Mahu Vice

by Neil S. Plakcy

  I leaned back in my chair and put my feet up against Hang’s wooden desk. I had known Hang since I was a kid; he was a business acquaintance of my Uncle Chin, my father’s best friend. In his day, Uncle Chin had been a major figure in one of the Honolulu tongs, the Chinese gang operations. Growing up around his house, I’d met a whole lot of guys like Hang, never realizing their criminal connections until I’d joined the police force.

  Of course, Hang knew that I knew who he was and what he did, but we went through this little dance every time we met. “You’re a wise man, Hang,” I said. “You know a lot of things, I’m sure. And if you knew anything about a gambling ring operating out of an acupuncture clinic in a shopping center on Waialae Avenue, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

  “The shopping center your father owns?”

  “Owned. He sold it last year.”

  Hang nodded. “I know the center. I know a little about the clinic. But there’s nothing I can tell you about gambling there.”

  “Nothing you can tell us, or nothing you will tell us?” Ray asked.

  “Your partner is a man of great discernment,” Hang said to me, smiling. “Let me rephrase myself. I do not know anything about gambling at that facility.”

  I wasn’t satisfied, but it was clear we weren’t going to get anything more out of Hang Sung until we had something to bargain with. I figured a trip to Vice was still in order. I put my feet down on the ground, dusted off the place on Hang’s desk where they had rested, then stood up, Ray following me.

  “See you around, Hang,” I said.

  Our next appointment, the head of the karate studio, a short, wiry Japanese guy in his early thirties, was waiting to see us by the time we got back to the station. His name was Yuko Mori, and he wore sweatpants and a sweatshirt with the arms ripped off—the better to show off his muscles, I guessed.

  It wasn’t hard to get him to talk about the acupuncture clinic. “I tried to make an appointment,” he said. “The dragon lady kept putting me off. No appointments, very busy. Every time I tried to talk to Treasure, the old grandma pushed me away.”

  “Treasure?” I asked.

  “Beautiful,” he said, making motions with his hands to indicate the girl’s measurements. “I like a tall girl. You know where she is now?”

  I shook my head. “We’re trying to get in touch with all the tenants, see if anyone saw anything suspicious.”

  “Only suspicious thing I ever saw was how nice the gardener keep the grass,” he said. “Like somebody pay him extra. All the time guys working out there, trimming hedges, cutting grass. Waste of time.”

  We thanked him, and he grumbled about having to find a new location for his dojo, which had just started to become profitable. He’d only had liability insurance because of the expense, so he was worried he’d have to take a job somewhere else in order to build up his savings.

  So far, none of the tenants had shown a motive for arson. The cell phone store and the pharmacy were both chains; the fire was an interruption in business. Yuko Mori would suffer financially, so he had no motive either. Ray had talked to a guy from the mainland company that owned the center. They were in the process of hiring a new manager for their island properties, and he knew little about it more than its numbers. He confirmed it had been profitable and said the company had no idea what it was going to do with the burnt-out buildings and the land.

  The acupuncture clinic was looking more and more suspicious. Could it be a front for a gambling operation? I went over to see Ricky Koele, a guy I knew who worked at the Business Registration Division, a state agency that’s a division of the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. They maintain the business registry for all corporations and other businesses in the state.

  Ricky had been two years behind me at Punahou, the private school Harry, Terri, and I had attended, and we’d known each other through a couple of extracurricular activities. He had come to me a year before when his drug-dealing brother had been killed in a drive-by shooting in Wahiawa, one of the more dangerous parts of the island. Ricky was concerned because he’d overheard one of the investigating officers refer to the crime as NHI—no human involved.

  Though Wahiawa was outside of my district, I’d reached out to a detective I knew there, Al Kawamoto, and he’d made sure that Ricky’s brother’s killer was brought in.

  “That’s the Professional and Vocational Licensing Division,” Ricky said, when I met him at his desk and asked him about acupuncture. “There are twenty-five professional boards and commissions and twenty licensing programs. You’re looking for the Board of Acupuncture.”

