Mahu Box Set

by Neil S. Plakcy

  I didn’t bother to close the door, but slunk around the side of the truck and then the side of the house. I heard voices raised as I came to the back, and dropped flat to the ground. From the cover of some pili grass, I could see up into the tall windows.

  Ari, Terri and Bishop were clustered together, at one end of the room. Across from them stood Dario Fonseca, with a pistol trained at them. As I crept closer, I could hear him yelling at them, “Where the fuck is my wife?”

  That was so different from what I expected to hear that I had to pull back and regroup. Terri had called Bishop the night before to tell him there might be a problem with the deal. He had obviously called Ari. Ari must have spoken to Dario, who was already in deep financial trouble. He couldn’t afford to lose his investment in Bishop’s Bluff. He might have come to force Terri to agree to the deal.

  But his wife? What could she have to do with anything?

  I closed my eyes and racked my brain for anything I could remember about her. Her name was America. She was younger than Dario, and had grown up near him on the Big Island, the daughter of another paniolo.

  Suddenly connections started zinging through my brain. That night at Sugar’s, Dario had said he was a rootin’ tootin’ cowboy, able to ride, rope and shoot. Did that mean America could, too? Was that America’s horse I’d passed before? Was she somewhere at the house? What could she have to do with anything? Why would Dario be looking for her?

  I lay there flat on the ground, surrounded by the pili grass, and out of the corner of my eye I caught a tiny movement to my left, just the waving of another stand of pili grass. I shifted ever so slightly, moving my head so I had a clearer view.

  I saw the outline of a woman’s body, and black hair in a ponytail that hung over one shoulder. While I could not see her face, something about her was familiar. Could that be Dario’s wife? I thought it was possible that I had seen her at The Next Wave, though we had never been introduced. Then she shifted again, and I saw the outline of her face, and recognized her. I had seen her at the outrigger practices and kissing Melody at Kahuna’s; she had been called Mary.

  It was an easy leap; if my name was America I’d want a nickname, too. Mary lay there, her eyes fixed on the tall windows of Bishop Clark’s house. The air around us was so still and quiet, I could hear the waves down at the beach, and an occasional gentle whinny from her horse, out toward the road. Where was the ambulance, I wondered. I hoped Rich Sarkissian was holding on.

  Mary shifted and raised the barrel of a rifle. Was it the same M4 carbine that had shot Mike Pratt and Lucie Zamora? I had to reevaluate everything I had been thinking about the case—but I couldn’t do that until the people in the house were safe.

  I did have to think about the situation, I realized. If Mary had shot Mike Pratt off his board at Pipeline, that meant she was an expert marksmen, and that meant I was in big danger if she realized I was watching her. If I could see her, camouflaged as she was in the pili grass, she could see me, too.

  Up at the house, I saw Ari lunge for Dario through the big windows. I held my breath as they wrestled for the gun. I wanted so much to rush up there and save them all, but couldn’t do anything as long as America Fonseca had her rifle trained on the windows.

  Finally, I heard a siren. Was it an ambulance? The police? There was no way I could get in contact, warn anyone. As soon as I tried to use my cell phone, Mary would hear me, and that rifle would swing my way.

  I heard a shot fired up at the house, and saw both Dario and Ari fall. Mary rose to one knee, sighted her rifle and released the safety. I pulled my pistol up and sighted her myself.

  I was a fraction of a second too late. She got a shot off toward the house just as I shot her. I caught her in the chest and knocked her backward. She dropped the rifle and I ran toward her. It appeared I’d only winged her shoulder; she reared up from the pili grass and shakily pointed the rifle at me, but by then it was too late for me to stop charging. I took a big jump and landed on her.

  We wrestled back and forth, and she was a tough opponent. The rifle was kicked away, but I still clutched my Glock in my hand. Finally I was on top of her, and I took that opportunity to knock her on the head with the gun. She went out cold, and I popped the cuffs on her.

