so long." "I'd forgotten the sound of it." "Stephen can't bear to talk about him." "It hurts even worse for him because he feels so guilty." "Why?" "Stephen thinks he should have been able to protect his son against anything." "Even against me." "The day of the accident, Stephen wanted Keli'i to stay home and help with the household chores." "Character building, he said." "But it was such a beautiful day, and Keli'i wanted so much to go with his grandfather." "I'm afraid my own character is a bit more lax than my husband's." "I couldn't see what harm could come." "You couldn't have known." "No." "I suppose not." "After..." "Afterwards, I did something very foolish and..." "Stephen was afraid to leave me alone." "My weakness made Stephen vulnerable." "Granger Sea and Air wanted that location and they paid $100,000 for Moku Charters." "Was it worth that?" "To my father, there was no price." "But after he and Keli'i died..." "Harry Granger did very well for himself, I think." "And I have a feeling he sleeps at night." "Until you showed up yesterday, I'd almost gotten used to not seeing Keli'i." "I envy you your dream." "Even before I was in training as a Navy Seal," "I'd heard my share of stories about rapture of the deep." "And I was pretty sure that at least some of them were true." "But I was also sure that you couldn't get rapture when you had both feet firmly planted on the ground." "It wasn't lack of oxygen that caused me to see that plane coming out of the sun at me." "That plane had physical dimension." "And I knew that if I could identify it and locate it," "I had a good chance of getting some questions answered." "Oh." "My God!" "What have you done?" "Higgins!" "I thought you were out." "You thought I was out!" "Oh." "That got a little wrinkled there." "Here, let..." "Don't touch it." "Haven't you done enough damage already?" "I was just trying to find some information." "I might have expected some feeble excuse like that from you after the flower has been despoiled." "Oh, please, Higgins." "Don't you think you're overreacting just a little bit?" "I mean, they're just books." "Just books?" "Just books?" "Proust, Somerset Maugham, Balzac." "You can refer to them as "just books"?" "Oh, come on, Higgins." "I'm afraid your blatant disregard for the world's finest literature leaves me no choice but to make this room off-limits to you from this moment forward." "Oh, now wait a minute." "If you used the Dewey Decimal System like most reasonable..." "The Dewey Decimal System is antiquated." "Please leave." "No!" "Not till I find what I'm looking for." "It's important." "What is it?" "I can't tell you." "Out." "No, really, Higgins, I..." "If you're going to tell me another wild-eyed story about children calling to you from underwater..." "Of course not." "It's nothing like that." "A World War ll plane just tried to run me off the road." "It came right at me, out of the sun." "The oldest fighter pilot trick in the book." "Now, Higgins, I'm not sure how or why, but somehow, see," "I think the airplane incident is related to the boy underwater, and I..." "What are you doing?" "I'm calling the crisis clinic." "Believe me, it's for your own good." "I saw it." "And if I can find a picture of it, I will show you exactly what plane it was." "How do you do that?" "How do you know exactly where every book is?" "How can you possibly keep track?" "It's a very simple system known only to me and a charming, rather zaftig army clerk I met while stationed in Burma." "As a matter of fact, she and I authored the system, as it were." "I'll never forget that night." "It was a balmy evening, after hours." "We were thrown together by chance in the stacks of the base library." "Naturally, conversation turned to matters literary and before we knew it, we were swept away by creative passion." "One thing led to another and the rest might have been library history had it not been for the fact..." "But that's another story." "Your plane?" "Oh." "Right." "Yeah." "There." "That's it." "A Navy JRB." "That is the plane that tried to run me off the road." "That's impossible." "Oh, how can you know that?" "The annual report of the Anglo-Hawaiian Aeronautical Enthusiast Society." "You can see for yourself." "There's not a single World War ll vintage plane in Hawaii." "Harry Granger!" "What?" "The President of the Enthusiast Society is Harry Granger?" "Yes." "Delightful chap." "He was a pilot with the American Volunteer Group in China." "The Flying Tigers." "The same." "He now owns a charter company here in Hawaii." "Granger Sea and Air." "Formerly Moku Charters." "I know." "Thanks, Higgins." "Granger Sea and Air, this is niner-five alpha." "This is niner-five alpha." "Do you read me?" "Go ahead, nine-five alpha." "I have an emergency GSA and I need clearance to land and repair, over." "That's