Mahu
Authors: Neil Plakcy
Tags: #Fiction, #Gay, #Mystery & Detective, #Police Procedural, #General Fiction
Table of Contents
Lingerie and Gentlemen’s Items
MAHU
NEIL S. PLAKCY
mlr
press
WWW.MLRPRESS.COM
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 2010 by Neil Plakcy
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Published by
MLR Press, LLC
3052 Gaines Waterport Rd.
Albion, NY 14411
Visit ManLoveRomance Press, LLC on the Internet:
www.mlrpress.com
Editing by Kris Jacen
Cover art by Victoria Landis
ISBN# 978-1-60820-262-1
2010
Trademarks Acknowledgment
The author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:
Longboard Lager: Kona Brewery LLC
Mazda Miata: Mazda Motor Corporation
Ford Explorer: Ford Motor Corporation
Jeep Cherokee: Chrysler Group LLC
Woolworth: Foot Locker Retail, Inc
Ford Taurus: Ford Motor Company
Rhino Chaser: Rhino Chaser Surfboards
Gordon Biersch: Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant Group, Inc.
Berlitz: Berlitz Investment Corporation
Armani: Giorgio Armani S.P.A.
Clairol: Procter & Gamble Company
Lexus: Toyota Motor Company
Rolex: Rolex Watch USA, Inc.
Big Wave Golden Wave Ale: Kona Brewery LLC
Brooks Brothers: Retail Brand Alliance
Fire Rock Pale Ale: Kona Brewery LLC
Polaroid: PLR IP Holdings, LLC
Foot Locker: Foot Locker Retail, Inc
Banana Republic: Gap Inc. Brands
The Limited: Limited Stores LLC
Gap: Gap Inc. Brands
Denny’s Grand Slam: DFO, Inc.
Magnum: Smith and Wesson Corporation
Smith & Wesson: Smith and Wesson Corporation
Dole: Dole Food Company, Inc.
Gucci: Gucci Shops, Inc.
IMAX: Imax Corporation
Prinivil: Merck, Corp.
Oreo: Kraft Food Holdings, Inc.
Rhino Chaser: KMF Group, LLC
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book is for Marc, my love and my inspiration, and for Sam, who gives us so much unconditional love, as well as in memory of Charlie, Pierre and Gus.
Thanks to Steve Greenberg, Pam Reinhardt, and Vicki Hendricks, my earliest readers, and to my mother, Shirley Plakcy, for all her love and support. Jim Hall, my MFA thesis advisor, read a very early draft of this book and convinced me I had to know more about Kimo before I could proceed. Lynne Barrett, Les Standiford
,
and John Dufresne are great instructors at Florida International University’s creative writing program, who provide instruction, mentoring and friendship in equal doses.
Thanks to Caren and Tom Neile and Ginny and David Wells, for all the encouragement, advice and editing over the years, as well as to all my FIU classmates and friends. Thanks also to Dan Jaffe, who gave Kimo his first literary exposure in
Blithe House Quarterly
. Other faithful friends and readers were David Beaty, Karen Blomain, Jessie Dolch, Lynne DuVivier, Jill Freeman, Sally Huxley, Christine Kling, Kathy Lawrence, Eileen Matluck, Stewart O’Nan, Barbara Parker, Ginny Rorby, Sharon Sakson, and Andrew Schulz.
Thanks to Maury Blitz and Morena Carvalho for help with the Mahu logo. Robert Phillips introduced me to the range of authors writing mysteries with gay detectives, for which I am quite grateful. Finally, thanks to Mr. Norman Haider, my tenth-grade English teacher at Charles Boehm Senior High, who first showed me how rewarding writing could be, and to all the other teachers who encouraged me.
When I first started writing about a surfer named Kimo Kanapa‘aka back in 1992, I had no idea that the character would take such a hold of my imagination. I have written nearly 20 stories, both mysteries and erotica, about his adventures, and I’m working on the fifth novel in the series.
Along the way, I’ve tried to understand Kimo’s appeal—both to me, and to the many readers who have written and emailed. I think the secret is that he’s a guy who’s trying to do the right thing, even when it’s difficult. Sometimes he succeeds, and sometimes he makes a mistake and tries to learn from it.
After I finished the final draft of
M
ā
h
ū
and sent it off to my publisher, I couldn’t stop thinking about Kimo. Like him, I came out of the closet somewhat later in life, and I realized that the process didn’t stop the first time I told another person that I was gay. I thought it would be interesting to put Kimo through those same steps—first kiss, first date, first gay friends, first real boyfriend, and so on.
At the same time, I have tried to find cases for him to solve that force him to confront these issues, and to accept his place in the larger gay community. As a college professor, I feel it’s important to be a role model to my students, and I’ve given Kimo that same desire. He’s not just a cop, he’s a gay cop, and that extra designation carries a lot of responsibility, both to himself, the GLBT community, and his employers, the City and County of Honolulu.
This is the third version of
M
ā
h
ū
to appear in print, and I’m grateful to Laura Baumbach and Kris Jacen of MLR for keeping Kimo’s story going. I also appreciate those at Alyson Books who brought out the previous edition: Dale Cunningham, Anthony LaSasso, and Paul Florez. Thanks also to Jay Quinn and Greg Herren, my original editors at Haworth Press, who gave Kimo his first chance to shine.
