“So what, I was supposed to tell you everything about him? That he could be a whiny little shit?” Stevenson asked. From the slight slur to his words, I could tell the beer he was holding wasn’t his first.

  I nodded. “Pretty much. Anything you tell me stays in confidence, you know, unless it’s relevant.”

  “I don’t know what I can tell you. We dated for about six months, and then his lease ran out and he moved in with me.”

  “Did you set him up as a book buyer?”

  He nodded. “Not that he was grateful, you understand. I mean, Christ, the prick never even finished college, and he thought he should be rich, just because he had a sweet little ass and he could suck dick like a Hoover.”

  I took a draw from my beer, giving Miller a chance to think. “He treated you like his sugar daddy?”

  “You bet. I bought him that car. And the laptop he carried around with him.”

  “He didn’t appreciate it, did he?”

  “As if.”

  “I’ll bet you bought him a gun, too, to protect himself in case someone tried to rob him again.”

  “I bought everything. The only thing Jerry ever bought was dope, booze and poppers.”

  I racked my brain. It was late, and I struggled to remember the details of the autopsy, which had arrived just before I left the office. The medical examiner had indicated the bullets that killed Jerry Epworth had come from a 9 millimeter.

  “A Glock’s good for that purpose,” I said. “Small, lightweight. But it packs a wallop.”

  “Yeah, that’s what the guy at the gun shop said. He told Jerry he ought to go out to the range, get comfortable with it. But as usual, he couldn’t be bothered.”

  “But you knew how to handle it. You’re that kind of guy. The one who keeps track of all the pieces.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, that’s me, all right.” He drained the last of his beer.

  “What did you do with the gun?”

  “Threw it in the ocean. Off Queen’s Surf. That’s where we met, you know.” He didn’t seem to be paying attention to what he’d said—he just kept trying to get another beer from Fred.

  “Why did you do it?”

  “He was pressuring me to order books and hand them over to him,” he said, turning back to me. “He was tired of going around to the professors. Some of them are rude to the book buyers. A couple even have these decals on the door, that they don’t sell books.” He gave a half laugh. “My publisher makes those up, and I send them out. That really pissed Jerry off.”

  “Did you know he was going to be up at HAC?”

  He nodded. “He knew I was hosting that party, that I was bringing books up to give to all the faculty. He caught me as I was leaving Reese Hall, wanted me to give him all the books I hadn’t passed out. We argued.”

  “How’d the gun figure into it?”

  “He was such an idiot. He kept the gun in a pouch on the outside of his backpack. I just finally had enough, you know? I couldn’t take any more. So I reached down, grabbed the gun, and shot him. He had the dumbest look on his face.”

  He looked down, remembered that his beer was empty, and went to raise his hand to Fred for another. “I think you’re done,” I said. “Come on down to the station with me, Santa. I don’t think you’ll be making it back to the North Pole this year.”

  There was no cute guy waiting under my tree for me to unwrap when I finally made it back home as the sun was rising on another Honolulu Christmas. But sometimes, solving a case is just as good.

  THE PRICE OF SALT

  A maid at the Honolulu Regent Hotel discovered the body around one in the afternoon. When I arrived on the scene a little while later, Lidia Portuondo, the uniformed officer who had responded to the 911 call, was in the hallway outside the room speaking soothingly in Spanish to a petite Filipina in a crisp pink uniform.

  “This is Detective Kanapa‘aka,” she said to the maid. “Can you tell him what you told me?”

  The maid shook her head and burst into tears. “There’s not much to tell, Kimo,” Lidia said to me. “She was making her rounds a little while ago, cleaning the rooms. She knocked, and didn’t get an answer, so she opened the door with her passkey. She saw the body, screamed, then after she caught her breath she called 911. She’s been out here in the hall ever since.”

  “Thanks, Lidia. Ask her if any of the other guests are in their rooms.”

  Lidia murmured something in low Spanish. “No, only four rooms on this floor were occupied last night,” she told me, after listening to the maid. “The other three rooms have already checked out.”

