Mahu Omnibus, page 56
part #92 of Mahu Series
Finally, I heard a siren. Was it an ambulance? The police? There was no way I could get in contact, warn anyone. As soon as I tried to use my cell phone, Mary would hear me, and that rifle would swing my way.
I heard a shot fired up at the house, and saw both Dario and Ari fall. Mary rose to one knee, sighted her rifle and released the safety. I pulled my pistol up and sighted her myself.
I was a fraction of a second too late. She got a shot off toward the house just as I shot her. I caught her in the chest and knocked her backward. She dropped the rifle and I ran toward her. It appeared I'd only winged her shoulder; she reared up from the pili grass and shakily pointed the rifle at me, but by then it was too late for me to stop charging. I took a big jump and landed on her.
We wrestled back and forth, and she was a tough opponent. The rifle was kicked away, but I still clutched my Glock in my hand. Finally I was on top of her, and I took that opportunity to knock her on the head with the gun. She went out cold, and I popped the cuffs on her.
I couldn't tell what was going on up at the house, but I couldn't wait any longer. I heard more sirens in the distance, but knew I had to get up to the house as soon as possible. I jumped up and ran for the side of the house; fortunately, no one seemed to be firing at me. I ran around to the side door and found it locked, then ran around to the makai side, the one facing the ocean.
Terri was leaning over her uncle, who lay on the floor. I didn't see any blood coming from him, but that didn't mean anything. Ari sat cross-legged on the floor next to them. Dario sat on the floor a few feet away, shakily training his pistol on them.
"Kimo," he said. "Nice of you to join us. I knew you had to be around somewhere."
He nodded toward his leg. "Your aim sucks, you know."
"I didn't shoot you, Dario. Your wife did."
Blood was leaking out of a wound in his leg, spilling all over Bishop's hardwood floor. There was a hole in the window where Mary's bullet had come through. Looking around quickly, I saw other bullet holes in the walls. I tried to count, to see how much ammunition Dario had left, but I couldn't take my eyes off Dario for too long.
I didn't want Dario to realize that there was a cabinet full of weapons and ammunition, so the only thing I could think to do was keep him talking until reinforcements arrived.
"Mary wouldn't shoot me," he said. "Mary loves me. My little piece of America." He laughed bitterly.
"She's outside. She had a rifle. Are the ballistics on that rifle going to match the gun that killed Mike Pratt and Lucie Zamora?"
Dario burst into tears. "I could never make enough money to make her happy."
"Who? Lucie?"
"No!" Dario said angrily. "Mary!"
"Is that why you started dealing ice out of The Next Wave?"
"I never did." His hold on the gun wavered. "It was always Mary. She got the idea, get surfers to smuggle the drugs in for us, and use surfers as dealers. They were hungry for cash, just like she was."
He looked up at me. "I was trying to get us legit," he said. "I was taking the money Mary made from dealing and putting it into this deal." He aimed at Bishop again. "This stupid project, which never seemed to take off, and just needed more money, more money. Until there wasn't any more money left to put in."
I heard Terri whispering to her uncle. "Hold on, Uncle Bishop," she said. "Everything's going to be okay."
"Everything's not going to be okay!" Dario shouted.
"Calm down, Dario, we can work things out," I said. "How did everything get so bad?"
"That idiot Pratt couldn't keep his mouth shut. Mary heard him bitching at the outrigger club. She came home and told me. But shit, I didn't know what to do. I said I'd talk to him. Mary said no, she'd take care of it."
He looked up at me. "She used to sit right in front of him in the canoe," he said. "I thought she'd talk to him, convince him it was better to shut up." Tears dripped down his cheeks. "The next time I heard his name it was somebody at the store saying he'd been shot."
He waved the gun a little. "I swear, I didn't know she was going to kill him. But what could I do?"
"Did Lucie find out?"
"Stupid little bitch. She tried to shake Mary down. Wanted enough to finance a year around the world, going to surf competitions. Mary told her she was a dumb cunt."
