Mahu Fire (21 page)

He looked down at his shoes. “I know I shouldn’t a done it. But this guy, he’s my minister, and he swore it wouldn’t be breaking my parole. Nothing more than malicious mischief, he said.”

He looked up again. “See, I got this ex lives down by Pearl. What with being in the joint, I’m way behind on my alimony, and she keeps threatening to haul my ass into court. I’d been talking to the Reverend about it, and he offered me a thousand bucks to make some trouble for those gay marriage people. That’s enough to make myself whole with her.”

As soon as Baines said minister, I thought about Jeff White, whose Church of Adam and Eve had met at the Plantation. “You got a name and an address on your minister?” I asked.

“Sure.”

I pulled out my notebook and a pen, and handed them to him. “Write it down.”

“You promise you won’t screw me up?”

“You give us the right guy, we forget we ever even talked to you,” I said.

“All right.” He quickly scribbled a couple of lines on a fresh page in my notebook and handed it back to me.

I took a quick look at it, and saw exactly what I’d expected. Reverend White, the Church of Adam and Eve, and the address on Wai’alae Avenue.

MAKING APOLOGIES

As we were driving back down to Honolulu, my Bluetooth buzzed with a call from Terri.

“I know you’re probably swamped with the bombing investigation,” she said. “But I’m at my wit’s end, and I just don’t know what to do.”

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s Danny.” Her five-year-old son had witnessed his father’s murder six months before, and he’d taken it hard. But I thought he’d been coming around. “He’s been acting up at kindergarten, and today he hit another boy with a rock. They’re threatening to kick him out unless I get him some help. But he’s been in therapy, Kimo.”

She started to cry. After Eric’s death, I’d promised to spend time with Danny, and for a while I had. But it had been a month or more since I had gone to Wailupe just to hang out with her and the boy. “Okay, hold on.” I turned to Mike. “Can we make a quick detour to Wailupe? My friend’s got a crisis.”

“Sure.”

Back to Terri, I said, “I’m on the Kam now. I’ll get on the H1 and be to you in about 45 minutes.” I paused for a minute, to concentrate on a bend in the road. “I’m bringing somebody with me. I think you’ll like him.”

Her voice faded out, and then she said, “See you soon.”

I hung up and told Mike more about my friendships with Terri and Harry, and about Danny. “I had you figured for a Punahou boy,” he said.

We spent the rest of the ride trading personal information. Where we’d grown up, gone to school, what we’d done and who we knew. Mike had grown up in Aiea, a suburb just beyond the Aloha Stadium, and the only city in the US whose name is spelled only with vowels.

“My parents liked the area because it was convenient to Tripler,” he said. “Easy for them to get to their jobs. The neighborhood’s gone through some trouble, but it’s coming back. Living there, it’s easy for me to get down to the new fire department HQ on South and Queen.”

He’d gone to Aiea High, a public school not far away. Then he’d gone to college on Long Island, near his dad’s family. We knew a couple of people in common, and it was interesting to compare the paths of our lives.

Finally, after battling traffic, we swung into Terri’s circular driveway about an hour later. Though the mountains loom just on the other side of the Kalanianaole Highway, Terri’s house is on a flat plain that sticks out into the Pacific. Twenty-foot royal palms stand on each side of her ranch-style house, towering like sentinels to protect her and her son.

Danny Gonsalves came running out to meet me in the same kind of tiny polo shirt and shorts I remembered wearing to school when I was a kid, and I picked him up and swung him around. “Hey, sport, how you doing?”

“Are we going surfing, Kimo? I’ve been going body surfing with my friend Chuckie and his dad. I’m getting really good.”

“We’ll go soon, I promise. What’s this I hear about you hitting another kid?”

“Who are you?” Danny asked Mike.

“I’m a friend of Kimo’s. My name’s Mike.”

He reached out formally to shake Danny’s hand. “Are you a policeman, too?” Danny asked. “My daddy was a policeman. He got killed.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not a policeman, I’m a fireman.”

“Wow! If I’m not a policeman when I grow up I want to be a fireman. Or maybe an astronaut, or work in a bakery with all kinds of desserts.”

“Well, if it’s okay with your mom, sometime maybe Kimo can bring you over to the fire station and I’ll show you around.”

Danny’s eyes were as big as coconuts. “Cool! Wait’ll I tell Chuckie.”

I sat down on the grass, and pulled Danny down next to me. “Is Chuckie the kid you hit with the rock?”

