Mahu Vice (17 page)

MAJOR CONVERSATIONAL SHIFTS

Saturday morning I slept in, letting my body recover from the stress of the week. I wasn’t sure what to do with the knowledge that Sergei might be hiring illegals to work for Haoa’s landscaping firm. Should I just keep quiet? Tell my father and let him decide what to do? If I told Haoa, he’d explode; Tatiana would have to mediate. Maybe I should just go to her? It was too confusing.

Around noon I drove out to Diamond Head and caught a few waves, stretching my body and clearing my head. On the way back, I rolled up the flaps on the Wrangler, turned the CD player up on some classic Bruddah Iz, and chilled out. It was the weekend, after all. I’d worry about what to do about Sergei on Monday.

Since Mike and I were meeting Terri and her new boyfriend for dinner out in Hawai’i Kai, it made the most sense for him to pick me up. It was a cool night, with a stiff breeze blowing in off the ocean, and I waited outside for him wearing a navy sports jacket over khaki slacks and a light-blue oxford cloth button-down shirt.

It was the way I’d dressed as a teenager for formal occasions, and I guess it stuck with me. “You look nice,” Mike said, when I slid into the front seat of his truck.

There was something so déjà vu about the experience—almost by reflex I leaned across the seat and kissed his cheek, saying, “You do, too.”

He still smelled the same, a lemon aftershave with tones of sandalwood. He must have shaved just before leaving his house, because his face was smooth. I remembered the texture of his cheek when he had a five o’clock shadow, the slight roughness that always reminded me I was kissing a man.

Mike was wearing a blue-and-white striped shirt and black pants, and I loved the way his short sleeves took hold of his upper arms and showcased his biceps.

“What have you been up to?” I asked. “Any progress on the shopping center investigation?”

“I had another case, took up most of the week. This twenty-eight-year-old guy was dumped by his girlfriend because of his drinking problem, so he poured gasoline on the furniture on her lanai and set it on fire. But he didn’t realize that the wooden furniture with foam cushions would burn so fast. The stuff caught while he was standing out there yelling for her, and he ended up with third-degree burns.”

“Bummer.”

“It made me think about love and liquor. How when things go bad I turn to alcohol, just like this guy did. And I need to be aware of that.” He turned onto Diamond Head Road and said, “Why did you invite me tonight?”

It was lame to say I didn’t know why. So I thought about it, and I said, “Remember when I came to your house last Sunday?”

“It was memorable,” Mike said dryly. “Your ears must have been burning that night when my dad and I had a conversation about you.”

“I’m not his favorite person.” I looked over at Mike. “Does he think I’m the one who made you gay?”

Mike laughed. “You mean are you the seducer who converted his innocent little boy into a cocksucker? No, he said to me one day that he knew I was gay back in high school.”

“So what’s he hate me for? Does he think I turned you into a drunk?”

“Ouch.”

“Sorry.”

“Do you think we’re ever going to be able to have a conversation without one of us hurting the other?” he asked.

“Man, your brain is just popping neurons like crazy,” I said. “I’m having trouble keeping up here. The answer to your first question is the answer to your second question.”

“Now who’s being obscure?”

We got onto the Kalaniana’ole Highway for the last part of the drive out to Hawai’i Kai. The mountains loomed up beside us, trapping us between them and the sea. “What I mean is that a month ago, if somebody had asked me if I still had feelings for you I would have denied it like crazy,” I said. “And then I saw you at the fire, and I realized that was a total lie.”

I looked over at him. “When you challenged me at your house and I said that I still loved you, that was the truth. I’m not sure I love you enough to start dating again and work through all your shit, but I can’t deny there’s still something between us.” I took a deep breath. “And that’s why I asked you to come to dinner. Because I want to either get you out of my system, or get you back in my life.”

“My dad hates you because he thinks you broke my heart, and he thinks it’s because of you that drinking became a problem for me again,” Mike said, as he pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant. “And both of those things are true.”

He got out of the truck then, forestalling any further discussion, and we saw Terri and a tall, handsome guy approaching us. Mike shrugged into a sports jacket and plastered a smile on his face.

