phone girl said. Lots of customers, all men. Some of them came into the pharmacy afterward, and as she said, ‘They didn’t look like somebody had been sticking needles in them.’”
We both laughed. “What do you think was going on in that acupuncture clinic?” I asked. “My guess is not acupuncture.”
“Back in Philly, we had a case like this, in Chinatown. They were using a clinic as a cover for a gambling operation.” He pressed one knee up against the dashboard of my truck. “I got called there for a multiple homicide. I walked in, there was this big round table, six guys sitting around it. Every one of them shot. Blood and guts and brains everywhere.”
“That’s grim.” I’d seen a couple of those cases myself, the ones that were so gruesome you kept seeing them in your mind for months or years after. I took a breath and tried to focus back on our case. “You get a lot of men coming and going from a place like that. Like the cell phone girl and the pharmacist’s wife said.”
“Skanky guys, too,” Ray said.
“And the beautiful girl could be some kind of waitress. Like in Vegas.”
“You know anybody in Vice? Maybe they heard about this place.”
“I can ask,” I said. “But we can make a little detour to Chinatown ourselves.”
I continued Ewa toward Chinatown. In Honolulu, we don’t use directions like north, south, east, or west. Mauka means toward the mountains, makai toward the sea, and Diamond Head is in the direction of that extinct volcano. Ewa, which is in the other direction, is toward the city of the same name.
“Remember that bookie, Hang Sung?” I asked as we drove.
“Guy looked like a weasel?” Ray asked.
“That’s the one. If anybody knows about gambling in Chinatown, he does.”
I pulled up at a seedy building on River Street, next to Nu’uanu Stream. “Last I heard, Hang was hanging out here. Up on the second floor.”
Hang was on a cell phone when we pushed past his secretary into a small office that overlooked the street. “Gotta go,” he said into the phone, hanging it up quickly and slipping it into his pocket. “Detectives. What a nice surprise.”
“Talk to me about acupuncture, Hang,” I said, sitting down in a hard wooden chair across from his desk. Ray sat next to me.
“Acupuncture? Helped me quit smoking.”
“You ever hear of somebody using an acupuncture clinic as a cover for a card game?” I asked. “Dice, betting, that kind of thing?”
Hang gave me a half smile. “Why would I know of such a thing?”
I leaned back in my chair and put my feet up against Hang’s wooden desk. I had known Hang since I was a kid; he was a business acquaintance of my Uncle Chin, my father’s best friend. In his day, Uncle Chin had been a major figure in one of the Honolulu tongs, the Chinese gang operations. Growing up around his house, I’d met a whole lot of guys like Hang, never realizing their criminal connections until I’d joined the police force.
Of course, Hang knew that I knew who he was and what he did, but we went through this little dance every time we met. “You’re a wise man, Hang,” I said. “You know a lot of things, I’m sure. And if you knew anything about a gambling ring operating out of an acupuncture clinic in a shopping center on Waialae Avenue, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”
“The shopping center your father owns?”
“Owned. He sold it last year.”
Hang nodded. “I know the center. I know a little about the clinic. But there’s nothing I can tell you about gambling there.”
“Nothing you can tell us, or nothing you will tell us?” Ray asked.
“Your partner is a man of great discernment,” Hang said to me, smiling. “Let me rephrase myself. I do not know anything about gambling at that facility.”
I wasn’t satisfied, but it was clear we weren’t going to get anything more out of Hang Sung until we had something to bargain with. I figured a trip to Vice was still in order. I put my feet down on the ground, dusted off the place on Hang’s desk where they had rested, then stood up, Ray following me.
“See you around, Hang,” I said.
Our next appointment, the head of the karate studio, a short, wiry Japanese guy in his early thirties, was waiting to see us by the time we got back to the station. His name was Yuko Mori, and he wore sweatpants and a sweatshirt with the arms ripped off-the better to show off his muscles, I guessed.
It wasn’t hard to get him to talk about the acupuncture clinic. “I tried to make an appointment,” he said. “The dragon lady kept putting me off. No appointments, very busy. Every time I tried to talk to Treasure, the old grandma pushed me away.”
“Treasure?” I asked.
“Beautiful,” he said, making motions with his hands to indicate the girl’s measurements. “I like a tall girl. You know where she is now?”
I shook my head. “We’re trying to get in touch with all the tenants, see if anyone saw anything suspicious.”
“Only suspicious thing I ever saw was how nice the gardener keep the grass,” he said. “Like somebody pay him extra. All the time guys working out there, trimming hedges, cutting grass. Waste of time.”
We thanked him, and he grumbled about having to find a new location for his dojo, which had just started to become profitable. He’d only had liability insurance because of the expense, so he was worried he’d have to take a job somewhere else in order to build up his savings.
So far, none of the tenants had shown a motive for arson. The cell phone store and the pharmacy were both chains; the fire was an interruption in business. Yuko Mori would suffer financially, so he had no motive either. Ray had talked to a guy from the mainland company that owned the center. They were in the process of hiring a new manager for their island properties, and he knew little about it more than its numbers. He confirmed it had been profitable and said the company had no idea what it was going to do with the burnt-out buildings and the land.
The acupuncture clinic was looking more and more suspicious. Could it be a front for a gambling operation? I went over to see Ricky Koele, a guy I knew who worked at the Business Registration Division, a state agency that’s a division of the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. They maintain the business registry for all corporations and other businesses in the state.
Ricky had been two years behind me at Punahou, the private school Harry, Terri, and I had attended, and we’d known each other through a couple of extracurricular activities. He had come to me a year before when his drug-dealing brother had been killed in a drive-by shooting in Wahiawa, one of the more dangerous parts of the island. Ricky was concerned because he’d overheard one of the investigating officers refer to the crime as NHI-no human involved.
Though Wahiawa was outside of my district, I’d reached out to a detective I knew there, Al Kawamoto, and he’d made sure that Ricky’s brother’s killer was brought in.
“That’s the Professional and Vocational Licensing Division,” Ricky said, when I met him at his desk and asked him about acupuncture. “There are twenty-five professional boards and commissions and twenty licensing programs. You’re looking for the Board of Acupuncture.”
“Can you tell me whose license is behind the Golden Needles Clinic?” I gave him the address on Waialae Avenue and he turned to his computer. It took him a couple of minutes, hitting keys and browsing screens. I listened to Lite 94.7 playing anonymous slack key guitar music over the office sound system while I waited.
“The clinic is run under the license of Dr. Hsing-Wah Hsiao,” Ricky said eventually. “Reason why it took so long, I looked up Dr. Hsiao. Turns out he licensed three other clinics as well-all of them since shut down. I’m printing you a list of all the clinics under his license. Looks like he’s a signologist.”
“What’s that? Some kind of specialist?”
Across from his desk I saw a printer kick into action. Ricky walked over to it and pulled the pages off. “When a doctor signs off on a lot of different licenses, we get the idea maybe he’s nothing more than a guy who likes to sign stuff for money. A signologist.”
He handed the pages to me. “Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate your help.”
“I owe you, Kimo. Come to me any time.”
I stuck my hand out to shake his, but he pulled me into a hug.
