Mahu Vice m-4

by Neil S. Plakcy

  It didn’t take long for the messages to start coming in. I sat there in my boxers, drinking the Longboard Lager I hadn’t been willing to open when Mike was there, and tried to figure out which of the offers might be from Mr. Hu.

  It was exercise in both eroticism and frustration. I didn’t want to get my rocks off-I wanted to catch a criminal. But I couldn’t help getting turned on by some of the messages. Nothing came in from Mr. Hu. Just a lot of horny guys looking for cybersex or a real-time hookup. Feeling no closer to finding Jingtao’s killer, or whoever was blackmailing Brian Izumigawa, I gave up around eleven, turned the computer off, and went to sleep.

  CLEANING HOUSE

  Ray and I caught a double homicide in Makiki as soon as our shift began-two Asian women killed while they slept in a cheap one-bedroom-and we spent most of the morning at the crime scene. There was suspiciously little in the apartment to identify the women-no family pictures, no wallets or driver’s licenses, though each woman had a tiny purse with cosmetics and cigarettes.

  The front door showed pry marks, indicating that whoever got in did so without the women’s knowledge. The crime scene techs, Larry and Ryan, dusted for fingerprints and found a couple of pieces of hair and fiber that might be evidence. But there wasn’t much else they could do beyond take digital pictures of the door and the pry marks.

  It must have been a slow day at the morgue, because Doc Takayama, the medical examiner, was there himself. Or maybe it was the presence of Lidia Portuondo, who had responded to the 911 call. I had the feeling they were carrying on a sub-rosa relationship; something about the flirtatious way they talked over dead bodies, I guess.

  Doc had turned thirty a few weeks before. Prior to that he’d never actually said how old he was. He was a prodigy in college and medical school, and he chose pathology because he got tired of patients calling him Doogie Howser and asking if he’d gone directly to medical school from kindergarten.

  “What do you think, Doc?” I asked.

  “Preliminary? Both women were killed by a single gunshot to the head. My guess is that the killer used a silencer, because the position of the bodies indicates that both appear to have been killed in their sleep.”

  “Don’t forget the stippling,” Lidia said. She was looking fine that morning, her dark hair pulled into a French braid, her uniform crisp. There was a light blush on her cheeks, as if she’d been in the sun-or put on makeup just before Doc’s arrival.

  “Of course,” Doc said, smiling at her. Stippling was a fancy word for a pattern of dots around the wound that indicated the gun was fired at close range.

  “Time of death?” Ray asked.

  “Four to six hours ago,” Doc said. “I’ll be more precise after the autopsy.”

  The building looked like it had once been a motel-two stories with a staircase at one end. Eight small apartments on each floor. A tired middle-aged Japanese woman was taking care of a couple of keikis in an apartment down the hall from the murder scene, but the kids were making such a racket I could barely hear her tell me she didn’t know anything.

  An elderly Hawaiian man in a wheelchair was in one of the first-floor units, but he was disoriented and the room smelled of urine. He thought we were from the water department about his leaky faucet, and nothing we said could convince him otherwise. The rest of the neighbors were gone.

  There was no superintendent on the property; the building was one of many owned by a small-time operator, and when I called over there the manager, whose name was Ed Millner, said that the lease was in the name of a corporation. “You don’t know the names of the tenants?” I asked.

  “Sorry,” Millner said. “They paid the rent on time, they didn’t tear the place up, and they didn’t bother the other tenants. That’s all we care about.”

  Doc had the bodies taken away and Lidia followed him outside. I saw them conferring before they parted and wondered if they were comparing forensic notes, or making a date.

  “Let’s recap what we have,” Ray said, looking at his notepad. “Two unidentified Asian females, killed in the middle of the night by an unknown assailant. Anonymous 911 call. This case has ‘solved immediately’ written all over it.”

  “Now, now,” I said. “We have the name of the corporation that signed the lease. Why does it sound familiar, though?”

  Ray paged through his notes. “The house in Black Point,” he said. “Lease in the name of the same corporation.”

