Mahu m-1

by Neil S. Plakcy

  I explained about going surfing, and she frowned. I’d broken many dates with her when we were in high school because I was out on the waves and lost track of time. Akoni started then, telling her about the crime scene, and then the two of us alternated describing the rest of our progress.

  “At least your investigation is well-documented,” she said at last, throwing us a little bone. She directed us to go back to the Rod and Reel and see if we could find the giraffe, get him to sign an affidavit that he’d seen me at the club that night. “And I don’t want you going alone, or acting like some neighborhood Rambo either,” she said. She turned to Akoni. “Detective, I expect that any reports will read you were there, too. You’re in this almost as deep as Kimo is.”

  “Understood,” Akoni said.

  “I could do it myself easier. We have no idea when this guy will be back at the club, if ever. I live nearby, so I can stop in randomly. That’s a big imposition on Akoni.”

  “It’s his job.” Peggy gave us a short lecture about minimizing personal connections with cases. “You should have stepped away as soon as you recognized the scene,” she said. “That was what, your third or fourth mistake on this case?”

  I told her I got the message.

  She closed the folder on her desk and put it to the side, in a neat pile of similar ones. I could see that the seeds of her personality had been there even back in high school, when her textbooks were crisply covered in brown paper, her penmanship perfect and her locker always tidy. We shook hands on the way out, and she said she’d call me.

  Akoni waited until we were out of the building to ask, “When you want to go back, look for this guy who blew in your ear?”

  “We could try happy hour again.”

  Akoni shrugged. “You’re starting to like this part of the investigation aren’t you?”

  “Hey, you got the lingerie shop. I get the gay bar.”

  At the Rod and Reel Club, Fred the bartender was on duty again. “I’m trying to track a guy I saw here two weeks ago. About six-two, really thin, blond hair shaved down to a stubble. You recognize him?”

  “Sure, Gunter,” he said. “Comes here two or three times a week, usually late, after eleven or so. I think he works a late shift somewhere. What do you want with Gunter?”

  “Just want to ask him a question or two,” I said. “He didn’t do anything. I talked to him two weeks ago, and I just want to see if he remembers.”

  “Gunter talks to a lot of guys,” Fred said, laughing. “Some of them talk back. You didn’t talk back, he might not remember you.”

  “Gee, and I thought I was unforgettable.”

  Fred said, “Maybe to some,” and looked me straight in the eye.

  I said, “Mahalo,” and took a pair of Big Wave Golden Ales out to Akoni on the patio, flattered and smiling.

  “I guess we’ll have to come back later,” I said, explaining about Gunter.

  “Just what I wanted to do,” Akoni grumbled. “I better call Mealoha.” He stood up. “Don’t let anybody take that beer. I’m going to need a few more before this evening’s over.”

  I sat back in my chair and looked around. The Rod and Reel wasn’t that scary in the light of day. It was just a bar, after all. There were gay people there and straight people, and nobody seemed to care who was who. That was nice.

  Akoni went home for dinner with Mealoha, and I went back to my apartment. I couldn’t eat, and I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I kept watching the clock, until finally it was ten and Akoni called to say he would be at my apartment in a couple of minutes. He parked out front, and we walked back down Kuhio Avenue toward the Rod and Reel.

  From a block away, we could hear the music and noise coming from the club. We walked in together, and for a minute my heart seized up the way it had when I’d gone in there two weeks before. But then I looked around, and I realized it was still just a bar.

  We circled slowly around the main room. Akoni was careful not to establish eye contact with anyone. I thought his unease was kind of funny. So what if a guy came up to him and asked him to dance, or blew in his ear? If he wasn’t interested he shouldn’t have been threatened. “No” worked pretty well if you weighed over two-thirty.

  Gunter wasn’t in the main bar. I headed toward the back bar, wondering what Akoni’s reaction would be when he saw the explicit videos being shown there. The one playing was a little wild even for me, a close-up shot of one guy humping another’s butt. They’d lit it so that the lube and the sweat glistened in the light, and there was a thumping beat behind it establishing a rhythm.

