Neil Plakcy - Mahu Vice

As a patrolman, and then a detective, I kept on surfing. I’d see a dead body, and then having to focus on the way the wind blew would clear that vision away. I’d comfort a victim of a mugging or rape, and the waves would wash away some of the pain I picked up from them. An investigation would help me understand the reasons why a criminal acted the way he did, and the relentless action of the surf showed me the potential for renewal. The faces of the dead stayed with me, but at least I was able to refresh myself for another day.

It was just before six, and the sun was about to rise over the Ko’olau Mountains, illuminating all of Waikiki in a watery, golden light. Next to me, I saw a dark-haired guy a few years younger than me, burly and tattooed, with a kid who couldn’t have been more than five or six. He was teaching the boy to surf in the gentle waves, holding him up on the board at first, then letting him go, cheering him on when he made it safely to shore.

I paddled out beyond the breakers and lay there on my board for a while, remembering the times my father had brought me down to this very beach to teach me how to ride the waves. I was the same age as that boy, my brothers in their early teens. I wanted to be like them, to be accepted by them, and so I worked my little butt off to be a good surfer. I pestered my dad to drive me down to Waikiki every weekend, and somehow he made the time, between all the hours he spent starting his business, doing the work of every trade he couldn’t afford to hire. My brothers worked with him, then, and they were my allies when I wanted him to skip work and go to the beach.

I rode a couple of waves, the white foam rushing toward shore and then the undertow receding. Fingers of sunlight peeked out over the Ko’olau Mountains, and Kalakaua Boulevard buzzed with early deliveries, joggers, and tourists who hadn’t adjusted their body clocks yet.

I couldn’t stop worrying about Mike and thinking about the dead boy, about the teenagers I used to mentor at the Gay Teen Center on Waikiki, who I’d forgotten about once I got so caught up in my own problems, about all the people I’d let down. So I quit and went back to the station. Maybe there I could do some good.

When Ray showed up, I gave him the list of tenants and he started setting up appointments with them. The only number we had for the acupuncture clinic was disconnected, though, and the lease had been signed on behalf of a corporation, Golden Needles, Inc. The signature was illegible, and the rent payments had been transferred directly from the corporation’s bank account.

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.