Zero Break (13 page)

“A prostitute?”

“A surrogate.” Roby was doing a dance with a white Lab, and I struggled to keep the leashes from tangling while listening to my mother. “Don’t you think about it sometimes?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said, pulling Roby away. “But you know, Mom, having a kid is a lifetime commitment. I’m not sure Mike or I are ready for that.”

“You’re never ready. But then the baby comes and you figure it out.”

“Thanks for the advice, Mom. Right now, I’ve got my hands full with Roby. Kiss Dad for me, all right?”

I was saying goodbye to her as we turned the corner toward our house, and Roby saw Mike getting out of his truck, and took off again. This time I just gave up and let him go. Sometimes you have to do that, with kids and with dogs. But I wasn’t sure that was a lesson my mother understood.

DEFENSIVE TACTICS

Mike brought home take-out barbecue with him, and we sat at the kitchen table, him slipping Roby bits of pork when he thought I wasn’t looking. My mom’s words were still in my head, but I wasn’t sure how to start the conversation I knew we had to have at some point.

Finally I said, “Do you think Roby is the only kid we’ll ever have?”

Mike looked up. “Whoa. Where did that come from?”

I shrugged. “A bunch of things. This case. Talking to my mom tonight.”

“Let me guess. She wants more grandchildren.”

I broke off a piece of cornbread and fed it to Roby. “Yeah. Don’t your parents feel the same way?”

“You know my dad. He thinks I’m still a big kid myself. And I don’t think they’re as liberated as your folks. They probably can’t conceive of me having kids.”

“Can’t conceive,” I said, laughing.

“You know what I mean.”

“I do. But do you feel like we’re missing out on something by not being parents?”

He pushed his empty plate away from him. “I like being part of your family, and hanging out with your nieces and nephews. But I also like being able to walk away from them.”

“Me, too. But my mom says it’s different when it’s your own kid.”

“It shouldn’t be about what your parents want, or mine. Do you want to have a kid?”

I started to say something, then stopped. “I don’t know. I mean, I see so many bad parents, and so many kids in trouble. Could we do any better?”

Mike stood up and picked up his plate. “I do think about having kids, sometimes,” he said. “But it wouldn’t be easy for us. And we’d have to really want a kid to go through everything—adopting or finding a surrogate or some lesbian who needs a baby daddy. I don’t think I feel strongly enough to go through all that—no less raise a kid. Do you?”

I had to say I wasn’t sure. We talked around the topic as we cleaned up the dinner dishes. Then it was time for us to head down to Waikiki for the gay teen youth group I mentored. Mike came with me when he was free; we thought it was good for the kids to see a successful partnership, even if we did bicker sometimes.

My friend Cathy Selkirk, who ran a drop-in program for gay teens out of a church on Waikiki, had asked me to put the group together right after I came out of the closet. Working with them had been therapeutic for me, and I hoped I’d helped them deal with the problems they faced. I had lost a few in the four years I’d been working with them, but had had some success stories, too. Jimmy Ah Wang was studying at UH, and two kids, Frankie and Pua, had graduated from high school and started taking courses at Honolulu Community College.

I shared the mentoring duties with Fred, the cute, brainless bartender at the Rod and Reel Club; he took the kids bowling and to the movies, and I taught them self-defense and talked about feelings and self-empowerment.

We met in a big room at the church where dance and yoga classes were held during the day; there were mirrors on the walls and a bunch of mats we could pull out to sit on. When Mike and I walked in that evening, there were already a half-dozen kids there, including two who were new.

Pua was a tough girl, the kind who wouldn’t be caught dead in a dress, while Frankie was chubby and feminine, with his sleek black hair pulled into a ponytail. They were sitting on mats already, so we said hi to them, then focused on the new kids, introducing ourselves and asking a couple of questions. Dakota was thirteen, a recent transplant from the mainland, who lived with his mom on the back side of Waikiki. He was haole and slim-hipped and had black hair that cascaded down his back. Naiuli was fifteen, Samoan, with the build of a sumo wrestler.

Zoë Greenfield’s murder had me thinking about knife attacks, which I knew were more common on the streets than HPD would like to admit. So I decided we’d talk about how to defend yourself from an assailant with a knife that night.

“Your first choice when someone threatens you with a knife should be to run away,” I said. “You can’t outrun a bullet, but you have a chance to outrun someone who’s holding a knife, especially if you can get to a more populated area.”

I did a slow motion jog for a couple of steps, and the kids laughed. “But if you can’t get away, then you have to consider the kind of knife.” I had brought a rubber knife with me, for demonstration purposes. “Who can give me some examples of knives you’ve seen on the street? Naiuli? How about you?”

He frowned, but said, “Ice picks. Steak knives. Switchblades.”

“Some knives have blades on both sides,” Frankie said. “And they can be short or long.”

I nodded. “There’s a lot of variety out there. Once you know what kind of knife, you have to think about where your assailant is in relation to your body.”

Mike stood up with the rubber knife. “He or she could be a few feet away. Or close up, in front of you.” Mike stepped up, holding the knife toward my stomach. “On your side, or behind you.” Mike moved around as I spoke, indicating not just position of his body, but how the assailant could be holding the knife.

“The key is to move quickly, and to act as soon as possible,” I said. “Look for a time when your attacker’s attention is slightly distracted, such as when he is talking or giving orders. Stay as far from the hand holding the knife as you can, and if possible, use something to defend yourself, like a book or a backpack.”

Mike came at me with the rubber knife, and I jumped out of his way. “See how I’m trying to stay out of range,” I said, talking to them but focused on Mike. “If you can’t get away from your attacker, try to get hold of the hand he’s holding the knife in.”