  Akoni looked away almost as soon as he saw the screen. Then I saw Gunter sitting at the edge of the bar, nursing a shot glass of something clear.

  I showed him my ID and explained. Gunter said, “I don’t think I remember you. You said I walked up to you?”

  “And blew in my ear.”

  “That sounds like me,” he said, laughing, “But you don’t look like my type.”

  “I’d been working undercover, I was a little grungier, a little more like…”

  “Rough trade,” he said, and I nodded. He stared at me for a minute, and I had the feeling he was trying to envision me without my clothes on. It was a weird feeling. “I remember. You ran away!”

  I nodded. “Out towards the alley.”

  “And I followed you to the door, but then I came back inside.” He nodded. “I met the most delightful boy after you left. A fraternity brother from Illinois, I think. He just wanted a beer, he didn’t realize what kind of place this was. But he was happy to let me suck his dick.”

  Akoni winced. “They like it, you know, straight boys,” Gunter said to Akoni. “Their girlfriends won’t suck their dicks for them. Does yours?”

  “My partner’s married,” I said. “So Gunter, would you come down to the station and give us a statement?”

  “A statement? Of what?”

  “Of what you just said. That you saw me here, two weeks ago, around three a.m.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Just that. I need some proof that I was here, then.”

  “What ever for?”

  “I witnessed a crime, just after I left here. I need to establish I was in the area.”

  Gunter nodded. “The body they found in the alley. You saw it?”

  I nodded.

  “I work from three to eleven,” he said. “I sleep in the mornings. I like to sleep in, particularly if I have a guest. Can I come in tomorrow afternoon, before work?”

  We agreed, but before we let him go I got his full name, home address and phone, and his work address. He was a security guard at a fancy condo tower. He was thin, but wiry, and you could see he was strong. With his evident muscles and his no-nonsense haircut, you wouldn’t want to mess with Gunter.

  “Hallelujah,” Akoni said when Gunter had walked away. “We can go home. And never come back to this place.”

  “Never say never,” I said.

  LIDIA’S LISTENING

  We had to table Tommy Pang’s murder the next morning, because Akoni and I had to attend a training session at the downtown station. Neither of us wanted to go, but since the case wasn’t going anywhere we didn’t have much of an excuse. We spent the morning watching videos and hearing speakers about diversity training, sustainability and community policing. I was interested to note that the diversity training included a section on the rights of gay people.

  Akoni called in for messages when we broke at one. “Our buddy Melvin called and said he found a bunch of the receipts from packages Derek and Wayne sent. We ought to swing past his place on our way back and find out what that’s all about.”

  “We’ve got Gunter coming in this afternoon for a statement,” I reminded him.

  “Why don’t you go back and do that interview yourself,” he said. “I’ll go back to the pack and ship place. We can compare notes later.”

  I was back at the station by two, and a little later Gunter showed up. I pulled Lidia Portuondo in
with me to take his statement, so that there was somebody else there. Knowing how Peggy Kaneahe and the lieutenant felt, I wanted to be extra careful. And besides, I thought that since Lidia had her own secrets, namely her relationship with Alvy, she ought to be able to keep mine.

  Gunter looked a lot more presentable in his work clothes than he did in the torn t-shirt he’d worn the night before. He wore a pressed white shirt with epaulets and a nametag and khaki slacks, and even his buzz-cut head looked more normal in the light of day.

  Lidia and I took him into one of the interview rooms. There was a coffee maker on a table against the far wall. “Coffee?” I asked. I poured one for myself.

  “I can’t take caffeine,” Gunter said. I motioned him to sit down at the table. “What do you want from me?”

  “Just what we told you yesterday. Just write down what happened to you at the Rod and Reel Club on the night of Tuesday the sixteenth.”

  “You want me to write down how I blew in your ear?” He leered at me, and I shivered a little. I thought a night with Gunter was more than I was willing to get into.

