Mahu Box Set

by Neil S. Plakcy

  “Come on in, detective,” he said, stepping back. He said his name was Jerry Bosk, and he showed me into the living room. When I was sitting on the chintz sofa, falling backward into a mass of plush cushions, he took a good look at me. “You’re the gay cop, aren’t you?”

  My stomach felt queasy. “I don’t like to think of myself that way, but, yes, I’m gay.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it as an accusation.” He sat forward in a gnarled wooden rocking chair, one hand on his thigh. “You’ve been an inspiration to us, you know. I mean, to me and the people I know. You’ve been showing the world that all gay men don’t have to be nelly queers who like to dress up in women’s clothes and wear makeup. I admire you.”

  “Thanks. I’m here about a murder that happened down the street. Did you see or hear anything unusual this morning?”

  Bosk sat back and rocked a little in his chair, thinking. He was a handsome guy, sandy hair and a strong face, with a smudge of sawdust on his cheek. “I can’t say I did. I wish I could help you. I’m a carpenter, a cabinet maker, and I’ve often got equipment going. When I’m not working, we’ve always got music in the house—it helps to drown out the neighborhood racket.” Indeed, I could hear some kind of baroque concerto coming out of the stereo speakers, very low, just enough to wash out background noise.

  “You didn’t see anyone unusual, hear any strange sounds?”

  He shook his head.

  “You said we, Mr. Bosk. Someone else lives here with you?”

  “My lover, Victor Ramos,” he said. “He’s at work now.”

  I stood up and handed him a card. “Well, thank you. If you or Mr. Ramos think of anything, will you give me a call?”

  “Have you talked to our neighbors?” he asked, as he walked me toward the door. He nodded with his head to indicate the house to the left, the one with the statue of St. Joseph. “She jogs early in the morning. She might have seen something.”

  “No one was home. I’ll be sure to check back with them, though. Thanks.”

  “They’re a funny couple,” he said, as we stood at the front door. “They don’t fit in with the rest of the neighborhood.” He laughed. “I mean, not that Vic and I really fit in either, but we try. We talk to people, we have a mango tree in the back yard and we always give people fruit.” He laughed again. “Funny, fruits from the fruits. But them, well, there’s just something strange about them. I can’t say any more than that.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  As I walked down the path to the street, he called out behind me, “Keep up the good fight, Detective.”

  I wasn’t sure which kind of fight he meant.

  I made it back to headquarters just before noon, and took the dead rooster down to ballistics on the first basement level of the building. A couple of hours in the hot Hawaiian sun hadn’t done much for the carcass, and as I walked down the hall carrying the evidence bags people stopped, stared and sniffed.

  “Homicide’s a dirty business, isn’t it, detective?” said a secretary from the photo lab.

  “Jesus, Kimo, get some air freshener,” a detective from narcotics said, waving his hand in front of his face. I smiled at everybody, nodding politely, like I wasn’t carrying something that stank to high heaven in my outstretched hand.

  Special investigations, which encompasses ballistics, wasn’t excited to see me. “Ew, what is that?” said Gloria, the secretary at the front desk. There was an incredibly handsome guy standing next to her, tall, dark-haired, and Eurasian, wearing a khaki shirt with a fire department emblem on it.

  “The remains of a murder victim. Where do you want it?”

  “Don’t remains go to the coroner?”

  “Only human remains,” I said.

  The handsome fireman looked my way and made a big show of squeezing shut his nostrils for Gloria. “Seems like fowl play,” he said, and she laughed.

  I saw Billy Kim, a young tech with an Elvis-like pompadour, in the back area and called out to him. “Hey, Billy, your chicken lunch is here.”

  I walked past Gloria’s desk to show him what I had. “What the hell?”

  “I got a murder out in Makiki this morning. Neighbor’s rooster got shot at the same time. I need a ballistics match between this bullet,” here I held up the evidence bags, “and the one from my stiff.”

  He took the bags from me, his nose crinkled up. “This is above and beyond the call of duty.”

