Hotel Honolulu

19 Crime of Passion

The simplified news items in small-town papers are charming and untranslatable to outsiders, but wonderfully evocative to the small-town reader: the townie can decode anything local. Just the names are telling enough — family names are like a whole language of revelation. In such a place, everyone knows the background to the latest news, and the innuendo in the reporting itself. In this respect, the local news story is often like a concentrated tale by that subtle enchanter from Argentina, Jorge Luis Borges, much of whose work was just that — news from Buenos Aires. Graceful and graphic, such a story was a coiled clinging beauty, a tiny trailing narrative, the sort of vine that suited its name, vignette.

In the small town of Honolulu, the headline in the Advertiser, MAN HELD IN KAILUA DEATH, was understood to be intentionally circumspect, because Madam Ma was one of the paper's most popular columnists. The rival Star-Bulletin was more teasingly explicit: JOURNALIST'S SON ARRESTED IN FLORIST'S MURDER. Yet what had happened was obvious, and the facts in both stories were the same: a quarrel was mentioned, with a hint that it had been a lovers' quarrel; the men were said to have been friends; and Chip was identified as "a leader in the campaign advocating same-sex marriage in Hawaii." That said queer as "florist" said queer, and Madam Ma was well known for being a prima donna. It was colorful but no

crime to be a mahu. Indeed, it was an old Polynesian custom. A shortage of daughters in the family meant one of the sons was raised as a girl.

For most newspaper readers, this seemed an open-and-shut murder case. Two local homos got into a screaming match that became a catfight that turned physical; one bashed the other's head in. What tickled people's interest was that Amo was married and had young children. This was the single scandalous detail, the tiny fact of the family house in Kailua that spoke volumes to the local reader. The wife was quoted as a witness. She was not ashamed, she was sorrowful, and who could blame her? But some people held her accountable. Married to a mahu, she should have known better. She was an enabler, playing with fire, turning a blind eye. She was asking for trouble, and hey, what about her poor keeds?

A Portugee florist and a hapa-haole and all the journalistic shorthand for sexual orientation that was understood locally: "an aspiring kumu hula," "active in the theater," "served a stint in the Honolulu ballet," "a protege of Richard Sharpe" (Sharpe was a shimmering old queen who prided himself on being a hoofer), "male model," "chorister," every significant term except "faggot."

The most vocal public reaction in Honolulu was that of gloating Mormons and sanctimonious Christians. Mormons — polygamous until just the other day — claimed gay marriage to be immoral. Such people tended not to question the motive or the violence in a gay murder — being gay was motive enough, for gays were seen as jealous and excitable, as Gypsies once were; it was a catfight between men, and because men, even

gay men, were strong, violence was expected. In the case of a man and woman, the woman was nearly always overpowered, but in a gay fight either party might win, since (being gay) the two men were equally matched. Therein lay the interest: the outcome — who was the victim?

There was perhaps also a factor that we understood to be common on the mainland — a certain pleasure taken by the public when a gay man murdered his partner, or did anything that placed him in the ranks of the unambiguous criminal. Theft, battery, destruction of property ("The weapon was a shod foot"), anything would do, because then the onlooker could gloat and decry without appearing to condemn the man for his homosexuality. Yet in such cases the queerness was the very thing that was being condemned, because it proved that, after all, they are even worse than the rest of us.

And there is always a shiver of satisfaction that the smugly voyeuristic public feels when marginal people kill each other, when a boxer dies from a lethal punch, or when the corpse of the unwelcome boat person is revealed by the ebbing tide. It is the rush of the spectator at a cockfight, for the faceless struggler has no character beyond his struggle, no personality, and all anyone cares about is the outcome — the loser is indistinguishable from the winner. Mexican farm workers suffocating to death in a boxcar, prison inmates clawing each other to death, vengeful mobsters, furious gays — such murders arouse little emotion. You don't feel that their distress places you in any personal danger. They asked for it.

So when Chip murdered Amo Ferretti in Kahana Beach Park in Punaluu there was no scandal, nor any outrage. No one felt any of that retrospective horror that grips the public when a hideous suburban crime is reported — the instant identification of the fear that sounds like a boast. I live right nearby! I use that road all the time! My best friend lives there! My kid went to school with that dead kid! That could have been me!

But in the case of the gay or the mobster or the Mexican illegal, people think, That could never have been me.

Murder seemed a natural outcome of the quarrel between Chip and his lover. People said "Where?" and "How?" but not "Why?" But "Why?" would have elicited the most surprising answer.

The version that Buddy Hamstra heard — it was going the rounds of Waikiki — sounded perverse enough to be true. Suspecting that something was wrong — his mother had not called — Chip had visited the hotel unexpectedly one afternoon. I could vouch for that. I remembered the day. Chip's visit was not as casual as it had seemed. Because it was deliberate it had all the elements of calculation: suddenness, surprise, daylight. Being on duty, I was aware of movement at the back of the house, and I knew that Chip had entered the hotel by the rear door, moving quickly through the kitchen and then to the service elevator.

"These gay guys have very strong manao," Buddy said, using the Hawaiian word for gut feeling or intuition. Chip and his mother were on the same wavelength; he was like her in every way.

It was as though Chip had heard his mother calling from across the island, like the cry of some panicky jungle bird in bright plumage, that same helpless squawk. Chip had been at Salt Lake, out near Aloha Stadium, getting the oil changed in his car. Sensing trouble he called his mother, and Brenda, the hotel operator, said, "She's not answering." Not "She's not in," but "She's not answering." That made Chip suspicious.

As soon as the oil was changed, but not staying around for a new air filter, Chip raced back to Waikiki on Nimitz Highway. Instead of parking near the hotel, he used a meter on Kuhio and hurried around back. He was spotted by the kitchen staff, who told me how he had come and gone, all within a few minutes, "chasing his friend."

What Chip had seen — so the story went — had shocked him. He had not knocked. Using his own key, he had opened the locked door and heard muffled cries from the bedroom. There he had found his lover, Amo Ferretti, furiously assaulting his mother. The big naked man with the hairy back was violently raping the old woman, who, sallow and shrunken, looked defenseless. In this horrible glimpse, it seemed to Chip like the worst child abuse, like a brute assaulting a small girl, for his naked mother had a child's insubstantial body. The dark man was holding her legs apart and driving deep into her as she thrashed, gulping for breath. It was the

rapist surprised in his crime, a son witnessing the violation of his own mother. And that same night the man was killed.

So, though it had all the conventional details of a gay crime — the bitchy quarrel, the car chase, the smashed skull — it only looked stereotypical. It wasn't a gay murder after all.

Chip's arrest and this explanation caused an outpouring of sympathy for the man in the orange jumpsuit in Oahu Community Correctional Center. He had the best motive on earth — the love for his mother. He had avenged his mother's honor by smashing the rapist's skull at the beach park. It was justified. Some people in Honolulu demanded Chip's release, but his mother was not among them.

If he had killed to defend her and had saved her life, why was his mother avoiding him? It was a question no one asked.