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 cafe 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.”
They walked toward the front of the store, and Louis lowered his voice. “I think the woman’s name was Jewel, or Treasure, something like that,” he said. “I only spoke to her once or twice, but she was very friendly. Friendly enough that my wife was upset.”
“Can you describe this Jewel?”
“Tall. A little taller than me, in high heels. Black hair, always in one of those French braids. She wore those Chinese dresses, very tight. Silk, in bright colors.”
“Cheongsams?”
“That’s it. I’m sorry I can’t tell you anything more. That was a very busy location, and I never had time to talk to her.”
Louis Cruz was hiding something. If it turned out to be relevant to the case, we’d have to come back to him. If not, I would let him slide. We all have our closets, after all.
A DEADLY CLAUSE
On our way back to the station, I told Ray what Louis had told me, and he said, “Wife confirms what the cell phone girl said. Lots of customers, all men. Some of them came into the pharmacy afterward, and as she said, ‘They didn’t look like somebody had been sticking needles in them.’”
We both laughed. “What do you think was going on in that acupuncture clinic?” I asked. “My guess is not acupuncture.”
“Back in Philly, we had a case like this, in Chinatown. They were using a clinic as a cover for a gambling operation.” He pressed one knee up against the dashboard of my truck. “I got called there for a multiple homicide. I walked in, there was this big round table, six guys sitting around it. Every one of them shot. Blood and guts and brains everywhere.”
“That’s grim.” I’d seen a couple of those cases myself, the ones that were so gruesome you kept seeing them in your mind for months or years after. I took a breath and tried to focus back on our case. “You get a lot of men coming and going from a place like that. Like the cell phone girl and the pharmacist’s wife said.”
“Skanky guys, too,” Ray said.
“And the beautiful girl could be some kind of waitress. Like in Vegas.”
“You know anybody in Vice? Maybe they heard about this place.”
“I can ask,” I said. “But we can make a little detour to Chinatown ourselves.”
I continued Ewa toward Chinatown. In Honolulu, we don’t use directions like north, south, east, or west. Mauka means toward the mountains, makai toward the sea, and Diamond Head is in the direction of that extinct volcano. Ewa, which is in the other direction, is toward the city of the same name.
“Remember that bookie, Hang Sung?” I asked as we drove.
“Guy looked like a weasel?” Ray asked.
“That’s the one. If anybody knows about gambling in Chinatown, he does.”
I pulled up at a seedy building on River Street, next to Nu’uanu Stream. “Last I heard, Hang was hanging out here. Up on the second floor.”
Hang was on a cell phone when we pushed past his secretary into a small office that overlooked the street. “Gotta go,” he said into the phone, hanging it up quickly and slipping it into his pocket. “Detectives. What a nice surprise.”
“Talk to me about acupuncture, Hang,” I said, sitting down in a hard wooden chair across from his desk. Ray sat next to me.
“Acupuncture? Helped me quit smoking.”
“You ever hear of somebody using an acupuncture clinic as a cover for a card game?” I asked. “Dice, betting, that kind of thing?”
Hang gave me a half smile. “Why would I know of such a thing?”
I leaned back in my chair and put my feet up against Hang’s wooden desk. I had known Hang since I was a kid; he was a business acquaintance of my Uncle Chin, my father’s best friend. In his day, Uncle Chin had been a major figure in one of the Honolulu tongs, the Chinese gang operations. Growing up around his house, I’d met a whole lot of guys like Hang, never realizing their criminal connections until I’d joined the police force.
Of course, Hang knew that I knew who he was and what he did, but we went through this little dance every time we met. “You’re a wise man, Hang,” I said. “You know a lot of things, I’m sure. And if you knew anything about a gambling ring operating out of an acupuncture clinic in a shopping center on Waialae Avenue, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”
“The shopping center your father owns?”
“Owned. He sold it last year.”
Hang nodded. “I know the center. I know a little about the clinic. But there’s nothing I can tell you about gambling there.”
“Nothing you can tell us, or nothing you will tell us?” Ray asked.
“Your partner is a man of great discernment,” Hang said to me, smiling. “Let me rephrase myself. I do not know anything about gambling at that facility.”
I wasn’t satisfied, but it was clear we weren’t going to get anything more out of Hang Sung until we had something to bargain with. I figured a trip to Vice was still in order. I put my feet down on the ground, dusted off the place on Hang’s desk where they had rested, then stood up, Ray following me.
“See you around, Hang,” I said.
Our next appointment, the head of the karate studio, a short, wiry Japanese guy in his early thirties, was waiting to see us by the time we got back to the station. His name was Yuko Mori, and he wore sweatpants and a sweatshirt with the arms ripped off-the better to show off his muscles, I guessed.
It wasn’t hard to get him to talk about the acupuncture clinic. “I tried to make an appointment,” he said. “The dragon lady kept putting me off. No appointments, very busy. Every time I tried to talk to Treasure, the old grandma pushed me away.”
“Treasure?” I asked.
“Beautiful,” he said, making motions with his hands to indicate the girl’s measurements. “I like a tall girl. You know where she is now?”
I shook my head. “We’re trying to get in touch with all the tenants, see if anyone saw anything suspicious.”
“Only suspicious thing I ever saw was how nice the gardener keep the grass,” he said. “Like somebody pay him extra. All the time guys working out there, trimming hedges, cutting grass. Waste of time.”
We thanked him, and he grumbled about having to find a new location for his dojo, which had just started to become profitable. He’d only had liability insurance because of the expense, so he was worried he’d have to take a job somewhere else in order to build up his savings.
So far, none of the ten
ants had shown a motive for arson. The cell phone store and the pharmacy were both chains; the fire was an interruption in business. Yuko Mori would suffer financially, so he had no motive either. Ray had talked to a guy from the mainland company that owned the center. They were in the process of hiring a new manager for their island properties, and he knew little about it more than its numbers. He confirmed it had been profitable and said the company had no idea what it was going to do with the burnt-out buildings and the land.
The acupuncture clinic was looking more and more suspicious. Could it be a front for a gambling operation? I went over to see Ricky Koele, a guy I knew who worked at the Business Registration Division, a state agency that’s a division of the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. They maintain the business registry for all corporations and other businesses in the state.
Ricky had been two years behind me at Punahou, the private school Harry, Terri, and I had attended, and we’d known each other through a couple of extracurricular activities. He had come to me a year before when his drug-dealing brother had been killed in a drive-by shooting in Wahiawa, one of the more dangerous parts of the island. Ricky was concerned because he’d overheard one of the investigating officers refer to the crime as NHI-no human involved.
Though Wahiawa was outside of my district, I’d reached out to a detective I knew there, Al Kawamoto, and he’d made sure that Ricky’s brother’s killer was brought in.
“That’s the Professional and Vocational Licensing Division,” Ricky said, when I met him at his desk and asked him about acupuncture. “There are twenty-five professional boards and commissions and twenty licensing programs. You’re looking for the Board of Acupuncture.”
“Can you tell me whose license is behind the Golden Needles Clinic?” I gave him the address on Waialae Avenue and he turned to his computer. It took him a couple of minutes, hitting keys and browsing screens. I listened to Lite 94.7 playing anonymous slack key guitar music over the office sound system while I waited.
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