  I couldn’t tell what was going on up at the house, but I couldn’t wait any longer. I heard more sirens in the distance, but knew I had to get up to the house as soon as possible. I jumped up and ran for the side of the house; fortunately, no one seemed to be firing at me. I ran around to the side door and found it locked, then ran around to the makai side, the one facing the ocean.

  Terri was leaning over her uncle, who lay on the floor. I didn’t see any blood coming from him, but that didn’t mean anything. Ari sat cross-legged on the floor next to them. Dario sat on the floor a few feet away, shakily training his pistol on them.

  “Kimo,” he said. “Nice of you to join us. I knew you had to be around somewhere.”

  He nodded toward his leg. “Your aim sucks, you know.”

  “I didn’t shoot you, Dario. Your wife did.”

  Blood was leaking out of a wound in his leg, spilling all over Bishop’s hardwood floor. There was a hole in the window where Mary’s bullet had come through. Looking around quickly, I saw other bullet holes in the walls. I tried to count, to see how much ammunition Dario had left, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Dario for too long.

  I didn’t want Dario to realize that there was a cabinet full of weapons and ammunition, so the only thing I could think to do was keep him talking until reinforcements arrived.

  “Mary wouldn’t shoot me,” he said. “Mary loves me. My little piece of America.” He laughed bitterly.

  “She’s outside. She had a rifle. Are the ballistics on that rifle going to match the gun that killed Mike Pratt and Lucie Zamora?”

  Dario burst into tears. “I could never make enough money to make her happy.”

  “Who? Lucie?”

  “No!” Dario said angrily. “Mary!”

  “Is that why you started dealing ice out of The Next Wave?”

  “I never did.” His hold on the gun wavered. “It was always Mary. She got the idea, get surfers to smuggle the drugs in for us, and use surfers as dealers. They were hungry for cash, just like she was.”

  He looked up at me. “I was trying to get us legit,” he said. “I was taking the money Mary made from dealing and putting it into this deal.” He aimed at Bishop again. “This stupid project, which never seemed to take off, and just needed more money, more money. Until there wasn’t any more money left to put in.”

  I heard Terri whispering to her uncle. “Hold on, Uncle Bishop,” she said. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  “Everything’s not going to be okay!” Dario shouted.

  “Calm down, Dario, we can work things out,” I said. “How did everything get so bad?”

  “That idiot Pratt couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Mary heard him bitching at the outrigger club. She came home and told me. But shit, I didn’t know what to do. I said I’d talk to him. Mary said no, she’d take care of it.”

  He looked up at me. “She used to sit right in front of him in the canoe,” he said. “I thought she’d talk to him, convince him it was better to shut up.” Tears dripped down his cheeks. “The next time I heard his name it was somebody at the store saying he’d been shot.”

  He waved the gun a little. “I swear, I didn’t know she was going to kill him. But what could I do?”

  “Did Lucie find out?”

  “Stupid little bitch. She tried to shake Mary down. Wanted enough to finance a year around the world, going to surf competitions. Mary told her she was a dumb cunt.”

  “How did her friend Ronnie get involved?”

  He snorted. “The idiot hacked into the store’s accounts, thinking he could find the money she wanted and take it out. But there wasn’t any money—we’d given it all to Ari.”

  Ari finally spoke. “You should have told me, Dario. W
e could have worked something out. You didn’t have to do… this.”

  “I didn’t have a choice,” he said. “Shit, I haven’t had a choice about anything for eleven years.”

  Oh, Jesus, I thought. I knew what was coming.

  “It was almost eleven years ago, you know that, Kimo?” he asked. “I still remember the first time I saw you.”

  I had to keep him talking. At least he wasn’t shooting. “Yeah, Dario? Where was that?”

  “At the Surfrider. You had just come home from college and moved up here. You were with Dickie Yamassa, remember him?”

  I did. Dickie had gone to Punahou with Terri, Harry and me, but instead of going to college on the mainland the way we all did, he had stayed at UH, surfing the North Shore every chance he had. He was an amazing surfer by then—he had dropped out of UH the year before, started entering tournaments, and started winning.