He frowned. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Mike sat across from us. His body language was open, and Danny moved over next to him. “You know what police officers do, don’t you?” I asked Danny.

He looked at me. He’d moved up next to Mike, as if he expected Mike to protect him from me. “Police officers arrest bad people,” Danny said.

“This kid you hit, is he bad?” I asked.

Danny nodded eagerly. “Yeah, he’s really bad. You should arrest him.”

“For what?”

Danny’s face darkened, and he was quiet for a minute. But I’m accustomed to waiting out suspects, so I didn’t say anything.

“He said mean things about my dad,” Danny said finally.

“Ooh, that’s tough. You loved your dad, didn’t you?”

Danny snuggled up against Mike, who put his arm around the boy. “Uh-huh.”

“Your dad was a great guy,” I said. “I knew him for a long time. He made a couple of mistakes, sure, but we all make mistakes, don’t we?”

Danny nodded. His dark hair was crew-cut short.

“The thing we do when we make mistakes is we apologize for them,” I said. “And then we promise not to do them again.”

“That’s a good plan, don’t you think, Danny?” Mike asked.

Danny looked from Mike to me. “I guess.”

“I think you should tell your mom exactly what happened, and then she can talk to this other kid’s mom, and maybe, since both of you made a mistake, if you both promise to do better, then things will be okay. I know that would make your mom happy.”

“Okay,” Danny said.

We looked up to see Terri standing in the doorway of the house. She wore a vintage aloha shirt with a couple of buttons open and a pair of nylon running shorts, and she looked worried. “Danny, honey, why don’t you go play Nintendo,” she said. “I want to talk to Kimo.”

“They’re always talking,” Danny said to Mike. We all got up, and he asked, “Will you come play Nintendo with me when you’re done?”

“Maybe for a few minutes. We’ll see. I might have to go back to the station.”

He nodded, then turned back to Mike. “Do you get to ride the truck?”

“Sometimes they even let me run the siren.”

“Cool.” He turned and ran inside, and I introduced Terri to Mike.

“You look terrific,” I said to Terri. “Are you working out?”

“I’ve been spinning and taking kick-boxing. A girl’s got to take care of herself.”

She led us into the living room. “Sometime you’ll have to tell me all about what Kimo was like in high school,” Mike said. Terri slid a glance at me out of the corner of her eye. I caught it and I guess I blushed, because she smiled.

“I’ve got some stories.”

“All right, all right. We came here for a reason, remember? And not for everybody to start comparing my faults. I talked to Danny, and I told him that he has to apologize, and tell you why he hit the other boy.”

“Why did he?”

“See if he tells you, first,” I said. “If the boy keeps giving Danny trouble, let me know, and I’ll have a talk with his folks.”

“Thank you, Kimo.” She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “You guys want anything to drink?”

We all agreed on lemonade, and followed her into the kitchen where she started pouring. “Terri was telling me yesterday that her family trust has been giving some money to the Church of Adam and Eve,” I said to Mike. “That may be where Jeff White got the money to pay Ed Baines.”

“Tell me about this Trust,” Mike said. “Is there any proof that’s where the money came from?”

“My family used to own Clark’s, the department stores, and my great-grandfather was wealthy. He fought against statehood because of the taxes, and he created The Sandwich Islands Trust to get around them. When the chain got sold to the Japanese, a lot of money went into the trust, and now it’s probably the biggest in the islands.”

She paused to move her legs under her on the sofa. “It’s separate from our family money, but my Great-Aunt Emma, my father’s aunt, has always run it as if it was her own money. Lately, though, I think she’s slipping. She uses a walker now, and she gets tired easily, and I think she’s just figuring out that she’s not running things the way she used to.”

“That’s why she’s asked you to help,” I said.

“You want me to talk, or not?”

I held up my hands. “Old friends,” I said to Mike. “You can’t live with them, and you can’t shoot them.”

“At least not if you’re a police officer,” Mike said dryly. “Go on, Terri.”

“Thank you. My first order of business is figuring out exactly where the money’s going. Most of the board members are old, and they’re all part-time anyway, so nobody pays a lot of attention.”

She leaned forward, adjusted the position of a couple of books on the coffee table in front of her. Finally she continued. “It seems the Trust has been funding the Church of Adam and Eve, as well as some other opposition to gay marriage. I can give you a copy of the cancelled check, if you need it.”

