Mahu Fire

by Neil S. Plakcy

  I felt guilty that I wasn’t busy figuring out who bombed the Marriage Project, so when Mike came out of the bathroom I said, “Can we talk about the bombing?”

  Mike stretched, flexing his back muscles. I couldn’t help staring at how great his body was, from his ropy calves and thighs to his flat abs and muscular arms. The dick peeking out from a nest of pubic hair wasn’t bad, either.

  He pulled on his briefs, which I realized were a Ginch Gonch design with fire trucks on them. Man, I thought, was this guy gay or what, and I laughed.

  He looked at me funny and said, “Sure. Got any new ideas?”

  I told him about my conversation with Terri the day before, trying to understand the motivation of the bomber. “So you think it’s some closeted guy?” he asked. “Maybe even married?”

  I nodded. “I know I did some stupid things before I finally gave up hiding. That pressure can make you crazy.”

  There was something on Mike’s face that I couldn’t read. Finally I realized, and I said, “You want to talk about it?”

  “It’s nothing. Just thinking about the dumb things I’ve done.”

  “Not…” I looked over at the bed.

  He smiled. “Not you. I’m not regretting anything we’ve done. Or we’re going to do.” He was quiet for a minute. “I was at this conference in San Francisco last year,” he said. “Arson investigators. Guys I’ve known for years, from all over the country. I should have just stayed in my room, but it was San Francisco, you know?”

  I knew. I’d been to San Francisco just a few months before, doing a favor for a guy who ended up making a big donation to the Gay Teen Center. And I’d been indiscreet, with an incredible guy I’d met on the street. But I was already out of the closet by then.

  “You get arrested?” I asked.

  The surprise showed on his face, and then he laughed. “Nope. Probably could have, though. I went to this sex club, and I just went kind of crazy. I mean, I did stuff there I’d never even thought of. I staggered back to the hotel, feeling miserable. My ass hurt and my skin was scraped raw in places. Some guy’d twisted my balls around and it took a day before they stopped aching.”

  He looked at me. “But the worst part was how I felt inside. Just miserable. Like I’d disappointed myself, like I’d… I don’t know… given something away that I shouldn’t have.”

  “I know. I’ve done my share of that kind of stuff, too. The closet’s a lousy place. Makes you do that kind of stuff. Maybe even makes you try to hurt other people.”

  As soon as I’d said it, I wished I could take it back. I didn’t mean that about Mike; I didn’t think he was the kind of guy who could ever hurt someone, no matter how much pressure you put on him. The kind of guy who’d let it all build up inside him.

  Shit, that was just the kind of guy our bomber probably was. I could see the hurt in Mike’s eyes, though, so I changed the subject. “I went to the Church of Adam and Eve this morning with my boss’s daughter,” I said.

  “Your boss’s daughter?”

  I explained about Kitty. “I gave her ‘til Thursday to come clean with her dad, though, or else I will.”

  I asked Mike about the arsons he’d been investigating, trying to make connections, and we sat at my kitchen table for a couple of hours, going over all the details. We ordered a pizza, drank a couple of Longboard Lagers, and studied every angle, but we couldn’t find a connection.

  Around ten o’clock, Mike yawned. “Been a long day, for a weekend,” he said. I knew he’d been up at an arson scene most of the day before showing up at my place. “Guess I ought to get to bed.”

  “You want to stay here?” I asked.

  “You’re ready for a rematch already?” he asked, and there was a smile in his eyes.

  “We could just sleep,” I said.

  He stood, and in one fluid motion he’d pulled off his t-shirt and shinnied out of the Ginch Gonch briefs. “In your nightmares, pal. But first, you need some more cream on your back.” When I laughed, he said, “Not that kind of cream. The medicated ointment.”

  “Wanna hear a joke?” Mike asked, while he was rubbing my back.

  “Sure.”

  “Did you hear the one about the policeman and the fireman who went to heaven?”

  “Sounds like us.”