THE ROD AND REEL CLUB
The exchange was set for six o’clock, under the arbor that ran between the zoo and the old aquatic stadium where Duke Kahanamoku swam for his records. By that time, as the sun was beginning its nightly drop into the darkening sea, there were still enough strollers and fishermen to provide cover, but not enough people to make the place crowded. I was dressed like a moke, in a grubby T-shirt from a surfing contest I’d lost years before, a pair of low-slung shorts and worn tennis shoes. I had a tattered backpack slung over one shoulder, and inside it were stacks of twenties and fifties
that
had been treated with fluorescent powder. I hadn’t shaved for two days, and when an elderly couple wearing matching aloha shirts gave me a wide berth on the sidewalk along Kalākaua Avenue, I knew the look was complete.
Tourists were packing up on the beach, toting their blankets and suntan lotion back toward the motels and time shares on the mauka, or mountain, side of Kalākaua. Japanese businessmen were stopping in at the chic boutiques, using their strong yen to buy European designer goods for neglected families back home. And somewhere in the distance I heard the rattle of an ipu gourd and the pound of a pahu hula, a sharkskin drum. That meant a hotel or bar was starting its hula happy hour for the Midwesterners among us, a chance for grandpa to get up and dance the hula with a pretty wahine while grandma trained the videocam on him for the folks back home, and everybody got brightly-colored drinks with little umbrellas.
Across the street, I saw my partner, Akoni, a beefy Hawaiian who went through the academy with me. We were an odd-couple pair, me tall and slim, Akoni short and stout. He had more pure Hawaiian blood in him, and darker skin. My father was half Hawaiian and half haole, or white, so even with a deep tan I was still fairer than Akoni. He wore an XXL aloha shirt in a bright pink and red pattern, shorts, and tennis sneakers, and he looked like one of those guys at the beach who rent out the surfboards. He looked pointedly at his watch. I nodded slightly, and crossed the street diagonally at Kapahulu, past the lovely Hawaiian-style Denny’s, with its second floor porch overlooking the beach, where you can get papaya with your Grand Slam breakfast.
I followed the shoreline under the big spreading banyan tree, walking along the beach called Queen’s Surf, which ran alongside Kapiolani Park. There was a volleyball net on the beach, and then a breakwater, and then the beach got really narrow.
That narrow section was the gay beach. There were about a dozen guys on the sand there, even though the tide was coming in, bringing with it scattered leaves and seaweed. There were fat guys and fit guys, guys wearing everything from the briefest of thongs to double XL swim trunks. Another ten or fifteen guys sat on the grass and benches, one group on towels under a palm tree. A guy with both nipples pierced winked at me and I quickly looked offshore, where a snorkeler swam toward Diamond Head, as if he was heading to the same rendezvous I was. Beyond him a range of sailboats and fishing boats cruised the glowing water.
A kid on a skateboard zoomed past, then stopped nearly in front of me to practice a jump, which he missed. I was jittery and I wanted to yell at him, flash my badge and give him the kind of scare he’d given me, but I held back. I headed along the narrow walkway behind the zoo, trying to concentrate on the shallow blue-green water, think only about the barnacle-encrusted pipe that rests on the sea floor and stretches out toward the horizon, bringing in deep, pure water for the aquarium behind me. But it didn’t work; I kept thinking of the bust.
Akoni was behind me. One of the fishermen along the shore, Lou See, was a member of the SWAT team, and he had a .357 Magnum in a shoulder holster under his baggy shirt, and a second in his creel. Evan Gonsalves, who was our link to the state’s import cops, was at the end of the path, waiting to monitor my conversation on a radio. I knew Evan carried a
five
-shot Smith and Wesson Undercover .38, with a
two
-inch barrel. The two young lovers leaning against a tree were beat cops from the Waikīkī station, Lidia Portuondo and Alvy Greenberg, and I wondered idly if they were enjoying this assignment. I think they were both carrying Smith and Wesson .38s, too.
I walked along behind the aquarium, where the pavement ha
d
been patched roughly. A single guard dog barked among the refrigeration equipment, which was poorly camouflaged behind a cluster of succulent hinahina plants with scattered white flowers. The low susurrus of the surf ebbed and flowed through my consciousness, and I breathed deeply, smelling salt air, car exhaust, and the low, sweet perfume of coconut tanning oil.
The week before a source had told me about a shipment of heroin coming in from Mexico, a kind they call black tar. It was cruder than the heroin produced in Asia, and sold on the streets for up to $100 per quarter-gram. It was smoked rather than injected, and that made it easier to get into, especially for teenagers. I was about to buy a pound of the stuff, with a street value of $150,000. If I didn’t screw anything up.
I got to the front of the stadium, by the big stucco gates sealed off with chain link fence, and waited. I looked up at the gates, thirty feet high, with Ionic pilasters and “The War Memorial” written on a lintel above. On either side of the Hawai‘i state seal above that were a pair of eagles, only the one on the Diamond Head side had lost his head, just a metal rod sticking up out of his neck. The gate was blocked with a chain link fence and signs that said “No Trespassing” and “Danger: Falling Rocks.” Through the fence I looked out at the pool and the ocean beyond, waves breaking on the deep blue water, the dying sun glinting off the crests of the surf.