Mahu Fire

by Neil S. Plakcy

  “He should come here,” Aunt Mei-Mei said behind me. I turned to face her. She wore a simple black silk cheongsam, which contrasted with her bare feet. Her toenails were painted bright pink. “We have much room. He could be company for Uncle Chin.”

  I looked back to Uncle Chin. “I’ll find him someplace permanent. I just need a place to put him for a few days. I can’t take him myself—it wouldn’t look right.”

  “If I know Derek earlier, maybe I help him more,” Uncle Chin said. “This boy, maybe help him instead.”

  I opened my briefcase on the edge of the bed. “You have to sign these papers. Then I can get him out and bring him up here.”

  As I handed the papers to Aunt Mei-Mei to sign, I caught a glimpse of my watch. It was almost three, so I had an hour to drive back downtown for the four o’clock hearing, where I hoped the judge would agree to release Jimmy.

  I took the papers back from Aunt Mei-Mei, and leaned down to kiss Uncle Chin’s forehead. “I’ll be back soon, Uncle. Thank you.”

  He was already dozing again as Aunt Mei-Mei walked me to the front door. “You’re sure this is all right?”

  “Doctor say he need something care about. Maybe this boy give him.”

  I kissed Aunt Mei-Mei on the cheek and hurried out to my truck. Back downtown, I showed the signed paperwork to Wilma Chow and she added her own signature. “This is a little irregular, you know,” she said. “I ought to meet with these people before I authorize him to be released. I’m trusting you here.”

  “And I appreciate it. I just want to get Jimmy out of jail. Then we can work out a long-term plan for him.”

  We hurried to the courtroom where Jimmy was being arraigned, and waited through a half-dozen other cases before his came up. Judge Yamanaka heard Wilma’s recommendation, and waived bail in light of Jimmy’s youth, his lack of a record, and his past cooperation with the police.

  When the Judge slammed his gavel and called for the next case, Jimmy looked confused, even younger than I knew he was, tired and scared. It was like he didn’t want to believe that anything good was happening, because then he’d just get put down again. “This is only temporary,” I said as we walked through the garage to my truck. “You have to hold up your end of the bargain, and I have to find a long-term place for you. You think you can stay out of trouble for a while?”

  He had his jaw set and wasn’t answering me. I stopped and grabbed him by the shoulder, pushing him up against a white panel van we used for stakeouts. “Listen to me, Jimmy. These people are like family to me. And this man, he’s sick. But they’re putting themselves out to be nice to you. To get you out of that cell back there. So you better not give them any trouble.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” I felt anger bubbling up inside me and tried to tamp it down. “Because they’re being nice to you, that’s why.”

  “No, why are they being nice to me? I mean, what’s in it for them?”

  “They’re doing me a favor.” I paused. I figured I might as well give him the whole story. “It’s Derek’s grandfather. You remember Derek. They feel bad that he’s in jail. I guess they hope they can help you.”

  He nodded. Somehow that seemed to reassure him. On the way back up into the hills, I asked him if he was hungry. “I guess.”

  “I’m sure Aunt Mei-Mei will feed you. You like Chinese food?”

  “I guess.”

  “You want me to stop and get you a burger? Tide you over until dinner?”

  He finally smiled a little. “Yeah, that would be okay.”

  We drove through a McDonald’s, and he wolfed down his burger and fries as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks. I thought maybe he hadn’t, and then I remembered that when I was a kid I ate like that all the time, and my mother was always worried people would think she didn’t feed me.

  We got stuck in traffic on Waialae Avenue and I drummed my fingers against the steering wheel in exasperation. I’d done nothing all afternoon on the murder of Hiroshi Mura, and Lieutenant Sampson wasn’t going to like that. But I didn’t think there was anything left to do, other than wait for a neighbor who saw my card to call, or the results of the ballistics test, or some tip that would break the case open.

