Mahu Vice (15 page)

TOO HANDSOME

I had trouble getting to sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking of my picture on MenSayHi, and of Lucas, and how far he’d fallen, from gorgeous high-end hustler to, in Frankie’s words, a skanky ice whore. It reminded me of how tenuous our grip is on our lives. All it takes is a couple of body blows to knock you completely off course.

In my case, it was breaking up with Mike, and Mike had been kicked around by the breakup, too. I’d seen it in criminals and victims alike. Losing a job, or an apartment, or the death of a loved one, or a serious illness, could knock the shit out of your life. The lucky ones, like Mike and me, had family and friends to fall back on.

The unlucky ones ended up like Lucas.

The next morning I went down to Kuhio Beach Park and surfed for an hour at first light, and it felt good to be regaining the skills I’d lost. Every wave I caught, no matter how small, was a step forward in my rehabilitation. I forgot about Lucas, Norma, Jingtao, and the two unnamed hookers, and focused on the water. There was a welcome pain in my arms and legs by the time I was done, and I walked slowly back to my apartment, savoring the sunlight that was just beginning to gild the beach and the tops of the palm trees.

At work I told Ray what I’d learned from Frankie and Pua, and about my lunch plans with Jimmy on Friday. I didn’t say anything about what I’d found on MenSayHi; I wanted to think about it for a while, and see what else came up.

The lieutenant had pulled us out of the rotation so we could focus on the murders of Jingtao, Lucas, Norma, and the two Chinese hookers. “I want to do some research on this Wah Shing Corporation,” Ray said. “I’m thinking they might have some more real estate here in town, or some leases out there. Why don’t I work the phones for a while?”

“I’ll help.” I called Ricky Koele, and he faxed over a list of all the corporations with ties to Wah Shing. Ray started calling the big real estate companies, to see if any of them had dealings with the company. He didn’t learn anything new, though, and I spent too much time staring into space and wondering what kind of photos of me were out there.

I checked the file and saw that Steve Hart hadn’t put Lucas’s fingerprints into the national database. The guy was a victim, after all, so that was a reason, but it was still sloppy police work. I went downstairs to the Special Investigations Section and found Thanh Nguyen, a fingerprint tech I knew who worked in Records and Identification. He was a wiry guy in his early sixties, and word around the building was that he’d been in the South Vietnamese army.

He pulled the records up on the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or AIFIS, and ran a search. The results came back a few minutes later; there was a match to a Lucas Tyler, who had a record for solicitation, petty theft, and criminal mischief in Seattle.

AIFIS serves up more than just fingerprints. It includes criminal histories; mug shots; scars and tattoo photos; physical characteristics like height, weight, and hair and eye color; and aliases.

I was surprised that the name matched; I’d always assumed that hookers took on new identities, but maybe Lucas Tyler hadn’t been imaginative enough. And Lucas was a sexy name; it’s not like his real name was Fred or Harvey.

Back upstairs, I called the Seattle PD. The detective who took the call was friendly but couldn’t provide much information. All the charges had been dropped except one for felony theft, for which Tyler had served six months in the county jail. He did get me the information on Lucas’s bond; a woman named Elizabeth Tyler had put up the money for him. He gave me her phone number.

Ray got on the extension when I called her. I introduced myself and explained I was a homicide detective in Honolulu. “Is this about Lucas?” she asked.

“Do you know him?”

“He’s my brother. What kind of trouble is he in now?”

“I’m sorry to have to tell you that he’s dead.” I explained what we knew of the circumstances.

“I’m not surprised,” she said, with a chill in her tone. “The last time I talked to him, he was nuts. He said he had all these photos of men having sex with him, that somebody was blackmailing these guys and giving him a cut of the profits. I told him he had to get out of Honolulu. I even offered to pay his plane fare home.”

“Did he give you any details about these men—names, occupations?”

“To be honest, detective, I didn’t want to know. Lucas was always too handsome for his own good. Everything came easy to him. Our parents spoiled him like crazy, teachers passed him along when he didn’t do the homework. He started taking money for sex when he was sixteen.”

Once she got started, she didn’t seem to want to stop. “He seduced the principal of his high school and got the man fired. He had sex with the quarterback of the football team and the boy was so mortified to be exposed that he dropped out of school and joined the Army. He was killed in Iraq.”

When she finally ran out of Lucas stories, I asked, “If you think of anything that might be relevant, will you contact me?” I spelled my name, and gave her my phone number at the station.

“He broke our parents’ hearts,” Elizabeth Tyler said. “Not because he was gay. They were very liberal people. But they believed that everyone was good at heart, and Lucas wasn’t.”

