My dad has spent most of his career as a general contractor, building the homes, stores and offices where the people of our island live and work. He has always impressed upon me and my brothers the honorable nature of hard work, the need to put others before yourself, the importance of remaining true to your ideals no matter what pressure is brought to bear on you.
When I was born, he was working as a construction supervisor for Amfac, one of the “Big 5” companies in Hawai’i. At night and on weekends, he was building a small house on a piece of land his friend Chin Suk had given him. When the house was finished, he planned to sell it, and use the money to start his own construction business.
But it was tough providing for a family of five on a superintendent’s salary, and he often had to wait weeks before he could afford to buy the materials he needed. One day, a man from a mainland company offered him a thousand dollars to approve a lucrative contract that would have been very costly to Amfac. That thousand dollars would have been enough to buy the rest of the materials my father needed, and get his business launched. But he turned the money down, and reported the bribe to his boss.
The house wasn’t finished for another six months, but my father made up for it by working harder and working smarter, avoiding waste and watching every penny. He has always held that up to us as an example of how a man must listen to his conscience and not take the easy way out.
Now, toward the end of his career, he worked out of an office above a small shopping plaza he owned in the industrial neighborhood of Salt Lake, near Pearl Harbor, and I knew if I hurried I could make it there just in time for lunch. I pulled into the parking lot just as he was descending the exterior stair.
He has lost a little height, the osteoporosis compressing his spinal column in tiny increments, and his hair is flecked with silver. As my mother often points out, though, he is still as handsome as he is in their wedding picture, framed in our living room. She keeps him on a strict diet, but he’s a big man, broad-shouldered and a little paunchy in the gut. If I age as gracefully as he has, I’ll be glad.
“Kimo!” he said, when I pulled up next to him and leaned out my window. “This is a nice surprise. How’s the first day back at work? You on a case out this way?”
“Not exactly. You have lunch plans?”
“I’m having lunch with you. Come on, I’ll buy you a plate lunch.”
A plate lunch is an island tradition, developed to serve to plantation workers who needed to keep up their strength through long days. A main course, usually fish or chicken, two scoops of rice, a scoop of macaroni salad, and some shredded lettuce. As we walked past the storefronts, I noticed an odd pattern in the flooring-random tiles with unusual patterns. “Hey, Dad, what’s with the floor here? Surfboards? Footballs? Movie cameras?”
As I walked I figured out the pattern. The tiles came in groupings of threes, scattered down the walkway as if tossed there. “Not movie cameras, TV cameras,” my father said. “For my sons. I wondered which of you would be the first to see the pattern. Haoa comes here a couple times a week, but he never looks down. Lui even came once or twice, but he never saw. This is the first time you’ve noticed.”
“For your sons,” I repeated. The TV camera for Lui, the football for Haoa, the surfboard for me. While we had been going on about our lives, leaving our parents behind, our father had been memorializing us in tile. “I hope you have the same number of each tile. You don’t want us to get jealous.”
“Always the same for each of my sons. No difference.”
We walked into my father’s favorite restaurant, a hole in the wall at the far end of the shopping center called Papa Lo’s. I didn’t know if there was a Papa Lo; if there was, I’d never met him. Instead the place was staffed by eager Vietnamese women who spoke only enough English to take orders and make change.
While we sat at a linoleum-topped table and waited for our food, I said, “I met with my new boss today, and things aren’t going to be as easy as I expected.”
“How come?”
I squirmed uncomfortably on the hard plastic chair. “He wants me to lie about something. And I don’t want to.”
“Lie? About what?”
“Something in an investigation. One he wants me to work on.”
“I don’t like him asking you to lie,” my father said, shaking his head. “Why be a policeman if you can’t tell the truth?”
“You told me once,” I said, recalling a conversation we’d had only a few weeks before, “that you and Uncle Chin, when you were younger…”
“Yes, yes,” he said. “What?”
Uncle Chin is my uncle in all but blood. My father’s best friend, he was once a powerful leader of a Honolulu tong, or Chinese gang. Now he is old and sick, but he and my father have always been, well, as thick as thieves, though I’ve never for a moment had reason to doubt my father’s honor.
“You told me you had always acted with honor, no matter what you did. Was that true?”
The waitress brought our lunches and laid them before us, bowing her head slightly. My father began to eat, without answering my question. Finally, he said, “You know the expression, no honor among thieves?”
I nodded.
“You may not understand, but your Uncle Chin was always an honorable man. And me, too, I try to live with honor and respect, try to teach that to you boys, too.”
“I’m not sure we always paid attention.”
My father made a noise in his throat that is impossible to render into an alphabet, but it is the same noise he made when any of us came in late with improbable explanations. Its meaning was something along the lines of “You expect me to believe that?”
We ate for a while in silence. Eventually, my father finished, wiped his hands on his napkin, and crumpled it into a ball. “Will you still have a job if you don’t agree to do this thing he wants, that will make you lie?”
I understood then that whether he knew it or not, my father was giving me the opportunity to take the job, even if it meant lying to him, to my mother, my brothers, and everyone else I knew. All I had to do was lie. I could tell my father that there would be no job for me with the HPD if I turned this opportunity down. It would give me a reason why I was leaving the force, a reason my parents, with their strong beliefs about honor, could understand. Instead of appearing weak, making it look like I could no longer handle being a cop now that I was out of the closet, I would be strong, holding on to my values in a world that didn’t appreciate them.
Of course, the irony was that I would be lying as I pretended to be unable to lie.
But what else could I do? Six years of work with the Honolulu PD had shown me that being a cop touched something deep inside me. It was a privilege and a responsibility, and I could not turn my back on either of those things. If I had to make a few personal sacrifices for the public good, tell a couple of small lies to my family and friends in order to catch a killer, that was nothing compared to the men and women who had given their lives in the line of duty. To pretend otherwise would demean them, and the badge I believed in.
It was time for me to make a decision, and there would be no going back on it. While my father waited for my answer, I felt that my senses were magnified. I smelled the chickens roasting in the back kitchen, and the pineapple an elderly couple were sharing next to us. The sun streaming in the front windows was almost too strong, hurting my eyes. When the door opened, I heard a siren outside, police, fire or ambulance rushing to provide help to someone who needed it.
