Mahu Vice (10 page)

“I can walk from here.” He nodded and pulled into a parking spot. “Maybe we’ll get together Monday, compare notes?” I asked, as I got out of the truck.

“It’s a date.”

MEMORIES OF A CASUAL ENCOUNTER

Sunday morning I slept late, made raspberry chocolate chip pancakes, and tried to recharge my batteries for the week ahead. Late in the afternoon, Aunt Mei-Mei called to give me Norma Ching’s address and phone number.

“She no happy,” Aunt Mei-Mei said. “Norma. I no talk to her myself, you know, not since very long time. But my friend say Norma mad about something.”

That was good, I thought. Angry people often made the best sources of information, because they had scores to settle.

“Thanks, Aunt Mei-Mei. You doing okay?”

“Ai ya, very busy. Jimmy and his friends come again tonight. Lot of food to cook!”

“You’re not running a restaurant there, Auntie. Don’t you let Jimmy take advantage of you.”

She laughed and her voice sounded like a young woman’s. “Jimmy nice boy.”

I called Ray and told him that I had an address for Norma Ching—but that my truck was in the shop. “I’ll drive Julie up to UH first thing tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll swing past your place, pick you up, and we’ll go see this woman.”

An hour later, I got a text message on my cell phone. Thinking it was from Mike, I bounded over to the phone. Instead, though, it was from a number I didn’t recognize. It read “Know u from house in Black Pt. Need ur help. Meet me?”

Alarm bells started to go off in my head. When I’d been at my lowest, emotionally, I’d met a man I only knew as Mr. Hu. He owned a house in Black Point, a very fancy neighborhood just outside Waikiki where I’d gone many times. He had arranged various sexual escapades for me, sometimes with him, but sometimes with other guys. If this guy had met me through Mr. Hu, was he trying to hold that over me? Or had he been on the same kind of desperate dive I’d been on, and gotten himself into deeper trouble?

I texted back, asking him who he was and what he wanted. He didn’t want to tell me, though, and for a minute I wondered if he was just being coy about a hookup. I didn’t want to mess around with a casual trick, though, because my head was so caught up in considering getting back together with Mike.

But after a couple of messages back and forth it seemed that he needed police help rather than a quick blow job, and I agreed to meet him at the Kope Bean at the Royal Hawaiian shopping center, which was only a few blocks from my apartment. He assured me that I’d recognize him.

I’d just gotten myself a raspberry mocha when a guy behind me said, “I’m glad you came.” I turned around and recognized him. He was a middle-aged guy, part Japanese and part haole, wearing expensive jeans and a silk aloha shirt. Oh, and a wedding ring.

We’d had sex once, though I couldn’t remember his name, if I’d ever known it. Just like the law student. How many nameless men had I slept with? The thought creeped me out. “Can we walk?” he asked.

“Sure.” I put a sleeve over my coffee cup and we went outside. The shopping center was busy with well-heeled tourists clustering under the palm trees, gazing in the windows of the fancy stores, and toting lots of shopping bags with marquee names.

The guy steered us toward the grounds of the hotel, where we could have privacy. “Do you remember me?” he asked.

“I do. But I’m in a different place now than I was. I’m not looking to hook up with anybody.”

“That’s not why I need to talk to you,” he said. “I know you’re a detective, and I might need help from the police. But if I tell you something in confidence, will you promise not to tell anyone else?”

I stopped him. “Look, it doesn’t work that way. If you need a cop, then I’ll do what I can to help you. But I can’t make any promises until I know what’s going on.”

There was a look of pure anguish on his face, which was eventually replaced with one of resignation. “I guess I don’t have much choice.”

We found a bench in the shade of a couple of palm trees and sat down. “Let’s start from the beginning,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember your name.”

“Brian.”

So, no last name. “And what’s up, Brian? I assume from that ring on your finger you’re married. Is some guy you slept with threatening to tell your wife?”

He nodded. “Not just that. My boss, too.”

“Blackmail? They ask you for money?”

He pulled an envelope out of his pocket, opened it, and handed me a sheet of paper. At the top of the page was a color picture of Brian, naked, with his legs up over his shoulders. A naked man was plowing his butt.

