Mahu Vice (5 page)

“The most important thing is honesty. You’ll have to tell this partner about your infection, and you’ll have to refrain from any activity with him, or anyone else, until you’re cleared up.”

“That won’t be a problem. I have no intention of any intimacy with this partner. Ever again. But I will tell him to get treated.”

The doctor nodded. “I’ll send the nurse in with your shot.”

As I finished the last of my meal at Denny’s and asked for the check, I thought that Dr. Riccardi would be proud of me. I’d stayed healthy despite the rough sex I’d put my body through.

My heart, though, was another story. It wasn’t until that surfing trip with my brothers and Harry that I had realized how much Mike’s violation of trust had hurt me, and despite the sparks between us, I wasn’t sure I could stand to go through that kind of pain again. That, I saw now, was why I had quelled my sexual desire with a series of one-night stands that I knew could never lead to anything romantic.

But no matter how things had ended between Mike and me, I still cared about him, and I couldn’t stand by and let him ruin his life. It was time for another visit to the clinic near Tripler. I hadn’t, and I wouldn’t, out Mike to his father as a homosexual. But if I didn’t out him as a drunk, who knew what misery he would bring on himself. His father was the only person I could think of who could help him.

WE ALL HAVE OUR CLOSETS

I had trouble getting back to sleep after my big meal at Denny’s, and around five I gave up and went out to Kuhio Beach Park to surf at first light.

When I was a teenager, I lived to surf. I majored in English at UC Santa Cruz because most classes met later in the day, and I could surf every morning and read books on the beach between sets. After college, I spent a year on the North Shore, figuring out that despite all those years, I wasn’t good enough to make a living as a professional surfer. When I gave that up, due at least in part to a sexual assault by a guy I’d considered my friend, I went to the police academy—the most macho thing I could think to do.

As a patrolman, and then a detective, I kept on surfing. I’d see a dead body, and then having to focus on the way the wind blew would clear that vision away. I’d comfort a victim of a mugging or rape, and the waves would wash away some of the pain I picked up from them. An investigation would help me understand the reasons why a criminal acted the way he did, and the relentless action of the surf showed me the potential for renewal. The faces of the dead stayed with me, but at least I was able to refresh myself for another day.

It was just before six, and the sun was about to rise over the Ko’olau Mountains, illuminating all of Waikiki in a watery, golden light. Next to me, I saw a dark-haired guy a few years younger than me, burly and tattooed, with a kid who couldn’t have been more than five or six. He was teaching the boy to surf in the gentle waves, holding him up on the board at first, then letting him go, cheering him on when he made it safely to shore.

I paddled out beyond the breakers and lay there on my board for a while, remembering the times my father had brought me down to this very beach to teach me how to ride the waves. I was the same age as that boy, my brothers in their early teens. I wanted to be like them, to be accepted by them, and so I worked my little butt off to be a good surfer. I pestered my dad to drive me down to Waikiki every weekend, and somehow he made the time, between all the hours he spent starting his business, doing the work of every trade he couldn’t afford to hire. My brothers worked with him, then, and they were my allies when I wanted him to skip work and go to the beach.

I rode a couple of waves, the white foam rushing toward shore and then the undertow receding. Fingers of sunlight peeked out over the Ko’olau Mountains, and Kalakaua Boulevard buzzed with early deliveries, joggers, and tourists who hadn’t adjusted their body clocks yet.

I couldn’t stop worrying about Mike and thinking about the dead boy, about the teenagers I used to mentor at the Gay Teen Center on Waikiki, who I’d forgotten about once I got so caught up in my own problems, about all the people I’d let down. So I quit and went back to the station. Maybe there I could do some good.

When Ray showed up, I gave him the list of tenants and he started setting up appointments with them. The only number we had for the acupuncture clinic was disconnected, though, and the lease had been signed on behalf of a corporation, Golden Needles, Inc. The signature was illegible, and the rent payments had been transferred directly from the corporation’s bank account.

I called Imperial Bank, a small, Chinese-owned bank where the clinic had an account, and discovered that the account had been closed two days before the fire. The branch manager couldn’t give me any information without a warrant, but I got him to confirm that the only address and phone number he had were for the clinic’s location at the center.

