Mahu Box Set

by Neil S. Plakcy

  Rik relaxed noticeably. “I want to help you.”

  “Do you know where she got her supply?”

  He shook his head. “I think she was afraid if I knew, I’d go direct.”

  “Did she ever say anything to you about Mexico, about going to the Mexpipe competition, about maybe some of the crystal meth coming back with her?”

  “I know she went,” he said. “And the drugs were really good down there. She told me I should go with her next year, that she could make it worth my while.”

  “Was she having any supply problems that you know of? Anybody want her territory, anything like that?”

  He shook his head. “We used to talk all the time. If she was having problems like that, she would have told me. As a matter of fact, things were going really well for her. She was on the verge of making a big deal, she said, and everything was going to be sweet after that.”

  “A big drug deal?”

  “I don’t think so. I think it was about real estate.”

  That was a stumper to me. “Real estate?”

  “She had her license, you know. I think it might have had something to do with that big project of Ari’s.”

  I remembered talking about real estate with Ari at breakfast. “He said something about zoning problems on some big property. You think that was it?”

  He shrugged. “I just remember worrying that if she went legit I wouldn’t be able to score from her. That’s what I was concerned about. You should talk to Ari about her.”

  I stopped and took hold of his arm. “Look, I told you before that I’m not interested in jamming you up, and I’m not, but I’ve got to know one thing. Who took over Lucie’s customers?”

  Rik’s body went rigid. His arm was so skinny I could feel the bone. He looked like he was ready to cry. I didn’t say anything more, though; I waited for him to speak. Finally, he said, “I cop in Honolulu, all right? Through my cousin. After Lucie died I didn’t know anybody else up here to buy from and I didn’t want to risk getting caught. I swear, that’s all I know.”

  I believed him, and I let go of his arm. We started walking again, neither of us saying anything. He had steered us in a big circle, and we came back to the country store just as the rest of the party was exiting the rest rooms. “Great to see you,” he said, when my attention was distracted. “Gotta go. Bye!” And then he was off, down another of the winding paths.

  “Hear anything interesting?” Terri asked as she approached me. The kids surrounded Harry and Arleen, who looked like they were practicing for having a large family of their own.

  “He didn’t know where she got her drugs. But he said she was mixed up in some big real estate deal, that she thought it was going to make her big money.”

  “There’s a lot of money to be made in real estate,” Terri said. We started to stroll slowly down toward the car, Harry and Arleen following us with all the kids. “Especially up here, where there are so many restrictions on building. That jacks the price up a lot.”

  “Since when did you become a real estate mogul?”

  “My family has some property up here.” We stepped into the shade, and she pushed her sunglasses up to her head. She was a very pretty woman, in an all-American kind of way, dark brown hair in a bob just above her shoulders, fine features, smooth skin. I saw those bags under her eyes again, though, and remembered all she had been through since her husband had been killed.

  “You doing okay?” I asked, taking her hand.

  “Today’s a good day.” She smiled. “I’m having fun, and I’m glad to see Danny enjoying himself too. I haven’t been up to the North Shore in ages, though I know I’m going to have to come up again soon, for this real estate thing.”

  As one of the wealthiest in the islands, there isn’t much Terri’s family isn’t involved with. Her father sits on the boards of many of the island’s biggest corporations, and her family trust is one of the biggest donors to island charities. All the money comes from the Clark’s chain of department stores, a rival of Liberty House for the home-grown market. “Clark’s planning to put a store up here?”

  She shook her head. “Not commercial land. Just some property that’s been passed down in the family, by Kawailoa Beach. My grandparents used to have a summer house up there, and my Uncle Bishop lives there now.”

