Mahu Vice (11 page)

Norma sat up very straight. “You can accuse me all you want, detective. But I am an innocent woman.”

“I know that you know something, Norma,” I said. “And I want to know what it is. What happened after Tommy Pang died? Who took over the lingerie shop?”

I saw Norma consider her options for a minute. I knew from Aunt Mei-Mei that Norma was angry; I figured if I just asked the right questions, she’d open up.

“For a long time, I didn’t know who the new owner was,” she said, having made her decision. “Everything went along. Then Mr. Hu called one day. He informed me that we were closing down, and that I should move everything to Waikele.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not following,” Ray said. “This lingerie shop—did you provide the same kind of services there that you did at the acupuncture clinic?”

Norma looked at Ray the way a teacher might smile at a prized pupil. “You are following everything just fine, detective.”

“Did Mr. Hu give you any reason for the move?” I asked.

“He said something about his arrangements with the police changing,” Norma said. “I resisted, because I didn’t want to go all the way to Waikele. I am an old woman, you know, and I do not drive. It was very inconvenient for me.”

“And what did Mr. Hu say?”

“He told me that I was welcome to stay in the shop, if I wished. But it might get very warm for me.”

“So you found your way to Waikele,” I said.

“A car and driver is expensive,” Norma said. “But better than the alternative.”

“Why did the massage parlor close?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I am just an old woman. I do what I am told.”

“From Waikele, you went to St. Louis Heights?” I asked.

“That is true.”

“Did you know why the acupuncture clinic closed?” Ray asked.

“Mr. Hu did not say. But I had my suspicions.”

“What were they?” I asked.

“A young boy,” she said. “One of our employees. He ran away, and Mr. Hu was afraid he would compromise our operation.”

“Jingtao?”

Norma looked surprised. “So he did go to the police.”

I shook my head. “He was hiding at the far end of the center, in the back of the beauty salon. He never spoke to the police. He was killed in the fire.”

Norma looked sad. “He was a beautiful boy. Very much in demand. But very unhappy inside.”

“You have a new location?” Ray asked.

“As I told you earlier, I have been informed that my services are no longer needed.”

“How can we get in touch with Mr. Hu?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I do not know. The number I had for him has been disconnected.” But she smiled slyly. “But I know someone who might be able to help you. Her name is Treasure Chen.”

I finally made the connection. Treasure had been Tommy Pang’s girlfriend, and she had worked with Norma at the lingerie shop.

“The girl the pharmacist spoke about,” Ray said.

I grimaced. If I’d only made the connection to the name the pharmacist had given us, we could have moved a lot faster.

“He did more than speak,” Norma said. “Though he was always worried that his wife would find out.”

“Where can we find Treasure Chen?” I asked.

“I do not know. But when you find her, I have a message for her.”

“Yes?”

Norma spit, more sound than saliva, and wiped her hands briskly. “That is my message for Treasure Chen.”

ANGRY LOBSTERS

We left Norma a few minutes later, after she told us that Treasure’s phone number was unlisted and she didn’t know where the girl lived. “We can check payroll tax records,” Ray suggested. “There might be an address for Treasure Chen there. You know anything about this Mr. Hu besides his address and last name?”

I shook my head. “That was part of the deal. Control. He contacted me; I never knew how to reach him. But I might have another way to get to Treasure.” It was almost lunchtime, and I told Ray to drive over to Ward Warehouse, a complex of shops between downtown and Waikiki. “After she left the lingerie shop, her boyfriend got Treasure a job as the hostess at a restaurant called the Lobster Garden. Maybe somebody there has kept in touch with her, or has an old address we can start with.”

The Ward Warehouse was a mini-mall, two long lines of stores facing each other on two levels with parking in the middle. To me, it’s one of the least attractive shopping centers on the island, because it looks like a child’s play set—girders bolted together, corrugated metal sheets painted clashing colors.

The Lobster Garden was a festive place on the upper level, decorated with framed Chinese calligraphy and red paper lanterns, and it was usually full of tourist families resting after a day’s trek to Pearl Harbor, Diamond Head, or Hilo Hattie’s aloha shirt factory store. The centerpiece of the restaurant was a huge fish tank filled with live lobsters, their claws banded together. I empathized with them; I felt like this case had my hands tied in the same way.

