Mahu Box Set

by Neil S. Plakcy

  Winner of the Hawaii Five-O award for best police procedural mystery

  A finalist for the 2008 Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Mystery

  Book 3: MAHU FIRE

  A Few Judo Moves

  It had been a tourist office day on O’ahu, with sunny skies, temperatures in the eighties, and a light trade wind sweeping in over the beaches and chasing the few wispy clouds up into the mountains. We had a parched winter, and as April began, and with it our dry season, there were already reports of wildfires in on the leeward side of the island, in Nanakuli and Waialua.

  I stepped out the door of my apartment building in Waikiki as dusk was falling, and the smell of distant smoke rolled over me. There had also been a couple of arsons at gay-owned businesses in the past couple of weeks, and I wondered what was burning—a few acres of mountain scrub, or the property and dreams of a gay man or lesbian.

  Hawai’i had been one of the first states to consider legalizing gay marriage, and though Massachusetts, Connecticut, and a few other states had moved ahead of us, the movement in the islands was still strong, and in fact, the media had tied a rise in violence against gays and lesbians to the renewed visibility of the campaign, led by the Hawai’i Marriage Project.

  I walked the few blocks to the Gay Teen Center, housed in the annex of a church on Kalakaua Avenue. At that hour of the day, Waikiki was crowded with tourists heading back to their hotels from the beach, older people out for early dinners, and skateboarding teens getting in everybody’s way. I passed up a half dozen chances to pick up discount meal coupons, skirted an elderly Japanese bag lady haranguing the Wizard Stones at Kuhio Beach Park, and stopped for a minute to watch a sailboat setting out for a sunset cruise.

  I’d been volunteering at the Gay Teen Center for a couple of months, counseling kids and leading a self-defense workshop in a big open room. My favorite student was a kid named Jimmy Ah Wong, a thin Chinese boy with a bright yellow coxcomb that stood straight up and then, at the very top, drooped over. He looked like a bit actor in a British art film of the 1980s, but he was smart and infinitely kind to the younger kids.

  Sixteen of them were waiting for me, Jimmy among them, when I walked into the room. We talked for a few minutes, and then I led them in a couple of warm-up exercises.

  We did some yoga, to get them in touch with their bodies, and then a couple of simple judo moves I’d picked up somewhere. When we’d finished the judo, we sat in a circle on the hard wooden floor and talked. I always had to kick things off; they were all shy, and sometimes in order to get into difficult subjects I had to reveal more about myself than made me comfortable. “I had a date on Saturday night,” I said.

  A couple of the kids broke into spontaneous applause. I smiled and inclined my head. “Yes, I know it’s been a while. I wish I could say it was a more positive experience.”

  I waited, but no one said anything, so I continued. “I met the guy online. And of course, he wasn’t anything like he’d said.”

  “I know that drill,” a chunky boy said. His name was Frankie, and he had some island heritage in him, and sleek black hair pulled into a ponytail. “Nobody on the internet is who they say they are.”

  We got into a little discussion about that, and about how they could be safe with people they met. “We agreed to meet at the Rod and Reel Club,” I said. “Remember, always meet people you don’t know in public places, so you can get away easily if things don’t work out.”

  “Yes, officer,” Jimmy said, with attitude.

  “That’s yes, detective,” I said, and the group laughed. “We had a couple of beers together,” I continued. “We seemed to be hitting it off, and we started making out on the outdoor patio.”

  “Is there video?” Frankie asked, and everyone laughed again.

  “You wish,” Jimmy said, and Frankie sent daggers his way. I gave them both a sharp look.

  “So one thing led to another, and he invited me back to his place,” I said.

  “Always use a condom,” Jimmy said.

  “Have I told this story before?” I asked, pretending to be annoyed. But I was glad that the lessons I’d been trying to teach were sinking in.

  “Does it end with you getting your ass fucked and your heart broken?” a boy I only knew as Lolo asked. He was the toughest of the kids, and I had yet to break through the barricades he had set up around him. Acne scarred his cheeks, and his dark hair was shaved close on both sides of his head. “Because if it does, yeah, we’ve heard it before.”