  “Many are called, but only the really dumb ones answer,” I said. “I don’t think the owner wants the carcass back when you’re done with it.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  When I came out, the handsome fireman was gone. I stopped at the men’s room before getting into the elevator, but no matter how much I washed my hands, there was still a faint aroma of dead chicken around me.

  People looked at me funny in the elevator, but I ignored them. I hoped the scent would dissipate during the day, but I wasn’t holding my breath. Only the people around me were.

  I stuck my head into Lieutenant Sampson’s office. He’s a big, burly guy, wiry beard going gray, fond of polo shirts. He has them in every color ever made in extra-large. He once told me he hated wearing suits because you had to wear a tie with a suit, and his neck was larger than it should have been so he never could get dress shirts that closed properly.

  Today his polo shirt was emerald green. He was on the phone, but motioned me to a seat in front of his desk. My eye was caught, as always, by the photos he kept there. One was an old clipping from a newspaper, an AP wire photo of a half-dozen people in their early twenties, a mixture of men and women, dancing naked in the mud at Woodstock. The tall man in the middle, with the wiry hair, was Lieutenant Sampson, at a younger and more foolish time in his life. He said he kept it there as a reminder of who he was. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I kind of liked it, working for a guy who’d once danced naked in the mud at a rock concert, and was comfortable enough about it to keep the picture on his desk.

  The other was a photo of his daughter, Kitty. I picked it up to look more closely at it. She was quite a beautiful woman, in her late teens or early twenties. She looked like a young Catherine Deneuve, that same icy blondness, yet with a simmering sensuality underneath. I didn’t envy him being her father.

  He put the phone down and I said, “Your daughter’s very pretty.”

  “Stepdaughter,” he said. “Kitty’s my second wife’s daughter from her first marriage.”

  I took a minute to process that. I knew Sampson had been married and divorced three times. “Kitty’s mother and I got married when Kitty was six,” he said, nodding toward the picture. “We were only married for three years, but Kitty got attached to me. No matter who her mom was married to, she thought of me as her dad.” He smiled. “Her mom moved back to the mainland when Kitty was thirteen. I think that was husband number four, though maybe it was number five.”

  “I thought Kitty lived with you?”

  “She does. When my ex left she asked if I’d take Kitty, and I said I would, only if I could adopt her. So I did. Kitty goes to visit her mom during the summer, wherever she happens to be living. It’s good for her—gets her off this rock. I see too many of these island kids whose world is bounded by the Pacific Ocean. Kitty’ll never feel that way.” He stopped and sniffed the air. “What do I smell?”

  “Chicken.”

  “Don’t eat at that place again.”

  “I didn’t eat there. You know that homicide in Makiki?”

  “Yeah. What do you know about it?”

  “Doesn’t look like an easy one. Homeless man, nobody in the neighborhood saw anything or heard anything. No clues at the scene, either.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t like these statistics. Unsolved homicides are piling up here like empty dishes at dim sum.”

  “I do have one lead, though. Neighbor’s rooster was shot around the same time. I’ve got ballistics doing a match on the bullets.”

  “
The dead chicken,” he said, nodding. “You think that’s a homicide, too?”

  “Don’t even start,” I said, holding up my hand. “I’ve heard the jokes already. I’ll keep you posted.”

  “From a distance,” he said, waving me out. He turned on a little fan on the credenza behind him. “I always knew homicide was a dirty business. Try not to make it a stinky one, too.” He paused. “That’s a residential neighborhood out there, isn’t it? Working class?”

  I nodded. “Tried to canvass this morning, but most people had already left for work.”

  “Why don’t you sign out for a couple of hours. Go home, take a shower. Then hit Makiki after some of the neighbors get home.”

  “You just want to keep me from stinking up your squad room, don’t you?”

  He laughed. “Close a couple of cases for me, will you, detective?” he asked. “This one would be a good start. I don’t need PETA picketing downstairs over cruelty to chickens.”

  “I’ll get right on it, chief,” I said.

