Patrick Morgan was one of several pen names used by durable American-born pulp-fiction novelist George Snyder. Hang Dead Hawaiian Style was the first novel in Morgan's nine-book "Operation Hang Ten series," published from 1969 to 1973, featuring surfer-swinger-undercover CIA agent Bill Cartwright.

Jim Dana, head of West Coast Headquarters of Operation Hang Ten, leaned back in his battered desk chair, swung his feet up to the window sill, and peeled the second of his two breakfast oranges. The poorly-lit office was toward the rear of a slim, obscure building on Pico Boulevard, in downtown Los Angeles. Behind Dana was a knife-marred, dark desk, with one black phone. His chair was blond-turned-to-yellow, armless, resting on three casters.

In his late forties, Dana had at one time or another worked for them all, including the CIA and the FBI. But he didn’t stay too long because his methods, although they got results, were a little too unorthodox for the paper-pushers in Washington.

When Operation Hang Ten was created, Washington decided they needed someone unorthodox. They handed it to Dana, told him to operate it any way he wanted. The standard methods just hadn’t cut any ice when it came to teenagers. Operators trying to infiltrate the teen ranks to learn something were quickly spotted and avoided. Hang Ten had succeeded so far because Dana bad reversed the usual method. Instead of trying to get someone inside, he pulled young people out of that world and made operatives out of them They knew the world and they were trusted. His operatives were mini-skirted girls as well as surfers and beach bums. Hang Ten was getting results. But to Washington, it was still a stepchild agency. Money came lean and seldom.

Dana separated the triangles of orange and popped them one at a time into his mouth. His operatives were working on four minor cases right now. He had two agents in the San Francisco area and one in Australia.

The black phone behind him rang. Dana dropped his legs from the sill, set the unfinished orange on the desk, and picked up the phone.

“Dana? McGraw, CIA. I think I’ve got something here I can throw your way, you know, kind of help you out. Interested?”

Dana didn’t try to hold his smile. “Well, I don’t know. We’re kind of busy right now. Maybe if you call me next month some time—”

“Okay, okay, so you’ll make me say it. We’ve got something we’re having a little trouble with.”

McGraw’s voice rose. “All right, dammit! So we’ve got one we can’t handle! They spot our agents and there’s nothing we can do about it! Satisfied?”

“I don’t think you do any better, but orders are orders.”

Dana reached out, took another section of orange, leaned back in the chair. “I’m listening,” he said.

“We got a call from old Mike Ho, a twenty-year cop who came up the hard way. He’s now Chief of Police in Honolulu. It seems he’s having problems with some surfers—”

“Waimea Bay is where the surf is. That's where the surfers are. That’s where the action is.”

“Well, right now we got more action than we need. Anyway, these surfers have got something new going for them now, smoking opium.”

“McGraw, you’re judging the many by a few. You’re not trying to tell me every surfer at Waimea Bay is hooked on opium?”

 of them are smoking the stuff. The point is, Ho has himself a king-size problem. He’s sent a couple of his younger officers over there to see what they could learn. But they were spotted and edged out. Some person or persons are supplying the stuff.”

Dana was jotting notes on a slip of paper. “All right,” he said. “What else?”

“Come on, McGraw. Dope pushing is small stuff for the CIA. You’ve got something else, something bigger.”

McGraw sighed deeply. “Okay. It was weird that Ho should call when he did. We had an agent over there. Hell, we had more than one, but the others were spotted. This agent, Rettig, had one-hundred-thousand dollars on him. He was supposed to contact a Chinese agent and pay the money for a microdot that supposedly contained specifications on a new and powerful laser beam the Chinese are working on. Evidently this Chinese agent double-crossed the Reds. We 

 know the Russians were bidding on the microdot too. We were informed that since our offer was higher, we’d get it.

“We got something all right We got Rettig killed along with the beach bum he was supposed to contact. It looked like a shoot-out with each of them killing the other. The bum was using a Russian gun and we found some Russian documents in his pockets. Maybe it's a big put-on, I don’t know. Could be the Russians actually 

 behind it. When we got the bum to the lab, they found him loaded with opium. Get the connection?”

“Way ahead of you, McGraw. What about the microdot? Did you find it on the bum?”

“Missing, right along with the hundred grand.”

Dana finished jotting, popped another section of orange in his mouth.

“Well?” McGraw asked. “What do you think?”

Chomping, Dana said, “I’d say you have a hell of a problem.”

McGraw raised his voice again. “Come off it, Dana! You’re itching to get your hands on this one! You know if you can pull it off you might rattle some more funds out of Washington. Don’t try to con me, Dana!”

