Belleau, Heidi & Vane, Violetta_Hawaiian Gothic

by Heidi Belleau

  “What for?”

  “What am I gonna do with that much pakalolo? I mean, my sister would smoke it, but I’d have to get it back to Oahu, and I don’t even want to think about going to prison again.”

  “Well, you could have kept the jam at least. I could use a snack.”

  “What, were you gonna eat it with your fingers?” Ori smiled, even though it kind of made the disused muscles of his cheeks ache. Kalani’s face lit up, mirroring the expression. “I didn’t think you could get—” Oh. Of course Kalani could get hungry. He obviously felt all the passions of this world.

  “Hey. What was… What was it like in prison?”

  “It wasn’t that bad. Lonely, but I’m used to that. Nobody fucked with me.” The thought struck him that prison wasn’t too far away from what Kalani had been going through. It was a half life. Waiting for freedom. And if Ori could make it to the other side… “Kalani, can you trust me? If I nail down who did this, why they did it, I can find out how to make things right again. I mean, I’m not Hawaiian, but I know where to start looking to find the old people who still know the right chants. You can help me. Everything the curse did, there are stories of putting it right again. Putting the soul back in the body. It used to happen all the time, like Hiku and Kawelu, like… There has to be a way. Everything done can be—”

  Kalani’s mouth closed over his own, Kalani’s hand wrapping around the back of his head to keep him close. He was too shocked, at first, to kiss back, then his body softened and sweetened in response. He opened his mouth, letting Kalani in. Kalani’s tongue and smiling lips—Ori had never tasted anything so perfect.

  He trusts me.

  He angled his head to deepen the kiss and then reached out and brushed his palms over Kalani’s short hair. It was the way Ori remembered him, not the slightly overgrown, inexpertly cut style his body in the coma ward wore, but Ori pushed that thought aside, tried to forget about the coma ward altogether, just be in the moment. Here, with Kalani. Their first kiss.

  They moved more slowly, this time, but just as hard, just as greedy for touch and taste. Spent long, lazy turns sucking each other, pulling back at the last minute to prolong the outrageous pleasure.

  Ori didn't have many words, but Kalani spoke enough for both of them, pleading and praising and demanding whenever his mouth wasn't full of cock. Yes. There. Fuck, you're hard. Do it like last time, just keep fucking me after I come. Please. Now. Yes, yes.

  At the end, Ori took him from behind, spooning on their sides, and groaned his thanks when Kalani reached around to grab his cock around the base and guide it home. Filling him. Worshipping him.

  Ori gave him everything.

  They kissed afterward, and it was even better than the first time. This is a promise, Ori told himself as he fell asleep to the crying of frogs and the taste of Kalani in his mouth.

  * * * *

  Ori’s uncle Miguel was a repo man in Honolulu. The next morning, Ori called him and explained the situation on the most mundane and basic level, a story not far off from the one he’d told Anela.

  In less than an hour, Miguel texted him Moses Lihilihi’s current address (the Aloha Hilo Nursing Home) and the next of kin for Keola Luahiwa, the man who died in the fishing accident in 1988. Ori’s confidence level soared. He didn’t need Magnum PI skills: he had a huge Filipino family instead.

  The nursing home was on the inland outskirts, right where the lowest hills of Mauna Kea began to roll. He drove slowly upward through the old and narrow streets. Hilo’s elegant shabbiness appealed to Ori. The town was slow, sleepy and above all, wet. The rain turned everything green and crumbly at the edges, freshened the air, softened the light.

  Once he found the home, everything went smoothly at the front desk. An attendant in flowery scrubs led him down a moss-green-carpeted hall. The place was as calm, clean, and sparely decorated as a midrange chain hotel, but an empty hospital gurney parked in the corridor reminded him that the only way to check out was generally feet first.

  “Here’s Mr. Lihilihi’s room,” said the attendant. “Let’s see how he’s doing today. He has his good times and his bad times.” She opened the door and led them in. “Good morning! I hope you had a nice breakfast!” Her voice was musical, professional.