Terri handled the introductions. Levi Hirsch seemed like a nice guy, and there was definite chemistry between him and Terri. The four of us walked into the restaurant, where a slack key piece by Hapa was playing. The ceiling arched above us in imitation of an old Hawaiian
halau
, or meeting house, and the furniture was all dark wood with a floral print of hibiscus and red ginger on the cushions.

We sat at a table on the terrace overlooking the dark ocean, making small talk. When the waiter came by, Levi said, “Why don’t we share a bottle of wine. White all right with everyone?”

I looked over at Mike, who said, “Fine with me.” Levi surveyed the wine list, ordering a bottle of Alto Adige Sauvignon, which, according to its description, was an Italian white that was racy, with distinctive flavors of melon, grapefruit, and grass followed by spicy green peppers and gooseberry notes. I would have preferred a beer, but I went along with the crowd.

Dinner was delicious and convivial. I couldn’t help noticing every time Mike sipped his wine, though he only had one glass and refused a refill. “No, it’s great,” he told Levi. “But I’m driving.”

“Got to be careful when you’ve got a cop in the car with you,” Levi said.

“I’m always careful around Kimo,” Mike said with the hint of a smile.

Terri insisted on paying for dinner, which was a relief for me after getting myself into debt for the Wrangler. Back in Mike’s truck, I said, “That was fun. I’m glad you came.”

“I can drink, you know.”

Man, I wished I could anticipate some of his mind jumps. “I thought you were going to AA meetings.”

“I am. But I don’t think I’m an alcoholic.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t look at me that way. I have a problem with alcohol. When I have emotional issues, I get drunk. I know that. I’m seeing a psychologist.”

“Really?”

“EAP program. I went into it voluntarily. Nobody in the department knows.”

The full moon hung over the ocean as we drove down the Kalaniana’ole Highway. The night had gotten cooler, and I had the window rolled down just a couple of inches. The flat, straight road was a contrast to my mood; I felt like we should have been driving up the Pali Highway, with its twists and turns instead.

“I can’t start to date you again until I work things out,” Mike said. “Man, I want to. I want to kiss you so much. But my shrink says I need to take things slow. That if we start up again, and then you dump me, I’ll end up in trouble again.” He turned to look at me, and I thought I saw tears glinting off his cheeks in the moonlight. “I can’t risk that yet.”

“You’re not the only one with problems,” I said quietly. “I don’t want to pick up with you again just because I think it’ll make me feel better.” I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. “But I do want to see you again. Do you think you can do that?”

He looked over at me and smiled. “I can do that.”

We sat there in silence for a while. As we turned back into Waikiki, full of neon and tourist traffic, he said, “I did learn one thing about our case. The fires at the lingerie store in Chinatown, the massage parlor in Waikele, and the acupuncture clinic all showed evidence of accelerants. It isn’t much, but it does show that they were all arsons, and there was nothing to indicate that a different guy was involved.”

“We’ve got the girl staying in Chinatown. I think she knows more than she’s telling us, but she’s got to get good and scared before she’s going to break down.”

“Keep me in the loop.”

When he pulled up in front of my apartment, I leaned over to kiss his cheek again, but he turned his face so that our lips met. My pulse quickened as I reached my arm around his back and pulled him close. We kissed, my lips remembering the familiar texture of his, my cheek against his, my nose inhaling that scent of lemon and sandalwood. My dick hardened and I wanted nothing more than to drag Mike upstairs, strip him down, and fuck him until we were both senseless, until all that existed was the physical and spiritual connection between us.

But we both knew we couldn’t do that. “Like a couple of horny teenagers in a truck,” Mike said. “Gotta love something that makes you feel like seventeen again.”

“I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t making out with sexy men in cars when I was seventeen.”

“Neither was I. Think of all we missed.”

“Think of all we have to look forward to,” I said.

“Yeah. Blue balls all the way home.”

I laughed. “You’re a goof. Drive carefully, and don’t think of me again until you’re home in bed, naked.”

