Free Mahu Vice by Neil Plakcy Page B

for a while, thinking. I knew that what I had been doing was wrong, and that I needed to stop.” His mouth set into a frown and his brows came together. His palms were sweating and he wiped them on his pants.
    I knew the feeling. I’d had it myself, more than a few times. It wasn’t until I’d come out of the closet that those feelings of shame began to fade away.
    “After a while I knew I couldn’t just sit there forever, and I was about to leave. I saw this guy, like a ninja or something, all dressed in black, come running out from behind the shopping center. From where I was parked, I couldn’t see where he went, but about a minute later, a dark sedan came zooming across the parking lot, turned onto Waialae Avenue, and drove off.”
    A group of students passed us, laughing and fooling around. One of the guys was shirtless and buff, and I watched my caller’s eyes track him as he passed. I could see beads of sweat pooling on his forehead. “Just then my cell phone rang, and I saw that it was my wife. She wanted to know when I was coming home.”
    He wiped his forehead. “I told her that I was just leaving the campus. She wanted me to stop at the ABC Store near our apartment and get some milk for the morning. We talked for a couple of minutes, and I was so scared that she knew I wasn’t at the library at all.”
    A gray cloud passed overhead, heavy with rain, throwing us into shadow. “When I hung up the phone, I turned the car on and rolled down the windows. As I drove away, I smelled smoke and realized it was coming up from behind the center, and I called 911.”
    “That was pretty good of you,” I said. “Considering the circumstances.”
    “I’m not a bad person. I believe in the law.” He paused. “I saw you on TV, and I thought I could trust you. That you’d understand.”
    A cool breeze swept past us, rustling the dead leaves under the kukui tree. “I do. I understand. Tell me about this ninja. Man or woman?”
    “Definitely a man. I saw the way he ran.”
    “Height? Weight?”
    He shrugged. “Too far away to see much. Maybe a little on the chunky side, average height, but I didn’t pay a lot of attention.”
    “How about the car. Did you notice anything about the car as it drove away?”
    “Fancy sedan,” he said. “BMW or Mercedes. I have to drive a piece of crap Toyota. I tell you, as soon as I pass the bar I’m leasing one of those nice cars.”
    “Color?”
    “Dark blue,” he said. “With a white interior.”
    “You saw that in the dark?”
    “Oh, the ninja’s car. I thought you were asking about the car I want.”
    I wanted to bop the guy on the head. He was cheating on his wife, and maybe he’d married her just so that her father would put him through law school. But he thought he was honest and righteous because he’d called me. I did understand the pressure he was under, though, so I cut him a little slack.
    “The ninja’s car,” I said patiently. “Notice anything about it? The color?”
    He shook his head. “Dark color, that’s all I saw.”
    I pulled out a business card and scrawled my personal cell on the back. “If you think of anything more, please call me,” I said.
    “You don’t need to know my name?” The relief was evident on his face.
    “I appreciate your call, and the information you’ve given me,” I said. “But I have your e-mail address if I need to get in touch with you. I don’t want to know your name because I don’t want it to get into any paperwork.”
    “Thank you.” It felt as though he wanted to hug me, but it was a public place—and after all, we’d done a lot more than hug the one time we’d hooked up. He settled for shaking my hand once again.
    I watched him leave, and Ray came over to me. I told him what I’d learned. “Ninja, huh?” he said.
    “Yeah. A ninja in a fancy sedan.”
    “Arson pays well,” Ray said.
    “Better than police work,” I said.

FINALISTS FOR MISS CHINATOWN
    Ray hung around UH to wait for Julie,