  “St. Peter gave them both their wings, but he said that if they had even one bad thought their wings would fall off. As soon as they left the wing department, they saw this beautiful girl, and the fireman’s wings fell off.”

  “So this isn’t about you and me,” I said.

  Mike slapped my back. “When the fireman bent over to pick up his wings, that’s when the policeman’s wings fell off.”

  I wriggled around trying to grab hold of him, and it felt so damn good just to laugh and have fun with him. We finally did get to sleep later that night. Mike drifted off first, his breathing turning into a regular, almost purring sound. I nestled up against him, inhaling the smell of coconut shampoo, and when I looked up again it was already daylight.

  We ran down our days for each other. “I’m hoping Harry dug up some dirt on the Whites and the Church of Adam and Eve,” I said. “He’s a night owl, so he was probably working while we were playing.”

  “Gotta love a computer geek,” Mike said. He was planning to be around his office all day, going over evidence.

  “My dad’s going home today,” I said. “If I can get away from work early enough I’ll go over there.”

  “I’d like to meet your parents sometime, when your dad is better. And your brothers, too. You think they’d like me?”

  I stood up and started to get dressed. “It’s hard to say. No, don’t give me that look, I’m trying to be serious here. If we weren’t gay, and I brought you over as a friend, they’d all love you. I mean, you’re a cool guy. You’re handsome and smart and funny. What’s not to like?”

  “Aw, you’re making me blush.”

  “If I could make you get dressed, that would probably speed things up around here.” He gave me a look, then started picking his clothes up from the floor. “But bringing you home like a boyfriend, that’s tougher. I mean, they know that Gunter is just a friend of mine, but at the party they were all looking at him like, ‘so, what do you guys do together?’ It was a little uncomfortable.”

  “And you’re just friends?”

  “Yes, Mr. Jealous. We’ve fooled in the past, just casually, and Gunter would love to get into my pants again, but so far I’ve resisted.”

  He walked over and put his arms around me, kissing me. “Well, you just keep on resisting.”

  We kissed for a while. Finally I pushed him away. “Come on, I’ve got to get going. Anyway, about meeting my parents and my brothers. If you ever do meet them, I want to be proud of introducing you. I want to be able to tell them how I feel about you. And that might take a while—for both of us.”

  “Will you call me tonight?”

  “You bet.” I kissed him, and then slapped his butt. “Now let’s get going.”

  THE WHITE FAMILY

  I spent the morning doing my own research on the Church of Adam and Eve. They didn’t have any kind of official registration, though they’d pulled permits for each of the big events they’d run, which had taken place at the Pupukea Plantation, the place I’d gone the month before. There wasn’t much else about them, though I read through a few articles in the Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin, and I did some background reading on fundamentalist churches and their opposition to gay marriage.

  Around noon, the desk called and said Harry was there to see me. “Hey, brah, what’s up?” I asked as I brought him back to my desk.

  “I got some material on those people you asked about. I figured I’d better bring it down to you.”

  “What did you find?”

  I sat at my desk, and he sat across from me. He passed a couple of printouts over to me. “Took me a while to dig around, but I finally found them,” he said. The printouts were driver’s licenses
from Texas for Sheila Jane White and Jeffrey Steven White. “That’s them, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. “Yup. They came from Texas?”

  “I looked for a marriage license, and I couldn’t find one. I thought maybe they’d changed their names, so I pulled up their birth certificates.” He passed two more pieces of paper my way.

  They’d been born a year apart, in the same hospital. I was almost ready to move on to the next point when I realized what had gotten Harry excited. “Holy shit,” I said.

  “You see it?”

  “The same parents. So Sheila and Jeff White aren’t married. They’re brother and sister.”

  “Kinky, isn’t it? They represent themselves as husband and wife. Don’t you think that means they’re sleeping together, too?”

  I blew out a big breath. “I think I need to talk to Terri.”

  “I would say that’s a good idea,” he said. “Call her up.”