  Moses Lihilihi sat on the edge of his little bed, staring at his knees and ignoring her. His head had sunk way down into his body with age, though his shoulders were still broad and straight, making him resemble a sort of human rectangle. “You’ve got a friend visiting today. This is Mr. Reyes. Moses? Moses?”

  “I don’t have no friends,” he said. “Go away.”

  “Can I talk to you about Jonathan?” Ori asked, all in a rush. He wondered if he’d have to lay out all his awkward questions in front of the attendant, but she drifted out the doorway, leaned against the opposite wall, and went to work on a clipboard.

  “I had a son. He went away. My daughter put me here. I don’t care. I like to be alone. Why I have to have a roommate? No good son of a bitch. Snores and cries and pisses the bed like a baby. I want my own room. Go away.”

  Ori swallowed hard and lifted his chin. Hell no, he was not leaving here emptyhanded. The door had fallen closed. Out of earshot of the attendant, he risked some harsher words. “I’m sorry, but your son is dead. He died almost fifteen years ago. I’m, uh, looking into the case. Trying to find out who killed him.” He played his last card. “And you have a grandson on Oahu. He’s very sick. Can I show you—”

  “I don’t have no grandson. I had a son. He went away.”

  “Yes,” Ori said through gritted teeth. “And he had a wife. Malia—” “ Malia!” the old man shouted. His chin was covered in shining, vibrating trails of spit. He laughed until he hacked. “Malia, Malia, Malia! Goddamn. Bet she killed him. She was the one. I told him not to take her back. She was always a whore, was a whore until she died, but I guess even good men got a use for whores if you can keep ’em in line, right?”

  “Make him shut up.” It was barely over a whisper, but Ori whipped around when he heard it. Kalani stood there, his back against the door, arms folded around his body protectively.

  Ori stared at him, tried to will him to leave without speaking aloud. He didn’t want Kalani to hear this, but that wasn’t Ori’s decision to make. He turned again, steeling himself.

  “And…and did he? Jonathan? Did he keep Malia in line?”

  In the space after the question, Kalani hissed, making Ori wince. “He sure tried. Why can’t I have my own room?” Moses’s eyes went distant; Ori was losing him, and fast. “Nurse,” he croaked. “Make them go away.”

  “He can see me,” said Kalani, a strangely satisfied anger in his voice. But when he moved to stand in front of Moses and tried to catch his eyes, Moses just shook his head, shivered his shoulders, and stared right through. “Damn, Anela was right to hate this man. Come on, Ori, let’s go.”

  Not yet, Ori pleaded silently. “Keola Luahiwa,” he said, throwing out the name desperately, hoping it would stick, that he would see something in Moses’s eyes. “Do you know that name? Do you know what happened to him? Was it an accident?”

  Kalani’s chest swelled, and he looked to Ori in recognition. “Listen to him! Keola!” shouted Kalani, and his words refused to echo in the closeness of the room. Moses shivered again. The corner of his liver-spotted lips twisted cruelly. “Oh, him. Well I did say Jonathan kept that woman in line, didn’t I? But he should have finished the job.”

  “Make him fucking talk. Make him say it!” Kalani’s voice was hot and insistent, raspy and broken. “I want to hear him say it!” There was a knock at the door. “Is Mr. Lihilihi getting upset?” came the muffled, lilting voice of the attendant. “Maybe you should come back another day, Mr. Reyes? Mr. Reyes?”

  Ori’s whole body clenched. He lunged forward and grabbed the old man by the shirt, hard. Kalani’s anger and power seemed to flow through him, like his skin was electrified, like he was full of boiling water. “Look here. Keola’s
spirit is in me,” he hissed, too low for the attendant to hear. “Now tell me the truth or I’ll drag you down to hell.” He felt a stab of guilt as Moses shivered so hard that his teeth clattered, but the lies in this family would never be torn away peacefully, and Kalani was worth anything.

  “How! How could you…? How could he…?” Moses’s eyes rolled, whites flashing. “Saul. Saul Kanazawa called you up, didn’t he? Jonathan only told me afterward. I didn’t have no part in it. Don’t put the death chant on me. You got your man already. Go away. Why can’t I have my own room?” He was crying now, the seams of his face gleaming with tears.