  Mr. and Mrs. Whack Job

  I stopped at my desk on my way out, and Steve Hart, a night shift detective who’d come in early to work some cases, pointedly got up and moved away. He was a tall, tanned Texan who had a chip on his shoulder the size of Amarillo. At least I was getting shunned for being smelly, rather than being gay. That was a start.

  I ran Hiroshi Mura through the computer, but didn’t get anything more than I already knew. So I gave up and went home. I took a nice, luxurious shower, then dropped my stinky chicken clothes in the washer on the ground floor of the building. While they ran through rinse and spin, I researched my latest case, using my spiffy wireless laptop.

  The network didn’t have far to reach; I live in a studio, with a galley kitchen, a small bathroom, and a picture window with a view of a narrow slice of Waikiki Beach. I sat at the kitchen table and pulled up the property appraiser’s website, where I saw that Hiroshi Mura was no longer the owner of the property where he’d been shot; it had been transferred a few months earlier to a corporation.

  I made a list of all the homeowners on the streets around where Mura had been killed, and typed up the notes on my interviews with Rosalie Garces and Jerry Bosk. By then it was time to switch the clothes to the dryer. After that, I checked department records for all shootings of homeless men and women over the past year, hoping that there would be a match in some way to my crime.

  No luck. But at least I felt I was earning my pay, even as I sat around in my boxers nibbling on a microwave pizza. Around five, I drove back to Makiki and started canvassing the neighborhood again. I interrupted a few dinners and got no response from a few houses, and I was starting to give the whole enterprise up when I came to the house with the rainbow flag.

  I remembered speaking with the cabinetmaker that morning, and checked my notes. Jerry Bosk, and his lover, Victor Ramos. Ramos had already left for work by the time I arrived. But there was a second car in the driveway, which I thought might be his.

  Bosk answered the door. “Hey, detective, come in. Vic just got home from work. I haven’t had a chance to ask him about this morning, but you can.”

  A handsome olive-skinned Filipino man in his mid-forties, dark hair cut short, stepped out of the kitchen, and Bosk introduced us. “There was a homicide down the street this morning,” I said. “I wondered if you saw or heard anything out of the ordinary.”

  “How about the creepy woman next door in a lead-lined apron and plastic goggles?” he asked. “Out of the ordinary enough for you?”

  We sat in the living room. This time I avoided the plush cushions on the chintz sofa, taking the hand-carved rocker instead. I pulled out my notebook. “When did this happen?”

  “Saturday,” Ramos said. “I sing with the Honolulu Men’s Chorus, and we had a rehearsal on Saturday afternoon. I got home around six, and I saw Mrs. Whack Job from next door looking like some kind of mad scientist. I’ve tried to tell Jerry that there is something strange going on out in their back shed, but Jerry likes to think the best of people.”

  “What’s her last name?” I asked, not understanding what he’d called her.

  “We don’t know,” Jerry said. “Vic has decided she and her husband are crazy, so he calls them the Whack Jobs. Mr. Pender died a couple of months ago, and his daughter is renting the house out. I tried to introduce myself to them but neither of them would even answer me.” He smiled. “Guess they’re not accustomed to living at the end of the rainbow.”

  They were a well-matched couple: haole and Asian, dark and light, about the same height and body size. For a moment I had a pang of longing for just that kind of life—a partner to come home to every night, a collection of art and furniture and books that reflected our life together.

  The neighbors Jerry was describing were next on my list to canvass, so I made a note to keep an eye out for anything strange. Unfortunately, Ramos hadn’t seen or heard anything that morning, so, declining offers of a drink or staying for dinner, I said my goodbyes.

  There was a breeze blowing in from the windward side of the island, bringing smoke and tiny particles of soot with it. I’d been smelling all too much smoke lately, and I knew the fire department was under the same pressure we were to solve the rash of arsons.

  A couple of the fires had been simple accidents—a cigarette extinguished in dry brush, an air conditioner short-circuiting. But others were clearly arson—a failing restaurant in Chinatown, a trash fire outside a gay bar in Salt Lake, a duplex in Kaka’ako where a married woman had moved in with her new boyfriend, an amateur Molotov cocktail through the window of an X-rated video store on Kuhio Avenue, a warehouse fire just off the Pali Highway where a bag of greasy potato chips had been used as an accelerant.