“Sampson said we’d talk about that,” I said. “But I have a feeling I won’t be reporting to work at the headquarters downtown any time soon. And if that happens, I think I might just go surfing for a while.” »
I met with Sampson again the next morning, ready to make a deal. “Who will I report to up on the North Shore?”
“No one up there will know you’re working on this case. I’ll give you my personal email address and my cell phone number, and that’s the only way I want you to contact me.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Any particular reason?”
“I have no idea who’s behind these murders,” he said. “But I have to be suspicious when two good detectives in District 2 can’t come up with any information. I’m not saying that I think there’s a cop, or cops, involved in this, but something doesn’t smell right.”
The thought that someone on the North Shore could be sabotaging the investigation made me uncomfortable, but it was just one more problem heaped on my plate, a plate that had gotten fuller and fuller since the day my closet door opened.
We mapped out a strategy. I would tell my family and friends that I had decided not to accept the department’s offer, in order to sit back and think about all that had happened to me in the last few weeks, not just my coming out but the man I had killed in the course of solving my last case. I was going to take my severance check and head for the North Shore, to surf while I thought about my next move.
Sampson would issue a press release to local media indicating that while my name had been cleared, I had chosen not to return to the force, and he would field all inquiries regarding me. He would work out the details to ensure that my salary would continue to be deposited into my bank account, and that my benefits, including health and life insurance, would continue.
One of my brother Lui’s reporters, a Korean guy named Ralph Kim, had followed my story from the beginning. After I left headquarters, I called Ralph to break the news of my resignation from the police force.
I had to leave a message on Ralph’s voice mail, but he called me back as I was walking into my apartment, excitement and feigned outrage in his voice. “I knew this was going to happen,” he said. “That department is never going to accept a gay cop.”
“It’s not about the department. It’s about me. That’s why I want to talk to you.”
“Have you hired an attorney? You know that series we ran last week, about gay cops around the country? There’s some big money in discrimination settlements.”
I stretched out on my sofa, the phone at my ear. “I need some time off, Ralph. That’s the story. It’s not about discrimination or how the HPD treats its cops. If you want to talk to me, those are the ground rules.”
“I want to talk to you, but that’s not much of a story.”
“Sure it is, if you pitch it right,” I said, sitting up. I found myself waving my free arm around, even though I knew Ralph couldn’t see it. “What effect does coming out have on somebody’s life-career being one part of that? You could talk to that guy at the power company, and that top salesman at the big car dealership near the airport. Some other high-profile gay men and lesbians. You might even get another series out of it.” I paused, giving Ralph a chance to think. “This could be a big career move for you, Ralph. But the story’s got to be about me, and my decisions, not a smear campaign against the HPD.”
“It’s still a so-so story, but I’ll pitch it to my news director and see what he says. In the meantime, let’s schedule something.”
I didn’t want to do the interview at KVOL, because I didn’t want Lui to know about it until it was over. I knew he’d waste a lot of time trying to talk me out of it, or putting obstacles in my way, out of a misplaced sense of family loyalty. Once he got over that, I was sure his newsman’s instincts would take over, and he’d run the story. So Ralph and I met just after lunch at Kuhio Beach Park, with the squat, single-story Waikiki station right behind us. I wore a pair of khakis, a dark green polo shirt, and brown leather sandals, trying to look relaxed and confident.
Ralph knew something was up, but couldn’t figure out what. “You’re just walking away?” he asked me. “After all your years on the force?”
“I need some time to think about my future.” We strolled along the beach together, the cameraman walking backwards in front of us. “My life has been in turmoil for the last couple of weeks, and I need to process everything that has happened to me. Remember, I solved a high-profile murder case, acknowledged my sexual orientation to the world, and killed a man with his own gun. That’s a lot for anybody to handle.”
Ralph found a dozen ways to ask the same question, but every time I gave him a variation of the same answer. Finally he shifted tactics. “What about that murder case? Will you be testifying?”
“That’s up to the DA,” I said. “I’ll make myself available whenever the department needs me.”
“And yet you don’t want to be a cop anymore?”
“I don’t know what I want, Ralph,” I said, and something about the honesty of that remark made him finally believe me.
“So what’s next?” he asked. “There are forces on the mainland where you could work, aren’t there?”
“There are. But I haven’t looked that far ahead. Right now I just want to step out of the limelight and think about what’s right for me.”
“Going to hit the waves?”
“You bet. I’ve got a long board and a short board, and they’re both calling my name.”
“I’ll let you answer that call, then,” he said. The cameraman moved around to get a beauty shot of the waves. Ralph said good-bye, wished me luck, and told me to keep in touch. “You have a lot of fans here in town, Kimo, and I’m sure they’ll all be looking forward to your next move.”
I felt funny walking back to my apartment after the interview was over. A little depressed, maybe. A part of me liked the spotlight, even though most of me didn’t, and so I was torn between being happy that I could slip into anonymity and knowing that my visibility might be helping others.
And of course, the fact that I had lied through my teeth during most of the interview didn’t help.
Northern Exposure
My cell phone rang late that afternoon, as I was packing my truck with everything I would need on the North Shore. “You trying get me killed?” Lui asked, without preamble. “Because you know that’s what Mom is going to do if I run this story.”
Our mother still had not let Lui forget that he had broken the news of my sexuality, and my suspension from the force, without calling either me or our parents before the story ran.
“I’ll take care of Mom and Dad. I’m going there for dinner. Before the story runs, I’ll tell them.”
“But why, Kimo?” he asked. “If you’re going to leave the force, fine. But why make more of a story of it? I’ll square it with Ralph, we’ll forget you had the interview, and you can go up to the North Shore and surf. Nobody will even notice you’re gone.”
“That’s the point. I want people to know I’m leaving the force, and I love the way Ralph is making the story more than just about me. I know a lot of people have been following what’s happened to me, and I want them to know how it all has come out. You have to run that story, Lui. You owe me.”
“You’re crazy, brah, but it’s your own special kind of crazy. It’s a great story and a good interview, so I’ll run it, but you make sure and tell Mom that I didn’t want to.”
“I will.” »
I decided to spend the night at my parents’ house before leaving for the North Shore, and pulled up at the house where I grew up late that afternoon. St. Louis Heights is a nearly vertical suburb of Honolulu that backs up against Wa ’ ahila Ridge State Park. The houses are older bungalows or split-levels stacked at a forty-five degree angle down the streets.
