Mahu Blood

by Alex Beecroft

He sniffed. “Smells like shit. Take it off.”

  I smiled. “There’s a surprise for you underneath.”

  I unbuttoned the shirt, showing off the fire department T-shirt, and Mike burst out laughing. “You’re joining my team.”

  “Speaking of your team.” I told him about the EMT who knew I was his partner.

  I was worried he’d freak out. But instead he said, “Yeah, I know him. Cool guy.”

  Maybe I was just too tired. That didn’t sound like Mike. But instead of starting an argument, I sunk into the chair across from him and motioned to the pages on the kitchen table. “What’s all that?”

  “I want to have a housewarming party.”

  I yawned. “You’ve been in this house for years.”

  “Yeah, but you just moved in. Look at this list of people I want to invite.”

  He pushed a sheet of paper across the table to me. He’d included my parents and his, my brothers and their families, Terri and Levi, Harry and Arleen, Ray and Julie and a bunch of other people I didn’t know. I recognized some names as his coworkers 292 Neil S. Plakcy

  and friends.

  “You want to have this many?”

  “I want to make a big luau. Haoa can dig the imu for us, right?”

  An imu is a big pit in the back yard where you roast a pig.

  “We have to make sure Roby doesn’t dig it up,” I said. Roby looked up from the floor as if my mentioning his name indicated there was a treat in his future. When he saw nothing coming, he slumped back to the tile.

  “Yeah, dogs,” Mike said. “Everybody has to bring their dogs.”

  He made a note on another piece of paper. “And the Greshams.

  They’ll want to see how Roby is doing.”

  The only way I could drag him away from the kitchen was to start stripping, there in front of him. I had the fire department T-shirt and my pants off, my dick poking out of the slit in my boxers, before he finally got the hint.

  After Mike and I had licked and sucked and rubbed each other to orgasm, he went right to sleep, but I lay there in bed next to him for a few minutes, relishing the feeling, once again, of bringing down the bad guys and making things right with the world, even if only for a little while.

  LuAu

  The next morning, Ray and I were back in the rotation, but we made time, over the next few days, to pull together all the details. Once Dex was in jail, Leelee confessed that she thought Dex had done something with her uncle Amos. Dex and Amos had fought a lot, especially when Amos was drunk and Dex was high.

  One day Amos didn’t come home, and Edith and Leelee had both been too frightened of Dex to say anything—not to mention the consequences from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs if the ownership of the property had to change to Leelee, who didn’t have the 50 percent Hawaiian blood to qualify to stay.

  Edith had the blood but didn’t want the responsibility. So neither had done anything.

  Though the pressure let up at work, as Ray and I handled a stream of simpler cases, it only got worse at home. When Mike got his mind on something, I couldn’t distract him. He spent the weekend making luau plans and fixing little things that had broken over the years. We argued and fought and then had make up sex, and I started wishing for an emergency to call me back to work. I was relieved when Monday morning came.

  We recruited my mother, his mother and both my sisters-in-law to help us cook, and every day that week someone was ferrying foodstuffs over to our house. We filled up the extra refrigerator-freezer in the garage with fruits, vegetables and platters and spent our spare time cleaning the house from top to bottom. My mother even sent us her maid to scrub down the kitchen and the bathrooms and polish the furniture.

  Mike and I both took Friday off from work. Haoa and his crew showed up to dig the imu shortly after 7:00 a.m., rousing us out of bed and sending Roby into a frenzy of barking, especially as the earthmover rolled down off the back of the pickup.

  The imu had to be about 2’ by 4’, with sloping sides. Haoa 294 Neil S. Plakcy

  brought a lot of twigs and other combustible material he’d been gathering from work sites for the last week, and Mike and I helped him and his guys place the kindling at the bottom of the pit. There was a separate pile of banana leaves, ti leaves and palm fronds, or hali’i, to put on top of the pig and the other food once the fire was going.

  Mike and I positioned some big logs on top of the kindling, then a tier of stones on top of the logs. My parents arrived around nine, bringing with them a bunch of old woven lauhala mats and tapa cloths that we would use the next day, once the pig was in place, to cover the whole mess.

