Mahu Men, page 19
part #91 of Mahu Series
The building behind her was a one–room cabin built of old pieces of wood and sheets of tarpaper. It looked like it had been abandoned for decades. Its one advantage seemed to be its location next to a small pond, probably fed by rainwater, which trickled down the hillside as a stream. I saw a gas–powered generator next to the cabin, turned off.
Another woman appeared in the doorway of the cabin, and said something to the one washing the car. We couldn’t hear the words, but I kept snapping pictures. The woman washing the car stopped and followed the other inside.
Ray and I turned around and climbed back down the slope, following the rutted track. “Dead end,” Ray said.
“Looks like it.” We got back to my truck just as dusk was beginning to fall. “You want to give it another try tomorrow?” Though it was a Saturday, we were both scheduled for duty.
“Sure. I’ll bet there’s a lot of those old trails we haven’t even seen yet.”
I dropped him at his apartment and drove home. There was something I wasn’t seeing, and I didn’t know what it was. It nagged at me.
I realized we didn’t know what Linda Moldovan looked like, and decided we’d have to call Ted Kiely the next morning and get a description before we set out. Then I gave up and went to the Rod and Reel Club.
I stepped up to the bar and ordered a Longboard Lager. Fred, the usual bartender, had switched shifts with a slim–hipped lesbian with a pierced tongue and a shock of auburn hair running through what was otherwise black and close–cropped. Her name was Lisa, and she’d only been working there a couple of weeks, but she already knew who I was. But so did most of the gay population of O‘ahu.
“Howzit, Kimo,” she said, sliding the beer in front of me, no glass.
“It’s Friday.”
“And that’s not a good thing?”
“Not if I have to work tomorrow.”
“Bummer. My girlfriend’s a nurse at The Queen’s. She has to work every other weekend.” She nodded, then went off to serve another customer.
Lisa had a girlfriend, I thought. That was nice. Maybe at some point I’d have a boyfriend again.
I sipped my beer, and talked to a couple of guys, and my eyes kept going back to Lisa. There was something about her nagging at me. So I watched her move smoothly behind the bar, blending cocktails, uncapping beers, pouring wine, flirting with the male and female customers alike. I wondered if her girlfriend minded.
And suddenly the light bulb went off. Like a straight cop, I’d made an assumption about Pat Brown. Dumb. Back at home I did a quick Google search, verifying my idea about the prison where Linda Moldovan had taught.
The next morning, I carried my short board out to Kuhio Beach Park at first light. It’s a tourist beach, but it’s the closest break to my apartment, and if you get out there early enough you aren’t competing with the clueless grommets. I caught a couple of good waves while I waited for the day to begin for the rest of the world.
I picked Ray up at seven-thirty, and a half hour later we were on our way to Kiely’s house in Mânoa. “Have you found her?” Kiely asked, when he opened the door of his ranch–style house.
“Maybe.”
I showed him the pictures I’d taken up on the ridge outside Makakilo. “That’s not Linda,” he said, when he saw the one of the woman washing the car.
“I didn’t think so.” I flipped forward, to the shot I’d caught of the woman in the doorway.
“Yes! That’s Linda. Thank God.”
I turned the camera off. “Thanks. That’s what I needed to know.”
“Is she all right?”
“I don’t know,” I said, as we headed back to my truck. “But I will soon.”
I called Lieutenant Sampson and told him what we had discovered. He mobilized the SWAT team, and by the time Ray and I made it out to Makakilo, Sampson was parked at the foot of the dirt trail talking on the radio. Today’s polo shirt was navy blue, over khaki shorts and deck shoes.
A short time later, the SWAT team was there. We climbed the dirt trail, and they fanned out around us on all sides. “It’s your op,” the team leader said, handing the electric megaphone to me.
From the shelter of the underbrush, I said, “Pat Brown. Honolulu PD has you surrounded. Release your hostages and step out of the cabin.”
We waited. I assumed Linda Moldovan was inside with Pat; I had no idea where Brian was. After a few tense minutes had passed, I was about to speak again when the door opened.