  He looked up at me. “Well, the clinic was a front for prostitution. You think somebody’s cleaning house?”

  “I think we need to go back and see Norma Ching again.” On our way to Chinatown, we stopped and picked up chili at Zippy’s.

  While we waited to order, I checked my phone and found a message from Terri with the time and place for our dinner on Saturday. “So you’re back with Mike?” she asked. “What’s going on? Can’t wait to see you.”

  If I knew what was going on I’d be ahead of the game, I thought.

  We got our food and sat down. I wasn’t about to get my new ride crapped up with fast food wrappers in my first twenty-four hours of ownership. “Who do you think made the 911 call?” Ray asked between mouthfuls.

  “Why?”

  “These women were killed in the middle of the night. With a silencer. And we know they were working girls, so it wouldn’t be unusual for somebody to see men coming and going at night. So who discovered the bodies?”

  “You think maybe Norma?”

  He shrugged. “It’s a question we can ask her.”

  I got a bad feeling from the fresh pry marks on Norma’s door. It was locked, though, and there was no answer to our knock. I was examining the door jamb when the lady next door came out in the hall. She looked about a hundred years old, no more than four feet tall, her hair a wild white tangle. “You look for Norma?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “You seen her today?”

  The old lady shook her head. “She always bring me coffee first thing. But not today. I worried.”

  I looked at Ray, then back at the old lady. “You wouldn’t happen to have a key to this door, would you?”

  She ducked back into her apartment and returned a moment later with a security key on a red ribbon. I took the key from her and opened the door, calling, “Norma? Norma? You here?”

  Ray and I walked into the apartment, already dreading what we’d find. Sure enough, Norma Ching was dead in her bed, a single bullet wound to her head. At a glance, it looked like the same caliber that had killed the two women in Makiki.

  The neighbor started to cry. She hadn’t heard anyone during the night, but she said she took her hearing aid out when she went to sleep. She went back into her apartment, and I called the medical examiner’s office and asked Doc to come out himself.

  I called the Scientific Investigation Section and asked Larry to come out with Ryan, even though they should have stayed in the lab processing the evidence from Makiki. “If these crimes are related, I figure it’s best to have all the evidence in the same hands. And bring those pictures of the door you took, and we’ll see if we can match them here.”

  We looked the place over while we waited. We found a bunch of gold rings, bracelets, and chains in a jewelry box on Norma’s dresser and a few thousand dollars in cash in her freezer, so it was unlikely that her killer had broken in with the intent to steal.

  While Doc examined Norma’s body, and Ryan and Larry went over the apartment, Ray and I canvassed the neighbors. They were all elderly Chinese, and none of them had heard anything the night before.

  It did look like the pry marks matched, but Larry wouldn’t be able to say for sure without a detailed analysis. “If you’re lucky, the crowbar they used left some trace evidence we can match to both doors,” he said.

  Ray and I were both beat by the time we made it back to the station, as our shift was ending. I yawned and looked at the clock. I was thinking about heading home for a nice nap when I realized that I had to meet Dr. Phil for an early dinne
r.

  “You want to go back and canvass that apartment building in Makiki?” Ray asked. “People might start to come home soon.”

  “Can you do it? I’ve got a date.” I explained about Dr. Phil’s schedule. “It’s his only night off this week.”

  “The things I do for my partner,” Ray said. “If you can drop me up there, I’ll get Julie to pick me up on her way home.”

  “You’re a prince among men. This makes up for, oh, at least two times I’ve chauffeured you around.”

  Before we left, I tried Karen at Social Security, to see if she’d found anything on Treasure, but she’d already left for the day.

  “I’m worried about Treasure,” I said to Ray, as we walked to the elevator. “If the same person killed the two women and Norma, she may already be dead.”

  “Or maybe Treasure’s our killer. Or maybe she was the one who called 911 about the girls.”

  “At this point, anything’s possible.”

  I drove Ray up to the apartment building in Makiki. There were a couple of cars in the parking lot, which meant somebody was home. “Good luck. How about I pick you up tomorrow morning on my way in? Save Julie the trip.”

