“His name Jingtao,” she said. She had a strong Mandarin accent, and I could see Ray straining to understand her. “Only sixteen, seventeen. No more. He come from Gansu, very poor part of China.”
“Do you know how he got here?” I asked.
“He never say. I think someone bring him here to work illegal.”
“At the center?” I knew there were sweatshops on the island, places where illegal immigrants worked long hours sewing and working assembly lines.
She shrugged. “He no say much. He very afraid.”
From the way that Li Po fiddled with her hands, and avoided looking Ray or me in the eyes, I could tell she, too, was afraid. But of what? Had the boy told her something-did she know about the gambling at the acupuncture clinic? A travel agent has a lot of different clients. It made sense that one or more of them might have said something about placing a bet. Or did she know something else about the arson that she didn’t want to say?
I tried to get her to open up, with no success. She didn’t know anything about acupuncture, or gambling, or how Jingtao might have ended up in Honolulu. Shifting gears, I asked, “Did you ever talk to any of the other tenants?”
She shrugged. “Little bit, now and then. Nice lady in pharmacy. Sneaky husband. I feel bad for her.”
“How about the two women in charge of the clinic-you ever talk to them?”
She shrugged. “Once or twice, in parking lot. I think maybe they need help with travel some time, they come to me. But no.”
Between the language gaps, and Li Po’s fear, it was clear we weren’t going to get anything more out of her. After she left, Ray and I went over what we had. None of the tenants we spoke with had any motive for arson. The acupuncture clinic had closed their bank account and cleared out of the clinic before the fire, which was suspicious, but until we could get a lead on one of the employees, either the elderly dragon woman or the beautiful Treasure, we didn’t have anything to go on.
I called Akoni again, and he picked up the phone. “Eh, brah,” I said. “Howzit?”
“Not bad, not bad. Keeping busy.” I heard his fingers clicking on his computer keyboard in the background.
“You guys know anything about gambling out of an acupuncture clinic up in St. Louis Heights?” I asked, moving some papers around on my desk. “Place that burned the other night.”
“Don’t think so. Hold on.” He put the phone down while he called out to another guy in his unit. “Nope. Tony doesn’t know the place either,” he said, when he picked the phone up again. “But that doesn’t mean it was clean. What you got?”
“Just suspicions.”
“You get anything else, you let me know?” I heard Tony Lee say something in the background, and then Akoni said, “Gotta go, brah. Take care.”
Another lead down the drain. I was fiddling around on the computer, checking my personal e-mail while Ray and I both let our brains roam over what we’d learned, when I saw a message with the subject line Contact me about fire.
I didn’t recognize the sender’s address, except that it came from a student at UH. I clicked it open.
Kimo: saw u on TV. I called 911. Can u meet me 2 talk? There was a cell phone number below. I called Ray over and showed him.
“You know this guy?”
“Don’t know yet. Don’t recognize the e-mail or the number.”
Since I came out of the closet, I’ve occasionally been contacted by gay people in trouble. I’ve worked both sides of the street whenever I could. I help the person, if I can, and at the same time I try to provide a compassionate voice inside the station. Was this e-mailer someone I already knew-or just someone who recognized my name? But how could he have gotten my personal e-mail address? I was careful about giving that out.
Or at least I’d tried to be. During my dark time, after breaking up with Mike, I’d hung out online a lot, and every now and then I’d given out my e-mail address for some hot cyber sex, or as a way to hook up with some guy I met online. The more I thought about it, the more I figured this guy was someone I’d known-perhaps, I thought wryly, in the biblical sense.
I used my cell phone to call the number from the e-mail. “This is Kimo,” I said. Fortunately, Kimo’s about as common a name as you can get in the islands. Since I didn’t know who I was calling I was reluctant to start out with name and rank.
“Thank God,” the man said. “I have been very upset about what to do.”
He had a South Asian accent. “Well, let me see if I can help. You know something about the fire Sunday night?”
“I do not wish to talk about it on the phone. Can you meet me?”
I looked over at Ray, who was listening to the conversation from across the desk. “You at UH?”
“Meet me in front of the law school library. Half hour?”
“I’m downtown. I’ll get there as soon as I can. Will I recognize you?”
“I know you,” he said. “And when you see me, you’ll recognize me, too.”
He hung up. “You want to take a ride up to UH?” I asked Ray.
“Sure. Let me call Julie and tell her I’ll meet her up there.”
Clouds had swept in off the ocean, wrapping Diamond Head in ribbons of white, and a stiff breeze shook the palm trees on South Beretania Street as we left the parking garage. In the half hour that it took us to climb the hilly roads to Manoa, though, the trade winds had swept the clouds away and a brutal sunshine glared off every reflective surface. I parked at a meter near the law school. “You want to go over there alone?” Ray asked.
“Why don’t you hang back, but keep me in visual.”
He nodded, and I strolled up to the law school library, where students were congregating on the concrete steps and under the giant kukui trees, and walking on the paths. Somebody was playing Keola Beamer’s Wooden Boat, and the gentle rhythm of the slack key guitar made me smile.
I was looking at a notice board covered with decades of staples and the remnants of hundreds of flyers when a guy appeared next to me.
I did recognize him, though I’d never known his name. As I thought, he was one of my hookups from MenSayHi. com, an island dating site for gay men. He was about five ten, very handsome, with short, dark hair and skin the color of a coffee bean.
I knew the first time I signed on to MenSayHi. com it was a mistake. All it would take is one disgruntled trick to report me to the department, or start spreading vicious rumors about me being a sloppy bottom who loved to get plowed, and my career could go up in flames. I already had guys teasing me about working for the Department of Homo-land Security, or snickering behind my back. Cops are among the most homophobic guys I’ve ever met, pouncing on the straightest guy who mentioned seeing a chick flick, asking if he’d started pissing sitting down-anything to get a rise out of you.
But when it came to getting laid, I was willing to take a few risks.
I’d tried meeting guys in ordinary ways. I’d met my first boyfriend on the beach, and I’d met Mike on the job. I’d picked up, and been picked up by, guys at bars and clubs. But after I broke up with Mike, I didn’t want to go out. I just wanted to get laid, frequently, and in ways that reminded me what a lousy human being I was for the way I’d dumped Mike without giving him a chance to explain.
So I logged into MenSayHi. com and answered a couple of ads, and had some sexual encounters that went from bland to disturbing. The things I got off on scared me a little-mostly men treating me badly, physically, tweaking and slapping and pounding various body parts. Somehow I got punishment confused with sex; I thought because I’d been a jerk when I broke up with Mike, I should be treated that way by every guy I met. I’d always been a little intrigued by S amp;M, and I indulged myself and my throbbing dick.
A few of the guys had simply been closeted, though, and if I recalled correctly, this was one of them. “I’d rather not give you my name, if you don’t mind,” he said. I couldn’t place the accent, though it was South Asian.