  “Can you tell me whose license is behind the Golden Needles Clinic?” I gave him the address on Waialae Avenue and he turned to his computer. It took him a couple of minutes, hitting keys and browsing screens. I listened to Lite 94.7 playing anonymous slack key guitar music over the office sound system while I waited.

  “The clinic is run under the license of Dr. Hsing-Wah Hsiao,” Ricky said eventually. “Reason why it took so long, I looked up Dr. Hsiao. Turns out he licensed three other clinics as well—all of them since shut down. I’m printing you a list of all the clinics under his license. Looks like he’s a signologist.”

  “What’s that? Some kind of specialist?”

  Across from his desk I saw a printer kick into action. Ricky walked over to it and pulled the pages off. “When a doctor signs off on a lot of different licenses, we get the idea maybe he’s nothing more than a guy who likes to sign stuff for money. A signologist.”

  He handed the pages to me. “Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate your help.”

  “I owe you, Kimo. Come to me any time.”

  I stuck my hand out to shake his, but he pulled me into a hug.

  On my way back to the station, I thought about why someone would burn the center. To cover up a gambling operation? But they’d already shut down. Could the boy have worked for them, perhaps as a runner? Hang Sung had been hiding something about the acupuncture clinic, but I didn’t know what.

  Could the fire have been a ploy to break a lease? The clinic’s two-year lease still had six months to run, and the penalty for breaking it was stiff—the clinic had to cover the rent until the landlord could find another tenant at comparable rent, or until the end of the term. Was that a good clause for that mainland company—or a deadly one for the rest of the tenants, and the boy Jingtao?

  ARSON PAYS WELL

  Back at my desk, I faxed Ricky’s list to Mike, to see if any of the other clinics licensed by Dr. Hsiao had been burned. Ray said, “I nosed around while you were out. Organized Crime has a task force investigating gambling in Chinatown.” He handed me a list of the guys on the task force. “You want to call Akoni?”

  Akoni Hapa’ele had been my old partner in Waikiki. I didn’t see him much anymore, though we were both working out of downtown; he had been moving around from operation to operation. As soon as I left Akoni a voice mail, our next interviewee arrived: Robertico Robles, or Uncle Tico, as my nieces and nephews called him. He managed to fit us in between scouting spots for his new salon, which he announced was going to be bigger and better than Puerto Peinado—which as far as I could tell meant “hair port” in Spanish, a sly pun that he and Tatiana loved.

  We went into a small conference room decorated with artwork prepared by our Police Explorer troop—pictures of cops and palm trees and one of a hula dancer on the hood of a blue-and-white. Tico accepted a Styrofoam cup of coffee. “Thanks, I need the caffeine,” he said.

  Despite his natural ebullience, I could tell he was troubled. “I feel so terrible for that boy. I shouldn’t have let him stay in the back room. I should have done what you told me, Kimo, and called social services. Either that, or taken him home with me.”

  Since I knew Tico so well, we’d decided Ray would take the lead on questions. “You see anyone suspicious hanging around the shopping center?” he asked.

  “Suspicious how? A guy with a gasoline can? Honey, I cut hair. A
ll day long. I flirt with the ladies, I listen to them complain about their husbands, I try to steer them away from bad hair choices. I don’t get to lounge around outside looking for suspicious characters.”

  “Tell me about the center. The new owners keep it up well? You ever get a sense that they’re letting it run down?”

  “They used to have a local manager, but he quit and they haven’t replaced him yet.” Tico took another sip of the bad coffee. “As soon as a store closes, another is ready to take its place.”

  “Anyone have a gripe against you, or any of the other businesses?”

  He shook his head. “Not that I know. Most of our clientele is local, little old ladies and businesswomen from St. Louis Heights. I try to make them all happy.”

  “What about the boy? You told my partner that you thought he was scared of something. You get any idea what that was?”

  “Not a thing. I didn’t want to push him.”

  “He ever tell you where he came from?”