“Seduced the principal, huh?” Ray said, when I hung up. “And the quarterback. Sounds like my cousin Joey’s fantasies come to life.”

“Not mine,” I said. “Our principal was seventy-five if he was a day, and the quarterback was a real jerk.”

Despite all our work, I didn’t think we’d made much progress, and that worried me as I drove out to a different STD clinic, this one in Aiea. Once again, I received a number and submitted to various indignities. The nurse on duty was a young guy, with a scar on his right cheek that looked like it had been caused by a knife. “What brings you in? Just being careful?”

I was beyond being bashful at that point. “I had sex with a guy a couple of months ago. I think everything was safe, but I can’t be sure, because I did experience some bleeding. Later on I learned that he had syphilis. I just wanted to make sure I didn’t pick anything up from him.”

“Do you know if he’s notified his other partners?”

“He’s dead,” I said. “Gunshot, not syphilis.”

His eyebrows rose, but he just nodded. “Have a seat back in the waiting room, and we’ll call you.”

I didn’t bother to pick up a magazine and pretend to read. My brain was whirling with all the little facts I knew about the murder victims. I was glad that we’d put a last name and a history to Lucas; I hate it when someone dies unknown and unmourned. Even somebody with as many issues as Lucas Tyler.

An hour passed. After my encounter with Lucas, and the subsequent intervention by my brothers and Harry, I’d been celibate, relying on cybersex and Internet porn, until I’d fooled around with Gunter, and then Sergei. If I turned out to have anything, I’d have to tell both of them. And then Sergei would tell his sister, who’d tell my brother. The whole drama of it made me tired.

Fortunately, when the duty nurse called my number he handed me a piece of paper which certified that I had a clean bill of health. I felt better—but just a little.

69 IN 609

After another hard surfing session Friday morning, I sat in front of my office computer and stared into space, hoping for an inspiration that would help us solve the case, but came up with nothing.

Around eleven-thirty, I drove up to Manoa and picked up Jimmy in front of the library. His hair was no longer in a Mohawk, and he was letting the black roots grow in. His skinny frame was filling out, the results of gym workouts and Aunt Mei-Mei’s cooking and care packages. We went to a plate lunch place near the campus, and after we’d ordered, he said, “I’m glad you called me, Kimo. But I know you. You just want to talk about Lucas, don’t you?”

I pretended to be offended, and in truth I was, just a little. “What, I can’t call up my friend Jimmy and hang out with him?”

He looked at me with the same built-in shit detector I’d seen in Frankie and Pua. I shrugged and showed him the photo of Lucas, and the corners of his mouth turned down. “Poor guy. I haven’t seen him for a while. I was afraid something like this would happen to him.”

“You knew him?”

He told me about how he and some kids from the GSA at UH had been going down to Ala Moana Beach Park. “I met Lucas for the first time a long time ago,” he said. “Back when—you know.”

I nodded. “He was nice to me. He was making a ton of money, and he liked to hand it around. He bought me this pair of two-hundred-dollar sunglasses. And whenever he’d see me, he’d buy me food.”

“I’m glad he was nice to you.” And I was; I wanted to see Lucas as a victim rather than a villain, and knowing he’d been kind to Jimmy helped.

“I didn’t see him for a long time. And then when I started going down to the park with the GSA, I recognized him, and I felt terrible.”

“Did he tell you anything about his life? Anything that might help me find out who killed him?”

“He was living in this apartment in Kaka’ako, but he got kicked out.” The waitress brought our food, and Jimmy said, “I went there once. I could show you.”

“That’d be great.” We ate for a few minutes. “You mentioned when I talked to you that he’d been getting customers through MenSayHi,” I said. “You know anything more about that?”

“There was this Chinese guy,” he said, spearing some macaroni-potato salad. “He’s the one who got Lucas involved. Lucas wanted to hook me up with him, but I said no.”

“Good for you.”

He ate for a minute. “I’m not sure, but I think he said something about being videotaped. Like it was some kind of insurance policy for him, maybe. That when he got too old to turn tricks he’d be able to get money from these rich guys.”

That tied in with the pictures I’d seen on the MenSayHi site, and with what Elizabeth Tyler had said. I wondered if one of the blackmail victims was behind the killings. A stronger guy than Brian Izumigawa might have decided to take matters into his own hands. He might have traced Lucas to the acupuncture clinic, and was trying to eliminate anyone who might have knowledge of his actions or clients.

After lunch, Jimmy and I drove down to Kaka’ako, an industrial neighborhood across from the port of Honolulu, out past the Kewalo basin, with its assemblage of small boats. Jimmy pointed out a high-rise tower where he thought Lucas had lived.