“Wouldn’t do that for the world, old pal. But like I said, we’re kind of busy right now.” He sighed deeply making sure McGraw could hear. “I guess if you really 

 handle it, we could try to squeeze it in someplace.”

“Damn you, Dana! If I hadn’t been ordered, I never would have contacted you!”

“Bye now,” Dana said softly. “Thanks for calling.”

McGraw was still cursing when Dana dropped the receiver on its cradle.

He pushed the last piece of orange into his mouth then leaned back, making a tent out of his fingers under his chin. A fan buzzed loudly from the comer. Outside the window, a hazy sun tried to break through the smog. That was California, still hot in November.

Dana slapped both palms on the desk and pushed himself on the chair casters to the gray, three-drawer filing cabinet. He pulled out the middle drawer, fingered through a row of manila envelopes, pulled out one simply marked in large block letters—"Cartwright." He pushed himself back to the desk and opened the folder. There was a large photo with specifications on a sheet next to it.

It was the face of a young man, somewhere in his early twenties, long, straight blond hair with sideburns extending along the bottom of his ear lobes, bushy eyebrows that looked almost white in the photo, hovering over deep-set, smiling eyes. The cheekbones were high, separated by a straight nose with just a trace of Indian hook at the end. The lips were full, and the chin looked squared off at the end like somebody had been at it with a hammer and chisel.

Cartwright, William. Born November 8, 1945. Works as a private investigator. USC graduate. Entered Hang Ten in September 1966. Childhood spent on coast cities along California, Hawaii, and Australia. Surfing main childhood activity. Won several championships as a teenager. Parents killed in an auto accident leaving Cartwright an estimated ten-million. Private eye work is cover for Operation Hang Ten. Home is the same as office, a thirty-six-foot trailer with the latest equipment, license number HAY699.

Four paternity suits filed from 1961–1964. Cartwright acquitted for lack of evidence. Three breach-of-promise suits filed from 1963–1966. Acquitted again for lack of evidence. Also acquitted from assaulting an officer, charge filed June 8, 1967, for lack of evidence. All records available only through Operation Hang Ten Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

Dana closed the folder, picked up the notes he had jotted, reached for the phone. He dialed the special operator.

“Number please?” the cooing voice asked.

Dana said, “Give me six-oh-dash-six-nine.”

The trailer was tucked away in a far corner of Manhattan Beach. It was as loud a canary yellow as the old wood-sided station wagon parked in front. Both had four-inch black stripes laying over the top. Both had exposed chrome wheels. A blood-red surfboard with black swirls causing a marbled effect leaned against the trailer just under the sign that read: "William Cartwright, Private Investigations." To the right of the board, just above the doorbell, another sign, fiberglassed into the side of the trailer, stated: If You Don’t Swing, Don’t Ring. And on the wooden tailgate, just under the rear window of the station wagon, in bold, one-inch black letters, a sign read: Indoor-Sports Car.

Inside the trailer, thermostat controlled to a constant seventy-one degrees, Bill Cartwright had shoulders and head completely entwined in the white sheet. He was lying sideways on the bed, his lanky legs dangling over the edge. The bed vibrator had shut off sometime during the night. He was awake, his eyes were open looking at the inside of his sheet hood. The sheet turned green. The multi-colored, swirling lights were still on. And he could hear violin music coming from the hi-fi speakers located everywhere in the trailer. Bill's temple was pressed against Connie’s ankle bone. It had been some night, all right, one of the better ones. And the way things had been going with Connie lately, there weren’t too many better ones. He still wasn’t fully awake.

Coffee! For the Cartwright machine to function, it needed coffee. He pulled at the sheet, finally getting it over his head, and wiggled his knees to the floor on the side of the bed. He glanced at Connie’s sleeping naked body, then switched off the colored lights. It was then that he noticed the small winking red light on the sideboard of the bed.

Pushing on the bed with his hands, he got to his feet, bumped into the door, opened it, and closed it behind him. He moved silently, bare feet on thick carpet, past the bathroom door on the right, through the kitchen with sink and stove on the left, dining table on the right. Just past the kitchen to the left was the computer. He dialed “Liquid,” switched to “Coffee,” and pressed the button. The phone in the living room, sitting on top of the short-wave set, kept buzzing. Bill stumbled back into the kitchen, pulled a mug out of the cupboard, and on the way back to the computer almost tripped on a pair of black, lacy panties with a tiny pink bow at belly-button level.

