Then I remembered the giraffe. Would he recognize me again? Would I recognize him? He could place me at the club at the right time, and he’d seen me go out the door.
I wasn’t sure if I felt better or worse. Each thing I had to do to prove my case was taking me one step farther out of the closet. And it assumed I’d be able to find the giraffe and that he could testify correctly.
The phone rang again. This time I answered, “Akoni?”
It was Uncle Chin. “Sorry, Uncle, I was expecting another call. Ni hao ma?” When I was really little Uncle Chin taught me a couple of Chinese phrases, and now they sprang up every time I talked to him.
“I am well. I ask questions about Tommy. Maybe you want come here sometime, find out answers.”
“My shift ends at four. I could come sometime after that.”
“Aunt Mei-Mei very happy you stay for dinner. Maybe your parents come too.”
How could I tell him my world was about to fall apart? “Sure,” I said. “But you and I will talk first.”
“Of course.”
When I hung up the phone rang again almost immediately. “Thank God,” I said, when I heard Akoni’s voice. “The lieutenant wants to see us both before the end of shift.”
“What’s up?”
I told him. “Shit, Kimo, I told you this was going to happen.”
“I’ll do what I can to keep you out of it.”
“Shit,” he said. “I’m on my way back.”
I shifted some papers around on my desk. I looked up every time the door opened, then looked back down. Two Japanese tourists came in with a complaint and needed a translator. I volunteered, more to pass the time than anything else, but all they really wanted was directions to the Kodak Hula Show.
While I was up, I looked at the little kiosk full of bus schedules by the front door, but couldn’t find one that went anywhere I wanted to go. Then I went back to my desk and stared at a poster announcing Citizen Anti-Crime Week for a while. It was pretty ugly, the HPD shield in a kind of burnt orange with a lot of text around it.
I straightened out a paper clip and then tried to bend it back into its original shape, but it wouldn’t go. I couldn’t get the same smooth curves, no matter how hard I tried. Finally Akoni got back from Honolulu Hale.
“Did you find anything interesting?” I said, as he put his folder down on his desk.
“Tell me again how this happened,” he said. “The lieutenant called you in to ask about our progress.”
I nodded. “I wanted it to sound like we were close to an arrest.” I told Akoni what Yumuri had said. “When I told him I had personal evidence, that I’d seen the guy dragging Tommy Pang’s body down the alley, he laughed.”
“He laughed?”
“Yup. He thought I was lying. I finally convinced him, and he wasn’t happy.”
“Shit,” Akoni said. “All right, let’s get this over with.”
We walked back to the lieutenant’s office, and this time he spoke mostly to Akoni. “Do you think you can wrap this up soon?”
“We’re making progress,” Akoni said.
“Progress!” Yumuri exploded. “Progress is a suspect behind bars! You don’t have shit, do you?” He paused, seemed to struggle to maintain his temper. “You have until Wednesday, end of shift,” Yumuri said. “I want results on this or I’ll have your asses. Is that understood?”
He looked at each of us. “Understood,” Akoni said.
“Understood,” I said.
“You are history,” Akoni said as we walked back to our desks. “Kiss your badge goodbye, sign up for the private security detail at the Ala Moana Mall.”
“Thanks for your support. You find out anything useful downtown?”
He shook his head. “Not a thing. I’m not giving up on the idea that there’s a dirty cop in this somewhere, but I still have my doubts about the son and his friend,” Akoni said. “After all, they’re the ones whose stories conflict.”
“I know. Wayne says they went to that bar by the Aloha Bowl, and Derek says they went up Mount Tantalus and parked.”
“Maybe they did both. Had a couple of beers, then went up the mountain to make out.” He shivered. “Thinking of those two parked together gives me the creeps.”
“Get over it,” I said. “All right, so tonight we check out the bar and see if they were really there.”
“I really don’t want to go to that place. Suppose somebody makes a pass at me? I don’t want anybody blowing in my ear.”
