I added that to our growing list of information. By then, it was two o’clock, and Gunter showed up to be wired with a recorder and transmitter that would reach up to the balcony. Of course, Gunter flirted with the technician as he snaked the wire down my friend’s shirt, and to my surprise the guy flirted back. Maybe he was yet another undercover homosexual at the Honolulu Police Department. Or maybe straight guys were just a lot more comfortable these days.
Steve Hart and his partner, a Chinese-Hawaiian guy named Lee Kawika, left the station to set up surveillance on Stan at the Mahalo Manpower office. I drove Gunter over to the Kuhio Regent and Ray followed me in his Highlander. Parking is always a nightmare in Waikiki, but I snagged a metered spot around the corner from the building, and Ray pulled into a handicapped space across from me. We both left our police decals on the dashboard.
Gunter led us in through a back door and up to the balcony which overlooked the lobby. We tested the audio, then settled down with some sandwiches and bottled water, because it looked like it might be a long wait until Stan showed up.
It was interesting to watch Gunter work—for about the first hour. He checked in visitors, accepted deliveries, and flirted with every guy who passed his desk, including the elderly Chinese man who brought the dry cleaning, the FedEx guy, the letter carrier, and the hunky UPS guy, who filled out his brown shirt and shorts in a way that was almost pornographic. I’d have flirted with him, too, if I’d been single.
Around four-thirty Steve Hart called to let us know that Stan was on the move, and about a half-hour later he showed up in the lobby. He was wearing his faux-cop outfit again, the tight white shirt with epaulets and form-fitting black slacks.
Ray and I listened in as he walked up to Gunter. “Haven’t seen your friend Kimo lately,” Stan said.
He was a couple of inches shorter than Gunter, but they were too far away for us to read Gunter’s expression. “Not for a couple of days,” Gunter said. He shifted from foot to foot.
“You and he ever fool around?”
Gunter shrugged. “A few times.”
“Pretty sexy guy. You should see him on tape. He’s got some interesting tastes. Likes a big dick pounding up his ass.” He smiled. “But then, who doesn’t?”
I was imagining Lieutenant Sampson listening to the tape when the front doors slid open and Mr. Hu walked in, holding Treasure Chen close to him in a way that implied he had a gun on her.
“Just got more interesting, huh?” Ray said to me in an undertone.
Stan looked surprised to see Mr. Hu. Because they stepped away from Gunter, I couldn’t hear what they said, but it looked like an argument.
“Shit,” I said to Ray. “What the hell is Mr. Hu doing here? How did he get hold of Treasure?”
“I talked to Treasure yesterday,” Ray said. “She was antsy, wanted to get out of Norma’s apartment. I tried to reassure her, told her a bunch of stuff about what we’ve been working on. I’m sorry, Kimo. She must have gone to Mr. Hu.”
My mind raced ahead. What if Treasure had attempted to use whatever Ray told her about our investigation to leverage her position with Mr. Hu? That would explain why Mr. Hu had come looking for Stan. Did he know that Gunter was my friend? Would he suspect that Gunter was wired up?
Stan walked back over to Gunter. “You’re coming with us,” he said. He nodded toward Mr. Hu.
“I can’t leave the desk,” Gunter said. “Any of the residents find out, they’ll complain to the manager. I’ll get fired, even if I say I was with you.”
“Getting fired is the least of your problems,” Stan said.
Grabbing Gunter by the arm, Stan half-dragged him toward the front door, Mr. Hu and Treasure following. “Do we stop them?” Ray asked.
“We don’t have anything yet.” I was torn between my desire to protect Gunter and Treasure and the need to get something on the two guys that would stick. Ray looked to me as the front door slid open and the four of them walked out.
“We follow them,” I said.
THE HOUSE IN BLACK POINT
Ray and I dashed for the staircase to the first floor. I radioed Steve Hart; he was parked in the loading zone in the front of the building. He told me that Stan, Mr. Hu, Treasure, and Gunter were getting into a Mercedes in the semicircular drive in front of the Regent. “Chinese guy driving, Chinese girl in the front seat,” he said. “The other two in the back seat.”
“Follow them,” I said. “We’ll be behind you.”
