It’s funny the things that make us uncomfortable with a lover. Sometimes it’s nakedness, physical or emotional. Sometimes it’s silly things, like seeing that we don’t pick up our underwear or the way we talk to our pets. I had a feeling Mike wanted some privacy to make his call, so I ducked out to the grocery at the corner to get us something for dinner.
When I got back, he was lounging on my couch watching baseball on TV, and I sat next to him to watch. 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.”
Mike and I were both tired, though he insisted on rubbing more cream on my healing burns. When he’d finished, we started to cuddle in my bed, but we both nodded off before we’d had a chance to get very far. It was so nice to wake the next morning, the sheets tangled around us, Mike snoring softly next to me. I propped my head up on my elbow and looked over at him.
I loved the way his hairy skin flowed over his muscular arms, the way his mouth relaxed into a smile, accentuated by his rich black mustache. There was a puckered scar on his right shoulder that looked like the result of a burn. I wanted to get to know every inch of his beautiful body, tracing my fingers over the fine black hairs on his chest and thighs, connecting the dots of the occasional freckles across his back.
He woke up and saw me watching him. He yawned. “What time?”
“At the sound of the tone it will be 6:05,” I said. While I was making my tone noise, he reached down and took hold of my dick.
“Did you say ‘tone’ or ‘bone’?” he asked.
I leaned across and kissed him, and we finished what we’d started the night before. By the time we were done, we had to rush out to avoid being late for work.
My first stop was at the coroner’s office on Iwilei Road, where I picked up the bullet that had killed Charlie Stahl. Doc’s minions had been busy the night before; Charlie’s prominence and wealth had ensured a speedy autopsy. As I’d seen, the cause of death was a bullet wound to the throat. None of the other shots I’d heard fired had connected with a human being, which was something to be grateful for.
From the coroner’s I drove downtown, and took the bullet down to ballistics on the lower level. At the door of the lab someone had hung a big poster of a chicken. Or at least, that’s what was on the left side. In case you didn’t know what it was, the word “chicken” was written underneath, with (before) next to it.
To the right side, someone had drawn what looked like an explosion, jagged little shards flying in all directions. Under that (after) was written. Below that was a photo of the bullet that had killed the chicken, blown up so that its distinctive striations were clearly visible.
On the bottom, in big letters, it read, “A case of fowl play. If you have any information about this dastardly deed, report to Detective Kimo Kanapa’aka.”
Billy Kim, the round-faced ballistics tech, came out as I was reading the poster. “Very funny,” I said.
“Hey, you work in ballistics, you take your humor where you find it. No offense?”
“I’ll let you make it up to me. Tell me everything you know about this bullet, all right?” I handed it to him in a plastic baggie. “Take good care of it. It’s my only clue.” Well, that and a partial license plate, I thought.
As I was leaving the lab, Billy’s phone rang. “Hey, Kimo, hold up,” he called. “It’s your boss. He wants you upstairs, pronto.”
Sampson was in his office watching a small battery-operated TV. Reception was lousy so he kept playing with the rabbit ears, but I could see enough to tell we were watching a press conference with Betty Yamazuki, one of the Honolulu County Commissioners, who was demanding to know more about Wilson Shira’s death.
She stood with her arm around Shira’s widow as she fabricated a story that had no relationship to reality. She implied that someone within the Marriage Project had deliberately lured Shira into the building, then orchestrated the bombing in order to kill him and shift blame away from themselves. “Is it a coincidence that the only person to die in this blast was one of this group’s most formidable opponents?” she said. “I call that a real mystery.”
“I call it irony,” I said.
Back at the studio, the anchor said, “Citing the confidentiality of their ongoing investigation, Honolulu police officials have declined to comment on Ms. Yamazuki’s allegations.”
“They’re a piece of crap, is what they are,” Sampson said. “But until you find something better, they’re going to stand. What have you got?”
“You notice how she didn’t even mention Charlie Stahl?” I asked. “I’m sure the two cases are related. We’ve got a bullet and a partial license plate number. I’m going all out on this, Lieutenant. I’ll get you the results you want.”
“Soon.” Sampson looked back down at the paperwork on his desk, and I left his office.
Back at my desk, I worked up a profile on Charlie Stahl, just to eliminate anybody else in his life who might have wanted to kill him. I found out a bunch of things about his personal life I’d just as soon not have known, but I couldn’t find anybody who could have killed him. Though he was wealthy, so was the rest of his family, and most of his money was tied up in family trusts. His friends all liked him, and he wasn’t involved in any suspicious business deals. He wasn’t a drug user or an alcoholic, though his sexual tastes were unusual. In short, he was an average citizen.
Just before noon, I got a call from Thanh Nguyen at the fingerprint lab. As soon as I had copied down the information I hung up and did some work at the computer. When I was finished, I phoned Mike Riccardi’s cell.
“We finally got a break,” I said. “Remember I told you about the rock in the paper bag that went through the window of the Marriage Project a couple of hours before the bomb? We got a make on the prints. I pulled the guy’s rap sheet and he’s got a half dozen arrests for assault, assault with a deadly weapon, felony assault, malicious mischief, you name it.”
“Anything for arson?”
“No, but people change.”
Mike laughed. “You got an address on the guy?”
“I’ve even got a job address. A farm up outside Wahiawa. You want to go for a ride?”
“How could I turn down an invitation like that?”
“Good. Where are you? I’ll pick you up.”
He gave me an address in Waikiki, a few blocks from my apartment. I knew the place, a small storefront that rented and sold X-rated videos. I’d stopped there once or twice myself, that is, until someone had poured gasoline behind the back door and set it afire. I thought it was the first of the gay-related arsons.
“You’re back there? Got a new lead?”
“Nope. Just tidying up loose ends. They’re reopening tomorrow, so I wanted to give them some advice.”
“Maybe they’ll cut us a discount on some video rentals.”
“I’ll be waiting out front,” he said. “I’ll be the one wearing the big smile.”
“Oh, if only that were all you were wearing.” I hung up, smiling to myself. This could be our big break. All we had to do was lean on the rock-thrower until he gave up his partners, and we’d be home free.
He’d gone home at some point and put on clean clothes and he looked handsome in his button-down chambray shirt with the HFD logo on the breast pocket.
It was sunny and dry as we cruised up the Kamehameha Highway toward Wahiawa. “This weather makes me nervous,” Mike said.
“Nervous? It’s gorgeous.”
“Yeah, but you feel how dry it is? We haven’t had significant rainfall in a couple of weeks.”
We’d passed through the miles of strip malls and light industrial development that marked the outskirts of Honolulu, and we were climbing through the cleft of hills into Central O’ahu. I looked out at the fields around us. They were beginning to look parched. “I’m sure it’ll rain soon. It always does.”