Mahu (35 page)

“I haven’t seen his bankbook. But he seems to live well.”

“Other children?”

“None.”

He stroked his chin. “So I might stand to inherit something.”

I stood up. “I can see I read you wrong. I thought maybe the loss of your father might motivate you to seek a connection with somebody else, with your grandfather. Uncle Chin is a good man, and I don’t want to see him hurt.”

“Hold on, hold on,” Derek said petulantly. “How can you deny an old man’s wish to know his grandson? We Chinese value family highly, you know. Why don’t you give me his phone number and I’ll give him a call?”

I thought that was probably the first time Derek Pang had used “we” and “Chinese” in the same sentence. “I’ll tell him about our meeting and he can decide if he wants to contact you,” I said. “And anyway, you know his name, you’ve met him before. If you really want to talk to him you can track him down.”

I turned and walked out, bumping right into Wayne Gallagher in the reception area. His hand immediately reached for my crotch, and I felt myself stiffen in his grasp. “I know what you like,” Wayne whispered into my ear.

I smiled at him and managed to pull away. “See you soon, Detective,” he called as I walked back toward the front door.

As I walked back to my apartment, I wondered what I’d expected. I’d already decided Derek was a shit and that he might have murdered Evan Gonsalves; why did I think he’d react differently to news of Uncle Chin?

By the time I got home it was almost four and I decided to go surfing for a while. After all, I might as well take advantage of this enforced leisure time, with pay. After my suspension hearing, I might be just another washed-up cop looking for security work. Maybe I’d stop by the Rod and Reel and see Gunter, see if they needed extra guards at the condo where he worked. There might be fringe benefits, if we worked the same shift.

It was overcast and blustery, but still warm. The palm trees along Kalākaua Avenue bent in the wind, and thick clouds clustered over the tops of the rocky Ko‘olau Mountains. A piece of newspaper rolled over and over down the brick pavement, past the games tables, where two elderly Chinese men huddled over a game of chess. The beach was sparsely populated, just the occasional tourist on hotel towels, struggling to get a tan before going back to the mainland.

I took my big board with me and dragged it out into the surf past the orange lifeguard station, where there were flags posted warning against the heavy wind. The surf was cresting at four to six feet, high for Waikīkī, and I plunged into the water with enthusiasm. At least, I thought, as I ducked and paddled my way through the breakers, I was getting some good surfing in, at the North Shore, at Makapu’u Point, and now here.

I forgot everything that waited for me back on shore and concentrated on the waves, and it was, as always, a magnificent release. Every time I thought of Wayne Gallagher’s hand on my butt, or Derek’s greediness, or all the dead or the living people I’d hurt, I willed myself into focusing on the surf.

The rough water gave me a beating, knocking me down over and over, but the struggle was exhilarating. By the time I was finished I ached in a dozen places, but they were good aches, the result of pushing myself to my limits. I finally gave up and dragged my board through the surf and up over the sand. As I was waiting for the light to change so I could cross Kalākaua, I looked Ewa and saw Akoni coming towards me.

“Hey, brah,” I said as he approached. “Am I allowed to talk to you in public?”

“It’s okay. I’m on a mission from Yumuri. You free for happy hour?”

“Give me a chance to shower and change,” I said. “What’s up?”

“I’ll tell you at the Canoe Club, all right?”

“Sure.” He turned back to the station and I crossed Kalākaua. I wondered what was up, but couldn’t figure it out. I took a quick shower and pulled on a pair of jeans and a polo shirt, and walked over to the Canoe Club, where I found Akoni at the bar, sipping slowly on a draft beer.

I stepped up next to him, ordered a draft for myself, and said, “So what’s up?”

He nodded toward the outdoor patio. “We’ll get a table.”

“Not at happy hour,” I said, as the bartender slid my beer across the bar and I dropped a couple of singles on the wood. “Look around.”

Inside the bar was crowded, but outside you could hardly move. We struggled through the crowd on the porch, and went down the stairs to the beach level. Businessmen in aloha shirts talked in small clusters, some smoking cigarettes, a few with fat cigars. Yuppies in polo shirts cracked wise with each other and made eyes at their female counterparts, sizing up opportunities for later in the evening. Small clusters of office friends sat at the tables comparing war stories or gossiping about absent coworkers.

