a guy in a Miata with the top down cut off a Ford Explorer to make a sharp left. The Ford blasted his horn. My heart was racing again and my hands were shaking. The door to the club opened, and the giraffe stepped outside. I caught his eye, shook my head, and walked around the corner. I found a place in the shadows and slumped against the wall, facing the back door of the club.
The giraffe didn’t follow, and I was grateful. It was nearly three, and I was due on the second watch at eight in the morning. If I went home now, I could sleep for a couple of hours, and then get out onto the surf by first light. Just me, my board, and the ocean, and I could feel better. I knew I could.
I was almost ready to start home when I heard the sound of somebody dragging something down the alley. I thought it was a manager dragging a trash can out to the street, until I rounded the corner and saw him bent down low. When he reached the shelter of a kiawe tree by the street, he turned and ran back up the alley. I heard a car door open and then slam closed, and then a black Jeep Cherokee swung out of the alley behind the club, fishtailing a bit as the driver made his turn. I figured the driver was probably running away from somebody he’d met at the bar. I knew how he felt.
Then I saw the body.
I looked up, making the connection between the dragging sound and the hurried driver, but it was too late; the car had already made the turn onto Kuhio and it was gone. I was kicking myself for my slow reactions as I leaned over the guy. Even in the dark, I could see the blood already pooling beneath his head. I felt his neck for a pulse, and couldn’t get one. “Shit,” I said out loud.
I wasn’t carrying my cell phone, so I had to jog to the corner, looking for a pay phone. There wasn’t one. It was two blocks before I could find one that worked. I dialed 911, and covered the mouthpiece of the phone with my T-shirt. “I want to report a murder,” I said, mumbling but trying to get the words out. “Behind the Rod and Reel Club on Kuhio Avenue.”
The operator asked, “May I have your name, sir?”
I wanted to go back to the guy in the alley. I didn’t want him to be alone. And I knew that as the first officer on the scene I ought to investigate, secure the area. Most crimes are solved within the first twenty-four hours, and I’d been given a golden opportunity to be in at the start of the investigation.
But I didn’t want to explain what I was doing back there, long after I’d left my buddies. I spent my time looking for the truth behind other people’s lives, but I wasn’t prepared to look so closely at my own. After all, despite whatever had happened in my past, I was dating a woman. I was still trying. So despite everything I knew I ought to do, I hung up the phone.
There was a light breeze sweeping through the trash along the side of the street. I pulled off my T-shirt and used it to wipe the sweat from my forehead. I started to jog for home, hoping the breeze could blow away my sins.
MORNING LIGHT
I heard the sirens going down Kuhio Avenue as I ran home. At least the poor sucker wouldn’t be alone, I thought. The avenue was nearly deserted, just a skinny black guy on the other side of the street going in my direction, and an old woman swathed in layers waddling along on a side street. The air was hot and humid, heavy with the scent of motor oil and crushed plumeria blossoms. The light breeze died as I ran past darkened store windows and lonely hotel lobbies.
All the events of the evening seemed to catch up to me by the time I got to Lili‘uokalani Avenue and the exterior stairs to my apartment. From the moment we put the sting in action, I’d been running on adrenaline, and it finally ran out. Sweat dripped off my forehead and my heart was racing, as much from exertion as from my own fear and panic. I knew it wasn’t right to leave the body there, and yet I knew I couldn’t stay. I careened into the decorative railing, palm trees encased in a cage of wrought iron, and used it to pull myself upstairs. With a shaking hand, I unlocked my door and stumbled inside.
I pulled off the rest of my clothes and stepped into the shower. Just before I turned the water on, my hand brushed my face and I found it was wet. As the hot water started to pound I realized it wasn’t sweat; I’d been crying.
I couldn’t sleep. I felt as guilty as if I’d killed the guy myself. What kind of cop was I? By hearing that guy drag the body out to the street and not staying around to report what I’d seen to the officer who responded, I’d made myself into an accessory to a homicide. I was as bad as every crappy witness I’d ever interviewed. No, I didn’t see the license number of the car. I couldn’t give more than a general description of the guy I’d seen dragging the body. It all happened so fast, officer. There was nothing I could do.
I paced around my little studio apartment until just before dawn, waiting for dispatch to call me, trying to convince myself I should call in. Akoni and I are not the only homicide detectives currently assigned to district six, Waikiki, but in a departmental experiment on community policing, the two of us had been assigned to work out of the Waikiki substation on Kalakaua. Other detectives, including ones from the other units, work out of the main headquarters. I guessed maybe dispatch was handing the call to detectives from downtown, so finally I said, “The hell with this,” and put on my bathing suit. I grabbed my board and walked out to Lili‘uokalani Street, which leads directly to Kuhio Beach Park, where I surf.
I am renewed, reborn and revitalized every time I step into the salty water. With my board under me, balanced on a wave, surrounded by sea spray and blue skies, I am finally complete. It’s a moment of rare transcendence for me, a chance to rise up out of the scum and bitterness and shame I find on the streets. It’s the only way I can keep being a cop.
The sun hadn’t come up over the Ko‘olau Mountains by the time I waded into the water, and the surf was cool, but there was a halo of light over the rocky crests beyond the city that promised day was not far behind. The waves were small, and it wasn’t hard to paddle beyond them. I lay on the board, dangling my right hand in the water, trying to get a feel for the surf.
I could take a while like that, falling into the rhythm of the waves. That morning it took even longer than usual. I couldn’t seem to empty my mind of the image of that guy, lying in the alley, or of the shame I felt at leaving him there. Finally, though, I relaxed at least a little, and then saw a good wave building. I paddled fast to catch it, then stood up on the board just as a ray of light rose beyond the top of the Ko‘olau, stabbing me in the eye. The nose of the board pearled, or dipped below the wave, and I wiped out, tumbling into the water. The wave washed over me, dragging my board toward the shore, and the leash that kept me tied to the board dragged me forward with it.
The dunking and the swim toward shore revitalized me. The sets were good, and I caught a couple of powerful waves. Before I knew it, it was daylight and it was time for me to get back home. And sure enough, when I got home I found a message to call dispatch. I called in before I stepped into the shower again. “Homicide reported at 2:38 a.m. in the alley behind the Rod and Reel Club on Kuhio Avenue,” the dispatcher told me. “Detective Hapa‘ele is en route.”
That was Akoni. I jumped through the shower and came out running, and about twenty minutes later I was next to Akoni in the alley, a narrow strip of often-patched pavement that ran between Kuhio and Kalakaua Avenues. It looked even more desolate in the full light of day than it had in the middle of the night.
On the Diamond Head side the alley backed up against the blank rear wall of a budget restaurant, and on the Ewa side sat the Rod and Reel Club’s back door. At the Kuhio Avenue end, a couple of the high trees inside the Rod and Reel’s patio hung out over the alley, but the rest of it was open to harsh sun. There were a couple of small dumpsters scattered at intervals, behind other back doors, and coupons for some tourist restaurant skittered in the wind. The walls that faced into the alley had been painted different colors, and some looked like they hadn’t been painted in years. It was a back side of Waikiki most tourists don’t see.
“You missed him,” Akoni said sadly. “I finally had to let the body boys take him away, because nobody knew where the hell you were.”
“You know where I was,” I said. I nodded my head toward the ocean. The sun had cleared the tops of the mountains and was shining brightly on the tourists, the orange-vested guys working on the street, the Japanese men in suits and the little girls in plaid uniforms on their way to school.
“Jesus, what time did you get to bed last night?”
