Mahu Vice

by Neil S. Plakcy

  “You’re right. I don’t know that.” I smiled. “Did Terri tell you that, too?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Came up with that one all by myself.”

  My brothers came back then with bottles of water, plates of grilled shrimp, piles of sticky rice, and slices of fresh, sweet pineapple sprinkled with li hing powder, and we ate, and drank, and then dozed for a while. Then we surfed again, until, in succession, all three of their cell phones went off. Harry’s first; then Haoa’s. Lui’s cell phone rang next, and we were sure it was his wife—but it was the station, notifying him that there was a big fire at a warehouse in Salt Lake, and that the evening news was going to lead with the story.

  I thought of Mike, but for the first time in nearly a year, I didn’t feel anything more than mild curiosity about whether he’d be investigating.

  Or at least that’s what I told myself.

  FEEL THE HEAT

  A couple of weeks later, I took a shooting victim in to the emergency room at The Queen’s Medical Center to get a bullet pulled out of his butt, and I pegged the handsome, haole ER doc as gay as soon as he introduced himself, when he made lingering eye contact. One thing led to another, and once the victim was wheeled off for surgery, the doc asked me to dinner.

  Since the surfing expedition with Harry and my brothers, I’d been celibate, resisting any temptation to get in trouble, trying to get back to the things that mattered to me—seeing my family and friends, reading, surfing, beating my body back into shape.

  Intellectually, I knew I ought to say yes to the doctor’s invitation. His name was Phil, and he was in his mid-forties, trim and well groomed, though his face was a bit too angular to be considered handsome. Emotionally, I was worried that I wasn’t ready for a normal relationship yet.

  Then I looked at him and he smiled, and my dick stiffened. I said, “Sure. That’d be nice,” and we made plans to meet on Saturday night.

  To celebrate my return to dating, I treated myself to a cleanup at my friend Tico’s hair salon. Saturday morning, I pulled up in the parking lot of the strip mall on Waialae Avenue where Puerto Peinado claimed an end location. Until recently, my father had owned the center, one of a few he’d built around O’ahu. He’d sold them all off in the last couple of years, investing the money in T-bills and CDs.

  For an older shopping center, it was meticulously maintained, with rich green grass between the parking lanes, expertly trimmed hedges, and kukui trees surrounded by perfect rings of mulch. The center had been Haoa’s first client when he began his landscaping business, and he still treated it as a jewel. Fearing my father’s disapproval might have had something to do with it, too.

  Tico, who is also my sister-in-law Tatiana’s best friend, embraced me like a long-lost relative. “Kimo, it’s been so long!” He looked at me front and back. I knew I’d let my hair get shaggy, and my normal tan was just starting to come back. “You are here just in time. I think if I work my magic I just might save your looks.”

  He leaned close. “Though you know, the closer you get to forty, the more you have to work to keep them.”

  “Forty!” I squawked. Tico was at least ten years older than I was, if not fifteen. “I’m not even thirty-five yet.”

  “And you want the boys to know that,” he said. “So you have to take care of your hair and your skin.”

  “I leave myself in your capable hands.”

  He led me past a row of old-fashioned hair dryers he loved because they reminded him of an I Love Lucy episode. The salon was filled with stuff like that—lavish murals, painted by a former lover; postcards of Puerto Rico, Tico’s home island; and a collection of Barbie dolls with extravagant hairdos, bought for him by clients every Christmas. When I walked in, Bruddah Norm was singing on the CD player about his Hawaiian-Samoan heritage, and I couldn’t help swaying to the beat.

  Tico sat me down in a chair and motioned a boy over to me. “Jingtao will wash your hair,” he said. He made some hand signals to the boy, which led me to believe he didn’t speak much English, and then the boy turned me around in the chair and gently pressed down on my shoulders, lowering my head to the sink.

  I rested my neck on the porcelain indent, closed my eyes, and tried to relax. I’d been working like a madman since the surfing expedition, trying to make up for my previous slacker attitude.