The woman behind the podium was in her mid-forties, and the frown on her face contrasted sharply with the smiley-face name tag which read Hi, I’m Mae.

I showed Mae my badge and asked if she remembered a girl who’d worked at the restaurant a few years before. “Her name is Treasure Chen.”

If possible, Mae’s frown deepened. “Bad girl. Hard to get good staff today. Pretty girls, they only want flirt with customers. Ugly girls, they work for while, then get better jobs.”

I resisted suggesting that the Lobster Garden improve their pay, and waited for Mae to continue. “I work here many years. Nine years soon. Year ago, my husband buy, when owner go jail.”

A sunburned haole family came in, the youngest boy dragged along by his arm like a recalcitrant puppy, and Mae seated them. When she returned, she said, “Treasure work here long time ago. She mixed up with bad man, friend of owner, and he get her job.” She pursed her lips together as if she was smelling something bad. “But this job not good enough for Treasure. She stay maybe six months, then quit. One day. No notice. Just no come back to work.”

“You have any address information on her?” I asked.

Mae shrugged. “Maybe in office.” She called a waitress over and asked her to watch the front, and then led us past the big tank full of lobsters waving their antennae and crawling over one another.

The office was a tiny room, barely enough space for a desk, a file cabinet, and a time clock on the wall with extra rolls of toilet paper stacked under it. Mae looked through a couple of drawers of the cabinet before she pulled out Treasure’s employment application.

I wrote down the address, noticing that her only previous work experience had been at the lingerie shop that Norma Ching managed. I wondered if Treasure had left the Lobster Garden to return to work for Norma—and in what capacity.

The address Treasure had put on her application was a cheap rental near downtown, and as we drove over there I called Karen Gold, a woman I knew over at Social Security, and asked her to see what she had on Treasure.

The apartment manager told us that no one of Treasure’s name or description lived there. He was new, and didn’t remember her or have any forwarding information. “Another dead end,” Ray said, as we drove away.

“I say we pass by the pharmacy one more time,” I said. “See if Louis Cruz is willing to tell us anything more about Treasure. Norma says he was a customer.”

“You think he’s kept in touch?”

“I think if Treasure’s set up shop somewhere new, she might be contacting her old friends to let them know.”

“Good idea as any,” he said, and turned on the engine.

Luck was with us: Lorna Cruz was running an errand, leaving Louis alone in the pharmacy. As soon as he finished dealing with his client, a heavyset Hawaiian woman buying diabetes testing strips, I asked if he’d been in touch with Treasure since the fire.

He looked alarmed. “No, no touch.”

“Come on, Louis, we know you were a client at the acupuncture clinic,” Ray said. “And not for shots, either. We’re not looking to jam you up, tell your wife or anything. We’re just trying to find Treasure Chen.”

“I swear, detective,” Cruz said, putting his hand on the ornate gold cross around his neck. “I haven’t spoken to her.”

I handed him my card. “If you do, will you find out where she is?” I asked. “And then let us know?”

He nodded, pocketing the card quickly. When we got back to the station, I called the garage to see what was wrong with my truck. When the mechanic told me, and then quoted me the price to repair, my mind went blank.

“I gotta tell you, detective, I wouldn’t fix this if I was you,” the mechanic said. “You can get a grand, maybe, if you junk it. I’d just buy something else.”

I thought about the money my parents had promised as the advance on my inheritance. “You may be right.”

I hung up and called my parents. My father answered and I told him the situation with the truck. “So I was wondering…you said you’d be giving us each some money. When were you thinking of doing that?”

“I can write you a check today,” my father said. “The law says we can give you each eleven thousand dollars tax free. What kind of car you want to buy?”

“I’m thinking maybe a Jeep,” I said, surprising myself. I’d always had a thing for the Wrangler, with those flaps you could roll up when the weather was good—which was pretty often in Hawai’i. I could throw a surfboard in the back, or any other kind of athletic gear. I liked the picture of myself, tooling around Honolulu like that.

“You want me to go with you?”

I’d never bought a car before. Everything I’d driven had been owned by my father first, then handed down. I was nearly thirty-five, and I ought to be able to handle buying a car—but it would be fun to hang out with my dad.

“Sure. Can you pick me up after work?”

He agreed he would, and I turned back to Ray, who asked, “You got any other ideas on how to track your Mr. Hu?”

