Read Online Mahu Fire by Neil Plakcy - Free Book Online Page A

“I’m going to take this big boy upstairs,” she said. “Sandra said I could leave him in her office.”
    “You’re sure he’ll be all right?” Harry asked. He’d dressed up, too, in a double-breasted tux with black satin lapels.
    “I’ll leave the window open. If he wakes up and starts to cry, you can bet we’ll hear it.” She hoisted him against the shoulder of her form-fitting little black dress and walked toward the stairs. Harry smiled goofily as she passed.
    Robert was the only one who’d opted for a white dinner jacket. He had a green carnation in his lapel—a nod, I was sure, to Oscar Wilde. It was nice to see a gay symbol other than the color pink or the rainbow triangle. I asked him what he was saying about the broken panel in the front window. “I don’t want anybody to know,” he whispered. “I’m just telling people that one of the caterers accidentally knocked into the window.”
    He pulled me aside. “There is a problem, though,” he said, keeping his voice low. “I’ve heard a rumor that we might get some protesters tonight.”
    “Really? How’d you hear that?”
    “I have a friend who works at Homeless Solutions,” he said.
    I knew it; it offered temporary and transitional housing services. It was a place that might have helped Hiroshi Mura, had he been willing to leave the shack in Makiki.
    “He told me that somebody was going around today, recruiting for a demonstration tonight. They were paying twenty bucks just to show up here and be part of a crowd.”
    I shook my head. “What’s up with that? Who cares enough about us to go to so much trouble?”
    “The same people who broke the window? Or the ones who threw the shit on the sidewalk?”
    Just then, Cathy and Sandra came down from the office above, and Robert and I stopped talking. Poor Cathy looked like she could have been Arleen’s homely sister—she was even smaller than Arleen, and her shapeless linen dress looked like an elegant flour sack. She was only half-Japanese, and the contrast between Arleen’s delicate beauty and Cathy’s pallor was dramatic. Sandra wore a navy business suit and sensible pumps, and it looked like both she and Cathy had sworn out a no-makeup pact for the evening.
    The four of us walked out to the lanai together. It was surprisingly large, paved with flat stones, with several big kukui trees shading it. A large frangipani tree with its exotic purple blossoms bloomed directly in the center, above a bar set up on folding tables. The waiters and waitresses all wore plumeria leis and aloha shirts, and they were offering a choice of mai tais or champagne cocktails. I noticed several of the women guests were wearing long, formal muumuus, called holokus , in colorful patterns.
    Sandra came over and steered me and Gunter toward a short, chubby man in an immaculate tuxedo, with a lavender cummerbund and matching bow tie. “I want you to meet one of our biggest benefactors, Charlie Stahl.”
    “I knew I should have gone on a diet before coming to this party,” he said. Everybody laughed, and Sandra introduced us. “So, detective,” he said to me, holding my hand for just a little too long to be comfortable. “You’re even more handsome in person than you are on television.”
    Gunter snaked his hand around my waist and said, “Yes, I always tell him that. Especially when he’s … out of uniform.”
    Charlie Stahl gave him an appraising glance, said, “I’ll bet,” and went on to meet some other guests.
    Gunter and I were momentarily alone. “If I didn’t know you better I’d say you were jealous, Gunter.”
    “You don’t want to get mixed up with that old leather queen.”
    “He’s also the heir to a huge pineapple fortune.” While Dole made sure that every pineapple off their plantation came with a red and yellow sticker on the side, the Stahl pineapples were primarily canned under store names, pressed into juice and used in flavorings. But that didn’t make them any less