Mahu Fire (16 page)

THIEVES AND MONEYLENDERS

When I woke up Sunday morning I was feeling pretty rocky. My head hurt, and the healing burns on my back itched, and I felt profoundly lonely. I wanted to see Mike Riccardi again, even if only to discover that we’d had a great one-night stand that wasn’t going anywhere. I just wanted to know. I was also sorry I had been so strong with him the night before—I should have just arranged to meet him after my club-hopping with Gunter was over. If he’d have agreed.

I couldn’t concentrate on the morning
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, and I couldn’t go surfing. I’d gone through all the paperwork at the office the day before, so I had no reason to go there, and it was still too early to go the hospital. I prowled around my studio apartment killing time until I was to meet Kitty for church, throwing away junk mail, washing the dishes in the sink, even making my bed.

When I reached the Church of Adam and Eve, I realized that my father owned the strip shopping center on Waialae Avenue where it was located, sandwiched among a dry cleaner, video rental store, real estate agency, and a funky beauty salon called Puerto Peinado, its interior walls painted with lavish tropical murals. The salon was owned by Robertico Robles, a gay man who was my sister-in-law Tatiana’s best friend, and I knew my father cut him a deal on the rent. I wondered if Liliha had called in the same favor for the church.

I met Kitty outside the storefront chapel. She’d swapped her typical college-kid T-shirt and sweats for a blue and white sundress and matching sandals. A gold cross on a chain hung around her neck.

“You ready for this?” I asked. “Because you can back out if you want. No problem.”

“I’m in.” She smiled demurely. “Aren’t you going to open the door for me, honey?”

The room was simple, twenty rows of folding chairs facing a pair of lecterns at the far end. Inside, about fifty people milled around talking to each other or sat, reading their Bibles. It was a lot less impressive than the mass gathering I’d attended a month before, but I figured this was the core congregation.

I looked nervously around for Liliha and Lui, but didn’t see them. I’d worn my clear owl-rimmed glasses, a short-sleeved striped shirt and chinos. Usually when I dressed for an undercover operation I aimed to look like a moke, a Hawaiian criminal. I had a false gold tooth, torn t-shirts and tattered shorts. I had always been able to pass; I hoped I could do the same at the church.

Behind the lecterns were a couple of folding screens; I assumed that the ministers used that area to prepare before the service. Both side walls held a collection of posters made by children, with a variety of sayings on them. Some held Bible verses, while others quoted phrases like “The love between a man and a woman is the most sacred thing on Earth.”

We went inside and slipped into seats next to a mother, father and two small children. I sat to Kitty’s right. The mother sat next to Kitty, with the little girl’s head resting on her lap, blonde hair splayed against the sunburst pattern of the woman’s skirt. Kitty smiled at them.

“I’m Fran,” the woman said. “I’d shake hands but I’m afraid to wake up Caitlin.”

Kitty introduced herself. We’d decided to use our real names; it would be easier, and frankly, every fourth or fifth guy in Hawai’i is named Kimo. Kitty started talking and giggling with Fran in low whispers until the minister and his wife came out from behind the screens and the room hushed. “Welcome, friends,” the minister said. We stood so he could lead us in an opening hymn.

That’s when I recognized him. The sweaty guy. The same round face and dark hair, the same chunky build.

But could I be sure? I hadn’t gotten that good a look at him at the party. Maybe I had just looked at that flyer too many times. Then I looked at his wife, and she looked familiar, too, though in a more generic way. She was slim, dark-haired like her husband, with the attenuated look of a career woman who goes to work in running shoes, swapping them for heels in the elevator.

But there hadn’t been a woman with the guy at the party. How could I have seen her?

The minister said, “And now a prayer for all our misguided brethren. For the criminals, and thieves, the moneylenders and alcoholics, the homosexuals and their perverted ilk. For all of these, Lord, we pray that you will shine your light to show them the true path. And continue to shine your light upon us, Lord, that we may see your path as well, and follow it to our everlasting reward.”

