Mahu Surfer (26 page)

The Odd Couple

I gave myself plenty of time to drive to Wahiawa, almost halfway down the Kam Highway toward Honolulu. District 2 headquarters was on North Cane Street, just off the North Fork of the Wahiawa Reservoir. I stopped at the front desk and gave the sergeant my name. “Here to see Detectives Ruiz and Kawamoto.”

He looked me up and down. “Have a seat.”

They kept me cooling my heels for about half an hour, but I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, thinking that they were just too busy to come get me. That had happened to me periodically as a detective. Sometimes I wanted a suspect to sweat; sometimes I was just busy.

Finally Ruiz came out to claim me, wearing a white dress shirt and navy slacks. He was a good-looking guy, and I could see he cared about his appearance—every hair was combed neatly, his pants had a crease and his black loafers had a shine. I was getting a definite vibe from him and his partner; Ruiz was going to be the one who was sympathetic, who understood my situation. Kawamoto was going to be the asshole. That was fine; they were roles Akoni and I had played, trading back and forth as appropriate.

“Thanks for coming in,” Ruiz said, as he led me to an interrogation room. “We’re just trying to clean up a few details.” As he opened the door to the room, where Kawamoto was already sitting, he said, “You don’t mind if we tape this interview, do you?”

“Not at all. I’m glad to help you in any way I can.” I was about to say that I had nothing to hide, but in my experience people who say that usually do have something. These detectives were only trying to do their job—but I was trying to do their job, too. It wasn’t an idea I thought they’d be too happy about.

“I know you told us how you and Brad Jacobson hooked up, but if you wouldn’t mind telling us again, I’d really appreciate it,” Ruiz said.

“Sure.” I said that I was window-shopping at the North Shore Marketplace, and Brad saw me, recognized me, and initiated a conversation. Which was all true. I took my time, explaining how I looked, and Brad’s makeover. “It wasn’t until I met up with his friends that I realized this was something he did often.”

“So you’re saying you didn’t have sex until after you’d been to the bar?” Kawamoto asked. He and Ruiz had a sort of
Odd Couple
vibe; Kawamoto wore those polyester pants that don’t take a belt, and a light blue polo shirt with sweat stains under the arms. I was willing to bet he had a nicotine habit he couldn’t—or didn’t want to—break. “Isn’t that a little unusual—I mean, you were naked in the guy’s apartment, weren’t you?”

“Yup. And I wondered about it, too. I mean, the whole time I was in the shower I kept expecting him to come in and join me. I was pretty confused. I thought maybe he didn’t find me attractive, that he was just being nice to me because of what had happened to me.”

“Meaning the whole coming out thing, then losing your job?” Ruiz asked.

I nodded. “It’s a funny thing, being recognized on the street,” I said. “Half the people want to say something nice, and the other half want to call you a name. And none of them actually know who you are, or anything about you other than what they saw on TV.”

“I don’t think I’d like that. Might even make me angry,” Ruiz said.

I shrugged. “I didn’t ask to be a role model, but that’s the way some people look at me. I keep thinking there’s a kid out there somewhere who feels bad or scared about being gay, and seeing me on TV helps. That’s a real privilege, an honor almost. If I have to put up with some shit now and then, it comes with the territory.”

The look in Kawamoto’s eyes told me didn’t believe anyone could see me as a role model. “Getting back to Brad Jacobson.” He stretched across the table for a piece of gum, and his shirttail rode up out of his pants. Not an attractive sight. “You said he dressed you up and then took you to a bar to meet his friends.”

“Yeah, I think it’s the celebrity thing. He wanted to show me off.” I named all five guys, and passed on all the contact information I had on them. I didn’t mention, though, that we had talked about Lucie Zamora’s murder, or that I’d made plans to meet with each of them to talk further.

That information was bound to come out, though. I wondered what Ruiz and Kawamoto would make of it. For now, I wasn’t volunteering anything beyond what they asked. Then if they challenged me in the future, I could simply say I’d answered all their questions.

I told them that I had gone back to Brad’s place to pick up my truck, and that’s when things had shifted between us. I repeated his comment, about his stereo being there in the morning.  “You didn’t make plans to get together again?” Ruiz asked.

“Nope. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure if he liked me. You know, maybe that one night was a fluke, him feeling sorry for me, or wanting to be able to say he’d done it with me. But I went back to his place the next night.”

I wasn’t going to go into detail about Brad’s sexual practices, because I didn’t think they were relevant. He liked to pick up strays, according to his friends. I’d seen that, with me, and then with Tommy Singer. That was important; how he liked his sex wasn’t.

“So on Thursday night, you still didn’t make any plans?” Ruiz asked, putting down his pen. “Isn’t that a little unusual?”

“You tell me,” I said. “I haven’t been dating guys for very long, so I don’t know what’s normal and what’s not. I’m still figuring the whole thing out.”

“But you didn’t figure he’d be upset if you fucked his friends,” Kawamoto said.

My pulse raced, but I tried to maintain control. “Nope, I didn’t. Since we weren’t exactly dating, I figured I was a free agent. His friends propositioned me, first on Thursday night, and I turned them down. Then again on Saturday night, when I finally said yes.”

“What made you change your mind?” Ruiz asked. He looked genuinely curious, though I was sure it was all a front. He was, after all, the good guy in this interrogation, and he had to maintain his rapport with me.

“About six beers. If Brad had been there, I might have gone home with him again. But he wasn’t, and they were. I was horny and curious and I didn’t think through all the implications.”

