called Jimmy’s cell phone and offered to buy him lunch the next day. “I’ve got a test tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “I’ve got to cram. Can we make it Friday?”
“Sure. But while I have you on the phone-I understand you’ve been going down to Ala Moana Beach Park with kids from the GSA.”
“Yeah.”
“You ever run into a hustler named Lucas there?”
“Is he in trouble?”
“He’s dead. I’m trying to track what he’s been up to. He ever say anything about who he worked for, how he got his clients, that sort of thing?”
“There was some private website where he posted his pictures, and you needed a password to get on and contact him. It was all like a big secret. He said he had these important clients, very discreet.”
“You remember the name of the website?”
“It was something funny,” he said. “Like a pun on the name Hawai’i.”
“MenSayHi? That’s a public site.”
“Yeah, that’s it. He said there was some kind of private part you needed a password for.”
“Thanks, Jimmy. I’ll look into the website. And I’ll pick you up in front of Hamilton Library at noon on Friday.”
I logged on to MenSayHi when I got home. I’d spent a long time on the site during the year after my breakup with Mike, but I’d never signed up for the full membership. For free, they let you chat and send and receive messages, and that had been enough for me.
But after talking to Jimmy, I clicked on the link that read “Members Only.” A box popped up which read, “You are entering the premium area of MenSayHi. Please enter your premium user ID or click here to set up premium access.”
I followed the instructions. For your $9.95 a month, you got full-length videos, extensive photo galleries, webcams, and the ability to private message the actors in the webcams. I filled in my credit card information and clicked Submit.
The button reminded me of my experiences with Mr. Hu, where I’d definitely submitted to his will. I wondered if he owned the site, or was simply one of its primary users.
A window popped up asking me to wait while my information was verified, and then when it closed the screen behind it read “Welcome, Premium Member.” My dick stiffened as I saw the cornucopia of sex spread out before me. The screen was broken up into three categories: Galleries, Videos, and Webcams.
There were a dozen still shots of handsome men, of all types, under the Galleries heading. You could click on each guy to see a series of shots of him in various positions. The stocky black guy with close-cropped hair was jerking off in frame after frame, getting closer to orgasm in each one. The dude with greasy black hair and a football jersey was stripping down to a white jockstrap, showing his ass and then his dick.
The photos were better quality and more explicit than what was available for free. They were posed photo sessions with professional photographers, not some horny dude with a digital camera shooting himself getting off.
The last gallery I clicked on surprised the shit out of me. Not only did I know the guy, I’d fucked him. It was Sergei Baranov, my sister-in-law Tatiana’s brother.
I was so shocked that I jumped out of the galleries and went back to the home page. Was Sergei a video star, too? I clicked on the first video, and once again I was surprised and titillated. The quality was good and the guys were sexy and built. Two blond dudes got it on next to a swimming pool, the one in the pool occasionally taking a mouthful of water and shooting it into his partner’s ass.
Two jocks were fucking in the locker room when the coach walked in, first yelling, then joining in the fun. Two skiers traipsed into a living room with a roaring fire, stripping down and massaging each other’s tired muscles. A guy with a stopped-up sink volunteered to suck off the plumber who was flat on his kitchen floor.
I didn’t find any videos featuring Sergei, and I had to remind myself that I was looking for clues in my case. How had Lucas participated in this site? I went back to the photo galleries and found a series of shots of him in action.
His photo set displayed his chief attraction, that ten-inch donkey dick. I’d only seen it briefly in person, though of course I’d felt it shearing me in two. I opened up one picture in Photoshop and zoomed in. Man, he was big, and thick. No wonder he’d hurt me so much.
I went back to the photo set. There were more shots of Lucas in action, though in all cases you couldn’t see the face of the guy working on him. Some of the men sucking him were clearly older, from the occasional gray hairs I spotted and the jowls of a mouth spread wide open.
The last shots were of Lucas fucking guys. Some men were on all fours on beds, others lying next to him with one leg raised. The last few were men cuffed against a wall as Lucas fucked them. The scene looked familiar, and I realized that these photos had been taken in the living room of the mansion at Black Point.
It’s difficult to recognize yourself from behind, especially when half your body is obscured by another man, and the camera is focused on the sight of his huge dick getting ready to slam into your butt. But the guy in shot 34 had a small half-moon scar behind his right calf, just like the one I had from a wipeout when I was a teenager. Add in my general body type, and my black hair, grown a little shaggy at that time, and you had a definite match.
My erection wilted, and I went back to the home page. At the bottom of the screen were a half dozen windows that represented live webcams of naked guys. Below each window was a chat frame where I could initiate a conversation with the blond twink who looked like he hadn’t started shaving yet, the hefty Asian who was a few calories away from sumo wrestler, the brunet with tribal tattoos, or the black guy whose body was as ripped as a Mr. World contestant.
I wondered if they were all in Hawai’i, or if these cams were linked to dozens of sites around the country- maybe around the world. Was there a night shift of guys in Australia, a morning shift in Europe? Had Lucas been one of these guys? Could you chat one of them up and then make arrangements to meet in person?
I didn’t have the enthusiasm to pursue the site anymore, so I clicked off, then sat there on my bed wondering what I’d gotten myself into.
TOO HANDSOME
I had trouble getting to sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking of my picture on MenSayHi, and of Lucas, and how far he’d fallen, from gorgeous high-end hustler to, in Frankie’s words, a skanky ice whore. It reminded me of how tenuous our grip is on our lives. All it takes is a couple of body blows to knock you completely off course.
In my case, it was breaking up with Mike, and Mike had been kicked around by the breakup, too. I’d seen it in criminals and victims alike. Losing a job, or an apartment, or the death of a loved one, or a serious illness, could knock the shit out of your life. The lucky ones, like Mike and me, had family and friends to fall back on.
The unlucky ones ended up like Lucas.
The next morning I went down to Kuhio Beach Park and surfed for an hour at first light, and it felt good to be regaining the skills I’d lost. Every wave I caught, no matter how small, was a step forward in my rehabilitation. I forgot about Lucas, Norma, Jingtao, and the two unnamed hookers, and focused on the water. There was a welcome pain in my arms and legs by the time I was done, and I walked slowly back to my apartment, savoring the sunlight that was just beginning to gild the beach and the tops of the palm trees.
At work I told Ray what I’d learned from Frankie and Pua, and about my lunch plans with Jimmy on Friday. I didn’t say anything about what I’d found on MenSayHi; I wanted to think about it for a while, and see what else came up.
The lieutenant had pulled us out of the rotation so we could focus on the murders of Jingtao, Lucas, Norma, and the two Chinese hookers. “I want to do some research on this Wah Shing Corporation,” Ray said. “I’m thinking they might have some more real estate here in town, or some leases out there. Why don’t I work the phones for a while?”
“I’ll help.” I called Ricky Koele, and he faxed over a list of all the corporations with ties to Wah Shing. Ray started calling the big real estate companies, to see if any of them had dealings with the company. He didn’t learn
