Mahu Fire

by Neil S. Plakcy

  “You have a partial plate, right?” Sampson asked. “And you think that the Whites are involved. Have you checked their DMV records?”

  “The network is down right now,” I said. “As soon as it comes up, I’ll check.”

  “How about a lineup? If one of your witnesses can place this White guy at the Marriage Project office, you could get a warrant based on that.”

  “Funny,” I said. “Usually we say ‘haole’ when we mean white guy.”

  Sampson wasn’t laughing.

  “A lineup is a good idea,” I said. “White said he was going to hire an attorney, so it may take a day or two to organize. I’ll get things started.” I began to wonder where I could round up a group of haole guys who looked like Jeff White, and remembered Eli Harding. “Did you talk to Kitty about the picnic?”

  “She’s not answering her cell phone,” he said. “She tell you what time this picnic was?”

  I shook my head. “Just that it was in the afternoon.”

  “If I have to, I’ll drive up to her apartment tomorrow morning and pick her up,” he said.

  Back at my desk, Lui called me looking for a news hook and I had to admit I didn’t have anything. “But you can’t run that,” I said.

  “It’s not exactly news, is it? The police have no suspects and no new leads. How about the murder on Sunday? You think that’s related?”

  I debated telling my brother about the ballistics match. I’d trust him with my life, and I had in the past. But he did run a news operation. “It’s obvious to me that Stahl’s murder is connected to the bombing at the Marriage Project. But I don’t have any evidence that links the two crimes other than the fact that Stahl was a supporter. He was at the party the night of the bombing, and he was killed as they were announcing he was funding the Project to reopen. That’s all I’ve got.”

  “We’ve been hearing stories about some unorthodox sexual activities. You think there’s any connection?”

  My first reaction was to scoff, but then I reconsidered. “I hate to malign a dead guy, Lui, but I guess it’s something we have to consider. The kind of stuff he was into, there’s usually a mutual trust between the two parties, safe words and so on.”

  “Safe words?” he interrupted. “What’s that?”

  “From what I’ve heard, and you’re my brother so I feel I have to tell you I don’t know any of this from first-hand experience, when you do anything with somebody else that involves pain or bondage or anything, you have these safe words. That way the person getting tied up can say, no, you’re hurting me, ouch, and so on, which I guess adds to the fun somehow.”

  “And the safe words?”

  “Well, when things go too far, the person just has to say, pickle, or sandwich, or whatever, and then things are supposed to stop. It’s possible that something Stahl was doing got out of hand, and somebody wanted to take revenge on him, but that’s a real long shot, considering the circumstances.”

  “It may be a long shot, but as a tease it’ll play on the news. Thanks, brah. I’ll get a reporter onto it.”

  “Let me know if you find anything out.” When I hung up I felt like shit. I didn’t want to drag Charlie Stahl’s personal life through the gutter. He’d seemed like a nice enough guy, and he had that record of good works and charitable donations. But it was possible I was going on the wrong track, linking his shooting to the bombing, and Lui might find something out that could move the case forward.

  Thinking about that, I wondered if somebody who lived around Hiroshi Mura might have had sex with Charlie Stahl. Maybe Mura saw them. I had heard he was always snooping around the neighborhood. It was a long shot, but I called Harry and suggested he try and correlate the partial license plate to Makiki. He said he’d try.

  I met up with Mike that night for dinner, and a long walk along the beach. I got such a positive charge from being with him—seeing his handsome face, touching the dark curl of his hair, feeling his body heat. We talked about the case, sat next to each other and stared at the gibbous moon, and kissed in the dark behind the gate of the zoo. The air smelled of animal droppings, sea salt, and the sewage pipe that runs out into the Pacific, but I didn’t care.

  I held onto Mike, heard the palm fronds rustle in the light breeze, and looked out at the crescent of lights along Diamond Head Road. I felt like I had a tenuous grasp on happiness.

  We cruised Waikiki and Ala Moana Beach Park once again, looking for Jimmy, without success, ending up back at the rest room where we’d seen Frankie and Lolo.

