Mahu Fire

by Neil S. Plakcy

  “Not a bit.” He walked up the stairs ahead of me and I swatted his butt.

  Wednesday morning I woke up next to Mike. For a couple of minutes I just lay there, resting on one elbow, looking at him. His chin was grizzled, his dark, curly hair tousled. He looked like a sleeping angel. I decided it was a way I wanted to wake up a lot in the future.

  A little later, after some fun in the shower, we walked together to a café near my apartment, got malasadas and coffee, and then, under the outside stairs to my building, kissed goodbye.

  When I reached the main station, there was an urgent message from Billy Kim in ballistics. Rather than call, I went downstairs to his lab. “Kimo, I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “I found something strange and I want to show it to you.”

  He pulled out a blown-up photo of a bullet. “This is what you brought us from your shooting victim yesterday.”

  “Charlie Stahl.”

  “Right. See the grooves here on the sides? Very distinctive. Comes from a small, lightweight gun, most likely a Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special Airweight.”

  “Good.”

  “Wait, there’s more.” He brought over the poster I’d seen the day before.

  “Not the chicken again, Billy.”

  “You’re going to like this, Kimo. Look at the grooves. See? Same pattern.”

  “So whoever killed the old man and the chicken also used a Chief’s Special Airweight.”

  “More than that. Look at this little notch here. See how it matches in both pictures? That’s more than just the same model. It’s the same gun.”

  “You’re saying the same gun was used to kill Charlie Stahl as was used in the two shootings in Makiki?”

  “I’d swear to it in court.”

  “Whoa. This is wild.” I stood up. “I’ve got to think about this one. Thanks, Billy—this could be the break I need. If I can just figure out how to use it.”

  When I got back to my desk my phone was ringing. “Kanapa’aka, Homicide.”

  “Hey, hey, Special K,” Harry said. “How’s it hanging, brah?”

  “You won’t believe what I just found out.” I told him about the ballistics match.

  “Tell me everything you know about the old man,” he said. I did. “Now tell me everything you know about Charlie Stahl’s murder.”

  I did that, too. I could almost hear the wheels clicking in his brain. “Do you think Charlie Stahl knew Hiroshi Mura?”

  “I doubt it. I’ll check, you never know who knows who in Hawai’i.” I thought of something. “You know, they didn’t necessarily have to know each other. But they both had some connection to the murderer.”

  “Yes,” Harry said.

  “The only thing I’ve got on Charlie Stahl’s killer is a partial license plate. It could take forever to pull up every match and analyze them.”

  “You ought to be able to automate that a little,” Harry said. “Eliminate the vehicle types that don’t match. Eliminate cars registered on the other islands.”

  “Our system isn’t that sophisticated. You have to do all that sorting by hand.”

  “I can write you a program that’ll do that. You just get me the data file.”

  “You can?”

  “Sure. The data must have VIN numbers in it, right? And addresses, including zip codes? It’s a simple sort. How soon can you get the data?”

  “Let me make a call.” I hung up from Harry and called our computer tech. I explained what I needed and gave him Harry’s phone number. He said he’d take it from there.

  I hung up. There was something dancing around the edges of my brain, a connection between Hiroshi Mura and Charlie Stahl. But what was it?

  Lieutenant Sampson loomed above my desk in black polo shirt and black slacks. “In my office. Now.”

  I didn’t like that tone. What had I done now?

  “Shut the door behind you.” He stood next to his desk, and from the way his jaw was clenched and his eyes narrowed, I figured he was plenty mad. I saw his eyes dart across to the picture of Kitty—and then I knew.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, before he could blow up. “I didn’t know what else to do. She was determined to go to the Church of Adam and Eve on Sunday, and I knew that she would, no matter what I said. So I went with her.”

  “Do I need to remind you that my daughter is not a sworn officer?”

  “You know Kitty a lot better than I do. But she strikes me as the kind of girl who follows through on what she says. Can’t convince her to change her mind.”