  “I save ass fucking for the second date,” I said dryly. “You all should, too.”

  “Let him finish the story,” a skinny girl named Pua said. She looked Filipina, with a slim face and almond eyes. Her name in Hawaiian meant “flower” which was totally inappropriate in her case. She wore a cut-off T-shirt that showcased her biceps, and her hair, black like Lolo’s, was almost as short.

  “The sex was lousy,” I said. “Alcohol does that. The guy’d been all hard in the bar, but when we got naked, he couldn’t perform. Of course, I worried it was me. That somehow I’d disappointed him.” I smiled. “He took care of me, and then as we were cleaning up, I realized he’d come in his shorts at the bar.” I batted my eyelashes. “So I guess I wasn’t that disappointing after all.”

  “He couldn’t get it up again?” Frankie asked.

  I shrugged. “He wanted to do some coke, and I said I didn’t, and he said that I might as well go, then. So I did. Not exactly a heart-breaker, but not much fun, either.”

  “You need a boyfriend,” Pua said. She crossed her arms in front of her, almost as if she’d make me get a boyfriend if I refused.

  We talked for a while about some experiences they’d had, and a few of them opened up. I tried not to judge, though in some cases I was horrified by the sexual abuse, drug use, and petty violence they talked about. I was pretty sure that Frankie hung out near the men’s room at Ala Moana Beach Park after dusk, giving blow jobs to johns, and there was at least one other kid I thought was a prostitute as well.

  I knew that some of the others snuck back into suburban homes where no one knew their secrets, and I wanted to take every one of them and say, Someone loves you. Someone will love you in the future. You are all good people. But there’s only so much you can do.

  Jimmy hung around for a few minutes after the class, and I asked him how things were going. He had given me some important information on the big case that cracked open my sexuality, and I still felt responsible for any fallout from it.

  “My dad and I have a meeting with that lady from the Prosecuting Attorney’s office next week,” he said. “It’s called a deppa, deppa-something.”

  “Deposition. She asks you a bunch of questions, and you answer, and they have somebody write it all down. It’s not a big deal.”

  “It will be when my father finds out.” He looked at the polished hardwood floor and a couple of spikes of his blond Mohawk dipped down. “He doesn’t know a lot of it yet.”

  A couple of bad guys had coaxed Jimmy into helping them with a smuggling operation through sexual favors, and though his father knew the bare outline of the case, I figured he didn’t know about the sex. “I think it’ll be okay,” I said, putting my arm around Jimmy. “Your father loves you.”

  “I hope so.”

  On my way out, I dropped in on the woman in charge of the center, a tiny, half-Japanese lesbian named Cathy Selkirk. Cathy was a poet whose love for kids ran deep in her soul. I often found her working long hours, filling out endless grant applications, talking to the kids, or interceding on their behalf with parents, teachers or the police. Though she was only in her early thirties, like I was, the dark circles beneath her eyes and the lines around her mouth made her look older.

  She smiled when I walked into her office. “Kimo, I’m glad you’re here. I was going to come look for you. Didn’t you once tell me you knew one of the Clarks, from the department store?”

  “Sure, Terri Clark is one of my best friends. Terri Go
nsalves, now. She’s a widow, that is, but she still uses her husband’s name.”

  “I’m working on this application for a grant from The Sandwich Islands Trust, the Clark family foundation. Do you think she has any influence on their decisions? I want to expand our outreach to gay teens on other parts of O’ahu, maybe open a satellite center on the North Shore.”

  I shook my head. “From what I know, Terri’s great-aunt runs that foundation, and she’s very conservative. I don’t think gay teens are going to be on the top of her list, but I’ll talk to Terri and let you know what she says.”

  I sat in the overstuffed armchair across from Cathy’s desk. I could see kids getting comfortable enough in it to talk to her about their problems. “Sandra’s been trying to find out about one of these horrible organizations that demonstrates against gay marriage,” Cathy said. She pushed her dirty-blonde bangs from her forehead. “Do you know anything about the Church of Adam and Eve?”

