Mahu Vice by Neil Plakcy Page A

wasn’t going anywhere fast. Maybe Tatiana’s brother would be just the distraction I needed to keep my mind off Mike Riccardi.
    “Didn’t look that way to me,” Ray said. “The way you were looking at him.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “I’m a detective, hotshot. I notice things about people. And I noticed there was enough heat rising off the two of you to start another fire.”
    I wasn’t sure which attitude made me more uncomfortable. A guy like Akoni, my former partner in Waikiki, who avoided the topic of my sexuality whenever possible, as if it was something smelly on the bottom of his shoe. Or Ray, who was so comfortable with it that he wanted details. He treated me like any other guy, telling stories of his own and expecting me to reciprocate.
    I wasn’t that comfortable with myself yet. I’d only been out of the closet for two years, and I was still shy about sharing. Further discussion was forestalled because we reached the cell phone store. Ginny Tanaka was a chunky girl with a pretty face and long dark hair that hung straight over her left eye. As soon as she was finished setting up a calling plan for a young guy with a Mohawk and multiple tattoos, she came over to talk to us.
    “You see anyone suspicious hanging around the center?” I asked.
    “The only suspicious thing was that acupuncture clinic,” she said. “Men coming and going all the time. Some businessmen, some skanky. Lots of old Chinese men. And the place was busy all the time—even late at night. I mean, who goes to get acupuncture at eleven o’clock?”
    “You open that late?” Ray asked.
    Ginny shook her head. “I go to HCC, and I live with my parents and three brothers. There’s never a quiet time in that house. So I stay at work late and do my homework. Use the computer and stuff.”
    “You think you could identify any of these men you saw?”
    “Nah. Never looked at them that carefully. I mean, it wasn’t like any of them were young and cute.” From the way her eyes darted over to the Mohawk guy, who was browsing for accessories, I got an idea of her taste in men. “Plus, they kind of gave me the creeps. I didn’t want any of them to think I was spying on them.”
    Ray had already spoken by phone with the day clerk, who hadn’t had anything to contribute, so we thanked Ginny and drove back to the station, stopping to pick up lunch on the way. Ray had developed a taste for saimin , a Japanese lunch, and I teased him that he’d never get that back in Philly.
    “Who says we’re going back?” he asked.
    “I figured once Julie’s done with her degree, you guys would go home.”
    He slurped up some noodle soup and then said, “She’s got three, maybe four years left on her PhD. By then, who knows where we’ll go? We might stay here.”
    I nodded. When I transferred downtown from Waikiki I had spent six months working on my own. I figured it was because nobody wanted to work with the gay guy. Then Ray had walked in, refreshingly without prejudice, and once again I had a partner. We worked together well, and I was glad he was planning to stick around.
    After lunch, we drove out to Kahala, where the pharmacist had been transferred, along with his assistant, who was also his wife. The pharmacy was a small chain, and he told us they were lucky that the owners were willing to accommodate them, transferring another clerk so he and his wife could continue to work together.
    He was a skinny Filipino named Louis Cruz; his wife Lorna looked enough like him to be his sister. “I tried to get the old woman in charge to buy from us,” Lorna said. Louis stood behind the counter, Lorna in front. “But she said everything had to come from the owners.”
    I could tell from the face Lorna made that she didn’t trust that at all. “I used to work near a clinic like that,” she said. “They were always running out of stuff—rubber gloves, ballpoint pens. They were good customers.”
    “Can you describe this woman?” I asked.
    “Old