by Viola Grace
A.J. Llewellyn
I got my first case after I had been on island, as we say in Hawaii, for eleven hours and five minutes on a sultry Friday morning. I was rushing out of my apartment to go to an office supply store sale. My neighbor, a nice mainland woman who’d moved to paradise and realized to afford it she’d have to work two jobs and skip all the luxuries, stopped me. She told me this big, long story saying this was why she resented somebody stealing her newspaper every morning.
“It’s the only little extra I’ve allowed myself,” she huffed.
“But I’m not a detective.” I tried edging toward my car.
“You’re a forensic something or other. I want you to get to the bottom of it.”
“I’m a forensic accountant.”
“Even better. You appreciate the value of a hard-earned dime.” She slipped a folded bill into the palm of my hand. “There’s more where this came from.” I glanced at it. Five bucks. She was the last of the big spenders all right.
The only way I could extricate myself from her was to agree to take on her case. I greeted my decrepit landlord who was sweeping the wraparound lanai of the palm-lined courtyard of our four-unit building. In fact, he seemed to sweep it constantly. He nudged me and held up a light bulb. What did these people do before I moved into the quiet corner unit? Uh-oh. I was beginning to realize it wasn’t so quiet after all. I reached up, changed the light bulb from the fake tiki torch from out the front. Being a tall man has its advantages. My landlord bowed at me as ancient Chinese men are wont to do.
I nabbed my second case two hours later. I was sitting at my desk in my spanking new office on McCully, the thick, salty scent from the Ala Wai Canal making the ocean feel close. Also dangerously close were my twin obsessions, a coffee shop and a bakery outlet. I had nothing but two chairs and a desk I’d just bought at the sale and a potted bromeliad my mom gave me for good luck, saying even I couldn’t kill it.
There wasn’t even a landline yet. I was on cell. I checked the readout. It was a local number, not my mom. “Michael McCloud.”
“Mingo?”
My stomach did an embarrassing back flip. Holy heck. A lot of people on island, even off island called me by my nickname, but none with the resonance that he did. Four years since I’d spoken to Kaolin Grace and his voice still worked its strange magic on me.
“Yes?” Good, good, pretend you don’t still feel him, what he did to you.
“I need your help.”
Sucking in a breath, I wished I had something on my walls to stare at. Dang. Not even a cockroach. I caught a glimpse of the verdant, green Ko’olau Mountains in the distance outside my window. That didn’t help. It was a reminder of my whole world with Kaolin.
“It’s me, Kaolin. But you probably already knew that.”
“Kaolin Grace?”
We both let the silence maul our cell phone minutes and he finally spoke.
“You knew it was me.” He chuckled finally. “Look. I need your help.”
Four years it had taken me to get over this bastard. Four years in which I went to the mainland, went back to school, made a success of myself and came back to the islands because with my unusual credentials I thought I could make something of myself.
“I don’t know how I can help you. How did you know I was back anyway?” I was genuinely curious but not surprised when he laughed.
“The coconut wireless, babe.”
“Don’t call me babe.” Christ, is my cock getting hard? Is there no end to the humilities involved with being reminded of the past?
“Is your cock hard?”
I hung up on him. Funny thing about Kaolin, he’s a persistent fellow. Always was. He was like a particularly bad case of toe fungus that always came back, nastier than the last time, harder to cure, with a lengthier, devastating recovery time. He was in my office several minutes later smelling like sex on a rope and I couldn’t have chucked him out if I tried. I was stuffing my cake hole with a pineapple turnover and extra large Kona coffee. Hard to act like a voice of authority when you’re busy entertaining the eight-year-old kid in you.
Holding a big, blooming bromeliad, he dropped it on my desk next to the puny one my mom gave me.
“Welcome back, Mingo.”
My cock and my heart gave simultaneous lurches. He was a six foot three, hot out of the oven slice of Hawaiian and Japanese shark pie. He was wearing tight jeans, a vintage Aloha shirt and he was still the most handsome man I knew, dammit. He had not gone to seed. His smile was still deadly, his teeth white. His gait made you want to drop your drawers and beg for the splendid treasures you just knew were lurking in his pants.
He also had invisible fangs. They’d bled me out more than once. He licked his lips and my cock once again reminded me who it was that made its day. Kaolin was like heroin. And yet I’d given him up. I felt foolish that I couldn’t sweep the empty paper bag and napkin into a wastebasket. Didn’t have one of those yet.
Kaolin draped himself into the seat opposite me. “You look tasty, babe.” He reached over, swiping a crumb from the corner of my mouth and look at me as he licked it off. “Like I said on the phone, I need your help, Mingo.”
I swallowed the last bite of turnover, wishing I had more, and contented myself scalding my tongue on the coffee.
He waited. Dang.
“What is it that you want?”
“I find I am in need of your professional services.”
Balling up the paper bag and napkin, I stuffed them in my top drawer, where all my important papers go.
“Well, I don’t see how—”
“I need a forensic accountant.”
It surprised me that he knew what I did, surprised me that he needed one. I needed business, but I did not need him.
