Fluke, Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings by Christopher Moore Read Free Book Online

together."
    "Thanks," Nate said just as Fuller sat down, then turned his back on all of them and resumed eating his breakfast, dismissing them. The women at the table looked embarrassed.
    "Breakfast?" Clay said. He herded his team to their table.
    They ordered and drank coffee in silence, each looking out across the street to the ocean, avoiding eye contact until Fuller and his group had left.
    Nate turned to Amy. "A jamoke? What are you, living in a Cagney movie?"
    "Who is that guy?" Amy asked. She snapped the corner off a piece of toast with more violence than was really necessary.
    "What's a jamoke?" Kona asked.
    "It's a flavor of ice cream, right?" Clay said.
    Nate looked at Kona. "How do you know Fuller?" Nate held up his ringer and shot a cautionary glare, the now understood signal for no Rasta/pidgin/bullshit.
    "I worked the Jet Ski concession for him at Kaanapali."
    Nate looked to Clay, as if to say,
You knew this?
    "Who is that guy?" Amy asked.
    "He's the head of Hawaii Whale," Clay said. "Commerce masquerading as science. They use their permit to get three sixty-five-foot tourist boats right up next to the whales."
    "That guy is a scientist?"
    "He has a Ph.D. in biology, but I wouldn't call him a scientist. Those women he was with are his naturalists. I guess today was even too windy for them to go out. He's got shops all over the island — sells whale crap, nonprofit. Hawaii Whale was the only research group to oppose the Jet Ski ban during whale season."
    "Because Fuller had money in the Jet Ski business," Nate added.
    "I made six bucks an hour," Kona said.
    "Nate's work was instrumental in getting the Jet Ski parasail ban done," Clay said. "Fuller doesn't like us."
    "The sanctuary may take his research permit next," said Nate. "What science they do is bad science."
    "And he blames you for that?" Amy asked.
    "I — we have done the most behavioral stuff as it relates to sound in these waters. The sanctuary gave us some money to find out if the high-frequency noise from Jet Skis and parasail boats affected the behavior of the whales. We concluded that it did. Fuller didn't like it. It cost him."
    "He's going to build a dolphin swim park, up La Perouse Bay way," Kona said.
    "What?" Nate said.
    "What?" said Clay.
    "A swim-with-the-dolphins park?" said Amy.
    "Ya, mon. Let you come from Ohio and get in the water with them bottlenose fellahs for two hundred dollar."
    "You guys didn't know about this?" Amy was looking at Clay. He always seemed to know everything that was going on in the whale world.
    "First I've heard of it, but they're not going to let him do it without some studies." He looked to Nate. "Are they?"
    "It'll never happen if he loses his research permit," Nate said. "There'll be a review."
    "And you'll be on the review board?" asked Amy.
    "Nate's name would solidify it," Clay said. "They'll ask him."
    "Not you?" Kona asked.
    "I'm just the photographer." Clay looked out at the whitecaps in the channel. "Doesn't look like we'll be getting out today. Finish your breakfast, and then we'll go pay your rent."
    Nate looked at Clay quizzically.
    "I can't give him money," Clay said. "He'll just smoke it. I'm going to go pay his rent."
    "Truth." Kona nodded.
    "You don't still work for Fuller, do you, Kona?" Nate asked.
    "Nate!" Amy admonished.
    "Well, he was there when I found the office ransacked."
    "Leave him alone," Amy said. "He's too cute to be bad."
    "Truth," said Kona. "Sistah Biscuit speak nothin' but the truth. I be massive cute."
    Clay set a stack of bills on the table. "By the way, Nate, you have a lecture at the sanctuary on Tuesday. Four days. You and Amy might want to use the downtime to put something together."
    Nate felt as if he'd been smacked. "Four days? There's nothing there. It was all on those hard drives."
    "Like I said, you might want to use the downtime."

CHAPTER SIX
Whale Wahine
    As a biologist, Nate had a tendency to draw analogies between human behavior and animal behavior — probably a