Mahu Fire

by Neil S. Plakcy

  She thought about it. Finally she nodded, and we agreed to meet on Sunday morning before the church service. “But you know,” she said, “you don’t have to worry about me. I know how to keep a secret. After all, I’m gay, aren’t I?”

  I had to admit she had a point.

  HERE’S THE AIRPLANE

  Harry called me late that afternoon to report in. Brandon was better, but Arleen was keeping him at her mother’s for the weekend, just to be extra careful. He’d finally caught up on his sleep, and then he’d spent some time surfing the Internet looking for people and groups that were opposed to same-sex marriage.

  “Way more than I expected,” he said. “I mean, it’s amazing. Don’t these people have lives? Like those people who were out protesting on Wednesday night. Don’t they have anyplace better to be?”

  “I don’t know, brah.” He had printed out a lot of stuff for me, he said, and I told him to fax it over to the station. “I’ll read it. Sometime.”

  “I’ll keep looking. I just wanted to get you what I found so far.”

  The fax spewed out pages for a depressingly long time. I started reading, taking notes, making piles based on how crazy the people seemed to be. Some of the arguments were clear and well-reasoned, though they all failed to change my mind. There were a couple of arguments from libertarians, who said that government shouldn’t regulate any interchange between private individuals. There was a group of bitter, divorced men who said that nobody should get married because marriage was an institution, and who wants to be confined to an institution?

  A few made pseudo-scientific arguments, saying that men had a biological imperative against monogamy. Most of them were ungrammatical rants that strayed into religion and fear of pedophiles. Those writers seemed to believe that once men were allowed to marry each other, the next step was guys marrying their Labradors, or women copulating with donkeys in church. The writers hid behind screen names or pseudonyms, though when I found an actual name I ran it through the computer.

  I was surprised, though probably I shouldn’t have been, how many of those who made religious arguments had criminal records. They were my most promising suspects, including a guy in Makiki Heights with a record of felony assault, a woman in Aiea who’d served time for graft, and a guy from Red Hill who had a string of misdemeanors for disturbing the peace, public drunkenness and indecent exposure. None of them had any record for bombings, arson or deadly assault.

  Lidia called in at the end of her shift. The only item on the list that was unusual was potassium chlorate, and only the Long’s on University had sold some within the last month. “I found the clerk who sold it, and he recognized the sketch.”

  “Lidia, you’re a gem.”

  It was after seven when I finally gave up and left the station. I walked down the street to The Queen’s Medical Center, rubbing my arms against a chilly breeze that swept down South Beretania, skittering trash along the deserted sidewalk. The small cafes and convenience stores that service the downtown population were closed and the line of parking meters were all available and showing red expired circles in their windows, like a long row of tombstones at an unattended cemetery.

  My brothers and their wives had gone home to their families, leaving my mother alone with my father. He was grumpy, refusing to eat his dinner and demanding again to go home. “Maybe you can talk to him,” my mother said when I arrived. “He’s driving me crazy.”

  My father sat up in bed when he saw me come in. There was more color in his face than the day before, and he looked stronger, more rested. “Kimo. Do you know where they put my clothes? I want you to find my clothes so that I can go home.”

  I looked at him sitting there, an IV hooked into his left arm, some kind of wires attaching him to a heart monitor going out the other side, and I started to laugh.

  “What are you laughing at? I could still kick your ass if I wanted to.”

  “You couldn’t even kick a pebble along the street,” I said. “And you aren’t going to be able to if you don’t eat. What was wrong with dinner?” I pointed to the nearly untouched plate sitting on his bedside table.

  “Lousy. They left all the taste out.”

  “I’m starving.” I picked up the fork and tasted the meat loaf. It wasn’t terrific, but it wasn’t that bad either. “This is okay. You sure you don’t want some?” He looked toward the wall.

  I moved the table over his legs and sat on the bed next to him. I picked up a forkful of meat loaf and started waving it in front of his face. “Here’s the airplane, flying around the sky. It wants to come into the hangar.”

