It was another gorgeous day in paradise, so we rolled up the flaps on the Wrangler and hit the H1. We were surrounded by rental cars full of vacationing tourists, going slow, changing lanes without warning. I blasted my horn a couple of times, but it was a losing proposition.
After the third time I’d tailgated some clueless vacationer, Ray said, “I know this must be weird for you, getting your sex life dragged into a case.”
“Not so weird as you’d think. I wish it weren’t this way, but I have a habit of letting my dick get me into trouble.”
“Do tell.”
“Remember I told you about that case that dragged me out of the closet? I stumbled into it because I went to the Rod and Reel Club one night and I found a body behind the club. And then when I was undercover up on the North Shore, I fooled around with a guy who ended up getting killed.” I sighed. “Sampson gave me this big lecture then, how I had to learn to separate my personal life from my cases. But is it my fault that a guy I had sex with turns out to be a criminal?”
“Sampson might suggest you be more careful about who you have sex with.”
“And how do I do that? Require a background check from every guy before I get naked with him?”
“Come on, Kimo,” Ray said, grabbing onto the door frame as I took a fast curve merging onto the H2. “You knew there was something weird with Mr. Hu from day one. And then you said he admitted he paid that guy to fuck you. I’m not trying to bust your chops, you know, but those were red flags that you just ignored.”
“I know. I ought to be a monk.”
“No. You just need to find the right guy and settle down with him.” He looked over at me. “You think the right guy is the fireman?”
I shrugged. “Maybe. If he gets his shit together.”
I pulled off the H2 and started to navigate the local streets of Mililani, trying to find my way back to Lenny’s house. I spotted a car with a bumper sticker for MenSayHi and pulled up. “Here’s our address. And I think this is Lenny’s place.”
The house was a nondescript ranch, painted beige, with a couple of scraggly hibiscus bushes with big red blossoms in the front yard. Ray and I walked up to the front door and I rang the bell. It sounded like he had a herd of dogs inside, barking like crazy. It took a couple of minutes until Lenny answered, a pair of small, furry white Pekingese yapping at his feet. “Kimo,” Lenny said. “What’s up?”
I introduced Ray. “You mind if we come in and talk?” I asked.
“Sure.” He leaned down and picked up the two dogs. “This is Bette Davis, and this is Greta Garbo,” he said, showing them off. “I’ll put them in the bedroom.”
When he wasn’t wearing his leather chaps, with studded black straps crisscrossing his chest, Lenny looked like an ordinary guy. He was about six feet tall, broad shouldered, with a bit of a gut. He was barefoot, and wore a UH T-shirt and sweats. We followed him into the living room, and when he came back we all sat down. The furniture was a mix of styles, as if he’d inherited half of it and picked up the rest at a thrift shop. If I hadn’t had sex with him, I’d have doubted he was gay.
“What can you tell us about MenSayHi?” I asked. “What’s your connection?”
“I’m the webmaster. I’ve got a ProLiant DL380 G5 Server with quad-core processors and a smart array in my spare room, with a T1 fat pipe.”
“I didn’t understand anything you said,” I said. “But what I want to know is how you’re connected to Wah Shing Corporation?”
Lenny looked wary. “Wah Shing is our corporate parent. They provided the start-up funding.”
“Is Mr. Hu behind Wah Shing?”
“What’s this all about, Kimo?”
“That’s what we need you to tell us, Lenny. We’ve got this giant jigsaw puzzle, and we’re trying to fit the pieces together.”
Lenny looked from me to Ray and back. “I knew it was too good to last,” he said. “I met Richard Hu about two years ago, online, through another site. We hooked up, and after sex we started talking. I had this idea for a Web site, and Richard provided the money.”
He sat back against the sofa. “We launched about a year and a half ago. The main site is self-supporting through ads and basic memberships. Then there’s the private site, for premium members. Streaming video, live chat, exclusive photo galleries. You know, Kimo, it’s a class site.”
“Except for the prostitution in the background,” I said.
“Hey, I don’t get involved in any of that,” Lenny said, leaning forward. “Everything I do is completely legit. All I do is provide a venue for guys to hook up. What they do after they hook up is their business, and out of my control.”
“We’re not interested in you, Lenny. We’re interested in Richard Hu. What do you know about him besides the money he provided?”
“Should I have a lawyer?” Lenny asked.
I shrugged. “That depends. If you broke the law, then yeah, you should have an attorney to protect your rights and broker a deal. But if you didn’t, all you’re doing is giving us information, and nobody ever went to jail for that.”
Lenny shifted around uncomfortably on the sofa, then said, “I don’t know much. I never let him put cameras in here. Hell, I’m not interested in being somebody’s performing monkey. If I want to have sex, I want the only people watching to be people I invite.”
“But he filmed other people?” Lenny nodded. “And then he gave you the pictures to post, didn’t he?”
His face looked like he’d swallowed something nasty. “Come on, Lenny, I recognized myself.” I saw Ray looking at me. “I know I didn’t sign any release that said you could put naked pictures of me on your site.”
“You can’t see your face,” Lenny said. “It could be anybody.”
“I recognize my own ass.”
“Maybe I should call my lawyer after all,” Lenny said.
“Suppose I get the DA’s office to promise we won’t prosecute you for posting the photos. In exchange for you telling us everything you know about Richard Hu.”
Lenny said, “In writing?”
“That’s the way they do it over there.”
“Can I think about it for a minute? I need to talk to Bette and Greta.”
Somehow it didn’t surprise me that Lenny’s closest associates were a pair of Pekingese. He went into his bedroom and closed the door behind him.
Ray turned to me. “He has pictures of you on his site?”
“From the back. Nothing anybody else could recognize.”
“So Lieutenant Sampson wouldn’t know it’s you?”
“Unless he’s seen my naked ass, which I know I’d remember.”
Ray looked toward the bedroom. “Awful quiet in there. You don’t think…”
“Shit.” We both jumped up and hurried over to the bedroom. I knocked on the door. “Lenny?”
I turned the knob, half expecting to see Lenny sprawled on the floor dead, the Pekingese already starting to nibble on him. But instead he was on his back on the bed, one dog on each side of him. My blood pressure slowed as he said, “All right. The girls think it’s a good idea.”
I called an assistant district attorney Ray and I often worked with, and briefed him on the situation. He agreed to put something in writing. “You have a fax here?” I asked Lenny. He gave me the number, which I passed on to the ADA.
While we waited for the fax to come through, Ray asked, “You know a guy named Stan LoCicero?”
“Yeah. He works for Richard.”
“Doing what?”
Lenny shrugged. “Whatever Richard tells him. Richard funds a business for him, too. Some kind of temp agency.”
“Mahalo Manpower,” Ray said.
“That’s it. I’ve only met him a couple of times. The dude’s kinky.”
We heard the phone ring, and the fax in the other room pick up. “How kinky is Stan?” I asked.
“Dude’s kind of a firebug,” Lenny said. “Likes to smoke cigars, you know? And sometimes he likes to burn guys.”
Lenny left us again, and I knew that we had our connection between Stan and the shopping center arson. If the law student could put Stan, a known firebug, across the street from the center at the time it burned, that meant there was a very good chance Stan was our arsonist, and responsible for Jingtao’s death.