Below the picture were the words “There’s video, too. If you don’t want the world to see it, transfer $50,000 to this account.” Below it was an account number, at a Singapore bank.

My mind was running a mile a minute. From Brian’s dress and manner, I had the feeling he had the money—and whoever was blackmailing him knew that. I recognized the setting; it was the master bedroom at Mr. Hu’s mansion in Black Point. And the naked back? That was mine. I wasn’t sure Brian knew that, though.

I blew a big breath out through my lips. “When did you get this?”

“Friday morning. It was delivered to my office by messenger.”

“Have you had any other contact with whoever sent it?” He shook his head. “How about the police? You report this to anyone?”

Again he shook his head. “I couldn’t. But I recognized you, the time we got together, and I knew you were a cop. I was hoping I could trust you.”

“Did you think I got one of these, too?”

He looked at me strangely. “You think they would send a copy to the police?”

“Not the police. Me, personally.”

I could see his eyes widen as the wheels turned. “That’s you?” he asked.

“You didn’t know?”

He shrugged. “You weren’t the only guy Mr. Hu fixed me up with.”

I didn’t know what to do. It should have been a no-brainer. Take the guy into Vice, show them the note, have them decide how to proceed. But would anyone else recognize me? Would the whole squad, and then the whole department, know that I’d been caught on video, banging the shit out of a random middle-aged stranger?

I slumped back against the bench. “I need to think about this for a minute.” It took a while, but my brain finally engaged.

The first thing was to see if I could be easily recognized. I called Gunter, who was close at hand, enjoying a post-coital mimosa at the Rod and Reel Club with his latest overnight guest.

Assuming I wasn’t recognizable, I could present the evidence to Vice on Monday morning. Since I came out, I’ve been the department’s go-to guy when gay men and lesbians are involved in crimes, usually as victims, though occasionally as perpetrators as well. I’d given a couple of talks about domestic violence in same-sex households, and I’d helped out a couple of prominent johns who’d been picked up in prostitution sweeps and didn’t want the world to know they’d been picking up guys, or guys dressed as women.

So it was reasonable that Brian could contact me, even if he didn’t know me personally, for help navigating his situation. If Gunter recognized my naked back and butt, though, and felt that the rest of the department might, too, I’d have to reconsider my story.

While we waited for Gunter to extricate himself from the bar, I said, “These guys don’t look like the most sophisticated blackmailers.” Brian looked interested.

“How can you tell?”

“Well, there’s no deadline. No ‘send us the money by Tuesday morning or else.’ And maybe they score a couple of points by delivering to your office—but there’s no guarantee you’ve seen this. It could be sitting on your secretary’s desk.”

“But if I don’t respond…”

“We’ll get to that. Plus, these aren’t anonymous photos. There’s a connection to Mr. Hu and to the place where the video they clipped this still from was taken.”

Brian didn’t look particularly reassured, and then I spotted Gunter. “I need to show my friend the picture.”

“He’ll recognize me,” Brian said.

“You slept with him, too?”

He shook his head. “I don’t want anyone to see that picture.”

“No way around it. But you can trust Gunter.” I waved him over, and pointedly didn’t introduce Brian. “Recognize the guy?” I asked.

He looked from the picture to Brian. “Is this a trick question?”

“Not him, dimwit. The other guy.”

“The top? Cute.” He peered at the picture, then shrugged. “You’d think with my wide experience of the homosexual population of Honolulu, I might, but I don’t.”

I gave out a sigh of relief. “Thanks, brah. That’s what I needed to know.”

“This the guy wanting the money?” he asked, pointing at my naked back.

I shook my head. “I get paid enough by the City and County of Honolulu,” I said. “I don’t need to extort money from tricks.”

Brian didn’t particularly like being called a trick. Gunter whistled. “That’s you?” He took a closer look at the picture. “You’ve got a mole on your left shoulder,” he said. He pointed to the picture. “It’s fuzzy, like they weren’t focusing on you. I suppose if you know what to look for you can see it.”

Gunter left a few minutes later and I laid out the plan for Brian. “I’m going to talk to the lieutenant in Vice tomorrow morning. I’ll show him the note and see what he wants to do. How can I reach you?”

“Will you have to give him my name?”

I nodded. “But they’ll be discreet. You’re the victim here.”