A teenaged boy stumbled out, the door flapping open behind him.
“Brian,” I said, and he looked around, trying to identify the source of the sound. “Keep walking slowly forward, down the track. Someone will meet you.”
He was wearing a T–shirt, nylon running shorts, and flip–flops, and he looked scared as hell, but he kept moving. One of the SWAT guys grabbed him as soon as he reached cover.
“That’s a good start, Pat,” I said into the megaphone. “Now send Linda out.”
“She doesn’t want to leave,” a voice called from the cabin.
“Let her step outside and tell me herself.” There was no answer. “Come on, Pat. If she wants to stay with you, she can go right back inside.”
I looked over at Ray. He shrugged. Then the door opened again, and the woman Ted Kiely had identified as Linda Moldovan stepped out. “Come down the hill, Linda,” I said. “We just want to talk to you. If you want to go back up to the cabin after we’re done talking, you can.”
Linda Moldovan didn’t answer. Instead, she took off down the hill at a run, reaching the underbrush in less than a minute. I hurried over to her. “Does she have any weapons in the house?” I asked.
“A handgun,” she said. “I don’t know what kind.”
The SWAT chief motioned back toward the cabin. I picked up the megaphone again. “Okay, Pat, we need you to throw your gun out the door, and then step outside. Nobody’s going to hurt you. We’re going to make this all go away.”
There was no response from the cabin. We waited, sweating in the hot sun. Linda Moldovan insisted on staying with us, her arm around Brian. After about ten minutes, a gun came flying out the door, landing at the edge of the clearing. One of the SWAT guys ran out and scooped it up, then hurried back to cover. Only when he was back in place did Pat Brown walk out the door, her hands up above her head.
When she was clear of the house, a pair of the SWAT guys moved in on her, getting her in cuffs. Ray joined them and read Pat her rights as they walked down the mountain.
I turned my attention back to Linda and Brian, who were hugging each other. “You guys okay?”
Linda was shivering, and Brian was squeezing her around the waist. “I was so scared,” she said. “How did you find us?”
“The note you left for Ted Kiely. He was sure you were sending him some kind of coded message. And I guess you were.”
“I didn’t know what else to do. Pat had a gun, and she made me write the notes to Ted and the super. She even read them to make sure I wasn’t pulling any tricks.” She shrugged. “Good thing she didn’t pay much attention to the grammar lessons I taught back at the prison.”
“I love you, Linda,” Pat called out, as she was being led down the hillside. “I’ll always love you.”
“Words I always wanted to hear,” Linda said sadly. “Too bad they didn’t come from the right person.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Too bad.” I remembered the last time I’d heard those words myself, and when Mike had said them to me. I swallowed hard, feeling that old pain once more. Then I turned and guided Linda and Brian down the mountain.
ISLAND BALL
Baseball fever gripped O‘ahu in February. Jeffrey Kitamura, a big real estate developer, was in negotiation with Major League Baseball to bring an expansion team to Honolulu. In an effort to demonstrate a market for baseball in the islands, he announced the Las Vegas Kings, a new expansion team, would be playing an exhibition series with the Indianapolis Racers, another expansion team.
Hawai‘i Winter Baseball, a four–team league and the only one to feature international players, was already a feature at UH’s Les Murakami Stadium, home to the Waikîkî Beach Boys and the Honolulu Sharks, and at Hans L’Orange Field, where the West O‘ahu Cane Fires and the North Shore Honu played.
My dad played second–string baseball for a few years at UH, and he’d raised my brothers and me with baseball fever. He told us stories of the first baseball game ever in Hawai‘i, played July 4, 1866, where the “natives” beat the “haoles”, 2–1. The great Babe Ruth had come to Honolulu in 1933, and in the 1940s, when my dad was a kid, he used to watch Major League All–Star games in the old wooden Honolulu Stadium, affectionately called “The Termite Palace.”
Randy Johnson was the Kings’ star pitcher, and his $12 million, three–year deal with the team was part of the publicity surrounding the exhibition series. His handsome face, bulked–up arms and slim waist adorned billboards everywhere in Honolulu.
