Back at the station there was a message from Mike Riccardi, which I returned immediately. He’d left three numbers, and I finally reached him on his cell. “Where are you?” I asked. “This connection is terrible.”
“I’m on the H2, heading back into town. I wanted to clear my plate so I could go full bore on your fire. I’m thinking it might be connected to some of the other arsons I’ve been investigating. The golf ball thing connects them, and the fact that they were all gay-owned or serving the gay community. I’ll know more when I get the full results back from the lab. Have you got any news?”
“I’ve gone through all the witness statements the uniforms collected last night, and there’s nothing there. But I went over to Queen’s today at lunch and talked to some of the people who were hospitalized.”
“Lunch? What’s that?”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t eat either.” I figured if I concentrated enough on work I’d forget I was hungry. I told him about the artist-my sketch, Gunter’s, and Tatiana’s.
“These guys are amateurs, I can feel it,” he said. “I’m heading in to the lab now, to see if they can connect that golf ball fragment you found to some of the other arsons. I spoke to the ATF guys, and because they think this is an arson, rather than a bombing, they’re going to back off and leave things up to us. The FBI’s going to hold off, too.”
“I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. We won’t have anybody to blame but ourselves.”
“That’s the way I like it. I had a couple of guys combing the place this morning, too, and I think we might have a few more clues.”
“I want to know what you’ve got,” I said. “Can we meet?”
“I’m not gonna get out of the lab until dinner time, at the earliest. You want to get something to eat around seven? You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”
“I can do that.” He suggested an Italian place on Kuhio Avenue and we agreed to meet there. “I’m half Italian, half Korean, you know. It’s either pasta or Kimchee.”
“I’ll take the pasta.”
Mike swore at a driver who’d gotten in his way, then came back to me. “I’m getting tapes of all the news coverage. You never know who’s lurking around in the background of those shots. You got a VCR?”
“Yup.”
“Good. I’ll bring the tapes. After dinner we can go over to your place and look at them.”
I hung up the phone, wondering for a moment or two what Mike Riccardi’s story was. I mean, he’d all but asked me out on a date and was already planning to go home with me. That is, if I was right and he was gay, and he was interested in me. Of course there was always the chance that he was busy until dinner, and it was a good use of both our time to eat together as we compared notes. And when we were so close to my apartment, why go back to the fire station or police headquarters to watch the tape?
Right. I gave up speculating and got back to work. I spent the afternoon wading through reports. I arranged for the police artist to go over and meet with Gunter, I sent the paper bag that Robert had given me down to be checked for fingerprints, and I asked the Vice Mayor’s office for a list of the people who had joined his protest outside the building.
His secretary, who sniffled on and off during our conversation, said that because Shira had organized the march himself, the office didn’t have any records. I figured that was a code for “Most of the people there were homeless folks hired for the night.”
I wrote a memo to all the beat officers and other detectives in all the districts on O’ahu, asking if they’d seen anyone acting suspicious that afternoon or evening, particularly any men in tuxedos sweating heavily.
Lieutenant Sampson said that I could pull one of the beat cops to help with running down leads, and I chose Lidia Portuondo. I had her canvass the neighborhood around the Marriage Project, hoping someone might report some suspicious activity. I was also looking for witnesses who could tell me more about who’d tossed the manure. I was sure it had to be tied to the bombing.
It might all lead to another heap of useless paperwork, but it had to be done. I also fielded a dozen more calls from the press, including one from my oldest brother.
Usually Lui has his secretary call me, and then he leaves me holding on the phone for a minute or two, reminding me that he is first boy, after all. But that afternoon he called direct. I wondered if he had spoken with Liliha, but even if he had I doubt she would have told him about her outburst. My brother is the most Japanese of the three of us, the most reserved with his feelings. Sometimes I think he was born in a business suit, a little tiny tie hanging around his chubby neck.
“Did you see our coverage of the fire last night?”
“Not yet. I got a guy with the tape, we’re watching it later.”
“Good story. I made sure they played up the gay marriage side of things. And we’re leading with your friend Cathy on the five o’clock. We’ll see what the reporter does with the story, and if it looks good we’ll run it again on the six and the eleven.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Enough to keep me in the loop when you’ve got any new leads?”
“You know the drill, Lui. All information is supposed to get funneled through public affairs. That way all the media gets equal access.”
“I understand your position. I’m not asking you to shut anybody else out. I’m just saying that if you know something, and you call me first, we’ll be able to put together the kind of story you want to see. We’re trying to do serious journalism, to give our coverage a little dignity.”
I started laughing. “Dignity? Are you sure you’re talking about KVOL, Erupting News All Day Long? Aren’t you the station that shows the clip of those people on the Big Island running away from that lava flow?”
“You want me to say it? You want to make me say it? All right, I will. I deliberately skewed our coverage of the fire to make us sympathetic to the whole gay marriage deal. And you know why? Because I’ve got this brother that’s gay, and I want him to be happy. If he wants to get married to some other guy, I want him to be able to. And I’m going to use the power that I have here at the station to do that. Now are you going to help me or not?”
“Go ahead, make me feel like shit,” I said, and I was almost certain I had made him laugh. “Geez, how’d you get so good at making people feel guilty? You must have been listening to Mom all those years.”
“I’ve got three kids. It comes with the territory. So tell me, you in or you out?”
“Seems like the whole island knows I’m out, Lui.” I thought about it for a minute. “In the first place, I shouldn’t be talking to you at all. Everything you get ought to come from the public information office. And we shouldn’t release any information to you that we don’t release to the rest of the media. But what I think I can do is give you some direction for your peripheral coverage.”
“Like pointing us toward Cathy Selkirk.”
“Exactly.”
“So where do we look for a lead for tomorrow’s news?”
“You know what I think is an interesting angle on this case? The fact that out of all the people at the party, the only one who died was somebody who was on the same side as the bomber. There’s irony there.”
“A story on Wilson Shira, you mean. What was he doing there, and so on. Maybe there’s something in his past that made him so opposed to this idea. You gotta wonder what makes somebody come out and protest a thing like this.” He paused, and I could almost hear the wheels whirring in his head.
“Off the record, you might want to talk to some of the people at Homeless Solutions,” I said. “A little bird told me that yesterday somebody was going around there, offering to pay homeless people to join the protest.”
“I’ll get somebody on it. Hey, you ever consider the possibility that Shira was some kind of suicide bomber?” Lui asked. “Maybe he carried the bomb on his body! Maybe he brought it in there himself, planning to plant it, and it blew up before he could get out?”
“The facts don’t exactly support that theory, but, hey, you’ve made KVOL’s reputation on that kind of sensationalism, haven’t you?”
“Don’t get snotty. Remember, you’re still the kid brother.”
I shook my head as I hung up the phone.