  Sampson’s shoulders relaxed a little. “I’ve been trying to convince her not to become a cop since she was twelve. No matter what I do, she just does what she wants.”

  “Did she tell you about the picnic on Thursday?” I asked.

  His eyes were wary again. “No. Tell me.”

  “This couple we met at the church.” I closed my eyes, searching my brain for their names. I have this trick I use sometimes, connecting a name to something else as a way to remember. I can’t use it that often, because of the wild ethnic soup we have in the islands, but I’d connected that couple to a president. Out loud, I started reciting any presidents I could think of. “Carter, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Nixon, Roosevelt, Coolidge, Harding, Taft… wait, Harding. That’s their name.”

  I opened my eyes to see Sampson staring at me with something like a grin on his face, which disappeared almost immediately. “Fran and Eli Harding.” I shrugged. “They seemed nice enough.”

  “It’s that kind of insight that makes you a great detective,” he said dryly. “Tell me about this picnic.”

  “I don’t know much. They called to invite Kitty, and she accepted. I told her that if she didn’t tell you by tomorrow, I would.”

  “So that’s why she called me this morning,” he said. “If I hadn’t spoken to you, she’d probably go on this picnic Thursday, and then Friday she’d say, ‘I told you, Jim. You just don’t listen to me.’”

  “I’ll bet you listen to her a lot more than she realizes,” I said.

  “Obviously, she is NOT going to this picnic,” he said. “At least not alone.”

  I shook my head. “Sorry, lieutenant. I’m taking some personal time Thursday afternoon. My dad’s best friend passed away. The wake’s a command performance.”

  His lips set in a grim line. “I’ll talk to Kitty. If necessary, Thursday will be take your daughter to work day.”

  I went back to my desk, trying to remember what I’d been thinking about before the confrontation with Sampson, and my phone rang.

  “Hey, brah, long time no hear.”

  “Akoni! Geez, man, this is a surprise. What have you been up to?” Akoni and I had gone through the police academy together, and we’d been detective partners in Waikiki for three years, before my transfer downtown. “How’s Waikiki?”

  “Not there any more. As of yesterday, I’m in the same building as you.”

  “No shit? What’s up?”

  “Yumuri is losing it,” he said. I could tell he was lowering his voice in order to speak about the lieutenant who had supervised us in Waikiki. “Ever since the business with you, he’s been acting weird. Rumor has it they’re moving him soon, maybe somewhere out in the country where the stress isn’t so bad. I heard about this opening in Organized Crime, they needed a detective for a special project, I figured I’d come over here for a while, see what happens back in Waikiki.”

  “Wow. I had no idea.”

  “And you know what else sucked? He had me partnered with Greenberg, and the guy’s a real asshole. Thinks he knows which way the sun rises and sets. I just couldn’t take it any more.” Alvy Greenberg had been Lidia Portuondo’s boyfriend, and the one who’d outed me to the rest of the squad. Though he’d been my friend once, I didn’t feel bad hearing that he’d turned out to be a jerk. “Listen, reason why I’m calling? A name came up I know you’re familiar with. Chin Suk.”

  “Uncle Chin. You know he died on Monday?”

  “Yeah. They sent us
the autopsy results, I thought you might want to know. What we all want—massive heart attack. Took him right out.”

  “They think he might have been awake at all?” I explained about the table, the spilled bottle of pills.

  “Possible. But there was nothing anybody could have done to save him. This was the big one.”

  “Thanks, brah.” It felt good to know that Jimmy Ah Wong couldn’t have been involved. “We’ll do lunch sometime, all right? Now you’re here in the building.”

  “Yeah. You gotta tell me the good places to eat. I got heartburn from yesterday like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “I’d believe it. Nobody told me where to eat, the first couple weeks I was here. Listen, brah, I gotta go. I’m in the middle of a big case. But we’ll talk.”

  I stared at the phone after I hung up. It took me a while to get back to work; I kept going back to the idea that Uncle Chin had died peacefully. Then why had Jimmy run away?