Ray and I both caught up to Steve a few blocks away from the Regent. We slid into a pattern, no one car tailing the subject too closely, trading off. We were out of transmitter range so I couldn’t tell what was going on in the car, or if Stan or Mr. Hu had figured out Gunter was wired up and disconnected him.
The streets of Waikiki were jammed. A teacher led a group of tiny keikis, all wearing name badges and holding hands, across the street in front of the Royal Hawaiian, and a man dressed like King Kamehameha, in a yellow headdress and an imitation kihei cloak, handed out coupons for Hawaiian Heritage jewelry.
Mr. Hu got stuck behind a bus, and we all had to drop back to avoid passing him. It looked like somebody had run into the bus shelter, knocking it into a coconut palm next to it. A few blocks on, the street was torn up for new crosswalks.
When Mr. Hu got onto the H1 he turned toward Diamond Head. “I know where we’re going,” I said into the radio. “Black Point.” I gave the other two cars the address and directions to the house where I’d met with Mr. Hu. “I’m going ahead.”
I moved into the passing lane, sped up, and zoomed past the Mercedes. It started to rain lightly and I turned on my wipers and my headlights, but by the time I got off the highway I’d passed through the shower.
When I reached the house, I radioed Steve and Ray. The three cars were bunched together down on Kahala Avenue, just about to enter Black Point. I parked uphill and jogged down to the mansion. The gates were locked, but I climbed a kiawe tree at one corner and jumped over the fence, landing hard on my right ankle.
I hobbled to the back of the house, where a cabana the size of a small bathroom sat just beyond the pool. It was unlocked and as empty as the rest of the yard, just a couple of broken-down old lawn chairs in one corner. It smelled like mold and chlorine. I saw light through a crack in the weathered old boards and lay down on the concrete floor, positioning myself so I could see out through the crack. I put the earpiece back in my ear, hoping that Gunter would still be transmitting.
“They’re approaching the gate,” Ray said on the radio. “Steve’s gone ahead. I’m parked just down the hill.”
I heard the gates opening, though they did not close again. Suddenly, I heard Mr. Hu’s voice in my ear. “We will have a conversation,” he said. “And depending on the results of that conversation, you may go free. Or not.”
Good. That meant that they hadn’t discovered Gunter was wired up.
“I already told you.” The new voice had to be Treasure’s. “I didn’t tell the police anything.”
Car doors opened and slammed. “They’re here,” I said to Ray and Steve on the radio. “Gunter’s still transmitting. Sounds like they’re going inside.”
The front door opened into a wide foyer and the living room, with big sliding glass doors on the far side leading to the pool and lanai. I remembered the room well. Two sofas with oatmeal-colored slipcovers sat at right angles, with a black lacquer coffee table between them. High-hat lights in the ceiling lit the room, and a big-screen TV was mounted on one wall. To the right was the dining room and kitchen, and a door to the garage.
The bedrooms were to the left. There were three, though most of the action took place in the master bedroom, which had sliding doors out to the lanai. The other two bedrooms were smaller and faced the street.
“Wait here,” I heard Mr. Hu say.
Two sets of footsteps faded away, Mr. Hu’s dress shoes and Treasure’s heels on the marble floor. Then I heard a fist hitting flesh.
“
Ow!” Gunter said. “What the hell was that for?”
“You set me up, you little bastard,” Stan said. “Isn’t that what the girl was saying? You told your buddy Kimo about our deal. Somehow he managed to connect me to Richard’s operation.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gunter said. “I haven’t talked to Kimo in a couple of days, like I told you. And I wouldn’t tell him about this deal. He’s a cop, remember? He’d turn me in. And I wouldn’t get any money.”
“We’ll see if you change your tune when Richard hooks you up,” Stan said.
The second bedroom was the dungeon. The walls were painted black, the curtains nailed to the wall so no light came in. I’d only been in there once, but the experience had both frightened and excited me. All the toys there were designed to enhance sexual pleasure, but I was sure that Richard Hu had no compunctions about using them to cause pain instead.