Akoni led the way down toward the beach, and the farther we got from the lights and music the less crowded it was. Finally we found a sheltered spot and pulled two lounge chairs together. “So what gives?” I asked as we sat down.

“We had a meeting today,” he said. “Preliminary for your hearing. Me, Yumuri, Hiram Lin, and your girlfriend from the DA’s office.”

“I’m not sure she’s exactly my girlfriend anymore.”

“We went over every line in the file on Tommy Pang’s murder and Evan Gonsalves’s suicide,” he said. Akoni smiled at me. “They didn’t find a single thing wrong beyond your first mistake.”

“Not calling the body in under my shield number?”

He nodded. “And even Yumuri had to concede that wasn’t a big deal.”

“So?”

“So the ADA wouldn’t accept it. She kept saying there had to be something else in the file we could hang you on.”

“I haven’t treated her very well,” I said. “I should have called her from the very start and told her what was going on. But I wasn’t sure myself for a long time.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if she was the one who called the media on you. Just something she said. She mixed it up pretty good with old Hiram, too. I was surprised to see the guy had a backbone. He told her it was his mission to root out bad cops. You believe that, his mission? But he also said it was his mission to protect the good ones. And as far as he could see, you were a good one.”

I nodded. “Nice of him.”

“You bet. Even Yumuri had to admit we’d done everything by the book, and that the worst he could see doing was placing a mark on your sheet.”

“So the hearing’s off? I’ve got my job back?”

Akoni looked down at his glass of beer, which was almost empty. “There’s still the gay thing.” He looked back up at me. “Yumuri doesn’t want you back. He wants you to resign and then you can avoid all the scandal of the hearing. Your record will be clean. You can get a job somewhere else, maybe even join a force on the mainland.”

“But you just said they had no grounds to dismiss me. Why should I resign?”

He looked sheepish. “Actually I wasn’t supposed to tell you they didn’t have grounds,” he said. “Yumuri wanted me to come out here, as your friend, and give you some kind of snow job, get you to back off before the hearing. I couldn’t do that.”

“You just can’t keep your ass out of the wringer. They give you a simple job and you screw it up.” I smiled. “I appreciate it, brah. But I couldn’t quit, even if I knew they had real grounds against me.”

He drained the last of his beer. “I ought to get going. Mealoha will be waiting dinner for me.” He stood up and put his arm on my shoulder, and I remembered when he’d flinched away from me when he first found out I was gay. I was making progress, I thought. Slowly, one person at a time, but it was progress nonetheless. “Take care, Kimo. Watch out for yourself.”

“I will,” I said. “And give Mealoha a kiss from me.”

He grinned. “I can do that.”

After he walked away I stayed on the chair for a while, holding my empty beer glass. I wanted a waitress to come by and get me a refill, because I didn’t have the energy to go up to the bar myself. I wasn’t sure I could even get up from the chair. All my fatigue kicked in as I thought about what Akoni had said. They had no professional grounds to fire me. They just didn’t want me around anymore.

It was a hard realization. Guys I’d thought of like brothers, men, like Yumuri, I had respected, had made a decision about me based on one fact, and that had turned them against me. I could be the best detective ever, I could outperform anybody on physical tasks and written tests, and they still didn’t want me on the force with them.

Darkness fell around me, and the noise of the bar diminished in the background. I sat back on the chair and looked up at the stars. It was hard to see much right above me, because I was too close to the bright lights of Waikīkī, but out over the ocean I could see stars and patches of clouds. The wind was still strong, though I was sheltered in a grove of trees and didn’t feel its effect much. But the clouds moved fast across the sky, covering and then revealing the stars, and I wondered which one would grant my wish, and what that wish should be.

PLATE LUNCHES

I woke early Friday morning in a fit of nerves, startled out of a dream involving Wayne Gallagher. It began when I was surfing on Waikīkī, holding Danny Gonsalves above my head as my board knifed the water. On the beach, Terri was crying, Tico Robles there comforting her, promising I would never hurt her son.