While Ray was busy on the phone, I went down to Honolulu Hale, our city hall, to check corporate records on Golden Needles, Inc. Nothing new there, though; the same address and phone. The owner of Golden Needles was another corporation, Wah Shing Ltd., based in Hong Kong.

On my way back to the station, I called the STD clinic and found out that I could catch Dr. Riccardi there Thursday night to tell him his son was a drunk. Great. Add that to my datebook. Then I called my sister-in-law Tatiana’s cell phone, and discovered she was at Hawaiian Graphics, an art supply store downtown. I said I’d be over in a few minutes to ask her some questions, and she said she’d be there.

When I got there she was browsing through paint brushes. Who knew there were so many different options? I’d done some house painting for my dad as a teenager, and I’d played around with watercolors in elementary school. You had a big flat brush for one, and a skinny little one for the other.

She wore a puffy hot pink blouse, jeans, and jeweled sandals. Her blonde hair was piled loosely on her head, wisps escaping all over the place. She was big-boned and almost as tall as I was. After some small talk about Haoa and her kids, I asked, “Did you ever see the Chinese boy Tico had staying in the back room of the salon?”

She nodded, then leaned down to pick up a black-handled brush from the bottom shelf. “Beautiful boy. Cheekbones to die for.”

I hadn’t noticed. “You think you could do a sketch of him?”

Tatiana was a talented artist, and I’d been amazed in the past at how she could capture the essence of family members in just a few lines.

“Sure. You trying to find someone who knew him?”

I nodded. “It’d be a lot easier if I had a picture of him.”

“You buy me a coffee, I’ll draw,” she said. “Let me pay up here.”

We went to a Kope Bean, an island coffee chain, and she brought in a sketch pad and a bunch of pencils from her car. While I ordered her a tall soy, no foam cappuccino and a raspberry mocha for myself, she started sketching.

By the time I picked up the coffees and joined her at a round table in the window, she’d almost finished the rough drawing. There in front of me was the boy I’d seen on Saturday. I sipped my coffee and watched Tatiana sketch, her fingers almost dancing over the pad, shading here and there, erasing and redrawing a line.

She sipped her coffee and considered. She erased his hairline and moved it back, shaded a little behind his ear, and then handed the pad to me. “Look like him?”

“You’re amazing. How can you do that so quickly?”

“Years of observation and practice. Sort of like being a detective.”

“Sort of.”

She leaned back against the padded chair and drank some coffee. “So, I saw Mike there on Sunday night,” she said.

“You did.”

“Don’t get cagey with me, Kimo.” She nudged my leg with her sandal. “What did you think when you saw him?”

“He looked hot,” I said. “But maybe that was just the shopping center burning.”

“You’ve got to get back in the dating pool.” I’d kept my sexual activities my own business, and Tatiana had the idea that I’d been celibate since Mike, too emotionally overwrought to consider dating again. A few months before, her gay brother, Sergei, had come to Hawai’i from Alaska, where they grew up. He’d been working for Haoa, and she had been trying to fix us up since he arrived.

“Playing matchmaker?” I asked.

“My brother is adorable. You two would make a cute couple. Why don’t you want to go out with him?”

“I don’t need complications.”

“It would be great if you two got together. I admit, Sergei’s had some trouble in the past, but he’s cleaning up his act.” She nudged me again with her foot. “He’s coming to dinner on Friday. Why don’t you come, too?”

My sisters-in-law are even more determined than my brothers when it comes to getting things done. Both of my brothers married women with personalities similar to our mother—the iron fist in a velvet glove deal. I figured resistance was futile. “What time?”

“Seven. The monsters are eating early, and I’m paying Ashley to keep the younger ones entertained and out of our hair.”

“Seven it is.”

By the time I got back to the station with the drawing of Jingtao, Ray had set up appointments with all the tenants. Our first was with the clerk at the cell phone store, who was picking up a shift at the downtown location, in the other direction from the café where I’d just hung out with Tatiana.

The downtown streets were crowded with tourists in convertibles, delivery trucks, and a wedding couple in a white horse-drawn carriage. Both bride and groom were decked out in colorful leis and plumeria headbands. The newlyweds reminded me of my romantic fantasies when Mike and I were dating. I asked Ray what he thought about Mike.

“Seems like a good guy,” he said. “He knows his shit.”