  I remembered that Ari had mentioned a project in Kawailoa Beach and wondered if it was the one Bishop was involved in. My attention wandered, trying to think, and by the time I came back to the conversation Terri had moved on. “Uncle Bishop was supposed to take over the stores, but he wasn’t interested in working, so my dad had to step up. Now Uncle Bishop has run through his inheritance, and all he’s got is this property he lives on, just north of here.” I’d met Terri’s uncle, and knew his relations with the rest of the family were strained, at best. “He wants to sell the property to developers and cash out. That’s why I’ve been learning about all the development restrictions.”

  We stopped at a lookout point where we could look down on the gardens. “Surely they can’t restrict you from building on property your family has owned for generations.”

  “Surely they can.” She waved her hand around. “Most of the North Shore is reserved for agriculture and open space. They’re only letting new housing go up in what they call the infill areas, around existing neighborhoods. And even if they do let you build, you have to reserve a certain number of spaces for what they call ‘affordable’ housing.”

  “Wow. I had no idea. This place was always so sleepy.”

  “When they put the highway through, it made commuting down to Honolulu a lot easier, and more people decided either to move up here, or to keep weekend houses. Even the most run-down old shack is selling for six figures now. The rental market is getting tighter all the time—if you can rent your house out for two hundred bucks a night during surf season, you can afford to leave it empty the rest of the year, and you don’t have to worry about poor tenants tearing the place up.”

  Danny came running up, and she picked him up. “Of course, that doesn’t help the surfers who are making ends meet by working at minimum-wage jobs. Lucie was probably talking about some new gated community with million-dollar homes.”

  “Probably the one Ari is planning to build. But how could she make money from something like that?”

  She kissed Danny’s head and took his hand in hers. “Commissions. Suppose Ari offered her the chance to work in his sales office. She could make a lot of money, legally, and still have some flexible time to surf.”

  I couldn’t put it together, so I kept thinking out loud, as we started to walk again. “But how could that lead to her getting killed?”

  Terri shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense to me. But you’re the detective.”

  “So they say.” Malia and Ailina came running up then, and we had to shelve all talk of murder for the drive back to the beach, and the rest of the afternoon.

  My family began to pack up around five. I was helping Haoa load the barbecue equipment back into his panel van when I noticed a familiar car pull up—Brad’s gold Toyota Camry with its rainbow bumper stickers and a broken antenna.

  “Uh-oh,” I said, as Brad screeched to a halt next to the van. “I’m not getting a good feeling about this.”

  “You know him?” Haoa asked.

  “In the biblical sense,” I said. “You know, not Adam and Eve, but Adam and Steve.”

  “Let me guess,” Haoa said, as Brad jumped out of his car and slammed the door behind him. “You cheated on him.”

  “Well, not cheated, really. I mean, it’s not like we were married.”

  “Yeah, that excuse works,” he said.

  “Boy, you sure get around,” Brad said, stalking up to us. “Where’d you meet this one?”

  “At the hospital, when I was born,” I said dryly. “Brad Jacobson, my brother, Haoa Kanapa’aka.”

  He looked from me to my big brother. Although Haoa is my height, six-one, he’s broader in the shoul
ders and the waist, and he looks more like the Hawaiian side of our family, with less of the haole than seems to have landed in me. Still, if you look closely, you can see the resemblance. Brad saw it.

  “You still slept with George and Larry, didn’t you, though? Those guys are my friends, Kimo. You didn’t think that was a little cheap and sleazy?”

  “I don’t think I want to hear the rest of this conversation,” Haoa said, backing away. Although he’s come around, he was the member of my family who had the most problem with my homosexuality, and I could see we were stretching the limits of his tolerance.

  Lui came up then, his newsman’s knack for following the story. “Who’s this?” Brad demanded.

  “My oldest brother, Lui,” I said. “Brad and I had some fun earlier last week, and I didn’t realize I would be hurting his feelings to um…”

  “Sleep with anything with a penis?” Brad finished for me.

  “You could say that,” I said, frowning. “I certainly didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “Yeah, tell me another one.”

  I saw my father approaching, trailed by a couple of his grandchildren. “Brad, this isn’t really the time.” I took his arm and steered him toward his car. “Why don’t I come over later and we can talk about it, okay?”