“Do you now?” I cringed, not liking how dumb I sounded. I was a credentialed, educated man. I had given testimony in two hundred and fifty criminal trials. I could handle Kaolin Grace. He looked at me and I had the clear image of him throwing me on my own desk, giving me what-for with that massive cock of his. Did he actually have feelings for me? Or was he simply aware that I still had a dull ache for him?
“Yes, I really do.” I saw them then. The shadows beneath the well rehearsed smile that never had quite reached his eyes in all the years I’d known him. He was in torment. I wasn’t expecting to feel…sorry for him.
I waited him out, trying to ease the images of us coupling from my mind. I am not a small man. Five foot eleven, but some guys just swamp you with their masculine power, their full control. I realized now that Kaolin was really dealing with genuine trauma.
“Tell me about it.” I could give him a little time. I had a mental image of him zipping up his fly, knowing he’d given me something to think about, and I focused on his fidgeting hands. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“Yeah, I would.”
We stood very close in line in the coffee shop. How odd, I thought. Once, we’d been unable to keep our hands off each other. In our two years together, we’d never made it through an entire movie or concert without having to fuck like bunnies in the can. Now we stood, side by side, not looking at one another, reading the same list of coffee options. Repeatedly. We ordered two coffees, lots of milk. He waited until we were back in the office to start his story.
“Who’s Selma?” he asked me.
“Selma?” I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Her name is carved on the front of your desk.”
“Aw, crap. That’s what I get for going to a supply store sale.”
We both laughed and it relaxed him enough to quit stalling and get on with his story.
“I’m in deep shit, babe. I think you’re the only one who can help me.”
“I’m not an attorney, Kaolin.”
“No, I know that. My attorney is good…by island standards, but this is a big case and he was the one who suggested you. He read about you in the papers. He has no idea we used to…used to…you know.”
“Fuck?”
“The gay part of your life?”
“In more ways than one, Mingo. You took all the sweetness, all the joy out of it when you left me.”
“I didn’t leave you. You started screwing Andy.” He opened his mouth and I waved away his pesky excuses. “Look, I still have no idea what the heck is going on and the past, like my ass, is behind me.”
He flicked a wounded glance at me. “I hurt you a lot. I’m sorry for that.”
I nodded. If I had a knife, I’d carve Selma’s name all over the damned desk, just for something to do. Just to give her clear ownership of the desk for there are few things in life we ever truly own.
“Start at the beginning.” I was going into auto pilot. I had become very good at dealing with people in financial and legal crisis. As a forensic accountant, my job was to follow the money trail, follow clues and find the crime. It might not be the sexiest profession, but I’ve given myself hard-ons with some of my own court testimony. Most of my business came from highflying attorneys in murder cases, but I prefer dealing with state prosecutors because I always get paid. Attorneys are notorious for not paying. I always get a retainer up front, too, because I learned the hard way that forensic accountants might be the backbone to many cases, but we’re the last to get paid. When all is said and done, we’re not even peanuts on the floor. We’re sawdust. And sawdust does not get paid.
“I’m being sued. The IRS is coming after me for everything. I am on the verge of losing everything I ever worked for, Mingo. It’s all going away. They’ve taken my boats, ransacked my home…they went through my work truck and—”
“Start at the beginning, honey.” I bit my lip over the term of endearment, but it seemed to shock him into listening to me. I had to be careful. I was a professional.
“Well, I guess it all started with the poker game.”
“Mind if I take notes?”
He shook his head and I pulled out a yellow legal pad from my brief case.
“Tell me about the poker game.” I might be a money guy, but part of my job is being a psychologist. I get the truth out of people for their own good. My job is to have them leaving my office with their troubles on my shoulders.
He lifted a hand. He was exhausted by all of this. Sometimes talking about things opens wounds deeper, but if I was to help at all, I needed him to tell me everything. “There were five of us and one of the guys lost big. To me. Next thing I know, I’m being investigated for tax evasion, theft and now they’re trying to say I’m a big time drug dealer.”
“Let me guess. The guy that lost is a cop.”
He looked startled. “How’d you know that?”
“They’re notoriously poor losers. How much did he lose?”
“Twenty thou.”
“And you believe he called the IRS out of spite.”
“I know he did. You know this island. Full of blabbermouths.”
“What has the IRS found on you?”
“A lot.” His smile was rueful. “Unfortunately, I’m having a hard time making any of this go away and I could end up being in prison for a very long time.”
I made him go through it all with me, step by step. A red-topped cardinal hopped into the open office door and we both looked at him. At my feet, there were turnover crumbs and neither of us spoke as the little guy hopped around, pecking his way clean.
“It’s so hard to find good help these days.”
Kaolin laughed at my joke, but the little bird was pissed. He eyed me from one side of his head, apparently disgruntled that there was nothing else left to eat. He fluttered to the windowsill and took off in a huff.
“Animals always gravitate toward you,” Kaolin smiled.
I shrugged. I’d rather sexy, hot guys gravitated toward me. “So explain to me how it is that you’ve been paying your bills since, by your own admission, you’re spending way more than you’ve been earning.”