“All right, all right,” he mumbled to the buzzing phone. His voice was thick with sleep. He pointed his finger at the phone. “Cartwright gets his coffee first, see?” He picked up the panties and dropped them on the dining table. At the computer, he pulled the small lever and smiled as the black liquid tumbled into the cup. The coffee temperature was perfect, as always. He slurped noisily at the cup. The dry rags around his tonsils were washed away, the cotton candy was fanned out of his head. He patted the computer lovingly.

In the small living room, he stumbled to the Danish Modern couch, brushed aside one sweater, one sleeveless blouse, two skirts, two pairs of panties with Wednesday and Thursday patches sewn on them, and two foam-padded bras. When the couch cushion was visible, he sat on it, sipped some more out of the cup. He leaned forward to the coffee table and swept away one pink nail polish bottle, one white cold cream jar, one blonde hair net, three brass lipstick tubes, and four earrings, two with pearls, two with glass diamonds. When white marble was showing, he pulled the buzzing phone off the short-wave, set it on the coffee table, and lifted the receiver to his ear.

“Hell no, man. This is your friendly neighborhood burglar. I’m cleaning out the joint. You interrupted me.”

“How about cleaning yourself onto a plane for Honolulu?”

“No rush,” Dana said. “Any time within the next hour.”

Bill groaned. “You got to be kidding me.”

“Not kidding, sweetheart. You’ll just have to kiss her goodbye, pat her on the rear, and shove her out the door.”

“You sound like an owl. The little whatever you happen to be playing with right now, that’s who.”

“You mean you already made the arrangements for the flight?”

“But man! You’re not talking about a twenty-pound suitcase. You’re talking about a thirty-six-foot trailer, a full-size Woody, and one Cartwright-size body! You just don’t get them ready to fly across an ocean in an hour!”

“You’ll muddle through in your usual fashion. So maybe I’m pushing it a little. Take an hour and twenty minutes. Are you ready?”

“Okay,” Bill sighed. “Let’s hear it.” He sipped his coffee and nodded occasionally while Dana told him everything he had learned from McGraw. The coffee was gone when Dana had finished.

“You shouldn’t have any trouble getting in with the crowd over there,” Dana added.

“So how do you want me to work it?” Bill asked.

“All right, so I’ll play it by ear. Anybody hire me?”

“No, you’re on vacation. Just over there to have a ball.”

“Yeah, well give the job a thought now and then, will you?”

Saturday night. A short drenching tropical rain passed over the North Shore of Oahu, while Bill sat in his trailer drinking one Scotch and soda after another, listening to the downpour. By midnight he was so plastered he couldn’t make it to bed. He slept on the couch. It was almost noon Sunday before he awoke.

And the word was out. Another storm was brewing a thousand miles off the coast of Japan, moving toward Oahu, due to hit the Islands Monday or Tuesday. But before the storm came the waves. And from Sunset Beach, Waikiki, and other parts of the island, the wave-hunters came searching. They had checked the scary breaks, Kaena Point, Avalanche, Himalayas, and had decided to head for the church-tower. They came in battered Fords, long Packard hearses, wood-covered station wagons. Boards stuck out of car windows or were hastily tied to rooftops.

Bill was nursing a large head when the first of them arrived. He watched them and the others that followed with mixed emotions. Time would stop because the only life, the only action, was the sets of man-killing waves that rolled in from the north. They blotted out the hazy sun when they rose, and as they broke they sounded like huge trains thundering by. And each breaking wave brought an earthquake to Waimea. The ground rumbled and the sound was like the big guns on destroyers. They ranged in size from fifteen- to twenty-five feet, and it was good sense to look at them in fear.

Bill sat in his patio chair and noticed many of the wave-hunters were from California. He also knew what was running through their minds. The California surf was tricky. There were riptides and jutting rocks to slow or speed the wave as it rolled in. But California waves were small, and easily conquered. They were a tricky bunch, those Californians. They could hotdog a small wave, skim sideways across the crest, walk the board, hang ten, and smile to the approval of the gallery. They were performers, and they were good, and some were cocky. But when they gazed at, and later tried, the giant-sized waves on the North Shore, they realized how lousy they actually were. One sweet ride on those watery mountains was an accomplishment all itself. The sets were unpredictable. One set could contain both the smallest and the largest wave of the day. So you tried to ride the fifteen-foot-and-under ones, and hoped to survive the twenty- to thirty-footers. To wipeout in California meant getting sand your baggies, maybe in your ears. But to wipe-out on the North Shore meant being pounded by millions of tons of water grinding your flesh into coral rock and lava. And if you recovered, it meant being sucked far out to sea as the next gigantic wave built itself up. If one wave didn’t get you, the next one would.