  “I remember we used to feed you that way,” my mother said. She, too, looked better, as if she’d finally gotten some sleep the night before.

  “It didn’t work then either,” my father said, continuing to face the wall.

  I waved the fork around in front of his face some more. “Come on, open the hangar so the plane can come in.” Grudgingly he opened his mouth and I stuck the forkful of food in. He chewed and swallowed, and then looked at me. “How about some mashed potatoes?” I asked.

  I scooped some up and he took them, a little less grudgingly.

  “Good job, Dad.”

  I fed myself a forkful of the meat loaf, and my father said, “Hey, whose dinner is that, anyway?” I looked at my mother and we exchanged smiles, and my father took the knife and fork from me and started to eat.

  It was nice sitting there, the three of us. I remembered what it was like after Haoa had moved into the dorms at UH, when Lui was away at Berkeley. I had my parents all to myself, after years of sharing them. We would sit down for dinner together and I’d tell them about what happened at school, and my father would talk about the job he was working on, and my mother would fill in when conversation lagged.

  After my father finished eating, we sat and watched TV together, some dumb comedy I had never seen before. I wanted to call Mike Riccardi, but I was bashful about doing it in front of my parents, because even though I wanted to talk to him about his progress on the case, and about mine, I just wanted to hear his voice, and find out when I could see him again.

  So I didn’t call. For a while, instead, I forgot I was a grown up, a homicide detective who was responsible for finding out why a man had died, why my friends and my father had been hospitalized. I hung out with my parents watching TV, like I had done when I was a teenager. It was a pretty nice feeling.

     

  I woke up from a nightmare around two a.m. I couldn’t remember the details, but it had scared the shit out of me. I think I was chasing somebody, and then he pulled a gun. He wasn’t aiming at me, though; he was aiming just behind me, and I didn’t know who was back there, but I was sure it was somebody I cared about.

  I knew I couldn’t go back to sleep. I was restless and agitated and worried that the nightmare would come back as soon as I closed my eyes. So I pulled on shorts, a T-shirt and slippas, and went out for a walk.

  The air was warm and uncomfortably dry, and the smell of smoke seemed to roll in from the windward side of the island. I wondered if the case Mike had been investigating up in central O’ahu was related to the bombing, if all those fires at gay and lesbian owned businesses had just been warm-ups for the big event. Or worse, if the bombers would continue to terrorize my island. What if the bombing had just been one more step toward a much larger goal?

  I walked the couple of blocks down Lili’uokalani to Kalakaua, which was buzzing with activity, mostly of the tourist type. The bars were still open, the street brightly lit, cars cruising slowly. I spotted a couple of prostitutes; it was clear that the Vice raids hadn’t been completely successful. A couple of the prostitutes were gay men; one of them recognized me and took my arm, trying to entice me off to a motel room with him—or maybe just a dark alley.

  I pointedly looked away, and my eye caught a guy in a sedan just across from me. Traffic was stopped at a light, and his window was down.

  I recognized the look Gunter
had described—that combination of fear and longing. The guy was a john, for sure, and within a block or two some hooker would catch up to him.

  But there was something more. Our eyes locked, and then he looked away. Had he been cruising me? He looked familiar. Had I met him at the Rod and Reel Club late one night? Worse, had I slept with him and then forgotten?

  As the light changed and he accelerated away, I realized that he looked like the guy in the sketch—the sweaty guy from the party. I shook off the prostitute’s hand and started running, darting between the tourists and the street hawkers, trying to catch the guy. But his car was a nondescript dark sedan, and he was gone before I could get a glimpse of his license plate.

  Was it the same guy? Or was I just so tired and sleep-deprived that I was imagining things? I yawned, and went back home. I wasn’t going to be any use unless I got some rest.

  GUNTER’S OVEN

  When I’m investigating a case, nothing clears my head like surfing. There’s something about getting out there among the waves, surrounded by sea and sky, that helps me focus my concentration, free my subconscious mind to look for patterns and ask questions I haven’t thought of yet.