  I pulled out my cell phone, which had her cell number programmed in. “I need to talk to you. Harry’s here in my office. Can we all meet up?”

  “I’m at the Foundation office. You guys want to have lunch?”

  About a half hour later, we all met up at a little plate lunch place a few blocks from police headquarters. We were certainly a motley crew—Terri looked like she’d just stepped out of a corporate boardroom, in a navy suit and matching pumps, I was in my standard work clothes—aloha shirt and khakis—and Harry wore a faded, oversized T-shirt and board shorts.

  “What’s the emergency?” Terri asked, after we’d been seated and ordered our lunches.

  I showed her the drivers’ licenses and the birth certificates, and waited for her to make the connection. “Kimo, this is creepy,” she said.

  “That’s what we thought,” Harry said.

  “But what do you think it means?” I asked.

  Terri sipped her pineapple soda while she thought. Finally she said, “There are laws against incest, aren’t there?”

  “I’d have to check,” I said.

  “But for sure, you can’t marry somebody you’re related to,” Terri said. “Cousins, siblings, that kind of thing.”

  “I see where you’re going,” I said.

  “Where?” Harry asked. “Don’t go all psychic on me.”

  The waitress brought our lunches. A plate lunch is an island tradition, developed to serve to plantation workers who needed to keep up their strength through long days. A main course, usually fish or chicken, two scoops of rice, a scoop of macaroni salad, and some shredded lettuce. We’d all opted for the chicken, making it easy for the waitress to distribute the food.

  “In many states, for years it was illegal for black people and white people to marry each other,” Terri said. “And eventually that changed. Now it’s possible that the laws against gay marriage will change. But I doubt that our society is ever going to change the way we feel about family members getting married.”

  “So the Whites probably resent the fact that gay men might be able to get married, when they’re never going to be able to marry each other, never be able to tell anybody about their relationship,” I said.

  “They left Texas, where people knew them, and came here,” Harry said. “They said they were married, and nobody ever questioned them. After all, they already had the same last name.”

  “Would that motivate them to bomb the Marriage Project party?” I asked Terri.

  She shrugged. “I guess so, if they were nutty enough. I mean, it’s one thing to want to do something that goes against society’s rules—and it’s another entirely to act against other people.”

  “Is this enough evidence to get you a search warrant?” Harry asked me.

  I frowned. “I don’t think so. I mean, yes, it’s creepy, and there’s probably something illegal about their relationship in some way. But it’s hard to make that leap to the bombing.”

  “But if you got a search warrant you’d find the evidence,” Harry said.

  “The law doesn’t work that way. The judges call that a fishing expedition.”

  We ate in silence. Finally, Terri said, “I did some research this morning at the Foundation. We’ve given the church a couple of small grants. About $10,000 in all. They have to give us an accounting to get any more money, but so far they haven’t provided any evidence of what they’ve used the money for.”

  “Bombs,” Harry said.

  “We don’t know that, Harry,” I said.

  “Don’t you care about this?” he asked. “These assholes could have killed Brandon, or Arleen, or any of us. Don’t you want to stop them?”

  “Yes, I do. But the only way to stop them is through the law. It doesn’t always seem right, but if we start trampling on anybody’s rights we open the door for all kinds of bad stuff.”

  Back at the station, I took the evidence to Lieutenant Sampson, in case I’d been underestimating what I had. But he agreed with me. “I agree with you, it smells bad,” he said. “But there isn’t anything yet that solidly connects these people or this church to the bombing, or any of the other arsons.”

  He was wearing a navy polo shirt, and that reminded me that when I’d seen Kitty last, she’d worn one, too, at the church service on Sunday morning. “How’s Kitty?” I asked.

  He looked surprised. “Kitty? She’s fine. Working hard at school.”

  “Good.” I guessed she hadn’t told him yet about our little investigation, and I knew she still had a couple of days to broach the subject. “Well, I’ll keep looking, then.”

  “Look fast. I want this case solved soon.”

