Mahu Box Set

by Neil S. Plakcy

  He was the handsome guy I’d seen the day before, in ballistics.

  We shook, as Doc completed our introductions. “The detective’s reputation precedes him,” Riccardi said with a smile. “I got a whiff of some of his work Monday.”

  He was a mixed-breed like me, a lot of haole and probably some Japanese or Korean in him, but he was movie-star handsome. He had a thick black mustache and wavy black hair that I was sure danced just short of any fire department regulations on length. I could not tell what color his eyes were, but there was a smudge of soot on his left cheek. I had a crazy impulse to wet my finger and reach over and clean him up, but fortunately I restrained myself. At that point, though, I couldn’t tell if the hammering in my heart and head were aftereffects of smoke inhalation, or if they came from looking at him—or from our hands touching when we exchanged business cards.

  “So tell me what you think about the fire, Mike,” Doc said.

  “Let me ask a few questions of the detective here,” he said, and there seemed to be a kind of condescension in his voice. It might have been that that I was still dressed in a grimy tuxedo and a pleated white shirt that was now torn and sooty, the ends of Gunter’s bow tie still dangling from my neck. I didn’t look like the cream of the Honolulu police department.

  Then again, he’d said my reputation preceded me. It was possible that he, like most of the rest of metropolitan Honolulu, knew I was the gay cop. If he wanted a pissing contest, though, he’d learn soon enough that I didn’t have to sit down to enter. “What can I tell you that a trained fire investigator couldn’t figure out for himself?” I asked.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Eyewitness accounts are part of any investigation,” he said mildly. “Surely you know that, detective?”

  “I’d like to get this guy back to the morgue sometime in this century,” Doc said. “If you two dogs could stop growling at each other long enough to get your business with my friend here out of the way.”

  “Sorry, Doc,” I said. “It’s been a long day.” I turned to Riccardi. I gave him the same quick rundown I’d given Lieutenant Sampson, ending with me and Gunter standing outside the building, facing down the crowd. I left out the part about us holding hands.

  “You heard one explosion?”

  I nodded.

  “Did the fall knock you out at all? Could there have been any other blasts you might not have heard?”

  “I was stunned but I didn’t pass out until after I came out of the fire. There was only one explosion.”

  “That was my guess based on the fire pattern. Now tell me exactly what it was like when you ran back into the building. Where was the fire? Was it all around you, or contained in one area?”

  I took a moment to remember, and in that time I was surprised to see how many levels my mind was working on. Riccardi was talking just like a detective, asking the kind of clear, analytical questions I would have if I hadn’t been a witness. It was strange to be on the other side of an investigation, even if only for a few minutes. Another level of my brain was collecting memories of what it had been like when I burst into the first floor of the building. And the third level couldn’t help noticing how sexy Mike Riccardi was when he was serious.

  “The front door wasn’t hot when I opened it, and I could see clear to the back. Robert, he’s the administrative assistant, he was coming in that way and I remember telling him to get out. He was determined to save some files, though. We kind of knocked past each other as I was heading for the stairs.”

  “So the stairway was clear then?”

  “Absolutely. The only fire was in the back corner, where the bathroom was.” I closed my eyes and tried to picture it. “I don’t think there were any walls left there. I just had the impression of flames.” When I opened my eyes again I saw he was taking notes on a secretary’s steno pad.

  Suddenly I remembered the sweaty guy heading for the bathroom during Vic Ramos’s speech. “If the bomb was in the bathroom, I might have seen the guy who planted it.”

  Riccardi’s eyebrows rose. “Yes?”

  “Just an idea. I don’t know for sure. But this guy was sweating, looking like he was going to be sick. Could just have been nerves.”

  “Did you recognize him?”

  “Maybe. Like somebody I’ve seen before somewhere, but couldn’t put a name or a place to it. I’ll get with an artist as soon as I can and see if I can get a picture of him.”

  “Good. So go on. You ran in the door of the building?”