His face reddened. He was a professional luau man. He catered parties for everything from weddings, anniversaries, the all-important First Year Baby luau, Yakudoshis and the let’s-impress-the-mainland-visitors luau. His boats were his fortune, he must have been going crazy without them.
“The IRS seized them. They went through my truck—”
“So you said.”
“They say they saw me in my garage at home putting something in plastic bags into it.” He shook his head, his eyes glittering with anger like shards of firelight. “They say they found traces of cocaine on money from my wallet. They say there were traces of cocaine in the back of my truck. And traces of Tylenol.”
“Tylenol is not illegal.” I made a note, hoping he couldn’t read upside down.
“Look, I may be an idiot to gamble with cops, but I am not a drug dealer and I am not a crook.”
I tapped my notepad. “Cocaine traces on money means nothing. Ninety percent of the world’s currency has traces of cocaine on it. I’ve proven that in a few criminal cases.”
He smiled. “My lawyer said you were good.”
I leaned forward. “If we’re going to proceed, I do need to know how you’ve been paying your bills.”
“No.”
“Then I can’t help you.”
The words stood between us like an angry umpire.
“Why? Why do you need to know?”
“It’s obviously an issue. The IRS is looking hard at you. It can remain our secret, but I don’t like nasty surprises.” I looked him right in the eye. “As you may recall…” The memory of walking into our house and finding him in bed with Andy, one of our closest friends, still ranked up there as the worst experience of my life.
He looked worried. “Jesus, McCloud. You are such a bastard.”
“Plenty of other fish in the accounting sea.”
“Not in Honolulu.” No, not in Honolulu. I worked hard to hide my giddy smile. That’s why I’d come home.
He sighed. “The goddam friggin’ money. I wish to God I’d never gotten it now.”
“Tell me about it.” I’d heard a lot of weird stories in my time. Couldn’t wait to hear this one.
He spread his hands. “My Aunty died. You remember Lucy? The one that owned the three lei stores down on Merchant Street?”
I did remember her and felt peculiarly desolate to know she’d passed.
“She liked you, too, Mingo.” His voice went tender for a moment. “She sold two of the stores and left me the one opposite the fruit market. It was her favorite.”
“The one where she slept upstairs in the storeroom?”
He smiled. “You remember it.”
How could I forget? He’d fucked me up there, the overwhelming smell of flowers adding to our wild, illicit fusing on his aunty’s floor as she went down the street for milk. We were so hot for each other we’d torn upstairs, his hands reaching for my more than willing ass. He was still coming inside me when she came back, barking our names.
“Yeah, I remember.”
“I do, too.” His cheeks reddened and in a whoosh of white-hot feelings, I knew it was all still there.
Shuffling papers, I waited for the sensation to subside. He was looking at me and I knew his marriage was in trouble. He might be able to make love to a man or a woman, but his real passion was men. He had made careful detours around the subject of his marriage. I waited and he blew out a warm gust of breath.
“The money. Jesus. There was a box. She left it in the basement for me. Had it there for years. She didn’t believe in banks and practically every last dime she ever made is in there. She told me to use it as needed and let me tell you, business has been down for about two years and I needed. I kept dipping into it.”
“Business was bad before all this started? How is that possible?” I couldn’t help myself. I knew the tourism industry was only getting bigger and better in the islands.
“I married a woman who lets money run through her fingers like s
and…” He licked his lips again. “She’s also made enemies of some of my old vendors and I had to find new ones. Some months I didn’t make a profit because of the costs of fuels for the boats.” He slipped into a momentary funk.
“How much of this money is left?”
He grimaced. “A lot. Somehow, I’ve managed to keep it from the Feds or they would have taken it. Without my boats, I’m not the same luau guy. Mingo, I’m in big trouble.”
“Back to the money. If you’ve been dipping into it for what, two years? How is it that there’s still a lot left?”
“She left it all in thousand-dollar bills.”
I stared at him. Thousand-dollar bills? “I’ve seen a few of those.” I thought quickly. This would be an easy case to prove. “You can’t get a one thousand dollar bill without paying a fee on it, usually twenty, twenty five dollars. Any bank in town would remember you coming in and buying those. If this is how you’ve been paying off your bills…”
He nodded. “It is.”
“Where is the box now?”
“I’m not telling you. That box is my security blanket.”
“So I take it the wife doesn’t know about it?”
“Hell, no.”
“Okay.” I tapped my notebook again. “All right. I’ll look at the case files. I’ll talk to your attorney. I believe you and I will help you.”
He looked relieved. “I can pay you a retainer.”
“You bet you will. But I prefer to work through your attorney.”
“He doesn’t know about the box. Nobody does. Except you.”
“Your secret is safe with me, I promise you. We will need to talk again after I’ve read the case files. But I don’t want you to worry. That’s my job now.”
He smiled and this time, I saw it almost meet his big, dark eyes. “I’ll wait to hear from you then.”
When he stood, I went to shake his hand, but he grabbed me, giving me a huge hug. I felt his cock harden at my waist and we both parted, looking anywhere but at each other. After he left, I stared for a long time at his attorney’s business card. Benny Leonard. Kaolin really had reached back into the future for help when he needed it most. Benny had been his lover before I came along.