It was a little creepy, the way he linked homosexuals to thieves and moneylenders. I wondered if there were any bankers in the audience, and if they felt as uncomfortable as I did. “Today my wife is going to read to us from Genesis,” the minister continued.

She stepped forward to her own lectern. She wore a white blouse buttoned up to the neck and a straight, black skirt. I guessed her view of religion didn’t allow bright colors.

“We begin with Chapter 19, verse 24. ‘Then the Lord caused to rain upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; and He overthrew those cities, and all the Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.’”

I looked at the paper program we’d found on the seats. The couple at the front were only lay ministers; they were clear about that. Their names were Jeff and Sheila White.

Then it clicked. The Whites lived next door to Jerry Bosk and Vic Ramos, and I’d interviewed them when I canvassed their Makiki neighborhood after the murder of Hiroshi Mura.

I felt better. I hadn’t recognized the minister from the sketch; I’d recognized him from the canvassing I’d done.

Sheila White closed her Bible and looked out at the audience. “We have had our own Sodom and Gomorrah here in Honolulu. On Wednesday night, the Lord rained down his fire and brimstone upon a group of sinners even here in our own home town.” My mind, which had been wandering, snapped to attention. She went on to describe how those sinners who had challenged God’s word on marriage had been punished, how just as in Genesis the flames had devoured the habitation of this terrible group.

I looked at her appraisingly. She was deadly earnest, no trace of irony in her voice as she compared the destruction of biblical cities with the bombing of an innocent office building. She decried the death of Vice Mayor Wilson Shira, a true friend of Christ, who had been martyred in his defense of the sacred institution of marriage.

I knew for a fact that Shira’s family were devout Buddhists. I wondered how they would appreciate his Christian martyrdom.

“But friends, the battle is not over yet,” Sheila White continued. “There are still people here in our own community who would pervert the sacrament of marriage. They must be stopped, or God will not stop with Sodom and Gomorrah. Genesis, Chapter 6, Verse 5: ‘And the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart. And the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the earth.’”

She closed the Bible in front of her. “Now we all remember what happened after that. And we live here on an island, so we know how terrible the might of the wind and the ocean can be when the Lord harnesses them in his power. It is a matter of self-preservation, after all. If we do not blot out these sinners, but leave the task to God, who knows what revenge he will take upon us?”

Who knows, indeed, I thought. The service dragged on for a while, and then finally we all stood and bowed our heads for the final benediction. “Christ our Lord, please shine your blessings on these, your children and your soldiers,” Jeff White intoned. “Help us struggle in your name for what is right and good and Christian in the world, and fight against evil and perversion with clean hearts and strong bodies.”

Everyone joined hands and sang “Onward Christian Soldiers, Marching As To War.”

After the service, Kitty and I stood out in the parking lot talking with the couple who’d sat next to us, Fran and Eli Harding, and their two little kids. Eli had the same earnest bland good looks as his wife—curly dark blond hair, a soul patch on his chin, hipster sideburns.

Traffic was zooming by on Waialae Avenue, a couple of customers going into Robertico Robles’ hair salon. I didn’t like being exposed out there; suppose Tatiana dropped by to gossip with her buddy Tico and spotted me? What if Liliha stopped by to chat with Sheila White?

The air was heavy with auto exhaust and the faint, lingering smell of smoke, not a cloud in the bright blue sky. There had been another arson the day before, a wildfire in Waipio, and I wondered if Mike had been out there to investigate it. I was just thinking of him when Eli said, “It isn’t normal. It isn’t what God wanted when he created marriage.”

I realized that the conversation had turned to gay marriage. “They’re jealous of us, you know,” Fran said to Kitty, holding on to Caitlin, who was only four, as she struggled to run away and play with her brother and some of the other kids. “What Eli and I have, what you and Kimo have. Marriage. A place in the world. The sense we’re good, God-fearing, normal people.”