“Let me guess, Aunt Emma saw you on TV the night of the bombing and she called you up to complain.”

“Actually she did see me, but she wasn’t upset I was there, or on TV. Although she would prefer the Clarks to keep a slightly lower profile.” She smiled. “No, apparently it showed her I had some gumption, and I might be able to do what needs to be done with the Trust.”

“Let me tell you what we found out today.” I told her what Ed Baines had told us, about being hired by Jeff White to throw horse manure at the Marriage Project offices, that the money was coming from some big foundation.

“I need to tell Aunt Emma about this,” Terri said.

“You can’t tell her anything yet. We’ve still got a lot of investigation to do.”

I looked at my watch. “You think we can spare ten minutes for Nintendo?”

“If he’s got three controllers,” Mike said. “You know I’ve got some pretty nimble fingers.”

He wiggled his fingers at me, and I laughed. “I know,” I said, and Terri looked at me, and I blushed again. “Come on, let’s go play.”

We found Danny playing a fighting game on his Nintendo, and he gladly gave us each controllers. We battled together for a while, but in the end he beat us both. “We’ll have a rematch,” I said, laying down my controller. “Soon. I promise.”

Danny jumped into my arms for a goodbye hug.

“And you make sure this guy brings you over to the fire house sometime,” Mike said.

Danny stuck his hand out to Mike to shake again. “All right!”

DOING THE RIGHT THING

Mike and I were driving down Kalakaua on our way back to my apartment when I saw two kids I recognized—Frankie and Lolo from the Gay Teen Center. I pulled over and called out to them from the truck.

They were both dressed suspiciously—form-fitting tank tops that didn’t quite reach their waists, and then board shorts that slipped down their hips, exposing both a band of skin and the elastic waistbands of their briefs. Jesus, were they working the street? When I’d seen them at Ala Moana Park on Saturday night, I’d thought they were dating, the way they palled around.

“You guys seen Jimmy lately?” I asked.

Up close I could see that Frankie was wearing some kind of eye makeup. And either Lolo was very glad to see me, or he’d been padding his crotch. But those were problems I couldn’t address right then.

Frankie and Lolo looked at each other and neither spoke for a minute. “It’s important,” I said. “I’m worried about him.”

Finally Frankie said, “We saw him at Ala Moana Beach Park last night.”

“Was he working?” I asked.

Frankie looked down at his feet and shuffled around for a minute.

Finally Lolo said, “Yeah. He looked like shit.”

“If you see him again,” I said. “You tell him everything’s okay where he was, that they want him back. Tell him to come to me. I’ll take care of him.”

I opened my wallet and pulled out all the money I had, a few twenties, and handed them to Frankie. “I want to be the only guy you take money from tonight, all right?”

“We can’t take your money,” Lolo said.

“Why? Because I don’t want a blow job in exchange?” I asked. “I’ve got a lot on my plate right now, Lolo, and I don’t have time to fuck around with you. Take the money, go get yourselves some dinner, and stay off the street. Cause if Vice picks you up, I will bail you out. And then I will beat the shit out of you. Got that?”

Both boys opened their eyes wide. Lolo reached out and took the money from my hand. “Someday I want a boyfriend like you,” he said, and he grabbed Frankie’s arm and dragged him away.

“You’ve got an admirer,” Mike said.

“Don’t start. Can we go down to Ala Moana Park?”

“Sure. And don’t worry, dinner’s on me tonight.”

While we struggled through the busy streets of Waikiki, I told him about Jimmy Ah Wong, how I felt responsible for outing him to his dad. “You didn’t do it, he did it,” Mike finally said.

“Because I told him it was the right thing to do, to testify against those guys. I promised to look out for him.”

“And you have.”

“Yeah, like I’ve been looking out for Danny Gonsalves,” I said. “Like I’m keeping Frankie and Lolo off the streets. Like I kept Sampson’s stepdaughter from interfering in the investigation.”

I found I was gripping the steering wheel and consciously tried to relax.

Mike said, “I think you have the kindest, strongest heart of anyone I’ve ever met.”

“Gee, here I thought you only liked me for my looks.”

“I’ve known who you were for a few months now,” Mike said.

I glanced over and saw that he was looking out the window, not at me.

“I did think you were handsome, the first time I saw you on TV. But more than that, I admired you so fucking much for being brave enough to be who you are.”

I didn’t say anything, but I swallowed, trying to get down the lump in my throat.

