“I understand. Anything you tell me will remain confidential, unless it has a direct bearing on Mr. Idris’s murder.”

  “Muhammad was deeply closeted.” I noticed the shift from last to first name. “Being gay isn’t just frowned on in Indonesia. It’s a death sentence.”

  “That must have been very difficult for him.”

  Nordahl nodded. “He said sometimes he found it hard to breathe when he was in Jakarta. Here, he could be himself.”

  “Did you two have a personal relationship?”

  “Just as friends.” Nordahl held up his hands. “It took him a long time to come out to me, and then I was a sort of mentor to him. Explaining about gay bars, places he could trust and places he couldn’t. That kind of thing.”

  “Did he go to places he shouldn’t trust?”

  Nordahl shrugged. “I don’t know, but that’s always a possibility, isn’t it? When you’re so deep in the closet, you get desperate for sex, and sometimes you do things you shouldn’t.” I wondered if he was speaking from his own experience. I knew that had happened to me. Losing control had put me in dangerous situations in the past. “Could he have picked up a piece of rough trade?”

  Rough trade was a term used for a kind of male prostitute, specifically the type that could just as easily beat you up as give you a blow job. Some men thrived on the danger inherent in such guys. “Was that where his interests were?”

  “I don’t know. We didn’t get that specific.” He shuddered. “The poor guy. Was he robbed? He had a Rolex and some nice gold jewelry. I always told him not to wear that when he went out.”

  I shook my head. “Robbery doesn’t seem to be involved. Was he ever worried that someone from Indonesia might find out about him?”

  “All the time. But once he opened up, he couldn’t stop. You know how it is. That taste of freedom can be so intoxicating.” He looked at me again, and I could feel his gaze like lasers on me.

  I stood up, and handed him my card. “If you think of anything that could help, please call me,” I said. “I may get back to you, if I come up with some more financial questions.”

  “Certainly. I want to do anything I can to help.” His handshake was warm and firm, with eye contact. I did my best to smile back, but leaving his office I couldn’t help feeling like I’d escaped from a crocodile’s jaws.

  A deeply closeted crook, embezzling millions from a country where his sexuality was against the law. It was no wonder someone had killed Muhammad Idris.

  The possibility also existed that Edward Nordahl had been closer to Idris than he let on. I’d have to look through the paperwork Francisco Salinas had given me, and I’d have to learn a lot more about Idris before I was ready to come to any conclusions.

  From the bank, I headed a few blocks away to the offices of the honorary consul, who was not Indonesian, as I expected, but instead a California surfer dude named Jamie Wills. His company manufactured electrical circuit boards in factories outside Jakarta, he told me, and he’d accepted the honorary consul position as a way to facilitate trade.

  “Did you know Mohammed Idris?”

  “I met him a few times, but I can’t say I knew him well,” Wills said. “Quiet kind of dude, kept to himself mostly.”

  “Do you know anything about the purchasing he was doing here? Who he bought from, what he bought?”

  “Can’t say I do. My field’s high–tech; Idris was in agriculture.”

  I had one last question. “How about Indonesian weapons. Know anything about those?”

  “You mean the keris?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, there I can help you. Come on, let me show you my collection.”

  I followed him out of his office and down the hall. He opened a side door and led me into a small room lined with display cases. “The keris is the traditional weapon of Indonesia, the Philippines and the Malay peninsula,” he said. “Each area has its own traditions, but it’s basically a double–edged dagger. I won’t bore you with all the technical terms, but there are a number of features which make it unique. Mostly it’s here, at the hilt.” He pointed. “The asymmetrical triangle at the end of the hilt is characteristic. The blade itself comes in over a hundred different shapes.”

  I turned on my digital camera and showed him a shot of the sword. “I assume this is a keris.”

  He nodded. He took the camera from me, fiddling with the dials to enlarge and zoom in on the picture. “I can’t be a hundred percent sure, but this looks modern, probably made in the U.S.”

  “Here?”

  “Not in Hawai‘i. There are a couple of swordsmiths on the mainland who either reproduce ancient weapons or design their own. If you come back to my office I can give you some websites to look at.”

