couldn’t.
“How long you think the body was alone?”
“Ten, maybe fifteen minutes.”
“Enough time for somebody to see him, think he’s drunk, and roll him.” Akoni shook his head.
I didn’t think it was possible for me to feel worse about what I’d done, but ways just seemed to keep cropping up.
I didn’t feel like going home yet, so I got my truck, put an old Springsteen CD on and just started to drive. I ended up way up the Pali Highway, driving fast and singing along with Bruce. I wanted to wipe everything out of my brain, give it a chance to cool down. I kept thinking about my confession to Akoni at the mall, trying to figure out what it meant for my future. It seemed like it had happened so long before, but it had really only been hours.
Eventually I pulled off at a switchback that gave me a view of the city and the Pacific below , and I got out of the truck. It was almost dusk and Waikīkī glowed against the dark ocean. It seemed to me like some fantastic golden city, the place where all my dreams could come true, if only they didn’t shut me out of it.
There was a rustling in the brush across the road from me, and somewhere an owl hooted. I stood there for a while longer, people in cars passing on their way home to their families, me just standing there outside the city, wondering.
I didn’t realize how exhausted I was until I pulled up in front of my apartment building. Then it hit me, and I barely made it up the stairs and into bed before I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
KEEP IT TO YOURSELF
I woke early the next morning, surfed for an hour, and was at my desk at eight o’clock. Akoni came in a few minutes later and said, “Let’s take a walk.” As we left, we passed a tourist wahine in a skimpy g-string bikini who was complaining about having her wallet stolen on the beach.
“The bad guys get an early start, miss,” I heard the desk sergeant telling her. “You’ve got to watch out all the time.”
Good advice, I thought. Outside, the morning air was fresh and bright. You could see tiny bits of dust and sand dancing in the shafts of sunlight coming from over the top of the Ko’olau Mountains. We got coffee from a little hole in the wall souvenir place on the mauka side of Kalākaua Avenue and walked along the beach.
“Here’s the way I see it,” Akoni said finally. “You did two things wrong. You failed to report a crime under your badge number and notify your lieutenant, and you failed to secure the scene of a crime. Neither of those is enough to lose your badge.”
He took a sip of coffee. I didn’t say anything.
“You don’t have to say anything else. Nothing to anybody. Not the business about being in the Rod and Reel Club, or the guy who stuck his tongue in your ear. If you feel you want to tell somebody something, you say you had a lot to drink, you went for a long walk, you stumbled on to the body, the guy in the Jeep. You were pretty drunk, confused.”
“I wasn’t drunk.”
“Cops and drinking, they go together. It’s a long tradition. Guys can handle that. The department can handle that. This other thing, you’re blazing new territory. You want to take your chances?”
“You’re telling me to lie.”
Akoni crushed his empty cup and pitched it into a trash can. “I have never told you to lie about anything and I never will,” he said. “You know me better than that. But you’re no virgin, Kimo. You know the way the world works. Sometimes you have to put some spin on the truth to make things come out the way they should.”
I thought about it. It was true. Many times, we’d known who the bad guy was, and we’d eliminated confusing evidence from our reports. Or we’d bluffed our way to confessions, pretending we knew more than we did. It was just something you did. But those situations weren’t about me. Somehow I’d always applied a higher standard to my personal life.
“You want to tell the truth?” Akoni said. “The way I see it,
“How long you think the body was alone?”
“Ten, maybe fifteen minutes.”
“Enough time for somebody to see him, think he’s drunk, and roll him.” Akoni shook his head.
I didn’t think it was possible for me to feel worse about what I’d done, but ways just seemed to keep cropping up.
I didn’t feel like going home yet, so I got my truck, put an old Springsteen CD on and just started to drive. I ended up way up the Pali Highway, driving fast and singing along with Bruce. I wanted to wipe everything out of my brain, give it a chance to cool down. I kept thinking about my confession to Akoni at the mall, trying to figure out what it meant for my future. It seemed like it had happened so long before, but it had really only been hours.
Eventually I pulled off at a switchback that gave me a view of the city and the Pacific below , and I got out of the truck. It was almost dusk and Waikīkī glowed against the dark ocean. It seemed to me like some fantastic golden city, the place where all my dreams could come true, if only they didn’t shut me out of it.
There was a rustling in the brush across the road from me, and somewhere an owl hooted. I stood there for a while longer, people in cars passing on their way home to their families, me just standing there outside the city, wondering.
I didn’t realize how exhausted I was until I pulled up in front of my apartment building. Then it hit me, and I barely made it up the stairs and into bed before I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
KEEP IT TO YOURSELF
I woke early the next morning, surfed for an hour, and was at my desk at eight o’clock. Akoni came in a few minutes later and said, “Let’s take a walk.” As we left, we passed a tourist wahine in a skimpy g-string bikini who was complaining about having her wallet stolen on the beach.
“The bad guys get an early start, miss,” I heard the desk sergeant telling her. “You’ve got to watch out all the time.”
Good advice, I thought. Outside, the morning air was fresh and bright. You could see tiny bits of dust and sand dancing in the shafts of sunlight coming from over the top of the Ko’olau Mountains. We got coffee from a little hole in the wall souvenir place on the mauka side of Kalākaua Avenue and walked along the beach.
“Here’s the way I see it,” Akoni said finally. “You did two things wrong. You failed to report a crime under your badge number and notify your lieutenant, and you failed to secure the scene of a crime. Neither of those is enough to lose your badge.”
He took a sip of coffee. I didn’t say anything.
“You don’t have to say anything else. Nothing to anybody. Not the business about being in the Rod and Reel Club, or the guy who stuck his tongue in your ear. If you feel you want to tell somebody something, you say you had a lot to drink, you went for a long walk, you stumbled on to the body, the guy in the Jeep. You were pretty drunk, confused.”
“I wasn’t drunk.”
“Cops and drinking, they go together. It’s a long tradition. Guys can handle that. The department can handle that. This other thing, you’re blazing new territory. You want to take your chances?”
“You’re telling me to lie.”
Akoni crushed his empty cup and pitched it into a trash can. “I have never told you to lie about anything and I never will,” he said. “You know me better than that. But you’re no virgin, Kimo. You know the way the world works. Sometimes you have to put some spin on the truth to make things come out the way they should.”
I thought about it. It was true. Many times, we’d known who the bad guy was, and we’d eliminated confusing evidence from our reports. Or we’d bluffed our way to confessions, pretending we knew more than we did. It was just something you did. But those situations weren’t about me. Somehow I’d always applied a higher standard to my personal life.
“You want to tell the truth?” Akoni said. “The way I see it,
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