It was a ragged, industrial neighborhood, a lot of buildings with roll-down garage doors and little landscaping. Ray parked across from a convenience store and we sat back to wait. We didn’t have to wait long; Stan LoCicero came out about fifteen minutes later, got in the car, and drove off.
“Game on,” Ray said.
Stan followed North King to North Beretania and headed toward Waikiki. It was easy to keep him in sight in the rush-hour traffic, which was moving about as fast as a green sea turtle crawling on shore to lay her eggs.
When he turned onto Kalakaua, I said, “I’ll bet I know where he’s going. Drop me by the Rod and Reel Club. If he goes somewhere else, call me.”
Fred, the handsome, brainless bartender who normally worked the late shift, was behind the bar, and I flirted with him for a few minutes, my cell phone on vibrate in my pocket. The sound system was playing some old hapa-haole music for the tourist crowd, including an elderly man in an aloha shirt in a pattern of heart-shaped red anthurium flowers, and his wife, who wore a muumuu in matching fabric. Tiny fairy lights twinkled in the trees that lined the outdoor patio, and the occasional leaf fell from the trees above to the stone pavers.
“Hello, detective,” a voice said over my shoulder. “Can I buy you a drink?”
I turned to smile at Stan, holding up my Mehana Volcano Red Ale. “I’ve got one now, but maybe later. Who knows what the evening holds?”
“Who knows indeed,” Stan said, taking the stool next to me. His left leg slid next to my right one as he did.
“What brings you here this evening?” I asked.
“I was hoping to run into your friend Gunter. He called out sick today. Wanted to see if that was true.” He shrugged. “Guess it must be so.”
Good thing I had told Gunter to lay low. I’d have to call him and let him know Stan was on the prowl.
“You’re quite the public figure,” Stan said, taking a swig of the Longboard Lager Fred brought for him. “How is it for you, among your fellow officers? They accept you?”
“It’s been a tough road. But you know, cops are people just like everybody else. Some are okay, some aren’t.”
“Still, you must need to keep your nose clean. Can’t get into any scandal.”
I looked at him innocently. “What do you mean?”
The elderly man in the anthurium shirt got up to do a little hula dance, and his wife laughed and filmed him for the folks back home with a tiny hand-held camera.
“Let’s say somebody had some intimate knowledge of you,” Stan said. “And he was to go public. Might damage your reputation.”
“Depends,” I said, my blood pressure beginning to rise. “I’m your basic law-abiding citizen. Sex between men isn’t illegal in Hawai’i.” The first sodomy law had been enacted in 1850, though the last case had been prosecuted in 1958, and subsequent revisions to the criminal code had all but removed the penalties.
“It is when money’s involved.”
Stan look a long drink from his beer and I looked at him. I had a feeling I knew where he was going.
“I’ve never had to pay.”
“But what if someone paid on your behalf?” he asked. “And what if there was videotaped evidence?”
A tour bus pulled up outside and honked its horn, and most of the sunburnt haoles in the bar got up to leave. I didn’t think they had any idea that the Rod and Reel Club, a kitschy destination by day, turned into a steamy gay club after dark. When they’d all left, I turned to Stan. “If you’re talking about Lucas, I have some bad news for you. First, he’s dead. And second, before he died he told the Vice department what had gone on. So there’s nothing there that could hurt me.”
Stan’s body language stiffened, and I could see a shadow of the temper that Gunter had seen when Stan hit the Filipino maintenance man. He was a guy who didn’t like to be crossed.
“There’s a difference between being told something, and seeing it in living color,” he said. “I don’t know that’s a difference you’d be able to withstand.”
The adrenaline was flowing, and I had to resist the impulse to punch Stan in his jowly red face. But showing him that I wasn’t afraid wasn’t necessarily the best course of action. I had to understand him before I acted. Why was he threatening me? Did he know that we were closing in on him? Or was I just the latest target of his blackmail ring?
“Suppose I was nervous,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “Suppose I wanted to make sure that whatever evidence there was never came to light. What would I do?”