  “Why don’t you stick your dick up your ass and fuck yourself to death,” Brad said, shaking off my arm and stalking back to his car.

  “I don’t think that’s anatomically possible,” I said, as my brothers snickered behind me.

  Brad sprayed gravel making a fishtail turn, then sped out of the parking lot.

  “Oh, to be single again,” Lui said. “Not.”

  “Yeah, I take back what I said about envying you the studly life,” Haoa said. “I’m remembering what a pain in the ass it was.” Suddenly he held up his hands toward me. “Don’t take that literally. And don’t give me any details.”

  There was a lot of kissing and hugging as everyone got ready to leave, and my mother even got a little teary. “You can come home any time you want,” she said, hugging me.

  “I know, Mom.” I leaned down and kissed her cheek. “Really, I’m fine. I’m relaxing, I’m surfing, I’m meeting people. I’m going to come home sometime, but there’s stuff I have to work out up here first.”

  I choked up, watching the cars all back out and head down toward Honolulu, wanting so badly to be able to get into my truck and follow them, to reclaim the life I had left behind. But like I told my mother, there was stuff I had to do on the North Shore first.

  There was still some daylight left, so I went back to my truck and pulled out my notes on the case. I wrote up my discussion with Rik, along with a reminder to talk to Ari again. He might know more than he had let on at our first meeting.

  I wrote up Terri’s observations about Lucie’s character, wondering if her Catholic upbringing really had caught up with her. And I made a note to email Harry the names and addresses of all three victims. I didn’t want to think too hard about what kind of computer mischief he’d get up to, but I needed all the information I could find.

  By the time I was finished it was dark, and I started to feel bad about Brad, thinking of him brooding in his apartment. I had hurt him, and I needed to apologize. I drove over there, but his car wasn’t in the parking lot.

  I didn’t want to go back to Hibiscus House, but then again, I didn’t want Brad to think I’d turned into some kind of stalker, that I was chasing him around Hale’iwa. So I decided to go back to the Drainpipe, where I’d been looking for Frank, the bartender, the night before. I still had a couple of questions for him about Lucie.

  And if I drowned my sorrows in a beer or two, well, that wouldn’t be all that bad either.

  Back to the Drainpipe

  The Drainpipe was not nearly as busy on Sunday evening as it had been on Saturday night, and I saw Frank behind the bar as I came in. I picked a stool, and when he came over I ordered a Kona Pacific Golden Ale. Even though it’s brewed on the mainland, it’s about as local a beer as you can get these days.

  It took a little while before Frank had a free moment to come over and chat with me, and I busied myself with enjoying my beer and checking out the rest of the patrons. A few surfers, a few tourists, a few locals. George and Larry were nowhere in sight, which I found a relief. I’d had enough wild sex to last me for at least a few days, though I wasn’t sure I’d be able to resist temptation, if it was placed before me.

  “How’s it going, dude?” Frank said, coming over to stand in front of me. He wore a San Francisco 49ers ball cap and a Budweiser T-shirt, and still had that annoying little goatee.

  “Just chilling. If you’ve got a minute, though, I wanted to ask you more about Lucie.”

  “I’m taking a break in about ten,” he said, looking at the clock.

  “Cool.” The time passed quickly, and he came out from behind the bar, bringing me a fresh beer, and led me to a table at the far side of the room, where it was quieter.

  “You’re the guy that used to be the cop, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “Word gets around.”

  “You gonna find out what happened to Lucie?”

  “I’m going to try. That’s why I had some questions for you.”

  “Fire away.”

  “I know she was dealing ice,” I said. “I’ve talked to somebody who used to buy from her. And I know she used to hang out here to meet up with customers. I’m not trying to jam you or anybody else up over that. What I’m trying to trace back is where she got the stuff from.”