  Tatiana and Liliha came over while their kids were in school to help set up the rest of the yard, putting up tables and chairs.

  Mike hung decorative Japanese lanterns from the tree branches, and I kept busy running stuff back and forth.

  Everybody left halfway through the afternoon, and Mike and I took a break with a couple of beers, sitting in the back yard with Roby at our feet, nibbling bits of roast chicken that Mike fed him when he thought I wasn’t looking.

  “I never thought I could have this,” Mike said.

  “A luau?”

  “This,” he said, waving his beer to encompass the yard and all the preparations. “You. Me. Roby. A big luau like this with all our family and friends.”

  “I thought I could,” I said. “But I always thought there’d be a wife and kids involved.” I sipped my beer. “When we first graduated from the academy, Akoni was dating this divorced woman, a few years older than us, with a couple of kids. I remember asking him how he would feel about raising somebody else’s kids. He said they weren’t that serious, they were just dating.”

  I stretched my legs and leaned back in my chair. “I couldn’t understand that, dating a woman for fun. I thought the only reason to date somebody was so that you could get married eventually.”

  Mike laughed. “That why you dated so many women? You MAhu BLood 295

  wanted to marry them all?”

  “I kept hoping things would be different,” I said. “That I’d really, I don’t know, like it, you know? That I would feel that thing I felt when I looked at guys.” I reached over and squeezed his hand. “That thing I feel with you.”

  We got up and finished the preparations, nibbling on the platters for dinner, trying to artfully rearrange the cold salads so that it didn’t look like we’d been at them. We spent the evening hanging out, Mike watching reruns on TV and me playing a computer surfing game that alternated between fun and frustration.

  We were up at six lighting the fire, and it was ready by the time Mike’s father got back from the butcher in Ewa Beach with the pig, which would take about eight hours to cook. Roby was so excited he kept dancing around the car and then us.

  As Mike and I dragged the pig out of the car, Haoa showed up to supervise. “More hali’i , ” he said, from the sidelines, as Mike and I piled on the banana leaves. “You want the pig to steam, not to burn.”

  We were both sweaty and tired by the time we had the pig in the pit, the hali’i piled on top, then the lauhala mats over it all, covered with a layer of dirt. Haoa left, and we took the opportunity to take showers and eat some breakfast before the next wave of people showed up.

  Our kitchen was commandeered by my mother, working with Tatiana, while Liliha went next door and helped Mike’s mother.

  They prepared platters of chicken long rice, poi, shark-fin soup, sweet and sour spareribs and Portuguese sausage and beans.

  There were Korean dishes, Chinese ones, even a boat load of Russian pierogies from Tatiana’s mother’s recipe.

  My mother and Tatiana had been baking cakes and pies and cookies all week, which they piled on the tables along with platters of fruit, tubs of mango sherbet and chocolate ice cream in coolers and about ten different types of crack seed.

  The smell of the pig roasting began rising from the pit, and 296 Neil S. Plakcy

  Roby positioned himself right at
the edge, alternately leaning forward to sniff and backing away from the heat. By noon, the yard was full of kids and dogs. Roby pretended to be the big shot, barking at every newcomer then jumping up to be petted and adored. We set up speakers in the yard and played The Makaha Sons, Keola Beamer and Mark Keali’i Ho’omalu and the Kamehameha School Children’s Chorus singing Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride. It was just like something out of Lilo and Stich, only without the space alien.

  I worried about the different groups of people we invited.

  Would the cops, like Ray, Kitty and Lieutenant Sampson mingle with my gay friends from the North Shore? How about Gunter, who brought a couple of guys from Māhū Nation? I had spoken with Peggy Kaneahe and invited her, and she’d asked if she could bring some attorneys and paralegals from her firm, who wanted to thank me for arresting Adam O’Malley’s killer. Would they get along with everyone else?

  My fears were unfounded. When Mike’s old boyfriend, the one who worked at the Halekulani, arrived with his new sweetheart, they bonded with Harry and Arleen. Greg Oshiro showed up with his two-year-old twins, and every mom in the place gathered to coo over them. Peggy and a male lawyer from her firm played croquet with Jimmy Ah Wang, a kid I had met on a case years before, and a college friend of his from Chicago. The Gresham kids played with Roby and my nieces and nephews.