“For now, sit tight.” Then, leaning close to my ear, he said, “That is, if your ass has recovered from the battering it got from Lucas.”
Fred came by to see if we wanted another round. “Maybe something with a fruity little umbrella?” he asked. Both of us declined.
Once Fred left, Stan said, “That’s a very sexy video, detective. I’ve watched it quite a few times myself and I always find it entertaining. You’ve missed a promising career in porn.”
“I’ll stick to police work.”
Stan drained the last of his beer. “Then I’ll be in touch.” He dropped a twenty on the bar for Fred and walked out.
I called Ray to let him know that Stan was on the move. “He parked at the garage on Seaside Avenue,” Ray said. “I’ll wait for you by the side entrance.”
I paid Fred, declined his offer of a quick step into one of the private rooms in the back of the building, and walked over to the garage. As I got into the Highlander, Ray said, “Stan just took off. Heading out toward Diamond Head.”
“Maybe he’s going home now.”
I called Gunter and let him know that Stan had been checking out the bar. “I’m being good. Well, maybe not good, but I’m staying home.” In the background I heard another man’s voice, and Gunter laughed. “Gotta go, brah. Thanks for the warning.”
Ray and I followed Stan, keeping a safe distance back in rush-hour traffic on the Kalaniana’ole Highway. “Stan seems to think he can blackmail me, based on the photos and video,” I said, looking out the window. I turned back to Ray. “Obviously he doesn’t know who he’s up against.”
“Obviously not.” Ray turned into Hawai’i Kai and climbed up to the community of Kalama Valley, nestled near the foot of Koko Head crater.
It’s a quiet suburban neighborhood, favored by those who want less congestion than in the rest of Hawai’i Kai. Stan pulled into the driveway of a nicely kept ranch with a tall hibiscus hedge around the entire property. Behind the shield of red and yellow blossoms and green leaves stood two coconut palms. He went inside, coming back out a minute later with a Siberian Husky on an expandable leash.
He was smoking a cigar, letting the dog pull him along the curving street as it sniffed and peed. We slouched back in the SUV, and Stan went in the opposite direction with the dog, so he didn’t spot us.
The Ko’olau Mountains provided a lush backdrop to clean streets and manicured lawns. Every house had flowering plants in the yard, all shades and sizes of hibiscus and bougainvillea. “Ritzy area,” Ray said. “Stan must be doing pretty well for himself.”
A half hour after Stan returned with the dog, the garage door opened, and Stan, dressed in full leathers, roared out on his Harley, a red do-rag wrapped around his head. We followed him back down to the Kalaniana’ole Highway, but instead of heading toward Honolulu he turned in the other direction.
At least we had a great view as we stayed a couple of cars behind him, going past Makapu’u Point, where the surfers were catching the last few waves before darkness fell. In the distance we could see Rabbit Island, now a seabird sanctuary, and a couple of albatross and frigatebirds soaring over the ocean.
Stan pulled up in the parking lot of a biker bar outside Waimanalo Beach. The wind was whipping the waves to a white froth, spraying a fine layer of sand across the highway. We parked across the road and about a quarter of a mile away. “You think I ought to go in there?” Ray asked.
I looked at him. “You?”
“Well, the guy knows you,” he said.
“Look at the lineup of bikes out there. Don’t you think you’d stand out?”
“I can be tough when I have to.”
“I don’t doubt it. But to be effective you’d need some leathers and a bike, and we don’t have either of those. I say we give up on surveillance tonight. We’ve got a lot of research to do tomorrow morning. I doubt Stan’s going to pick up a guy tonight at this bar.”
“You never know. He’s a gay biker, after all.”
“If there was such a thing as a gay biker bar on O’ahu, I’d know it,” I said. “After all, I am the official homosexual of the Honolulu Police Department.”
“As opposed to the unofficial ones,” Ray said, putting the SUV in gear.
“We don’t talk about them.”
On our way back downtown, I called Haoa and found out that he and Tatiana were at the office, photocopying the records on every employee. “Remember, just because there’s no paperwork, it doesn’t mean the guy’s illegal,” I said. “It could just be that Sergei’s sloppy.”