  Clouds were gathering above the mountains, and I hoped that meant we might get a little rain, but the air around us was so dry I doubted it. We were going so slowly that I could follow the progress of two boys in parochial school uniforms flipping pogs on the sidewalk in front of a Chinese restaurant with a fake pagoda front rising above its plate glass window. Inside the restaurant I saw an old woman sitting at a table, pouring grains of rice into salt shakers. Usually Honolulu is so humid you need the rice to absorb the excess moisture in the air and keep the salt from sticking, but I didn’t think it was necessary now.

  A guy in an aloha shirt sat in an open convertible next to me, talking on his cell phone. He had a laptop computer in a black leather bag on the seat next to him, and a foam boogie board on the back seat. I wanted to get out in the surf myself, to put the murder of Hiroshi Mura, Uncle Chin’s illness, and Jimmy’s situation aside for at least a few minutes.

  The van ahead of me had a UH decal on the back windshield and a bumper sticker that read, “Nothing is lost in the kingdom of God.” I was thinking about that when Jimmy asked, “How old were you when you first had sex?”

  “What brought that on?”

  “Just asking.”

  “Man or woman?”

  “You slept with girls?” He looked interested.

  “Mostly,” I said. “Until pretty recently. I had a lot of problems with being gay.” That was an understatement, I thought.

  “So how old?”

  I had to think for a minute, do the math. “With a girl, I guess I was about your age. With a guy, nineteen or so. I was in college. I suppose I could have when I was in high school—looking back now, I see I had opportunities that I was too scared to take.”

  “Scared how?”

  “Jeez, you don’t mind asking hard questions, do you?”

  He slumped against the side of the door, one long, slim leg crossed over the other, his rubber slipper dangling. “You don’t have to tell me.”

  I inched the truck forward then sat on the brake. “I had all these confusing feelings. I knew I was supposed to like girls, that there was stuff I was supposed to do, to want to do. And I liked girls, I had lots of friends who were girls, but they didn’t, I don’t know, get me excited. Then there were these feelings I had, like in gym class, and these kind of romantic daydreams of guys touching me, and I knew those were wrong. So it was all a big mess.”

  “Did you like doing it with girls?”

  “Jimmy,” I said, whining in spite of myself. Traffic moved forward a little more, and I looked at my watch again. “I guess so. I mean, it’s nice to have that physical contact with someone, even if it’s not, I don’t know, exciting. I ended up having sex with a lot of women, and it was usually nice, but not great.”

  “And with men it’s great?”

  “It can be. I don’t have a lot of experience with guys, Jimmy. I can’t give you much advice.” I gave him a sidelong glance. I wondered if he had any other clothes anywhere. He was staring out the window, trying to be nonchalant. “Have you been on the streets long?”

  “A couple weeks.”

  “When’d you start hooking?”

  “And you complain about me asking questions!”

  “Turnabout’s fair play. I answered yours.”

  “When I had to drop out of school and leave my friend’s house, I ended up in Ala Moana Park, sleeping on the beach. I met this guy there, late one night. He told me I could make some money. That was maybe, two weeks ago.”

  “You use protection?”

  “I just suck, Kimo. I won’t let anybody do anything else.”

  “It’s still dangerous. With people you don’t know, you should get the guy to wear a condom.”

  He laughed. “Like that’s going to happen.”


  “You gotta promise to stop hooking, at least for a while,” I said. “While you stay with these people.”

  “What am I gonna do for money?”

  I opened up my wallet. I had about fifty dollars in it. I gave it all to Jimmy. “Take this. I’ll get you some more. And you won’t have to pay for anything there, like food or anything.”

  He took the money and stuffed it into his pocket. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

  The lane next to me moved a little and I swerved into it. We made almost a block’s worth of progress. I could see Uncle Chin’s turn just ahead, tantalizingly close. “I think you’re a good kid. If you hadn’t come forward with the information you did, you might still be living with your dad. So I feel bad about that.”

  “I think you’re really nice.” He reached over and put his hand on my thigh. “Really cute, too.”

