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Mike heard that and looked up. I said, “Gunter. What did you do now?”
“Nothing, really. Just a harmless prank.”
I skipped the details for the moment, and asked where he was. “The main police station downtown. My bail is $250. I’ll pay you back, I promise. We can go to an ATM as soon as you get me out of here.”
“I’m on my way,” I said.
I stood up. “I can’t believe you’re going to bail him out,” Mike said.
“He’s my friend.” I looked over at Dakota. “I take care of my friends.”
Mike humphed and went back to what he was reading. I called a guy I knew at a bail bond company while I was on the road, and he looked up Gunter’s sheet. “Two-fifty cash bond,” he said.
A cash bond is one posted by friends or family of the defendant. They require the full bail amount and are not financed through a bail bondsman, but you still have to go to one to get the right paperwork. I told him to get the papers ready for Gunter, and I stopped at an ATM to get the cash.
The bail bondsman’s office was a single-story building, the front windows plastered with signs and special offers. A bumper stick affixed to the glass door read “CSI: Christ Saves Individuals.”
Once I had the bond, I parked in the headquarters garage and walked across to the holding cells. I saw Rory Yang, an officer I knew, and asked him, “What’s the story with Gunter Franz?”
He turned to the computer and pulled up Gunter’s sheet. “Three counts of disorderly conduct,” he said, looking up at me. “He and a bunch of other guys were driving a pink convertible down Kalakaua, shouting derogatory comments and spraying water guns at a Boy Scout march.”
I groaned. “How come he didn’t get pretrial release?” Usually the court allowed defendants in misdemeanor cases who had no prior criminal record, and evidence of strong ties in the community, to get out without paying for a bond.
“The way I heard it from the bailiff, Judge Burns was an Eagle Scout and he was very upset that all the little scouts were getting soaked and being called bad names.”
I showed him the bond, and he went to get Gunter. When he appeared he was wearing a pink T-shirt that read “Mahu Nation” and matching pink rubber slippers. His white shorts were so tiny and tight I could tell he wasn’t carrying a wallet, only a single house key.
I thanked Rory and waved Gunter toward the door. He started to explain, but I said, “Not here. Wait until we’re outside.”
He pressed his fingers together and pulled them across his lips as if he was zipping them shut. I resisted the urge to punch him.
We walked outside. The sun was finally going down and the air had cooled. “What the hell did you think you were doing?” I asked.
“It’s called civil disobedience.”
“No, it’s called three misdemeanors.” I turned to face him. “You were calling Boy Scouts dirty names?”
“Not the scouts,” he said. “There was this march today, down Kalakaua. My friend Nick called me this morning and asked me if I wanted to help out with a protest. You know me, I’m always up for a party.”
I led him to my Jeep in the parking garage. “Go on.”
“Nick bought this used pink convertible, and he thought we could drive real slow down their route, telling them exactly what we thought of their rule against openly gay scout masters.”
“I heard there were water guns involved.”
“Just in fun,” he said. “Come on, Kimo, where’s your sense of humor? We rode along, calling out things like ‘Boy Scouts are prejudiced,’ and ‘If they’re the masters, are you the slaves?’ We had a couple of those super soakers, and the boys looked hot, so we thought we’d cool them down.”
“Gunter. They’re kids. You can’t go around yelling things at little kids and spraying them with water guns.”
“I wanted to be a Cub Scout when I was a kid, back in Jersey,” he said. “They wouldn’t let me in. They said I was too girly.” He smiled. “Payback’s a bitch, isn’t it?”
I waited for a break in traffic on South Beretania to pull out of the garage. “If you want to go back to New Jersey and look up those boys who called you names, or even the Scoutmaster who let them, more power to you. Go for it. But these boys didn’t do anything to you.”
“But they’re still doing it to other boys,” he said. “And what kind of example does it set for the kids if a scoutmaster can’t be gay?”
“I can’t argue with your principles. But you broke the law, Gunter. You harassed a bunch of innocent little kids. If I’d known what you did before I came down here I might not have come at all.”
“Fine. Be that way.” He turned toward the window and sulked.
When I pulled into his driveway I said, “I’m not going to lecture you, Gunter. You’re an adult. You know that what you do has consequences.”
“Mike is going to give you shit for bailing me out, isn’t he?”
“Yeah. But I’ll survive. You’re my friend. And like I told him, I take care of my friends.”
He leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Thanks.” Then he scampered out of the car and up his driveway, like some kind of big blond fairy. Oh, wait, that’s exactly what he was.