  “I ran up the stairs. There were two rooms up there, a big meeting room that faced the street and an office that overlooked the back lanai. I didn’t go into the front room; I went straight ahead, into the office. I remember I stopped short, almost fell over, because I saw a big chunk of the floor was missing.”

  He wrote furiously. “Go on.”

  “My friend Harry came up right behind me. His girlfriend’s baby was in there, on one of the desks, but the blast had knocked the kid to the ground. Harry went around to the left, toward the baby, and I went to the right. Sandra Guarino, she’s the executive director, she was slumped over a desk at the back of the room. I had to work my way around carefully because there was this big hole in the floor, and there were sparks jumping up out of the flames, crackling and catching on things, and it was very bright, from the fire, but also kind of dark, because of the smoke.”

  I looked over at the Doc, who was listening intently. “It was like a picture in a Sunday school textbook of what hell was like.” I started to shiver a little.

  “It’s all right, Kimo,” Riccardi said, and he put a hand on my shoulder. “We’re almost done.”

  I took a deep breath. “I made it around to Sandra and I felt for a pulse. She had one, but it was weak. I wrapped her in my jacket and put her over my shoulder—I guess you know what the fireman’s carry is—and I headed back for the door. Harry had already gotten the baby and gone out. The footing was harder going out because the floor was hotter, and every time I took a step I thought I was going to slip and go into that pit.”

  My throat was dry and my lips were parched. Damn, reliving those moments was tough. This must be what victims felt like when I interviewed them.

  I licked my lips, took a deep breath, and coughed. Riccardi waited patiently while I got my breath back. “I made it out to the stairway, but by then the walls were broiling hot and I was afraid the stairs were going to collapse under me. I wanted to go fast but I was afraid to put too much stress on the steps and it was hard to move with Sandra over my shoulder. By the time I got downstairs there were flames everywhere. I saw the door ahead of me and I just bulled my way through.”

  I looked up at him and smiled. “The last thing I remember is bursting through the door, and my brother was right there, and I knew that he’d take care of things from there. Kind of silly, isn’t it?” I shrugged.

  “I don’t think it’s silly at all,” Riccardi said. He turned to Doc. “Okay, that tallies with what I’ve seen so far. A single blast concentrated in the area of the rest room. Probably some kind of plastic explosive, one with a simple timer. Once we can go through the debris I’ll know more. Now, we know Shira was upstairs in the office. If the bomb had blown out the floor directly under him, he would have gone through the roof and he’d be in little bitsy pieces. My guess is that he and the woman were far enough away from the hole that they didn’t get blown up right away. He probably got knocked out, though, and then slid or fell downstairs.”

  He looked over at me. “We recovered the body on the first floor, not on the second.”

  “That would explain the pattern of the burns,” Doc said. “If he fell feet-first into the fire.”

  “Do you think he burned to death?” I asked.

  “I have to examine his lungs—or what’s left of them. Whatever I can. My guess is that he was knocked out by the blast and then the fire finished him off. I’ll get you the results as soon as possible.”

  “Thanks. You know this is going to be a nasty
one.”

  “The folks at City Hall do tend to look up when one of their own gets killed,” Doc said. “So, you guys finished with me now? Can I take the body?”

  I looked at Mike. “Fine with me,” he said, and I nodded along. “Thanks for your help, Kimo. It looks like things have cooled down a little, so I’m going to take a walk through the ashes. I’ll let you know what I find.”

  “I’d like to come with you.”

  He smiled. “You aren’t exactly dressed for it. I think you might be missing your smoking jacket.” There was that condescension again.

  “This tux is beyond repair. I don’t care if it gets a little smokier.”

  “It’s not that. You need special gear to walk around after a fire.” He looked at me. “You sure you’re up to this?”

  “I’ve got a job to do. I’ll be up to it.”

  He nodded. “All right. I’ve got an extra fire suit in my truck.”