I shrugged. “We have a last name, which Norma thinks wasn’t his real name anyway. The only address we have, for the mansion in Black Point, leads us back to Wah Shing.”

“Hold on. I’ve got an idea.” He turned to his computer and started typing. A moment later, though, he said, “I thought I could see if we have anything in the system on a guy named Hu. Turns out there’s a lot more than I expected.”

“It’s a common name,” I said. “Without a first name you’re screwed.”

“Though not by him,” Ray said, and laughed.

“Ouch,” I said, but I laughed along with him. “I wish we knew more about the boy. I mean, we don’t even know if Jingtao was his real name.”

“I think the boy was just collateral damage. He happened to be in the back of the salon when they were burning the acupuncture clinic. Just bad luck.”

“Yeah, but what if he ran away from the clinic, and that made the owners want to burn it? Did he threaten somebody? Did he know something? And how did he get here, anyway?”

“Good questions. You think up any answers, you let me know.”

I thought that if Norma or Treasure could tell us when Jingtao arrived in the United States we might be able to track him through INS, and I made a couple of notes. A few minutes later, Lieutenant Sampson called me into his office.

“Have a seat, Kimo,” he said.

My mind was racing through my recent cases. Was there a problem with one of them? I remembered my visit to Dr. Riccardi at the STD clinic. Maybe he’d complained? But that was foolish—because I’d simply reveal why I had gone there, and Mike would be the one to suffer.

“I’ve had a request for your services,” Sampson said. Today’s polo shirt was a light blue, with a penguin crest. “From Vice.”

I nodded. “I spoke to Lieutenant Kee this morning.”

“I’m worried that Kee is not telling you the whole story. I don’t like anybody holding out on my detectives—not even another lieutenant.”

My heart started racing again. Had Kee recognized me from the photo and just not told me?

“Do you know what it is?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t want to know. But I told him that if he didn’t give you everything he’s got, then I’ll pull you off the assignment.” He smiled. “He’d like to see you downstairs as soon as you’re free.”

I stopped at Ray’s desk to tell him I was going back to Vice. “What do you think he’s holding back?” Ray asked.

I shrugged. “I’ll know soon enough.”

Down at Vice, Juanita was at her desk. “Back again. You just can’t stay away from us, can you?” She smiled. “The Lieutenant is expecting you. Let me tell him you’re here.”

When I sat across from Lieutenant Kee, he said, “Your lieutenant is a very persuasive guy.” He pursed his lips in a frown. “What I’m going to tell you is confidential.”

I was baffled, but I kept my mouth shut.

“A hustler used your name. We were running a sting in Ala Moana Beach Park, and he offered a blow job to one of my guys. He was jonesing for his next fix, and he was so strung out he didn’t realize that he already had a couple of rocks until we searched him.”

He sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “He bragged that he’d had sex with a lot of important guys. He gave us a couple of names, among them yours. We weren’t sure whether to believe him or not; could have been the ice talking. He bonded out, and one of my guys made an appointment to meet with him the next day to get more details. He didn’t show for the meeting.”

I could feel the sweat dripping down my back, pooling under my arms. I was right; one of the hookers Mr. Hu had hired had recognized me. But that had been part of the power Mr. Hu held over me—the danger that what he forced me to do not only humiliated and degraded me, but could bring down my career.

The last time I went to Mr. Hu’s mansion at Black Point, the night that drove Gunter to take me to the emergency room, Mr. Hu had told me after the fact that he’d paid the man who had fucked me so brutally. But did taking part in the act make me as guilty as either of them?

“I wouldn’t dignify his allegation except that after you left this morning I was trying to remember where I’d heard that name before, the one your blackmail victim mentioned, Mr. Hu. This hustler also mentioned him.”

“Can you tell me the hustler’s name?”

Kee turned to his computer and punched in a couple of keys, two-finger typing. After a moment he said, “The guy went by the name Lucas.”

That was the name Mr. Hu had called the man he’d paid to fuck me. Kee turned back to me. “Recognize the name?”

I nodded.

“How did you come in contact with him?”

I sat there for a moment, collecting my thoughts, considering how much to say. “I met a guy through a gay hookup Web site, and I met Lucas through him.” I took a deep breath. I had to make it clear that I was not a guilty party. “I did have sex with Lucas—but I didn’t pay him for it.”

He nodded. “I have no evidence to the contrary, detective. If I had, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”