  “Have fun on your date. I’ll try and get the case solved for you.”

  I realized on walking in to the steak house that I wasn’t dressed well enough; an aloha shirt and black jeans are fine for homicide, but the men around me were all wearing business suits. Mel Torme was on the sound system, and even the waiters wore ties. It was like I’d stumbled into my brother Lui’s world.

  Dr. Phil was waiting for me at the bar with a glass of fizzy water in his hand. “Alcohol doesn’t mix well with medicine,” he said, apologetically. “But you go ahead and have a drink if you want.”

  “I think I will,” I said, imagining that if I did start dating Mike again this was how our relationship might play out. I ordered a cosmopolitan.

  “Not the drink I’d expect of you,” Dr. Phil said. “You seem more like a beer-and-a-shot kind of guy.”

  I wasn’t sure how to take that, but I chalked it up to those getting-to-know-you jitters. “I do like a beer now and then. What’s the matter, you not masculine enough for a fruity drink?” I wanted it to sound like a joke, but I don’t think Dr. Phil thought of it that way. Another date off to a rocky start.

  The hostess came over and showed us to a booth of dark wood, with a single spotlight hanging high above us and shining on the glossy table top. The menu and wine list were bound together in a leather-covered book, and the prices were a lot higher than I’d expected. I was cranky with Dr. Phil for picking such an expensive place, and for not telling me about the dress code, either.

  But then he said, “Now, this was my invitation, so it’s my treat. This is my favorite place and I don’t get over here often enough. The food is amazing.”

  I followed his lead and ordered the filet, with a baked potato and a Caesar salad. The potato was as big as my foot, and the beef was tender enough to cut with a butter knife.

  “What’s up?” Dr. Phil said, as we were eating our main course. “You’ve been kind of distracted. Bad case?”

  “Three murders in one day.” I told him, briefly, about Norma and the two Chinese girls, and their connection to prostitution at the acupuncture clinic.

  “I can’t tell you how many prostitutes we treat at the ER,” he said. “Not just STDs, either. Girls who get beat up, or cut, who don’t have medical insurance, so anything that happens to them gets very bad before they come to us. Not just girls-boys, too. A couple of weeks ago, I saw this Chinese boy who somebody had used pretty badly. Rectal bleeding, anal fissures, and a bad infection. He didn’t speak a word of English, and he had this older man with him who was supposed to be his translator, but I think he was more like a guard.”

  “Did you call anyone?”

  Dr. Phil shook his head. “Not my job. The older man said that the boy was over eighteen, that he’d been attacked in an alley by some guys who got away.”

  Immediately I thought of Jingtao. “You remember a name for this boy?”

  He shook his head. “And whatever name they gave, I’m sure it wasn’t his real one.” He drank his fizzy water. “Prostitution’s a victimless crime. We ought to decriminalize it, regulate it, make sure the girls-and guys-get regular checkups.”

  I was tempted to tell him about Jingtao, how he’d escaped from the acupuncture clinic and then died in the fire. But I couldn’t find a way to make it sound like I wasn’t accusing Dr. Phil in his death, and neither of us said anything else for a while; we just sat listening to Dean Martin and the rest of the Rat Pack singing about the past. I didn’t have the energy to court Dr. Phil when my mind was on Mike, and I’m sure he figured out something was up.

  I yawned when the waiter asked if we’d like dessert, and Dr. Phil said, “No, I’ve got to get to work, and I think my friend here needs a nap.”

  “Sorry. I’m normally more animated on a date.”

  “It’s okay. With schedules like ours, we’ve got to fit dates in when we can.”

  He paid the bill and said, “I’ll see what my schedule’s like for next week and I’ll call you.” I had a feeling that he wouldn’t. He did let me leave the tip-which was more than I’d have spent on dinner with a date at a restaurant of my choice. It made me feel better about the way things were ending-but only a little.