The buzz accelerated when Johnson came out of the closet a few days before the series was to start. I heard two guys on the radio debating the issue as I drove to work. One felt Johnson was debasing a great American game, while the other guy said, “I don’t care what he does off the field as long as he keeps pitching like he does.”
I parked in the garage and was on my way up to my desk when the chief’s secretary called my cell and summoned me to his office, pronto.
My heart started racing as I ticked off my most recent cases. What could Ray or I have done to attract the chief’s attention? I called Ray and asked, “What do you think is up?”
“What do you mean?” Ray sounded like he was eating, probably a malasada, a kind of Portuguese donut that he’d fallen in love with.
“The chief’s office. I’m on my way there now. Aren’t you?”
“Nope. I’m just going through paperwork, waiting for you to saunter in.” He took another bite and chewed noisily, then said, “Looks like this one’s all on you, partner.”
“I’ll call you.” I hung up, then took the elevator to the chief’s office. Though I’d shaken his hand on a couple of occasions, he’d never said more than “Good work, detective,” to me.
When I approached his secretary, she said, “Go right in, detective. They’re expecting you.”
I opened the door tentatively and stepped inside a plush carpeted, wood–paneled office that could have served any corporate mogul. The walls were lined with photos of the chief with the mayor, the governor, and various dignitaries, as well as him presenting checks to the many charitable organizations that the force supports with the proceeds of drug forfeitures.
“Good morning, detective,” the chief said. He was sitting on the edge of his desk, and he stood and shook my hand. “Jeffrey Kitamura, Detective Kimo Kanapa‘aka.”
Kitamura looked like his news pictures—a handsome Japanese–American man in his mid–forties in an expensive suit, a few worry lines creasing his well–tanned face. “Randy Johnson’s been getting death threats,” he said brusquely. “I can’t let anything screw up these exhibition games—they mean too much to me, and to the people of Honolulu.”
“You want me to investigate?” I asked.
Kitamura shook his head. “I want you to keep an eye on him while he’s here.”
I looked questioningly at the chief. “Bodyguard? Aren’t there private firms that could handle this better than I could?”
“Randy’s something of a loose cannon at the moment,” Kitamura said. “Drinking, hitting the clubs. He’s going through a tough time. I know what happened when you came out of the closet and I think you can do a better job of helping him than anybody I could hire.”
I knew first–hand the hell the media could mire you in—though Randy Johnson’s situation was much larger than mine. For one thing, nobody was paying me $4 million a year. “I’ll do whatever I can.”
“His plane lands at Honolulu International in two hours,” Kitamura said. “I want you there.”
The chief assured me that he’d already cleared my temporary reassignment with Lieutenant Sampson, so I was free to head directly to the airport to meet Randy’s plane.
On the way I called Ray. He was a baseball fan, too, and wasn’t happy to have been cut out of the duty. “See if you can wangle me some good seats.” The tickets had sold out fast, though my father’s connections had come through for him, my brothers and me.
“You can probably have mine. I doubt I’ll be able to enjoy the game.”
“Dude, you’re the bomb.”
“Dude, get a life,” I said, and hung up.
The media had gotten hold of Randy’s flight, and there were news cameras waiting in the arrivals area. Fortunately all the enhanced security after 9/11 prevented them from mobbing him at the gate. I badged my way in and introduced myself to the gate agent. Randy was among the first off the plane.
There weren’t many guys in baseball as handsome as he was. Close–cropped blond hair, a face that resembled Brad Pitt’s, chest and biceps bursting out of a royal blue polo shirt that matched his eyes. Narrow waist, slim hips, thighs and calves honed by running bases.
I stepped up and introduced myself. Up close, I could see the toll that the last week had taken on him—bags under his eyes, chin unshaven, worry lines around his mouth. He looked me up and down, then shook his head. “How do we get out of here?”
“Follow me.”
Okay, so we weren’t going to be best buds. That was fine with me. Who could blame the guy for being a jerk—handsome, rich, successful, and now hounded by the press. It would make being around him a lot easier if I didn’t have to worry about lusting after his tight ass or wanting to kiss his pouty lips.