  Saul Kanazawa. Who was Saul Kanazawa? If he had the power to call up old ghosts… Moses bent and rocked, hiding his face. “Jesus, I’m sorry, I was not a good man. Jesus, listen to me.” Ori felt a flash of cruel inspiration. “I won’t take you to hell, Moses Lihilihi, because I’m generous, but you do this thing for me. You never say the name Malia again. Never. You don’t even think it. If even the first syllable touches your shriveled old lips—” The door clicked open. Ori stepped back from the bed quickly and wheeled to face the attendant. “I think he’s having some kind of fit,” he said, dusting his thighs.

  “I never say it! I never say it!” shouted Moses as the attendant went to his side. “I swear!”

  “You’d better go,” she said.

  * * * *

  When Ori finally collapsed into the driver’s side of the rental car, Kalani was already slumped in the passenger seat. He stared out the windshield, his face almost too dry. His voice was monotone. “He beat us,” he said. “My mom and I. When I was little.”

  Ori reached out to him, not sure what to say, but Kalani cut him off.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before now.”

  And then he vanished, like smoke.

  * * * *

  Jonathan had killed Keola, there was no question about that, but why? Was Keola Kalani’s father, and did Jonathan know that? It made sense as a motive for murder, but none of it explained why Moses jumped immediately to Saul Kanazawa as the one to avenge him. How did this third man fit in?

  Back at the hotel, Ori had his uncle ran another database search, but the last record for Saul Kanazawa was an arrest for trespassing in Kona seven years ago, with charges later dropped. No father of record. A mother who had married, changed her last name to Smith, and apparently moved to the mainland.

  With no clear path ahead, he fell back to thinking about Kalani. What Kalani must be feeling, the echoes of his childhood pain, his doubt, his uncertainty, all magnified by his chaotic shifting existence in between worlds. Ori couldn’t really know. He came from a strict but reasonably happy family where what you saw was what you got. Ori only ever had to keep one secret.

  He wrote down Keola Luahiwa and Saul Kanazawa on the back of his rental car contract envelope and put a line between them with a question mark. His uncle’s search had revealed they were both around the same age as Jonathan and Malia. Friends? Rivals?

  No matter their connection, no matter why Saul would want to avenge Keola, the biggest question still remained. How? Moses assumed that Saul could call up ghosts, which could easily mean—but Kanazawa was a Japanese name. Hard to trace to the lineage of a kahuna ana’ana. So many links were missing.

  An online search for the Luahiwas had revealed a seemingly endless list of local hits. He could go knocking on their door. He’d have to, at this point, although he wasn’t looking forward to it. If he told the truth, they might want to get the police involved and reopen the 1988 case as a homicide. If he lied…

  He groaned and stabbed random pen slashes around the names. Even though they’d only had a few days together, he already missed having Kalani around, nearby, in bed with him.

  He looked around the room to the plain, frameless mirror, to the tacky plastic Chinese foo dog lamp, to the window that faced far-off Mauna Kea, to his army-issue duffel bag full of neatly rolled clothes. “Where are you?” he asked into the air. “I’m worried about you. Kalani?”

  No answer.

  He flopped back onto the bed and threw his forearm over his eyes. Tried not to think too hard on what Kalani had revealed. Should he have known? Were there hints, clues, in the way Kalani acted, the way he smiled, the things he said about his parents? Had Kalani been waiting all these years for Ori to care enough to figure it out?

  He had to stop thinking about it. He’d wasted enough of his life wallowing in guilt and regret, analyzing every moment of their relationship with each other. It hadn’t done him any good, and he knew that scrutinizing it from another angle wouldn’t help either.

  He took up the pen and envelope again. Drew looping lines to reorient his mind. Detour the Luahiwas. Jonathan, Malia, Saul, Keola. All the same age. Hilo was a small town, nothing like Honolulu. They probably all went to the same high school. Same graduating class, even. He’d bet on it. He could find the yearbook at the library and track down friends.

  It brought him back to the same problem: he’d need a cover story. But the thought of lying to long-ago friends didn’t make his skin crawl as much as the thought of lying to a murdered man’s family.

  He wondered if Keola Luahiwa had wandered after dying or if he’d found his peace.