a roger." "T. C. .' Do you know what could happen to me if anyone found out I was faking an emergency?" "My license, my business." "It's the only way I could figure to get close to the hangar." "A little more to your right, T. C." "Oh, great." "Company." "Hi." "Are you the pilot?" "No." "No." "You got a parts department open?" "I need some shock mountings for an engine I'm working on." "You mean LORD mounts?" "Uh, right." "Ask Steve." "He's in the far hangar." "Thanks." "What seems to be the trouble?" "Oh, I don't know." "You know much about helicopters?" "I'm afraid not." "We don't get any choppers out here." "Mostly twin engine props." "Yeah?" "To be honest with you, I've never looked inside one of these before." "No kidding." "What do you think the problem is?" "Oh, uh, hydraulics." "We've got to, uh, disconnect the relays, recalibrate the valves, check the points." "You know, all kind of heavy stuff." "Oh, yeah." "Uh, well, that should do it." "And I want to thank you for all of your help." "Anytime!" "Was it there?" "Thomas?" "Was the plane there?" "Have you ever stopped to think this may be the work of an overtired, overactive, imagination?" "Yeah." "Then there was the time I knew I'd seen Michelle, and you thought it was the work of an overtired, overactive, imagination." "Then there was the time I was sure I'd seen Mac, and you thought..." "Okay, okay, okay." "But this time you keep running into a dead end." "Maybe this time is different." "Maybe." "Okay, where to now?" "My cousin Mike took me diving for the first time when I was in high school, and a whole new world opened up to me." "A world with its own set of rules, perspective, and reality." "It was a lesson I never forgot." "Now, I knew that Keli'i hadn't come to me in your everyday, ordinary kind of reality." "But that didn't mean I hadn't seen him." "What it did mean was that I couldn't stop asking questions until I found out why I'd seen him." "I should've known you'd show up." "Here to see your handiwork?" "I stopped at the school." "Yeah, yeah." "They called me." "Told me that llima had shown up drunk." "They tried to get her to go home." "Only, of course, she had a different idea." "Look, Mr. Parker..." "No, you look." "You take a good look at exactly what you're doing." "Are you proud of yourself, Mr. Magnum?" "You know, before you came into our lives, llima and I, we were holding it together." "We had gotten past the years of drinking, the nervous breakdown, the attempted suicide." "Or didn't she tell you about that?" "She told me she'd rather be dead with Keli'i than go on living alone." "As if she were alone." "I found her in time that day." "I don't know if I will the next time." "Will you?" "Aren't you going to take her home?" "She won't go." "Ilima?" "That's funny." "Everywhere I go, I run into you." "Stephen was here." "He's mad." "I've been trying to figure out all afternoon how it is that some people lose everyone who's close to them." "What causes that?" "I don't think there is a reason, llima." "No, there must be something." "I almost lost Stephen." "During the war." "I couldn't sleep for three weeks waiting to hear." "When the phone rang, I knew." "I knew he was okay before I ever answered." "I keep thinking that phone" "is going to ring again." "Ilima," "I am going to stop." "I can't believe Keli'i would want me to keep searching if he knew it was hurting you like this." "You can't stop." "I stopped, and Keli'i went away." "He found you." "Please." "Don't let him down." "I kept telling myself this was the last dive." "The last chance to find Keli'i." "I told myself that after this dive, I'd quit looking." "That's what I told myself." "But even though Keli'i stayed elusive, I couldn't surface." "Even though I knew that, as tired as I was," "I was putting myself in real danger, I couldn't quit looking." "And even though I knew that beyond 200 feet, my own chances of survival were getting slimmer and slimmer," "I couldn't force myself to go up." "Something or someone kept drawing me down." "And as I kept going deeper and deeper, I told myself." "I had to take the chance to find Keli'i." "And at last, I saw it." "Not the boy." "But something maybe even more important." "I knew I'd found what Keli'i had been trying to show me." "I found it, Keli'i, I found it!" "I still don't understand the reason for such jubilation." "Don't you see, Higgins?" "The plane I found in Kahuku Lagoon was a Corsair." "A World War ll vintage plane." "I'm aware of that." "Nevertheless..." "So was the Navy JRB that tried to run me off the road." "I know, but what possible connection could there be between a plane which has been submerged at the bottom of the ocean for 40 years and the Navy JRB which tried to run you off the road?" "Maybe Stephen Parker." "I have studied