  By the time we opened up the pit and pulled out the pig, the party was in full swing. My cousin Ben was the focus of an adoring group of kids who realized that they had a champion surfer in their midst. Uncle Kimo, usually the fountain of all surf wisdom, was relegated to the sidelines. My mother and Aunt Pua, Ben’s mom, were getting along, the two of them talking story in a corner of the yard with their other sisters. Miscellaneous cousins renewed old friendships and feuds, with Lui’s son Jeffrey and Haoa’s daughter Ashley organizing a touch football game that ended with the ball on our roof and Mike climbing up there to retrieve it.

  MAhu BLood 297

  My dad and Mike’s were turning into fast friends, regaling each other with stories of how badly each of us had behaved as keikis. Gunter and Jimmy began planning a Māhū Nation party at the U.H. campus, in conjunction with the GLBT group there. It was much more than just a luau; it was a meeting of worlds, and just as Rodney King would have wanted, we were all just getting along.

  Late in the afternoon, Harry came over to me carrying a manila folder. “I managed to enhance those birth records you gave me. Want to take a look?”

  “Sure.” I called over Ray and Lieutenant Sampson, and we added Peggy Kaneahe and Sarah Byrne since the materials had come to us through Fields and Yamato. I explained that to Sampson as the six of us sat down at the picnic table.

  Starting with the most recent page, I traced my finger down the list. “Look here,” I said. “1968. Ezekiel Kapuāiwa Lopika.

  Parents Alfred and Leilani Lopika.”

  “Ezekiel Lopika,” Peggy said. “That’s the guy whose hospitalization records we found.”

  “So it looks like those records do belong to Ezekiel Kapuāiwa,”

  I said. “He must have dropped his last name after he got out of the mental hospital.”

  “King Kamehameha’s birth name was Lot Kapuāiwa,” Peggy said. “We learned what Kapuāiwa meant in Hawaiian school, didn’t we, Kimo?”

  I struggled to recall anything I’d learned in those open-air classrooms, washed in memories of Peggy and me as little kids learning the Hawaiian language and the legends of the gods.

  We usually think of kapu as something forbidden—but really it means something sacred, restricted only to royalty. Tossing that idea in my head, I tried to put kapu together with āiwa, which means mysterious or strange. Then it came back to me in a flash.

  “Yeah. Something like a sacred one protected by supernatural powers.”

  298 Neil S. Plakcy

  “Something sure protected Ezekiel at the bank,” Ray said.

  “The way he was able to pull Dex out of that truck without getting himself killed.”

  “So maybe Ezekiel really is a descendant of Kamehameha,”

  Peggy said excitedly. “And Tanaka convinced Ezekiel to drop Lopika in order to focus on the connection. Didn’t you say you found some big koa bowls somewhere?”

  “That’s right. My mother said bowls that big were reserved for royalty. Edith was Ezekiel’s hanai tūtū, so she may have been holding them for him.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Ray said. “We have the records right here. Let’s see what we can find.”

  We hunted backward until we found Alfred’s birth record, in 1925. No father’s name was given, but his mother was Victoria Lopika. In 1906, we found the birth of a baby girl by that name.

  I struggled to remember the details Maile Kanuha had given us.

  “Victoria’s father is supposed to be Moses Kapuāiwa, who was the grandson of Kamehameha V.”

  “Kamehameha?” Sampson said. “I’m no expert on Hawaiian history, but I thought he never had any children. Isn’t that when Hawai’i started electing kings, after he died?”

  “The story that Kingdom of Hawai’i tells is that Kamehameha had an illegitimate son named Ulumaheihei, maybe with one of the girls who was at the Royal School with him, who dropped out and got married quickly. That his advisors would never let him recognize the boy, and that’s why he refused to name a successor.

  Ulumaheihei died when Moses was young, and the family never came forward until now.”

  “Let’s look for Moses, then,” Peggy said.

  But there was no Moses, no one designated to lead his people out of slavery. Victoria’s parents were John and Apikela Lopika. The records didn’t go back far enough to track John Lopika’s birth, but I was willing to bet he wasn’t related to Moses Kapuāiwa, if such a person existed.