  I slept on Dickie’s floor the first three months I was on the North Shore. He had a girlfriend he stayed with most nights anyway, but we often surfed together during the day, then cruised bars together at night.

  “The Surfrider has a lot of memories for us,” I said.

  “Jesus, Kimo, I thought the sun rose and set on you, and you hardly knew I was alive. For months—months—I knew where you were all the time, I followed you around, just waiting for you to notice me.”

  “I noticed you, Dario. We used to surf together all the time.”

  “But you ignored every hint I gave you.”

  “I was scared, Dario. I didn’t want to be gay, and the way you kept coming on to me, touching me, saying stuff—what did you expect me to do?”

  “I expected you to tell me you loved me, that you wanted to be with me,” Dario said. “Then I finally got the chance to show you how I felt, and you ran away.”

  “I’m sorry if I hurt you, Dario.” I started inching closer to him. “I never wanted to. Honestly, I didn’t know how you felt. But maybe things can be better now.”

  The noise he made in his throat sounded oddly like the one my father did, when he didn’t believe what I was saying. “I’m serious, Dario. Things can be different. I’m out of the closet now. I’m here on the North Shore.” I inched closer to him. “Give me the gun, and I’ll look after you. Mary is going to have to go to jail, but then you and I can be together.”

  “Mary! Where’s Mary? I have to talk to Mary!” He tried to stand up, but he fell back to the floor.

  I was close enough that I could tackle him. “Give me the gun, Dario,” I said. We wrestled on the floor, and then another rifle blast shattered one of Bishop’s big glass windows. Dario’s attention was distracted enough that I got my body on top of his, got my hand on his gun hand. I had a knee in his crotch and I was close enough to smell the raw scent of fear and perspiration coming off him.

  I mustered up a final burst of strength and wrenched the gun from him, pushing myself back from him. Another rifle burst split the air. “Everybody okay?” I called. “Terri?”

  “Okay,” she said shakily.

  “How’s Bishop?”

  “Dario shot him, and he’s going in and out of consciousness. Kimo, I’m scared. Who’s shooting at us?”

  “I thought I knocked Mary Fonseca out and handcuffed her, but either she’s gotten up or somebody else has gotten her rifle. See if you can drag Bishop under the table. Ari, can you help?”

  I kept one eye on Dario, who was crying on the floor in front of me, and the other focused on the window. Mary Fonseca was a damned good riflewoman if she was able to shoot with her hands cuffed together.

  “What about Brad, Dario? Who killed him, and that college kid? Why?”

  “I couldn’t stand to see somebody else have what I couldn’t.” He was crying full blast by then. “I know I shouldn’t have done it. I just went crazy.”

  “And me? Did you shoot at me when I was out at Pipeline?”

  “I’d never shoot you, Kimo. That must have been Mary. I think she knew how much I cared about you and she was jealous.”

  I heard another blast of gunfire, but this one wasn’t aimed inside. There was a volley back and forth, and then I heard a voice call out, “Hello the house. Anybody there? Police!”

  “Officer on the scene,” I called back. “Scene secured.”

  After

  Al Kawamoto was the first in the door, his gun held out ahead of him. In short order, he was followed by uniforms who took custody of Dario, and an ambulance crew that took Bishop Clark away, with Terri by his side.

  I sat at the table with Ari, and we reconstructed everything that had happened for Al. When we were done, I drove down to Wahiawa General, where Bishop was in critical condition. Terri’s parents had driven up from Honolulu by then, and her father sat holding his older brother’s hand and talking gently to him.

  “I’m so sorry things worked out the way they did,” I said to Terri, when we had walked out together. “If I had known there was any danger I never would have let you go to Bishop’s in the first place.”

  “You didn’t know what was going to happen.”

  “Yeah, that’s been the theme of my life lately. Everything happens and I don’t have a clue about it. Hell of a detective, huh?”

  “You knew there was a connection between Dario’s store and the deaths of the surfers.”

  “I should have figured it out sooner. The first time I heard that Dario had a wife, I knew something was funny. I should have looked at him a lot more closely, but I was afraid I was trying to make him the killer because I was scared of him.”