  “You can leave that part out.”

  Lidia had just come in from her shift, and her uniform made her look tougher than she did in street clothes, especially with her long brown hair pulled into a bun. She leaned against the wall across from the coffee maker, crossed her arms and listened.

  “I think I cruised you for about an hour before I went up to you,” Gunter said, looking up from his writing. “That sound about right to you?”

  I held up my hands. “You write it the way you remember it.”

  He went back to writing. He finished and then pushed the paper over to me. He wrote in a neat, careful script, crossing his sevens and his Z’s. I had a momentary flash of Gunter as a small boy with the same haircut, painstakingly practicing his penmanship, and then he didn’t seem frightening at all. I picked it up and read through it. It was just as he’d said the night before, and corresponded pretty closely to what I remembered. He wrote that he had first seen me at the bar at about two o’clock or so, and described the couple of times we’d made eye contact. He ended by noting he’d looked out the door of the club and seen me duck into the alley.

  I signed the bottom, and then handed it to Lidia for her signature as witness. She read it, and then signed next to my name.

  “All right, you can go now,” I said. “Thanks for coming in.”

  He stood up. “So, you hang out at the Rod and Reel a lot?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Shame,” he said. “You’re cute.” As he walked past me he casually ran a hand over my chest. “I’m there most nights. If you change your mind.”

  Lidia didn’t say anything until Gunter had left the room. “Were you on a stakeout or something? At that club.”

  I shook my head. “I just wanted to go there. Kind of dipping my foot in the waters, you know?”

  She nodded like she understood and left to sign out. I didn’t say anything specific to her, but I was sure she’d respect my privacy and not spread any gossip.

  I went back to my desk. It was time to think about Evan Gonsalves, much though I had tried not to. He fit the description Lou had given us. I knew he had money problems, trying to support Terri in the style she was accustomed to, and I remembered Terri’s suspicions. And he’d known about the black tar bust and could have tipped off Tommy. The other connections we’d made were fuzzier, but possibilities, too.

  Akoni finally got back just before the end of our shift. Apparently Melvin Ah Wong had discovered how his son Jimmy had been doing favors for Derek and Wayne, stamping papers with his father’s notary seal and forging his father’s signature. “Melvin thinks Jimmy’s just gullible,” Akoni said. “He doesn’t realize there was anything else going on.”

  “That’s good,” I said. We started making copies of all the documents Akoni had brought for Peggy; it was more than likely there was a connection to her theft case at the Bishop Museum, to the smuggling of Hawaiian artifacts that she’d been investigating. While we were standing at the copier, I said, “Listen, I’ve been thinking about Evan Gonsalves some more. You know I know his wife?”

  “Yeah, you went to school with her, didn’t you? The Clark’s girl?”

  “That’s her. Anyway, she called me a while ago, upset that Evan seemed to have more money than he ought to.”

  Akoni pulled the last pages from the copier. “How so?”

  I shrugged. “Buying her expensive gifts, paying cash for things. He told her he was doing some security work on the side.”

  “Lots of cops do it.” We carried the paperwork back to our desks.

  “Yeah, but she was pretty sure he was lying. She asked my advice, and I said I couldn’t really get involved.”

  “So where’s this leading? You think he’s the one killed Tommy Pang?”

  “I wish to hell I didn’t. Terri’s birthday was last week, and Evan gave her a really nice emerald bracelet. She showed it to me-it came in one of those long, narrow jewelry boxes.”

  It was like a light bulb went on over Akoni’s head. “Didn’t Derek say he saw Tommy give the cop a box like that?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Akoni slumped back in his chair. “Man, I hate pulling down cops.”

  “Me too. And I don’t want to do anything until we’re sure. I was thinking maybe we could take a picture of Evan out to Wayne and Derek, see if they can ID him.”

  Akoni nodded. “You got one?”

  “At home. I can bring it in tomorrow.”

