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Oahu, Hawaii
There was no place more captivating than at sunrise in Oahu, Hawaii. Staff Sergeant Andre Underwood and I seldom got to mini-vacation from the Marine Corps base. Observing the fiery ball make its debut as the city slept was my favorite pastime. Picking up chicks at the bar was his. Sometimes, he and I managed to secure a weekend leave concurrently. We always gravitated from the bar and grill we’d practically lived at all weekend to the beach around five a.m. We’d been here ever since, staring at the sky and talking.
Well, Andre talked about endless subjects. The man led a double life vicariously through his family back in Harlem, New York. They seemed to know everybody there from gangsters to government agents. Then, they fed him the juicy bits of those associations. He fed them to me. I mostly grunted in all the right places as he gossiped. In no way did the chatterbox beside me even resemble the silent but deadly, lean and lethal killing machine in the field.
We were as different as night and day. It had nothing to do with him being black. He decided he wanted to be a military cop, following in his ancestor's footsteps ranging from security guard to FBI. Naturally, with my background, I avoided law enforcement in any form. However, we had a lot in common. We hailed from the same state. His attitude was so laidback in his downtime I couldn’t help but become friends with him.
He shifted in the sand, setting an empty beer bottle at his booted feet to prop his elbows on his knees then link his fingers together at his shins. “Have you heard from Greg lately, Tobin?”
Of course, I only grunted. I hadn’t expected him to ask an actual question until the sun rose above the horizon. Pretty much when he was tired of talking to himself. I guessed he had reached that stage. Now, it was a dialogue.
“Oh yeah, we talked on Friday before you and I left the base.”
The midnight-hued globes in Andre’s head skipped over me as if looking for chinks in my invisible armor. A sensitive subject was incoming from him. “He quit working for Shane yet?”
And the morning was going so well until that name left his lips.
Instantly peeved, I turned up my beer. After swallowing down the last of it, I deposited the bottle in the sand beside me. Copying Andre’s pose, I gazed at the ocean’s surf breaking on the bank. “Greg’s still working for that monster no matter how many times I’ve told him it’ll get him killed. Maybe even locked up for life one day.”
Greg declined to join the Marine Corps with me the day following the murder of Martin Hughes. Fifteen years later, my brother still hadn’t gotten his wakeup call about working for Shane. He’d survived numerous brushes with death from other gangs, the cops, and Shane’s volatile outbursts. Meeting Cherise was the blaring alarm indicating that I was a finger snap away from losing my life to the streets. I knew now that one look into her eyes that night changed me, made me want to be a better man.
So, I tried to be that blaring alarm for Greg. Several times, I offered him money to resettle in another town. Since he was an adult, there was nothing I could do but worry and pray. So far, it was working.
“Maybe, you should just try talking to him again about moving out here the next time you two talk,” Andre recommended. “This is a beautiful place to live and the women top the scenery. That’s one heck of an incentive to pack your bags and burn rubber for a better life.”
I dead-eyed my friend of eight years. “You would know, playboy. No one fucks more of the locals than you do. And you know how you say I’m stubborn?”
He snickered, shaking his head with a low cut containing enough spiraling waves to make someone seasick. “Not my fault the exotic women here love me. I’m probably exotic to them too, and I’m guessing Greg has you beat in the stubborn department.”
“Beat? I don’t even place when it comes to Greg. There’s a picture of him beside the word stubborn in the dictionary. If I say yes, he says no for the hell of it.”
“Then use reverse psychology, stop asking him to move, and regale him with stories about your life here.” Andre grimaced. “Then again, don’t do that. You are about as all work and no play as a career military man can get. I hope your dream girl appreciates your restraint. Pitiful.”
Damn if I didn’t find his revulsion of my clean living, which started mysteriously around the time Martin was murdered, hilarious. Contrary to Andre’s beliefs, there had been a few women I tried dating over the years. Sleeping with them took a concentrated effort. Cherise would always invade my mind when it started getting good in the bedroom.
It was easier to let her smooth, latte-toned face settle in my head than to push her out. Imagining penetrating her was insulting to the woman beneath me. As long as Cherise could enter my head, I wasn’t worth a damn to other women. I gave up on dating, embracing one night stands periodically. The woman who happened upon a crime scene inspired me to change my life. Her essence had all but neutered me.
“Fine, Andre. I’ll tell Greg about your life here then. He’s as much a manwhore as you are.”
Andre’s revulsion gave way to his own hilarity. “I would say I wish I could deny that, but I’d be lying.”
“Yeah, you would, brother.” The backdrop of sun and sea divorcing at the horizon stole my attention again.
Not long after, someone yelled, “First Sergeant Graham!” at the top of their lungs like someone was being killed.
Andre peeped back over his shoulder. I bolted to my feet, rotating in the direction of the high-pitched bellow. Private First Class Pulley, a nineteen-year-old who hadn’t gotten his man-voice yet, was running full out across the beach in combat gear toward us, flapping his arm like a madman.
“Sir, I need to speak with you!”
“I gathered as much, Pulley.” Right away, I supposed it was bad news if he had tracked me with this much fanfare ten miles away to the bar and beach most of the Marines frequented. “You’re speaking to me, Marine. What’s going on?”
“First Sergeant, we just received a call from Long Island Police Department about your brother,” he shouted midway to me. “Sergeant Major Lindon needs you to come back to the base asap!”
Andre stood up. Pulley, an up and coming military police officer, recognized a superior in Andre and snapped to attention to salute. Andre urged him to go back to rest position. I couldn’t speak if I wanted to. My throat had closed up. There were two reasons LIPD would be making a call on my behalf to my superior. My brother had been arrested. God forbid he was dead. We had no other family in New York to stand by him until I got there.
He and I had been unwanted wards of the state, unwanted by families looking to adopt most of our lives after our parents died together in a fatal drug deal when I was five. Greg was only three. Even that young, we made it my business to make sure we were never separated. As fast as a family tried to take one of us home, they regretted it big time. Greg could pitch a fit like nobody’s business, and he only got better with time. Deep inside, I knew we had been separated in one way or another, bars being no better than the grave. I wouldn’t get to go home for the holidays this year. Greg’s crimes wouldn’t be a minor infraction.
Andre squeezed my shoulder. “Tobin, I can see from the look on your face that you’re thinking the worst. Get all the details before you start borrowing trouble. Come on, Marine. Let’s go find out what the hell happened.”