  As we walked, Wills said, “If you’re not picky, you can search for a couple of minutes, type in your credit card, pick your shipping option and, voila, you’ve got yourself a keris.”

  He opened a couple of web pages in quick succession, and cut and pasted the URLs into an email, which he addressed to me. I shook his hand and said, “You’ve been very helpful, Mr. Wills. I really appreciate your time.”

  “Glad to be of help. These are beautiful pieces of armament, and I hate to see them misused.”

  Back at headquarters, I got online again, this time using the URLs Wills had sent to look for information about the keris and how easy it was to order one. He was right; a few clicks, and you could have yourself a ritual murder weapon.

  I matched the keris from Idris’s room to a picture on a website for a company in Sausalito, just outside San Francisco. I called the number on the site, and reached the swordsmith’s wife, who handled sales.

  She had shipped a weapon like the one I described to Honolulu, she said, but not in the last few days. She’d sold it almost a month before. “We’re always willing to cooperate with law enforcement, detective,” she said. “However, you understand I need to be sure of who I’m dealing with.” She asked me to fax her a formal request for information, on department letterhead, with a verifiable department number she could fax back to.

  I prepared the fax and sent it, then sat back in my chair. Was this a ritual murder, or just supposed to look like one? Some rabid Muslim with a hair up his ass about gay people could have assassinated Idris, using the keris for ritual effect. Or some home–grown crook could have chosen the weapon as a red herring.

  In either case, the crime had turned into one of premeditation, since the weapon had been purchased a month before. The fax came through a few minutes later; the credit card was registered to an Ernest Nicholson, and sent to an address in Kaka’ako, a residential district just outside downtown. Nicholson, however, was not listed, and a call to the credit card company told me that the card had been cancelled over three weeks before, after a report of unauthorized use.

  A quick records search indicated that the owner of the condo where the sword had been shipped was a corporation called Hawaiian Coast Salt, which had paid $750,000 cash—no mortgage was recorded.

  That name sounded familiar, so I looked back over the records Francisco Salinas had provided me. The biggest purchases Idris had made were from Hawaiian Coast Salt, but I couldn’t find a listing for them in the Honolulu phone book. Nothing on line, either.

  I started calling food wholesalers, asking for information. No one had ever heard of a company by that name, but they were all willing to sell me the same commodity Idris had bought, red salt. It was a pale orange specialty product whose unique color came from the addition of volcanic clay. It was pricy, and I wondered why Indonesia needed so much of such an expensive condiment.

  I called Edward Nordahl, but he couldn’t tell me anything about the company. “You must have bank information,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, but that information is confidential. I can’t reveal it to you without a court order. It’s bank policy.”

  A buddy over in Customs told me they had no records of a shipper called Hawaiian Coast Salt, and no records of any large shipments of salt to Indonesia, either. It was all ground Salinas had covered, but I kept going over the data, hoping to find something he’d missed.

  A judge wouldn’t give me a subpoena for information on Hawaiian Coast Salt without some connection to Idris’s murder, and I wouldn’t have that unless I could prove that the keris shipped to the condo the company owned was the same one used to kill Idris. Since the weapons were historically accurate, there was no marking to differentiate this keris from any other one made by the same swordsmith.

  I clocked out at the end of my shift and headed home to Waikîkî. There was still time to surf a few waves at Kuhio Beach Park, down the street from my apartment. But as I passed the Ala Wai Yacht Harbor and saw the street sign for Hobron Lane, I made a quick detour to 80% Straight, the store where the bag I found with Idris’s body had come from.

  It was just after five, and the neighborhood was crowded with tourists and business people from the offices at Eaton Square. A year ago, I wouldn’t have gone to a store like 80% Straight, too afraid that someone might see me there, or even see me going in.

  I stopped just outside the store. How did a guy like Muhammad Idris go in, then? He was closeted, fearing for his life if the repressive regime in Indonesia knew about him. The receipt had been dated a week ago, days before his asylum bid. There was no way I could see him going into the store, no less buying condoms and a cock ring. Someone must have bought them for him.

