“He from Maui—got money, got some food trucks. He know Maui things. He don’t know the Leeward Side. He buy this from another guy. He so lucky to have Max house.”

“What can you tell us about Max?”

“I can tell you he was bulletproof. I can show you his friend—he knows everything. They were buddies. But, hey, you gotta move your vehicle.”

“Where is this guy?”

“Follow me.”

In the car, following the cruiser, Olive said, “He doesn’t know. He thinks Max Mulgrave is alive.”

Sharkey sighed, as he often did hearing the man’s name, the name like an accusation; and he knew that saying he was dead would mean his having to admit he’d killed him. He resisted saying anything; his guilt burdened and weakened him.

“This policeman is taking an extraordinary route.”

The cruiser had moved through a neighborhood of small bungalows, along back streets of junked cars, to the highway, but instead of reentering the residential area the policeman headed to the beach on a service road patched with softened tar that ran parallel to the main road, past overflowing trash barrels and piles of litter—blue plastic, discarded tires, rusted bicycles, and shattered toys. They came to what looked from a distance like a campsite, a huddle of tents atop a steep sand dune, surrounded by windbreaks of canvas, and twiggy lean-tos wrapped with tarpaulins, the twigs protruding like bleached bones. A small Hawaiian flag flapped upside-down on a stick secured to one of the tent poles.

That was the foreground of improvisation and disorder; in great contrast the background was a forested ridge, the old twisted lava flow showing in its folded slopes, the green dignity of a Hawaiian mountainside, its sweet aromatic woods.

The policeman waved them forward, and when they drew beside his cruiser, he called out, “Ask for Frawley DeFreeze. Is his friend. He mention Max to me other day.”

Olive parked, and they walked up the ramp of sand and tussocky turf into the littered area of the tents, where three men were seated in beach chairs, facing the sea, the small waves flopping against the shore, rolls of scummy foam draining into the sand, some shrieking children kicking at it.

“Aloha,” Olive said.

The men leaned back, scowling, their chairs straining under their weight. Two were very fat, bulked against the frayed webbing of the chairs; the third was gaunt, holding a small flattish can under his chin. They wore dirty T-shirts and torn shorts and baseball caps. Now Olive could see that the gaunt one was eating, flicking food from the can to his mouth with chopsticks. At first glance they were like a trio of ragged clowns, harlequins in patches who at any moment might get up and dance and distract her with their foolery, but she saw they were inert and stubborn and colorless in their squalor.