“I wish I could remember the apartment number,” Jimmy said. “There was something funny about it. Lucas like to make jokes, you know. Like about the website name.” He thought for a minute. “I think the apartment number was 69. I remember something about him doing sixty-nine there.”

I dropped him back at the campus and drove to the station. There was a message from Brian Izumigawa, with his cell phone number. When I reached him, he didn’t have any news, just wanted to see if I’d made any progress.

I hated to admit that we weren’t much farther ahead than we had been the last time he and I talked. So I said encouraging things, that it was all going to work out, and after I’d listened to his fears for a while I managed to get him off the line.

While I talked to Brian, Ray checked the address Jimmy had shown me. By the time I was done, he’d finished his call. “It’s a condo, not a rental. There’s no apartment 69, but there’s a 609. And the deed is in the name of the Wah Shing corporation.”

I shook my head. “Man, these guys got around, didn’t they? Anybody living there now?”

“Building manager didn’t know. The corporation’s been paying the maintenance, though. Want to go over there and take a look?”

Kaka’ako is in the middle of a transformation. The high-rise tower Jimmy had pointed out dominated the neighborhood; on one side was Restaurant Row, a collection of twenty-some restaurants and a multiplex cinema, but on the other side was a derelict empty lot. There were low warehouses and parking lots all around. We parked at a meter on a side street and walked up to the building.

Ray whistled as we entered the marble lobby. “Some people know how to live.” Fresh flowers in Venetian glass vases decorated the reception desk, and a koa wood bowl my mother would have loved sat on a low table by the door. A couple of overstuffed couches clustered in a corner, and the walls that weren’t mirrored were paneled in dark wood.

I wasn’t that impressed, but Ray was loving every detail. I could see him promising Julie that one day they’d live in a place like that.

The concierge was a beautiful Filipina in her late twenties, wearing a tailored navy suit. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. How may I help you?”

We showed her our badges. “We’re interested in apartment 609,” I said. “You guys have a key to that unit?”

“Let me see.” She went into a back room, and came out a few minutes later with a tall, muscular guy with black hair tending toward salt-and-pepper, wearing a similar suit—though I liked it better on him than on her. “I’m Sean Hackbarth,” he said. “The manager. You’re the detective I spoke to about unit 609?”

“That was me,” Ray said. “The corporation that owns the unit has come up in one of our investigations, and we’re just curious to see if anyone’s living there.”

“So you don’t have a warrant?”

Ray shook his head. “Nope. And to be honest with you, we don’t have grounds for a warrant. This is just curiosity.”

“Four employees of this corporation have turned up dead in the last week,” I said. “Three of them shot execution style while they slept. One of the employees is missing.” I showed them both the picture of Treasure Chen. “A Chinese woman in her late twenties, very beautiful.”

Hackbarth looked at the concierge and she shrugged. “If you have a parking card, you can enter the building directly from the garage,” she said. “Some of the residents we never see unless they have a package delivered.”

“Can you show us the apartment?” Ray asked Hackbarth. “We want to see if Ms. Chen’s body is there. If it’s not, we’re good to go.”

“I’ll take you up,” he said.

We followed him to an elevator bank. “Residents have key cards they use for the elevator,” he said. “You slide it in, and then choose your floor.”

“Cards coded to a particular floor?” Ray asked as we stepped inside.

Hackbarth slipped his card into the reader and pressed six. “No. Once you’ve swiped your card, you can go to any floor. If you’re a guest, the concierge calls your party. Once you’ve been approved, she punches a code in the system that calls the elevator for you, with your floor preprogrammed.”

Ray nodded. “Good security.”

“There are flaws,” Hackbarth admitted, as the elevator door opened on six. “A visitor who enters the elevator with a resident can punch any floor once the resident has swiped a card.”

He held the door as we stepped out, then pointed up at a security camera. “We do monitor the cameras, but we don’t chase someone who gets out on the wrong floor. We don’t have the manpower.”

“Still, it’s a place Treasure could feel pretty safe,” I said to Ray.

“A lot safer than Norma Ching’s place, or that apartment in Makiki,” he said.

Hackbarth led us to apartment 609 and knocked on the door. When there was no answer, he unlocked both locks.

There was a security chain but it wasn’t engaged. We walked into the apartment, a one-bedroom with a view toward the airport and a small, half-round balcony off the living room.

“Somebody’s been living here,” Ray said. There were dirty dishes in the dishwasher, and a pint of milk in the fridge that hadn’t expired yet. In the bedroom, we found some women’s clothes, the kind of slinky dresses and expensive underwear that we’d found at Treasure’s apartment in Hawai’i Kai.

“So if Treasure’s been staying here, where is she now?” I asked.

“Great question,” Ray said. “Get back to me when you figure it out.”