“Hold on a minute.” I picked up the phone and at the same time pulled Tim’s card out of my wallet. “Tim Ryan,” I said, when the receptionist answered. “Hey, Tim, it’s Kimo. Yeah? Good. Listen, I have to go out to a bar by the Aloha Bowl called the Boardwalk tonight, to show some pictures around and check out an alibi.” I listened. “Oh it is, is it? You want to go with me?” I laughed. “I promise. All right, I’ll pick you up around ten.”
“You’re off the hook,” I said when I hung up. “I’ve got a friend to go with me.”
“You’re not wasting any time, are you? That the guy who blew in your ear?”
“He’s a lawyer. I met him at Kuhio Beach Park.”
Akoni held up his hand. “I don’t want to hear about it.”
I gathered my stuff from my desk and packed up. “I’m going to see Uncle Chin now. He said he had some information about Tommy Pang.”
“We’ve got to get this solved,” Akoni said. “Or it’s both our asses.”
“I know,” I said, as I walked out of the station.
DINNER WITH FRIENDS
My parents were already at Uncle Chin’s house by the time I arrived, the four of them sitting out on the lanai chatting, surrounded by birds and flowers. “You know your father built this house,” Uncle Chin said, as I settled into a lounge chair across from him.
“I didn’t know that,” I said. “How long ago?”
“This was my first project on my own,” my father said. “Right after you were born, when I left Amfac and went on my own.” In my memory, my father had always had his own business, but I knew that at some time in the past he had worked for Amfac, one of Hawai‘i’s Big Five companies, as a construction superintendent.
“This was new area back then,” Uncle Chin said. “I bought many pieces land. Sold your father one where your house is.”
They kept on talking about the old days, when they were young men and the world stretched out before them like a treasure chest of riches waiting to be plundered. It was hard for me to concentrate, because I kept thinking about my own future. What would I do if I left the force? I was too old to be a professional surfer by then; I had let that chance pass me by when I fled the North Shore. Like Akoni suggested, I could become a private cop, working security details for fancy condos or Ala Moana Center. I could become a private detective, chasing down errant husbands and bogus slip-and-fall claims.
I looked at my father. He was still a handsome man, graying, distinguished. He had once had many powerful friends and connections, but his friends aged as he did, and consequently the business he had built, which had provided for us all for so many years, was fading away too. Maybe I could work with him, rejuvenate the business, become a minor tycoon like he was.
But would he want me? I’d seen his face when he described Derek Pang as mahu. He didn’t want a gay son any more than Tommy Pang had. “E, Kimo, you gone away somewhere?” my father asked.
I looked up. “Sorry, Dad. It’s been a long day.”
“Time for dinner,” Aunt Mei-Mei said, standing up. “Lokelani and me, we have dinner ready chop chop.”
When the women had left the room, Uncle Chin said, “I ask many people about my son. What he do, who hate him.”
I looked at my father. He said, “I knew Tommy was Chin’s son. I helped him get his papers.”
I guessed my father was willing to stay and listen, so I said to Uncle Chin, “What did you find?”
He picked up a silver harmony ball from the tabl
e next to him and rolled it in his palm. “He was hard man, like I tell you, but no one know anyone who kill him. He was smart, my son. Not like his father like that.”
“You’re plenty smart, Chin,” my father said.
Uncle Chin smiled. “Good to have friends, no?” Then his smile faded. “My boy not have many friends. Not many enemies either, but not many friends. Many women, lots of money.”
“What kind of stuff was he doing, Uncle Chin? I know about the legitimate businesses-the bar, the pack and ship, the lingerie shop. But he must have been doing some illicit stuff too. Smuggling? Gambling? Prostitution? Drugs?”
“Hate drugs,” Uncle Chin nearly spit out. I remembered Robert, his death. Uncle Chin had always been adamantly against the drug trade. “Stupid business,” I remembered him telling me once. “Get customers, then kill them. How make life like that?”
“Did Tommy deal in drugs?” I asked gently.
Uncle Chin nodded. “Bad business. I told him many times, stop. Drugs kill his brother, he not care. Truth, I think he resent Robert’s memory, Robert born here, have advantages he no have. Even though I tried make up to him.”