I reached out and grabbed Mike’s wrist. Though he fought against me, I was able to keep him from getting the knife close to me. “See what I’m doing? I’ve got my open hand pressing against the back of Mike’s hand, and I’m pushing his hand away from me. Once I’ve got the knife out of the way, I can kick or punch or scratch with my other hand.”

We went through a couple of scenarios, and then I said, “Let’s get you guys trying this out. Pua and Frankie, come on up.”

Pua stood up awkwardly, and I realized she was pregnant—probably about three or four months along and just starting to show. That threw me for a loop; I’d always believed she was a lesbian. But I covered, and got her and Frankie to act out the scenario I thought had happened to Zoë Greenfield—Frankie coming up behind Pua and putting the knife at her neck. Then I walked them through how to get out of it. It made me wish I’d known Zoë before her death, and been able to show her the same kind of move.

I shook that off, and we tried a couple more exercises. After an hour we called it quits. As the kids were getting up to go I walked over to Pua. “So…” I said.

“Yeah, I’m pregnant.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I’m almost finished with my certificate in diesel mechanics technology,” she said. “I’m going to have the baby, then go into my internship program. My auntie runs a day care program so I can leave the baby with her while I work.”

Mike and Frankie joined us. “So, Pua,” Mike said. “You’re playing for the other team now?”

“I wanted a baby,” she said, crossing her arms over her stomach. “There was this guy in my program and I thought we could make a pretty baby together. So I pretended to be straight for him.”

I looked at Mike. Neither of us seemed to know what to say.

“Pua’s going to be an awesome mom,” Frankie said. “And she said I can be the godfather.”

“What about you?” I asked him. “You in the same program as Pua?”

“Are you kidding? These hands are not touching car engines. I’m getting my AS in Audio Engineering Technology. I already have a part-time job with this computer company, processing audio files for computer games.”

“Wow. I’m proud of you guys,” I said.

Frankie put his arm in Pua’s. “Come on, Mommy. You have to take your vitamins. We want the baby to be healthy!”

Pua smiled and squeezed up next to Frankie. “See you soon, guys,” she said.

Mike and I didn’t talk about Pua until we were back in the Jeep on our way home. “So easy for her,” he said. “She just picked a guy and went to bed with him.”

“She’s just a kid herself. It’s crazy.” I shook my head. “I mean, what was she thinking? She has no idea what she’s getting herself into.”

“She’ll grow up quick,” Mike said. “It’s what our parents did, right? And their parents before them?”

“I just never thought we’d have to talk about stuff like birth control and parenting in a gay teen group,” I said, as we swung onto the H1 toward home. I turned on the CD player, and Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s sweet tenor filled the space, singing his mashup of “Aho Wela” and “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” Mike and I both sat back and listened to the music.

When we got home, we played with Roby for a bit, then ended up in bed, watching TV. “Straight people have it easier,” Mike said, when the program was over. “For them, making a baby together is an expression of the love they feel for each other. But no matter how much I love you, or how many times we have sex, we’re never getting a baby without bringing a third party in. I’m just not ready to change what we have forever.”

I leaned over and kissed him. “We do have a pretty good thing going.”

“That we do.” He pushed me back to the bed, and climbed on top of me, and we made love. I felt a momentary pang when I was cleaning up, thinking about the sperm I was washing away, wondering if I was denying some biological imperative—or maybe Mike and I were part of nature’s grand plan to avoid overpopulation.

It was too much to think about, so I just went to sleep.

JUVENILE RECORDS

The next morning, Greg Oshiro called my cell when I was on my way into work. “I have some information for you about the guy Zoë was seeing,” he said.

That was Greg. No hello, how are you, sorry for calling so early.

“Wyatt Collins.”

“You know about him?”

“We talked to him yesterday afternoon.” I turned from Houghtailing onto North King, and blew my horn at a clueless tourist who thought it was okay to stop in the middle of the street to take a picture.

“Did he tell you about his criminal record?”

I darted around the tourist, then had to stop short for an SUV with a turn signal on, who didn’t want to bother getting into the median lane. “You dug something up?” I asked. “When can we meet? I want to see everything you’ve got.”

“The Kope Bean downtown at eight-thirty,” he said, then disconnected.

I didn’t even bother to park; I called Ray and arranged to meet him outside headquarters. We got to the coffee shop before Greg and staked out a corner table. Once he showed up and got his coffee, he plunked down in the big chair we’d saved for him.

“After we talked on Tuesday night, I started calling anyone I knew who might have known Zoë. I remembered this lesbian I’d met at their house once, and she gave me the guy’s name. Wyatt Collins.”

“We’ll need to talk to her, too,” I said.

He nodded. “It’s all here.” He held up a couple of photocopies. “He’s 38, divorced, no kids. He just got out of ten years in a state prison in Tennessee, for armed robbery.”

I looked at Ray. “You got copies of his record?”

Greg shook his head. “There’s a woman in Tennessee who posts all the parolees in the state on a website. I can’t get anything on his record without official authorization.”

“We can do that,” I said.

“Collins was paroled last November. It looks like he moved to Honolulu about two months ago. Here’s the address I found for him.”

He handed Ray a piece of paper. “I knew he was bad news,” he continued. “I met him once, when I went over to see the girls. Skinny redneck with a chipped tooth and tattoos up and down his arms. Zoë just introduced him as a friend, another accountant. But he didn’t look like any accounting geek I ever met.”

He took a sip of his coffee. “That’s all I’ve got, but I’m going to keep on it.”

“How are the girls?” Ray asked. “Did Anna tell them yet?”

“Yeah, we told them together. They’re so little though, it’s hard to know if it’s sunk in. Anna said she needed some time on her own, so they’re with my parents right now.” He smiled. “They love those girls. It makes me so happy to see them all together. You know, like all the aggravation is worth it.”