Mahu Fire (22 page)

“Yeah. You gotta tell me the good places to eat. I got heartburn from yesterday like you wouldn’t believe.”

“I’d believe it. Nobody told me where to eat, the first couple weeks I was here. Listen, brah, I gotta go. I’m in the middle of a big case. But we’ll talk.”

I stared at the phone after I hung up. It took me a while to get back to work; I kept going back to the idea that Uncle Chin had died peacefully. Then why had Jimmy run away?

Now all I had to do, while finding the bomber and whoever shot Charlie Stahl, was find Jimmy Ah Wong and let him know he was off the hook.

HARMLESS MISCHIEF

I tried to let my mind relax, see what kind of connection I was missing, but all I kept coming back to was the name Ed Baines had given us. I raised Mike on his cell, out in the field ruling out arson at a house fire in Mo’ili’ili. “I want to go over and talk to our buddy Jeff White. You want to come with?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.” I gave him the address, and he agreed to meet me there.

A half hour later, I pulled up at the shopping center on Wai’alae Avenue and parked in front of Puerto Peinado, the hair salon owned by Tatiana’s friend Tico, where Mike was leaning against the wall in a square of shade. The air was still, not a hint of a breeze to carry the exhaust fumes and traffic noise up to the mountains or out over the ocean. It was incredibly hot and I understood why Mike was waiting in the shade. “You realize this salon is run by a known homosexual,” I said.

“You know him?”

“Not in the biblical sense.” I explained about his friendship with Tatiana.

“Like your friendship with Terri,” he said.

“Gotta have a gal pal,” I said. “Every gay man needs one.”

We walked up to the door of the church and peered inside. It looked pretty much as I remembered from Sunday, though there was only one person inside, a man in a short-sleeved shirt sitting at a table writing something.

When we opened the door, he looked up. It was the minister himself, Jeff White, though I still wasn’t sure if he was also the sweaty guy I’d seen at the party.

“Welcome,” White said. “Are you interested in the church?”

We introduced ourselves and showed our credentials, and I could see the man become wary. Mike hung back and let me take the lead. “Mr. White, we’re here because your name has come up in an investigation,” I said, “and we’d like to give you the opportunity to set the record straight. Tell us your side of the story.”

“What is it you want to know?”

“Are you familiar with a farm up in the highlands called Pupukea Plantation?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Don’t you run worship services up there occasionally?”

White looked confused. “Oh, that place,” he said. “I get mixed up with these Hawaiian names. Everything sounds so similar. Yes, we’ve had services up there several times.”

“In your visits out there, have you ever spoken with an individual named Ed Baines?”

“I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“You’re sure, are you?”

White nodded.

“Because, see, the thing is, he says he knows you. He says you hired him to put some horse manure into paper bags and then throw it all over the sidewalk in front of an office building downtown.”

I watched as White’s shoulders relaxed. “Oh, that. A little harmless mischief. I wouldn’t exactly say I hired him. He’s a strong supporter of our church and our causes, you know, and we were talking about things that people do now and then. I didn’t think he was actually going to do it.”

I blew a little air out through my lips in a derogatory way. “Not even when you offered him a thousand dollars? How about when you paid him the money, Mr. White? Did you think he actually did it then? Or do you just spread that kind of money around without thinking?”

“You’re a homosexual, aren’t you, detective? I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

“Did the money you gave him come from the Sandwich Islands Trust?” I asked. “Because if it did you’re not getting any more money from them.”

Beads of sweat appeared on White’s forehead. “I’m not saying anything further. I want a lawyer present.”

“That’s your call.” I pulled the card out of my wallet and read him his rights. “Do you understand these rights that I have explained to you?”

“I understand them.”

“Good.” I stood up. “Then we won’t take any more of your time right now, but I suggest you engage the services of an attorney, if you so desire. We’ll be back, with more questions.”

“Why the hell are you investigating this nonsense?” he asked. “The city pays you top dollar, I’m sure, what with all your press exposure. All that just to chase around a little fag-bashing incident?”

“We hardly consider homicide a little fag-bashing incident.” I noticed his face went several shades paler. “Especially since to my knowledge the victim was an avowed heterosexual.”

“Victim? What victim?”

“Vice Mayor Wilson Shira.” I paused to let the name sink in. “Come on, Mr. White, you gotta keep up with the news. A couple hours after Ed Baines threw that horseshit, the building blew up and Wilson Shira turned into a crispy critter.”

“You don’t think…”

“The city doesn’t pay me to think. They pay me to investigate. And when I find you paid one guy to throw some horseshit at the place, it’s not a big leap to consider you might have paid somebody else to plant a bomb there.” I looked down at him, still sitting at his desk. “Or planted it yourself.”