“Your father said he had lunch with you yesterday,” my mother said, as I kissed her check. “I wondered when you were going to come and see me.”
My mother has always stood in sharp contrast to my father. Where he is casual, letting his hair get sloppy before he cuts it, or allowing half a shirt tail to escape his pants, my mother is the picture of perfection. Her black hair is cut and styled and sprayed into submission, her skin smooth and wrinkle-free even in her sixties. As a teenager, she was the Pineapple Festival Queen, glittering in a rhinestone tiara and satin sash, and she has retained that aura of poise and grace. She only comes up to my father’s shoulder, but she exerts a subtle force that easily allows you to forget her height.
My parents and I sat in their elegant living room, in elaborate armchairs imported from France. It was an odd room to find in a Hawaiian house, one dropped in from the pages of Architectural Digest , circa 1975. As kids, we never set foot in there, for fear we’d break something. My mother folded her hands in her lap and gave me the look that had terrified all of us, my father included, for years.
“You know I had a decision to make about work,” I began. I realized my mouth was very dry, but it was too late to ask for a glass of water. “And it was a really difficult one to make, but I thought a lot about the way you brought me up, the things you taught me mattered, and I’ve decided that I’m not going back to being a cop. At least not right now.”
“I don’t like to see you quit a job. We didn’t bring you up that way.”
“I know.” I squirmed in my chair, trying to find a comfortable position, finally giving up. And there was no way she was letting me stretch my legs out and rest them on the glass and gilt coffee table. “But you didn’t bring me up to lie, either.”
“What exactly do they want you to lie about?” she asked. “Being gay?”
“That cat is pretty much out of the bag. It’s something else. I don’t want to go into it.”
“But…”
“Let the boy be, Lokelani,” my father said. “If this is what you need to do, then we support you. Being a cop is a bad job for a gay man, anyway. You go surf for a while, then you come back, maybe you’ll work with me. You could go back to school, learn about decorating.”
That thought horrified me. I missed that gay decorating gene; my apartment looks like the “before” picture from some reality TV show. It was killing me to have my parents think I was a quitter, that I couldn’t do my job any more just because I’d come out of the closet.
My mother clearly wasn’t happy. Short, petite, and pretty in a china doll way, she has ruled her big, tall husband and three sons with a raised eyebrow, a tone of voice, a deep sigh. It’s rare that she comes out and takes a stand so definitely, but there was nothing I could do at that point. Once I’d made my decision, chosen my wave, so to speak, all I could do was ride it until it crashed to shore, doing my best to manage the fear and exhilaration, and avoid getting crushed on the coral that always lurked just below the water’s surface.
“There’s more,” I said.
My mother looked wary. I could only imagine what was going through her head, after all that had happened. “What?”
“There’s going to be a story, on KVOL, on the evening news.”
“No, Kimo. No more stories!” She reached for the phone. “I’m calling your brother right now.”
“You can’t, Mom.” The words rushed out, in my haste to keep her from spoiling those carefully-laid plans. “It’s not about me, so much. It’s about the decisions gay people have to make when they come out, about who to tell, and how to tell, and what you have to do once the secret’s out.”
I leaned forward. “The reporter interviewed other people, too. I mean, I’m the hook, the reason for the story. But they’re making it into another series, like the one on gay cops around the country. This is about gay and lesbian people in Honolulu, and how they live their lives every day.”
My mother looked at my father. Some kind of unspoken message passed between them, and finally my father said, “The news is on soon. We don’t want to miss it.”
We moved out to my father’s den to watch the news-there was no way my mother was letting a television set into her recreation of Versailles. My parents were both tight-lipped during the interview.
After the interview with me, Ralph gave the audience a preview of what was to come in this new series: gay men who had lost their jobs after coming out, lesbian moms who had lost custody battles, gay ministers who had been forced to leave their churches. There were other, more positive stories coming too, about people who had found faith, given up addictions, chosen new careers and established new families. It was going to be a good series, I thought, one that might change minds and move hearts. And it was going to do all that because I had told a lie.
The segment ended with a shot of Ralph framed against the surfers at Kuhio Beach Park. “This is Ralph Kim, in Waikiki with former Honolulu PD detective Kimo Kanapa’aka, who has just announced his decision not to return to the force after his very public coming out story. Stay tuned to KVOL, “Erupting News All The Time,” for more stories about ordinary men and women and their experiences coming out of the closet.”
When the news was over, my mother stood up, said, “Dinner now,” and we went into the equally formal dining room and ate, talking carefully about my brothers and their wives and children. I could tell the story had moved them, though we didn’t talk about it. That didn’t change the fact that I had lied, and I would have to live with the consequences of that lie, particularly when it came to light, but it did make me feel better.
We watched TV together after dinner, and then I went up to my room, just the way I had as a teenager. It was frozen as it was when I was seventeen, leaving Hawai’i for college on the mainland. The walls were lined with surf posters, the shelves crowded with every trophy I ever won in a surf competition. I sat on my twin bed and tried to remember that boy, or the young man he became, who returned to the islands with the idea that he could be a champion surfer. I remembered the day my parents picked me up at the airport, how I told them I was moving to the North Shore to surf even before we had left the parking garage.
In many ways I’m lucky to be the youngest. By then, my oldest brother, Lui, was married, a father, and moving up in the hierarchy at KVOL. Haoa, two years younger, had just gotten married and started his own landscaping business. Their success bought me freedom, and my parents agreed to let me take a year to surf. My father hired me on as a laborer and carpenter until the fall, letting me bank every penny I earned to fund my North Shore adventure, and I surfed every morning before work, rising in the pre-dawn darkness, and every evening. I left them in September, as the North Shore waves began to improve, and didn’t return until winter had passed and I had given up that dream.
I tried to read but I couldn’t concentrate. I checked my gear again, waxed my short board, reorganized the books on my shelf, which I hadn’t read since high school and wasn’t likely to ever again. At eleven, I turned the lights out.
I couldn’t sleep well, hyped up by the nervous energy of what the next day was to bring, but I did doze a little. I was grateful when light began seeping in my window and I heard the slap of the morning paper in the driveway. I pulled on a pair of board shorts, slippas and an old t-shirt that read, “Hug a Pineapple.” Before I opened the door, I looked outside for reporters lurking in the underbrush. Fortunately there were none.