  “She was always real cagey about that,” Frank said. He pulled a pack of sugar out of the dispenser and swung it back and forth between his fingers. “But I think she had a contact at the place she used to work, The Next Wave. Even after she quit working there, she’d be stopping by, at weird hours like after closing or first thing in the morning.”

  “She ever mention any names? Even a first name or a nickname?”

  He shook his head. “Like I said, she was pretty secretive about it. It was like she was embarrassed, you know? Her mom was this real sweet lady, hard-working, totally honest. A maid at this hotel in Waikiki. Lucie’d tell me stories all the time about stuff her mom found, that she’d turn in to the hotel, because it was the right thing to do. Her mom would’ve died to know Lucie was selling drugs.”

  He looked at the clock. “Gotta get back behind the bar. You think of anything else, just ask me.”

  “Okay.”

  He stood up and walked back behind the bar. Based on what Rik had told me, I needed to talk to Ari. I looked at my watch. It was just nine o’clock; I could probably make a stop by Sugar’s and not seem like I was stalking Brad.

  I drained my beer, waved at Frank, and drove the mile or two to Sugar’s. Like the Drainpipe, it was quiet, but I was lucky to see Ari sitting alone at a table by the window, sipping something that looked like a Cosmopolitan and making notes on a Palm Pilot.

  He looked up as I got close to his table, and said, “If you’re looking for Brad, he’s already gone.”

  “I was kind of looking for him. But for you, too. Got a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  “Let me just get a beer.” I got another Kona ale, and sat across from Ari.

  “Brad found out about your little dalliance?” Ari asked, tilting his head toward me.

  “Yup. I didn’t realize it would bother him. I mean, I hardly know him. He was really nice to me, getting me cleaned up, and we had sex a couple of times. But it’s not like we had any kind of relationship.”

  “He’s a little sensitive,” Ari said. “And this isn’t the first time this has happened.”

  “So why’d he come yell at me? Why not go after Larry and George?”

  Ari crossed his legs and leaned back in his chair. “Because we all live here, and we see each other all the time.”

  “Okay. Doesn’t make much sense to me, but I can see it.”

  He closed his Palm Pilot and put it away in the br
iefcase by his side. “So what did you want from me?” he asked, as he looked back up.

  “I wanted to ask you about Lucie. I’ve been hearing that she was trying to get away from selling drugs, go legit. She got a real estate license.”

  “Yup. I told her that if my project went through, I’d hire her to work for me, selling units. And she’d have been good at it, too. She was hungry, and hungry people make the best salespeople.”

  “By hungry you mean…”

  “She had a big appetite for life,” Ari said, waving his right hand around. “She liked designer labels and expensive meals and traveling to surf competitions around the world. She had been brought up poor and didn’t want to be poor any more. Somebody with that kind of motivation will do what it takes to close a deal.”

  I took a drink of my beer. It was just as good as the first two had been. “You think she would have given up dealing drugs if she came to work for you?”

  He shrugged. “I hoped so. I had a feeling she was heading for trouble. I guess she didn’t get ahead of it fast enough.”

  “Is there any possibility that whoever she worked for might have resented her wanting to get out, or that she knew more than she should have?”

  “Always possible,” Ari said. “It wasn’t like we sat around and talked about her dealer or anything. I deliberately didn’t talk about any of that stuff with her, because I didn’t want to know.”

  I nodded. I didn’t have anything else to ask, but I was happy enough to sit there with Ari drinking my beer. By the time I’d finished it, though, he’d finished his Cosmopolitan, and we both stood up around the same time. “Give Brad a day or two to simmer down,” Ari said. “That is, if you’re still interested.”

  “He’s a nice guy. I don’t want to hurt him.”

  “I’m glad.” We walked out to the parking lot together, and he hugged me before we parted. “Take care of yourself.”

  “You too.” I got into my truck, and felt the accumulation of all my surfing and my late nights. I drove back to Hibiscus House and fell promptly and soundly asleep, not waking until six the next morning.