Mahu Fire

by Neil S. Plakcy

  “What’s this?” I asked, pointing my flashlight at a small white object on the floor. I kneeled down and picked it up. It was a piece of plastic about an inch square, with a few round depressions in it. It didn’t look like anything that had been in the office.

  “Golf ball.” Mike took it from me and examined it. “Say you want to use a plastic explosive, like RDX. It’s pretty stable stuff, so you have to trigger an initial explosion in order to set it off. What you do, see, is you cut a golf ball in half and you fill it with something that will blow up more easily. There’s a lot of different stuff you can use—I couldn’t speculate yet what might have been in here. But the basic principle is, you put some kind of condensed acid inside some gelatin capsules, and you bury them in the less stable explosive inside the golf ball. After a while, the acid eats through the gelatin, and when it comes in contact with the first explosive, you get a little boom. That sets off the big boom.”

  He shrugged. “You can read about it all over the Internet. If you’re an amateur, you don’t know much about using clocks and timing mechanisms, so you go for something simpler, like this.”

  “You must have been hell as a teenager,” I said.

  “Hey, did you know everything you know about homicide when you were a kid?” He smiled.

  We were joined by a couple of agents from the local office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. They were dispatched to investigate any kind of bombing, and these two weren’t happy about getting roused out of bed in the early hours of the morning.

  Mike and I went through everything we knew with them, and after a while I was yawning and stumbling on my feet. At one point I fell against Mike and he grabbed me. But it didn’t even feel sexy; I was just exhausted. The ATF guys left, promising to come back in the morning. “Come on, I think it’s time to get you home,” Mike said to me.

  I yawned again. “My truck’s in the garage.” I smiled. “I think it’s a little neater than yours.”

  “Let’s leave it there overnight. I don’t want to see you falling asleep behind the wheel. Where do you live?”

  “Waikiki.” I yawned again.

  “Almost on my way. Come on, let’s go.”

  I tried to argue but I was just too tired. I remember getting into the truck, and then we were on Kalakaua Avenue and he was gently shaking me awake. “Sorry, bud, but I need a little more direction.”

  “Left at Lili’uokalani,” I yawned. “Geez, we’re here already.”

  “Yeah, you’re not the best driving companion.” He looked over at me and smiled. I directed him to my building, and he pulled up in front. I stumbled as I got out of the truck, but got my balance before he could help me.

  “I can make it.”

  He nodded. “Thing is, you don’t want that suit inside your place. You’ll be weeks getting the smell of smoke out.” He grinned. “The voice of experience.”

  “Okay.” It seemed perfectly reasonable to me. I unbuttoned the suit and let it drop from my shoulders. There was a warm breeze off the ocean that tickled the skin on my back as I stepped out of the boots and the legs of the suit.

  “Whoa,” he said. “I didn’t mean you should strip down right here on the street.” He moved to stand between me and any passing car, although there weren’t any.

  “I wear less than this any day on the beach,” I said, looking down at my boxers. It was hard to relate all those parts that I saw, legs, and arms and torso, to my body. I felt disconnected from them. I reached into the cab and got my shirt, pants and shoes. I tried to muster up some dignity as I turned, naked but for socks and boxers, to climb the steps to my apartment. But I stumbled again.

  “Let me walk you up the stairs.” He put an arm around my shoulders, and I shivered from the contact.

  “You gonna tuck me in, too?” I asked.

  “Maybe another night.” We walked up the steps and I fumbled for my keys. He took them from me and opened the door.

  I wanted to kiss him good night. I wanted to touch my skin to his and feel what that was like. But instead I said, “Will you call me tomorrow with whatever you find out?”

  He smiled. “It’s already tomorrow, bud. I’ll call you later. Get some sleep.” He gave me a pat on the butt that moved me a step further inside, and turned away.