“Was Derek involved in any of Tommy’s businesses?” I asked. “I know about the bar. How about the others?”
“Sounds like,” Uncle Chin said. “Two boys, Derek and friend. They collect money sometimes, carry messages. Like learning business.”
“The drugs, too?”
Uncle Chin shook his head. “No. Tommy said. Derek no in drugs. I make him promise.”
“He gets all the businesses now?” I asked. “Derek?”
Uncle Chin looked disturbed, like he was seeing where I was going. “Wife gets, but Derek runs. You think Derek kill Tommy?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. You think Derek could kill his father?”
“I’m a contract builder,” my father said unexpectedly. “You hire me, I work for you. There are men like that, who kill.”
I wondered again about the relationship between my father and Uncle Chin, how much my father knew about Uncle Chin’s business, how closely he was connected. “Could that be?” I asked Uncle Chin. “Could Derek have hired someone to kill Tommy?”
Uncle Chin looked very sad, very old. “Don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t know.”
Just then my mother came in. “Come for dinner, now,” she said. My father stood and offered his arm to Uncle Chin, who struggled up from his chair. He murmured something to my father, who laughed. I wondered if Harry and I would end that way, still friends, helping each other over the rough places in our lives.
We didn’t talk any more about Tommy Pang. At dinner, Aunt Mei-Mei and my mother kept a light banter going, my father occasionally making jokes. I was happy they could all be together, support each other. Uncle Chin had aged a lot over the last few days, and it surprised me to consider that he must have loved Tommy Pang very much, even though he had called him a hard man. I knew that my father loved me and my brothers very deeply, in a way that often could not even be expressed, and I was sure he would be as crushed as Uncle Chin if one of us were to die.
I think your attitude toward your parents changes as you get older. You’re more able to see them as human beings who have made choices and handled their lives as best they could. I didn’t always agree with the decisions my father had made; I would rather he had worked less when I was a kid, and spent more time with us. I thought we could have had a few less toys, eaten more rice and poi and less steak, and in return had more of him, but it was the fifties and sixties then, and that’s what fathers did. I’m sure my mother, born poor and determined never to be poor again, had a lot to do with that, too, but again, you couldn’t fault her for doing what she thought was best for her family.
It was saddening to know that I would never have more family than this, and that I would lose them eventually. I wouldn’t have a wife, though I hoped someday I would find a partner. I would never have children and have to make choices on how to raise them; never see their first steps or first day at school, nor their graduations or weddings. I would never have a luau to celebrate the birth of my child, and never have grandchildren to swarm over me the way my nieces and nephews did to my father.
I would always be a part of my brothers’ lives, or hoped I would, be Uncle Kimo to Jeffrey and Ashley and their brothers and sisters, and that would have to be enough. Like my parents, I took the hand I was dealt and tried to make the best of it.
I looked at my watch. It was already late; I had to drive back to Waikiki and pick up Tim, and then go out to the Boardwalk and see if anyone could identify Wayne or Derek. I made my excuses as my mother and Aunt Mei-Mei were clearing the dessert dishes. “So late, you have to work?” my mother asked.
“I have to check out a suspect’s alibi. He was there late, I have to go there late.”
She shook her head. My father said, “Be careful, Keechee.”
“I will be.” To Uncle Chin I said, “I am very sorry, for you, about Tommy. I’ll do my best to catch whoever killed him.”
Uncle Chin smiled at me. “You my son, too, Kimo,” he said. “ He kanaka pono ‘oe, lokomaika‘i ‘oe.”
I looked down. “You flatter me, Uncle Chin.” He had told me I was a powerful person, and good-hearted as well.
“He says the truth,” my father said. “Your mother and I are very proud of you.”
How proud would they be, I thought, as I drove back down to Waikiki, if they knew who I really was?
***
The Boardwalk looked nondescript from the outside, stuck near the end of a strip mall, with nothing but a wooden walkway over the concrete sidewalk to distinguish it from the Karate school and beeper store on either side. Tim said, “This is it?” when we pulled up in my truck.
