“I want to know a lot more about Mr. LoCicero,” Kee said, bringing me back to the present.
“So do I.” I told him I thought his investigation might tie into the arson and homicide Mike, Ray, and I were pursuing.
“I want you to find out everything about LoCicero,” Kee said. “Where he’s from, what he’s into, down to what kind of toilet paper he uses. I want you to know him as well as you know your best friend.”
“I’m on it.”
“Tell your friend to stall for a day or two. Say he’s got a flu bug or something, call in sick. Once we know more about LoCicero, we’ll know how to proceed.”
When I got upstairs, I called Gunter and told him what Kee wanted. “Fine with me,” he said. “I didn’t want to go to work today anyway.”
“I’ll call you tonight. We’ll do some brainstorming.”
“I brainstorm best over alcohol,” Gunter said. “Preferably in the presence of hot, handsome manflesh.”
“No you don’t,” I said. “And I’d stay away from the Rod and Reel Club if I were you, since Stan knows that’s your hangout.”
“You sure know how to ruin the fun of a day off.”
“Gunter, you have enough resources to entertain yourself for a month without breaking a sweat. I’ll call you later.”
By the time I hung up, Ray had returned from court. I briefed him on what I’d heard from Frank O’Connor and Lieutenant Kee. He asked, “What was the name of LoCicero’s company?”
“Mahalo Manpower.”
“That name sounds familiar.” He flipped through his notes. “Mahalo Manpower was one of the other companies owned by Wah Shing.”
“Well, that connects Mr. Hu and Mr. LoCicero.” That was a relief; it meant that all our cases were linked. We looked LoCicero up and found that despite his appearance on Vice’s radar, he had no criminal record. He owned a house in Hawai’i Kai, near where Treasure Chen had lived, and a Harley-Davidson VRSCDX, the Night Rod Special, was registered at his address. The corporate office for Mahalo Manpower was in a small building just on the other side of the H1 expressway.
“I say we find Mr. LoCicero and follow him around for a while,” I said. “See where he goes and what he does.” I thought for a minute. “And I think this is a good time to bring in our computer consultant.”
“Your friend Harry?”
“The same. There must be something in cyberspace about Stan LoCicero.”
“In the meantime, maybe Stan will lead us to Mr. Hu.”
We roughed out a plan, and then got Lieutenant Sampson to buy into the program. “With your permission I’m also going to get my friend Harry to do some cybersearching on him,” I said.
“Your friend still charging the same price?”
Harry had always worked for free, to help me out and because he loved poking around in places he wasn’t supposed to be. “Sure.”
“Then it’s fine with me. You need any overtime, I’ll authorize it.”
Back at my desk, I put everything I knew about Stan LoCicero into an e-mail to Harry. “I sent you a message, brah,” I said, when he picked up his cell.
“Just got it.”
It sounded like he was in some public place, so I said, “Where are you?”
“Looking at wedding invitations with Arleen.”
“How’d you get the e-mail, then?”
“BlackBerry,” he said. “Welcome to the twenty-first century, brah.”
I was barely up to speed with my laptop. “You have time to look into it?”
He lowered his voice. “Arleen’s got us booked all afternoon with wedding crap.” Back at normal volume, he said, “If you need this stuff ASAP, I’ll get right on it.” I heard him explaining to Arleen in the background. When he came back to me he said, “I owe you one, brah. Talk to you later.”
Ray and I drove to the offices of Mahalo Manpower. A black Mercedes was parked in the lot, and the license plate corresponded to one of the three cars registered to Wah Shing. Who was driving it, though? Richard Hu? If it was Stan’s car, it was one more thing that connected him to Mr. Hu.
My stomach grumbled. “Stan’s probably working. Let’s get something to eat, then come back here at the end of the day,” I said. We drove up University to a Zippy’s near UH and got some of their killer chili, and sat in the front window to consider what we knew.
Ray pulled out a steno pad and said, “I’ve been making some notes.”
The pad reminded me of Mike Riccardi, and I remembered the electricity that had passed between us the night before, wondering what would have happened if Gunter hadn’t shown up when he did.
But that, as they say, was another story entirely.
MEN WHO SAY MORE THAN HI
Ray turned to a clean page and wrote Wah Shing in the center, drawing a circle around it. Then he drew a line to Mahalo Manpower, and circled that, too. He did the same for each of the business names we knew about, including the acupuncture clinic, the massage parlor, and the lingerie store. The only name I didn’t recognize was Island Internet. I called Harry and asked him to check it out.
“So who’s behind Wah Shing?” Ray asked, when I hung up. “Mr. Hu?”
“Must be. He’s the only guy who comes up over and over again. And the house he lived in is owned by Wah Shing.”
“How’d you hook up with him, anyway?”
I closed my eyes and tried to remember. Had I answered his ad? Had he answered one of mine?
I joined MenSayHi about a month after I broke up with Mike, once the gonorrhea was completely gone. I’d been celibate since my diagnosis and the horniness was building up. The first guy I answered said his name was Lenny, and that he was a muscular top into dominating other well-built, well-hung men.
I flattered myself into thinking he’d believe I fit the bill, and e-mailed him a couple of digital photos, including one of me flexing with a hard-on. My face was always in shadow; because of my very public coming-out, I had a recognition factor in the gay community and I wasn’t eager to reveal myself to a total stranger.
Lenny responded a day later and we met up at his house in Mililani, where he had a variety of toys, including dildos, vibrators, and a sling. “I thought I recognized you from your photo,” he said, when I showed up.
We had some fun together, and when we were done he said he had a friend I might like to meet. I was noncommittal, and over the next few weeks I answered a number of ads and had a lot of sex. Some of it was good, and some was bad. By the time I heard from Lenny again, I was ready for somebody who knew what he was doing, and I agreed to meet up with him and his friend.
My first impression of Mr. Hu was that he was very ordinary. A middle-aged Chinese guy wearing a business suit, he looked more like he was ready to interview me for a job than to fuck me.
But fuck me he did, after watching Lenny do the same.
I couldn’t put my finger on it then-and even now, after months of encounters, it’s hard to quantify-but there was something about him that I connected to. It was as if he got me, in some very basic way, and I reacted to that.
It was similar, in a way, to what I felt for Mike. I loved Mike, and I didn’t love Mr. Hu at all, but I felt like they were able to see into me and accept what they saw.
I couldn’t explain all that to Ray; I barely understood it myself. So I simply said that I’d met Lenny online and then he’d introduced me to Mr. Hu a little later.
“You know anything about this Lenny?” Ray asked. “Maybe he could give us a line on Mr. Hu.”
I couldn’t remember the address of the house in Mililani, but I thought I’d recognize it again if I saw it. “Let’s take a drive,” I said.
We’d just thrown away our lunch trash when my cell phone rang. “Hey, brah,” Harry said. “Island Internet owns a couple of Web sites-looks like they’re all gay porn, gay hookups. The big one is called MenSayHi. com.”
“Thanks, brah. You have an address on them?”
“In Mililani.” He read it to me and I wrote it down.