  I must have made it to the bed under my own power, because that’s where I was a couple hours later when I woke up. My mouth was dry and my head was pounding, but my bladder was full. It was almost dawn and after I finished in the bathroom I couldn’t go back to sleep. I kept remembering the fire, worrying about the people I knew who had been inside, thinking about how much I had to figure out.

  Whenever my head is too full, I go surfing. There’s something about the serenity of the water, the discipline of the physical activity, that helps me put everything in perspective. So I pulled on my board shorts and rubber slippas, tried to smooth down my unruly hair, and grabbed a board. Everything around me smelled like ashes until I walked outside and caught a fresh, sweet breeze, full of sea water, frangipani and the last, lingering scents of yesterday’s coconut tanning lotions.

  I love to be outside in those moments just before dawn, when the city streets are quiet, the tall palms dozing under a fading quilt of stars. Even before you can see the sun, the sky begins to lighten, the night’s blue-black shading into the palest blue imaginable. When I was a little kid working my coloring books, I used to search for a blue just that shade, composed, it seemed to me, of equal parts of yellow and white. I never got just the right mix; maybe that’s why my art career didn’t continue beyond kindergarten.

  The sun was just peeking over the tops of the Ko’olau mountains as I reached Kuhio Beach Park and launched my surfboard into the water. There were only a few other surfers around, the hard-core who, like me, have a physical need that draws them out on the waves. I lay flat on my stomach and paddled out past the low breakers, feeling my cheek against the cool Fiberglas of my board.

  Back on land, the high-rise hotels and the little stores on Kalakaua Avenue were just waking up. In the distance I could see the fading green hills, with patches of brown from the protracted dry spell. I thought if I could just stay out there, waiting for the perfect wave, I could keep the world and its troubles at bay. I knew that almost as soon as I launched my day it would get away from me—too many calls to make, reports to read, details to organize. I was facing a major investigation alone, without any preparation, already physically debilitated.

  I felt a good wave building beneath me, and stood to ride it. At the same time, though, the sun jumped quickly above the mountaintops, as it does in the tropics, and the flash of blinding light stabbed at my retinas. I lost my balance, and went tumbling into the cool water. Almost immediately I jumped up, howling in pain.

  I learned to swim before I could walk, and the sea has always been kind to me, even at its most stern. This blinding pain in my back, though, was new and terrible. I dragged myself and my board out to shallow water and stood, trying to look around over my shoulder. What I saw there disturbed me—a big patch of my skin was raw and red, probably from a burn I’d suffered the night before and not noticed. Not until it came into contact with salt water, that is.

  Reluctantly I splashed out of the surf and carried my board home. I wanted nothing more than an hour or so of uncomplicated surfing, clearing my head for the work before me, but I was not to be so lucky. Instead I showered quickly and awkwardly tried to lather some sunburn cream on my back, without noticeable effect. I pulled on a pair of light cotton pants and a polo shirt and realized I was starving.

  It was barely six-thirty, too early to go into the office. The streets were still empty of tourists, only the occasional hotel employee or store clerk hurrying to work as I walked over to my favorite breakfast place, a buffet restaurant in a hotel right on the water. It’s called the Beachside Broiler, and you can sit at tables overlooking the sand, eat your fill of pineapple and papaya, ham and eggs and biscuits and whatever
else you want. I like to go there after surfing sometimes, when my body is tired and aching but I still need to be near the water.

  Connie, the elderly hostess who favored sarongs and way too much eye makeup, smiled when she saw me walk in. “Kimo! You hero!” She reached down to the pile of morning newspapers next to the register and held one up to me, the front half from the masthead to the fold. There was a huge picture of me coming out of the fire, Sandra over my back. I guess I must have blushed.

  “Hey everybody, Kimo big hero!” she said to the restaurant at large. There were about twenty people there, mostly Midwesterners on package tours, and a few of them looked up with mild interest. “He save lady from big fire last night.”

  There was some slight applause. “Come on, Connie,” I said. She wouldn’t take money for my breakfast, just handed me a tray and waved me through. I walked all around both steam tables, loading up on bacon, eggs and sausages. It was going to be a long day and I wasn’t sure I’d get any lunch at all, maybe not even dinner.