  “No witnesses.” I shook my head. “If you’ve got her statement, she can go.”

  Before I entered the room, I looked up and down the hall. The Honolulu Regent was a Japanese–owned luxury hotel which had opened downtown just a few months before, to great fanfare. We were on the twentieth floor, and a tall window at the far end of the hall framed a view of the Aloha Tower. A bank of elevators were at the other end; the floor had only a dozen rooms, each of them with a view of the ocean or the cityscape.

  The hotel placed a premium on privacy. Unfortunately, that meant the murderer could stroll through the elegant lobby unmolested, ride the elevator to the half–empty floor, and enter the victim’s room unnoticed.

  The maid had left the door ajar; I used my pen to push it fully open. It was an elegant room, with floor–to–ceiling windows facing Punchbowl Crater and the Cemetery of the Pacific. A love seat rested just inside the door; immediately beyond it a round mahogany table and two chairs sat on a circle of parquet. At the far end of the room, a king–sized bed lay in disarray. The body of a dead man rested atop the sheets, his severed head lolling at a gruesome angle beside him. I could see why the maid had screamed.

  Before I stepped inside, I surveyed the room. There was no sign of a struggle other than in the rumpling of the sheets. The drawers of the bureau were intact, and a laptop computer and cell phone sat on the table. I began making notes, taking pictures and sketching the layout of the room and the position of the body. A tremendous amount of blood had spattered everywhere, even on the walls.

  The crime scene tech arrived just as I was preparing to enter the room, Doc Takayama behind him. Doc is the medical examiner for Honolulu City and County, and he comes out himself for the high–profile victims and interesting cases. He was the youngest graduate of the medical school at the University of Hawai‘i and chose pathology because his youth made it hard for him to instill confidence in patients.

  At thirty–two, he looked barely old enough to drink. “Morning, Kimo,” he said. “Have an ID yet on this gentleman?”

  “Hotel records say the room was rented to a Muhammad Idris, a diplomat from Indonesia.” The fifty–something man on the bed was short, with black hair and skin the color of teak. Chances were good he was the diplomat in question.

  Two techs from Doc’s office followed him in, and we all got to work. Following a trail of drips from the bed, I discovered an ornate sword in the bathroom shower stall, covered in blood. A blood–spattered jumpsuit, of the type worn by cleaning people, had been stuffed into the bathroom trash can.

  I found Idris’s passport in his briefcase and verified his identity, while Doc did a preliminary examination of the body. Robbery was not a motive; a gold Rolex and a gold rope bracelet rested on the nightstand next to the bed, and there was close to a hundred dollars in U.S. currency in Idris’s wallet.

  I put in a call to the honorary consul’s office to notify him of Idris’s death, and made an appointment to speak with the consul later that afternoon. Then, based on the department’s protocol for incidents involving foreign diplomats, I called the local office of the FBI as well. A receptionist took down my information and said that an agent would be in touch if appropriate.

  Most of the paperwork in Idris’s briefcase related to the importation of U.S. food products to Indonesia, not a subject I knew or cared much about. I did find something a little unusual stashed under the paperwork, a bag from the 80% Straight store at the Eaton Hotel, which contained lube, condoms and a cock ring. A receipt indicated the items had been bought a week before. Not quite what I would have expected from a diplomat from a heavily Muslim country. I knew that in the past gay Muslims in Indonesia had been terrorized, beaten up and even castrated.

  Doc stripped off his rubber gloves just as I was pondering this issue. “Time of death was approximately twelve hours ago,” he said. “No defensive wounds, so he was probably either sedated or suffocated before he was beheaded. The cuts in the flesh around the neck are consistent with the sword we found in the bathroom.”

  “You know anything about that sword?”

  “Beheading is a ritual killing,” Doc said. “Since our victim is Indonesian, and the keris is an Indonesian sword, my educated guess is the bathroom sword’s a keris.”