“Yeah, go on thinking that,” Haoa said.
We rolled the windows down and the trade winds swept in the cooling night air. Was Sergei just trying to satisfy Haoa’s constant need for staff? Or was there something else? I’d seen the photos of him on MenSayHi, so I knew he had more than just a tangential connection to Mr. Hu and Stan.
Rather than making the turn onto Lili’uokalani, which would have put him in the wrong direction for home, Ray dropped me off on Kalakaua and I walked around for a few minutes, trying to work things out.
The constant parade of car headlights, combined with the neon and the store lighting, made it hard to see any stars, but a slice of moon hung above the ocean, clouds moving swiftly past it. There was a cacophony of noise around me-rap music, car horns, and loud laughter-but I felt cocooned from it all, my brain working through the case. But by the time I got home I hadn’t come up with anything new. After I’d stripped off my shirt and fixed some dinner, I relaxed with a book for a while. Around nine I called Mike. “Hey, what’s up?”
“Hanging out,” he said. “Your burn guy from last night go to the
ER?”
“I don’t know. Didn’t hear from him.”
“Don’t you have a buddy in the ER?”
That stumped me. Had I said something about Dr. Phil? I didn’t think so. “How’d you know that?”
There was silence on Mike’s end. Finally he said, “You went to Raimundo’s.”
I remembered back to my first date with Dr. Phil, the day I’d gotten my hair cut at Puerto Peinado and had my hair washed by Jingtao. “Yeah?”
“Raimundo remembered you from when we used to go there. I was in a couple of days later and he mentioned it to me.”
That was interesting. I had occasionally obsessed about Mike myself during the time we’d been apart, once seeing his truck parked on Kalakaua and scouring the area looking for him. “We have a new lead,” I said. I told him about going out to Mililani to see Lenny.
“You had sex with Lenny?” Mike asked. “Me, too.”
“Really? Were you on MenSayHi?”
“Yup. That’s how you met him?”
“You didn’t have sex with Richard Hu, did you?”
“Don’t recognize the name. He a friend of Lenny’s?”
“You could say that.”
“Lenny and I didn’t click,” Mike said.
“Lucky you. At least there wouldn’t be any pictures of you.”
“Pictures?”
I told him about the photos I’d found of my ass getting plowed by Lucas. “I’m online,” Mike said. “I’ll have to check it out.”
“It’s nothing you haven’t seen,” I said, but I heard his fingers clicking furiously in the background.
“Where is it? One of the photo sets?”
“You have a premium membership?”
“Come on, fess up. Like you said, it’s nothing I haven’t seen.”
“Set 34,” I said.
There was clicking on his end, and then a low whistle. “Man, that is hot,” he said. “I’m jealous.”
“Jealous why? Because Lucas’s dick is bigger than yours?”
“I’m jealous because you have a hot ass that ought to belong to me,” he said. “You know, last night, if your buddy Gunter hadn’t come over, I might have…”
“I know. I might have too.”
“Well. Where does that leave us?”
“You at your computer drooling over pictures of my ass. Me here remembering your dick.”
“Are you naked?”
“I could be.”
“So could I.”
I closed my eyes and remembered Mike’s body. His chest was hairy, his stomach flat. A trail of black hair led from the cleft of his chest down to his crotch. I’d already pulled off my shirt when I got home; as I was thinking of Mike I shucked my shorts and boxers.
“I’m naked now,” I said, my voice catching a little. “I’m thinking about your body. You are so fucking hot.”
“So are you. I’m stroking my nipple, and it’s getting hard.”
We went on, each of us spurring the other on to orgasm. Mike groaned and caught his breath, and I knew he’d come. That was enough to put me over the edge.
“Man,” he said, when he’d gotten his breath back. “Are we ever going to do this in person again?”
“We might. In the meantime, I’ll call my friend in the ER. I haven’t seen him in a while. He’s pretty hot.”
“You bastard. Can’t you just check the department computer and see if there’s a report of his assault?”