  When I’d finally piled as much food on my tray as possible I walked over to the long counter that faces the water. I laid the paper down face up and put my tray next to it. Just then one of the Midwestern couples, an elderly pair in matching aloha shirts, blue pineapples against a purple backdrop, came up to me. “You did a good thing, son,” the man said. He reached out to shake my hand.

  “I knew she was inside,” I said. “I didn’t think about it.”

  “We’d be proud to have police officers like you back home,” his wife said. “You just hold your head up high and don’t listen to anything bad anybody says about you, all right?”

  I didn’t quite understand what she meant, but I nodded anyway. “I will. Thank you.”

  “Enjoy your breakfast,” the man said, and they left. I was puzzling over his wife’s comments when I opened the paper and saw the headline, in big hundred-point type, just below the fold. “Gay cop saves woman at gay marriage party,” it read.

  Oh, God. It was starting again.

  THE LOOK ON HIS FACE

  I took a cab to the garage where I’d parked the night before, ransomed my truck, and was at my desk by seven-thirty, staring at a pile of paperwork. Steve Hart had left me a detailed account of everything he’d done, as well as all the witness interviews collected by the uniforms the night before.

  I’ve never been a big paperwork cop. When I worked on Waikiki, my partner, Akoni, and I used to alternate filling out the endless forms required by the department. I like to be out on the street, talking to people, gathering information, making my own judgments. But without a partner, there was nobody to push this mound of paper off on.

  Regretfully, I moved Hiroshi Mura’s murder to my pile of unsolved cases, and buried myself in paperwork regarding the bombing, reading endless variations on how no one saw or heard anything. I looked up around nine only to see Lieutenant Sampson coming my way. “Have you seen the circus outside?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “I got here pretty early.”

  “The pressure is already building, Kimo. What have you got so far?”

  I looked at him. It was barely nine o’clock in the morning. What did he expect me to have, the bomber on a silver platter? I told him about walking the fire with Mike Riccardi, the cooperation with ATF, the ideas we had on the bomb and the amateur nature of the crime. I told him there was nothing much in the witness statements but I would continue to go through them.

  “One thing, I’m wondering if this is tied to the arsons lately. I’m going to get with the fire investigator again, see if he’s found any connections. A couple of the places that burned were gay businesses, so they could have been done by the same people.”

  “Solve this one, Kimo,” he said as he walked away. “Solve this one fast, or it’s both our asses on the line.”

  “Yes, sir,” I muttered. I called for one of the department sketch artists, and a little later a guy came up to my desk so I could try to recreate the sweaty guy’s face. I didn’t do a very good job of it; after all, I’d only seen the guy in passing, and it was just because he seemed familiar that I paid any attention at all.

  The morning crawled by. I left a message for Mike Riccardi, asking if he thought the bombing was related to the other gay arsons. I read eyewitness reports in between reviewing the artist’s sketch, dodging calls from the press, and searching for past crimes that might be similar. By noon I was antsy to get away from my desk, to feel like I was actually doing something. I decided to walk over to The Queen’s Medical Center, check on my dad, and see if anybody there could help me.

  At the front desk I found out that Robert and Gunter were sharing a room, down the hall from Sandra Guarino. The clerk gave me a funny, knowing look, and I remembered what it had been like before, when it seemed everybody in Honolulu was looking at me, puzzling over the details of my private life.

  Robert was asleep in the bed by the window when I walked into the room, but Gunter was awake. He looked funny against the white sheets, his dark blond hair so short it was barely there. The stubble on his chin was the same color, and almost as long. The pale green hospital gown definitely wasn’t his color.

  I remembered that I still had his bow tie, and I told him. “You can keep it for a while,” he said. “Though I’ll have to teach you how to tie it.”

  “You’ll have to do that.” I sat on the side of his bed. “How are you doing?”

