Mahu (5 page)

“I’ve felt better.”

When we turned back, they were lifting prints from his skin. “Not much luck,” Doc said. “We might get a good one from his hand. And there’s a nice clean one up by his neck. Somebody taking his pulse, probably.”

Marilyn turned the lights back on. Something was bothering me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I chalked it up to my general discomfort level. While Doc and Marilyn made the Y-incision down the guy’s body, Akoni and I stepped back. I had seen this before and it wasn’t pretty. Since the guy had died of a head trauma, I didn’t think there was much his insides could tell us, and I didn’t really want to lose my saimin if I could help it. Akoni was already looking pretty pale.

Doc cut the poor guy open and removed his internal organs, weighing them and remarking on them. “Too much fatty foods,” he said at one point. “That can kill you.”

Akoni and I looked at each other. I waited until the sound of the saw had stopped before I turned back. That’s always the worst part to me, cutting the top of the head off and removing the brain. “You want to see the blood vessels?” Doc asked.

“We’ll take your word for it, Doc,” I said.

“Death definitely occurred as a result of blunt trauma to the head. Almost instantaneous. Probably no more than an hour before he was found. Maybe even less.”

Doc promised to fax over a final report within twenty-four hours. We collected our evidence and went down to the car.

“Well, I can’t say we know much more than we knew when we went in there,” I said. “He confirmed what we thought, though.”

“That still doesn’t give us much of a place to start,” Akoni said.

“Well, we’ve got a guy with tong connections, and he was killed outside a gay bar. Tongs own any of those bars, you know?”

Akoni shook his head. “No clue.” I handed the evidence bag to him so I could fish out my keys, and the zipper lock popped open, the guy’s gold neck chain spilling out. Akoni reached for it. “Hey, careful, we don’t want your fingerprints on it, too,” I said.

Then it hit me. Fingerprints. There was a clean print on the guy’s neck, where somebody had tried to take his pulse. Suddenly it felt like I hadn’t eaten in days, a big hollow place in my stomach. I knew whose fingerprint it was. Mine.

INCIDENT AT THE MAKAI MARKET

We parked Akoni’s car and walked back toward the station. On the way, we passed the Makai Market, the food court. The time I had been avoiding couldn’t be put off any more. I knew I needed to tell Akoni everything. He deserved it; after all, it was his investigation too. “You want a coffee?” I asked. “I could use one.”

I chose a table for us at the edge of the traffic, private enough so no one would overhear us. The food court
was
shaped like an L, with one end open to the covered parking lot. Little birds fl
ew
in, swoop
ed
around the rafters, and peck
ed
for crumbs on the tile floor. Like in much of Hawai‘i, there
was
a strong contrast between light and shadow—it’s bright in the area under the skylight, but dark in the corners. I wanted to be in the dark.

We sat down with our coffees. Akoni put cream and sugar in his. I just stirred mine for a while until it cooled off. With Akoni, it had always been an us versus them thing, and we were the good guys, the mainstream, the keepers of the peace and the representatives of the population at large. I was about to cross over from us to them, and I wasn’t sure how he was going to take it.

“I did something bad, Akoni,” I said. “I need you to stand by me, all right? But if you can’t, then tell me. Just tell me straight out so I know what I have to do.”

Akoni looked at me. “You’re my partner, man, my friend. What did you do?”

“I checked the guy for a pulse. It’s my fingerprint they’re going to find on his neck. They’re going to run the prints through the computer, and that one is going to match mine, and everybody is going to wonder how the hell my fingerprint got on a corpse I didn’t see until the autopsy.”

Akoni put his coffee cup down. “Start at the beginning of the story, Kimo,” he said. “Tell me what you did.”

I sat there for a minute, my coffee cooling in my hands, trying to decide how much I had to tell. I had an urge to go back to the beginning, to tell him about the first time I had sexual thoughts about another guy. Through all the years of denying it, trying to be a big stud with a string of girlfriends. How else could he understand how I’d ended up at the Rod and Reel Club that night, how I’d stumbled out into the alley and seen some guy drag a dead body to the street. How I’d run away, and how much that act shamed me.