The gate agent led us through a locked door and into the bowels of the airport, depositing us at a side entrance where a black limousine waited. Randy Johnson climbed into the back and slammed the door behind him, leaving me to sit up front. The driver announced that Randy’s luggage was already in the trunk, and we took off.
I saw Randy pull out a Blackberry and start punching keys, and I settled back for the ride to the Mandarin Oriental in Kahala. I knew the security at the property pretty well because my brother Haoa had done a lot of the landscaping. If I could convince Randy Johnson to stay in his room except for his time on the field, this would be an easy job.
No such luck. “I’m going to hit the hotel pool for a while, then take a nap,” he said, leaning forward. “Get me a dinner reservation at Roy’s for nine. After that I want to go to a place called Surf Boyz.” Surf Boyz was Honolulu’s newest, hottest gay bar, a multi–level place with three dance floors and five bars. It would be hell to keep track of him. “Who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky.”
I called a guy I knew, who’d dated a waiter at Roy’s for a while, and got Randy the reservation he wanted. Then I called the Mandarin Oriental and asked for a VIP check in. The clerk gave me Randy’s room number and arranged for someone to meet the limo and escort us there.
Randy’s suite had an ocean view, and while he stalked into the bedroom to change I stood admiring the surf, wanting to be out on my board more every minute. He was worse than my friend Terri’s seven–year–old, Danny. I was going to be a glorified baby–sitter, and worse, the chief of police would instantly hear of anything I did wrong. It was clearly a no–win situation.
“What the hell is this shit?”
Randy stalked out of the bedroom, buck–naked, brandishing a bottle of Longboard Lager.
“Beer,” I said. “Maybe you’ve heard of it?”
Oops. Probably shouldn’t mouth off to a guy who had the ability to get me fired with a single phone call.
“I only drink Corona. I want a six–pack here, now. And don’t forget the lime.”
He turned to stalk back into the bedroom, giving me a prime view of that gorgeous ass, two round white globes dusted with a few pale blonde hairs. “I’m your bodyguard, not your secretary. You want room service to bring you a beer, pick up the phone.”
He turned to stare at me, and I saw his dick had begun to stiffen. Hmm, being an asshole made him hard. Interesting.
I smiled blandly, and I could see he wanted to say something, but instead he turned and went back into the bedroom, returning a moment later in a skimpy Speedo and a pair of complimentary hotel flip–flops. “Let’s move,” he said, heading toward the door of the suite.
As Randy swam laps, I sat under an umbrella, trying to look inconspicuous in my work khakis and polo shirt, my Glock in a holster attached to my belt. When Randy flopped on a chaise lounge a couple of giggling teen-aged girls asked for his autograph, which he was gracious about providing. Only one older man muttered “Faggot” under his breath—but I wasn’t sure if the gibe was intended for me or Randy.
We went back up to the suite after an hour or so, and while Randy napped, I called Lieutenant Sampson to map out the strategy for the next few days. “The hotel’s providing you with a room across the hall from Johnson,” he said. “I’ll send a uniform over to relieve you for a few hours so you can get yourself organized.”
By the time Randy woke at eight that night, I’d gone home and thrown together enough clothes and other gear to get me through his visit. When he came out, stretching and yawning, naked once again, I was sitting in the living room of the suite reading a mystery novel by Mark Richard Zubro, one of his series about a Chicago high school teacher and his baseball player boyfriend.
“I hope you won’t be uncomfortable in a gay club,” Randy said, smirking, and I realized that he didn’t know I was gay. It was a surprise; since I’d come out so spectacularly, it seemed that everybody who cared knew that I was the “gay cop.” So that’s why he’d been so antagonistic, I thought.
“I’m fine with a range of sexual orientations,” I said.
His dick was limp again, though impressive in its length and girth, nestled in a blond bush. His six–pack abs rippled as he walked. I noticed he was carrying another Longboard Lager, and this one had been opened. As I watched, he took a long pull from it. “It isn’t bad,” he admitted, seeing my gaze. “For a local brew.”
