On my way back to the station, I thought about why someone would burn the center. To cover up a gambling operation? But they’d already shut down. Could the boy have worked for them, perhaps as a runner? Hang Sung had been hiding something about the acupuncture clinic, but I didn’t know what.
Could the fire have been a ploy to break a lease? The clinic’s two-year lease still had six months to run, and the penalty for breaking it was stiff-the clinic had to cover the rent until the landlord could find another tenant at comparable rent, or until the end of the term. Was that a good clause for that mainland company-or a deadly one for the rest of the tenants, and the boy Jingtao?
ARSON PAYS WELL
Back at my desk, I faxed Ricky’s list to Mike, to see if any of the other clinics licensed by Dr. Hsiao had been burned. Ray said, “I nosed around while you were out. Organized Crime has a task force investigating gambling in Chinatown.” He handed me a list of the guys on the task force. “You want to call Akoni?”
Akoni Hapa’ele had been my old partner in Waikiki. I didn’t see him much anymore, though we were both working out of downtown; he had been moving around from operation to operation. As soon as I left Akoni a voice mail, our next interviewee arrived: Robertico Robles, or Uncle Tico, as my nieces and nephews called him. He managed to fit us in between scouting spots for his new salon, which he announced was going to be bigger and better than Puerto Peinado-which as far as I could tell meant “hair port” in Spanish, a sly pun that he and Tatiana loved.
We went into a small conference room decorated with artwork prepared by our Police Explorer troop-pictures of cops and palm trees and one of a hula dancer on the hood of a blue-and-white. Tico accepted a Styrofoam cup of coffee. “Thanks, I need the caffeine,” he said.
Despite his natural ebullience, I could tell he was troubled. “I feel so terrible for that boy. I shouldn’t have let him stay in the back room. I should have done what you told me, Kimo, and called social services. Either that, or taken him home with me.”
Since I knew Tico so well, we’d decided Ray would take the lead on questions. “You see anyone suspicious hanging around the shopping center?” he asked.
“Suspicious how? A guy with a gasoline can? Honey, I cut hair. All day long. I flirt with the ladies, I listen to them complain about their husbands, I try to steer them away from bad hair choices. I don’t get to lounge around outside looking for suspicious characters.”
“Tell me about the center. The new owners keep it up well? You ever get a sense that they’re letting it run down?”
“They used to have a local manager, but he quit and they haven’t replaced him yet.” Tico took another sip of the bad coffee. “As soon as a store closes, another is ready to take its place.”
“Anyone have a gripe against you, or any of the other businesses?”
He shook his head. “Not that I know. Most of our clientele is local, little old ladies and businesswomen from St. Louis Heights. I try to make them all happy.”
“What about the boy? You told my partner that you thought he was scared of something. You get any idea what that was?”
“Not a thing. I didn’t want to push him.”
“He ever tell you where he came from?”
“Just China. That’s all. I asked Li Po, the girl from the travel agency, to talk to him, but he wouldn’t tell her much either.”
Tico didn’t know anything about the acupuncture clinic, since his salon was at the opposite end of the center. “Better tenants than the last ones,” he said, referring to the Church of Adam and Eve, an anti-gay group that had been closed down a year and a half before.
When we left the conference room, Li Po was waiting at my desk. She and Tico embraced, both of them crying a little. She was a Chinese woman in her mid-fifties, a little too plump for the bright blue silk dress she wore. Her black hair was piled up on her head, kept in place with a pair of chopsticks.
She and Tico chattered for a few minutes, and then he left. We led her back to the conference room, where she sat with a big sigh. She said that she was swamped with trying to retrace all her client activity, since her computer had been destroyed in the fire, and with it all her records.
“We’ll try not to keep you too long,” I said. “Can you tell us anything about the Chinese boy who was sleeping in Tico’s back room?”
“His name Jingtao,” she said. She had a strong Mandarin accent, and I could see Ray straining to understand her. “Only sixteen, seventeen. No more. He come from Gansu, very poor part of China.”
“Do you know how he got here?” I asked.
“He never say. I think someone bring him here to work illegal.”
“At the center?” I knew there were sweatshops on the island, places where illegal immigrants worked long hours sewing and working assembly lines.
She shrugged. “He no say much. He very afraid.”
From the way that Li Po fiddled with her hands, and avoided looking Ray or me in the eyes, I could tell she, too, was afraid. But of what? Had the boy told her something-did she know about the gambling at the acupuncture clinic? A travel agent has a lot of different clients. It made sense that one or more of them might have said something about placing a bet. Or did she know something else about the arson that she didn’t want to say?
I tried to get her to open up, with no success. She didn’t know anything about acupuncture, or gambling, or how Jingtao might have ended up in Honolulu. Shifting gears, I asked, “Did you ever talk to any of the other tenants?”
She shrugged. “Little bit, now and then. Nice lady in pharmacy. Sneaky husband. I feel bad for her.”
“How about the two women in charge of the clinic-you ever talk to them?”
She shrugged. “Once or twice, in parking lot. I think maybe they need help with travel some time, they come to me. But no.”
Between the language gaps, and Li Po’s fear, it was clear we weren’t going to get anything more out of her. After she left, Ray and I went over what we had. None of the tenants we spoke with had any motive for arson. The acupuncture clinic had closed their bank account and cleared out of the clinic before the fire, which was suspicious, but until we could get a lead on one of the employees, either the elderly dragon woman or the beautiful Treasure, we didn’t have anything to go on.
I called Akoni again, and he picked up the phone. “Eh, brah,” I said. “Howzit?”
“Not bad, not bad. Keeping busy.” I heard his fingers clicking on his computer keyboard in the background.
“You guys know anything about gambling out of an acupuncture clinic up in St. Louis Heights?” I asked, moving some papers around on my desk. “Place that burned the other night.”
“Don’t think so. Hold on.” He put the phone down while he called out to another guy in his unit. “Nope. Tony doesn’t know the place either,” he said, when he picked the phone up again. “But that doesn’t mean it was clean. What you got?”
“Just suspicions.”
“You get anything else, you let me know?” I heard Tony Lee say something in the background, and then Akoni said, “Gotta go, brah. Take care.”
Another lead down the drain. I was fiddling around on the computer, checking my personal e-mail while Ray and I both let our brains roam over what we’d learned, when I saw a message with the subject line Contact me about fire.
I didn’t recognize the sender’s address, except that it came from a student at UH. I clicked it open.
Kimo: saw u on TV. I called 911. Can u meet me 2 talk? There was a cell phone number below. I called Ray over and showed him.
“You know this guy?”
“Don’t know yet. Don’t recognize the e-mail or the number.”
Since I came out of the closet, I’ve occasionally been contacted by gay people in trouble. I’ve worked both