  “If it’s true, then Ezekiel isn’t descended from Kamehameha, MAhu BLood 299

  and he has no more right to a restored throne than you or me,”

  I said.

  “Speak for yourself,” Peggy said. “My great-grandmother insisted she was a distant cousin of Queen Lili’uokalani.”

  “It would destroy the foundation of KOH, though,” I said.

  “If Jun Tanaka was betting on Ezekiel and then he discovered his horse was out of the running, he might do whatever he could to keep the information from getting out.”

  “So what do we do with this material?” Peggy asked. “It shuts down KOH.”

  “I think KOH is going down anyway,” I said. “Without Tanaka’s money, without him pulling the strings, you’ve got Ezekiel. And everyone who knows him admits he’s a little squirrely. He did act like a hero at the bank, though.”

  I sat back in my chair. “Ezekiel said something to me. That he believed it was in his blood to protect the people of Hawai’i.

  That they were his ohana. And who knows, maybe those big bowls Aunty Edith had really did come down through his family and that means he has royal connections somewhere.”

  “He may be nuts, but he’s a good guy,” Ray said. “If he hadn’t pulled Dex out of the truck, Dex could have killed more people.”

  We were agreed. The secrets of Ezekiel’s parentage and hospitalization would stay between us, at least until there was some reason to make them public. The Bishop Museum had contacted Leelee about buying the bowls from her, and Peggy had agreed to look after Leelee’s interests in the deal. Some of the money would go to get her settled off homestead land, and some would be put away in trust for the baby.

  The CDs had all ended by then, and no one had gotten up to put new ones on. “I think we need a little live music,” Peggy said. “To cap off a great luau. Sarah, you want to sing something for us?”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t,” Sarah said. “Not without a band behind me.”

  300 Neil S. Plakcy

  “You have a great voice,” Ray said. “You know Frishberg’s song I’m Home? The one Al Jarreau sings? It’s a great song for a housewarming.”

  After a li
ttle more persuading, Sarah stood up, and we shushed the crowd. When she sang, “I knew that I’d found what’s at the end of the rainbow... There’s no place on earth I’d rather be than stayin’ right here with you,” I looked around for Mike.

  He was standing at the back door, where two steps led up into the house. He looked so handsome, in his Honolulu Fire Department T-shirt and geometric-print board shorts. A smile curled out from beneath his mustache. I had this powerful desire to be with him—the kind of magnetic attraction I’d seen between Haoa and Tatiana, where neither of them looked complete without the other. I’d always envied that about them, and now I knew what it felt like from the inside.

  I climbed up there with him, and we listened the music and looked at everyone enjoying themselves, celebrating a union that neither of us had ever dreamed we could enjoy.

  Sarah finished the song, and everyone applauded. Then, holding hands, Mike and I stepped down to take our places in our ohana.

  ABout the AuthoR

  NEIL PLAKCY is the author of Mahu, Mahu Surfer, Mahu Fire, Mahu Vice, and Mahu Men, about openly gay Honolulu homicide detective Kimo Kanapa’aka. His other books are Three Wrong Turns in the Desert, Dancing with the Tide, The Outhouse Gang, In Dog We Trust, Invasion of the Blatnicks, and GayLife.com . He edited Paws

  & Reflect:A Special Bond Between Man and Dog and the gay erotic anthologies Hard Hats, Surfer Boys and Skater Boys. His website is

  www.mahubooks.com.

  Trademarks Acknowledgment

  The author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Bankoh: Bank of Hawaii

  Billabong: GSM (Operations) Pty LTD

  Bluetooth: Bluetooth Sig Inc.

  CHiPs: Turner Entertainment

  Colt Python: Colt Manufacturing Company Disney Store: Disney Enterprises, Inc.

  Dodge: Daimler Chrysler Group LLC

  Flashdance: Paramount Pictures

  Foodland: Foodland Super Market, Ltd.

  Frisbee: Wham-O Mfg. Co.

  Gamblers Anonymous:

  Glock: Glock Inc.

  Google: Google Inc.

  Hawaii Five-O: CBS Productions and Leonard Freeman Productions