“This is it.” We walked up to the front door, and stepped through a beaded curtain into a dark vestibule. I heard the pounding beat of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” as we turned right and stepped through another curtain into a pile of sand.
At least that’s what it felt like. It was a long, narrow sandbox that I guess those in the know stepped over. As it was we both stepped in it, and then as we walked farther in, the sand sifted out of our shoes.
The room was dark, but spotlights washed places on the rough wooden walls. It was as kitschy as the Rod and Reel, but in a different style. This was early beach bum, with fishing nets hung from the ceiling, and tattered pin-ups of boys in skimpy bathing suits on the walls. The centerpiece was a long bar that ran the length of one wall. Instead of a polished top its surface was made of rough wood planks, like a beachfront boardwalk, and at about the middle a well-muscled Hawaiian boy in his early twenties strutted and danced in a jockstrap, reaching in often to fondle himself. At the far end, in his own pool of light, an equally well-muscled, dark-haired haole boy of about the same age practiced his own posturing.
“They have bars like this back in Boston,” Tim whispered. “But I never went to one.”
“There’s a first time for everything,” I whispered back.
There was another smaller bar in a back room, through a wide archway, and on the other side of the room there were four pool tables, each lit by its own fake stained-glass lamp. There were two or three guys at each of the tables, and maybe a dozen by the bar.
I hadn’t changed from the clothes I’d worn all day-a maroon polo shirt and jeans. Tim had taken off the tie I guessed he’d worn to work, but was still wearing a white oxford cloth button down shirt, and a pair of neatly pressed khakis. The guys around us, who ranged in age from what I guessed to be late teens to mid-fifties, were all dressed similarly, though there were a few in t-shirts and another couple in leather pants with chains attached to the pockets.
We walked up to the bar and tried very hard to avoid the boy thrusting his crotch toward our heads. I ordered beers for both of us, and then when the bartender, a guy who looked half Hawaiian and half Chinese, brought them I showed him my ID. “Yeah?”
I’d deliberately chosen a place where one of the spotlights washed a section of bar. I pulled out a picture of Wayne I’d found on a club page of the Yale website, and asked, “Have you seen this guy?”
The bartender looked at it and shrugged. “I think so.”
“You remember when?”
He laughed. “You gotta be kidding.”
“Think a little harder,” I said. “I’ve got some friends in the department who don’t like underage drinking very much. I could send them over here.”
He didn’t like that. He picked up Wayne’s picture, looked at it again, and then closed his eyes. “Not for a couple of weeks,” he said when he opened them again. “He’s got a friend, doesn’t he?”
I showed him a picture of Derek I’d found at the same place. “Yeah, that’s him,” he said. “They’re usually together, though sometimes the haole cruises by himself.”
“So they weren’t in here a week ago Tuesday, the sixteenth?”
He shook his head. “No. I know that for a fact, because we were closed that night.” He looked at me. “Your friends in the department were here the Saturday before. They said they were looking for drugs, but they didn’t find anything. And I don’t serve anybody under twenty-one. Still they decided they didn’t like the idea of a fag bar, so they closed us down. It took us a full week to get it cleared up and reopen.”
I nodded. He walked away to serve somebody else down the counter. If the police didn’t like fags getting together at a bar on the edge of town, they certainly weren’t going to like one on their force.
For an hour or so we stood around and watched the guys playing pool, me leaning back against Tim, feeling the contact my shoulders made against his chest, his arms around my waist. Every time his fingertips grazed my skin I felt shock waves rolling through my chest and down into my groin. I was hard almost the entire time.
We drank our beers, and swayed to the rhythm of the music on the jukebox, and every now and then we turned around and kissed. Around us, men moved through the shadows and the light, talking in small groups, flirting, or silently cruising the bar waiting for sparks to fly. A Thai or Vietnamese boy who couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen chatted at the bar with a haole man in his fifties, and as I watched, the man stroked the boy’s cheek in a gesture of unexpected tenderness.
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