“But what about testifying? I’ll lose everything if this gets out.”

“Let’s work one step at a time, okay?” I put my hand on his shoulder. “I’ll do whatever I can to take care of you.”

Finally, he opened his wallet and pulled out a business card. “You have my cell number,” he said. “Text messages are best.”

His full name was Brian Izumigawa, and he was an executive vice president at one of the bigger banks in the islands. “Let me know if you hear anything more from these guys,” I said.

He was reluctant to leave, as if just staying around me would make his problems go away, but finally I reassured him enough. I wished I felt as good as I pretended; I was still worried that someone in the police department would recognize me, or that Lieutenant Kee in Vice would insist on knowing the identity of the guy with his back to the camera.

And if my name didn’t come out that way, would the investigation lead to Mr. Hu? Would he have a little black book of men? If he did, my name was sure to be there—perhaps with annotations as to my experience and tastes.

That was something I didn’t want in the police department rumor mill.

WHAT NORMA KNOWS

Ray showed up at my apartment at six thirty Monday morning, too early to spring a visit on Norma Ching. “I’ve got something to talk about downstairs in Vice,” I said as we drove. “While I’m down there, I’ll see if they know anything about this clinic, or about Norma.”

Ray didn’t ask about my other business with Vice, and I didn’t volunteer any details. I had to see how things worked out first, and how much involvement I would have in Brian Izumigawa’s case.

While Ray parked, I went down to the B1 level, the first of two levels below ground. The photo lab, narcotics, and the special investigations section, where they do research on evidence, are also down there. It’s my favorite part of the building, and I’m always willing to hang around the labs and talk to the techs.

Lieutenant Kee’s secretary, Juanita Lum, is a heavyset, no-nonsense Filipina, with lustrous black hair and skin so smooth she could do soap ads. From her wedding picture, which sat in a heart-shaped frame on her desk, you could see she’d been a real looker when she was younger.

“Hey, Kimo, howzit?” she asked.

“Pretty good, Juanita. The lieutenant have a minute?”

“He’s on the phone. And then he’s got a meeting. But let me see if he can squeeze you in.”

She kept an eye on the red light on Kee’s line while she chatted with me and kept on typing some kind of report. The multitasking made my head spin, but it was all in a day’s work for Juanita. When she saw the light go off, she buzzed the lieutenant. “I’m busy, woman,” I heard him say through the intercom.

“And next week you’ll want something from Homicide,” Juanita said. “You scratch Kimo’s back, he’ll scratch yours. And your back itches a lot.”

“Fine, send him in.”

In the four years or so that he’d been in charge of Vice, Kee had been perpetually grumpy. He had a long, sad face like a Bassett hound, and brush-cut black hair going gray at the sideburns.

“Thanks for giving me a minute,” I said, walking into his office. “You hear about the arson homicide up in St. Louis Heights last Sunday?”

“Shopping center up on Waialae Avenue?” he asked. “What about it?”

“That address ever come up in your investigations? There was an acupuncture clinic there that sounds pretty shady, and they closed down and moved out a couple of days before the fire.”

“I’ve heard the address,” he said. “But I’ve been short handed since the last round of budget cuts. I haven’t had a chance to get anybody up there.”

“You know the name Norma Ching?”

He shook his head. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

I paused, and Kee said, “That all?”

I took a deep breath. “Nope.” I told him about Brian Izumigawa, how he’d contacted me, making it sound like he recognized my name from the media. I showed Kee the note Brian had been sent. “You get this dusted for prints?” he asked.

“He was cagey about what was going on. I didn’t realize it might be evidence until he’d already given it to me and I’d put my prints all over it. I can still get it tested, though.”

“Do it.” He looked at me. “What do you make of this?”

Inside, I breathed a little sigh of relief. There was no reason why Kee should recognize my naked back, but I was still glad that he didn’t. I told him my theory that the blackmailers were amateurs, and explained about Brian’s connection to Mr. Hu and the mansion in Black Point.

“He told you all this?” Kee asked.

“We met up yesterday afternoon and I got him to open up.”

“This needs some delicacy,” Kee said. “You want to run this? Keep it quiet that way.”

“If you want.” Good. There was little chance that the story would spread around the department if I was in charge.