  Now all I had to do, while finding the bomber and whoever shot Charlie Stahl, was find Jimmy Ah Wong and let him know he was off the hook.

  HARMLESS MISCHIEF

  I tried to let my mind relax, see what kind of connection I was missing, but all I kept coming back to was the name Ed Baines had given us. I raised Mike on his cell, out in the field ruling out arson at a house fire in Mo’ili’ili. “I want to go over and talk to our buddy Jeff White. You want to come with?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it.” I gave him the address, and he agreed to meet me there.

  A half hour later, I pulled up at the shopping center on Wai’alae Avenue and parked in front of Puerto Peinado, the hair salon owned by Tatiana’s friend Tico, where Mike was leaning against the wall in a square of shade. The air was still, not a hint of a breeze to carry the exhaust fumes and traffic noise up to the mountains or out over the ocean. It was incredibly hot and I understood why Mike was waiting in the shade. “You realize this salon is run by a known homosexual,” I said.

  “You know him?”

  “Not in the biblical sense.” I explained about his friendship with Tatiana.

  “Like your friendship with Terri,” he said.

  “Gotta have a gal pal,” I said. “Every gay man needs one.”

  We walked up to the door of the church and peered inside. It looked pretty much as I remembered from Sunday, though there was only one person inside, a man in a short-sleeved shirt sitting at a table writing something.

  When we opened the door, he looked up. It was the minister himself, Jeff White, though I still wasn’t sure if he was also the sweaty guy I’d seen at the party.

  “Welcome,” White said. “Are you interested in the church?”

  We introduced ourselves and showed our credentials, and I could see the man become wary. Mike hung back and let me take the lead. “Mr. White, we’re here because your name has come up in an investigation,” I said, “and we’d like to give you the opportunity to set the record straight. Tell us your side of the story.”

  “What is it you want to know?”

  “Are you familiar with a farm up in the highlands called Pupukea Plantation?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Don’t you run worship services up there occasionally?”

  White looked confused. “Oh, that place,” he said. “I get mixed up with these Hawaiian names. Everything sounds so similar. Yes, we’ve had services up there several times.”

  “In your visits out there, have you ever spoken with an individual named Ed Baines?”

  “I don’t know anyone by that name.”

  “You’re sure, are you?”

  White nodded.

  “Because, see, the thing is, he says he knows you. He says you hired him to put some horse manure into paper bags and then throw it all over the sidewalk in front of an office building downtown.”

  I watched as White’s shoulders relaxed. “Oh, that. A little harmless mischief. I wouldn’t exactly say I hired him. He’s a strong supporter of our church and our causes, you know, and we were talking about things that people do now and then. I didn’t think he was actually going to do it.”

  I blew a little air out through my lips in a derogatory way. “Not even when you offered him a thousand dollars? How about when you paid him the money, Mr. White? Did you think he actually did it then? Or do you just spread that kind of money around without thinking?”

  “You’re a homosexual, aren’t you, detective? I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

  “Did the money you gave him come from the Sandwich Islands Trust?” I asked. “Because if it did you’re not getting any more money from them.”

  Beads of sweat appeared on White’s forehead. “I’m not saying anything further. I want a lawyer present.”

  “That’s your call.” I pulled the card out of my wallet and read him his rights. “Do you understand these rights that I have explained to you?”

  “I understand them.”

  “Good.” I stood up. “Then we won’t take any more of your time right now, but I suggest you engage the services of an attorney, if you so desire. We’ll be back, with more questions.”

  “Why the hell are you investigating this nonsense?” he asked. “The city pays you top dollar, I’m sure, what with all your press exposure. All that just to chase around a little fag-bashing incident?”

  “We hardly consider homicide a little fag-bashing incident.” I noticed his face went several shades paler. “Especially since to my knowledge the victim was an avowed heterosexual.”

  “Victim? What victim?”