“If you don’t get out of my truck right now…”

“I’m getting.” I leaned over and kissed his cheek one last time, then scrambled out of the truck. I climbed the outside staircase to my apartment and watched the taillights of his truck until he reached Ala Wai Boulevard and turned.

THE GANSU POSTER

Sunday I went over to see Treasure Chen and make sure she was okay. She was antsy, cooped up in Norma’s apartment. “It’s creepy here,” she said. “I can’t sleep in the bed. It’s like her spirit is still there. And the police tape outside? Don’t get me started.”

I assured her we were making progress on the case, even though I didn’t feel that way. “You’re safe here. Think of it like Norma’s spirit is protecting you.”

She laughed harshly. “For real? If Norma’s spirit is here she’s trying to figure out how to get me killed, too.” She rubbed her arms. “I got all chicken skin,” she said. “You’ve got to get me out of here.”

“Give me another couple of days. Meanwhile, nobody is going to look for you here.”

“That’s true. This shithole reminds me too much of where I grew up.”

I sat down at the kitchen table and motioned her to join me. “How’d you recruit the people to work for you?” I asked. “That boy, Jingtao—it didn’t seem like he spoke English at all. He answer some kind of ad?”

“Mr. Hu had somebody who recruited them in China, some back-ass place where there was no work. Promised them the Golden Land, come to America.”

“Who did the visas? You?”

“You really don’t know?” she asked.

“Wouldn’t ask if I did.”

“There were no visas. I mean, I guess they had tourist visas to get into the U.S., but whoever it was in China did all that.”

“You mean those girls, and the boy, they were illegal?”

She laughed and smoothed back her hair. “Come on, detective. It’s prostitution. That’s the illegal part.”

“What did you do when their visas were up? Send them back?”

“You’re not listening. Mr. Hu picked them up at the airport and brought them to the clinic. They’d work, they’d get a little money, they’d give most of it to Mr. Hu to pay for their airfare, their apartment, everything. Sometimes Mr. Hu would sell a girl on to somebody else, especially if she got sick or lost her looks. The boys didn’t last long. Usually they didn’t like what they were doing, and they complained a lot.”

She wrinkled her nose. “That boy, Jingtao, he was the worst. He wouldn’t do anything. Then he ran away. What a pain in the ass.” She laughed. “I guess I made a joke, huh? Pain in the ass?”

“Yeah, funny,” I said, remembering the pain Lucas had given me.

Before I left, I made sure she was locked in safely. “Ray or I will call you tomorrow,” I said, standing in the doorway of the apartment. “If anything happens, you have both our cell phone numbers.”

“Just get me out of here fast,” she said. “I have a limited shelf life, you know. If I’m not going to work for Mr. Hu anymore I’ve got to find a new gig.”

“I’ll introduce you to the guys in Vice. Maybe they can give you a lead.”

“Big comedian.” She made a shooing motion and I stepped out in the hall, then she locked and bolted the door behind me.

I thought about calling Mike to see if he wanted to hang out, but knew that was a bad idea. Instead I went surfing, then to bed early. Ray was already at his desk when I got to the station the next morning. “Hey, I’ve got some good news and some bad news for you,” he said.

“I never like the sound of that. Give me the good news first.”

“Over the weekend, Julie and I bought another car, a Toyota Highlander.”

“Great. What’s the bad news?”

“It’s a gas guzzler.”

“Bad for you. Not for me.”

“At least now I won’t have to depend on you to pick me up and drive me around.” I told Ray what I’d learned from Treasure, and we decided we’d check out the office she mentioned when we were driving her to Norma’s, though she thought it had been cleared out.

The wind waved the palm fronds and shreds of rain clouds scudded overhead as we drove up to St. Louis Heights. We had the flaps rolled down on the Wrangler, and I kept the intermittent wipers on. It was a cruddy day, and that matched the way I felt.

Across the street from the building Treasure had told us about, a demolition company was razing the remains of the shopping center, and I felt a pang of loss. It was my dad’s first commercial project, and he’d recruited all of us to help. I was only six or seven, but on the weekends, I carried supplies around, bringing my dad and brothers water, taking away trash.