  “I heard that the Queen of England was touring Disneyland with Prince Charles when he was a little boy,” I said, as we walked together. “And he told his mother that he wanted a Mickey Mouse costume. So she bought him a fire suit.”

  “Very funny,” Mike said, as we stopped in front of a black pickup with red and yellow flames in a stripe down the side.

  “Guess you want the world to know you’re a fireman,” I said.

  I can’t be sure because of the darkness but I think he blushed. “I bought it from another guy. I didn’t bother to have it repainted.” He had a big locked case that spanned the bed, and all around it were piles of junk. Scraps of wood and metal, broken down tools, what looked like half a surfboard.

  “Don’t bother to clean too often either.”

  “Please. I grew up in a house with plastic slipcovers on the sofa and a plastic runner on the hall carpet. My mom used to dust every day. I think I’m in rebellion.”

  “My mom would have tried that, too,” I said, as he opened the chest and rooted around in it. “But she had three sons. By the time I was born she’d pretty much given up hope of keeping the house clean.”

  He pulled a big yellow suit out and held it up to me. He looked at me appraisingly, checking out my body.

  I haven’t got anything to be embarrassed about there; I keep in good shape, between surfing, roller blading and riding my bike.

  “I think it’ll fit you.”

  Our eyes met, and I knew. Maybe Mike Riccardi didn’t know it himself yet; maybe he knew but he just wasn’t admitting it. But in that glance, when our eyes locked on each other, I knew. This hunky fireman with the sexy mustache and dancing eyes was just as gay as I was.

  Through the Fire

  I held his glance for a minute, smiled, and then said, “So where do you think I can go to put this on?”

  We both looked around. It was almost one in the morning by then, and the area had begun to empty out. We were about two blocks away from the offices of the Hawai’i Marriage Project, and the storefronts and office buildings around us were closed and locked. “Just go behind the truck,” he said. “I promise I won’t look.”

  “I haven’t got anything you haven’t already seen.” Our eyes met again and he smiled. This had definite possibilities, I thought. Then I yawned, and felt an ache in my back, and once again I was conscious of the hammering in my head, which had muted. I had enough on my plate without wondering how I could get into Mike Riccardi’s pants.

  I stripped off my jacket and shirt. My back hurt, but I assumed it was because I’d been laying on the pavement. My shirt was a wreck; the back must have caught a stray ember and there was a big hole with brown edges there.

  I did allow myself to wonder, as I pulled my pants off and threw them into the cab of the truck, what Mike Riccardi looked like under all that baggy material. My dick responded, and I had to turn away. In turning, though, I exposed myself to the glare of a spotlight, and I’m pretty sure he saw a revealing silhouette.

  I stepped into the suit, and pulled a pair of booties over my good dress shoes—also ruined. I had some trouble getting the suit buttoned up and Mike came over to help me. “You get accustomed to this after a while,” he said. “At least it keeps half your clothes from smelling like smoke.”

  Together we walked back to the fire site, me clomping along in the ungainly booties and bulky fire suit. A series of high-intensity lights were focused on the ashy remains, but even so Mike handed me a small flashlight. All the engine companies but one had left, and most of the firemen were standing around in the street talking while their last few fellows prowled around looking for stray embers. Mike called out some greetings as we walked in through what had once been the front wall, and I remembered Robert telling me about the rocks that had come through the window that afternoon, the manure on the sidewalk. I wondered if there was a connection, and told Mike about them.

  “My first guess is that this is an amateur bomb, which fits with that kind of shit,” he said. “No pun intended. But let’s keep an open mind as we look around.”

  We started a careful, inch-by-inch search, looking for anything that might have been out of place. I saw the melted remains of Robert’s computer, settled in the midst of a hunk of molten steel and plastic that had once been a desk. A couple of the framed posters on the wall were still recognizable, though singed at the edges, and the glass was gone. There wasn’t much else left to say what this place had been or what it had done.

  “What’s this?” I asked, pointing my flashlight at a small white object on the floor. I kneeled down and picked it up. It was a piece of plastic about an inch square, with a few round depressions in it. It didn’t look like anything that had been in the office.