  I picked up his slender pale hand and put it back on his own leg. “Don’t get any ideas. Sometimes people care about you without expecting anything back.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  I looked over at him. “Get this one thing straight, Jimmy. I like you, and I care about you, but I do not, repeat do not, want to have sex with you. And it has nothing do with you. If you were ten years older, then, well, maybe. But you’re not. I don’t think it’s right for adults to have sex with kids, whether they pay or just do it to be nice. I don’t think it’s right and I won’t do it.”

  “All right, don’t get excited.”

  We finally moved forward enough to make the turn up into the Heights, and I felt like I could let go of a deep breath I’d been holding.

  LIVING IN DIFFERENT WORLDS

  It appeared that Aunt Mei-Mei had been cooking non-stop since I left, and she had set up TV trays in the master bedroom so she, Uncle Chin and Jimmy could all sit and eat together. I sat with them for a while, eating some of Aunt Mei-Mei’s special Hunan chicken, and then I left them in that room decorated with embroidered prints and black lacquer, sitting at their tables, eating and watching the news on TV. They weren’t talking much but it didn’t seem like a strained silence.

  On my way home, I called my parents and told them what I’d done. My father thought, like Aunt Mei-Mei, it was a good idea, that taking care of Jimmy would give Uncle Chin something to live for. My mother was worried, though.

  “You know this boy?” she asked. “Does he come from a good family?”

  “His father runs a pack-and-ship place in Chinatown.”

  “Are you sure you can trust him?” my mother asked. “Uncle Chin and Aunt Mei-Mei are old, and Uncle Chin is sick. What if this boy causes trouble?”

  “Enough, Lokelani,” my father said. “If Kimo says this is a good boy who needs help, then we all help him if we can.”

  We ended the conversation by saying that we were all looking forward to seeing each other the next evening at the party for the Hawai’i Marriage Project. My mother and her two daughters-in-law had apparently been burning up the phone lines discussing what to wear, and my father complained about having to wear a suit. Business as usual in the Kanapa’aka household.

  I spent most of the next day working all my old cases, reviewing my notes, tapping away at the Internet trying to find information, reviewing autopsy reports and generally working hard and getting nothing accomplished.

  Just as my shift was ending, Sandra Guarino called me. Cathy Selkirk’s partner, she was the director of the Hawai’i Marriage Project, and she was so upset she could hardly speak. “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Bastards,” she said. “Somebody tried to trash our office this afternoon.”

  I calmed her down a bit, then looked at the clock. I blew a deep breath out. If I hurried, I could stop at the Marriage Project office on my way home to get dressed for the party. “That would be terrific, Kimo,” Sandra said. “I’m sure Robert would feel a lot better.”

  Robert, I thought, as I drove the couple of blocks from headquarters over to the Marriage Project. Harry had fixed us up; Robert was a first or second cousin of Harry’s girlfriend Arleen, and they’d been anticipating double dates, because Robert and Arleen were so close.

  Robert had skinny bird legs and two front teeth that he always felt were too prominent. He’d told me that someday he wanted to get braces to rein them in. And someday, too, he might motivate himself to get to the gym and fill out his muscles. But in the meantime, he was accustomed to making do with what he had. “A little eyeliner and a little blush could go along way toward making a boy look better,” he’d said, the one time we went out to dinner together.

  He was a nice guy, but I wasn’t his type, and he wasn’t mine. Harry and Arleen were more upset than either of us were; that’s the way it goes with dating.

  I pulled up in front of the two-story stucco building that housed the Marriage Project to see a very butch lesbian in cargo shorts and a tie-dyed T-shirt nailing a piece of plywood over what had been a front window.

  “If you need something done, ask a lesbian,” Robert said, after we’d exchanged greetings.

  We went inside, and I asked, “Want to tell me what happened?”

  “I was on the phone with Haley’s Helium Heaven asking why the rainbow arc of multi-colored balloons wasn’t here yet, when there was this noise and the window just exploded.”

  He pointed to the square pane in the front window, now securely covered with plywood. “The floor in front of my desk was just strewn with shards of glass. I was so startled I actually just hung up the phone and stared.”