There was a breeze blowing up from Diamond Head, and I could smell just the faintest hint of salt water. Down the street, I heard the soft whoosh of someone’s sprinklers, a dog barking, a siren passing far below. A yellow and orange sun was just coming into view over Wilhelmina Rise, to the east, and there were thin wisps of cirrus clouds high in the atmosphere. I picked up the paper and went back inside.
Opening it, I saw that I had reclaimed the headlines I’d been so glad to relinquish only a few days before.
“ Gay Cop Resigns,” they read. Someone, identified only as an “unnamed police source,” said that while gay men and lesbians had been successfully integrated into police forces around the country, there was no formal policy at the HPD prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and that some officers might not feel comfortable serving with someone who was openly gay. Sampson himself was quoted as saying, “Mr. Kanapa’aka has gone through a very difficult time in his life, and the Honolulu Police Department wishes him only the best in whatever the world brings his way.”
My father was up at first light, too, and while my mother slept in we read the paper and he made scrambled eggs and Spam for both of us. We Hawaiians take pride in the fact that we eat more Spam per person than any other group in the United States, something like five and a half cans per person per year. Hormel has even made a special limited edition hula girl can for us, available only in the islands.
“At least you get to surf for a while,” my father said, as we sat down to eat.
“I will,” I said. “Big waves coming soon.” It was October, and the best surf of the year was on its way to the North Shore, monster waves that attracted the best surfers from around the world.
“You have to be careful,” my father said, between forkfuls of egg. “People will know who you are, and some of them won’t like you. You won’t have your badge or your gun to protect you.”
“They never really protected me while I had them. The badge is just a way of convincing people to give you the information they know they should. And a gun doesn’t protect you; it’s a means of last resort. The only protection you really have is your own common sense.” I reached over and touched his shoulder. “Besides, if I get in any trouble, I still have that pistol you gave me.”
When I left for the North Shore the first time, after returning home from California with a BA in English and no job prospects in sight, my father had given me a. 9 millimeter Glock, one he’d had for years. It was more male bonding than out of any sense that I was in danger. I had grown up around guns; they were as much a part of our family life as luaus and slack key guitar music. Another father might have given his son a book, an heirloom watch or an embroidered ball cap. Mine gave me a gun.
He’d kept it lovingly polished and oiled, and I had tried to take as good care of it as he had. At that moment, it was locked in the glove compartment of my truck-which of course he had handed down to me, too. I believe you don’t draw a weapon unless you are ready to fire it, and you shouldn’t be ready to fire it until you have exhausted every other opportunity. I’d never fired either the Glock or my service revolver at anything more than a paper target, though I had killed a man with his own gun only a week before. The memory of that incident still haunted my dreams, but I had done it to save my brother Haoa’s life, and I did not regret it.
“Good,” he said, smiling across at me. “You know I worry about you.” He took a forkful of eggs and Spam, and smiled at the taste. “Just don’t tell your mother.”
“Don’t tell me what?” my mother asked, coming in to the kitchen in her white terrycloth robe, a gift from a spa vacation my father had treated her to the year before.
My father’s eyes widened. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you he had Spam for breakfast,” I said. “You know how you worry about his cholesterol.”
I was surprised at how quickly the lie came to my mouth. I try and believe I am an honest person, but years of harboring secret desires, lying to myself as much as others, had made the habit easier. So much for my new honesty; like the position I thought I was getting at District 1, it had evaporated quickly.
“You shouldn’t eat like that, Al,” she said, taking the half-eaten plate from him and scraping the Spam into the garbage. “You know what the doctor said.”
“He said, don’t eat anything that tastes good,” my father grumbled to me.
Let’s Go Surfing Now
I left them a little later, taking the Kamehameha Highway up through the center of the island, past pineapple plantations and tourists in rented cars. It was a sunny day, clear skies and gentle breezes ruffling the papery blossoms of wild red and purple bougainvillea along the highway, and I rolled down my windows, turned the volume up on an early Hapa CD, and tried to relax.
It had been a rough couple of weeks, emotionally and physically, and I knew it would take me a long time to process everything that had happened. But now I had to focus on the case, and solve it quickly so I could get back to Honolulu and get on with my life.
My cell phone rang about halfway up the Kam. It was my second brother, Haoa, the one who had the hardest time with my coming out. “Eh, brah, howzit?”
“Heading for the big waves,” I said. “How you doing?”
Both my brothers had helped me put away the case that had been the cause of my coming out, and Haoa had nearly been shot. That experience seemed to have shaken my big, solid brother, and I was sorry I was leaving Honolulu when he might need me.
“Keeping busy. We’re redoing all the planting for an office building out in Kahala.” Haoa’s landscaping company had continued to grow, and he sometimes worked with our father on projects. I was a little jealous of that.
I asked about his wife, Tatiana, and their kids, and heard all their news. Then there was an awkward silence. I thought for a moment the connection had been broken and checked the phone’s display to make sure the call hadn’t dropped. Finally, he said, “How you sleep, brah? Going through everything you do?”
“I get nightmares. And sometimes my nerves keep going and I can only doze. But then whatever’s bothering me passes, and I sleep again. For a while.” I held my breath, waiting for him to say something, and when he didn’t, I said, “You will, too. Give it time.”
“Yeah. I hope so.” He yawned. “Gotta make a living. You take care, brah.”
“You, too.”
I hung up, feeling like shit yet again. Add Haoa to the list of all those I owed. I should never have involved civilians in a case, least of all my own family, but I hadn’t had a choice; I had been suspended at the time and knew the only way I could get back to the force was to solve the case myself, however I could.
Thunderclouds moved overhead, and began to spit, then shower me. I turned on the wipers, flicked on the headlights, and kept going. I drove directly to Hale’iwa, where the bodies had all been found, passing the big carved sign with the surfer catching a wave right in the middle. Every time I go through that arched bridge over the Anahulu River, I get excited, because it means I’m going surfing, and there’s nothing better.
There are no motels anywhere in the area, so I stopped at Fujioka’s Supermarket, where all the visiting surfers check out the bulletin boards for rooms in private homes, for shacks with no plumbing but great ocean views, even for just a stretch of concrete floor with room enough for a sleeping bag and a surfboard.