  “I’ve got to take a leak,” Mike said.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  There was something sexy and dangerous about standing there next to Mike at the urinals, seeing the dick that I had sucked that morning poking its way out of his pants. I’ve never been one for water sports, but I definitely got an erotic charge out of being there next to him in a public place, our dicks out. He was on my left, so I reached my left arm around his shoulders and brought his head to mine so we could kiss.

  We finished pissing, and I put my right hand on his dick, which was stiffening, as mine was. We kissed, and began stroking each other.

  “You know this is crazy,” I said, between kisses. “Anybody could walk in here and catch us.”

  “One of those kids you know,” Mike said, nuzzling my ear. “Or a cop.”

  “We could end up in jail.”

  “You and me in a cell together,” Mike said.

  My pulse rate was accelerating and I was having trouble breathing. There was a single stall, handicap size, next to us, and I dragged Mike into it. Well, I didn’t exactly have to drag him; he was a willing accomplice. In that relative privacy, we kept on kissing and rubbing against each other.

  We heard two male voices, giggling in Japanese. My mother’s father was Japanese, and I learned a few words to be able to talk to him, but I couldn’t understand much of what the guys were saying to each other. They knew we were there, though, and it didn’t seem to bother them. I pressed against Mike to let him know that it was okay, and he pushed back.

  The guys outside the stall were grooving on us; I could hear them kissing and their bodies rubbing against each other just as we were doing.

  Mike whispered in my ear, “You are a very bad boy.”

  “You’re no better,” I whispered back. “But if we’re going to do any more than this, we ought to get a room, you know.”

  The door to the restroom slammed as the two Japanese guys exited. Mike and I were alone again, and kissed once more before we opened the stall door, then walked back out into the cool night.

     

  The phone woke us both. I looked at the clock, bleary-eyed. It was only six-thirty. “I did it, brah,” Harry crowed. “I came up with a match I think you’re gonna find very interesting.”

  “Harry. You know what time it is?”

  “Yeah, it’s six-thirty. You’re lucky I didn’t call you at four, when I figured this out. I thought by now you’d be up and ready to surf.”

  I yawned. “Oh, well. Tell me what you found.”

  “There’s black Toyota Camry, license plate HXM 691, registered to a Jeffrey White in Makiki. That’s your minister, right? He lives down the street from where you found the old man, and around the corner from the address where the rooster got shot. And your buddy Mike saw the guy who shot Charlie Stahl get into a car that matches this plate.”

  “Thanks, brah. You’re a winner. I’ll talk to you later.”

  I rolled over and looked at Mike. “We’ve finally got enough to connect the Whites to the bombings and the shootings.”

  It took us only about twenty minutes to get pulled together. While we drove down to police headquarters, I remembered Frank Sit mentioning the couple in a dark sedan the night of the bombing. I was sure that was the Whites.

  The streets were strangely quiet, and Mike helped me write my search warrant. By nine o’clock we had it ready to go.

  Judge Yamanaka was a few blocks away, at
the Criminal Courts building, and though on a slower day we might have walked over to deliver the warrant, we drove instead. “Try to get us there in one piece, okay?” Mike asked, as I swerved around slow moving trucks and used the flashing light on my dash.

  “Hey, I took the defensive driving course at the Academy.”

  “That’s what I’m worried about.”

  Judge Yamanaka insisted that I tell him everything that had led me to my conclusions. “We tracked the partial license plate that Fire Inspector Riccardi saw on the gunman’s escape vehicle to this address,” I said. “And we matched the ballistics on both homicides. That gives us probable cause to search the residence and the vehicle, as well as the other vehicle registered at the same address.”

  “You’re also looking for incendiary materials?” the judge asked.

  Mike spoke up. “We believe that the homicide of Mr. Stahl is linked to the bombing that killed Vice Mayor Shira. Because of Mr. Stahl’s connection to the Hawai’i Marriage Project and the context of his murder.”

  “Somebody really doesn’t like the Project,” I said. “It’s our hypothesis that Mr. Stahl was killed in an effort to keep the Project from reopening.”