  I turned around and went back to headquarters, where I hunted down photos on the Internet of both Muhammad Idris and Edward Nordahl, and printed them out on Lieutenant Sampson’s color laser printer. Then it was back to 80% Straight.

  I knew Ronnie, the store manager, and he knew me. Not that I was such a great customer; you get your picture in the bar rags, and other gay men notice, and remember. “Eh, Kimo, howzit?” he asked as I walked in.

  He was a skinny haole with multiple piercings and a purple streak in his blonde hair. We made small talk for a few minutes, and then I pulled out my pictures. “You ever seen either of these guys in here?”

  He studied Muhammad Idris, and shook his head. But he pointed to Edward Nordahl and said, “Him, I remember.”

  “How come?”

  “Asshole was in here about a week ago, buying shit. I remember when he was checking out, he had a small size cock ring, and I kind of looked at him, like, dude, I know this is not for you.”

  I laughed. “Come on, Ronnie, you’ve got that good of an eye?”

  “Duh, yeah,” he said. “But he looked at me and smirked. Said it was for this Asian guy he knew, and then he made this nasty crack about Asian guys and small dicks. Shit, man, my boyfriend’s Chinese and he’s hung like a horse. I just shook my head and rang him up.”

  He reached under the counter and brought out a shrink–wrapped DVD. “Hey, we got this new release in, I thought of you,” he said, handing it to me. It was called Surf’s Up, and the cover shot was a beefy haole with a huge dick, leaning naked against a surfboard. “Go ahead, on the house. I think you’ll like it.”

  With Ronnie’s keen eye, he could probably spot the immediate reaction I had to the cover shot. “Thanks, brah. I appreciate it. And thanks for the photo ID.”

  “No problem. Always eager to help out a man in uniform.”

  “Guess I’ll have to wear mine in here one day, then.”

  “You do, you’ll cause a riot. Just give me some notice, man. I can draw a crowd for that.”

  I knew I was blushing by then, so it was time for me to leave.

  On the drive home, I stashed the DVD under the seat so I could concentrate on Ronnie’s ID. Edward Nordahl had bought the paraphernalia for Muhammad Idris. That didn’t prove anything, but it did open a door.

  The next morning, I swung past Honolulu Hale, our city hall, on my way to work. The massive stone building, with its ornate chandeliers, houses the corporate records office, where I searched for information on Hawaiian Coast Salt. No luck, though; no incorporation papers, no “doing business as” notices. You needed a business license to open a bank account in a company name, so that meant that Hawaiian Coast Salt was banking offshore, in one of those cash havens Francisco Salinas had mentioned.

  As I drove back to the station, I wondered who else would be affected by Idris’s decision to ask for asylum. His wife and kids. His office. His banking contact in Honolulu – Edward Nordahl. Suppose Nordahl had been playing Idris all along, assuming that the Indonesian would always go back to his wife in Jakarta. One day Muhammad says to Ed, “Honey, I’m not leaving you again.” What does Nordahl do then? Buy a keris and chop his lover’s head off? And if he did, how could I prove it?

  I needed to talk to Nordahl again. I called his office, but his secretary said he wasn’t in, and she hadn’t heard from him. I picked up the white pages, and his number was listed—in Kaka’ako. The same address where Ernest Nicholson had received delivery of the murder weapon. I noted the similar initials – EN.

  Nordahl didn’t answer his phone, but he’d changed his message before he left. He was going out of town for a while, he said, but leave him a message and he’d get back to you.

  The only way off an island is either by boat or plane. I gambled that if Nordahl was running scared, the easiest way to escape was by plane. I printed a dozen copies of Nordahl’s picture, then ran for my truck and drove to Honolulu International. On the way, I tried to think like Nordahl. He’d planned enough to order the murder weapon weeks before he needed it; he’d used rubber gloves and an industrial jumpsuit. I thought he’d have an emergency exit plan, too, just hadn’t thought he needed it until I pegged both him and Idris as gay.