Though any of the above might have served when I was 22 and broke (and many did), I could afford to be a little pickier at 32, with a credit card in my pocket and some money in the bank. I copied down information from half a dozen listings, and might have copied one more, from a flyer being posted by a heavyset Filipina with too much eye shadow and lipstick like a bloody gash across her mouth. But she saw me looking, recognized me, and put the flyer in her handbag instead.
I turned down one place where the landlady eyed me like a rib roast in the refrigerated meat case, another where I would have shared a bathroom with half a dozen surfer dudes in their twenties, a third that was the size of my closet back in Waikiki, and a fourth that was so close to the Kam Highway that I could almost reach out the door and touch the trucks heading up from Honolulu.
Fortunately the last place I tried was a wood-frame home called Hibiscus House, that had been added onto like a crazy quilt. The main house faced the street, but the driveway ran up alongside it, and the owners had built a series of rooms, one after the other, each with their own entrance and bathroom. It was as close to a cheap motel room as I was going to find, so I paid $500 for a week in advance (in cash, thank you, requiring a quick trip back into Hale’iwa to find an ATM), and set about getting my feet wet in the cool Pacific.
That first day I didn’t get into the ocean until late afternoon, after the rain clouds had passed over, and the sinking sun welcomed me back with water temperatures in the high 70s and light trade winds. There was still a line of cars parked on Ke Nui Road, but I snagged a spot, then dragged my board off the roof rack of the truck and headed down the sand.
People were starting to pack up, pulling off their wetsuits, coiling up their leashes and shouldering their boards, but I made my way down the hard-packed sand and felt the frothy water swirl around my ankles. I dropped my board into the surf, paddled outside the breakers and rode my first wave, a mid-sized one that broke to the left. It felt good to be back on the water.
My room at Hibiscus House came equipped with a miniature refrigerator (the tiny freezer compartment was fused solid with ice that looked like it had been there since before statehood) and a working toaster, so I swung past Fujioka’s on my way home and picked up bottled water, barbecue flavored Fritos, and brown sugar and cinnamon Pop Tarts. Not exactly hitting all the food groups, but I did also get some take-out sushi and chocolate-chip cookies for dessert, and then retreated to my room like an animal holing up in its burrow.
There had been water damage by the window, a brown stain the color of dried blood dripping from the sill to the floor. The twin mattress was bowed in the middle and smelled like generations of men had jerked off into it. The water in the bathroom was rusty and the bulb in the overhead light flickered like something from a bad movie. But it was home, at least until I earned the right to go back to Waikiki.
The next morning I went back to Pipeline, but before I got into the water I visualized the scene, based on what I’d read in the case dossier. Someone had been able to bring an M4 carbine to the beach, take careful aim, and shoot a surfer off his board. An M4’s not the kind of gun you can stash in the waistband of your shorts; it can be close to three feet long, and can be fitted with a dizzying array of scopes, lights, magazines and other apparatus. How the hell could you bring something like that to a beach and set it up?
After strolling casually up and down the beach a couple of times, making occasional eye contact, smiling and saying aloha, I saw a guy pulling his board out of a foam-lined neoprene bag, and had one of those Eureka! moments. Lots of surfers actually transport their boards in bags; with a little creativity you could probably fit a rifle in there, too.
So you could bring a rifle to the beach, pretty much undetected. But how do you set it up? Looking around, I figured the only solution was to hide behind a dune, using your surfboard to shield you from curious onlookers. There were a couple of likely prospects; if you were careful you could hunker down, letting only the top of your head and the barrel of the rifle peek above the sand.
Standing at the water’s edge and looking back, I could see you’d be protected. But you’d still be vulnerable from the street. It wasn’t until I saw an amateur photographer begin to set up his gear that I realized how the gunman had completely avoided suspicion. Bring enough gear with you, a couple of cameras with big lenses, some umbrellas, coolers and other paraphernalia, and everyone on the beach would assume you were there to shoot pictures, not surfers.
Once I figured that out, it was time to get wet. I hadn’t tackled big water for a long time, and I knew it would take a few days before I looked like I knew what I was doing. I stuck to Pipeline, because Mike Pratt had been killed there, and because both he and Lucie Zamora had been tournament-class surfers. At Pipeline, I’d be likely to meet up with other surfers who knew them.
Pipeline is actually a series of three reefs, meaning it can generate a variety of swells, from small to monster. You almost never get a wave to yourself there: if the surf is low, then every surfer and bodyboarder is out, fighting for those few precious feet at the top of the swell. Even when the surf is high, there are daredevils all around, dropping into your wave and pushing you out.
The potential for disaster is everywhere, and maybe that’s what makes Pipeline so much fun. The drops can be so high that you get giddy with exhilaration-yet that reef is waiting for you when you fall. You may have mastered a tall wave, but watch out for that guy cutting across in front of you. With every tube you face the possibility of getting sucked under the water.
Pipeline requires the most basic skills: getting in early and placing your turn just right. Those were things I knew I could do, if I worked at them long enough. I took the small and medium waves, often sharing them with other surfers when the beach was busy, and I let the really big ones go. If you aren’t prepared for those, you can end up hurting yourself on the rocky, coral bottom.
I alternated between Pipeline and Backdoor, a perfect right only about 150 feet away, and though every muscle in my body ached by the time I dragged myself back to my little room, I was starting to feel like a real surfer again. But all the time, I was thinking about the case, too, trying to come up with ways to learn about the dead surfers and who might have killed them.
Occasionally when I surfed, I’d run into my cousin Ben, who was about ten years younger than I was. He was doing what I’d done at his age, trying to see if he could make it as a professional surfer. My mother is the oldest of five daughters, and Ben’s mom was my Aunt Pua, the youngest. Pua was a hippie, far from my prim and proper mother. She was an aromatherapist at a posh resort in Hawai‘i Kai, and had been married and divorced three times.
Because of the age difference between us, and the attitude difference between our mothers, we didn’t know each other that well, but we recognized each other and made small talk about the family and the surf. He was a Pipeline expert, making it his home base, and I learned a few tricks from talking with him.
Some people seemed to know who I was, and sometimes they wanted to talk. A haole guy with Rasta hair and tattered board shorts wanted to know if I knew a good attorney-I didn’t. A middle-aged Japanese lady waiting with me to buy bottled water asked me if I knew where her son could get information about AIDS. I told her about an agency in Honolulu.