I didn’t know what they had all talked about in the car, but I hadn’t heard anything on tape that was incriminating enough to bring either Stan or Richard up on charges. As much as I wanted to swoop in and rescue Gunter and Treasure, I had to hold out a little longer.
“What’s going on?” Ray said through the radio. “Can you hear anything?”
“Nothing yet. Mr. Hu took Treasure away somewhere.”
“SWAT team should be in position within ten, fifteen minutes,” Ray said.
I heard the sounds of footsteps returning—just one set, this time. “The girl’s in the third bedroom,” Mr. Hu said. “We can take your friend here into the playroom and see what he has to say.”
“I don’t appreciate being dragged around like this,” Gunter protested. “I thought we were going to make a deal, Stan. What’s going on?”
“You made a deal already,” Stan said. “With your buddy Kimo. Now you’re going to tell Richard and me exactly what that involved.”
Footsteps. A door opened. There was some scuffling. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Stan said.
I wondered what they were going to do to Gunter to get him to talk. Would they take his clothes off and discover the wire? “Handcuffs,” Gunter said. “Kinky.” I heard some rustling and snapping, and then he said, “Hey, those leg restraints are too far apart. That hurts.”
“Good,” Stan said.
“I’ll deal with this,” Richard said. “You go prepare the house.”
“The stuff’s still in the garage?”
“I haven’t touched it.”
Footsteps faded away, and then a door closed. “Stan’s on his way to the garage,” I said into the radio. “Is somebody in position to see what he’s up to?”
“I’ve got a visual,” Steve said. “The door’s opening from the inside.” There was a pause, and then he said, “Jesus Christ.”
“What’s up?”
“The guy’s got enough gasoline stocked there to burn down the Aloha Tower. He’s picking up one can. From the way he’s carrying it, it must be full. Walking around the back.”
Through the crack in the cabana wall, I saw Stan come around the corner and lay a can of gasoline on the ground. He pulled a cigar from his front shirt pocket, put it in his mouth, and lit it. He puffed for a minute, then blew out a smoke ring. Once the cigar was burning to his satisfaction, he picked up the can and began pouring gasoline at the base of the house. “He’s going to burn it,” I said.
“Your friend has ruined a very lucrative business,” Richard Hu said in my ear. “My cousin in Gansu recruited good-looking men and women and got them tourist visas. I put them to work and made a lot of money.”
“The kind of work Stan wanted me to do?” Gunter asked.
“Catering to sexual desire is the oldest profession, you know,” Richard said.
Gunter yelped. “That hurts.”
“Good. We’ll be walking that fine line between pleasure and pain, though I’m afraid things will lean more toward the painful.”
Where was the SWAT team? Did we have enough yet to charge Richard? He’d admitted bringing in the aliens and putting them to work as prostitutes.
“Those guys Stan brought into the Regent, are they hustlers who didn’t work out?” Gunter asked. Despite his earlier wimpiness, Gunter was showing himself as a trouper, keeping an eye on what he could get on tape.
“Some of them,” Richard said. “Chinese women are much better at performing sexual services for pay than Chinese men. But there is always a demand for young-looking Chinese boys. I worked them until their asses were too sore to continue and then turned them over to Stan. He found them jobs in security, maintenance, yard work.”
That was enough to get a search warrant. But we couldn’t go into the house until the SWAT team arrived. Where the hell were they?
“Any word on the team?” I asked through the radio. “I can see Stan, and he’s getting the house ready for a burn. I’m not sure how much longer we can wait.”
“The team’s stuck in traffic,” Steve said. “There’s a pileup on the H1, and they were right behind it.”
“So we’re on our own,” I said.
THROUGH THE FIRE
“Lee and I can take the guy with the gas can,” Steve Hart said over the radio.
“I’ll go in the front,” Ray said. “There’s a uniform here, too, Portuondo. She and I will get Treasure.”
Pushing open the cabana door, I saw Steve and Lee emerge from the bushes and tackle Stan LoCicero. I drew my gun and rushed for the sliding doors into the living room, feeling the pain in my twisted ankle. In my ear, I heard Mr. Hu say, “I think it’s time to move to the next level, don’t you?”
Something rustled, and Mr. Hu said, “You’ve been wired. You bastard.”