  “Vice Mayor Wilson Shira.” I paused to let the name sink in. “Come on, Mr. White, you gotta keep up with the news. A couple hours after Ed Baines threw that horseshit, the building blew up and Wilson Shira turned into a crispy critter.”

  “You don’t think…”

  “The city doesn’t pay me to think. They pay me to investigate. And when I find you paid one guy to throw some horseshit at the place, it’s not a big leap to consider you might have paid somebody else to plant a bomb there.” I looked down at him, still sitting at his desk. “Or planted it yourself.”

  Mike and I left White to stew over those questions. We walked down the shopping center sidewalk to the news stand and picked up a copy of the Advertiser, then went into the Chinese restaurant at the far end to grab some lunch and check for articles on the case. An editorial columnist had written about public officials who placed themselves in personal danger, and there was an article on Charlie Stahl’s life and legacy. He had contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years to liberal causes, and there were quotes from various civic leaders praising him. I wondered if they knew he was, as Gunter had called him, a notorious leather queen. Would that have made a difference in how they treated him? Probably not, as long as he was rich.

  “What do you know about this minister?” Mike asked.

  I told him what Harry had discovered, that the woman he was representing as his wife was actually his sister. “And they think we’re kinky,” he said.

  “I talked to her when I was canvassing in Makiki.” And then it hit me, so much that my mouth dropped open and Mike must have thought I was having a fit or something.

  “Kimo? You okay?”

  “They live in Makiki,” I said.

  “Yes. Lots of people do.”

  “Down the street from the homeless man who was killed the day I first saw you at headquarters.”

  “Yes, you said you met them when you were canvassing.”

  “And did I tell you about the ballistics match?”

  He shook his head. “The same gun was used on the homeless man, the chicken, and Charlie Stahl.”

  “Whoa.”

  “Exactly. This is what I can use to tie together the two cases.”

  “But how can you tie them to the Whites without a smoking gun, to coin a phrase?”

  I frowned. I knew I’d need something concrete to get a judge to sign a warrant. I could tie the two murders together, and I
could tie Charlie Stahl’s death to the bombing at the Marriage Project offices, and I could identify the Whites and their church as opponents of gay marriage.

  But the only concrete evidence was Ed Baines’s fingerprint on the paper bag, and his statement that Jeff White had hired him to throw the shit bombs. And that didn’t tie to anything else, except in a circumstantial way.

  “This case is making me crazy,” I said. “I know that the pieces fit together but I just need one more to make the puzzle show enough to get the warrant.”

  We stood up to go, and I saw an elderly man walking by with a cane, a stout younger man, probably a son, helping him. “Shit. I ought to call my house. See how my dad is.” I pulled out my cell phone and dialed as Mike and I walked to my truck.

  My mother answered. She said everything was fine, and wanted to make sure that I would be at Uncle Chin’s wake the next day.

  “I will be.”

  “Did you find anything more about that boy?” she asked. “Aunt Mei-Mei keeps asking about him. The boy who was staying there.”

  “No. A friend and I went out last night, but we didn’t see him. I’ll keep looking.”

  “You think he had anything to do with your uncle’s death?” Mike asked when I’d hung up. We stopped next to my truck, and I could see his, the one with the flames painted down the side, a few feet away.

  I told him about my call from Akoni. “It should make everybody feel better, except I know Aunt Mei-Mei is just gonna worry more about Jimmy, knowing he’s innocent and yet he still felt like he had to run away.”

  SEARCH WARRANT

  Mike went off write up his conclusions about the home fire in Mo’ili’ili, and I went back to the station. By the end of my shift, I still hadn’t come up with that one piece of evidence that would tie the Whites to the bombing or the shootings.

  I went in to Lieutenant Sampson’s office and told him everything I knew. The ATF and FBI hadn’t come up with anything more out of their investigation of the bombing wreckage, and Harry was still working on converting the state license plate database into a format that he could sort. After all the research I’d looked through, the only religious group that made me suspicious was the Church of Adam and Eve, but I didn’t have anything I could take to a judge.