  He crossed his arms. He was wearing a bright pink polo shirt and a pair of white clam-diggers that exposed a chunk of ankle. “I mean, I was a pretty girly teenager, bad at sports and in love with Broadway show tunes, your typical fag-in-training, so I got teased a lot, got pushed around in the halls a few times and called a couple of names that I’m glad to admit to now, like cocksucker and butt pirate. But I was never gay-bashed, and I just couldn’t believe it.”

  I smiled reassuringly, and as I did, I wrinkled my nose with the recognition of a bad smell. At first I worried that maybe the aroma of dead chicken was still lingering around my truck, attaching itself to me, but there was a different note to this stink.

  “You smell it,” Robert said, noticing my reaction. “The rock that came through the window was just part one. The guys yelled, ‘Take that, faggots!’ And then I smelled shit. I looked through the window at the pavement outside the building. A half-dozen paper bags were split open, and there was brown, mucky goo spilling out of them.”

  He handed me a piece of brown paper bag, with writing on it. “There was a note, too.”

  I read, ‘Faggots deserve to die,’ scrawled with a pencil in crude block letters.

  I took notes on everything Robert said, and promised to file a report. All the time he was talking, I kept looking at my watch, worrying that I wouldn’t have enough time to get home, get showered and changed, and pick up my date.

  Harry had encouraged me to invite someone to the Marriage Project party, and I’d deferred until a week before, when I’d been having drinks with my friend Gunter at the Rod and Reel Club, a gay bar in Waikïkï not far from my apartment. I’d mentioned the party to Gunter, complained about having to get into the tuxedo I owned but tried never to wear.

  “I’ve got a tux,” Gunter said. “But you can bet I jump at any chance to wear it. I think men look more handsome in tuxedos than in any other clothes.” Then he smiled at me. “Even better than in no clothes at all.”

  Gunter was a “friend with benefits.” We had sex every now and then, when no one else was available, but mostly we were friends. “Come with me, then,” I said. “Be my date.”

  “Serious?”

  “Serious as a hot dick on a cold night,” I said, repeating back to him one of his favorite expressions.

  Since then we’d talked a couple times about the party. Gunter was about as far from marriage-minded as a guy can get, but the party meant free food and booze and a chance to look his
best, and there was nothing wrong with that. I was pleased I’d been able to make him so happy.

  By the time I got home, he’d already left a message on my answering machine, saying he was ready, so I jumped through the shower and started pulling on my tuxedo. When we went to my cousin Mark’s wedding, which was black tie, my parents had bought it for me, over my complaints. “I’m never going to wear this thing again,” I’d said, while my mother supervised the fitting.

  “Every man should have a tuxedo,” she said. “Just in case.”

  I sometimes think she and I live in different worlds. In hers, people go to black tie dinners and dance until dawn, drinking champagne cocktails and flirting like they’re in some old movie. In my world, people commit murder, they force teenage kids into prostitution, and they shoot chickens, which start to stink in the hot sun. The two worlds don’t go together that well.

  I clipped the black satin bow tie on just as I was ready to leave, then stopped to look at myself in the mirror.

  I considered myself lucky to get the best genes from my varied ancestors. Black hair and skin that tans easily from the Hawaiians, a slight epicanthic fold over the eyes from my Japanese grandfather, just enough to make me look exotic and dashing. Solid lines in my face, good cheekbones and a strong chin from my haole grandmother. I’m normally not vain about my looks, figuring it’s all genetics, but that night I had to admit I looked handsome.

  Gunter shared a small house with a roommate, just outside Waikiki proper, behind Diamond Head Elementary. I pulled up in his driveway and walked up the front sidewalk. The orange and yellow hibiscus blossoms on the bushes by his mailbox were already closing up, and the evening sky was shading from pastel blue to lavender above the mountains. The pervasive smell of smoke still lingered, and I hoped we’d get that rain sometime soon. In the distance I heard someone pounding an ipu gourd and chanting rhythmically in Hawaiian.

  Gunter came out the door. “You look gorgeous!” he said, stopping to admire me. “Who knew you dressed up so well?” He put one finger on my chin and turned my head from side to side. “Darling, you need somebody to take you in hand and bring out your potential!”