"How did her friend Ronnie get involved?"
He snorted. "The idiot hacked into the store's accounts, thinking he could find the money she wanted and take it out. But there wasn't any money — we'd given it all to Ari."
Ari finally spoke. "You should have told me, Dario. We could have worked something out. You didn't have to do... this."
"I didn't have a choice," he said. "Shit, I haven't had a choice about anything for eleven years."
Oh, Jesus, I thought. I knew what was coming.
"It was almost eleven years ago, you know that, Kimo?" he asked. "I still remember the first time I saw you."
I had to keep him talking. At least he wasn't shooting. "Yeah, Dario? Where was that?"
"At the Surfrider. You had just come home from college and moved up here. You were with Dickie Yamassa, remember him?"
I did. Dickie had gone to Punahou with Terri, Harry and me, but instead of going to college on the mainland the way we all did, he had stayed at UH, surfing the North Shore every chance he had. He was an amazing surfer by then — he had dropped out of UH the year before, started entering tournaments, and started winning.
I slept on Dickie's floor the first three months I was on the North Shore. He had a girlfriend he stayed with most nights anyway, but we often surfed together during the day, then cruised bars together at night.
"The Surfrider has a lot of memories for us," I said.
"Jesus, Kimo, I thought the sun rose and set on you, and you hardly knew I was alive. For months — months — I knew where you were all the time, I followed you around, just waiting for you to notice me."
"I noticed you, Dario. We used to surf together all the time."
"But you ignored every hint I gave you."
"I was scared, Dario. I didn't want to be gay, and the way you kept coming on to me, touching me, saying stuff — what did you expect me to do?"
"I expected you to tell me you loved me, that you wanted to be with me," Dario said. "Then I finally got the chance to show you how I felt, and you ran away."
"I'm sorry if I hurt you, Dario." I started inching closer to him. "I never wanted to. Honestly, I didn't know how you felt. But maybe things can be better now."
The noise he made in his throat sounded oddly like the one my father did, when he didn't believe what I was saying. "I'm serious, Dario. Things can be different. I'm out of the closet now. I'm here on the North Shore." I inched closer to him. "Give me the gun, and I'll look after you. Mary is going to have to go to jail, but then you and I can be together."
"Mary! Where's Mary? I have to talk to Mary!" He tried to stand up, but he fell back to the floor.
I was close enough that I could tackle him. "Give me the gun, Dario," I said. We wrestled on the floor, and then another rifle blast shattered one of Bishop's big glass windows. Dario's attention was distracted enough that I got my body on top of his, got my hand on his gun hand. I had a knee in his crotch and I was close enough to smell the raw scent of fear and perspiration coming off him.
I mustered up a final burst of strength and wrenched the gun from him, pushing myself back from him. Another rifle burst split the air. "Everybody okay?" I called. "Terri?"
"Okay," she said shakily.
"How's Bishop?"
"Dario shot him, and he's going in and out of consciousness. Kimo, I'm scared. Who's shooting at us?"
"I thought I knocked Mary Fonseca out and handcuffed her, but either she's gotten up or somebody else has gotten her rifle. See if you can drag Bishop under the table. Ari, can you help?"
I kept one eye on Dario, who was crying on the floor in front of me, and the other focused on the window. Mary Fonseca was a damned good riflewoman if she was able to shoot with her hands cuffed together.
"What about Brad, Dario? Who killed him, and that college kid? Why?"
"I couldn't stand to see somebody else have what I couldn't." He was crying full blast by then. "I know I shouldn't have done it. I just went crazy."
"And me? Did you shoot at me when I was out at Pipeline?"
"I'd never shoot you, Kimo. That must have been Mary. I think she knew how much I cared about you and she was jealous."
I heard another blast of gunfire, but this one wasn't aimed inside. There was a volley back and forth, and then I heard a voice call out, "Hello the house. Anybody there? Police!"
"Officer on the scene," I called back. "Scene secured."
