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 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.