Neil Plakcy - Mahu Vice

I listened to the details and said, “Already on the scene, partner. You want to come up here?”

Ray shared a car with his wife, a graduate student in East Asian studies at UH, and I drove us wherever we had to go. But on nights, he was able to get around on his own, so I gave him directions, then slapped the phone shut. I told Mike that my partner and I had caught the case.

In the low light I couldn’t tell if he was smiling or not. “Looks like we’ll be working together,” I said.

“Just like old times.” There was a flatness to his voice I couldn’t interpret.

We walked over to his truck, and just as we’d done the night we first began working together, we stepped behind it and pulled off our shirts, pants, and shoes, getting ready to don a pair of yellow fire suits. That first night, the air had nearly crackled with sexual tension, as I kept stealing glances at Mike’s body, and my dick rose up in appreciation of his finely chiseled abs, his biceps, and strong calves.

This time, though, the sexual tension that had been between us that first night was gone. There was a sadness in Mike that hadn’t been there before, and as I stepped into the pants, pulled them up by the waist, and then shrugged into the upper part of the suit, I kept remembering how we had broken up. I knew that I couldn’t trust my body’s reactions, because the last time I’d done so I’d gotten my heart broken.

The hood of my suit got tangled, and Mike had to help me fix it. I felt his hot breath on the back of my neck, the closeness of his body to mine. My traitorous dick jumped to attention and I had to force myself to ignore the way his hand passed over my back as he popped the hood into place.

Once dressed, we walked to the back of the salon, where we saw the charred remains of a body. Logic indicated it was the Chinese boy Tico had been sheltering in his back room, Jingtao, but it was going to be a pain to identify him, since there would be nothing to connect him to-no dental records, no fingerprints. We’d be lucky if his body type conformed to that of a pubescent boy of Asian origin.

Had the fire been set to kill him? Tico knew nothing about him, just a guess that he was on the run, that he had been abused. I regretted not forcing the issue the day before, when I had been in the salon. Perhaps if I’d called social services myself, had the boy taken away to a group home somewhere, the fire might not have happened, and he’d still be alive.

But that was getting ahead of myself. I looked at the burned-out ruin, finding it hard to believe that it had been a beautiful, lively hair salon just the day before. I could still make out the walls, the wash station, and a crumpled shelf that had once held Tico’s Barbie dolls, which were now a pile of melted rubber and charred fabric.

Looking down the center, through what had been the dividing walls between premises, I could see that the travel agency, karate studio, acupuncture clinic, cell phone store, and pharmacy were all gone, too. “Any idea where the fire started?”

“Behind the acupuncture clinic,” Mike said. “But the place went up fast. The wind carried the flames down the block-when the first engine got here the beauty parlor was already engulfed. The guy in the back didn’t have a chance, especially if he was asleep. Doesn’t look like there were fire alarms or sprinklers.”

“And now it’s up to us to figure out what happened.”

“Yup,” Mike said. “You and me.”

Ray showed up a few minutes later. He’s about five ten, wiry and tough, with sandy brown hair. He’d just made detective in Philadelphia when his wife announced she wanted to pursue a master’s degree in Asian studies at the University of Hawai’i. He’d joined HPD a little over a year before and become my partner.

He was Italian, very laid back, with an ironic sense of humor. He was also a savvy investigator, and though he was a newcomer to the islands, or malihini, he had a keen understanding of human behavior.

Two crime scene investigators were behind him, and after I got out of the fire suit, I briefed them all on what we knew. We blocked off the site with tape, and Ray and I walked out to the edge of the parking lot. The night was dark away from the arc lights; there was only a neon sign half a block away. I could see the pattern of streetlights that rose into the mountains around us, broken in places where the ridges were too steep for housing.

With all but one of the fire engines gone, traffic had resumed on Waialae Avenue: trucks and motorcycles and low-riding sedans. “We know who made the 911 call?” I asked.

“Nope.”

I looked across the street. Most of the block was taken up with a two-story office building-insurance agents, doctors, and so on. Next door to that was a used car lot, dark behind a high fence. “No neighbors to see anything,” I said.

“Nope.”

“Got any ideas?”

“Nope.”

“Know any words other than nope?”

“Yup.”

The perils of having a partner who thinks he’s a comedian. There wasn’t anyone to canvass, though perhaps the next morning our 911 caller might resurface, or a passing driver might call in a clue. Mike came over and said, “They’re working on the overhaul now.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Once we think the fire’s been extinguished, we send some guys in to search for any bit of fire we might have missed. They pull out the furniture, open the walls and ceilings. We want to prevent any possibility of rekindle-when the fire starts up again, after it’s been extinguished.”

In the glow of the arc lights next to the remaining fire truck, I followed Mike’s gaze back to the smoldering ruin. “I’ve got to stick around for the overhaul,” he said. “If they don’t do it right, they could remove evidence I need to determine the cause and origin of the fire.”

He stretched his shoulders back and flexed his arms. “Going to be a long night. After that, I’m going down to company 22 to talk to the guys there. How about we meet back here at six? Should be first light then, not too hot.”

“Ray and I are just finishing a night shift. We’re supposed to have two days off, then go back to days, but I’ll talk to my lieutenant and see if I can go straight to days tomorrow morning,” I said. “How about you, Ray?”

“Julie’s in school. Won’t matter to her if I’m off or at work.” He smiled. “Will get me out of a bunch of chores, though.”

The crime scene techs went off to look for anything related to cause of death-spent cartridges, rope that might indicate the victim was bound. Then the medical examiner’s office took away the body, and Ray and I waited around until they had cleared the site.

Then we went back to the District 1 station, inside the police headquarters downtown, and spent the next few hours clearing our desks so that we could focus on the dead body at the back of Tico’s salon. I believed it was Jingtao, who had so carefully touched my hair on Saturday, and felt that I owed it to him, to Tico, and to my family to figure out what had happened to him and bring his killer to justice.

Sampson came in at seven, and I explained the circumstances to him. He told us both to go home, get a couple of hours’ sleep, then clock back in. Ray left for home, but I drove directly up to Waialae Avenue. I was tired, but at the same time my adrenaline was high, and I was determined to work through my fatigue.

I wasn’t sure I could work with Mike again without all the baggage of our personal relationship. On the way up to the center, I wondered if I could shift coordination with Mike to Ray. That would be the coward’s way out, though. I would have to suck it up and work with him, and avoid being distracted by memory or sexual attraction.