  TREASURE HUNT

  Wednesday morning, as promised, I picked Ray up on my way to work. “Any hope you guys are getting a second car?” I asked, cranky after my failed date with Dr. Phil, and after battling early morning traffic to get over to Ray’s place.

  “I’ve got a line on a used SUV. I do a couple more special duty gigs, I can put a down payment on it.”

  “You learn anything last night?”

  He shrugged. “Next door neighbor lady didn’t like the girls-they dressed like tramps. Nobody I talked to heard or saw anything.”

  “We could track down the doctor whose license was used for the clinic,” I said. “Maybe he knows something.”

  When we got back to the station, Dr. Hsing-Wah Hsiao was easy to find, considering he’d been dead for five years. The first hit I got on Google was his obituary. “Another dead end,” Ray said. “This case has a million of ’em.”

  I e-mailed the obit to Ricky Koele so that he could follow up on the clinics licensed in the good doctor’s name.

  We put in a couple of hours reviewing arrest reports for prostitution and otherwise trying to track Norma and the two dead women in Makiki. I checked Doc Takayama’s report on Jingtao; he cited “reddening of the perianal region, together with multiple linear shallow fissures within the anal canal and moderate edema of the distal 5 cm of the rectum.”

  “What does that mean, in layman’s terms?” Ray asked, looking over my shoulder.

  “Somebody butt-fucked him pretty badly.” I shuddered, remembering my ER visit after Lucas had left me bleeding.

  Ray didn’t look too happy either. “A john?”

  “Can’t say for sure. All it means is that he was sexually active.” I thought about the boy Dr. Phil had treated and made a note to show him the picture of Jingtao that Tatiana had drawn. If he could identify the boy, then maybe the records of his hospital visit would give us a lead.

  Just after nine, Karen Gold at Social Security called with an address on Treasure in Hawai’i Kai, and we drove out there. It was a nice apartment building with a lobby and a locked front door, and we had to call the management company and ask them to send someone over with a key to Treasure’s apartment.

  While we waited, we got coffee from the Kope Bean in the Hawai’i Kai Town Center, where the Disney version of Aloha ‘Oe was playing on the sound system, Tia Carrere singing the song Queen Lili’uokalani had written. I couldn’t help but think of the lyrics: aloha ‘oe means “farewell to you,” and we’d said that to too many people on this case already.

  “Gonna have to put the medical examiner on speed dial, this kee
ps up,” Ray said.

  “I can’t remember the last time we had a case with four dead bodies and almost nothing to go on,” I said, looking out the window at the mountains across from the center. Clouds were massing at the tops, casting strange shadows down the valley. “Maybe Treasure knows something. That is, if she’s still alive.”

  We drove back to Treasure’s building, where a pleasant-faced haole with flyaway light brown hair met us. “I’m Stephen Viens,” he said. “You guys the detectives?”

  We introduced ourselves, and he let us in the front and took us up to the second floor. “Miss Chen?” he said, knocking on the door. “Miss Chen, you in there?”

  There was no answer-which didn’t necessarily mean that Treasure Chen was in the apartment and unable to answer. At least there were no visible pry marks. Viens opened the door and we walked in.

  “Not much of a housekeeper, is she?” Ray asked. The living/dining room looked like somebody had gone through it in a hurry-papers, newspapers, cosmetics, and clothes scattered everywhere. The good news was that the place smelled like lilacs, courtesy of one of those plug-in air fresheners, rather than like a dead body.

  Treasure’s bed was empty, and the bedroom and bathroom bore similar signs of a quick exit. “I’ll leave you to your business,” Viens said, and Ray and I spent the next hour or so going through what Treasure had left behind, looking for anything that might tell us where she’d gone.

  There was precious little. I found the envelope from a greeting card in the bedroom wastebasket. The return address was “E. Chen,” with an address in Waikiki. “Maybe a relative?” I asked Ray.

  “Could be.”

  Treasure’s wardrobe was a lot like that of the girls in Makiki-slinky dresses and high-heeled shoes-though her underwear was much higher class. “Fancy stuff,” Ray said. “You know how much panties like this costs?”