“I’ll clear it with your boss. Get back in touch with this guy. Tell him not to do anything until they contact him again. In the meantime, see what you can run down on this Hu guy.”

I dropped the note off for fingerprint processing, taking a photocopy back upstairs with me, and filled Ray in on the case, leaving out my personal involvement. I checked the property records for the mansion in Black Point where Brian and I had been fixed up. It was owned by a corporation, of course. I put in another call to Ricky Koele.

“You’re turning into my new best friend,” he said. “Pretty soon we’ll be surfing together.”

“You get a lead on some good waves, you let me know.” I gave him the name of the corporation that owned the mansion, and a few minutes later he was back on the line.

“It’s a shell,” he said. “The stockholders are another corporation out of Hong Kong. Wah Shing Ltd.”

“Why does that name sound familiar?” I asked him.

“Hold on. Let me do a cross-reference search.”

He was back on the line a couple of minutes later. “You won’t believe it. Remember that acupuncture clinic you called me about last week? Golden Needles? Wah Shing was their corporate parent.”

“No shit? Or should I say no Shing?”

“Call if you need anything else,” Ricky said.

After I hung up, I sat there staring into space. It was too weird that this random trick and his blackmail case had somehow become connected to our arson homicide. A million things were running through my head, not the least of which was how I was going to come out of all this with my secrets intact.

I didn’t realize Ray had been talking to me until he was waving his hand in my face and saying, “Earth to Kimo.”

I told Ray about meeting Brian Izumigawa and the blackmail attempt. I showed him the picture, too, and he didn’t recognize me—though there was no reason why he should have. “You’re sure this isn’t just some random shot from a porn movie?”

“Very. But here’s the weird part. The same corporation was behind the lease on the acupuncture clinic and the house where this was taken.”

“Whoa. What do you think that means?”

I looked at Ray. I liked him, and we worked well together. We’d shared bits and pieces of our personal lives as we got to know each other better. I knew about the money problems he and Julie were having, the way they argued sometimes about them. He knew about my complicated history with Mike Riccardi. But this was bigger. It was time to see if I could trust my partner.

“Let’s head over to Norma’s,” I said. “I’ve got some stuff to tell you.”

As detectives, Ray and I can either use personal vehicles for police business, or sign out an unmarked Crown Vic from the Vehicle Maintenance Section. Call me fussy, but if I’m going to feel something sticky on the seat or the dash, I want to have a general idea what it is. If there’s a funny smell in the car, I want it to be one of my funny smells. And I don’t want to have to worry about whether the last guy to drive it did something that’s going to cause me a problem.

So I was reluctant to take a car out, and Ray was willing to drive us into Chinatown in Julie’s Mini Cooper. Which put us on the road in a vehicle that didn’t say, “We are the police. Fear us.” But it had to do in a pinch.

There were big, puffy clouds outside, and a restless wind shook the kukui trees along South Beretania Avenue as Ray drove us. “I told you about how I broke up with Mike, right? About a year ago? After that, I started getting into this web site called MenSayHi.com, a hookup site. Through it, I met this older guy, Chinese. I always called him Mr. Hu. He got off on choreographing these scenarios for me. He’d pair me up with guys, for whatever reason in his head, and then sometimes he’d watch, and sometimes he’d participate.”

“Did you meet him up at that house?” Ray asked. “The one where the blackmail guy went?”

“Yup.”

Ray looked over at me. “Shit. Is that you in the picture with him?”

“Yup.”

“And you complain about me and one-word answers.” Ray pulled the car over a couple of blocks from Norma’s. “Tell me the whole story.”

I took a deep breath. “There isn’t much more to say. I didn’t know who Brian Izumigawa was, and I didn’t know we were being filmed.”

“You cannot tell anyone else that’s you in the picture, Kimo.” He looked back at the street ahead of him. “You do, and they pull you off the case, and your name goes down the drain. I’ve seen that happen. You’re too good a cop to lose that way.”

“Thanks.” I felt a little better, knowing Ray was on my side. “But I have to say, I don’t know what to do.”

Ray looked out at the street, then turned back into traffic. “Right now, we go see Norma. If she worked for your Mr. Hu, maybe she can help us find him. Then we get both cases wrapped up fast.”