Mike and I left White to stew over those questions. We walked down the shopping center sidewalk to the news stand and picked up a copy of the
Advertiser
, then went into the Chinese restaurant at the far end to grab some lunch and check for articles on the case. An editorial columnist had written about public officials who placed themselves in personal danger, and there was an article on Charlie Stahl’s life and legacy. He had contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years to liberal causes, and there were quotes from various civic leaders praising him. I wondered if they knew he was, as Gunter had called him, a notorious leather queen. Would that have made a difference in how they treated him? Probably not, as long as he was rich.

“What do you know about this minister?” Mike asked.

I told him what Harry had discovered, that the woman he was representing as his wife was actually his sister. “And they think we’re kinky,” he said.

“I talked to her when I was canvassing in Makiki.” And then it hit me, so much that my mouth dropped open and Mike must have thought I was having a fit or something.

“Kimo? You okay?”

“They live in Makiki,” I said.

“Yes. Lots of people do.”

“Down the street from the homeless man who was killed the day I first saw you at headquarters.”

“Yes, you said you met them when you were canvassing.”

“And did I tell you about the ballistics match?”

He shook his head. “The same gun was used on the homeless man, the chicken, and Charlie Stahl.”

“Whoa.”

“Exactly. This is what I can use to tie together the two cases.”

“But how can you tie them to the Whites without a smoking gun, to coin a phrase?”

I frowned. I knew I’d need something concrete to get a judge to sign a warrant. I could tie the two murders together, and I could tie Charlie Stahl’s death to the bombing at the Marriage Project offices, and I could identify the Whites and their church as opponents of gay marriage.

But the only concrete evidence was Ed Baines’s fingerprint on the paper bag, and his statement that Jeff White had hired him to throw the shit bombs. And that didn’t tie to anything else, except in a circumstantial way.

“This case is making me crazy,” I said. “I know that the pieces fit together but I just need one more to make the puzzle show enough to get the warrant.”

We stood up to go, and I saw an elderly man walking by with a cane, a stout younger man, probably a son, helping him. “Shit. I ought to call my house. See how my dad is.” I pulled out my cell phone and dialed as Mike and I walked to my truck.

My mother answered. She said everything was fine, and wanted to make sure that I would be at Uncle Chin’s wake the next day.

“I will be.”

“Did you find anything more about that boy?” she asked. “Aunt Mei-Mei keeps asking about him. The boy who was staying there.”

“No. A friend and I went out last night, but we didn’t see him. I’ll keep looking.”

“You think he had anything to do with your uncle’s death?” Mike asked when I’d hung up. We stopped next to my truck, and I could see his, the one with the flames painted down the side, a few feet away.

I told him about my call from Akoni. “It should make everybody feel better, except I know Aunt Mei-Mei is just gonna worry more about Jimmy, knowing he’s innocent and yet he still felt like he had to run away.”

SEARCH WARRANT

Mike went off write up his conclusions about the home fire in Mo’ili’ili, and I went back to the station. By the end of my shift, I still hadn’t come up with that one piece of evidence that would tie the Whites to the bombing or the shootings.

I went in to Lieutenant Sampson’s office and told him everything I knew. The ATF and FBI hadn’t come up with anything more out of their investigation of the bombing wreckage, and Harry was still working on converting the state license plate database into a format that he could sort. After all the research I’d looked through, the only religious group that made me suspicious was the Church of Adam and Eve, but I didn’t have anything I could take to a judge.

“You have a partial plate, right?” Sampson asked. “And you think that the Whites are involved. Have you checked their DMV records?”

“The network is down right now,” I said. “As soon as it comes up, I’ll check.”

“How about a lineup? If one of your witnesses can place this White guy at the Marriage Project office, you could get a warrant based on that.”

“Funny,” I said. “Usually we say ‘haole’ when we mean white guy.”

Sampson wasn’t laughing.

“A lineup is a good idea,” I said. “White said he was going to hire an attorney, so it may take a day or two to organize. I’ll get things started.” I began to wonder where I could round up a group of haole guys who looked like Jeff White, and remembered Eli Harding. “Did you talk to Kitty about the picnic?”

“She’s not answering her cell phone,” he said. “She tell you what time this picnic was?”

I shook my head. “Just that it was in the afternoon.”

“If I have to, I’ll drive up to her apartment tomorrow morning and pick her up,” he said.

Back at my desk, Lui called me looking for a news hook and I had to admit I didn’t have anything. “But you can’t run that,” I said.

“It’s not exactly news, is it? The police have no suspects and no new leads. How about the murder on Sunday? You think that’s related?”

I debated telling my brother about the ballistics match. I’d trust him with my life, and I had in the past. But he did run a news operation. “It’s obvious to me that Stahl’s murder is connected to the bombing at the Marriage Project. But I don’t have any evidence that links the two crimes other than the fact that Stahl was a supporter. He was at the party the night of the bombing, and he was killed as they were announcing he was funding the Project to reopen. That’s all I’ve got.”

