Uncle Chin is not my uncle, but my godfather, and my father’s best friend. Because of that long-time relationship, I never spoke with Uncle Chin about what I knew were his impressive, if quiet, connections to the tongs, or Chinese gangs, on the island. I tried to avoid the topic with my father as well.
Uncle Chin had cancer now, and we feared that every hospital trip would be his last. He’d just come home from one stint, and I hoped he and Aunt Mei-Mei would be up to the favor I was about to ask of them.
I signed out on the Vice case and drove up to St. Louis Heights, the residential neighborhood above Honolulu where I grew up, and where Uncle Chin and Aunt Mei-Mei lived in a simple split-level house that did little to demonstrate how wealthy they actually were. Aunt Mei-Mei answered the door. She was a tiny little woman, with a bouffant of dark hair. When I leaned down to hug her she felt as light as a palm frond. “How is Uncle Chin doing?” I asked.
“Ai ya, not good, Kimo. They send him home but he still very sick. Not just body sick, but heart sick too. He miss Derek.”
Derek, Uncle Chin’s grandson, had gone to jail a few weeks before, and as soon as he went away, Uncle Chin’s health declined.
She sighed. “He lonely old man, Kimo. Derek gone, he feel he done here, go on next world, see Robert and Tommy.”
Robert and Tommy were Uncle Chin’s sons. Robert overdosed, and Tommy, who had become a drug pusher, had been murdered.
She led me to the bedroom, where I found Uncle Chin propped up in an elaborate black lacquered bed, his reading glasses on the night stand and his eyes closed. “He very tired,” whispered Aunt Mei-Mei behind me.
He had been a handsome young man, and I could still see that in his face. Uncle Chin opened his dark, bird-like eyes, and smiled. “Ni háo ma?” I asked, using the traditional Chinese greeting he had taught me when I was barely old enough to speak.
“Good to see you, Kimo.” He tried to sit up and failed, sinking back against the pillows. Seeing how frail he was, I regretted the idea that had brought me to his bedside, but I felt I had no choice but to see it through.
“I have come to ask you a favor, Uncle.” I sat gently on the edge of his bed, while Aunt Mei-Mei hovered in the doorway. I leaned forward and adjusted the collar of his black silk pajama top. “There’s a boy who needs your help.”
“Derek?”
I shook my head. “Not Derek, but a boy like him. Chinese boy, sixteen years old. His father found out about him and threw him out of the house. He was arrested last night for prostitution. His father won’t take him back, so he’ll have to stay in juvenile hall, and then go to a home.” I paused. “You know those are bad places.”
“He should come here,” Aunt Mei-Mei said behind me. I turned to face her. She wore a simple black silk cheongsam, which contrasted with her bare feet. Her toenails were painted bright pink. “We have much room. He could be company for Uncle Chin.”
I looked back to Uncle Chin. “I’ll find him someplace permanent. I just need a place to put him for a few days. I can’t take him myself—it wouldn’t look right.”
“If I know Derek earlier, maybe I help him more,” Uncle Chin said. “This boy, maybe help him instead.”
I opened my briefcase on the edge of the bed. “You have to sign these papers. Then I can get him out and bring him up here.”
As I handed the papers to Aunt Mei-Mei to sign, I caught a glimpse of my watch. It was almost three, so I had an hour to drive back downtown for the four o’clock hearing, where I hoped the judge would agree to release Jimmy.
I took the papers back from Aunt Mei-Mei, and leaned down to kiss Uncle Chin’s forehead. “I’ll be back soon, Uncle. Thank you.”
He was already dozing again as Aunt Mei-Mei walked me to the front door. “You’re sure this is all right?”
“Doctor say he need something care about. Maybe this boy give him.”
I kissed Aunt Mei-Mei on the cheek and hurried out to my truck. Back downtown, I showed the signed paperwork to Wilma Chow and she added her own signature. “This is a little irregular, you know,” she said. “I ought to meet with these people before I authorize him to be released. I’m trusting you here.”
“And I appreciate it. I just want to get Jimmy out of jail. Then we can work out a long-term plan for him.”
We hurried to the courtroom where Jimmy was being arraigned, and waited through a half-dozen other cases before his came up. Judge Yamanaka heard Wilma’s recommendation, and waived bail in light of Jimmy’s youth, his lack of a record, and his past cooperation with the police.
When the Judge slammed his gavel and called for the next case, Jimmy looked confused, even younger than I knew he was, tired and scared. It was like he didn’t want to believe that anything good was happening, because then he’d just get put down again. “This is only temporary,” I said as we walked through the garage to my truck. “You have to hold up your end of the bargain, and I have to find a long-term place for you. You think you can stay out of trouble for a while?”
He had his jaw set and wasn’t answering me. I stopped and grabbed him by the shoulder, pushing him up against a white panel van we used for stakeouts. “Listen to me, Jimmy. These people are like family to me. And this man, he’s sick. But they’re putting themselves out to be nice to you. To get you out of that cell back there. So you better not give them any trouble.”
“Why?”
“Why?” I felt anger bubbling up inside me and tried to tamp it down. “Because they’re being nice to you, that’s why.”
“No, why are they being nice to me? I mean, what’s in it for them?”
“They’re doing me a favor.” I paused. I figured I might as well give him the whole story. “It’s Derek’s grandfather. You remember Derek. They feel bad that he’s in jail. I guess they hope they can help you.”