He’d gotten into the island way big time, wearing aloha shirts and mirrored sunglasses. The Philly was still there inside, just covered with a layer of Honolulu.

He turned to look at me. “You still have a thing for him?”

“Nah, I’m over him,” I said, though I knew it was a lie. I had Dr. Phil in the background, but that wasn’t going anywhere fast. Maybe Tatiana’s brother would be just the distraction I needed to keep my mind off Mike Riccardi.

“Didn’t look that way to me,” Ray said. “The way you were looking at him.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m a detective, hotshot. I notice things about people. And I noticed there was enough heat rising off the two of you to start another fire.”

I wasn’t sure which attitude made me more uncomfortable. A guy like Akoni, my former partner in Waikiki, who avoided the topic of my sexuality whenever possible, as if it was something smelly on the bottom of his shoe. Or Ray, who was so comfortable with it that he wanted details. He treated me like any other guy, telling stories of his own and expecting me to reciprocate.

I wasn’t that comfortable with myself yet. I’d only been out of the closet for two years, and I was still shy about sharing. Further discussion was forestalled because we reached the cell phone store. Ginny Tanaka was a chunky girl with a pretty face and long dark hair that hung straight over her left eye. As soon as she was finished setting up a calling plan for a young guy with a Mohawk and multiple tattoos, she came over to talk to us.

“You see anyone suspicious hanging around the center?” I asked.

“The only suspicious thing was that acupuncture clinic,” she said. “Men coming and going all the time. Some businessmen, some skanky. Lots of old Chinese men. And the place was busy all the time—even late at night. I mean, who goes to get acupuncture at eleven o’clock?”

“You open that late?” Ray asked.

Ginny shook her head. “I go to HCC, and I live with my parents and three brothers. There’s never a quiet time in that house. So I stay at work late and do my homework. Use the computer and stuff.”

“You think you could identify any of these men you saw?”

“Nah. Never looked at them that carefully. I mean, it wasn’t like any of them were young and cute.” From the way her eyes darted over to the Mohawk guy, who was browsing for accessories, I got an idea of her taste in men. “Plus, they kind of gave me the creeps. I didn’t want any of them to think I was spying on them.”

Ray had already spoken by phone with the day clerk, who hadn’t had anything to contribute, so we thanked Ginny and drove back to the station, stopping to pick up lunch on the way. Ray had developed a taste for
saimin
, a Japanese lunch, and I teased him that he’d never get that back in Philly.

“Who says we’re going back?” he asked.

“I figured once Julie’s done with her degree, you guys would go home.”

He slurped up some noodle soup and then said, “She’s got three, maybe four years left on her PhD. By then, who knows where we’ll go? We might stay here.”

I nodded. When I transferred downtown from Waikiki I had spent six months working on my own. I figured it was because nobody wanted to work with the gay guy. Then Ray had walked in, refreshingly without prejudice, and once again I had a partner. We worked together well, and I was glad he was planning to stick around.

After lunch, we drove out to Kahala, where the pharmacist had been transferred, along with his assistant, who was also his wife. The pharmacy was a small chain, and he told us they were lucky that the owners were willing to accommodate them, transferring another clerk so he and his wife could continue to work together.

He was a skinny Filipino named Louis Cruz; his wife Lorna looked enough like him to be his sister. “I tried to get the old woman in charge to buy from us,” Lorna said. Louis stood behind the counter, Lorna in front. “But she said everything had to come from the owners.”

I could tell from the face Lorna made that she didn’t trust that at all. “I used to work near a clinic like that,” she said. “They were always running out of stuff—rubber gloves, ballpoint pens. They were good customers.”

“Can you describe this woman?” I asked.

“Old Chinese lady. I think her name was Norma. Looked about a hundred. Shorter than me.” Since Lorna herself was barely five feet tall, that made the old lady pretty small.

“There was another lady who worked there,” Louis said.

“Her,” Lorna snorted.

“A very attractive young woman. Chinese, too.” I could see he was hesitating, as if knowing too much about the attractive young woman would make his wife jealous. “I only spoke to her once or twice,” Louis continued. “In the parking lot.”

Lorna was glaring at Louis and I caught Ray’s eye. He nodded, and said, “Mrs. Cruz, could I talk to you for a minute? I’d like to see if you remember anything else about the elderly woman.”