  “Just China. That’s all. I asked Li Po, the girl from the travel agency, to talk to him, but he wouldn’t tell her much either.”

  Tico didn’t know anything about the acupuncture clinic, since his salon was at the opposite end of the center. “Better tenants than the last ones,” he said, referring to the Church of Adam and Eve, an anti-gay group that had been closed down a year and a half before.

  When we left the conference room, Li Po was waiting at my desk. She and Tico embraced, both of them crying a little. She was a Chinese woman in her mid-fifties, a little too plump for the bright blue silk dress she wore. Her black hair was piled up on her head, kept in place with a pair of chopsticks.

  She and Tico chattered for a few minutes, and then he left. We led her back to the conference room, where she sat with a big sigh. She said that she was swamped with trying to retrace all her client activity, since her computer had been destroyed in the fire, and with it all her records.

  “We’ll try not to keep you too long,” I said. “Can you tell us anything about the Chinese boy who was sleeping in Tico’s back room?”

  “His name Jingtao,” she said. She had a strong Mandarin accent, and I could see Ray straining to understand her. “Only sixteen, seventeen. No more. He come from Gansu, very poor part of China.”

  “Do you know how he got here?” I asked.

  “He never say. I think someone bring him here to work illegal.”

  “At the center?” I knew there were sweatshops on the island, places where illegal immigrants worked long hours sewing and working assembly lines.

  She shrugged. “He no say much. He very afraid.”

  From the way that Li Po fiddled with her hands, and avoided looking Ray or me in the eyes, I could tell she, too, was afraid. But of what? Had the boy told her something—did she know about the gambling at the acupuncture clinic? A travel agent has a lot of different clients. It made sense that one or more of them might have said something about placing a bet. Or did she know something else about the arson that she didn’t want to say?

  I tried to get her to open up, with no success. She didn’t know anything about acupuncture, or gambling, or how Jingtao might have ended up in Honolulu. Shifting gears, I asked, “Did you ever talk to any of the other tenants?”

  She shrugged. “Little bit, now and then. Nice lady in pharmacy. Sneaky husband. I feel bad for her.”

  “How about the two women in charge of the clinic—you ever talk to them?”

  She shrugged. “Once or twice, in parking lot. I think maybe they need help with travel some time, they come to me. But no.”

  Between the language gaps, and Li Po’s fear, it was clear we weren’t going to get anything more out of her. After she left, Ray and I went over what we had. None of the tenants we spoke with had any motive for arson. The acupuncture clinic had closed their bank account and cleared out of the clinic before the fire, which was suspicious, but until we could get a lead on one of the employees, either the elderly dragon woman or the beautiful Treasure, we didn’t have anything to go on.

  I called Akoni again, and he picked up the phone. “Eh, brah,” I said. “Howzit?”

  “Not bad, not bad. Keeping busy.” I heard his fingers clicking on his computer keyboard in the background.

  “You guys know anything about gambling out of an acupuncture clinic up in St. Louis Heights?” I asked, moving some papers around on my desk. “Place that burned the other night.”

  “Don’t think so. Hold on.” He put the phone down while he called out to another guy in his unit. “Nope. Tony doesn’t know the place either,” he said, when he picked the phone up again. “But that doesn’t mean it was clean. What you got?”

  “Just suspicions.”

  “You get anything else, you let me know?” I heard Tony Lee say something in the background, and then Akoni said, “Gotta go, brah. Take care.”

  Another lead down the drain. I was fiddling around on the computer, checking my personal e-mail while Ray and I both let our brains roam over what we’d learned, when I saw a message with the subject line Contact me about fire.

  I didn’t recognize the sender’s address, except that it came from a student at UH. I clicked it open.

  Kimo: saw u on TV. I called 911. Can u meet me 2 talk? There was a cell phone number below. I called Ray over and showed him.

  “You know this guy?”

  “Don’t know yet. Don’t recognize the e-mail or the number.”