  But my back was still red and scaly, flaking skin all over my sheets that Saturday morning, so I knew surfing was out. I decided to roller blade instead, and, to make the best of a bad situation, to blade over to Gunter’s house and see how he was doing, now that he was home from the hospital. Before I left, though, I tried to get hold of Mike Riccardi but couldn’t reach him, leaving him a message.

  It was a gorgeous morning, only a few puffy clouds congregating over the tops of the Ko’olau mountains. The bad news was that meant there wasn’t going to be any rain.

  The rest of the sky was a luminous light blue. A gentle trade wind ruffled the tops of the palm trees as I bladed toward Diamond Head on Ala Wai Boulevard, shutting out the hotel vans and idle tourists in rental cars, the blaring horns and distant sirens. Instead I concentrated on the serene waters of the canal next to me, on the outrigger canoes full of weekend athletes that pulled past, grunting and shouting. Diamond Head itself loomed ahead of me, its brown and green flanks still free of development.

  I crossed the triangular intersection where Ala Wai ends at Kapahulu and continued on behind Diamond Head Elementary to Gunter’s little house. The windows were open and his car was in the driveway. I skated up to the front door and rang the bell, looking down at the welcome mat as I did. It read, “Prize Patrol: Sorry we missed you. Leave the $1,000,000 check under the mat.”

  Gunter came to the door looking sexy in a tank top that read “America’s Most Wanted” and a pair of tight nylon running shorts slit up the side. He’d gotten a new haircut, shaving the sides down to nothing and leaving only a crown of blond fuzz at the top. I could see rough red patches on one side of his head, and he still had a couple of bandages on his arms.

  “Hey, babe, you weren’t who I was expecting.” He leaned forward to kiss me as I tried to step inside. I caught the edge of my skate on the mat and stumbled into his arms. “If you want to jump my bones there are more subtle ways to tell me,” he said, smiling.

  I regained my balance and clomped forward into his living room. “When I’m ready to jump your bones you’ll know about it.” Though I’d been happy in the past to get sweaty with Gunter, I’d experienced something new and different with Mike and I wanted to explore it. “Who were you expecting?” I asked, sitting on the couch.

  “The artist you sent by yesterday. We’re continuing our artistic collaboration.” Gunter posed, as if for a portrait.

  “Interesting.” I hadn’t been kidding when I’d described the guy as fifty and pot-bellied. Not what I’d expect as Gunter’s type.

  A little disappointment showed on Gunter’s face. “Not as interesting as it might be. He’s bringing his girlfriend along.” A sly smile crept on his face. “Apparently this is a little fantasy of hers.”

  “So will you—” I waved my hand a little in the air because I didn’t want to actually say the words— “with her, too?”

  “I can do it, you know,” he said indignantly. “It’s not my favorite thing in the world or anything, but I am capable.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply you weren’t.”

  “Of course, there may be some surprises along the way that they hadn’t anticipated.” There was that sly smile again. “For both of them. You ever hear of the Eiffel Tower?”

  “Big metal thing in Paris? Yeah.”

  “Not exactly what I meant,” Gunter said. “Picture this woman lying flat, her boyfriend at the front, getting a blow job. Me behind her.”

  “I get the picture. But where does the Eiffel Tower come in? You speak French to each other?”

  “The two guys lean forward toward each other,” Gunter said. “Straight guys high five.”

  “Oh.”

  “And we might do a little ski poling.” He made some motions with his hands, which could either be the action of arms on ski poles—or someone jerking two guys off simultaneously. “You can stick around, you know. The more the merrier, I always say.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “Now, you’re not going all closeted on me, are you Kimo?”

  “I hardly think that’s possible, unless I leave the state.”

  “Because you know a boy needs sex. I don’t want to hear about you going with any prostitutes or anything nasty like that. You know if you need some lovin’, just come over to Gunter’s oven. It’s always hot here.”

  I must have blushed, because he said, “You are getting some! And you haven’t told me about it. You naughty boy!” He sat next to me on the sofa. “Okay, dish.”