  “Golf ball.” Mike took it from me and examined it. “Say you want to use a plastic explosive, like RDX. It’s pretty stable stuff, so you have to trigger an initial explosion in order to set it off. What you do, see, is you cut a golf ball in half and you fill it with something that will blow up more easily. There’s a lot of different stuff you can use—I couldn’t speculate yet what might have been in here. But the basic principle is, you put some kind of condensed acid inside some gelatin capsules, and you bury them in the less stable explosive inside the golf ball. After a while, the acid eats through the gelatin, and when it comes in contact with the first explosive, you get a little boom. That sets off the big boom.”

  He shrugged. “You can read about it all over the Internet. If you’re an amateur, you don’t know much about using clocks and timing mechanisms, so you go for something simpler, like this.”

  “You must have been hell as a teenager,” I said.

  “Hey, did you know everything you know about homicide when you were a kid?” He smiled.

  We were joined by a couple of agents from the local office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. They were dispatched to investigate any kind of bombing, and these two weren’t happy about getting roused out of bed in the early hours of the morning.

  Mike and I went through everything we knew with them, and after a while I was yawning and stumbling on my feet. At one point I fell against Mike and he grabbed me. But it didn’t even feel sexy; I was just exhausted. The ATF guys left, promising to come back in the morning. “Come on, I think it’s time to get you home,” Mike said to me.

  I yawned again. “My truck’s in the garage.” I smiled. “I think it’s a little neater than yours.”

  “Let’s leave it there overnight. I don’t want to see you falling asleep behind the wheel. Where do you live?”

  “Waikiki.” I yawned again.

  “Almost on my way. Come on, let’s go.”

  I tried to argue but I was just too tired. I remember getting into the truck, and then we were on Kalakaua Avenue and he was gently shaking me awake. “Sorry, bud, but I need a little more direction.”

  “Left at Lili’uokalani,” I yawned. “Geez, we’re here already.”

  “Yeah, you’re not the best driving companion.” He looked over at me and smiled. I dir
ected him to my building, and he pulled up in front. I stumbled as I got out of the truck, but got my balance before he could help me.

  “I can make it.”

  He nodded. “Thing is, you don’t want that suit inside your place. You’ll be weeks getting the smell of smoke out.” He grinned. “The voice of experience.”

  “Okay.” It seemed perfectly reasonable to me. I unbuttoned the suit and let it drop from my shoulders. There was a warm breeze off the ocean that tickled the skin on my back as I stepped out of the boots and the legs of the suit.

  “Whoa,” he said. “I didn’t mean you should strip down right here on the street.” He moved to stand between me and any passing car, although there weren’t any.

  “I wear less than this any day on the beach,” I said, looking down at my boxers. It was hard to relate all those parts that I saw, legs, and arms and torso, to my body. I felt disconnected from them. I reached into the cab and got my shirt, pants and shoes. I tried to muster up some dignity as I turned, naked but for socks and boxers, to climb the steps to my apartment. But I stumbled again.

  “Let me walk you up the stairs.” He put an arm around my shoulders, and I shivered from the contact.

  “You gonna tuck me in, too?” I asked.

  “Maybe another night.” We walked up the steps and I fumbled for my keys. He took them from me and opened the door.

  I wanted to kiss him good night. I wanted to touch my skin to his and feel what that was like. But instead I said, “Will you call me tomorrow with whatever you find out?”

  He smiled. “It’s already tomorrow, bud. I’ll call you later. Get some sleep.” He gave me a pat on the butt that moved me a step further inside, and turned away.

  I must have made it to the bed under my own power, because that’s where I was a couple hours later when I woke up. My mouth was dry and my head was pounding, but my bladder was full. It was almost dawn and after I finished in the bathroom I couldn’t go back to sleep. I kept remembering the fire, worrying about the people I knew who had been inside, thinking about how much I had to figure out.