  My boss, Lieutenant Sampson, hadn’t said anything to me in my low period, but now he’d begun lavishing praise on me, as if recognizing that I needed some extra pushing to make it back up from my depths. I’d closed out three homicides that week, all as the result of dogged police work, and I was feeling good.

  Jingtao’s long, slender fingers massaged my scalp, first with shampoo, then conditioner, and I wondered how a boy—and he couldn’t be more than sixteen—who couldn’t speak English ended up shampooing at a hair salon. When I moved to Tico’s chair for my cut, I asked.

  “I found him in the back alley,” Tico said, leaning close to my ear. The back of the center faced a narrow alley. “He was scared of his own shadow. I coaxed him inside, cleaned him up, and let him sleep in the back room.”

  “Doesn’t he have family?”

  “Not that I know of. There’s a Chinese girl at the travel agency next door, and all he’d tell her was that he’d run away from somewhere.”

  “You should call social services. They can find out what’s going on.”

  “In a few days,” Tico said. “I gave him a safe place to sleep, I feed him every day, and he collects a few bucks in tips. He’s safe enough, for now.”

  He began to snip at my head, and black hair fell around me. “Now let me work my magic, young man. You need some help here.”

  I relaxed to Bruddah Norm’s island beat as Tico cut, and when I left the salon I felt handsome. I’ve been lucky enough to get the best genes from my Hawaiian, Japanese, and haole grandparents: a light olive skin, a slight epicanthic fold over my eyes, and thick dark hair. I have worked my body for years through surfing, rollerblading, bicycling, and other sports. I’d put on a few extra pounds in the past year, maybe the beginning of a pot belly, but I’d been working it off with a fresh round of exercise.

  Gunter came over that night to help me pick out the right clothes to wear for my date. I’m no fashion bug; if it was up to me, I’d wear aloha shirts, board shorts, and rubber slippas every day of the year. I sprawled on my bed, playing the air ukulele with Jake Shimabukuro on the sound system, while Gunter picked through my closet, most of which did not meet with his approval. “You need new clothes,” he said. “Actually, you need new taste first.”

  “Just pick something,” I said, strumming along with one of Jake’s killer riffs. “It’s a date, not a job interview.”

  “Honey, every date is a job interview,” he said, striking a pose. He’s an inch or two taller than I am, skinny as a coconut palm, with close-cropped blond hair. He’s a muscle queen, with bulging biceps and abs as taut as guitar strings. He likes to pretend to be some kind of Teutonic god, but I know he’s just a suburban boy from New Jersey. “You’re interviewing for a position. Husband, boyfriend, or just flat on your back with your legs up in the air.” He flipped through my shirts, pulling out a black T-shirt with a designer label, something Tatiana had given me for my birthday. “I may be looking for a new job myself,” he said.

  “Really? What’s up?” Gunter was a security guard at a fancy condo in Waikiki, a job that suited him because he got to wear a uniform and boss people around. He was good at that.

  “This new company took over the contract for services at the Kuhio Regent,” he said. “They’re subcontracting valet, security, and maintenance. We’ve all been hired by the new company—but who knows how long that will last. They may want to bring in all their own people.”

  The music gave us a nice vibe, and a couple of beers added to the mellowness of the evening. Gunter moved on to pants. “Have you ever heard of this thing called dry cleaners?” he asked, pulling one rumpled pair of khakis after another
out of the closet and throwing them into a pile on the floor. “You take them dirty, smelly, wrinkled pants like these and they return them to you a few days later, all nice and clean and pressed.”

  “Who has time for that?”

  “You have time for surfing,” Gunter said. “And what did you do this morning? Rollerblade? Bike ride? Jogging?”

  “I ran through the park after I got done surfing.”

  “See? You could have dropped these pants off on your way, and picked them up the next time you go for a run.”

  “Save me the lectures. Just find a pair of pants I can wear.”

  “My new boss is hot, though,” Gunter said, inspecting a pair of black pants for stains. “He’s over fifty, but built like a brick shithouse. And he’s hung like a horse.”

  “Gunter. You haven’t seen his dick in person, have you?”

  “The man’s a wannabe cop. He wears these tight uniform pants stretched across his crotch, white shirts with epaulets. His nipples are pierced, too.”