Nobody seemed aware that three surfers had been killed, and though I dropped names with everyone I met, I got no reactions to Mike Pratt, Lucie Zamora or Ronald Chang. I could see why the original detectives hadn’t made much progress, and started to doubt whether I could learn anything they hadn’t.
When I returned to Hibiscus House, I called Lieutenant Sampson to let him know I was settled in, and pass on my idea on how the shooter had brought the rifle to the beach. Then I called my parents, just to check in. They were full of well-meaning suggestions for my future. “You could come work with me,” my father said. “I could do big projects again, if I have you to help me. No more malasada shops.” The malasada is a kind of Portuguese donut, and of late my father had been building tiny shops to sell them around the island.
“Al, let the boy alone,” my mother said. “He should go back to school, get a graduate degree and become something-an architect, a businessman, a lawyer.”
“Pah, back to school,” my father said. “Why go back to school when he can learn everything he needs from his father?”
“I’m not making any decisions for a while.” I had already heard that my brother Lui was sure he could find me a job of some kind at KVOL, if I wanted it. My brother Haoa wanted me to join him in the landscape business. My sisters-in-law and my friends all had their own ideas.
And I had to lie to each and every one of them, telling them all I was still figuring out what I wanted, that I was enjoying just surfing every day. More lies than I had ever wanted to tell. And telling them kept getting harder and harder for me, and would only keep getting harder until I could come home with a solved case.
The Next Wave
By the end of my second full day of surfing, I was beat. I collapsed on the beach, catching my breath and massaging my calves, when a haole girl who couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen stuck her board in the sand and sat down next to me and said hi. She was wearing a neon yellow bikini, and had her sandy blonde hair pulled up into a pony tail with a matching ribbon. Her skin was the deep bronze of someone who spends a lot of time on the water.
“Hi,” I said back. I’d seen her surfing; she was pretty damn good.
“You’re that guy who used to be a cop, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Guilty as charged. Kimo.” I held out my hand.
“Trish,” she said, shaking it. “I saw you on the news.”
“My fifteen minutes of fame.”
She nodded toward the water. “Your form’s pretty good for somebody who hasn’t surfed for a long time.”
“I’ve been surfing since I was a kid, The last few years, though, not too much. Mornings, before work. Weekends. The occasional odd trip up here.” I paused. “How about you?”
“I was born in Iowa, but my mom wanted to be a movie star, so she divorced my dad when I was seven and we moved to LA so she could pursue her destiny.”
“And did she find it?”
“If her destiny’s waiting tables at the International House of Pancakes on La Cienega, then she found it, all right. Me, I found surfing.”
I had a gut feeling that Trish had something she wanted to tell me, something more than just the story of her mother’s failed attempt at movie stardom. I wasn’t in a hurry; my calves still needed a rubdown before I could stand up. And I’ve learned that when somebody has something they really want to tell you, they will, if you give them enough time.
“How long have you been in Hale’iwa?”
“Two years. I didn’t actually run away; I waited until I was sixteen, and I left a note.”
“A note’s always good.”
“And I talk to my mom every Sunday. Religiously.”
“Admirable.” I waited. Trish watched the surfers. Finally, I said, “You must know a lot of people around here after two years. You know any of the surfers who’ve been killed?”
She looked up in alarm. “More than Mike?”
Pay dirt. “Two others. Did you know Mike?”
She nodded. “He was my boyfriend. I was surfing just behind him, and I was the one who pulled him out of the water.”
“That’s tough.”
She looked like she was about to cry.
I was thinking about what to ask her next when a guy called “Yo, Trish!” from up the beach. “Come on, let’s go!”
“I gotta run,” she said, standing up. “I’ve got some stuff to think about, but I want to talk to you. You’ll be around?”
“I’ll be here.”
“Good. Catch you later.” She grabbed her board and started running up toward Ke Nui Road.
That was progress. I had seen Trish around, and I was sure I would see her again. There are, after all, a limited number of spots for serious surfers. Plus, surfing is an individual sport, but after you’ve caught a monster wave, you want to tell everyone about it. You want to hang out with other surfers, compare notes on gear and breaks. Pipeline was one good place to meet people who might have known the three victims, but I needed more sources.
I left the beach with a plan. Each night, I’d choose a different bar, ordering a burger and a beer and showing my face around. I started with the club where Lucie Zamora had been shot, but the crowd there was very young and only interested in drinking and dancing, and there was no way I could strike up a casual conversation with anyone about her or her murder. A couple of times, it was clear people recognized me-there was some whispering, and a guy pointedly moved away from me when I walked up next to him to order a beer.
Over the next few days, I saw Trish a couple of times, but the time was never right for us to talk. She always made eye contact, though, and I knew I just had to give her time. On TV, when they compress an entire case into an hour-long show (with time out for commercial breaks) the witnesses and the suspects always talk on cue. In life, though, people tell you the most when they’re ready to talk, and I was willing to wait.
I spent my first few days at Pipeline, getting to know the surfers and working on my cover story. A few wouldn’t speak to me, though I didn’t know if it was because I had been a cop, because they knew I was gay, or just because they were unfriendly. After long, hot showers and lots of sports cream rubbed on to my aching calves, I went out every night, but finally I realized that in the places I’d been choosing, the music was too loud and the patrons too drunk. I decided to rethink my strategy and find the best surf shop on the North Shore, the one where the top surfers would hang out to swap stories and salivate over new gear. Maybe someone there could give me a lead.
After cruising up and down the Kam Highway, I decided The Next Wave was the place. The collection of high-end equipment and the cappuccino bar made it a place not only where surfers would hang out, but where it was quiet enough to strike up a casual conversation.
As I moved around Hale’iwa, I discovered that there weren’t many people left on the North Shore who remembered me from the time I’d spent there; most of those I surfed with had moved on with their lives, as I had, or else were chasing waves elsewhere around the world.
One person had remained, though. Of course, he was the one I didn’t particularly want to see, and of course, he was the owner and manager of the Next Wave, meaning I was bound to see a lot of him.
Dario Fonseca and I had a complicated history. He was not the reason why I gave up pursuing a career as a professional surfer, nor was he the reason why I entered the police academy. But he certainly contributed to both those decisions. Dario was a few years old than I was, but no better a surfer. Unlike me, though, back then surfing seemed to be all he had; no education, no family, nothing but a board and a wave and the desire to put them both together.