Lui and Haoa were teenagers and they complained about having to spend their weekends working, but even my mother helped, spackling holes in the drywall, painting, and washing the glass storefronts.

“Remember that law student?” Ray asked, bringing me out of my reverie.

“The one who called 911?”

“That’s the one. He said he was having sex across the street, right? You think this is the place?”

I shrugged. “I can ask him.”

The building was two stories tall, with a staircase at each end and a balcony that ran across the front. There was no lobby; each office opened to the street. Most of the doors advertised some kind of import or export business, though there was an insurance agency, an acupuncturist, and a law office on the ground floor.

We walked up to the second floor, where the salt air had pitted the concrete banisters along the front rail. Chunks were missing, showing the rebar underneath. We found the door marked Wah Shing, with a Realtor’s box hanging from the lock. A combination lock through a hasp kept the box closed.

Just in case there was evidence somewhere, we both put on plastic gloves. I read Ray the combination Treasure had given us, and the lock dropped open. He pulled out the key and unlocked the office door.

I wasn’t expecting much, and I wasn’t disappointed. The place was nearly as barren as the acupuncture clinic. A beat-up, puke green couch sat along one wall, where I figured the law student had gotten his ass plowed the night of the fire. Across from it was a metal desk with a single drawer and a cheap swivel chair.

There wasn’t a picture on the wall, or a piece of paper on the desk. The plastic waste basket was empty. “We could always dust for prints,” Ray said.

“To prove what? This isn’t a crime scene.”

The space had been divided in two by a wall with a door set in it, and I walked through to another barren room. At least there was a poster on the wall there, a photo of a Chinese landscape taken in Gansu Province, where the travel agent had said Jingtao was from.

Carefully I pried the poster from the wall. There was some Chinese writing on the back, which I couldn’t decipher. Ray came in the room and I showed it to him.

“You know anybody who can read that?” he asked.

“My godmother. She doesn’t live far from here. We’ll swing past her house on our way back to the station.” I shrugged. “It probably doesn’t mean shit, but there isn’t anything else here.”

There was a metal desk like the one in the outer office, a slightly more comfortable chair on casters, and an empty file cabinet. “Phone jack,” Ray said, pointing to the wall. “Maybe we can get a number and trace the calls.”

“That project has your name written all over it, partner.”

We left a few minutes later, after satisfying ourselves that whoever had cleaned the place out had done a great job. I called Aunt Mei-Mei and asked if we could stop by, and she said, “You out early, Kimo. I make you breakfast.”

“No, Aunt Mei-Mei. Don’t go to any trouble.”

“No trouble.”

When she greeted us at her front door, wearing her apron once again, I introduced Ray to her, and she served us scrambled eggs with unidentifiable little bits in it, which were delicious. “I still make big meals,” she said. “Lots of leftovers.”

She ate like a bird, picking a small piece of egg with her chopsticks, then rolling it in sticky rice. Ray loved the food and was effusive with his praise. Aunt Mei-Mei blushed.

After we finished, I put a fresh pair of gloves on and showed her the poster, which I unrolled on the kitchen table when the plates had been cleared.

“Is name and address,” she said. “In China.”

“Can you write it in English?” I asked.

She found a pad from a Chinese store, and wrote, in careful letters, the name Guo Yeng-Shen, with an address below it. “Gansu. That’s the place where the picture was taken?”

“Yes.” She looked at me with a keen interest in her dark eyes. “This help you find who burn down your father’s shopping center?”

“I hope so.” I kissed her cheek and thanked her for her help. As we drove back down to the station, Ray said, “That woman should open a restaurant.”

“You guys need to get out more. Don’t get me wrong, Aunt Mei-Mei’s a great cook. But I can show you places in Chinatown that make her look like an amateur.”

“Maybe we’ll double date sometime. Me and Julie, and you and the fireman.”

I remembered the dinner Mike and I had with Terri and Levi Hirsch on Saturday night. It was fun, despite all the angst over our relationship that had arisen in the truck on the way there and home.

“Yeah,” I said. “We’ll do that sometime.”