  Since I came out of the closet, I’ve occasionally been contacted by gay people in trouble. I’ve worked both sides of the street whenever I could. I help the person, if I can, and at the same time I try to provide a compassionate voice inside the station. Was this e-mailer someone I already knew—or just someone who recognized my name? But how could he have gotten my personal e-mail address? I was careful about giving that out.

  Or at least I’d tried to be. During my dark time, after breaking up with Mike, I’d hung out online a lot, and every now and then I’d given out my e-mail address for some hot cyber sex, or as a way to hook up with some guy I met online. The more I thought about it, the more I figured this guy was someone I’d known—perhaps, I thought wryly, in the biblical sense.

  I used my cell phone to call the number from the e-mail. “This is Kimo,” I said. Fortunately, Kimo’s about as common a name as you can get in the islands. Since I didn’t know who I was calling I was reluctant to start out with name and rank.

  “Thank God,” the man said. “I have been very upset about what to do.”

  He had a South Asian accent. “Well, let me see if I can help. You know something about the fire Sunday night?”

  “I do not wish to talk about it on the phone. Can you meet me?”

  I looked over at Ray, who was listening to the conversation from across the desk. “You at UH?”

  “Meet me in front of the law school library. Half hour?”

  “I’m downtown. I’ll get there as soon as I can. Will I recognize you?”

  “I know you,” he said. “And when you see me, you’ll recognize me, too.”

  He hung up. “You want to take a ride up to UH?” I asked Ray.

  “Sure. Let me call Julie and tell her I’ll meet her up there.”

  Clouds had swept in off the ocean, wrapping Diamond Head in ribbons of white, and a stiff breeze shook the palm trees on South Beretania Street as we left the parking garage. In the half hour that it took us to climb the hilly roads to Manoa, though, the trade winds had swept the clouds away and a brutal sunshine glared off every reflective surface. I parked at a meter near the law school. “You want to go over there alone?” Ray asked.

  “Why don’t you hang back, but keep me in visual.”

  He nodded, and I strolled up to the law school library, where students were congregating on the concrete steps and under the giant kukui trees, and walking on the paths. Somebody was playing Keola Beamer’s Wooden Boat, and the gentle rhythm of the slack key guitar made me smile.

  I
was looking at a notice board covered with decades of staples and the remnants of hundreds of flyers when a guy appeared next to me.

  I did recognize him, though I’d never known his name. As I thought, he was one of my hookups from MenSayHi.com, an island dating site for gay men. He was about five ten, very handsome, with short, dark hair and skin the color of a coffee bean.

  I knew the first time I signed on to MenSayHi.com it was a mistake. All it would take is one disgruntled trick to report me to the department, or start spreading vicious rumors about me being a sloppy bottom who loved to get plowed, and my career could go up in flames. I already had guys teasing me about working for the Department of Homo-land Security, or snickering behind my back. Cops are among the most homophobic guys I’ve ever met, pouncing on the straightest guy who mentioned seeing a chick flick, asking if he’d started pissing sitting down—anything to get a rise out of you.

  But when it came to getting laid, I was willing to take a few risks.

  I’d tried meeting guys in ordinary ways. I’d met my first boyfriend on the beach, and I’d met Mike on the job. I’d picked up, and been picked up by, guys at bars and clubs. But after I broke up with Mike, I didn’t want to go out. I just wanted to get laid, frequently, and in ways that reminded me what a lousy human being I was for the way I’d dumped Mike without giving him a chance to explain.

  So I logged into MenSayHi.com and answered a couple of ads, and had some sexual encounters that went from bland to disturbing. The things I got off on scared me a little—mostly men treating me badly, physically, tweaking and slapping and pounding various body parts. Somehow I got punishment confused with sex; I thought because I’d been a jerk when I broke up with Mike, I should be treated that way by every guy I met. I’d always been a little intrigued by S&M, and I indulged myself and my throbbing dick.

  A few of the guys had simply been closeted, though, and if I recalled correctly, this was one of them. “I’d rather not give you my name, if you don’t mind,” he said. I couldn’t place the accent, though it was South Asian.