  He shrugged. “Not too bad. I’ve got some second degree burns on my arms and legs.” He coughed. “Some smoke inhalation, too, they said. But I’ll probably get out of here today.”

  “You have somebody to stay with you at home?”

  He smiled. “Baby, I’ve always got somebody to stay with me.”

  “So you know what happened, right? Somebody planted a bomb in the men’s room.”

  “I read the morning paper, Mr. Hero. I notice that even though I carried Robert over there out of the fire, I didn’t get my picture on the front page.”

  “Believe me, I wish it had been you rather than me. Did you see anything suspicious, any time during the party? Anybody who looked like they didn’t belong?”

  “You mean somebody who might have planted a bomb?” He paused, playing with a loose thread on his hospital gown. “Well, there was this one guy I remember.” I must have smiled, because he said, “Don’t look like that. I remember guys for more than one reason. I mean, one reason the most, but I can think about things besides sex.” I grinned even more and he said, “If you don’t want to hear this you can just go on back to your police station.”

  “I want to hear it, Gunter. I’ll be serious.”

  “Yeah, right. Just before the speaker started, I helped Robert carry some plants in from the lanai, and I needed to wash my hands. I went into the restroom, and when I came out, there was a line, a couple of people wanting to get things taken care of before they sat down.”

  He coughed a little, and I felt like a jackass pressuring him to remember and talk when he was in the hospital. But there was no way around it. Once he’d gotten his breath back, he continued.

  “There was this guy at the very end of the line,” Gunter said. “He was all sweaty, his hair plastered down over his head, looking like he was going to be sick. But when Charlie Stahl tried to get behind him, the guy insisted that Stahl go first.”

  He took a little sip of water. “That was when I got a good look at his face. I see it sometimes on guys at the Rod and Reel Club. You, maybe, that first night I saw you. This look that says you want so much to be a part of what’s going on but you’re dead scared.”

  “So you’re saying this guy was gay.”

  “I don’t know for certain. Curious, absolutely. But you know how these bi guys are. They’re on a seesaw, one day it’s boys, one day it’s girls, up and down, up and down. Never make up their mind.”

  “Do you think you’d recognize him if you saw him again?”

  He frowned. “Not sure. The look, I’d recognize the loo
k again. I could give you a general description of him. I can tell you one thing—I’d bet you a blow job he was wearing a rented tuxedo.”

  “That’s a bet you can’t lose, either way. What makes you think so?”

  “Darling, I know how clothes are supposed to fit. If he owned that tux then the store that sold it to him ought to be fire-bombed.” He suddenly realized what he had said. “Oh, well, that’s an expression I’m going to have to retire.”

  “I’ll send over a police artist this afternoon. I think I saw a guy like the one you’re describing; we’ll see if your sketch matches mine.”

  Gunter sank back against the pillows and feigned great illness. “I suppose I can rise from my sickbed to help the police with their inquiries.” Then he sat up and looked at me slyly. “This artist you’re going to send. Is he cute?”

  “He’s fifty years old, with a pot belly,” I said, smiling. “I’ll let you decide if he’s cute or not.”

  He flopped back against the pillows. “Oh, you.”

  I was about to move over to speak with Robert when Harry came in, wearing a faded T-shirt from a long-ago surf competition. He looked ready to speak, and then he yawned instead. “Sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “We didn’t get much sleep last night. They wanted to keep Brandon overnight for observation, and Arleen wanted to stay with him. So of course I stayed, too.”

  I noticed that Gunter had dozed off, so I motioned Harry over to Robert’s side of the room and we pulled the two chairs together so we could talk quietly. Robert was still sleeping, too, his breathing steady but raspy. I noticed he had bandages around both arms and legs, as well as on his face.

  “How’s Brandon doing?”

  Harry yawned again and settled back against the plastic cushions. “Arleen’s mom came down and they took him home a little while ago. I said I’d come up and check on Robert and then head home for some sleep.” He looked closely at me. “You look like shit, brah. You get any sleep last night?”