  “Too much information. Those pants going to be okay?”

  He tossed the slacks to me. “They’ll do. But I am taking you shopping at the outlets in Waikele. As soon as I get my next paycheck.”

  I met Dr. Phil a little later outside Raimundo’s, an Italian restaurant on Kuhio Avenue. “You look handsome,” he said, scanning me up and down. “The night we met you were kind of ragged, but you clean up very nicely.”

  I wasn’t sure that was a compliment. “My friend Gunter picked out my outfit,” I said. “He’s always telling me I don’t sell myself enough.”

  “That’s a good friend to have.”

  It wasn’t until we were seated that I remembered Raimundo’s was a place where Mike and I had eaten when we’d dated. I wondered if I’d picked the place as a way of reclaiming it, banishing his memory.

  To a soundtrack of Frank Sinatra and Don Ho, Dr. Phil and I traded basic information, shared some sushi, and started on that long process of getting to know each other. “When did you know you were gay?” he asked, over the salad.

  “I knew there was something strange when I hit puberty. I’d always liked girls, been friends with girls, but the feelings I had for guys were…different.”

  “The locker room,” Phil said.

  I nodded. “I’d see other guys naked and I’d start to think about touching them, doing things with them. I knew it wasn’t what I was supposed to feel, though, so I compensated by dating girls.” I shrugged. “I was lucky, because the girls liked me, and I never…you know…had trouble.”

  I sipped some wine, and he waited. “And then there was this case, a couple of years ago. A bust that went bad, and my adrenaline was running like crazy, and I suddenly thought, ‘Is this the way I want to live? If I died today, would I feel like I’d lived the life I was supposed to?’”

  He smiled. “We all have to come to that decision. For me, I was in medical school.” He told me a long story about a homophobic professor, and how that experience had spurred him to come out. He poured the last of the wine, and we finished it up over dessert. He said, “I’d like to see you again, Kimo, but my schedule gets crazy starting Monday. I’m going to nights, and I’m supervising a new crop of residents, so I won’t be able to get away for dinner.”

  “That’s a bummer,” I said. “Tomorrow’s my last night shift, and then I have two days off before I switch to days.”

  I licked my lips, and looked at him with raised eyebrows. In my past experience, this was the point when we figured out whose place to head to. But I hadn’t gotten much of a sex vibe from him and so I wasn’t sure what would happen next. I stuck my leg out and made contact with his.

  “I don’t have sex on the first date,” Phil said, answering my unasked question. “I’ve found in the past that it doesn’t lead to second dates. And I’d like a second date with you.”

  “I’d like one with you, too,” I said, smiling, and meant it.

  “I’ve got your number,” he said, standing up. “I’ll call when I have a day off.”

  “That would be great.” We walked out to the parking lot together. In the distance, a street performer was imitating Keali’i Reichel in a reedy tenor. Maybe I wasn’t going to sleep with Dr. Phil, but I certainly was going to kiss him; if he couldn’t kiss, then there wasn’t much point in a second date. In the shadow of my truck, I leaned down a bit and kissed his lips lightly.

  He kissed back, and it was pretty good. Fireworks didn’t go off and my heart didn’t race, but it felt nice to chase a little romance. Then he backed off and said, “See you soon—hopefully not in a professional capacity.”

  I slept in on Sunday morning, then spent a couple of hours in the surf off Diamond Head. I started my shift at eleven that night, and almost immediately my cell phone rang. When I saw it was Lui’s number I got scared.

  My father had been in declining health, getting a new heart valve and taking a host of pills, and I was always worried that the next news about him would be bad.

  “What’s up, brah?” I asked. “Mom and Dad okay?”

  “They’re all right, but shook up. You know Dad’s favorite center, the one on Waialae Avenue? It’s on fire. He and Mom are freaking out.”

  I knew my dad had a sentimental attachment to that center, even though he didn’t own it anymore. “I was just there yesterday.”

  “Mom and Dad are heading over, and so am I. Can you get up there, too?”

  “See you there.” I told my new partner, Ray Donne, where I was going, and drove my truck up to St. Louis Heights.