  “That’s a pretty big leap, Detective,” the judge said. “And how do you connect Mr. Stahl’s murder to Mr. Mura’s?”

  “I can’t answer every question without the results of the search,” I said. “If this Mr. White was involved in planning or carrying out the bombing, it’s possible that Mr. Mura, his neighbor, witnessed something that caused Mr. White to kill him.”

  Judge Yamanaka looked from me to Mike, and back to me again. He sighed. “All right, I’ll grant you the warrant. But I’m warning you, this had better be more than just a fishing expedition.”

  “It’s more than that, Judge,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”

  I called Lieutenant Sampson as soon as we left the judge’s chambers, and he arranged to meet us a couple of blocks from the address in Makiki with a squad of plainclothesmen. When we pulled up he was standing outside his car looking grim. “I did a pass by,” he said. “There’s one car in the driveway.”

  “One of the vehicles we’re authorized to search?”

  He shook his head. “No. My daughter’s. I went to her apartment this morning, but she was already gone. Did she say that she was going out with these people as well as the others?”

  “Not to me. I never would have let her go, knowing what we know about the Whites.”

  “I’m holding you responsible.” He pointed an accusing finger at me. “I want my daughter back, safe. Otherwise there’s going to be hell to pay.”

  “I know,” I said. Somehow I’d known it all along.

  We prepared to move in. Sampson insisted on taking the lead; after all, Kitty was his daughter. Mike and I followed behind him, guns drawn and ready. “Open up, it’s the police,” he shouted, after knocking loudly. “We have a search warrant.”

  There was no response. “There’s nobody home,” a voice said. I turned and saw it was Jerry the cabinet maker. I’d forgotten he lived next door. He was standing on his front porch looking at us. “They left about an hour ago. Both of them, her in her car and him in his truck. She had another woman with her, the woman who drove over in that car.” He pointed to Kitty’s, and started walking toward us. “Then he came back, just for a few minutes, and put a bunch of stuff in the back of his truck.”

  “Was he alone?” I asked.

  “No, there was somebody with him, looked like a teenager. Funny hair. Looked like a Chinese kid, but with blonde hair pulled up like a Mohawk.”

  A Chinese kid with a blonde Mohawk. That sounded like Jimmy Ah Wong. My mind raced ahead, making connections. I knew that Jimmy had been working the streets, and I’d seen Jeff White cruising Kalakaua as if he was looking to pick somebody up. Did White know Jimmy?

  “If I showed you a picture of a kid, do you think you could ID him?” I asked.

  Bosk shook his head. “He didn’t get out of the truck at all.” Jerry came to the low hedge that separated the two properties. He motioned me to come closer. “I think Mr. Whack Job was putting some guns in the back of the truck,” he said. “At least, one of the things he brought out looked a lot like a rifle.”

  Lieutenant Sampson ordered uniforms to check out the perimeter of the property and report back in. “They have a shed in the back, too,” Jerry said. “You should check that too.”

  “You said Mr. White came back,” I said. “How long ago was that?”

  “Oh, you just missed him. Maybe ten minutes ago?”

  “You have any idea where they were all going?” Sampson asked.

  “We’re not exactly friendly,” Jerry said. “But I did see her, Sheila, carrying a picnic basket. And the girl with her had a couple of grocery bags.”

  The uniforms reported in. They didn’t see anyone around the house, and no activity could be seen through the windows. “I don’t suppose you have a key to their house?” Sampson asked. When Jerry shook his head, Sampson directed a uniform to break the door down.

  Mike and I were surveying the house when one of the uniforms radioed. “I think we found what you were looking for, out here in the shed.” We hurried out to where the uniform was standing in front of a small wooden shed, about eight feet on each side. He had cut a padlock off the door and turned on the lights inside.

  We could both see that the room had been fitted out as some kind of laboratory. “Bingo,” Mike said.