After
Al Kawamoto was the first in the door, his gun held out ahead of him. In short order, he was followed by uniforms who took custody of Dario, and an ambulance crew that took Bishop Clark away, with Terri by his side.
I sat at the table with Ari, and we reconstructed everything that had happened for Al. When we were done, I drove down to Wahiawa General, where Bishop was in critical condition. Terri's parents had driven up from Honolulu by then, and her father sat holding his older brother's hand and talking gently to him.
"I'm so sorry things worked out the way they did," I said to Terri, when we had walked out together. "If I had known there was any danger I never would have let you go to Bishop's in the first place."
"You didn't know what was going to happen."
"Yeah, that's been the theme of my life lately. Everything happens and I don't have a clue about it. Hell of a detective, huh?"
"You knew there was a connection between Dario's store and the deaths of the surfers."
"I should have figured it out sooner. The first time I heard that Dario had a wife, I knew something was funny. I should have looked at him a lot more closely, but I was afraid I was trying to make him the killer because I was scared of him."
"You weren't scared of him," she said, taking my hand. "What you were scared of is inside of you, but you're working on that."
Bishop's death was big news because of the family's prominence. And of course they had to note that there had been another Clark death, just a few weeks before. This time, though, I went to the funeral, with my parents. We sat at the Kawaiahao Church in downtown Honolulu, across from Honolulu Hale. The Clarks were descended from early missionaries to the islands, and had ancestors buried in the graveyard behind the church. After a brief service, Bishop took his place among them.
I was in the news again, as Sampson told reporters that I had been working undercover to bring both Fonsecas to justice. Mary was being held for trial for her drug activities, as well as for the murders of Mike Pratt, Lucie Zamora and Ronald Chang. Dario was being held as her accessory for all that, as well as for the murders of Brad Jacobson and Thomas Singer.
I closed up the house at Cane Landing and moved back to my apartment in Waikiki. After a couple of days off, and evaluations by both the department physician and psychiatrist, I drove my battered pickup into downtown Honolulu once more, parked at a meter a block away from the main station, and prepared to start the job I'd thought I was getting all along, as a detective in District 1. I sat in the truck for a minute, though, listening to Keali'i Kaneali'i ask where all the beach boys of Waikiki had gone. This boy, I knew, had gone away, but was back. Secure in that thought, I locked my truck and headed inside.
Mahu Fire
By Neil Plakcy
A Few Judo Moves
Such Friendly People
The Death of Hiroshi Mura
A Dirty Business
Mr. and Mrs. Whack Job
Helping a Boy
Living in Different Worlds
Preaching to the Choir
Blow Up
Colored Pinwheels
The Fire Investigator
Through the Fire
The Look on His Face
Fighting Back
Family Happiness
Between Brothers
Pasta Puttanesca
Secrets
Here's the Airplane
Gunter's Oven
Emotional Insights
A Guide to the Night
Thieves and Moneylenders
Working with Mike
The White Family
Pills on the Floor
A Shot in the Park
Pupukea Plantation
Making Apologies
Doing the Right Thing
Harmless Mischief
Search Warrant
Incense Burning
Logistics
Picnickers
The Hardings
Jimmy and Kitty
Out of the Fire
Jeff's Story
After
A Few Judo Moves
It had been a tourist office day on O'ahu, with sunny skies, temperatures in the eighties, and a light trade wind sweeping in over the beaches and chasing the few wispy clouds up into the mountains. We had a parched winter, and as April began, and with it our dry season, there were already reports of wildfires in on the leeward side of the island, in Nanakuli and Waialua.
I stepped out the door of my apartment building in Waikiki as dusk was falling, and the smell of distant smoke rolled over me. There had also been a couple of arsons at gay-owned businesses in the past couple of weeks, and I wondered what was burning — a few acres of mountain scrub, or the property and dreams of a gay man or lesbian.
Hawai'i had been one of the first states to consider legalizing gay marriage, and though Massachusetts, Connecticut, and a few other states had moved ahead of us, the movement in the islands was still strong, and in fact, the media had tied a rise in violence against gays and lesbians to the renewed visibility of the campaign, led by the Hawai'i Marriage Project.