Fearing the wave was only part of it. The surfer’s biggest enemy was himself. Wipeouts were dangerous. Loose boards were like floating knives, the fins could gut a man like a fresh-caught fish being cleaned. To have a board slam into you could start a job that the next wave would easily finish. With nobody on them, those boards were lethal weapons.

But Bill knew that once you were up there, once you had the speed of the wave judged right, had your board placed just so, the ride in was the sweetest, most powerful feeling there was.

So he sat in his patio chair drinking coffee, and watched as the wave-hunters came. They looked and judged from the beach, mumbled about the wind and about a growing chop in the water, but as yet none had tried the big waves. Meanwhile, crowds of spectators gathered on the rocks and on the beach.

Bill drained the last of the coffee. Surfing was good therapy. There was a time for shock, a time for grief, a time for anger. There was the drowning of sorrow. The butterfly of love had touched him and moved on. Now it was time to jump back into the stream that flowed from womb to tomb.

And there was Operation Hang Ten. The opium thing. Emotion had run its course through him. Now he had to become, once again, the hunter, the cold analyzing calculating machine. And there was no room for emotion.

But first there was the therapy. The big waves.

A few had already tried when Bill, in the early afternoon’s hazy sun, trudged across the short span of beach to where wave afterbirth boiled like soap suds. He was dressed in his bright yellow baggies. The blood-red board with its black-marble swirls was tucked under his arm. The earth shuddered with the thunder of each breaking wave. The swells started far out in the bay. He could almost feel the suction as the waves gathered, pulling in, rising, and still rising, blotting out sky, sun, clouds. Then they crashed along the reef, boiling and churning. And Bill felt the quickness of his heartbeat. Puny man on his fragile overgrown ice-cream stick facing the one thing over which he had no control. The sea. Man always challenged but never conquered.

The few who were out there looked scared, and with good reason. The wind had grown, there was a chop, and the suction of the building waves exposed ugly jagged heads of coral.

As Bill watched, one of the surfers caught a beautiful wave. He was riding it in, looking like a dark Quasimodo. Bill smiled. Onyx color and plenty of style and grace, that was how John "Fast Black" Washington rode it in. John had a dangerous position just below the crest, but the board was angled sideways and he slid along twisting and arching his body to compensate for the changes in wave speed. A good fifteen feet below him, jagged coral rock waited. The rear half of his board was hidden by churning white water snapping at his ankles like a pack of albino wolves. It was a sweet fast ride, and when the wave started to break up, he turned out.

Bill had seen it coming but there was no way of warning John. The set was close. A twenty-footer was building just behind the wave John rode in. When he turned out, the second wave started sucking him out into the bay. John knew he was in trouble. He lay prone on the board, his thick muscles bulging with the power of his paddling strokes. But the current was too strong. John grew smaller as the wave built and pulled him into its curl. But still he paddled, hoping to make it over and it would break behind him. But even the strength of his mightly strokes couldn’t fight that current. Then John was a mere speck in the curl. The top of the wave leaned over. John stopped paddling. He hooked his arms and legs around the board. A girl on the beach screamed. The sun was blotted out, and the mountain crashed down. John disappeared. When the thunder subsided and the wave was just rolling whitewater coming in, John’s board zipped into the air, high, twisting and twirling. It came down then bounced up again, not quite so high. There was no sign of John. A third wave was building.

Bill now began paddling with all his strength, straight for the current he knew would suck him into the wave. He saw a dark ball bob up and down far ahead of him. But the ball was moving out to sea faster than Bill could get to it. Then Bill was in the current. He was being pulled and he helped by paddling. The gap closed. John was swimming toward him, getting nowhere against that strong current. The third wave was building higher. Bill was beyond the reef, well into the bay. He was close enough to see the fatigue on John’s face. His swimming strokes were lifeless, without strength. There was a nasty gash above John's left eyebrow. Bill got beside him and point his board toward the beach. He felt John’s hands on his legs. There was no time for talk. John climbed up on the back of the board. A shadow loomed behind them. When Bill felt John’s head against the small of his back, he started paddling. John seemed to get a second wind. He paddled too. With both of them working they slowly made their way against the current. The shadow above them darkened. But they weren’t in the curl, they were ahead of it. The current stopped and Bill knew any second the wave would come down on them. He felt the eerie split-second of silence just before the wave thundered down. He shut his eyes and hung on.

EXCERPT FROM "HANG DEAD HAWAIIAN STYLE" BY PATRICK MORGAN (1969)

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