Norma Ching lived in a run-down high-rise just off Hotel Street, which had once been the center of Honolulu’s red light district. I’d heard stories about the brothels there during the second world war, when there were nearly 150 of them within a few blocks, servicing the servicemen.

Now, though, it’s just another neighborhood. A lei stall was already open across the street, the beautiful colors and pungent scents a dramatic contrast to the shuttered storefronts around it. The only other business open was a Chinese grocery, and as we passed I looked in the window and saw a familiar face.

“Hey, Melvin, how you doing?” I asked, walking inside to the aroma of barbecued pork and roast duck. The shelves were lined with canisters of salty dried plums and apricots, tapioca pearls, and shrink-wrapped mushrooms. Chinese characters decorated bottles of vinegar and soy sauce. A couple of dusty red paper lanterns hung from the ceiling.

“Detective.”

Melvin Ah Wong was Jimmy’s father, if you could still call him that. He’d kicked the boy out at sixteen, when he discovered his son was gay. I introduced him to Ray, then said, “You seen your son lately?”

“My son is dead.”

“Your son is very much alive, Melvin. He’s at UH now, you know that? Looks happy, got lots of friends. You’d be proud of him.”

“My son is dead, detective,” Melvin said, and he walked past us.

“I always admire your people skills,” Ray said, as he paid the shopkeeper for a package of salty dried plums.

“The guy’s lucky I don’t knock him out,” I grumbled.

We walked over to Norma’s building and took the elevator up to the tenth floor. We knocked on the door of 10-F and a moment later Norma opened it.

I wasn’t sure I’d have recognized her on the street. Her white hair was wild and uncombed, and she wore a black cotton dressing gown hastily tied. I introduced myself and Ray.

“I’m not dressed for gentlemen callers,” she said, smiling coyly. She was missing her front teeth and her smile reminded me of a Halloween pumpkin.

There was just a trace of a Chinese accent. She smiled flirtatiously at Ray. “Will you come in and give me a few minutes to fix myself up?”

We sat in her black lacquer living room, and all the hothouse plants reminded me of Uncle Chin’s lanai, where he had spent much of his last years surrounded by flowers and birds. A glass étagère along one wall was cluttered with dragon figurines, bonsai trees, and a pile of round coins with a square cut out of the center—I Ching charms. A rice paper scroll hung on the wall with a bunch of characters signifying good fortune. I recognized love, peace, and harmony, among others. Through the doorway into the kitchen I saw a Buddha kitchen god and a Chinese calendar.

Ten minutes passed, and when Norma reappeared from the bedroom she was a different person. She’d put her teeth in, and donned an elegantly coiffed white wig. There was red powder on her cheeks, and she wore a smart black business suit with a white blouse, open at the neck.

“Now, how can I help you, detectives?” she asked.

“We wanted to ask you about the Golden Needles Acupuncture Clinic,” I said. “You know it burned last week?”

She nodded. “We had already closed a few days before the fire.”

“Why did you close?” I asked. “Not enough people needing acupuncture?”

She laughed. “Oh, detective. We didn’t do acupuncture there, despite the sign out front. Since I am no longer employed there I feel free to tell you that personal services were provided to discreet gentlemen.”

“Prostitution,” Ray said. He and I looked at each other. So we’d been on the wrong track; it wasn’t gambling that the other tenants had been hinting about.

“What an awful word. So unsavory, isn’t it? Not that I participated myself, you understand. I am a little past my prime.”

“Why did you close?”

“It was a business decision made by my ex-employer.”

“Mr. Hu?” I asked.

Norma looked surprised. “Yes, that is the name I knew him by. But I doubt that is the name he was born with.”

“You and I first met about two years ago, isn’t that right?” I asked. “You were working at a lingerie shop. Just a few blocks from here, wasn’t it?”

She nodded.

“That building burned, too,” I said. “Interesting, isn’t it? You worked at two places that both burned under suspicious circumstances.”

“I had nothing to do with either fire.”

I pulled out Mike’s list of suspicious fires. “A massage parlor in Waikele, a quick mart in Kaneohe, a coffee shop near the airport, and a Christian religious shop downtown. All of them burned. If I check your employment records, will I find that you worked at any of those places?”