  There were no visible prints on the sword or the jumpsuit, indicating the very careful killer had used rubber gloves, but I packed it all up for further analysis. Doc and his techs took the body away, and the crime scene tech finished taking his samples and photos, so I headed back to the station, with instructions that the room should not be disturbed until I gave permission.

  As I drove back to police headquarters I wondered about the gay paraphernalia I’d found in Idris’s room. Had he been murdered because he was gay? As far as I recalled, homosexual acts were criminal in his homeland. The ritual nature of the killing seemed to indicate a cultural motive; I’d have to ask the consul for advice.

  Back at the office, I laid the case out for Lieutenant Sampson, then got on line to see what I could discover about Muhammad Idris. There wasn’t much; he had spoken at a trade conference in Tokyo two years before, so I found he was 53, held a master’s degree in public planning and policy from the University of Indonesia, and had been an under minister in the Department of Trade for ten years. As an English major myself, I couldn’t make heads or tails out of the paper he had presented at the conference.

  I was puzzling over tariffs and trade concessions when my phone rang. The FBI was interested in Muhammad Idris, after all, and an agent who identified himself as Francisco Salinas asked if we could meet to discuss the case. One of the two Starbucks on Bishop Street was around the corner from his office, and I agreed to be there in half an hour.

  Salinas was easy to spot–– a tall, dark–haired haole with a military–short hair cut and navy suit and white shirt. We shook hands at the barista line, then took our cappuccinos to a blond wood table in the back corner. “What do you know about Idris so far?” he asked, taking a sip of his coffee.

  “Not too much.” I laid out what I’d learned from the conference web site. “Obviously, you know something more. Is that something you can share?”

  Salinas pulled a manila folder out of his briefcase. “Idris is a PEP,” he said. “We’ve had our eye on him for a while.”

  “What exactly is a PEP?”

  “A Politically Exposed Person. Someone from a foreign country who has the potential to move illicit cash or financial instruments around,” he said. “The concept originated with the Swiss over twenty-five years ago, when they instituted enhanced due diligence when dealing with senior foreign politicians and their families.”

  “People like Marcos and Duvalier.”

  “Exactly. Although Idris was not on their level, it looks like he may have moved close to two million dollars out of Indonesia to offshore bank accounts.”

  “How can a low–level guy like Idris get access to so much cash?”

  “Idris’s job was to purchase large quantities of food from foreign sources, under government contracts, then resell it to local wholesalers. You’ve seen the headlines—Russia buys a billion dollars of wheat from the U.S., and so on.”

  I drank some coffee. “Go on.”

  “He arranged to buy products here in Hawai‘i and paid significantly over the going rate. We think that difference was siphoned into his offshore accounts.”

  “You have proof of this?” I asked, nodding toward his folder.

  “Not completely. It’s Indonesian money, not U.S., and it’s small potatoes for us. But we’ve been collecting data.”

  “You think this operation of his put him at risk for murder?”

  Salinas shrugged. “My grandmother had an expression. ‘You lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas.’ It’s possible somebody got wind of our investigation and killed Idris to cover his tracks.”

  “You know anything about Idris’s personal life?”

  “Wife and two kids back in Jakarta. They’ve never come to the U.S.”

  “Any indication he might have been gay?”

  Salinas nodded. “I got a call a little while ago from a buddy of mine at the State Department. Seems Mr. Idris applied for asylum three days ago, due to his well–founded fear that he would be persecuted and perhaps killed if his homosexuality were to become known in Indonesia.”

  “Three days? Is that enough time for his government to find out, and arrange to have him killed?”

  “If they cared. It’s one thing to get caught with your pants down, so to speak. But I think it’s a stretch to assume somebody in Jakarta got wind of his asylum bid and sent a hired killer all the way to Honolulu.”

  “Stranger things have happened. But you’re right, it does seem a little far–fetched.” I thought for a minute. “Idris have any local contacts?”

  “I put together what I could for you,” Salinas said, handing me the folder. “There isn’t much, but it should get you started.”