By the time I got home Mike and Dakota were in the living room together with Mike’s laptop on the coffee table. “I took Dakota next door to meet my folks,” Mike said.
We lived in one half of a duplex; Mike had grown up on the other side, and his parents still lived there. He had bought the house where we lived before I met him, in what I thought was a colossally stupid move for a gay man who hadn’t come out to his family. My interaction with Dominic and Soon-O Riccardi hadn’t been positive at the start. Though they had no problems with him being gay, Dominic thought I was bad news, that I’d broken his son’s heart and driven him to drink. It had taken a long time for our relationship to overcome those obstacles, and though we all got along, I was glad Mike had taken care of introducing Dakota.
“Then we came back here and found a YouTube video somebody uploaded. You’ve got to see this.” He swiveled his laptop screen around so he, Dakota and I could watch together. Roby was interested, too; he came over and squeezed between Mike and me so we could both pet him at the same time.
In footage taken with a cell phone camera, Gunter was very visible, his lanky frame sticking up from the back seat of the convertible. Along with a third guy in the front passenger seat, Gunter and a friend with a Mohawk used industrial strength water guns to spray the Scouts as they drove past, yelling the things he’d told me.
I had to admit it was funny watching the kids scramble as the water hit them, even though as a cop I knew it was wrong.
The scoutmasters in their quasi-military uniforms yelled back at Gunter and his friends. A police siren began to wail, and the driver gunned the convertible out of the cameraman’s vision.
“What an asshole,” Mike said, when the video was finished.
“It’s Gunter’s idea of a prank.” I looked at Dakota. “Don’t get any ideas.”
Mike wouldn’t let it go. “Kimo, those are kids.”
“I know. I already yelled at him.”
“Not very strongly, I’ll bet.” Mike stood up. “Come on, Dakota, let’s take Roby out for his late night walk.”
I was upstairs getting ready for bed when Mike came in to the bedroom. “Gunter’s your id, you know? You like it when he acts out.”
My grasp of psychology was pretty basic, a result of lectures and reading on criminal behavior. I had a vague idea that the id was the part of your psyche that looks for pleasure. “I have my own id, thank you very much.”
He began to undress. “Watching him is a safe way for you to vent your frustrations and exercise your fantasies.”
“Since when did you become a psychiatrist?”
“I was really into psychology when I was a teenager. I made the mistake of telling my father I wanted to be a psychologist. Of course he had to take over and tell me all the reasons why the only valid practice was psychiatry, because it required you to go to medical school. The rest was all mumbo jumbo.”
“Sounds like Dominic. So let me guess—you ran away from that idea as fast as your little legs would carry you.”
“They weren’t so little by that time. But you’re right. I wasn’t going to do anything my father said.”
I finished stripping down and tossed my dirty clothes in the hamper. Mike was down to his white briefs, and once again I noticed how damn sexy he was. “And you want to have kids,” I said. “So they can do the opposite of whatever you say?”
“That’s not the reason, and you know it.”
“It’s certainly part of it, isn’t it? You want to have your own kid so you can try to correct the mistakes your parents made with you.” I slid into bed.
“Like your parents never made mistakes.” He tugged down his briefs and his half-hard dick swung free. He faked a jump shot and tossed the briefs into the hamper, then joined me in bed.
“Of course they did. But I’m not obsessed with fixing the past. I’ve got enough to do keeping up with the present.”
“I’m not obsessed with the past. But you’ve got to admit you’d love to have the chance to mold a kid. You do that already with the teen group.”
“Yeah, but somebody else has already changed their diapers. And at the end of the meeting I send them home.”
“Sandra and Cathy would be the moms,” Mike said. “They’d do all that stuff.”
I turned on my side to face him. “Are you really that naïve? This isn’t about jerking off in a cup and letting the women do all the work. It’s a lifetime commitment to a child. Despite what you may think about your father, he’s always going to be there for you. And even after he’s gone, he’s going to be in your head. It’s a huge responsibility that goes beyond whose turn it is to babysit.”
“And you’re not interested in that.”
I thought about the way my parents had loved me unconditionally through my childhood hijinks, my failed attempt to become a professional surfer, and my coming out. What an amazing gift they had given me.
With Mike’s help, I could give that gift to someone else—our child.
I took a deep breath. “I think you’d be an awesome dad. Me, I’ll have to work at it more. But I’m willing to give it a try if you are.”
Mike reached over and took my hand. “For real?”
I leaned over and kissed him lightly on the lips. “For real. For now and for always.”