  We worked steadily, gathering evidence for several hours. In the meantime, Sampson had APBs broadcast for both of the Whites’ cars. He paced back and forth among us like a restless ghost, muttering aloud about terrorist bombers and headstrong kids. I looked at my watch and saw that Uncle Chin’s wake had been going on for hours.

  I called my father and explained I was running late. “There are lots of people here,” he said. “But try and come over for a few minutes. I know Mei-Mei would appreciate it.”

  “I’ll try. Tell her I’m sorry, will you?”

  “She knows,” he said.

  INCENSE BURNING

  By two o’clock Thursday we had gathered as much evidence as we could from the house. When the technicians went back to headquarters to check fingerprint records, they dropped Mike at the fire department lab with all the incendiary materials. We didn’t find the small Smith and Wesson we believed had been used to kill Charlie Stahl and Hiroshi Mura, but it was obvious from the empty gun drawers that many weapons of various sizes were missing.

  I told Lieutenant Sampson I wanted to stop by Uncle Chin’s house for the wake, promising I’d keep my cell phone turned on and handy, and he let me go. The narrow, curving streets of St. Louis Heights were chock-a-block with cars as I navigated my way there. Fortunately, a neighbor, Mr. Rodriguez, was out in his yard as I passed and he let me park in his driveway. As I walked down the hill toward the house, I saw a familiar face in one of the parked cars.

  “Hey, brah,” I said, walking up to the passenger side of the car. “You checking out all the dangerous characters going into my uncle’s house?”

  Akoni turned to me, a sheepish look on his face. “We’re just looking at tong members.”

  “You got a problem with that, Kanapa’aka?” the man behind the wheel said.

  I leaned down to look in at him. His name was Tony Lee, and all I knew about him was that he worked in Organized Crime. “Not at all,” I said. “You see anybody you don’t know, you can just ask me. I’ve got a couple of great-aunts you might not recognize.”

  “Blow me,” Tony said.

  “Hey, be careful what you say. I might just take you up on that someday.”

  I saw Akoni trying to stifle a smile and stood up. Uncle Chin’s house and yard were full of people and it took me a while to say hello to everyone. There are very prescribed rites that take place when a person of Chinese descent dies, and even though he had a long criminal past, Uncle Chin was very traditional, and he was getting everything he was d
ue.

  When I saw the group of old men playing cards in the front courtyard, I realized that Aunt Mei-Mei had gone totally old school, and that Uncle Chin’s body had to be in the house, waiting for the funeral. The card players were there because the corpse had to be “guarded” while it was in the house, and gambling helped the “guards” pass the time. It was also said to make the mourners feel better—which I guessed was only true if you were winning.

  A white cloth was across the doorway of the house, and a gong had been placed to the left. The wake had been going on since early that morning, and I figured that my family had been busy helping Aunt Mei-Mei prepare everything. A monk stood in the corner, his head shaved, wearing saffron robes and chanting Buddhist scriptures. The Chinese believe that the souls of the dead face many obstacles, torments, and even torture for the sins they have committed in life before they are allowed to take their place in the afterlife. The monk’s prayers, chanting and rituals were aimed to help smooth the passage of Uncle Chin’s soul into heaven. From what I knew of his life, he needed all the help he could get.

  A trio of musicians played gong, flute and trumpet in one corner of the living room. Next to them, Uncle Chin’s coffin sat about two feet above the ground, with his head of the deceased facing the inside of the house. The area around the head of the coffin was filled with wreaths, gifts and a big color photo of Uncle Chin as a young man.

  He was quite handsome then, though there was a deadliness about his eyes that was creepy, even knowing that he was beyond harming anyone. The coffin was open, with plates of food placed in front of it, to feed Uncle Chin on his journey.

  A comb, broken in half, was placed in the coffin next to him, and I knew that Aunt Mei-Mei would keep the other half. At the foot of the coffin sat an altar, with burning incense and a lit white candle. Joss paper and prayer money (to provide the deceased with sufficient income in the afterlife) are burned continuously throughout the wake. I stepped up to the altar, bowed to Uncle Chin, and lit a stick of sandalwood incense. I folded a twenty-dollar bill and slipped it into the donation box.