  So that meant he had a hidey hole set up somewhere in a place that didn’t extradite. Which led me to believe he was heading for the international wing of the airport. From my truck, I called for backup, and after I parked in the airport garage I met up with a dozen uniforms and security guards in front of the TSA scanners.

  I handed out the photos and gave them all a quick description, then started prowling the gates, looking for tall, blonde and handsome. Nordahl had majored in Far East studies in college, I knew, and I was pretty sure I remembered he spoke some Chinese. So I focused on flights to Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai. JAL had a flight to Hong Kong that was about to begin boarding, so I ran to that gate. And sure enough, Nordahl was waiting in line for his row to be called.

  I radioed for backup, and kept an eye on him until two uniforms arrived. “Mr. Nordahl, we need to have a talk,” I said, walking over to him.

  “He thought we could be together,” he said, looking at me. “That I loved him, that he would move into the apartment he bought me and we’d live happily ever after. Silly little man, really.”

  “Come with me, and you can tell me all about it,” I said, pulling a pair of handcuffs from my belt.

  SUPER–SIZE

  As a homicide detective in Honolulu, I spend my working time solving mysteries. When I get a little personal time, I like to surf, but when a mystery presents itself, even a small one, it’s hard to resist. When you add in that I’m a sucker for a big dick (no pun intended), I couldn’t help wondering why the sexy guy walking toward me on the beach looked so miserable.

  I’d just finished surfing a set and was relaxing on the sand at Kuhio Beach Park when I saw him, about ten feet away from me. He was a big fat boy, in his early twenties, at least six–three or six–four. Roughly two hundred seventy five pounds poured into a red nylon bikini. I first noticed him from the back, eying the way the fabric stretched unsuccessfully to cover the big round globes of his ass; at least an inch of crack peered above the elastic band.

  He turned around, and as he got closer to me I could see he had a whomping big dick stuffed into that tight bikini, and that he dressed to the left. He was carrying a towel as well as a cell phone on a string around his wrist. The edges of his mouth drooped and his big brown eyes squinted in the sun. Unlike the other beachgoers around us, who were smiling and laughing and enjoying the gorgeous day, he looked miserable.

  I’m a soft touch. Something about a sexy guy with a big dick and a sad face really turns me on—and sets my detective instincts going.

  I stood up, dusting the sand off my board shorts, and walked toward him. As I got closer, I noticed the blonde hair on his pecs and upper arms, and a forest of darker blonde curls peeking out above that ample dick, at rest now but clearly outlined against the thin, red fabric. Jesus, I thought, who let this guy out of the house in such a skimpy suit?

  “Hey,” I said. “You looking for a place? ‘Cause you can come sit by me.” I nodded toward my towel.

  A smile broke across his big face, stretching from one dimpled cheek to the other. He checked me out—though he tried to hide it, he wasn’t very suave. I guess he liked what he saw; I had to be at least ten years older than he was, but I was shirtless, showing off my pecs, my biceps and the six–pack abs I work to maintain.

  I wasn’t nearly as showy as he was; my dick was secured inside my board shorts, though I had a feeling if I didn’t sit down quickly I’d have to perform a discreet adjustment.

  “That would be great.” He followed me to my square of sand, like an obedient Saint Bernard, and laid his towel down next to mine.

  I found out, in quick order, that his name was Tom, he was in college in Oregon, and that he’d come to Hawai‘i with a couple of friends—because the room was cheaper when you split it four ways, he said.

  “I’m Kimo,” I said, sticking out my hand. “Where are your friends now?”

  “Getting lucky at happy hour,” he said, with a frown. “They’re all really good–looking, and they didn’t want me around when they’re trying to pick up guys.” His mouth dropped open, like he’d just realized he’d outed himself.

  “It’s okay,” I said, reaching over to touch his shoulder. “I’m gay, too.” I looked down my lashes, trying to be shy. “It’s why I went over to talk to you.”

  Because I was looking down, that big dick of his was right in my line of sight, and I swear, I’ve never seen one spring to life so fast. The fat, fleshy head jumped right over his waistband, and in embarrassment he stuffed it back into his bikini.