“Last night I stayed at the bar until about one,” I said. “Alvy was still there, and maybe a couple of the guys from the fifth squad. But I didn’t go home.” I took a deep breath. “I went to the Rod and Reel.”

Akoni was looking at me. A couple of sparrows pecked around under the table next to us, and in the background I could hear upbeat jazzy background music that was directly at odds with how I felt. “I had a couple of beers there and a guy tried to pick me up. I walked outside. I was just heading toward the alley when I saw this guy dragging something toward the street. It was dark, so I didn’t see what it was, and I didn’t think anything of it. Then he ran back up the alley, jumped into a black Cherokee and peeled out. I didn’t even see if he was alone or if there was someone else driving.”

I tried to pick up my coffee cup but my hand was shaking. “I kept walking down the street, and I saw that what the guy had been dragging was a man’s body. I leaned down and took his pulse. He was dead. I started looking for a phone, and I had to go two blocks down on Kuhio to find one. I called it in to 911 but I hung up when they asked who I was.” I lowered my head and looked down at the table. “Then I went home.”

“Jesus, Kimo.”

I waited for him to say something else. He just said, “Jesus,” again and shook his head.

“You goddamned motherfucker!” There was a loud thud immediately after that, and both of us turned toward
the
sound, which caused a momentary stop to the bustle of the Makai Market. A young guy with long, scraggly blond hair and a brownish blond goatee was screaming at another loser across an overturned table from him. “Why the fuck’d you do that, man?” the blond guy screamed again. “Why’d you fucking do that?”

“She was fucking there, man,” the other loser said. He was about the same build, drug-thin and disheveled. Akoni and I both looked around for security, but like a pay phone when you’ve just gotten an emergency beep, they were nowhere in sight. “She fucking wanted it, anyway.”

The two guys started pushing and shoving each other, and the crowd backed away, giving them a clear circle. I looked at Akoni and he looked at me, and we both stood up.

He took the blond and I took his friend, and we strong-armed them out of the Market in different directions. I talked low and calm to my loser as I walked him to the parking lot, though my heart was racing. “You just gotta take it outside, man,” I said. “You got a beef with your buddy, you just take it outside, you work out your differences, and nobody gets hurt, all right?”

“I knew she was his girlfriend, but, fuck shit, man, a stiff prick has no conscience, right?”

“All depends on your definition of friendship,” I said. I released his arms when we got to the parking lot. Because of the configuration of the mall, I knew Akoni and his friend were around the corner, out of harm’s way for now. I watched the guy stumble down to the bus stop, and it seemed the danger had gone out of him.

I met Akoni back at the table where we’d been sitting. A couple of cleaners had materialized from the shadows and righted the chairs and tables, and the conversational buzz had returned. We sat back down.

“Now let’s get back to you,” Akoni said. “What the hell were you doing at the Rod and Reel Club at two o’clock in the morning?” He crumpled his coffee cup and I could see he was mad. I knew him inside and out. He’d wanted to punch the blond guy, but he hadn’t, and his anger had to go somewhere. It was all mixed up with me, the blond guy and his friend, and having to get up so early in the morning for a murder case. “Were you tailing somebody again? We’ve been through this before, Kimo, the Allen case. I told you I can’t have a partner who goes off on his own, tailing people and doing stuff without telling me…”

“I wasn’t tailing anybody, Akoni.”

He stopped talking. It took him a minute, then he said, “Then tell me what the hell you were doing at a gay bar at two a.m., drinking beers and talking to a guy who tried to pick you up.”

“I didn’t talk to him,” I said. “He stuck his tongue in my ear and I walked away.”

“He stuck his…” Akoni was almost speechless, stuttering. “He stuck his tongue in your ear and you walked away. Jesus Christ, why didn’t you clock the guy!”

“I guess he was just trying to be friendly.”

Akoni put his left hand over his face and shook his head. When he put his hand down his face was dead serious. “Brah, you in a heap of trouble. And I don’t know what to do. Man, I thought I knew you. But I can see I don’t know dick about you.”

I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh. “It’s a figure of speech, man,” Akoni said. “Jesus, Kimo, you got to take this seriously.”