“We aren’t married,” Kitty said, holding up her ringless left hand. “But you never know what God’s plan is for you until he reveals it.”

She smiled at me, and I reached over and squeezed her hand.

“We had to pull Cole and Caitlin out of the public school,” Fran said. “They had this teacher there that was a homosexual, and he was teaching them all this terrible stuff about deviants. I went in and complained, and the principal made it seem like I was the crazy one!”

“And don’t forget the little girl with the two mommies,” Eli said. As he raised his arm to wave goodbye to someone, the right sleeve of his shirt slid up a bit to reveal the bottom of a tattooed cross on his bicep.

Fran nodded. “Cole came home from school one day and said that this one little girl in the class had two mommies. We thought, well, all right, the parents are divorced and she has a mommy and a step-mommy. But no! It turns out there are these two lesbians and she calls them both Mommy! Do you believe that?”

Neither Kitty nor I knew what to say, so we just smiled. “So of course we couldn’t keep Cole and Caitlin there,” Eli said. “Fran got a home school course through a church on the mainland, and we use that now.”

We chatted for a few more minutes, and then the Hardings left. Kitty and I walked down along the storefronts, trying to put as much distance between us and any stray members of the church who might be around to overhear. “What did you think?” Kitty asked.

“I don’t like the rhetoric,” I said. “And the reference to the bombing is pretty suspicious.”

“What can you do? Can you get a search warrant for the church? Maybe they’ve been making bombs out in the back.”

“Not so fast,” I said. “You need to assemble evidence before you can ask a judge for a warrant.” I told her that I thought Jeff White looked a lot like the sweaty guy who’d been seen near the bathroom at the Marriage Project before the bomb went off. “But we don’t even know that the sweaty guy is the bomber,” I said. “He could have just been some guy who happens to look a lot like Jeff White, who got a bad shrimp from the caterers and got sick.”

“It’s so frustrating,” Kitty said. “I just know there’s something wrong about that church. But how do you prove it?”

“Welcome to police work.”

I thought about that on the drive back to Waikiki. Under normal circumstances, I’d grab my board and head out to the water. Surfing freed my subconscious mind to find just those connections that might allow us to pin something on the Whites and the Church of Adam and Eve.

But my back was still red and sore, so I knew I couldn’t expose myself to salt water. I decided to get on my bike and ride instead.

I headed down Kalakaua Avenue, through Kapiolani Park. For a while the street was roofed over by tall trees, like riding through a grotto, almost religious in its way, and I realized how much more spiritual nourishment I got from nature than from organized religion. Then I came out along the base of Diamond Head itself, riding along the ocean, past the lighthouse and the Kuilei Cliffs.

I tried to focus on what I knew for sure. Jeff and Sheila White were the lay ministers in charge of the Church of Adam and Eve. They lived in Makiki, next door to a gay couple. They preached against gay marriage, while their neighbors were strong proponents of the issue. That was an incendiary situation.

A search warrant for their home and church might turn up evidence. But I needed something more than speculation to get such a warrant. I decided to put Harry on their trail, see what he could dig up on the Whites. They were malihinis, newcomers to the islands, and often our newest residents bring with them the baggage of their mainland years. If either Jeff or Sheila White had a criminal record, especially using incendiary devices, I could use that as a toehold.

As I came out to the coastal road, there was a single cloud over Rabbit Island, but no real hope for rain to break our drought and extinguish the wildfires. The hard-core surfers were out beyond Diamond Head, of course, as I probably would have been if my back hadn’t prevented it. I rode past the motley assortment of cars parked along the road, waving to a couple of surfers I recognized changing out of rash guards.

I kept going back to my conversation with Terri. What would motivate someone to preach so strongly against an issue like gay marriage? What would motivate someone to protest, to bomb a party? I knew how tough it was to live in the closet—yet despite all my angst I’d never chosen to take out my frustration on anyone else. I’d beaten myself up instead.