Aristotle, Socrates, Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel, Bertrand Russell." "I have toured college campuses debating the virtues of dialectic versus symbolic syllogism." "I have written scholarly articles on the need for a new, more dynamic logic." "But nothing in my life has prepared me for the workings of the Thomas Magnum mind." "I was right." "Lt. Stephen Parker, Marine Corps pilot." "He flew A-6 Intruders in Vietnam." "There were thousands of Marine pilots in Vietnam." "What makes you think that Parker was the man in the Navy JRB?" "Don't you see, Higgins?" "It's symbolic." "His son is killed in a boating accident." "Except maybe it's not an accident." "Maybe someone who's still around has something to do with it." "And that someone is the only person in the entire Islands who owns a vintage World War ll airplane." "So Keli'i points me in the direction of the only clue that he can, a World War ll plane, hoping that I could take the leap, find the connection." "So you're saying that Keli'i Parker led you to this Corsair so you could find whoever is responsible for his murder?" "I think, Higgins, if you will look at this thing a little off-center, a little sideways, you will see that whoever owned the plane that tried to run me off the road probably killed Keli'i and his grandfather." "Now, it is up to me to find out if Stephen Parker is that man." "And I think I know someone who can help me out." "Astonishing." "It just isn't possible!" "No, no." "It was an accident." "An accident that paved the way for you to buy Moku Charters." "Look, I really wanted this location." "I knew that it would double, even triple, my business." "Now, I offered Parker's father-in-law twice the fair market value." "He wouldn't sell." "He was a stubborn old man, and I was furious." "But I would never, never condone murder." "Never." "I'm not saying you did, but maybe Stephen Parker thought for $100,000 it was worth it." "100,000?" "I wish I got off so easy." "I paid $500,000 to Parker." "No." "No, I just can't believe it." "All right, look, maybe you're right." "Maybe Parker didn't plant explosives on that boat." "But just..." "What if you're wrong?" "Don't you think it's time somebody found out for sure?" "Well, if he does have that plane, there's a small airfield, couple of hangars, out past Mokuleia." "Thank you." "I don't want to go, Stephen!" "Just leave me alone." " I don't care what you want anymore." " Parker." "What are you doing here?" "I came to talk to Stephen." "Do you know something, Stephen?" "Everywhere I go, I see him." "Get in the plane." "Why is that, do you suppose?" "Get in the plane." "We're leaving." "There's nowhere left to go, Parker." "I told you to leave us alone." "You just wouldn't go away." "You're hurting me, Stephen." "Why don't you just let her go?" "Why didn't you stop?" "You had to keep asking questions." "Somebody would've found out, someday." "If it wasn't me, it would've been somebody else." "What are you talking about?" "Shut up." "What were you going to do?" "Kill everybody that started to suspect?" "Oh, you got all the answers." "You just let her go and then we'll talk about it." "Talk about what?" "The whole thing was her fault anyway." "Stephen?" "I told her not to let Keli'i out on that boat." "He had to stay home and take care of chores." "I told her that." "No, Stephen, no." "Ilima, I want you to come over to me." "She's not going anywhere." "Somebody is gonna have to pay." "Not llima." "All right." "I put the explosives on the boat, but what else was I gonna do?" "I had tried talking with her father." "He wouldn't sell." "He wouldn't listen to reason." "I only wanted a future." "I only wanted to take care of my wife and son." "Stephen, tell me you didn't kill our baby!" "I didn't!" "You did!" "No." "You let Keli'i out on the boat." "No, no!" "Stay right there." "Where you gonna go, Parker?" "No matter where you land, you'll take this with you." "Illusion and reality." "Anyone not watching Stephen Parker carefully might have thought he was running away from his destiny." "In reality, he ran headlong into it." "Stephen Parker's plane was lost at sea." "He'd tried to live too long with an act he'd committed that had robbed him of his humanity." "He wasn't trying to run away." "There was nothing for him to do but join the two people he'd sent to a watery grave." "I know what you're thinking." "I said I wasn't going to dive anymore, at least not to find Keli'i." "But I wasn't looking for the boy." "In fact, I knew he wasn't going to make an appearance." "I had the feeling he didn't need anything from me anymore." "As for Ilima, knowing the truth about her son's death, had helped her stop blaming herself and start living her own life again." "A little emptiness would always be there, but at least her nightmares were over."