  We left the station a little later. I was too tired to make dinner, so I heated up a frozen pizza. When I finished it was about seven, and I felt so beaten down by everything that had happened I lay down to take a nap.

  When I woke, my apartment was hot and sticky, even though the sun had gone down hours before. The fans did nothing but move the hot air around. I got dressed and went out for a walk.

  There was something magnetic about the Rod and Reel Club, something that kept drawing me there even though I knew I should stay away. It was almost eleven, and even from a block away I could hear the music coming from the club, the strong bass line reverberating in my stomach.

  I stood across the street for ten minutes or so, trying to figure out what I really wanted. I finally decided to settle for a beer, and went in. Fred was behind the bar again, and he gave me a smile with my beer. I was just about to look for a quiet piece of wall to lean against when I felt a hand on my ass. “So, you decided to come back after all,” a voice said in my ear.

  I knew without turning around that it was Gunter. “Just for a beer,” I said, turning to face him. He pulled up a stool next to me, and we sat there at the bar and talked for a while. I guess about half an hour passed, until I saw a couple at one of the patio tables get up, and my heart rate sped up about a hundred percent.

  It was Derek and Wayne, and I could tell immediately that their path toward the door would take them right past me. I turned my head so that Gunter was between me and them, and kissed him.

  He was surprised, but it didn’t take him long to rally. We sat there at the bar and kissed deeply, and I felt my dick stiffen even though I was watching Derek and Wayne out of the corner of my eye. When they’d passed, I relaxed and leaned back.

  “You sure changed your mind in a hurry,” Gunter said, smiling at me. He put his hand on my thigh.

  “Sorry. I saw a couple of guys who are involved in a case, and I didn’t want them to recognize me.”

  I thought Gunter could still see them over my shoulder, and I was right. “Not Macho Man and his Chinese love-child?” he asked.

  “You know them?”

  He took a deep draw from his Corona and then wiped his lips. “I tricked with Derek a couple of times, when he first got back from college. He used to come over here for happy hour by himself. Then Wayne showed up and suggested that I stay away from his boyfriend.” He opened the top two buttons of his shirt and showed me a half-moon shap
ed scar around his left nipple. “Powerful suggestion, don’t you think? I took him at his word.”

  “Wayne cut you? Did you go to the police?”

  “Do you really think the police care about two fags squabbling over a boyfriend?” He took another pull on his beer. “You trying to break up their little smuggling ring?”

  All my synapses started buzzing, and I didn’t feel drunk at all. “Well, the case isn’t quite pulled together yet,” I said.

  “I helped the little shits at first, before Wayne went crazy with his boy scout knife. See, Derek made some connections through trying to get his gallery set up, people who’d find some precious artifacts and then bring them in for resale. Of course, the background on some of those things was a little dodgy, and they had to be sold to the right kind of buyers. The place where I work, I see everything that goes on. The kind of things people have when they move in. You know who’s got taste and who doesn’t. I made a couple of introductions, made myself a few bucks on the side.”

  “And it stopped when Wayne cut you?”

  “The bastard has a temper! I was just fooling around with Derek one day, had my hand in his pants, nothing more, and Wayne went ballistic! I pulled out right after that.” He smiled. “In more ways than one.”

  I remembered the case that Peggy had been working on, the missing artifacts from the Bishop Museum, and the beautiful pieces I’d seen in Derek and Wayne’s apartment. All the puzzle pieces seemed to be coming together.

  “But enough talk,” Gunter said. “Kiss me, you fool.”

  And I was a fool, because I did.

  DANGEROUS CHARM

  By the time I stumbled home the next morning, I felt raw in a dozen places. Sex with Gunter was nothing like it had been with Tim. With Tim, it had been slow and easy, building heat between us until it erupted like one of the volcanoes Hawai‘i is famous for. With Gunter it was athletic and arduous, sweaty and fast-paced, and ultimately no less volcanic. I could still feel the scrape of his beard against my thighs, strain in unaccustomed muscles, and the memory of the deep hunger he awakened in me.