  Sandra was Cathy’s life partner, a prominent attorney with a downtown firm and the most politically connected lesbian in the Islands. “This mainland minister and his wife relocated to Honolulu about three months ago, to save us from the plague of homosexuals.” She smiled wryly. “They’re very well-financed, and they advertise their prayer meetings all over the place. Sandra hasn’t been able to find any dirt on them—yet.”

  “But she thinks there’s something wrong.”

  “There has to be, don’t you think, Kimo?” Cathy looked at me, her almond eyes opened wide. “How else can they pretend to be loving Christian people when they have this terrible anti-gay agenda?” She sighed. “They’re having one of their revival meetings tonight. Maybe it’s just the smoke everywhere, and these arsons at gay-owned businesses, but I have a bad feeling.”

  Such Friendly People

  As I walked back home, the smoke still hung over Waikiki, and I had the same bad feeling as Cathy. So I decided to check out the Church of Adam and Eve for myself. After a quick dinner of grilled pineapple chicken with sticky rice, I put on the only suit I own, a conservative navy blue, and slicked my short dark hair back with gel. Since my time in the spotlight, people occasionally recognized me on the street, so I put on a pair of horn-rimmed glasses with clear lenses and hoped no one would connect this conservative young businessman with that gay detective in his aloha shirts and Topsiders.

  I drove up into the hills of central O’ahu, to a place called the Pupukea Plantation. The atmosphere in the parking lot was festive, like I remembered when I was young and my parents used to drive us out into the country to watch fireworks displays on July fourth. Everybody was so friendly, smiling and shaking hands. Boys and girls played in the grassy aisles and “Onward, Christian Soldiers” poured out of big speakers.

  Hundreds of folding chairs had been lined up under the tent, but even so by the time I got there it was standing room only. It was warm, with a buzz of conversation going on around me and the high giddy laughter of little kids. Everybody got a paper flyer with a list of the hymns and the topic of the preacher’s sermon, and an address where you could send donations. An elderly Filipina in a flowered halter dress moved through the aisles, handing out paper fans imprinted with the logo of one of the big car dealers.

  The crowd was a cross section of Hawai’i. Young people courteously gave up seats to their elders, and haoles, islanders and Asians smiled at each other and talked about politics and business. Maybe Cathy and Sandra were wrong; the people around me seemed so nice. How could they advocate violence?

  The minister and his wife appeared from the sidelines, to rapturous applause. They were both in their early thirties, neatly groomed and overly cheerful, as such religious people often are. He was a little on the pudgy side, but his fleshy face just seemed to hold a smile that much better. She was slim, without much of a figure, obviously the more serious of the two. Both had dark brown hair, though hers had a light curl while his was straight.

  The minister led us in the opening prayer, through a couple of hymns and then into his sermon. He began slowly, talking a lot about morality and family values, about the need for a return to spirituality. It all made sense, even to a confirmed non-churchgoer like me. My family was a real polyglot of religions, and we’d gone to a couple of different churches when growing up, never settling on any one. Our parents seemed to feel that as long as we grew up as moral, ethical people it didn’t matter where we worshipped.

  Then the minister’s wife stepped up to the podium. She wore a simple shirtwaist dress in a reddish orange color that reminded me of the color of bonfires at the beach. She wore no jewelry other than a wedding ring, and her black pumps were almost old-ladyish.

  She began by speaking about their family, extending an invitation to all of us present to join in the love that they shared. “But there are some people who aren’t deserving of our love,” she said, and there was general nodding and agreement among the people around me.

  “You know who I’m talking about. Homosexuals. They call themselves gay, to cover up their depravity, but we won’t let them get away with that. There are other names for them, nasty names, but we won’t use them either. We’ll just call them like we see them—homosexuals. Keep the sex right up front there, because that’s what they’re all about, after all. Sex. That’s all they care about. Everything else is just window dressing.”

  I started to feel the heat under the tent, regretting having worn my suit. As I pulled at my collar, I glanced around, to see if anyone was looking at me as if they knew who I was. She had that knack, of making you think she was speaking directly to you, and I felt more like an impostor with every word.