“We’ve been hearing stories about some unorthodox sexual activities. You think there’s any connection?”

My first reaction was to scoff, but then I reconsidered. “I hate to malign a dead guy, Lui, but I guess it’s something we have to consider. The kind of stuff he was into, there’s usually a mutual trust between the two parties, safe words and so on.”

“Safe words?” he interrupted. “What’s that?”

“From what I’ve heard, and you’re my brother so I feel I have to tell you I don’t know any of this from first-hand experience, when you do anything with somebody else that involves pain or bondage or anything, you have these safe words. That way the person getting tied up can say, no, you’re hurting me, ouch, and so on, which I guess adds to the fun somehow.”

“And the safe words?”

“Well, when things go too far, the person just has to say, pickle, or sandwich, or whatever, and then things are supposed to stop. It’s possible that something Stahl was doing got out of hand, and somebody wanted to take revenge on him, but that’s a real long shot, considering the circumstances.”

“It may be a long shot, but as a tease it’ll play on the news. Thanks, brah. I’ll get a reporter onto it.”

“Let me know if you find anything out.” When I hung up I felt like shit. I didn’t want to drag Charlie Stahl’s personal life through the gutter. He’d seemed like a nice enough guy, and he had that record of good works and charitable donations. But it was possible I was going on the wrong track, linking his shooting to the bombing, and Lui might find something out that could move the case forward.

Thinking about that, I wondered if somebody who lived around Hiroshi Mura might have had sex with Charlie Stahl. Maybe Mura saw them. I had heard he was always snooping around the neighborhood. It was a long shot, but I called Harry and suggested he try and correlate the partial license plate to Makiki. He said he’d try.

I met up with Mike that night for dinner, and a long walk along the beach. I got such a positive charge from being with him—seeing his handsome face, touching the dark curl of his hair, feeling his body heat. We talked about the case, sat next to each other and stared at the gibbous moon, and kissed in the dark behind the gate of the zoo. The air smelled of animal droppings, sea salt, and the sewage pipe that runs out into the Pacific, but I didn’t care.

I held onto Mike, heard the palm fronds rustle in the light breeze, and looked out at the crescent of lights along Diamond Head Road. I felt like I had a tenuous grasp on happiness.

We cruised Waikiki and Ala Moana Beach Park once again, looking for Jimmy, without success, ending up back at the rest room where we’d seen Frankie and Lolo.

“I’ve got to take a leak,” Mike said.

“I’ll come with you.”

There was something sexy and dangerous about standing there next to Mike at the urinals, seeing the dick that I had sucked that morning poking its way out of his pants. I’ve never been one for water sports, but I definitely got an erotic charge out of being there next to him in a public place, our dicks out. He was on my left, so I reached my left arm around his shoulders and brought his head to mine so we could kiss.

We finished pissing, and I put my right hand on his dick, which was stiffening, as mine was. We kissed, and began stroking each other.

“You know this is crazy,” I said, between kisses. “Anybody could walk in here and catch us.”

“One of those kids you know,” Mike said, nuzzling my ear. “Or a cop.”

“We could end up in jail.”

“You and me in a cell together,” Mike said.

My pulse rate was accelerating and I was having trouble breathing. There was a single stall, handicap size, next to us, and I dragged Mike into it. Well, I didn’t exactly have to drag him; he was a willing accomplice. In that relative privacy, we kept on kissing and rubbing against each other.

We heard two male voices, giggling in Japanese. My mother’s father was Japanese, and I learned a few words to be able to talk to him, but I couldn’t understand much of what the guys were saying to each other. They knew we were there, though, and it didn’t seem to bother them. I pressed against Mike to let him know that it was okay, and he pushed back.

The guys outside the stall were grooving on us; I could hear them kissing and their bodies rubbing against each other just as we were doing.

Mike whispered in my ear, “You are a very bad boy.”

“You’re no better,” I whispered back. “But if we’re going to do any more than this, we ought to get a room, you know.”

The door to the restroom slammed as the two Japanese guys exited. Mike and I were alone again, and kissed once more before we opened the stall door, then walked back out into the cool night.

   

The phone woke us both. I looked at the clock, bleary-eyed. It was only six-thirty. “I did it, brah,” Harry crowed. “I came up with a match I think you’re gonna find very interesting.”

“Harry. You know what time it is?”

“Yeah, it’s six-thirty. You’re lucky I didn’t call you at four, when I figured this out. I thought by now you’d be up and ready to surf.”

I yawned. “Oh, well. Tell me what you found.”

“There’s black Toyota Camry, license plate HXM 691, registered to a Jeffrey White in Makiki. That’s your minister, right? He lives down the street from where you found the old man, and around the corner from the address where the rooster got shot. And your buddy Mike saw the guy who shot Charlie Stahl get into a car that matches this plate.”