  Salinas was being too helpful, and that made me suspicious. “And what do you get out of this?”

  “I get to close a case.” He drained the last of his coffee. “You have any idea how many of these I’m investigating? You need a Ph.D. in Economics just to follow the money trails. Since 9/11, we’re cracking down on any foreign currency transactions that can be considered suspicious. We’re swamped. Every PEP has family, friends, and associates. Just following one money trail can take hundreds of hours. I guarantee you, you’re doing me the favor by taking this one off my desk.”

  He stood up. “Good to meet you, detective. Let me know the outcome of your investigation.”

  “Will do.” I stayed at the coffee shop for a while longer, nursing the last dregs of my cappuccino and reading about Idris and his financial dealings. He had set up letters of credit to pay shell corporations for commodities at prices Salinas’s notes indicated were inflated. The Indonesian government paid the money on signing, not on delivery, so often no merchandise was ever delivered.

  The letters of credit had all been arranged through The Hong Kong Bank of Trade, an offshore bank with offices just a few blocks away. I decided I’d pay the account officer a visit.

  The bank’s offices were on the twenty-fourth floor of a luxury office building with a view of Honolulu Harbor. I showed my ID to the receptionist and asked to speak with Edward Nordahl.

  Nordahl’s hawk nose put him just the wrong side of gorgeously handsome, but the rest of the package was there—white–blonde hair, prominent cheekbones, broad shoulders and a trim waist. My gaydar has been improving in the year since I came out, and it told me Nordahl was batting for my team. Maybe it was the stylish cut of his Italian suit, the crispness of his white starched shirt, or the way his gaze rested a little too long on me.

  I introduced myself, and he led me back to his office, which had a stunning view of Waikîkî Beach and Diamond Head. “I understand you handled some transactions for Mr. Muhammad Idris, a trade minister from Indonesia,” I said, as I sat in a teak armchair across from Nordahl’s desk.

  “That’s correct. I facilitated the letters of credit for various purchases by the Indonesian government.”

  “What does that mean, exactly? I’m not much of a finance expert.”

  “A letter of credit is a document issued by a bank that guarantees the payment of a customer’s draft.” Nordahl’s smile was sexual, in contrast to his words. “It substitutes the bank’s credit for the customer’s credit. Mr. Idris would negotiate a purchase, and then come to us for the letter of credit. We’d pay his vendor, and the government of Indonesia would reimburse us.”

  I shifted uncomfortably in the teak chair. We weren’t at the Rod and Reel Club; we were talking about a murder. There was something weird about the sexual tension he radiated. “Why would somebody do that? Why not just invoice the government directly?”

  “Ah, now you’re asking for a semester–long course in economics,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “The letter of credit is a guarantee that your bill will be paid. If the government, for some reason, defaults, then the bank pays. Many vendors are hesitant to deal directly with third–world countries—unstable political situations, currency fluctuations, lack of familiarity with the necessary paperwork.”

  “You provide the insurance that the bill will get paid,” I said, nodding. “And charge a fee for the service, of course.”

  “Of course. May I ask you what this is all about?”

  “Mr. Idris was murdered last night.” Nordahl’s mouth dropped open and his eyebrows raised. “I’m trying to understand what brought him to Hawai‘i.”

  “I’m shocked, to say the least. I didn’t know Mr. Idris well, but I can’t imagine why someone would murder him. He was very…innocuous.”

  “Did you ever have any indication that Mr. Idris was gay?”

  Nordahl looked at me. I imagined he was considering how much he could or should tell me. I knew the feeling; even though my coming–out story had been splashed across the headlines, I still found myself in situations where I had a choice between outing myself or remaining closeted. I hoped Nordahl would realize that I could keep his secrets, if they didn’t impinge on my investigation, and that he’d feel comfortable confiding in me. That is, if he didn’t try to jump my bones first.

  “I read about you in the paper,” he said finally. “I admire you for your honesty. Some of us, however, work in environments where that kind of honesty isn’t possible.”