Then I was back in my room at my parents’ house, making love to Wayne on my narrow twin bed, when my father came into the room. He was disappointed, he said, because he and Uncle Chin were lovers and he wanted me to have picked Derek over Wayne. That’s when I woke up.

I looked for the newspaper but it hadn’t arrived yet, so I began cleaning my apartment, putting away books, organizing the laundry. I didn’t want to think about my hearing, and what I would say. I was entitled to have a lawyer present, but I’d made no moves toward hiring one. I thought idly of asking Tim Ryan to defend me, but I knew that was a bad idea.

Finally I heard the thunk of the paper on the concrete outside, and I brought it in and read it sitting up in bed. I made myself chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, with coconut macadamia syrup, and then cleaned up all the dishes and pans. I was trying to figure out what to do next when the phone rang.

“Good morning, Kimo,” my father said. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“I’ve been up for hours.”

“I remember when you were a boy you could sleep until noon. I used to tell your brothers to drag you out of bed, and one would take one leg and the other the other leg.” He laughed. “You’d hold on to the sheets, and everything would end up a big mess.”

“I remember,” I said dryly. “What’s up?”

“Did you get a chance to speak to Chin’s grandson?”

“I did.” I told him about my meeting with Derek the day before. “He acted like a jerk. I don’t want to see Uncle Chin get hurt.”

“Chin is a grown man. He can take care of himself. Come here for lunch today, and you can tell him.”

“I’ve got a lot to do,” I said, even though I couldn’t think of one thing I had to do before I showed up at the Boardwalk as a decoy.

“No matter, you’ll make the time. Be here at noon.”

I was annoyed. Usually he let my mother make such calls, relie
d
on her strength to enforce what he want
ed
. Couldn’t they keep their roles straight? “All right.”

At least then I only had to kill the morning. I kept walking around my tiny apartment wondering what I could do, and then caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I could use a haircut, I thought, so I called Tico Robles, and he said he could squeeze me in if I could get to his salon in half an hour.

The first strip shopping center my father built was on Wai‘alae Avenue, at the base of St. Louis Heights, not far from our house. Though he’s had many offers to sell it, over the years, he has held on to it for what I consider purely sentimental reasons, though I have to admit it’s always fully leased and the parking lot there is usually jammed. About three years ago Tatiana, unbeknownst to Haoa, bankrolled Tico in a salon of his own, out of money her parents had left her. She convinced my father to rent him a small space in the Wai‘alae Avenue center, at a bargain rate, and he prospered.

The center was so busy I had to park my truck on a side street, and then walk almost the full length of it to the salon, passing a dry cleaner, video rental store, lawyer’s office, real estate agency, pack and ship place, and greeting card store before I got to Tico’s salon, Puerto Peinado. They’d huddled over the name for weeks, finally coming up with a tribute to Tico’s homeland of Puerto Rico and the Spanish word for hairdo. They’d hired a young artist Tico was dating to paint tropical murals in bright colors on the walls, exotic visions of a Puerto Rico that looked suspiciously like Oahu, and when I walked in there was fast Latin music playing and Tico was doing a merengue with an elderly Chinese woman.

He looked totally recovered, except for a slight bruise on his forehead just below the hairline, almost completely covered by a swoop of brown hair I suspected he had gelled in place. “Kimo! Sweetheart!” he said when I walked in. He dipped the old lady, then expertly swung her into a chair and plopped the old-fashioned hair-dryer down over her head. He tripped lightly across the salon floor and gave me a big hug. “I’m so glad you came in! I’ve been dying to see what I could do with your hair since you came to see me in the hospital.”

He ushered me to a chair in front of a basin at the back of the salon, talking the whole time. “Now wasn’t that a dismal place,” he said. “I mean, really, who decorates those places? They should be shot! I was so eager to get out of there.”

“Maybe that’s why they decorate them that way,” I said, as he swirled a plastic cape around my shoulders. “So you’ll want to get well and leave quickly.”

“Lean back,” he commanded. He washed my hair quickly and expertly, leaving it smelling faintly of coconut and strawberries, and then led me to his chair, in the front window of the salon. “Now I will work my magic,” he said. He leaned down and whispered in my ear, “When I’m finished with you, the boys will fall all over you!”

“Just one boy in particular,” I said, thinking of Wayne Gallagher.