Aunt Mei-Mei laughed, exposing a row of tiny white teeth. “Acupuncture,” she said, and it was good to see her smile. She hadn’t done enough of that since Uncle Chin’s death. “No acupuncture if Norma there.”
“That’s what we were thinking,” I said.
“Do you know how to get in touch with her?” Mike asked. “These dumplings are amazing, by the way.”
I’d been so busy eating I hadn’t stopped to tell Aunt Mei-Mei how good they were, but I did.
She waved her hand. “Just dumplings. Lots more food in kitchen. Jimmy’s friends, they always hungry.”
“Norma Ching,” I said.
“I no want to talk about Norma,” Aunt Mei-Mei said. “You eat.”
I was about to protest, but a car pulled up in the driveway, with the sound of loud music and laughter. Aunt Mei-Mei’s face broke into a smile again, and she hurried to the door. “You okay to stay?” I asked Mike.
“If the rest of the food’s as good as this, I’ll move in.”
Jimmy’s friends were all guys from his dorm, mostly straight, as far as I could tell, and as Aunt Mei-Mei had said, they were all hungry. We ate honey chicken, white rice, wonton soup, more dumplings, spare ribs-the woman must have been cooking all day to generate so much food.
The guys were all curious about being a cop and a fireman, and we carried on rapid-fire discussions, even as Norma Ching kept percolating in the back of my mind. One of the guys said, “Man, you guys must get a lot of babes in your jobs.”
I looked at Mike, and he looked at me, and we both burst out laughing. Jimmy laughed, too, then looked at his friend and said, “Dude, can’t you tell? They’re both gay. They used to be boyfriends.”
My heart did a flip-flop and I stole a glance at Mike. He was intent on eating.
The guys didn’t seem to care, just kept peppering us with questions. It was almost nine before we finished.
The boys left first, after lots of compliments to Aunt Mei-Mei, and kisses and hugs from her. “The poor woman’s going to spend the next two days cleaning up,” Mike whispered to me as we watched them pile into somebody’s old Chrysler LeBaron convertible, a rental car reject from the 1980s.
They turned up the car’s meager stereo and backed away, heading downhill to the tune of some Jawaiian reggae. “The future of America,” Mike said, as we walked back to the kitchen, where Aunt Mei-Mei had begun loading the dishwasher.
“Let us help you,” I said.
“No, no, you go,” Aunt Mei-Mei said.
“About Norma Ching,” I began, but Aunt Mei-Mei held up a tiny hand with pink lacquered fingernails.
“I have to ask for address for you,” Aunt Mei-Mei said. “Someone tell me.”
We had to be content with that. But there was something else there, and I knew I couldn’t let it loose. When we were back in my truck, I picked up my cell phone and dialed my parents’ number.
My dad answered. “Hey, Tutu Al,” I said. “Howzit?”
“I’m not your tutu, boy.” He was grumpy, which probably meant my mom was watching his diet. “You can call me Dad.”
I laughed and said, “I’m driving, Dad, so I’m putting you on speaker. You ever hear of a woman named Norma Ching?”
There was silence on the other end of the phone, and for a minute I worried he really was angry that I’d called him grandpa. “What do you want with Norma?”
“Why does everybody ask me that? Aunt Mei-Mei said the same thing.”
“You asked Mei-Mei about Norma? Are you stupid?”
“Hold on, Dad. I’m missing something here.”
He sighed. “Your Uncle Chin was a good man, but he had many weaknesses. Pretty women were one of them.”
I remembered meeting Norma. “Dad, she’s an old woman.”
Mike poked me in the side and I looked across at him.
“She used to be one of the most beautiful women in Honolulu.” There was a wistfulness in my father’s voice that made me wonder a little. “She had Chin at the tips of her fingers. He bought her the apartment in Chinatown where she lives.”
I’d always heard rumors that Uncle Chin was a womanizer, but in the past my father had been cagey when I asked him. I knew that Tommy Pang was Chin’s manuahi, or illegitimate son, from a woman in Hong Kong, but I never paid much attention to any women he might have had after that.
“You know where that apartment is? Aunt Mei-Mei said she didn’t know the address, though she was going to try to find it for me.”
“Best to let Mei-Mei,” my father said. “She and Norma, they go back a long way. They were both finalists for Miss Chinatown, you know, way back when Chin and I were in college.”
“Aunt Mei-Mei?”
The disbelief must have crackled in my voice, because my father laughed. “We were all young once.”
I thanked him and hung up. “I can see that, you know,” Mike said. “I’ll bet Aunt Mei-Mei was quite a babe.”
“What do you think she meant when she said that if Norma was around there wasn’t any acupuncture going on?”
He shrugged. “Could be she knows about the gambling. You said her husband was a crook, yeah? You think she knew about his business?”
I shook my head. “She was always just a housewife. Uncle Chin never let her know anything that could have hurt her.” I paused. “I’ll tell Ray about your list tomorrow. I can take it down to Honolulu Hale, and run it by Akoni, too, in case Organized Crime knows anything. You got any other ideas?”
I realized I wanted to know if Mike had any ideas about the two of us-but I didn’t say that. Mike shook his head. “Making the connection to those other fires was my big leap. I’ll start going over the case files tomorrow. Maybe there’s a lead.”
I pulled into my parking space, wondering how the night was going to end. Mike yawned theatrically. “Got to get my beauty sleep,” he said. We stood next to each other beside my truck, both of us unsure how to part. Should I hug him? Shake his hand? Or just walk away?
We both made little movements toward each other, and I gave up and hugged him. It felt good to be close to him again. “It’s been good seeing you again, Kimo,” he said, as we pulled apart.
There was a warmth in his voice that thrilled me a little. “Me too. See you around.”
As he walked away I tried to make myself stop thinking about him, about the way his body had felt against mine. I watched him get into his truck, then wave as he drove past. I waved back, unable to shake the feeling that the evening had felt almost like a date.
I was too antsy after that encounter with Mike to go upstairs and go to sleep, so instead I changed into casual clothes and walked through the evening tourist crowds to the Rod and Reel Club. A tall Chinese transvestite and a haole surfer dude were laughing and talking in front of an ABC Store, and tiny orange-billed mynah birds pecked at crumbs on the sidewalk. Slack key guitar music spilled out of every other shop. I put my hands in the pockets of my board shorts and felt like whistling.
My neighborhood gay bar, the Rod and Reel Club, was like a second home, and as I hoped, Gunter was there, having just come in from his shift at the Grand Kuhio. There was another guy with him, a haole in his fifties wearing what looked at first glance like a police uniform-but wasn’t.
“Hey, Kimo, I want you to meet my new boss,” Gunter said, waving me over. “Stan LoCicero, Kimo Kanapa’aka.”
“The homicide detective,” Stan said, reaching out to shake my hand. “Nice to meet you. I admire everything you’ve done.”
He had an unlit cigar in the corner of his mouth, a ruddy complexion, and the lines and wrinkles that come with a life well lived. But I could see he’d been quite handsome when he was younger. “You don’t know everything I’ve done,” I said, and we all laughed.
I ordered a beer and we talked for a while. I couldn’t help checking Stan out; as Gunter had said, he was hot. His body was in good shape for a man his age-but it was something about his attitude that made him attractive. He looked like the kind of guy who’d learned a few tricks, and who’d be happy to show them off.