He nodded. Somehow that seemed to reassure him. On the way back up into the hills, I asked him if he was hungry. “I guess.”
“I’m sure Aunt Mei-Mei will feed you. You like Chinese food?”
“I guess.”
“You want me to stop and get you a burger? Tide you over until dinner?”
He finally smiled a little. “Yeah, that would be okay.”
We drove through a McDonald’s, and he wolfed down his burger and fries as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks. I thought maybe he hadn’t, and then I remembered that when I was a kid I ate like that all the time, and my mother was always worried people would think she didn’t feed me.
We got stuck in traffic on Waialae Avenue and I drummed my fingers against the steering wheel in exasperation. I’d done nothing all afternoon on the murder of Hiroshi Mura, and Lieutenant Sampson wasn’t going to like that. But I didn’t think there was anything left to do, other than wait for a neighbor who saw my card to call, or the results of the ballistics test, or some tip that would break the case open.
Clouds were gathering above the mountains, and I hoped that meant we might get a little rain, but the air around us was so dry I doubted it. We were going so slowly that I could follow the progress of two boys in parochial school uniforms flipping pogs on the sidewalk in front of a Chinese restaurant with a fake pagoda front rising above its plate glass window. Inside the restaurant I saw an old woman sitting at a table, pouring grains of rice into salt shakers. Usually Honolulu is so humid you need the rice to absorb the excess moisture in the air and keep the salt from sticking, but I didn’t think it was necessary now.
A guy in an aloha shirt sat in an open convertible next to me, talking on his cell phone. He had a laptop computer in a black leather bag on the seat next to him, and a foam boogie board on the back seat. I wanted to get out in the surf myself, to put the murder of Hiroshi Mura, Uncle Chin’s illness, and Jimmy’s situation aside for at least a few minutes.
The van ahead of me had a UH decal on the back windshield and a bumper sticker that read, “Nothing is lost in the kingdom of God.” I was thinking about that when Jimmy asked, “How old were you when you first had sex?”
“What brought that on?”
“Just asking.”
“Man or woman?”
“You slept with girls?” He looked interested.
“Mostly,” I said. “Until pretty recently. I had a lot of problems with being gay.” That was an understatement, I thought.
“So how old?”
I had to think for a minute, do the math. “With a girl, I guess I was about your age. With a guy, nineteen or so. I was in college. I suppose I could have when I was in high school—looking back now, I see I had opportunities that I was too scared to take.”
“Scared how?”
“Jeez, you don’t mind asking hard questions, do you?”
He slumped against the side of the door, one long, slim leg crossed over the other, his rubber slipper dangling. “You don’t have to tell me.”
I inched the truck forward then sat on the brake. “I had all these confusing feelings. I knew I was supposed to like girls, that there was stuff I was supposed to do, to want to do. And I liked girls, I had lots of friends who were girls, but they didn’t, I don’t know, get me excited. Then there were these feelings I had, like in gym class, and these kind of romantic daydreams of guys touching me, and I knew those were wrong. So it was all a big mess.”
“Did you like doing it with girls?”
“Jimmy,” I said, whining in spite of myself. Traffic moved forward a little more, and I looked at my watch again. “I guess so. I mean, it’s nice to have that physical contact with someone, even if it’s not, I don’t know, exciting. I ended up having sex with a lot of women, and it was usually nice, but not great.”
“And with men it’s great?”
“It can be. I don’t have a lot of experience with guys, Jimmy. I can’t give you much advice.” I gave him a sidelong glance. I wondered if he had any other clothes anywhere. He was staring out the window, trying to be nonchalant. “Have you been on the streets long?”
“A couple weeks.”
“When’d you start hooking?”
“And you complain about me asking questions!”
“Turnabout’s fair play. I answered yours.”
“When I had to drop out of school and leave my friend’s house, I ended up in Ala Moana Park, sleeping on the beach. I met this guy there, late one night. He told me I could make some money. That was maybe, two weeks ago.”
“You use protection?”
“I just suck, Kimo. I won’t let anybody do anything else.”
“It’s still dangerous. With people you don’t know, you should get the guy to wear a condom.”
He laughed. “Like that’s going to happen.”
“You gotta promise to stop hooking, at least for a while,” I said. “While you stay with these people.”
“What am I gonna do for money?”
I opened up my wallet. I had about fifty dollars in it. I gave it all to Jimmy. “Take this. I’ll get you some more. And you won’t have to pay for anything there, like food or anything.”
He took the money and stuffed it into his pocket. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
The lane next to me moved a little and I swerved into it. We made almost a block’s worth of progress. I could see Uncle Chin’s turn just ahead, tantalizingly close. “I think you’re a good kid. If you hadn’t come forward with the information you did, you might still be living with your dad. So I feel bad about that.”
“I think you’re really nice.” He reached over and put his hand on my thigh. “Really cute, too.”
I picked up his slender pale hand and put it back on his own leg. “Don’t get any ideas. Sometimes people care about you without expecting anything back.”
“Yeah, right.”
I looked over at him. “Get this one thing straight, Jimmy. I like you, and I care about you, but I do not, repeat do not, want to have sex with you. And it has nothing do with you. If you were ten years older, then, well, maybe. But you’re not. I don’t think it’s right for adults to have sex with kids, whether they pay or just do it to be nice. I don’t think it’s right and I won’t do it.”
“All right, don’t get excited.”
We finally moved forward enough to make the turn up into the Heights, and I felt like I could let go of a deep breath I’d been holding.