He and I, along with many of our friends, regularly entered tournaments we had no hope of winning. Then in March, when the great winter waves on the North Shore had died down and the best surfers had gone to chase waves elsewhere, I came in fifth in the Pipeline Spring Championships. It was the best I’d ever done, and I was riding high, thinking I was finally reaching my potential.
A bunch of the guys took me out drinking that night, buying me beers and shots until the bar closed and dawn streaked the dark sky. I was in no condition to drive, so Dario dragged me over to his place, a one-room cottage north of Hale’iwa, to crash. I remember wanting to lay down right there on the beach, I was so wasted.
The next thing I remember is waking up in Dario’s bed, naked, his mouth on my left nipple. He bit and sucked at both nipples until they were hard and sore, and then licked a trail down my stomach to my crotch, where he gave me a blow job.
I wasn’t a virgin then-I gave up that title to a girl named Penny Phillips, who transferred into our class at Punahou junior year with a voracious sexual appetite, and was gone by the Christmas holidays. In the interim, she slept with at least a dozen of our male classmates, relieving one and all of that most unwanted commodity among teenaged boys. I’d had girlfriends in college, and one night a girl named Jocelyn had talked me into a three-way with another guy, which both freaked me out and turned me on intensely. For the most part, though, I had successfully repressed my attraction to other guys, convincing myself that it was something I could grow out of if I just ignored it.
I must have passed out after Dario finished, because when I woke again it was almost noon and there was a note on the refrigerator from Dario. “You’re a champ, Kimo,” it read. “I’m on the water.”
I felt paralyzed. My mouth was dry and my head pounded, and my body was sore in unaccustomed places. When I looked in the mirror I saw my nipples were raw and red, and I had a hickey on the side of my neck.
I didn’t know if I was gay or not, back then. I knew that I liked to look at men’s bodies, in magazines and catalogs, and on the beach when I thought no one would notice. But the only men I knew who were clearly gay were fairies, effeminate guys who flounced around. If that was being gay, then I didn’t want any part of it, and I determined to hide any part of me that threatened to become like them.
Waking in Dario’s bed, though, I knew I no longer had Jocelyn to blame for what had happened. Sex with Dario, even as drunk as I was, was amazingly more erotic and thrilling than sleeping with a girl had ever been. And that knowledge scared the hell of out of me.
Once I’d had a taste, though, I knew that I would have to keep on fighting, harder and harder, to hold back. And the more effort I had to put into hiding that desire, into forcing it down into the deepest part of my being, the less I would have to put into surfing.
I was scared and confused, and somehow I decided that I had made the best showing I would ever make in a competition, because I knew you had to put 110 percent of yourself into surfing if you wanted to be a champion-it had to be all that mattered to you. And as long as I was hiding my sexuality, I couldn’t give surfing that 110 percent.
So I left. I hitched back to the place where I was staying, packed up, and went home. I slept nearly non-stop for a few days, and awake or dreaming, I kept coming back to that night with Dario. It felt like my world had been turned on end and I didn’t know how to make sense of it.
My parents couldn’t figure me out. I wouldn’t tell them the details, just that I’d decided to give up on being a champion surfer. My mother wasn’t exactly depressed-after all, she’d sent me to college for four years so I could become a professional of some kind-and not a professional surfer. My father knew something was up but I don’t think he ever figured it out. He kept trying to get me to go down to Waikiki to surf, offering to lend me his truck, to wax my board for me. But I was so caught up in my own internal struggles that I paid no attention to them.
After hanging around my parents’ house for a while, I saw a notice in the Advertiser that the Honolulu Police Department was looking for new recruits. Intuitively, I knew it was the right thing for me, so I entered the police academy. It was, after all, the most macho thing I could think to do. I thought if anything could save me from being gay, being a cop would be it.
I wanted to be a pro surfer when I was twenty-two, and I let fear of being gay stop me from chasing that dream. Dario Fonseca had been a big part of that fear, but I was ten years older and out of the closet, and I couldn’t let fear of anything keep me from finding out who killed Pratt, Zamora and Chang. I couldn’t avoid the Next Wave, if going there would help solve the case, just to avoid Dario.
Dario had probably known I was gay within about five minutes of meeting me, if it took that long. I knew there was this thing called gaydar, a kind of gay radar that you developed the more comfortable you were with being yourself. It helped you figure out who was gay and who wasn’t. Mine wasn’t that well-attuned yet, but obviously, ten years ago Dario’s had been in full bloom.
Back then, I didn’t like the way he always found himself next to me when we were out drinking, the way he often rubbed his leg against mine-or the way my body reacted when he did. I was damned if I’d be dragged out of a closet I wasn’t even sure I was in.
I hadn’t seen him since that day I’d walked out of his shack on the beach, but he hadn’t changed much. When I walked into The Next Wave that evening, he was standing next to a display of bodyboards explaining the principles of the sport to a customer. By then I’d been on the North Shore for six days and I was tired, sad, horny and frustrated. Beyond figuring out that Mike Pratt’s shooter had probably camouflaged himself as a photographer, I hadn’t been able to come up with a single lead on the case that took me beyond what I had read in the dossiers.
Dario had clearly followed everything that had happened to me over the last few weeks. “Well, look what the cat dragged in!” he said, coming up to me as if it had been ten days since we’d seen each other last instead of ten years.
He hugged me and kissed my cheek, and I hugged him back. I’d never been comfortable with too much physical contact with other guys before, always afraid I’d do something that would reveal my secret self. Now I figured I had nothing left to reveal.
“You look good, Dario,” I said. “Must be all that clean living.”
He was probably thirty-five, but he’d hardly put a pound on his skinny frame, his face had no lines, and his hair, though thinning at the top, was still full enough. “Flattery will get you everywhere.” He winked at me. “And I do mean everywhere,” he said, in a low voice.
His voice returned to normal as he said, “Now, why don’t you take a look around while I finish up with this customer, and then we’ll go in back and get all caught up.”