“Yeah, but I like the idea of you being jealous.”
THE FEDERAL CASE
After I hung up with Mike, I logged into the department intranet and found an assault record for Fouad Khan. It read just the way we had told him to tell the story.
Then I went to sleep, thinking of Mike and how it would be to have sex with him again-this time with actual physical contact.
Frank O’Connor from ICE called the next morning. He asked me to set up a meeting with my source as soon as possible. When I spoke to Haoa, he was eager to get things moving. “How soon can we do this?”
I went back and forth between him and Frank, and we ended up with a ten o’clock meeting at Frank’s office. Haoa said he would bring Sergei, even if he had to tie him up and throw him in the back of the truck. “Do we need an attorney?”
I asked Frank.
“I want to get a line on who’s bringing these people in,” he said. “I’m not interested in putting your brother behind bars. Or his brother-in-law, as long as he’s willing to cooperate.”
Ray and I researched the rest of the guys on Lenny’s list. We ended up with a nice selection of who’s who in Hawai’i. The UH dean, a couple of corporate executives, a few politicians, a professional athlete, and a competitive surfer. All of them had something to protect.
“The next step is to see if any of these guys have been blackmailed,” Ray said, when we were finished. “And if any of them are willing to swear out a complaint. What’s your gut feeling on that?”
I shrugged. “If I were on the list, I’d be reluctant to air my dirty laundry. I might just sit back and hope somebody else brings the blackmailer down.”
Ray looked at his watch. “Time to get moving,” he said. “You okay doing this with your brother? Because I’ll handle it if you want.”
“No, I promised Haoa I’d look out for him. I’ve got to go.”
A group of Hawaiian nationalists from the Kingdom of Hawai’i group were picketing outside the Prince Kuhio Kalaniana’ole Federal Building. Young Hawaiian men in red T-shirts carried our state flag on poles, the British Union Jack in the upper left corner, surrounded by red, white, and blue stripes. Women in muumuus carried signs that read Ku I Ka Pono: Justice for Hawaiians. Men from luas, or schools of Hawaiian martial arts, wore traditional kihei -tapa cloth cloaks
tied in a knot-and carried staffs and other weapons. Kids carried portraits of King Kamehameha and Queen Lili’uokalani.
The demonstration was peaceful, but it took Ray and me extra time to get through the crowd and security. By the time we arrived at the ICE office, Haoa, Tatiana, and Sergei were sitting in plush seats in the reception area. Tatiana had tamed her wild blonde hair into a severe French braid, and she wore a severe gray business suit I was astonished to see that she owned. She somehow forced my brother into a navy blazer with the green UH logo on the left breast, along with a green tie with a repeating logo pattern.
Sergei, though, was wearing an aloha shirt, khakis, deck shoes, and a puka shell necklace. Just a casual outfit for an interview with the Feds. I wondered if Tatiana had dressed him, too-deliberately and subtly highlighting who was who in the situation. I wouldn’t be surprised. Despite her artsy attitude, Tatiana’s very savvy.
From their body language, I could tell that Haoa and Tatiana were angry, and Sergei scared. “I’m not going back to jail, am I, Kimo?” he asked me as I sat down across from him.
“This is not my operation. I’m looking out for Haoa and Tatiana.”
“But Kimo, we…you know.”
“Yes, Sergei. We had sex. It’s not a secret. That doesn’t mean I’m on your side in this.” I knew we had to have his cooperation, so though I was angry with him for putting my brother and sister-in-law in jeopardy, I had to soften my approach. “But if you cooperate, you can walk out of this.”
As Frank led us into a conference room with an oblong wooden table and comfy chairs all around it, I made the introductions. “Why don’t we start with you, Mr. Baranov,” Frank said to Sergei. “What’s been happening at Kanapa’aka Landscaping?”
“I landed here in Hawai’i about two months ago,” he said. “I was kind of a fuckup in Alaska and I was trying to do a good job for Haoa. But it was next to impossible to find guys to work for him. I was bitching about it to this trick one night, and he said he could help me out.”
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