“Thanks, brah. You’re a winner. I’ll talk to you later.”

I rolled over and looked at Mike. “We’ve finally got enough to connect the Whites to the bombings and the shootings.”

It took us only about twenty minutes to get pulled together. While we drove down to police headquarters, I remembered Frank Sit mentioning the couple in a dark sedan the night of the bombing. I was sure that was the Whites.

The streets were strangely quiet, and Mike helped me write my search warrant. By nine o’clock we had it ready to go.

Judge Yamanaka was a few blocks away, at the Criminal Courts building, and though on a slower day we might have walked over to deliver the warrant, we drove instead. “Try to get us there in one piece, okay?” Mike asked, as I swerved around slow moving trucks and used the flashing light on my dash.

“Hey, I took the defensive driving course at the Academy.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.”

Judge Yamanaka insisted that I tell him everything that had led me to my conclusions. “We tracked the partial license plate that Fire Inspector Riccardi saw on the gunman’s escape vehicle to this address,” I said. “And we matched the ballistics on both homicides. That gives us probable cause to search the residence and the vehicle, as well as the other vehicle registered at the same address.”

“You’re also looking for incendiary materials?” the judge asked.

Mike spoke up. “We believe that the homicide of Mr. Stahl is linked to the bombing that killed Vice Mayor Shira. Because of Mr. Stahl’s connection to the Hawai’i Marriage Project and the context of his murder.”

“Somebody really doesn’t like the Project,” I said. “It’s our hypothesis that Mr. Stahl was killed in an effort to keep the Project from reopening.”

“That’s a pretty big leap, Detective,” the judge said. “And how do you connect Mr. Stahl’s murder to Mr. Mura’s?”

“I can’t answer every question without the results of the search,” I said. “If this Mr. White was involved in planning or carrying out the bombing, it’s possible that Mr. Mura, his neighbor, witnessed something that caused Mr. White to kill him.”

Judge Yamanaka looked from me to Mike, and back to me again. He sighed. “All right, I’ll grant you the warrant. But I’m warning you, this had better be more than just a fishing expedition.”

“It’s more than that, Judge,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”

I called Lieutenant Sampson as soon as we left the judge’s chambers, and he arranged to meet us a couple of blocks from the address in Makiki with a squad of plainclothesmen. When we pulled up he was standing outside his car looking grim. “I did a pass by,” he said. “There’s one car in the driveway.”

“One of the vehicles we’re authorized to search?”

He shook his head. “No. My daughter’s. I went to her apartment this morning, but she was already gone. Did she say that she was going out with these people as well as the others?”

“Not to me. I never would have let her go, knowing what we know about the Whites.”

“I’m holding you responsible.” He pointed an accusing finger at me. “I want my daughter back, safe. Otherwise there’s going to be hell to pay.”

“I know,” I said. Somehow I’d known it all along.

We prepared to move in. Sampson insisted on taking the lead; after all, Kitty was his daughter. Mike and I followed behind him, guns drawn and ready. “Open up, it’s the police,” he shouted, after knocking loudly. “We have a search warrant.”

There was no response. “There’s nobody home,” a voice said. I turned and saw it was Jerry the cabinet maker. I’d forgotten he lived next door. He was standing on his front porch looking at us. “They left about an hour ago. Both of them, her in her car and him in his truck. She had another woman with her, the woman who drove over in that car.” He pointed to Kitty’s, and started walking toward us. “Then he came back, just for a few minutes, and put a bunch of stuff in the back of his truck.”

“Was he alone?” I asked.

“No, there was somebody with him, looked like a teenager. Funny hair. Looked like a Chinese kid, but with blonde hair pulled up like a Mohawk.”

A Chinese kid with a blonde Mohawk. That sounded like Jimmy Ah Wong. My mind raced ahead, making connections. I knew that Jimmy had been working the streets, and I’d seen Jeff White cruising Kalakaua as if he was looking to pick somebody up. Did White know Jimmy?

“If I showed you a picture of a kid, do you think you could ID him?” I asked.

Bosk shook his head. “He didn’t get out of the truck at all.” Jerry came to the low hedge that separated the two properties. He motioned me to come closer. “I think Mr. Whack Job was putting some guns in the back of the truck,” he said. “At least, one of the things he brought out looked a lot like a rifle.”

Lieutenant Sampson ordered uniforms to check out the perimeter of the property and report back in. “They have a shed in the back, too,” Jerry said. “You should check that too.”

“You said Mr. White came back,” I said. “How long ago was that?”

“Oh, you just missed him. Maybe ten minutes ago?”

“You have any idea where they were all going?” Sampson asked.

“We’re not exactly friendly,” Jerry said. “But I did see her, Sheila, carrying a picnic basket. And the girl with her had a couple of grocery bags.”