I walked the few blocks to the Gay Teen Center, housed in the annex of a church on Kalakaua Avenue. At that hour of the day, Waikiki was crowded with tourists heading back to their hotels from the beach, older people out for early dinners, and skateboarding teens getting in everybody's way. I passed up a half dozen chances to pick up discount meal coupons, skirted an elderly Japanese bag lady haranguing the Wizard Stones at Kuhio Beach Park, and stopped for a minute to watch a sailboat setting out for a sunset cruise.
I'd been volunteering at the Gay Teen Center for a couple of months, counseling kids and leading a self-defense workshop in a big open room. My favorite student was a kid named Jimmy Ah Wong, a thin Chinese boy with a bright yellow coxcomb that stood straight up and then, at the very top, drooped over. He looked like a bit actor in a British art film of the 1980s, but he was smart and infinitely kind to the younger kids.
Sixteen of them were waiting for me, Jimmy among them, when I walked into the room. We talked for a few minutes, and then I led them in a couple of warm-up exercises.
We did some yoga, to get them in touch with their bodies, and then a couple of simple judo moves I'd picked up somewhere. When we'd finished the judo, we sat in a circle on the hard wooden floor and talked. I always had to kick things off; they were all shy, and sometimes in order to get into difficult subjects I had to reveal more about myself than made me comfortable. "I had a date on Saturday night," I said.
A couple of the kids broke into spontaneous applause. I smiled and inclined my head. "Yes, I know it's been a while. I wish I could say it was a more positive experience."
I waited, but no one said anything, so I continued. "I met the guy online. And of course, he wasn't anything like he'd said."
"I know that drill," a chunky boy said. His name was Frankie, and he had some island heritage in him, and sleek black hair pulled into a ponytail. "Nobody on the internet is who they say they are."
We got into a little discussion about that, and about how they could be safe with people they met. "We agreed to meet at the Rod and Reel Club," I said. "Remember, always meet people you don't know in public places, so you can get away easily if things don't work out."
"Yes, officer," Jimmy said, with attitude.
"That's yes, detective," I said, and the group laughed. "We had a couple of beers together," I continued. "We seemed to be hitting it off, and we started making out on the outdoor patio."
"Is there video?" Frankie asked, and everyone laughed again.
"You wish," Jimmy said, and Frankie sent daggers his way. I gave them both a sharp look.
"So one thing led to another, and he invited me back to his place," I said.
"Always use a condom," Jimmy said.
"Have I told this story before?" I asked, pretending to be annoyed. But I was glad that the lessons I'd been trying to teach were sinking in.
"Does it end with you getting your ass fucked and your heart broken?" a boy I only knew as Lolo asked. He was the toughest of the kids, and I had yet to break through the barricades he had set up around him. Acne scarred his cheeks, and his dark hair was shaved close on both sides of his head. "Because if it does, yeah, we've heard it before."
"I save ass fucking for the second date," I said dryly. "You all should, too."
"Let him finish the story," a skinny girl named Pua said. She looked Filipina, with a slim face and almond eyes. Her name in Hawaiian meant "flower" which was totally inappropriate in her case. She wore a cut-off T-shirt that showcased her biceps, and her hair, black like Lolo's, was almost as short.
"The sex was lousy," I said. "Alcohol does that. The guy'd been all hard in the bar, but when we got naked, he couldn't perform. Of course, I worried it was me. That somehow I'd disappointed him." I smiled. "He took care of me, and then as we were cleaning up, I realized he'd come in his shorts at the bar." I batted my eyelashes. "So I guess I wasn't that disappointing after all."
"He couldn't get it up again?" Frankie asked.
I shrugged. "He wanted to do some coke, and I said I didn't, and he said that I might as well go, then. So I did. Not exactly a heart-breaker, but not much fun, either."
"You need a boyfriend," Pua said. She crossed her arms in front of her, almost as if she'd make me get a boyfriend if I refused.
