“Good. How’d it go?”
“I liked it. The people there were pretty cool.” Then he looked down at the ground, and spoke softly. “He came back to the store on Wednesday,” he said. “Wayne. He knew I would be there by myself. I told him I didn’t want to do anything with him anymore, but then he got down on his knees and he-he sucked me, and it felt so good, I didn’t know what to do. I knew I needed help so I came here.”
“Good for you. Don’t worry about Wayne. I’m going to take care of him.”
“I don’t know what you can do.” He looked up at me and there were tears in his eyes. “I think I might be in love with him.”
I put my arm around him. “I know it’s hard at your age,” I said, “but try and be careful not to confuse love with lust. Just because you want to be with somebody, because you want to have sex with him, doesn’t mean you’re in love with him.” I pulled back and looked at him. “Can I tell you a secret?”
He nodded. “I think he’s pretty sexy myself. I mean, I haven’t done anything with him, but I’m not sure I could resist.” I pulled a tissue out of my pocket and wiped his eyes. “So don’t feel bad about the way you feel, okay?”
“I’ll try. Will you let me know if you ever arrest him?”
“You’ll hear,” I said. “Oh, yeah, you’ll hear.”
BOYS’ NIGHT OUT
I gave Jimmy Ah Wong my home phone number and cell number, and told him to call me if he ran into any trouble with Wayne, or if he just wanted to talk. Heading down Kalakaua, I saw Officer Saunders approaching me with a big grin on his face.
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t ex-Detective Dicksucker,” he said.
“What’s your problem, Saunders?” He was wearing street clothes, and I guessed he was heading to the station for the start of his shift. “I ever do anything to you?”
“Guess I just don’t like faggots on the force.” He leaned in close to me. “I’m glad they booted your ass out. I hope you end up running security for some shopping mall, rent-a-cop with a little go-cart. Then you can pull your carpet-muncher buddies over for a quickie in somebody’s back seat, out in the mall parking lot.”
“You’ve given this a lot of thought,” I said. “Sounds like you’re the one with the problem. You having wet dreams about guys sucking your cock?”
“You asshole. You pervert that badge you used to wear.”
“You’re not on duty yet, are you, Saunders?”
“I was on second watch. I got off duty at three-fifteen.”
“Good.” I punched him in the eye, knowing I could blacken it easily. “Then you can’t say I assaulted a police officer,” I said, as he went reeling backwards. “Unless of course you want to cry about the fairy who gave you the black eye.”
My hand started to throb, but I didn’t care. I brushed past Saunders and headed for home. “You haven’t heard the last of this, faggot!” he called after me.
I smiled all the way home, despite the pain in my hand, imagining the excuses he would come up with for sporting a shiner. He was more flab than muscle and more bark than bite, and everybody knew it. His tiny Chinese wife was really the one who wore the pants in the family. I figured there’d be a lot of snickering at the station, guys asking if his wife had given him the black eye. Good. He’d been talking stink about me; now he’d be the butt of fun.
I decided to change into my new clothes before going over to Harry’s to help set up the equipment. I stripped down to my Gap boxers, printed with tropical fish, then poured myself into the too-tight pants and shirt. When I was finished, I admired the results in the mirror.
It didn’t look like me, not the me I usually was. It was like I was getting into costume, preparing for a performance. I combed my hair one last time, and left.
When I got to Harry’s parking lot, Haoa’s van was nowhere in sight. So I walked across the street to the Ala Wai Canal and sat on the stone wall at the water’s edge. From there I could look down towards Diamond Head, looming in the distance, or straight ahead to the Ko‘olau Mountains, where the spill of suburbia trailed down its sides.
Clouds were starting to mass over the mountains, and though the sun was behind me it got cooler due to the wind. There was a steady buzz of traffic on Ala Wai Boulevard behind me, as I sat there staring at the placid water. The occasional jogger or walker went by, but I hardly noticed them, thinking about what lay ahead.
Based on the note Evan Gonsalves had left for Terri, I was pretty sure that Evan hadn’t killed Tommy Pang. That only left Wayne. He wanted to manage the club and he wanted to stay with Derek, and I was sure Tommy wouldn’t have liked that.
I was pretty sure that Derek and Wayne had been at Evan’s house, and that it was because of them that he was dead. I just didn’t know why.
A black bird landed next to me, pecked at the ground, then flew away. Then I understood. Suppose Wayne had killed Tommy, and somehow Evan had witnessed it? Evan could have been blackmailing Wayne, threatening to tell Derek what had happened.
That would explain the cryptic message Evan had left, that he had one more thing to do before he could go back to being legit. Wayne was probably making a lot of money from the sale of those Hawaiian artifacts, money Evan thought could pay for his future with Terri.
I wasn’t sure how I could get Wayne Gallagher to admit it, though. I hoped that I could get him talking, into a bragging mood, and let nature take its course. I was in a good position for that. As far as Wayne was concerned, he had won, and I’d lost my job, and he had every reason to gloat.
The tougher question was what I’d do if he came on to me. How would I react? It was like he emitted some kind of pheromone that was irresistible to me-a combination of sex and danger, a physical and mental presence that drew me in. I had to remember I wasn’t there for fun, that I was playing a part and I had to stay in character. But I knew from my brief experiences with Tim and Gunter that I was hungry for that physical contact, and that it would be a struggle to hold back.
I heard a couple of quick beeps behind me and got up. I saw Haoa’s green landscaping van pulling into Harry’s parking lot, and crossed the street. Haoa straddled two guest parking spaces and as I walked up, Lui was sliding open the side doors to reveal Harry sitting amongst a jumble of boxes and cables. “Hey, guys,” I said.
“We’ve got our work cut out for us,” Harry said from inside the van, as he stood up. “You guys are all going to have to pitch in.”
We spent the next couple of hours, as night fell around us, unpacking boxes, connecting cables, and hooking up receivers. By eight o’clock we were running tests, and I was running scared. I pulled off my shirt so that Harry could start taping me up, and saw my skin was covered with goose bumps.
I’d been through situations like this before, most recently that drug bust in Kapiolani Park that now seemed a lifetime away. I remembered that was the night I’d gone to the Rod and Reel, the night that Tommy Pang had been murdered and my life had started falling apart.
“Hold still,” Harry said. “Every time I touch you, you jump a foot.”
Before, though, the danger had never seemed so great. It was easy to ignore the possibility you might get killed-the brain loves to shelve that kind of stuff in the back, some primitive form of self-preservation. Besides, in a standard stakeout I’m walking in armed, or at least with a half-dozen armed officers behind me. If anything goes wrong, they’re there for me.
In a normal stakeout, you want to make your case and put the bad guy away, but if it doesn’t work, if he won’t talk or he makes your wire, you can go back to your desk the next day and get on with your life. If I didn’t get a confession out of Wayne Gallagher, I didn’t know where I was going.