  My mind seemed like it was overflowing. I wanted to tell him everything about Mike Riccardi, but at the same time I was scared that talking might jinx things. And there was something else running around in my head, too, something that Gunter had said. I was thinking when he said, “Now, Kimo, you’re not going to hold out on me, are you?”

  I gave up. I told him about seeing Mike on Monday morning at police headquarters when I was carrying the dead chicken, and then the coincidence of seeing him again Wednesday night. Then about stripping down in front of him, and the look in his eyes.

  “Good, your gaydar is improving. So what happened next?”

  I must have blushed again, because he dug an elbow in my ribs and said, “You dog. I want to know all the details.”

  It felt great to talk about him, as if it made what I felt more real by sharing it. “Young love,” Gunter sighed. “It’s so sweet. I remember my first love.”

  “How old were you? Thirteen?”

  Gunter gave me a look. “Actually I was twelve. I was an early bloomer.”

  “I’ll bet.” Then it came to me. “You said something about prostitutes before, didn’t you?”

  “I did not have sex with a prostitute when I was twelve years old,” Gunter said. “I had to wait until I was at least nineteen for that.”

  “No, what you said about closeted guys going with prostitutes. The guy we saw the night of the bombing, the one you worked on the sketch of. He look closeted?”

  “Absolutely.”

  I remembered catching that glimpse the night before, of the guy in the dark sedan. Maybe it was the same guy, after all. “So maybe I should circulate the sketch among prostitutes, see if any of them recognize him.”

  “Adult book stores, too,” Gunter said. “And gay bars. You never know who’ll show up in one.”

  “That’s true. It’s where I met you.” I leaned over and kissed him. “Thanks, Gunter. That’s a great idea.”

  I stood up. “I’d better get back on the pavement. I don’t want to disrupt your artistic endeavors.” This time it was my turn to strike a pose. He jumped up and tried to tickle me but I raced him to the front door.

  I bladed home, showered, and changed, then headed to The Queen’s Medical Center to check on my various charges. Arleen and Harry were there to check Robert o
ut of the hospital, and take him up to Arleen’s mother’s, where he and Brandon could both be monitored.

  Sandra Guarino was improving, too. When I got to her room, she was preparing to be discharged. Sandra and Cathy were sitting together on the bed, Sandra in street clothes, and they were holding hands and chatting softly. Sandra’s parents were sitting by the window overlooking the highway, not saying anything.

  “Kimo! I’m so glad you’re here!” Sandra tried to get up, but she was still too weak. Cathy held her arm as she sank back to the bed. I walked over, leaned down, and kissed her cheek. She took my hand and squeezed. “So do I get to call you my hero and bat my eyelashes?”

  “I doubt you even know how to bat your eyelashes,” I said, smiling.

  “Never underestimate the power of a woman.”

  “Or the power of a gay man who’s also a great friend,” Cathy said.

  “Aw shucks, guys, it was nothing.” I sat on a chair on the other side of the bed from Sandra’s parents. “So, you’re going home?”

  “I’m still pretty weak, but the doctor says I can recuperate at home just as well as here.” Sandra leaned forward. “Seriously, Kimo, there’s no way for me to thank you. For what you did for me, and for Cathy, too.”

  “Please, you’re embarrassing me. I’m just glad you’re up and around. Soon, maybe, you can think about what you want to do with the project.”

  “Charlie Stahl came over earlier this afternoon,” Sandra said. “You remember him from the party, don’t you? His family owns half of O’ahu. He’s donating office space, and startup funds to buy all new equipment. We’re going to be back in business on Monday. I’m taking some sick leave from the firm, so whatever I can manage I’ll do just for the project, for now.”

  “We’ve been talking to your brother, too,” Cathy said. “He’s helping us arrange a press conference for Monday, just in time for the evening news. Charlie’s buying us an announcement in the Advertiser, too, so that we can get a big crowd, rally the troops and so on. It’s going to be in Waikiki Gateway Park, where Kuhio meets Kalakaua. You’ll come, won’t you?”