I heard that flat sound of flesh hitting flesh again, and Gunter howled. The glass doors were locked, so I stood back and shot through one of them. I grabbed a lawn chair from the cabana and used it to knock away the broken glass.
Sirens howled in the distance. Ray and Lidia Portuondo burst through the front door as I made it into the living room, and I sent them to the third bedroom. The door to the dungeon room was locked, but it was flimsy plywood and one well-aimed kick at the knob knocked it loose enough that I could shoulder my way in.
As the door swung open, I saw that Gunter was still clothed, though his shirt was unbuttoned and the wire was hanging loose. He looked angry rather than frightened, and he was strapped to the wall in a position like Leonardo’s Vitruvian man, his arms out to his sides in handcuffs, his feet spread and cuffed to the floor. Mr. Hu stood next to him, holding a gun to Gunter’s head.
I had my weapon drawn, but we were in a standoff. If I shot Richard, there was a good chance he’d get a shot in at Gunter before he fell.
“I thought I’d see you here, Kimo,” Mr. Hu said. “We seem to have a problem, though. How do you propose we solve it?”
“You give me the gun. I unhook Gunter, and we all go downtown.”
“That doesn’t work for me,” Mr. Hu said. It was hot and close in the room, and beads of sweat clung to his forehead. It was the first time I saw him close to losing his cool.
“That’s the way it’s going to work, though.”
He shook his head and smiled. “Ah, Kimo. Trying to be the top, are you? Forceful, determined? When we all know you’re a bottom at heart. You just want a big, strong man to tell you what to do.”
“I consider myself versatile,” I said. “Sometimes the top, sometimes the bottom. Right now, I’m the top. And unless you want to find yourself on the floor licking my shoes, you’ll do as I say.”
Gunter laughed, which says a lot about his character, considering he was strapped to the wall with a gun pointed at his head.
My radio crackled. “That asshole tossed his cigar into the gasoline,” Steve said. “You’d better get out of there fast.” As he spoke, I smelled the smoke myself.
“Stan always did get ahead of himself.” A bead of sweat dripped down the side of Mr. Hu’s face. I felt the sweat pooling i
n my lower back, too. “He wasn’t supposed to start the fire until he and I were ready to leave.” He looked at me. “But that does lend a certain urgency to our negotiations, doesn’t it?”
“He has a small dick, doesn’t he, Kimo?” Gunter asked me. “Is that why he’s such a jerk?”
Mr. Hu’s attention was diverted, as if he was about to unzip right there and prove Gunter wrong. For just a moment, his gun hand pointed away from Gunter, toward the far wall.
I took advantage of the distraction, firing three shots in short succession. He fell to the ground, crying out in pain. We’re always taught to aim for body mass—anywhere on the torso. But I hadn’t been out to the range in a while and my aim was rusty. From where he was grabbing, it looked like I’d hit a little lower than I wanted, in Richard Hu’s upper and lower thigh.
Ray burst in then, jumping on Richard and taking the gun from his hand. I pulled Richard’s jacket off, looking for the keys to the handcuffs holding Gunter, and then Ray slapped a pair of cuffs on him.
The keys weren’t in any of his jacket pockets, so I patted down his pants as he lay on the floor, loosing a stream of invective in Mandarin Chinese that was worse than anything I’d ever heard Uncle Chin say. He tried to kick me but I sat on his calves, ready to unzip his pants and pull them down if I had to.
My hands were slick with his blood by the time I found a pair of small keys in the back pocket of his suit pants. I wiped my hands on his white shirt so that the keys wouldn’t slip away from me and used the back of my arm to move the sweat from my forehead. “My hero,” Gunter said as I stood up. “I’m glad you showed up when you did. I was about to piss my pants.”
I fumbled the keys once, dropping them to the floor, and as I bent down I felt a wave of dizziness. It was all the blood, I guess. I struggled to calm my stomach as I stood up again, my hands still shaking.
Mr. Hu was bleeding heavily from his leg. Ray flipped him on his back and said, “I’m not losing another shirt.” He leaned down and pushed aside Mr. Hu’s tie, then unbuttoned his white shirt and began ripping strips of fabric.
Mahu Vice Page 26