  “You weren’t scared of him,” she said, taking my hand. “What you were scared of is inside of you, but you’re working on that.”

    

  Bishop’s death was big news because of the family’s prominence. And of course they had to note that there had been another Clark death, just a few weeks before. This time, though, I went to the funeral, with my parents. We sat at the Kawaiahao Church in downtown Honolulu, across from Honolulu Hale. The Clarks were descended from early missionaries to the islands, and had ancestors buried in the graveyard behind the church. After a brief service, Bishop took his place among them.

  I was in the news again, as Sampson told reporters that I had been working undercover to bring both Fonsecas to justice. Mary was being held for trial for her drug activities, as well as for the murders of Mike Pratt, Lucie Zamora and Ronald Chang. Dario was being held as her accessory for all that, as well as for the murders of Brad Jacobson and Thomas Singer.

  I closed up the house at Cane Landing and moved back to my apartment in Waikiki. After a couple of days off, and evaluations by both the department physician and psychiatrist, I drove my battered pickup into downtown Honolulu once more, parked at a meter a block away from the main station, and prepared to start the job I’d thought I was getting all along, as a detective in District 1. I sat in the truck for a minute, though, listening to Keali’i Kaneali’i ask where all the beach boys of Waikiki had gone. This boy, I knew, had gone away, but was back. Secure in that thought, I locked my truck and headed inside.

  Acknowledgments

  I met Sharon Sakson at a picnic table at a Bread Loaf writers’ conference reunion, and we immediately clicked. That connection has resulted in a long friendship and a book together, Paws and Reflect: A Special Bond Between Man and Dog. Thanks for everything, Sharon.

  Thanks to Steve Greenberg, Pam Reinhardt, and Vicki Hendricks, my earliest readers, and to my mother, Shirley Plakcy, for all her love and support.

  My career could not have begun without the help of the faculty in the MFA program at Florida International University: Jim Hall, Lynne Barrett, Les Standiford, Campbell McGrath, Rust Hills and John Dufresne. They were great teachers who provided instruction, mentoring and friendship in equal doses.

  Thanks to Caren and Tom Neile and Ginny and David Wells, for all the encouragement, advice and editing over the years, as well as to all my FIU classmates and friends. Thanks also to Dan Jaffe, who ga
ve Kimo his first literary exposure in Blithe House Quarterly.

  Thanks to Mr. Norman Haider, my tenth-grade English teacher at Charles Boehm Senior High, who first showed me how rewarding writing could be, and to all the other teachers who encouraged me.

  Endless thanks, also, to my husband Marc for all his support, and lots of puppy kisses to our dogs.

  When I started writing about a surfer named Kimo Kanapa‘aka back in 1992, I had no idea that the character would take such a hold of my imagination. I’ve tried to understand Kimo’s appeal—both to me, and to the many readers who have written and emailed. I think the secret is that he’s a guy who’s trying to do the right thing, even when it’s difficult. Sometimes he succeeds, and sometimes he makes a mistake and tries to learn from it.

  This is the second version of Mahu Surfer to appear in print. Thanks to Jay Quinn and Greg Herren, my original editors at Haworth Press, who gave Kimo his first chance to shine. I also appreciate those at Alyson Books who brought out the previous edition: Dale Cunningham, Anthony LaSasso, and Paul Florez. I appreciate the work of MLR publisher Laura Baumbach and my terrific editor Kris Jacen of MLR for keeping Kimo’s story going. Mahalo nui loa!

  Kimo’s story continues in Mahu Fire.

  Mahu Fire begins six months after Honolulu homicide detective Kimo Kanapaka’a’s return to Honolulu from his undercover assignment on the North Shore. He’s becoming more comfortable with his visibility as Honolulu’s only openly gay homicide detective, including mentoring a group of gay teens.

  Kimo, his family and friends are attending a local charity event in support of gay marriage when a bomb disrupts the gala. Kimo is determined to find out who feels strongly enough against the issue to kill-- but it’s possible that his high profile will stand in his way.