  By the time I arrived, the flames had been doused everywhere except the acupuncture clinic at the far end from Tico’s salon. A single fire engine remained on Waialae Avenue, and bright arc lights illuminated the scene. The long, one-story building was now just a skeleton, and the air was filled with the acrid smell of burnt light bulbs, drywall, electrical wiring, and plastic.

  My parents stood at one side, supported by Lui’s wife Liliha. All of them looked like they’d dressed hurriedly, my father in sweatpants and a UH T-shirt, my mother in a housecoat. Even Liliha, who never appears in public without perfect makeup and elegant clothing, looked rumpled and tired. I went over and hugged them all. Since my teen years, I’ve always been a little taller than my father, though he’s shrinking as he gets older, and his normally sturdy body felt frailer in my arms.

  “Terrible thing,” he said, shaking his head. My mother grasped his hand and squeezed. Though he has a blustery temper, she’s always been the strong one in their relationship. She’s only about five seven, but she has a take charge attitude. Perhaps it comes from her childhood as a daughter of a Japanese father and a Hawaiian mother, living in near poverty on the windward coast. Or maybe they just feed off each other, the big, strong builder and the petite housewife, who made an exceptional team raising three sons.

  Lui came over and said, “We heard that there’s a victim inside. Ralph wants a sound bite from someone in Homicide. Come talk to him, okay?”

  “It’s not my case. There’s probably somebody coming up from downtown right now.”

  Lui looked at his watch. “If I can get this wrapped up in the next few minutes, we get something at the end of the eleven o’clock news. There’s a chance somebody who’s watching will have some information. Don’t you want to make sure they know where to call?”

  My oldest brother is a master manipulator. I couldn’t argue with that, so I followed him to where Ralph Kim was setting up a live shot. He was a trim, dark-haired Korean guy in his early forties, and we had a history; he was one of the newsmen who’d dogged my coming out, and I didn’t trust him, but as the ranking police representative on the scene I’d have to talk to him.

  The lights went on and we were rolling, the shot framed by a couple of restless palm trees behind us. Ralph spoke first to an assistant fire chief, and then turned to me. “Also on the scene is Honolulu homicide detective Kimo Kanapa’aka,” he said. “We understand that there was a fatality her
e. One of the tenants?”

  “The victim has not been identified yet. But anyone with information about this fire, or about the victim, should call Crime Stoppers, 955-8300, or dial star-crime on your cell phone.”

  When we were finished, I walked over to the far corner of the site, where Lui and Haoa were standing in front of what had been Puerto Peinado. The air was filled with bitter smoke, the arc lights from the fire engines casting eerie shadows. They were talking to someone, and it wasn’t until I was there that I realized it was Mike Riccardi. I caught a mouthful of smoke and started to choke.

  As I fought for breath, my heart raced, and I felt an emptiness at the pit of my stomach. I’d always known I could run into Mike somewhere; it’s a small island, after all. But seeing my parents so upset, and then having to be on TV with Ralph Kim, had raised my stress levels, and Mike made them go off the charts.

  The first time we met, after another fire, I’d been floored by his looks. He was handsome, with thick, dark hair, and a black mustache over full, sensual lips. He looked like the same guy I’d fallen in love with and spent six months dating and sleeping with, except around his eyes. They had always been dancing and full of fun, with a bit of an epicanthic fold over them, courtesy of his Korean mother, but in the glare of the arc lights, they looked tired and somber.

  “Kimo,” he said, sticking out his hand. “You look good.”

  I shook his. “You too, Mike.” The electricity of his touch raced through my body, and I wondered if he felt it, too. I struggled to stay professional when all I wanted to do was touch him, hold him—and maybe beat the crap out of him for betraying me. I cleared my throat. “My brother said there’s a body inside?”

  He nodded. “In the back of the salon.”

  I looked over at Tico, in sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt. He was hugging Tatiana and crying, resting his head on her full, blonde hair. I was about to go over to them when my cell phone rang, and I saw from the display that it was Ray. “Hey, we caught a case,” he said.