  About half the arsons had some connection to gay people or businesses serving them, which was enough to get the local bar rags in an uproar about official indifference to the gay and lesbian community. I’d been called for an opinion by one of them, but I’d said I had no comment.

  It seemed that all over the island, gay and straight people were living in an uneasy balance. When we’d been quiet enough in our closets, our businesses had been allowed to run, with darkened windows and little advertising. Now that we were pressing our claims to live freely, marry like everyone else, things were getting more difficult.

  It couldn’t have been easy for an openly gay couple like Jerry Bosk and Victor Ramos to live next door to a religious family, the kind who kept a statue of St. Joseph on the front lawn.

  The house itself was nondescript, maybe a little more rundown than the average house on the street. It was a single-story ranch, painted a faded green, with brown grass in the front yard and a small outbuilding at the back. The slant-eyed St. Joseph said nothing as I walked up to the door and rang the bell.

  A trim, dark-haired young woman in a light-blue polo shirt and dark slacks answered. I showed her my badge and introduced myself. Though I knew she was a tenant, and not the owner, I asked, “Are you Mrs. Pender?”

  “Mrs. White. We’re renting from the Penders.” She didn’t invite me inside.

  “I understand you’re a runner,” I said.

  “Sometimes.”

  “A man was shot about a block away from here, early this morning,” I said. “Did you hear or see anything out of the ordinary?”

  “I wear headphones when I run. I get into a zone, and I block everything else out.” I could just imagine her; I saw women like that every day on the streets of Waikiki, their grim determination seeming to suck all the joy out of exercising.

  “I know what you mean. I’m a surfer, and I focus the same way.” I paused for a minute. “Did you ever notice the homeless man living on the empty lot?”

  She grimaced. “Creepy guy. The city shouldn’t let people like that live on the street.”

  “Did he ever threaten you?”

  I thought I saw something flicker in her eyes, but she said, “No. I never had anything to do with him.”

 
“Well, thanks anyway.” I checked her left hand before I said, “Your husband. Can I speak with him?”

  Again, there was something strange about her eyes, the way alarm seemed to register in them. “He sleeps late. He snores. He wouldn’t have heard anything.”

  “If it’s okay, I’d still like to talk to him.” I looked over her shoulder. A man I assumed was her husband stood in the background. “Mr. White?”

  Grudgingly, the woman stepped aside, and her husband came forward. He was dark-haired, a bit pudgy, wearing a shapeless T-shirt and jeans that were too tight around the waist. There was something familiar about him, but couldn’t place him. I repeated what I’d told his wife. “Did you see anything this morning?”

  When I’d first come out, my friend Gunter gave me some interesting advice. “Straight men won’t look you in the eyes,” he said. “Gay men will. That’s a big part of gaydar. It’s not about whether a guy has a limp wrist or says Mary every five minutes. It’s about whether he’ll make eye contact or not.”

  I’d put that to the test a couple of times, with interesting results. Especially because an awful lot of gay people on O’ahu knew who I was, that I was the gay cop, I’d gotten some surprising readings. It was equally surprising that this guy, Mr. White, looked me in the eyes with something that looked a lot like hunger.

  No wonder his wife hadn’t wanted me to talk to him.

  Unfortunately, Mr. White really had been asleep that morning, and hadn’t heard a thing. Probably to interrupt any additional flirtation, his wife put her hand on the door. “I’m sorry, detective, but we’re very busy right now. You know how it is, you get home and there’s so much to do.”

  “Thank you very much, Mr. and Mrs. White. You have a good evening, now.”

  She shut the door firmly without wishing me the same. I could see why Vic Ramos called her Mrs. Whack Job. Not the friendliest person to have for a neighbor. But rudeness wasn’t a crime under the Hawai’i Penal Code, though if my mother had her way it would be.