He went back to the girl he’d been showing bodyboards to, and I walked around the store. The Next Wave was located just off Hale’iwa Road, overlooking Waialua Bay. The buildings in the neighborhood were all one and two stories, simple wood-frame places often with fading paint and a motley collection of clunkers, Jeeps and pickups parked outside. Most people on the North Shore were there because they loved to surf, and high-paying jobs in the area were non-existent. People spent their money on expensive gear rather than on fancy homes or tricked-out cars.
When I was surfing the North Shore, The Next Wave was a hole in the wall next to a discount shoe store. Since then, Dario had moved up from occasional salesman and the store had taken over the adjacent space. A news clipping on the side wall described how Dario Fonseca, owner of The Next Wave, had been given the key to the city of Hale’iwa by a previous mayor. Maybe Dario was more serious than I’d given him credit for.
I hadn’t surfed competitively in years, but I still kept an eye out for the latest gear, and Dario had it. There was some serious money tied up in his inventory, everything from O’Neill surfboards to Rip Curl wetsuits, Oakley sunglasses to Reef sandals, Croakies to Sex Wax. As you moved around the store, you could shop for T-shirts, boogie boards, leashes, and cork coasters in the shape of aloha shirts. The Next Wave also sold surf guides, magazines, signs that read Surfer Girl Crossing, and beach towels featuring the Ford woody station wagon that the Beach Boys had made famous.
Clothing took up nearly half the store, with fake surfboards at the ends of the racks with face-outs of shirts and shorts. You could buy every type of souvenir gadget known to man, including miniature surfboard magnets, bottle openers that looked like shark fins, ball caps with a long flap around the back to protect your neck from the sun, roof racks for your car or truck, and plastic cups with The Next Wave logos. After I’d made a complete circuit of the store, I wasted time by trying on a couple of different pair of sunglasses, modeling for myself in the tiny mirror. I thought I looked a little like Keanu Reeves as Neo in The Matrix; just give me a black duster and the ability to do those jumping, twirling moves in slow motion and I’d be the baddest detective in the Honolulu PD.
It was late in the afternoon, and The Next Wave was busy, a mostly young crowd shopping, discussing and buying. Dario had even installed a little cyber cafe in one corner, serving cappuccinos and lattes and renting out time on six computers. Each of them was busy, and from the expectant looks of a number of the coffee drinkers sitting near the stations, I figured they would be for some time. I also saw a couple of people using their own laptops and realized the cafe offered free Wi-Fi.
Against my expectations, Dario seemed to have turned himself into a solid citizen. I’d given up on sunglasses and moved on to hats by the time he came over to me again. “So, how does it feel to be out and proud?” he asked. “You’re here, you’re queer, get used to it?”
“Strange,” I said. “I never wanted to be a celebrity. But now my face has been on TV and in every newspaper.”
“It’ll pass,” Dario said. He gave me a smile that was half a leer. “I always knew you’d come out of the closet some day. I didn’t know you’d do it so spectacularly.”
“How did you know?” I blurted out. “When I didn’t even know myself?”
“This calls for some liquid refreshment,” he said. “Hey, Cindy, keep an eye on things,” he called to a girl by the register. He took me by the arm and steered me back to his office, past a display of sun block featuring life-sized models of scantily-clad guys and gals.
His office was at the rear of the store, down a corridor that led to rest rooms and a loading dock. He had a side view of the ocean through a big plate-glass window; I could see wind restlessly whipping waves against the deserted shore, a line of rock and scree too rough to surf.
The rest of the office was cluttered with sales props and advertising memorabilia. The walls were lined with posters of past surf champions, including a couple we’d both surfed with way back when. He opened a small refrigerator and pulled out a pair of Kona Longboard Lagers.
He used a bottle opener in the shape of a palm tree, with the Next Wave logo, to pop the tops and handed one to me. “To your new life,” he said, toasting me.
“And to yours. Looks like you’ve come up in the world.”
He shrugged. “I’m doing okay. Retail’s tough, though. You’ve got to be on top of things every minute or you can lose your shirt.”
We sat down in a couple of beat-up armchairs. “Back to your question,” Dario said. “How did I know you were gay when you didn’t know it yourself.” He took a pull on his beer. “It’s in the eyes, usually. Hunger. The way a guy will look at another, thinking no one is noticing. Straight men touch each other without thinking-they’ll wrap an arm around another guy’s neck, they’ll hip-check or punch one another in the arm.”
I shook my head. “I see gay men touch each other all the time.”
“That’s true. What you want to look for is the ones who are afraid to touch. They’re the ones in the closet.” He smiled. “They’re the ones who are the most fun to chase. They know they want it, but they’re scared, and you have to get them past the fear.”
“By getting them drunk,” I said.
“That’s one of the ways.” He lifted his bottle to me, took a long drink. “By touching them. Giving them these deep, searching looks that say, ‘I can see into your soul.’”
I shook my head. “Dario, you are so corny.”
“Rhymes with horny.” He raised his eyebrow. “I’m always horny. How about you?”
That was something I wasn’t expecting, and it took my breath away for a minute. “That was nine or ten years ago,” I said, finally. “And I’m already out of the closet by now. You can’t drag me any further.”
“Honey,” he said, leaning toward me, “you don’t know how far I can take you.”
He must have seen that he’d gone too far, too fast, because he backed up then. “You’ll come to me sometime.” He smiled. “I’ll be here.” He drained the rest of his beer. “Now come on, let me show you the rest of the store.”
If it hadn’t been for Dario’s obvious connections to the surfing community, I would have walked out, rather than taken a tour. He was just so full of himself, I thought, and I imagined he was still taking twenty-something surfer dudes who were conflicted about their sexuality out for a few beers-and then back home with him, wherever home was. It was predatory, and the cop part of me didn’t like it.
He walked me around for a few minutes, then had to go to the register to handle a customer, and I took that opportunity to leave. I knew I’d be back; it was clear that The Next Wave was one of the centers for the surfing community, and I couldn’t avoid it for too long. I just had to manage to avoid Dario when I was there.
What was it about me, I wondered, as I drove back to my room, picking up some fast food on the way, that attracted these predatory males? A kind of naivete? I wasn’t some confused teen-ager. I was thirty-two years old, a cop. I had no trouble facing down the toughest criminals, but a guy who wanted to get in my pants still scared the crap out of me. It reminded me of a William Styron quote, from Sophie’s Choice, something about being six feet of quivering nerve. That was how I felt, even though I knew it was dumb. Really, really dumb.