“Every time I’d go over to the police station, I’d be keeping my eye out for you. I thought you were this larger-than-life figure, and I kept thinking about you. I knew that the only way I’d get over you was to see you in person.”

I felt him turn my way, and looked over at him. “Then when I saw you carrying that dead chicken, I realized that you were a real guy, not just some fantasy figure. I don’t know if I’d ever have had the nerve to talk to you, if we hadn’t been thrown together because of the bombing.”

“Your loss,” I said lightly.

We finally passed the Ilikai Hotel and traffic eased up. “You play the hand you’ve been dealt,” I said. “That’s all I’ve been trying to do.” I reached my right hand over to him, and he took it and squeezed.

We parked at the Ala Wai Yacht Club, where Gilligan and his crew had left for their three-hour tour, and we walked the whole park, looking for Jimmy Ah Wong, with no success. We ate dinner at the Gordon Biersch at the Aloha Tower, but I couldn’t enjoy the sunset, worrying about Jimmy and Kitty and how I’d ever get this case solved.

The beer seemed flat, the food tasteless. The only good thing was that I was with Mike. After we ate, we drove around downtown, checked the park one more time, then cruised Waikiki for a while. By eleven, we were both exhausted and had to give up.

He’d left his truck in a garage on Waikiki earlier, and I dropped him there so he could move it to my apartment. When he met me at the outside stair, he was carrying a gym bag. “Running up to Aiea to get clean clothes every morning is getting old,” he said. “You don’t mind me assuming, do you?”

“Not a bit.” He walked up the stairs ahead of me and I swatted his butt.

Wednesday morning I woke up next to Mike. For a couple of minutes I just lay there, resting on one elbow, looking at him. His chin was grizzled, his dark, curly hair tousled. He looked like a sleeping angel. I decided it was a way I wanted to wake up a lot in the future.

A little later, after some fun in the shower, we walked together to a café near my apartment, got malasadas and coffee, and then, under the outside stairs to my building, kissed goodbye.

When I reached the main station, there was an urgent message from Billy Kim in ballistics. Rather than call, I went downstairs to his lab. “Kimo, I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “I found something strange and I want to show it to you.”

He pulled out a blown-up photo of a bullet. “This is what you brought us from your shooting victim yesterday.”

“Charlie Stahl.”

“Right. See the grooves here on the sides? Very distinctive. Comes from a small, lightweight gun, most likely a Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special Airweight.”

“Good.”

“Wait, there’s more.” He brought over the poster I’d seen the day before.

“Not the chicken again, Billy.”

“You’re going to like this, Kimo. Look at the grooves. See? Same pattern.”

“So whoever killed the old man and the chicken also used a Chief’s Special Airweight.”

“More than that. Look at this little notch here. See how it matches in both pictures? That’s more than just the same model. It’s the same gun.”

“You’re saying the same gun was used to kill Charlie Stahl as was used in the two shootings in Makiki?”

“I’d swear to it in court.”

“Whoa. This is wild.” I stood up. “I’ve got to think about this one. Thanks, Billy—this could be the break I need. If I can just figure out how to use it.”

When I got back to my desk my phone was ringing. “Kanapa’aka, Homicide.”

“Hey, hey, Special K,” Harry said. “How’s it hanging, brah?”

“You won’t believe what I just found out.” I told him about the ballistics match.

“Tell me everything you know about the old man,” he said. I did. “Now tell me everything you know about Charlie Stahl’s murder.”

I did that, too. I could almost hear the wheels clicking in his brain. “Do you think Charlie Stahl knew Hiroshi Mura?”

“I doubt it. I’ll check, you never know who knows who in Hawai’i.” I thought of something. “You know, they didn’t necessarily have to know each other. But they both had some connection to the murderer.”

“Yes,” Harry said.

“The only thing I’ve got on Charlie Stahl’s killer is a partial license plate. It could take forever to pull up every match and analyze them.”

“You ought to be able to automate that a little,” Harry said. “Eliminate the vehicle types that don’t match. Eliminate cars registered on the other islands.”

“Our system isn’t that sophisticated. You have to do all that sorting by hand.”

“I can write you a program that’ll do that. You just get me the data file.”

“You can?”

“Sure. The data must have VIN numbers in it, right? And addresses, including zip codes? It’s a simple sort. How soon can you get the data?”

“Let me make a call.” I hung up from Harry and called our computer tech. I explained what I needed and gave him Harry’s phone number. He said he’d take it from there.

