Wayne answered the door again and showed us in to the living room. “Derek’ll be right out,” he said. “He’s just on the phone.”
“I went to the Boardwalk last night,” I said. “You could have warned me about that sandbox by the front door.”
He smiled. “It’s a little thing they do to keep track of who’s been there before.”
“And you’ve been there. The bartender recognized you. Said you go there sometimes with Derek, sometimes without. Cruising, I think he called it.”
“I wouldn’t say that. Sometimes I want a beer and Derek doesn’t.” He picked a paper clip up from the table and started fiddling with it.
“Just to refresh your memory, you told us that the night Tommy was murdered, you and Derek left the Rod and Reel and went to the Boardwalk. That true?”
“Yeah, we needed to chill out.”
“When you’ve been to the Boardwalk in the past, you ever see anybody in there drinking, doesn’t look old enough?” I asked.
“There are guys there who like chicken.” We must have looked confused, because he added, “Younger guys. Boys, almost. So the chicken comes there, and sometimes they drink, I guess. I never paid much attention.”
I nodded. “See, the liquor control board, they pay attention. Matter of fact, they closed the place down Saturday, the ninth. They didn’t get open again until the following Saturday. So the Boardwalk was closed on the Tuesday night you said you and Derek went there. You want to rethink that story a little?”
By then he had twisted the paper clip into a tortured shape that resembled the double helix of DNA. “Okay, you got me, I lied,” he said. “You’ve got to understand, I come from an Irish Catholic family. My older brother’s a goddamn priest.” He shook his head. “I’m accustomed to lying when it comes to my sex life. The fact is, I still don’t think it’s anybody’s business who I get off with and where, but I don’t want you guys to think I’m holding out on you.”
He looked right at me, smiled, and then licked his lips. I felt he was looking right into my heart, and knew that even as I sat there, I was lusting for him. He said, “Derek and I have been together three years now, and sometimes, the sex gets boring, so we try and spice things up a little. The truth is, after we left the Rod and Reel I was horny and I wasn’t taking no for an answer.”
He licked his lips again, and I shivered. I hope neither he nor Akoni noticed. “We drove up to Mount Tantalus and I spread Derek against the hood of the car, and plowed his ass, howling at the moon like a dog in heat. I was hoping some breeder couple would stumble on us and get the shock of their lives, but no such luck.”
“You’re a pervert,” Akoni said.
“You ever had a piece of ass up against a warm engine, Detective?” he asked. “You ought to try it sometime. Your wife, maybe one of those boys from the Boardwalk. You just might like it.”
“You freak,” Akoni said, jumping up.
I jumped up, too, holding him back, just as Derek Pang entered the room. If he’d heard anything, he didn’t let on. “You have jewelry that belonged to my father?” he asked.
We sat back down, Wayne putting his arm protectively around Derek’s back, and I showed them both everything, in plastic bags. Derek nodded. “It was all his.” He seemed to swallow hard. “You think the man who pawned this stuff is the one who killed him?”
“We don’t know yet, but it’s a good chance,” I said. “Listen, Derek, there’s just one little thing we need to clear up. Would you tell us again what happened after you left the Rod and Reel Club the night your father was murdered?”
He relaxed back into Wayne’s embrace. “It’s like I told you,” he said. “Wayne and I wanted to fool around, and we weren’t comfortable doing it where my father might find us. So we went up to Mount Tantalus and parked.”
“You stayed in the car the whole time?” I asked.
Derek blushed. “Is that important?”
“Just checking the details,” I said.
Derek reached over and squeezed Wayne’s knee. “We made out in the car for a while, and then Wayne asked me to get out and pull my pants down.”
“Okay,” Akoni said. “That’s all we need.” He stood up. “You’ll be able to get this jewelry back after the investigation’s over.”
I didn’t say anything until we were in the elevator. “What was that all about?” I asked. “Derek was in the middle of his statement.”
“Yeah, and you know as well as I do the two of them rehearsed the whole thing,” he said. “They were baiting us, Kimo. I didn’t need to hear the details all over again.” He looked over at me, and I was sure he’d seen what was in my heart when I looked at Wayne Gallagher. “And you didn’t either,” he said.
We were on our way back to the station when we got a radio call, that a man’s body had been found in Kapiolani Park, on the Diamond Head end of Waikiki. When we arrived, we found Lidia Portuondo keeping traffic away from the spot and Alvy Greenberg standing over a body, which had been discovered by a young haole woman out walking her dog. The body was in an advanced state of decomposition, so much so that we could not even determine, at first glance, whether it belonged to a man or woman.
Apparently the body had been buried, at the far end of the park near the Dillingham Fountain, and recent wind and rain had uncovered it. We waited for the coroner to come out and take the body away, but it was clear we wouldn’t have much to investigate until Doc had a chance to do some analysis.
The girl whose dog had discovered the body was pretty upset, and we took a statement from her there, along with all her information, in case we needed to get back to her. “Dis one not get solved,” Akoni said. “Not without lucky break.”
“No argument from me, brah,” I said. We couldn’t even search missing persons reports back at the station until we found out if the body was male or female and got a race and approximate age. This one certainly wasn’t getting solved quickly, probably further adding to Lieutenant Yumuri’s unhappiness with us.
GIRAFFE
We didn’t even bother to go back to the station, but instead headed over to the DA’s office to go over the evidence we had collected on Tommy Pang’s murder. When we arrived, the receptionist told us Ms. Kaneahe was waiting for us in her office.
Peggy had met Akoni a couple of times. The three of us shook hands, and then he and I sat down in old- fashioned wooden chairs across from her desk. The room was spare and professional-a bookcase filled with impressive legal volumes took up one whole wall, and the other was decorated only with Peggy’s framed diplomas, including one from Punahou. There was nothing personal about the room, no knickknacks or photos on the desk, no attempt made to overcome the institutional sterility of the bland white walls and lay-in acoustic tile ceiling. I wondered how she could spend every day there. I’d have gone crazy before my first coffee break.
“Why don’t you tell me about the case in your own words.”
I looked to Akoni, but Peggy said, “No, you first, Kimo. Since you seem to play a larger than usual role in this case.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay,” I said. “It started the night that black tar bust failed.” I told her about drinking with the other cops, and then going to the Rod and Reel.
“So you weren’t just in some bar in the neighborhood, you were in that bar,” she said. “I don’t understand. What were you doing there?”
I should have told her then, but I knew it was something I had to talk to her about in private, as a personal thing, nothing related to work. “You know we’ve had a number of gay bashings outside that club over the last few
