“Let me walk you up the stairs.” He put an arm around my shoulders, and I shivered from the contact.
“You gonna tuck me in, too?” I asked.
“Maybe another night.” We walked up the steps and I fumbled for my keys. He took them from me and opened the door.
I wanted to kiss him good night. I wanted to touch my skin to his and feel what that was like. But instead I said, “Will you call me tomorrow with whatever you find out?”
He smiled. “It’s already tomorrow, bud. I’ll call you later. Get some sleep.” He gave me a pat on the butt that moved me a step further inside, and turned away.
I must have made it to the bed under my own power, because that’s where I was a couple hours later when I woke up. My mouth was dry and my head was pounding, but my bladder was full. It was almost dawn and after I finished in the bathroom I couldn’t go back to sleep. I kept remembering the fire, worrying about the people I knew who had been inside, thinking about how much I had to figure out.
Whenever my head is too full, I go surfing. There’s something about the serenity of the water, the discipline of the physical activity, that helps me put everything in perspective. So I pulled on my board shorts and rubber slippas, tried to smooth down my unruly hair, and grabbed a board. Everything around me smelled like ashes until I walked outside and caught a fresh, sweet breeze, full of sea water, frangipani and the last, lingering scents of yesterday’s coconut tanning lotions.
I love to be outside in those moments just before dawn, when the city streets are quiet, the tall palms dozing under a fading quilt of stars. Even before you can see the sun, the sky begins to lighten, the night’s blue-black shading into the palest blue imaginable. When I was a little kid working my coloring books, I used to search for a blue just that shade, composed, it seemed to me, of equal parts of yellow and white. I never got just the right mix; maybe that’s why my art career didn’t continue beyond kindergarten.
The sun was just peeking over the tops of the Ko’olau mountains as I reached Kuhio Beach Park and launched my surfboard into the water. There were only a few other surfers around, the hard-core who, like me, have a physical need that draws them out on the waves. I lay flat on my stomach and paddled out past the low breakers, feeling my cheek against the cool Fiberglas of my board.
Back on land, the high-rise hotels and the little stores on Kalakaua Avenue were just waking up. In the distance I could see the fading green hills, with patches of brown from the protracted dry spell. I thought if I could just stay out there, waiting for the perfect wave, I could keep the world and its troubles at bay. I knew that almost as soon as I launched my day it would get away from me-too many calls to make, reports to read, details to organize. I was facing a major investigation alone, without any preparation, already physically debilitated.
I felt a good wave building beneath me, and stood to ride it. At the same time, though, the sun jumped quickly above the mountaintops, as it does in the tropics, and the flash of blinding light stabbed at my retinas. I lost my balance, and went tumbling into the cool water. Almost immediately I jumped up, howling in pain.
I learned to swim before I could walk, and the sea has always been kind to me, even at its most stern. This blinding pain in my back, though, was new and terrible. I dragged myself and my board out to shallow water and stood, trying to look around over my shoulder. What I saw there disturbed me-a big patch of my skin was raw and red, probably from a burn I’d suffered the night before and not noticed. Not until it came into contact with salt water, that is.
Reluctantly I splashed out of the surf and carried my board home. I wanted nothing more than an hour or so of uncomplicated surfing, clearing my head for the work before me, but I was not to be so lucky. Instead I showered quickly and awkwardly tried to lather some sunburn cream on my back, without noticeable effect. I pulled on a pair of light cotton pants and a polo shirt and realized I was starving.
It was barely six-thirty, too early to go into the office. The streets were still empty of tourists, only the occasional hotel employee or store clerk hurrying to work as I walked over to my favorite breakfast place, a buffet restaurant in a hotel right on the water. It’s called the Beachside Broiler, and you can sit at tables overlooking the sand, eat your fill of pineapple and papaya, ham and eggs and biscuits and whatever else you want. I like to go there after surfing sometimes, when my body is tired and aching but I still need to be near the water.
Connie, the elderly hostess who favored sarongs and way too much eye makeup, smiled when she saw me walk in. “Kimo! You hero!” She reached down to the pile of morning newspapers next to the register and held one up to me, the front half from the masthead to the fold. There was a huge picture of me coming out of the fire, Sandra over my back. I guess I must have blushed.
“Hey everybody, Kimo big hero!” she said to the restaurant at large. There were about twenty people there, mostly Midwesterners on package tours, and a few of them looked up with mild interest. “He save lady from big fire last night.”
There was some slight applause. “Come on, Connie,” I said. She wouldn’t take money for my breakfast, just handed me a tray and waved me through. I walked all around both steam tables, loading up on bacon, eggs and sausages. It was going to be a long day and I wasn’t sure I’d get any lunch at all, maybe not even dinner.
When I’d finally piled as much food on my tray as possible I walked over to the long counter that faces the water. I laid the paper down face up and put my tray next to it. Just then one of the Midwestern couples, an elderly pair in matching aloha shirts, blue pineapples against a purple backdrop, came up to me. “You did a good thing, son,” the man said. He reached out to shake my hand.
“I knew she was inside,” I said. “I didn’t think about it.”
“We’d be proud to have police officers like you back home,” his wife said. “You just hold your head up high and don’t listen to anything bad anybody says about you, all right?”
I didn’t quite understand what she meant, but I nodded anyway. “I will. Thank you.”
“Enjoy your breakfast,” the man said, and they left. I was puzzling over his wife’s comments when I opened the paper and saw the headline, in big hundred-point type, just below the fold. “Gay cop saves woman at gay marriage party,” it read.
Oh, God. It was starting again.
THE LOOK ON HIS FACE
I took a cab to the garage where I’d parked the night before, ransomed my truck, and was at my desk by seven-thirty, staring at a pile of paperwork. Steve Hart had left me a detailed account of everything he’d done, as well as all the witness interviews collected by the uniforms the night before.
I’ve never been a big paperwork cop. When I worked on Waikiki, my partner, Akoni, and I used to alternate filling out the endless forms required by the department. I like to be out on the street, talking to people, gathering information, making my own judgments. But without a partner, there was nobody to push this mound of paper off on.
Regretfully, I moved Hiroshi Mura’s murder to my pile of unsolved cases, and buried myself in paperwork regarding the bombing, reading endless variations on how no one saw or heard anything. I looked up around nine only to see Lieutenant Sampson coming my way. “Have you seen the circus outside?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I got here pretty early.”
“The pressure is already building, Kimo. What have you got so far?”
I looked at him. It was barely nine o’clock in the morning. What did he expect me to have, the bomber on a silver platter? I told him about walking the fire with Mike Riccardi, the cooperation with ATF, the ideas we had on the bomb and the amateur nature of the crime. I told him there was nothing much in the witness statements but I would continue to go through them.