  “I’m leaving now, Kalani,” he said softly. “Be careful out there, okay?”

  * * * *

  Andrea Yamamoto agreed to meet him in front of Jonathan and Malia’s old house. The house where Kalani had spent his first childhood years. Tracking her down had been the easiest part of this whole journey. He’d found a photo of her with her arms around Malia, who was smiling a smile he recognized in Kalani, and he referenced the portraits of the graduating class for her name. A call to his uncle had done the rest. Miguel was starting to complain about the extra work, though, so Ori hoped this lead panned out. Of course, even if Miguel continued to volunteer, this was the end of the line for Ori.

  She walked up the street toward him now, a small woman with a bob of slightly wavy brown hair. She’d had a ridiculous perm in the yearbook pictures. She looked better in her forties than she did as a teenager.

  He’d told her an almost true story over the phone. His friend was dying, in a coma, and his last wish had been to find out the truth of his origins. She’d been suspicious at first, but a quick look at Kalani’s Facebook page had her sighing in sympathy and offering all she could.

  “You have a good face,” she said, stopping short a few feet away from him. “I’m glad to meet you.” The two of them sat down on the hood of Ori’s rental car, looking across the lawn toward Kalani’s childhood home. It was looking old, a bit shabby, but at least it wasn’t condemned like Moses Lihilihi’s place was. Here, life went on.

  “Mahalo,” he said. “I wasn’t getting far, before I found your name. It’s really nice of you to—” “I never liked Jonathan,” she said bitterly. “I never liked any of her boyfriends. I don’t know, maybe I was jealous. But Jonathan, I always knew there was something off about him. But what can you do? Eventually it gets to the point where you got to decide whether you put up with her jerk boyfriend, or you complain enough she stops being your friend, you know? I didn’t want to lose her, but I guess I did anyway, in the end.”

  “I know that feeling,” Ori swallowed hard at how easily he’d confided in her. Andrea’s hand covered his and gave it a soft squeeze. “You and Kalani are close?” “Yeah, best friends. Thanks for not using past tense.”

  “That was me and Malia. I’d have done anything for her. I was the geek and she

  was the popular girl, not because she wanted to be, it was just… I mean, she was six feet tall and had D-cups by the time she was fifteen. I think Jonathan had her convinced that’s all she was. That she wasn’t smart enough to live away from him. He was good at conning people like that to get his way, but sometimes they caught on. He had to leave the island because he ripped off some growers.”

  “The Fergusons, right?” It was starting to fall into place. If Ori to
ok out his envelope now, he could fill in some of those question mark connections. But not the important ones, not yet. “What about Keola, the one who…died.”

  “Oh,” she said, softly. “That’s an ugly old story. And I think you already know what answer I’m gonna give you there.” “I need to hear it. I mean… Why?”

  “It was Jonathan. He was… Well, he was bad. I always knew he was bad—that type who was charming but you had to always walk on eggshells around him—but I never knew how bad he was, not before that. Malia was going to leave Jonathan for Keola. I was so damn happy for her. She could have left him for Al Capone and I’d have been happy at that point, but Keola was a good guy. We were friends, Malia and Keola and—but you know how they say it takes seven times to get out of a relationship like that.”

  Like that. Even after all these years, nobody was willing to name it. Nobody was willing to name any of it.

  Ori had a sense of how strong Jonathan’s hold had been on them all. Even now he was long dead, nobody would accuse him of anything worse than getting on the wrong side of a haole dope grower.

  “Do you think Keola was Kalani’s real father?” Ori asked.

  “Does it matter?” Someone was coming out of Kalani’s old house, a woman with a toddler on her hip and a huge diaper bag that threw her whole body off-balance. She waved at Andrea, and Andrea waved back. “I still live next door,” Andrea said with a little shrug and tight-lipped smile as she watched the woman load the toddler into the back of an old sedan. “I didn’t want to say, in case you were a weirdo, but that’s me in the blue house there. I literally just locked the door and walked over to see you. Malia and I were going to have kids at the same time, live next door to each other, have Christmas together, all of it. I convinced myself as long as I kept her nearby, Jonathan couldn’t hurt her too bad. She’d always—she’d always—”