I hung up. There was something dancing around the edges of my brain, a connection between Hiroshi Mura and Charlie Stahl. But what was it?

Lieutenant Sampson loomed above my desk in black polo shirt and black slacks. “In my office. Now.”

I didn’t like that tone. What had I done now?

“Shut the door behind you.” He stood next to his desk, and from the way his jaw was clenched and his eyes narrowed, I figured he was plenty mad. I saw his eyes dart across to the picture of Kitty—and then I knew.

“I’m sorry,” I said, before he could blow up. “I didn’t know what else to do. She was determined to go to the Church of Adam and Eve on Sunday, and I knew that she would, no matter what I said. So I went with her.”

“Do I need to remind you that my daughter is not a sworn officer?”

“You know Kitty a lot better than I do. But she strikes me as the kind of girl who follows through on what she says. Can’t convince her to change her mind.”

Sampson’s shoulders relaxed a little. “I’ve been trying to convince her not to become a cop since she was twelve. No matter what I do, she just does what she wants.”

“Did she tell you about the picnic on Thursday?” I asked.

His eyes were wary again. “No. Tell me.”

“This couple we met at the church.” I closed my eyes, searching my brain for their names. I have this trick I use sometimes, connecting a name to something else as a way to remember. I can’t use it that often, because of the wild ethnic soup we have in the islands, but I’d connected that couple to a president. Out loud, I started reciting any presidents I could think of. “Carter, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Nixon, Roosevelt, Coolidge, Harding, Taft… wait, Harding. That’s their name.”

I opened my eyes to see Sampson staring at me with something like a grin on his face, which disappeared almost immediately. “Fran and Eli Harding.” I shrugged. “They seemed nice enough.”

“It’s that kind of insight that makes you a great detective,” he said dryly. “Tell me about this picnic.”

“I don’t know much. They called to invite Kitty, and she accepted. I told her that if she didn’t tell you by tomorrow, I would.”

“So that’s why she called me this morning,” he said. “If I hadn’t spoken to you, she’d probably go on this picnic Thursday, and then Friday she’d say, ‘I told you, Jim. You just don’t listen to me.’”

“I’ll bet you listen to her a lot more than she realizes,” I said.

“Obviously, she is NOT going to this picnic,” he said. “At least not alone.”

I shook my head. “Sorry, lieutenant. I’m taking some personal time Thursday afternoon. My dad’s best friend passed away. The wake’s a command performance.”

His lips set in a grim line. “I’ll talk to Kitty. If necessary, Thursday will be take your daughter to work day.”

I went back to my desk, trying to remember what I’d been thinking about before the confrontation with Sampson, and my phone rang.

“Hey, brah, long time no hear.”

“Akoni! Geez, man, this is a surprise. What have you been up to?” Akoni and I had gone through the police academy together, and we’d been detective partners in Waikiki for three years, before my transfer downtown. “How’s Waikiki?”

“Not there any more. As of yesterday, I’m in the same building as you.”

“No shit? What’s up?”

“Yumuri is losing it,” he said. I could tell he was lowering his voice in order to speak about the lieutenant who had supervised us in Waikiki. “Ever since the business with you, he’s been acting weird. Rumor has it they’re moving him soon, maybe somewhere out in the country where the stress isn’t so bad. I heard about this opening in Organized Crime, they needed a detective for a special project, I figured I’d come over here for a while, see what happens back in Waikiki.”

“Wow. I had no idea.”

“And you know what else sucked? He had me partnered with Greenberg, and the guy’s a real asshole. Thinks he knows which way the sun rises and sets. I just couldn’t take it any more.” Alvy Greenberg had been Lidia Portuondo’s boyfriend, and the one who’d outed me to the rest of the squad. Though he’d been my friend once, I didn’t feel bad hearing that he’d turned out to be a jerk. “Listen, reason why I’m calling? A name came up I know you’re familiar with. Chin Suk.”

“Uncle Chin. You know he died on Monday?”

“Yeah. They sent us the autopsy results, I thought you might want to know. What we all want—massive heart attack. Took him right out.”

“They think he might have been awake at all?” I explained about the table, the spilled bottle of pills.

“Possible. But there was nothing anybody could have done to save him. This was the big one.”

“Thanks, brah.” It felt good to know that Jimmy Ah Wong couldn’t have been involved. “We’ll do lunch sometime, all right? Now you’re here in the building.”