“Akoni, if I wasn’t laughing, I’d be crying. I mean it, man. You have no idea how broken up about this I’ve been. I mean, leaving that guy in the alley, it was the hardest thing I ever did. I thought I could walk away, I wouldn’t have to admit what I’d been doing.” My throat suddenly got dry but I knew I had to keep going. “I thought I’d never have to sit here and tell you I’m gay.”

“Oh, man. What do you got to be gay for? You were always such a stud, Kimo.”

“I was trying to avoid the truth. But now my fingerprint’s on that dead guy’s neck and I’ve got to explain why.”

There was a moment when the noise in the Makai Market died away and I could hear the birds chirping. In the background I heard a blender making some frothy drink, the sizzle of meat on a grill. The sun must have come out from behind a cloud, because suddenly the center of the food court was flooded with a much brighter light. I didn’t exactly feel good, but there was a weight off my chest, something that had been keeping me from breathing. And that was okay.

“You know you could get fried for this,” Akoni said after a while. “Being gay is one thing. But you witnessed a homicide and you walked away.” He shook his head. “That’s a hard rap to walk out of.”

“I didn’t witness a homicide.” Two elderly Chinese women came over and sat down at the table next to us, and I lowered my voice. “I saw a guy drag something down the alley, and it wasn’t until the Cherokee was gone that I realized that something was a body. I checked the guy’s pulse, and when I couldn’t get one I called for help. And I walked away. I know I did wrong. But I didn’t do anything an ordinary citizen wouldn’t have. Hell, I did more than your average Joe.”

“You’re a cop, Kimo. You have a different standard to live up to.”

I didn’t know what to say. He was right. The two women next to us began gossiping in Chinese, their voices high and chattery. I think life is like some kind of ongoing movie. Sometimes you play a minor character, sitting back, commenting on the action around you. Then sometimes, you have to step forward, take the starring role. This was one of those times. I was moving out of the background, up to center stage.

We sat there for a while, not talking. Finally Akoni said, “When we get back to the station, you run the guy’s prints and the print Doc pulled off his neck through the computer. I don’t want to know about it.”

“I can’t put you in that position.”

“What position?” Akoni said. “What position is that? We don’t do everything together. You question some people, I question some people. You fill out some reports, I fill out others. We work together. You run those prints through. Who knows, maybe that one from the neck is smudged. You never know with prints.”

“I can’t wreck evidence. That would make it even worse.”

“You stupid?” he asked. “Did I say you should smudge the print? No. Did I say you should destroy evidence or lie about anything? No. Put it in your goddamn report. The fingerprint on the victim’s neck matches the index finger of Detective Kanapa‘aka. If that’s the finger you used. Leave it there. Who’s going to challenge it? You’re the detective on the case. End of story.”

“I had to tell you,” I said.

He looked at me. “No, you didn’t.” Then he stood up. “Come on, let’s get back to the station.”

HAPPY HOURS

The print from the guy’s throat was a clear match. Detective Kimo Kanapa‘aka, Waikīkī Station. More important, though, was the match to the dead guy’s prints. We now had a name to go with our stiff: Thomas Pang. He had a couple of minor arrests in the past, nothing for the last few years. He was suspected of tong activity, but nothing was ever proven.

I dutifully made notes for the case file, then turned back to the computer and punched in a few keys. After a minute, a list began scrolling down the screen.

Tommy Pang had a long record, from possession of illegal weapons to armed robbery. It was clear he had been a low-level jack of all trades for one of the tongs, the kind of guy who takes the rap for whatever goes down. But he had served remarkably little jail time given all his time in court. He’d often been acquitted, or charges had been dropped, and the few times he’d actually been convicted he had paid fines or served at most a few months behind bars.

I pulled up Tommy Pang’s address, then looked at the clock. It was just after three. “You want to take a ride up to Maunalani Heights with me, break the news to the widow?”

Akoni shrugged. “Can’t let you out of my sight,” he said. “Only this time, you drive.”

Tommy Pang had lived pretty nicely, on a ridge overlooking Diamond Head, Black Point, and the Pacific Ocean. We stopped at a wrought-iron fence, and I identified myself through a speaker phone. The gate buzzed and we drove up a curving driveway to a sprawling one-story house, part ranch and part Chinese pagoda, with a blue tile roof curved up at the ends.