  I wondered what would happen if someone recognized me. I’d seen crowd mentality at work firsthand, when I was a patrolman. All it took was a trigger, and ordinary people would turn into a mob, capable of looting, rioting, and other violence that seemed to lurk unsuspected beneath all of our solid exteriors. I had no doubt this crowd would turn on me, hurt me if they could.

  I started to make my way out of the tent, slowly, politely squeezing between people. The sweat dripping down my back got worse as I tried to fold myself up as narrowly as possible. Behind me, I heard the minister’s wife continue. “We need to take action, friends. It’s up to all of us to make this the right kind of world for our families, for our children and grandchildren. It starts with each of us, when we make a commitment in our hearts to accept Jesus, to practice what he preached.”

  Then I was spotted. Our eyes met for a moment, and he looked away. My heart did a double back flip, but I knew that my own brother could not be the catalyst who could turn a crowd against me. Or at least I hoped so.

  Lui, my eldest brother, stood with his hands on his wife’s shoulders. She hadn’t seen me; her attention was focused on the woman at the podium. It was clear Lui wasn’t going to look at me again, so I continued to the exit, wondering. It was surprising to see him there, but even more so was the way he looked. He wore an aloha shirt, shorts and sandals, and had sunglasses on a chain around his neck.

  You have to understand; my brother wears a suit and tie to family luaus. I hadn’t seen him in an aloha shirt since high school, and I hadn’t often seen his bare legs since he reached puberty. He had always been the most precise of the three of us, the most formal, and his business degree and high-paying job seemed to suit his personality.

  He was in disguise, I realized, as I made it outside without further incident. Just like me, he didn’t want to be recognized. Lui was the station manager of KVOL, “Your Volcano Alert Station, Erupting News All the Time,” the scrabbling non-network station in Honolulu. KVOL concentrated on the most inflammatory stories, the ones on the dark side of the news. I wondered if he knew something about the Church of Adam and Eve, if he was there for professional reasons.

  Or maybe he just believed what they preached.

  The Death of Hiroshi Mura

  KVOL was headquartered in one of the gleaming high-rises downtown, and Lui’s position as sta
tion manager gave him access to the private club on the top floor, a white-linen place with stunning views of the airport and Honolulu Harbor. About a month after I saw him at the Church of Adam and Eve, he asked me and our middle brother, Haoa, to meet him for breakfast on a Monday morning, reason undisclosed. I’ll always be their little brother, younger than Lui by eight years and Haoa by six, so I agreed without question.

  Haoa and I met in the parking garage and rode up in the elevator together. We were greeted, as the doors opened, by a vista of sunshine and sparkling water. A flat barge was making its way past the end of Sand Island, surrounded by a couple of fishing boats heading out to deep water. All around us, waiters in white jackets hurried from table to table. My eldest brother, whose sad-looking features were often enough to turn any day gloomy, waited for us at a round table near the window.

  My family was a polyglot mix of Hawaiian, Japanese and haole, or white, and though my brothers and I shared the same genes we all seemed to have taken a different dip in the pool. Lui was the shortest, at just under six feet, and the most Japanese, both in features and bearing. Haoa was the most Hawaiian, tall and bulky, and his ‘uhane, or spirit, lies deep in the island soil. He has never left the islands, except for brief vacations. All three of us had dark, glossy black hair, though Lui’s was expertly cut, Haoa’s shaggy, and mine short and simple.

  I had the most pronounced haole features, though my skin was always tan, and my eyes were just a little elongated. I was six-one and my build was slim but muscular. If Lui belonged in a glassy high rise and Haoa out working the land, then I belonged in the water. Line the three of us up and you could see we were brothers, but just barely.

  We ordered quickly and then Lui said, “Look, I know you guys don’t have much time, so I’ll get to the point. Mom says Dad is sick and he refuses to see a doctor. She wants us to lean on him.”

  “Dad’s sick?” I saw my parents every couple of weeks, and they never seemed to change. We’d had dinner in Waikiki about a week and a half before. My father had been uncomfortable, I remembered, but had passed it off as something bad he’d eaten.