“What’s the boss’s name?” Kee asked.
“Stan LoCicero.”
“You know the name of his company?”
“Mahalo Manpower. They have the security and maintenance contracts for the Kuhio Regent.”
He turned to his computer and started typing, two-fingered, cursing periodically as he must have hit the wrong key. “Goddammit, Juanita, get in here,” he bellowed after a while.
“What’s up, Lieutenant?” she asked, appearing in the doorway with a smile on her face.
“Come over here and type in my password.”
He moved back from the computer, and she leaned over and punched a few keys. “While you’re there, find whatever you can on a guy named Stan LoCicero or a company called Mahalo Manpower,” he said.
Juanita shot me a glance and I had to struggle not to laugh. Her fingers danced over the keyboard, and then with a flourish, she hit the last key. “It’s printing,” she said.
“Damned computers,” Kee grumbled as she walked out. He pulled a page off the printer and scanned it, then handed it to me.
There was nothing on the company, and the information available on Stan LoCicero didn’t fill a page. He had been mentioned a few times in the course of investigations-but then so had I. Nothing had stuck.
My brain buzzed, trying to fit together the pieces. Mr. Hu lived in a house owned by Wah Shing, which also owned the acupuncture clinic, which meant he was involved with the fire at the shopping center. He had hired Lucas Tyler to have sex with me. Lucas had told Vice that he was photographed or videotaped for blackmail purposes. And because Mr. Hu had set me up to have sex with Brian Izumigawa, I assumed he was the one behind the blackmail.
But was he connected to Stan LoCicero, Gunter’s boss? Or was there more than one guy out there videotaping gay men and blackmailing them?
Was Stan the haole guy who had burned Fouad, the law student? If so, had Stan left Fouad and then set the fire across the street? A lot of facts floated around, but what was missing was a good theory to tie them all together.
“I want to know a lot more about Mr. LoCicero,” Kee said, bringing me back to the present.
“So do I.” I told him I thought his investigation might tie into the arson and homicide Mike, Ray, and I were pursuing.
“I want you to find out everything about LoCicero,” Kee said. “Where he’s from, what he’s into, down to what kind of toilet paper he uses. I want you to know him as well as you know your best friend.”
“I’m on it.”
“Tell your friend to stall for a day or two. Say he’s got a flu bug or something, call in sick. Once we know more about LoCicero, we’ll know how to proceed.”
When I got upstairs, I called Gunter and told him what Kee wanted. “Fine with me,” he said. “I didn’t want to go to work today anyway.”
“I’ll call you tonight. We’ll do some brainstorming.”
“I brainstorm best over alcohol,” Gunter said. “Preferably in the presence of hot, handsome manflesh.”
“No you don’t,” I said. “And I’d stay away from the Rod and Reel Club if I were you, since Stan knows that’s your hangout.”
“You sure know how to ruin the fun of a day off.”
“Gunter, you have enough resources to entertain yourself for a month without breaking a sweat. I’ll call you later.”
By the time I hung up, Ray had returned from court. I briefed him on what I’d heard from Frank O’Connor and Lieutenant Kee. He asked, “What was the name of LoCicero’s company?”
“Mahalo Manpower.”
“That name sounds familiar.” He flipped through his notes. “Mahalo Manpower was one of the other companies owned by Wah Shing.”
“Well, that connects Mr. Hu and Mr. LoCicero.” That was a relief; it meant that all our cases were linked. We looked LoCicero up and found that despite his appearance on Vice’s radar, he had no criminal record. He owned a house in Hawai’i Kai, near where Treasure Chen had lived, and a Harley-Davidson VRSCDX, the Night Rod Special, was registered at his address. The corporate office for Mahalo Manpower was in a small building just on the other side of the H1 expressway.
“I say we find Mr. LoCicero and follow him around for a while,” I said. “See where he goes and what he does.” I thought for a minute. “And I think this is a good time to bring in our computer consultant.”
“Your friend Harry?”
“The same. There must be something in cyberspace about Stan LoCicero.”
“In the meantime, maybe Stan will lead us to Mr. Hu.”
We roughed out a plan, and then got Lieutenant Sampson to buy into the program. “With your permission I’m also going to get my friend Harry to do some cybersearching on him,” I said.
“Your friend still charging the same price?”
Harry had always worked for free, to help me out and because he loved poking around in places he wasn’t supposed to be. “Sure.”
“Then it’s fine with me. You need any overtime, I’ll authorize it.”
Back at my desk, I put everything I knew about Stan LoCicero into an e-mail to Harry. “I sent you a message, brah,” I said, when he picked up his cell.
“Just got it.”
It sounded like he was in some public place, so I said, “Where are you?”
“Looking at wedding invitations with Arleen.”
“How’d you get the e-mail, then?”
“BlackBerry,” he said. “Welcome to the twenty-first century, brah.”
I was barely up to speed with my laptop. “You have time to look into it?”
He lowered his voice. “Arleen’s got us booked all afternoon with wedding crap.” Back at normal volume, he said, “If you need this stuff ASAP, I’ll get right on it.” I heard him explaining to Arleen in the background. When he came back to me he said, “I owe you one, brah. Talk to you later.”
Ray and I drove to the offices of Mahalo Manpower. A black Mercedes was parked in the lot, and the license plate corresponded to one of the three cars registered to Wah Shing. Who was driving it, though? Richard Hu? If it was Stan’s car, it was one more thing that connected him to Mr. Hu.
My stomach grumbled. “Stan’s probably working. Let’s get something to eat, then come back here at the end of the day,” I said. We drove up University to a Zippy’s near UH and got some of their killer chili, and sat in the front window to consider what we knew.
Ray pulled out a steno pad and said, “I’ve been making some notes.”
The pad reminded me of Mike Riccardi, and I remembered the electricity that had passed between us the night before, wondering what would have happened if Gunter hadn’t shown up when he did.
But that, as they say, was another story entirely.
MEN WHO SAY MORE THAN HI
Ray turned to a clean page and wrote Wah Shing in the center, drawing a circle around it. Then he drew a line to Mahalo Manpower, and circled that, too. He did the same for each of the business names we knew about, including the acupuncture clinic, the massage parlor, and the lingerie store. The only name I didn’t recognize was Island Internet. I called Harry and asked him to check it out.
“So who’s behind Wah Shing?” Ray asked, when I hung up. “Mr. Hu?”
“Must be. He’s the only guy who comes up over and over again. And the house he lived in is owned by Wah Shing.”
“How’d you hook up with him, anyway?”
I closed my eyes and tried to remember. Had I answered his ad? Had he answered one of mine?
