“There’s a reason why they have you on homicide, not vice. Let me be your tour guide to the night.”
“I’m not exactly naive.”
“Let’s start with Ala Moana Park,” Gunter said. “After that, we’ll hit Waikiki.”
As we drove, I was thinking about Jimmy Ah Wong, hoping he was settling in okay with Uncle Chin and Aunt Mei-Mei. I told Gunter what had happened.
“Did you ever run away from home?” he asked.
“Once. I was about fourteen, I think. My brothers were both living at home that summer. Lui was already working at KVOL, some kind of entry-level intern thing, I think. Haoa had just graduated from UH, and he was working on a road crew out near the airport. He had this explicit porno magazine, all kinds of things. Men and women, women with dogs, oral sex, anal sex, even a couple of threesomes. The only thing it didn’t have was gay sex.”
“Let me guess. You stole it.”
“Not exactly. He caught me reading it and he and Lui laid into me. You know, snooping in their personal stuff, what a sneaky little weasel I was, that kind of thing. I was mad, so I told them I was going to go away, and they’d never find me, and they’d sure be sorry. They both laughed.”
“Brothers. You gotta love ‘em. Otherwise you’d kill ‘em.”
“So I left. I went out into the woods for a while, but then it started to get dark so I came back and hid behind some bushes across the street from my house. I watched my parents go out in their cars to look for me. My mother cruised around St. Louis Heights, and my father went down to Waialae Avenue and drove up and down, checking out the bus shelters and the pinball arcade and the drugstore and so on. They made Lui and Haoa go out into the woods with flashlights, looking for me.”
“What did you do?”
“As soon as I saw them all leave, I went back into the house. I fixed myself a TV dinner and ate, and then I was watching TV when they all came back. Nobody said a word about it. I found out later that my father had laid into Lui and Haoa-not about beating me up, but about bringing the magazine into the house in the first place. Of course, by the time I was old enough to get that kind of stuff for myself they didn’t care any more.”
“Some comic once said, my parents were protective of my older brothers, but by the time they got to me I was playing with knives and they didn’t mind.”
“That’s about right.” I looked over at him. “How about you? You ever run away?”
He leaned the seat back as far as it would go and pulled his knees up to the dashboard. His legs were so long and skinny it was hard to connect them to the rest of his body. “I remember once,” he said. “I was about sixteen, I think. I was still in high school, for sure. We lived a mile or two from this rest stop on the Jersey turnpike, maybe an hour outside New York. I was hating my life then, and one day, I just couldn’t take it any more, so I walked over to the rest stop and tried to hitch a ride into the city.”
I pulled into the park and we started driving real slow along the road, seeing if anyone was out. “I hung around by the men’s room for a while, trying to spot somebody who might be gay. I must have been a real piece of work-I was as tall as I am now, but skinny, no muscles at all. I had a ponytail-you believe it? Bell-bottomed pants and a tie-dyed T-shirt. Finally this one guy says to me, You waiting for a ride somewhere? I thought I was real cool, I said, Yeah, where you going?”
He laughed. “He said, Come on, little buddy, I know just where you want to go. He was this big fat guy, beard and a pot belly, drove a big truck. I followed him out to the truck and climbed up in the cab with him. He pointed down at his crotch and said, Right there. That’s where you want to go. And you know, it was.”
“You ever make it into the city?”
“Nope. Not that time, at least. I blew him, and he gave me twenty bucks. I mean, that was like a month’s allowance to me. I couldn’t wait to get home and figure out what I wanted to buy.” He sat up. “You better pull up and park. We’re not going to hand out any of those flyers sitting up here in this truck.”
We walked around the park for half an hour or so, threading our way between cabbage palms and kicking up small sprays of sand. The ocean was a constant murmur there, slapping against the shore in the background, fading in and out among the traffic noises on Ala Moana Boulevard and the sound of a car radio somewhere in the parking lot. The fronds of the palms moved mysteriously around us, dancing to an almost hidden breeze, and every so often we found a homeless person camped beneath a banyan or kukui tree, stumbling on signs of humanity in what otherwise was dark and natural.
We handed out copies of the sketches, but either nobody recognized our sweaty bomber, or nobody wanted to rat out a good customer. We were just about to head out when I saw someone step out of the men’s room, and even in the dim glow of the street light above the entrance I recognized him as Frankie, one of the kids from the Teen Center. His brightly-patterned silk shirt hung funny on his shoulders, as if he’d buttoned it hurriedly without looking, and a few wisps of dark hair had come loose from his ponytail.
I motioned silently to Gunter, and we hung back in the shadows for a minute or two, waiting to see who’d follow Frankie out of the men’s room. I felt protective of the kid, and I was worried what I’d do if the john turned out to be some closeted old toad who could only handle sex with young boys in public restrooms.
To my surprise, the next guy out was Lolo, the sulky tough guy. I stepped out into the light and said, “Hey, guys, howzit?”
Both of them turned toward me in alarm.
“Anybody else in the men’s room?” I asked.
They stole furtive glances at each other, and finally Frankie said, “No.”
“Hey, it’s cool. I know what it’s like to want to play around and not have any place to go.”
I turned and introduced Gunter, who was holding the pile of sketches. “You a cop, too?” Lolo asked, surveying his lean build and buzz-cut hair.
Gunter laughed. “Hell, if I was, I’d have to arrest myself every other day for something.” He poked me. “Only reason Officer Kimo here doesn’t lock me up is cause I’d want to fuck every guy in lock up.”
“Detective Kimo,” I said. “Why does everybody get that wrong?”
Everyone laughed. “Either of you guys seen this guy?” I asked, showing them both the sketch.
Lolo nodded. “Just a looker, though. I see him cruising sometimes on Kalakaua, but he never actually picks anybody up.”
“Maybe you’re just not his type,” Frankie said.
“I’m everybody’s type,” Lolo said. At the youth center, he’d always worn baggy clothes, oversized sweatshirts, the kind of pants that hang off your hips. But that night he was wearing a form-fitting tank top, and tight bike shorts that rode low, exposing a band of taut flesh. He was hot, and he knew it.
I gave them both my cards. “Either of you see him, you call me right away,” I said. “Day or night, any time. This is a bad guy. You don’t want to mess with him.”
“I can take care of myself.” Lolo reached out for the other boy’s hand and said, “Frankie, too.”
“I’m sure you can,” I said. “But even so, you call me, all right?”
Both boys nodded. I was about to turn away when Gunter said, “Here, take a couple of these,” and he pulled some foil packets from his pocket. “They glow in the dark. Pretty cool.”
Frankie and Lolo grinned, and I wondered where they’d go to try them out. On the way back to the truck I said, “You’re a sweetheart, you know that, Gunter?”
“Yeah, but don’t let it get around. Bad for my image.”
We spent the next couple of hours bar-hopping on Waikiki, showing the sketch around, having a few drinks, even dancing a little. Around three o’clock Gunter said, “Well, it doesn’t look like I’m gonna get lucky tonight. Hanging around with a cop tends to turn away romance.”