I figured if Ruiz and Kawamoto couldn’t understand being drunk and horny, they both had to be neutered. But they seemed to accept how things had happened, and we went on to the confrontation on Sunday at Waimea Bay Beach Park. Then we went back over the whole thing again.

It was a long, draining experience.  Even though the interrogation room was cool, I felt sweat pooling under my arms and at my brow. I was tired and felt a headache coming on. I could easily see how suspects might make mistakes; that’s why we kept them for so long, asking the same questions over and over again.

“Is it possible,” Ruiz said, talking somewhat slowly and softly, “that you actually did see Brad Jacobson at that bar, Sugar’s, on Sunday night?” He lightly tapped his fingers on the table in front of him. “And you were upset that he was with someone else, maybe jealous? I know you’ve said you’re not very experienced at this gay thing. Maybe you misread some signs, and you were actually way more interested in him than he was in you.”

“Nope. Not possible. Didn’t happen that way.”

“Well, maybe it did,” Ruiz continued. “And you were pretty upset seeing him leave the bar with this young boy, much younger than you. You were jealous, so you followed them down to the beach.”

I wasn’t frightened; I thought this was bush league interrogation, much more blatant than anything that had gone before. I was on comfortable ground here. “Nope. Ask Ari. He’ll tell you I arrived at Sugar’s after Brad had already left. Ari will tell you I stayed at the bar talking to him for some time. Even if I’d wanted to find Brad, I had no way of knowing where he was then.”

“We will check this out, you know,” Kawamoto said, drumming his fingers on the tabletop. “If anything doesn’t jive, you can be sure we’ll back at you.”

“I’ve been honest with all your questions.” I looked from Ruiz to Kawamoto, and back. “Are we finished here yet? Because it’s been a long day.”

“We’re finished,” Ruiz said. “But you know the drill. Don’t leave the island. We may need to talk to you again.”

“I’ll do anything I can to help,” I said. “By the way, I had to move out of the place where I was staying after I was on TV again. A friend of mine arranged for me to stay at a rental property with security.” I gave them the address and phone number at Cane Landing, and left. It felt good to get out of the police station—and that wasn’t a feeling I wanted to contemplate too much.

Exodus

After the interrogation, I was very much in need of caffeine. As I headed back to Hale’iwa, I noticed that traffic heading away from the North Shore was much heavier than normal. Everybody seemed to be going down toward Honolulu. Cars and trucks I passed were loaded up with suitcases and surfboards.

The Kope Bean, on the other hand, was much emptier than usual. The barista, an older brunette woman in a colorful apron, was scared and wanted to leave, but she had a child in school and couldn’t just pick up and walk away. Two other customers, both surfer types in their twenties, said they were leaving in the next day or two.

I went over to The Next Wave, and the parking lot was nearly empty, which was very unusual. I walked in, and the place was dead. Dario heard the door ring and came over immediately, looking disappointed that I wasn’t an actual customer. He was wearing a polo shirt with the store’s logo on it and a pair of khaki shorts. It was the first time I had seen him wearing a name tag.

“Two of my staff quit this morning.” He waved his arm to encompass the empty aisles of clothing, the fact that no one was looking at surfboards or trying on sunglasses. “Look at this place. My business is going down the toilet.”

“It’s just a momentary panic. A couple of days will pass, and people will start filtering back up here.”

“Yeah, a couple of days like this and I won’t be able to pay my bills.” He stalked away toward his office, and I headed over to the café, where I settled down with my laptop. There were only about half a dozen other people in the entire building, most of them employees, so it was unnaturally quiet, the sound of Keola Beamer and his slack key guitar echoing off the surfboard displays.

I logged on to the
Advertiser’s
web site, and read their follow-up story on the shootings, which agreed with what I’d seen—that people were scared and leaving the North Shore.

The media reports, as usual, distorted things; Brad became a surfer, too, though I knew he’d never stepped on a board. Tommy became a budding champion, though he’d never actually entered a competition,  much less won one.

I was getting ready to leave when Dario came over and sat down in the armchair catty-cornered to mine. We were the only people in the lounge area, besides the barista, who was across the room cleaning the cappuccino machine. “Listen, I was out of line yesterday,” he said. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“It’s okay.”

“I guess I always had a little crush on you, you know?” He crossed his legs and his khaki shorts rode up on his thighs. His legs were strong, slim and tanned. He’d put some muscle on in the last ten years, but not much fat. If it wasn’t for the worried look in his eyes or the bags underneath them, he’d be considered pretty handsome.

“I didn’t know, but I’m flattered.”

“Since that time, I’ve thought about what happened between us, at the beach. I think what I was trying to do was pull you out of the closet so that we could be together.” He shrugged. “It had the opposite effect. I pushed you even farther in, and you left, and I lost any chance of a relationship with you.”

Dario was starting to creep me out. Back when we were surfing, I always just considered him a friend. I knew he was gay, because he didn’t try and hide it, but I wasn’t attracted to him. I had no idea he had such feelings about me.

“Anyway, seeing you here again, I just went a little crazy. I hope you can forgive me. I really want us to be friends.”

I sat up a bit in my chair, pulling my legs in. “Sure, Dario. Friends are good. I’ve decided, I’m going to be celibate for a while, you know? Just try and keep my zipper closed and stay out of any more trouble.”

Until I solved these murders, I almost said, but I held back.

“I’ll have to see if I can change your mind,” he said, leaning forward a bit. “Gently, though. No more full frontal attacks.”

“Okay.”