  At the end of my shift, I went over to The Queen’s Medical Center, and caught up with my parents just as they were getting ready to leave. My father was wearing a pair of pressed khaki slacks and an aloha shirt, and he looked a whole lot better than he did in a hospital gown. I’d just said hello when my father’s bedside phone rang. Since my mother was busy helping my father into the bathroom, I answered it.

  “Oh, Kimo!” The woman on the other end of the line was crying.

  I listened to her for a minute, then said, “All right, I’m going to come right over. You stay there, don’t do anything, don’t call anyone else, all right?”

  “Thank you, Kimo. You good boy.”

  I hung up the phone. When my mother closed the door on my father, I beckoned her over. “Aunt Mei-Mei just called. Uncle Chin is dead, and Jimmy Ah Wong has disappeared. I’ve got to go over there.”

  My mother nodded. “I was worried this would happen. I’ll take your father home.”

  She looked at me. “I don’t want to tell him yet. He’s still not well, and a shock like this could set him back. You come over tonight. I’ll call your brothers, too.”

  My father didn’t want to ride in a wheelchair down to the car, even though it was clear he wasn’t up to walking—but I pointed out he didn’t have any choice in the matter. I guess I know where my stubbornness comes from. I pushed the chair downstairs, and waited with him while my mother ransomed her car from the parking garage.

  “You know about the old Polynesians and the mahu?” my father asked.

  I moved around in front of him and sat on a bollard. “Yeah?”

  “When a family had only sons, they would raise the youngest as a girl. Dress him as a girl, have him help the mother with chores. The mahu never married, and always stayed with the family to take care of them.”

  “I’ve read about it,” I said.

  He reached out and took my hand. “You’re a good boy, Kimo. But your mother and me, we don’t want you to think you have to be that old-style mahu, give up your life to take care of us.”

  I smiled at him. “You have three sons, Dad. We’re all going to be around to help you and Mom with whatever you need. And don’t worry, I won’t have to give up my life to do it.”

  I leaned forward and kissed his forehead. Then my mother pulled up in her Lexus, and we loaded my dad into the front seat. “Will you be okay with him at home?” I asked my moth
er.

  “He can walk a little,” my mother said. “And I have a walker he can use.”

  “I’m right here,” my father said.

  “Yes, Dad, I know. You be good to Mom, okay? This hasn’t been easy for her.”

  He snorted. “For me, a big luau.”

  “Yeah, and who cleans up every time we have a luau? Mom, right?”

  I closed the passenger door and watched them drive off. Then I got my truck and followed them to St. Louis Heights, where Uncle Chin’s house was not far from theirs. My father and Uncle Chin had been best friends since their days at the University of Hawai’i, when they were young men, before they married and became fathers and successful businessmen. A few weeks after I started at the police academy, I asked my father when he knew that Uncle Chin was a criminal.

  “Chin is a very smart man,” my father said. He had asked me to take a walk with him, out in the woods of the Wa’ahila Ridge Park, which abuts our property. “You have to understand, back then the Pake kept to themselves, stayed in Chinatown. There was a lot of prejudice against them. But Chin knew he needed to learn about the haole world, and he started taking classes at the university, which is where I met him. I think even then he was mixed up in the tongs, probably since China.”

  “And it didn’t bother you?”

  My father smiled at me. “When you were a boy, everything was always black or white with you. Very strong opinions, even when your brothers disagreed with you, and they were so much older and bigger. I never felt that way.” We wandered down a narrow mossy trail between tall trees, the light shading from clear white to dark green all around us. “I never was like that. I always knew there are many shades of gray in the world.”

  “Did you ever break the law with him?”

  “Ah, now you’re starting to sound like a police officer,” my father said. “You have to understand what it was like for me, being mixed race back then. It was hard to know where you fit in. I’d go places with my father, who was full-blooded Hawaiian, and people could look at me and know there was haole in me, and of course I didn’t speak the language as well as he did. So they would look at me funny, like I didn’t quite belong.”