It was almost six forty-five by the time I dragged my sorry, exhausted and starving butt out of headquarters for the drive to Waikiki. Not even the prospect of seeing Mike Riccardi could generate much enthusiasm. I’d hoped to get home for a quick nap, a shower, maybe the chance to pretty myself up. No such luck; he’d have to take me battered and disheveled. And to top it off, every time I sat back I felt my shirt rubbing against the raw burn on my back. I was definitely not in a dating mood.
I’d never been to the restaurant he had suggested, a small storefront on Kuhio Avenue a few blocks ewa of my apartment. It was set between the lobby of a cheap hotel for vacationing Japanese and a Laundromat, where a bunch of German teenagers hung around their wash like sharks circling an unknowing surfer.
Mike was already there when I arrived, sitting at a table in the back drinking Chianti and bantering with a waiter. His hair was perfectly combed in a wave over his forehead, and his beige oxford-cloth button down shirt was spotless.
“Man, you look like shit,” he said in lieu of a greeting.
“I don’t know you well enough for such honesty,” I said. He looked terrific, of course; he had to have gone home and changed clothes. I didn’t know anybody who could keep pressed shirts so crisp after a day in the tropical sun.
“Come on, sit down. Want some wine?”
“Sure.” As he poured me a glass, the waiter brought us an antipasto platter, the greens glistening with olive oil, vegetables and cheeses all arranged carefully on a decorated plate.
“I ordered for both of us. I hope you don’t mind. They’ve got a terrific pasta puttanesca here-” he held up his thumb and two forefingers together in a gesture I’d only seen on television, then kissed his fingertips- “you’re gonna love it.”
This was sounding more and more like a date to me, and frankly I just didn’t have the patience for it. He was a gorgeous, hunky guy, sexy and charming, but all I wanted to do was get his information, watch the video tape, and then go to bed. Alone. I was afraid I might nod off before the pasta arrived.
“Let me tell you what I found out today,” I said. Before I left the station I’d printed out all my notes. As I started going through them, I noticed he’d pulled out the battered steno pad I’d seen him with the night before. Every now and then he stopped me for a question or two, making his own record.
When I was finished, he said, “You’ve been busy.”
“It makes the day pass.” The waiter cleared away our antipasto plates and refilled our wine glasses. “So, your turn now. What did you do today?”
“Like I told you on the phone, I went up to Central O’ahu to look over an arson-a pair of lesbians with a few acres of pineapple. Somebody torched their storage shed a couple of days ago, and at first I thought it was just kids, because it was so amateur.”
He sipped his Chianti. “But when I looked at it again, I saw a lot of connections to the bombing. Looks like the lesbians might have been a trial run for your guy.”
I shook my head. “We’ve got to stop these guys, Mike.”
“I know. While I was up there, I had guys go over the site again, and they found a couple of interesting things. Like a piece of pipe, for instance.”
“Pipe like you smoke?”
He shook his head. “Pipe like you put a bomb into. These guys are definitely amateurs. The fragment we found was only about three inches square, pretty standard hardware store issue. But it looks like we’re going to get a partial print off it. They were too dumb to use gloves-they must have figured all the evidence was going to blow up.”
“There’s something I don’t get. If they’re such amateurs, how do they know how to make a bomb in the first place? I couldn’t do it.”
“Sure you could. You’ve got a brain, right? And you know how to work a computer?”
“Pretty much.” The waiter brought a big tray of pasta, family style, and two plates. He prepared to dish it out, but Mike waved him away and started the work himself.
“So you get on the Internet,” he continued, as he heaped the creamy white pasta onto the plates. “And you do a search for ‘bombs.’ That brings up hundreds of hits. You start surfing around, you read, you go from link to link, and pretty soon you know almost as much about explosives as the fire department does.”
“I’d always heard about that, but I figured it was one of those urban folk tales-you know, some teenaged kid builds an atom bomb for his high school science project, and all he needs is the plutonium to make it work.” I paused to drink some more wine. “Can you give me a list of all everything you think they might need? I can get some uniforms out canvassing stores, see if we can trace any of the items.”
“Everything they used was pretty common, but I’ll put a list together. Who knows, you might get lucky.”
I was sure that was his leg brushing against mine under the table. We locked eyes and smiled. Mike kept looking at me as he twirled a forkful of pasta, lifted it to his mouth, and tasted. An expression somewhat akin to ecstasy passed over his face. “This is fabulous. Go on, taste it. Tell me what you think.”
I tasted. It was pretty terrific. The wine was good, too, and though the place had filled up our table was partially sheltered by a metal trellis with fake grape leaves twining around it. I was feeling more relaxed. Maybe this could turn out to be a date.
“I’d say this is just like my mother used to make, by my mom’s Korean,” Mike said. “And my dad’s from Long Island, so I didn’t see his family much growing up.”
“Your folks meet during the Korean War?” I asked.
Mike nodded. “If you believe them, it was love at first sight. My dad had taken some shrapnel, and my mom was a nurse. He came out of the anesthesia, and hers was the first face he saw.”
He smiled, and our eyes met again. I remembered the first time I’d seen him, at police headquarters. Would that be our story someday-love at first dead chicken?
“They moved back to New York after the war, and my mom worked as a nurse while my dad went to medical school. My mom hated it out east, though. She didn’t fit in, and she wanted to go back to Seoul. So they compromised on Hawai’i. They both work out at Tripler.”
“So how come you don’t have a stethoscope around your neck?”
“Teenaged rebellion? Plus I hated science at the time. Kind of ironic that so much of what I do now revolves around science.”
“You go to school for this stuff?” I asked. “The arson investigation?”
“Took a few courses. Spent a lot of time online.”
I was about to respond when he continued. “The Internet is an amazing thing. I’m still exploring a lot of it myself. I mean, it seems like anything you’re into, there’s something out there. You want to make a bomb, or find out who won the World Series in 1986, or try out some cool new software, all you have to do is point and click.” He looked at me appraisingly. “You must have seen how much gay material is out there. Chat rooms and pictures and stories and all.”
It was finally on the table, the g-word. I tried to phrase what I wanted to say carefully. “You do much of that? Hanging out on line, I mean.”
Our eyes met across the table once again. I could fall in love with those eyes. Clear, light green, steadily focused on me. “I’m working on it. Finally broke down and bought a laptop, got my own account at home a couple of months ago.”
“What’s your screen name?” I’d been on-line with Harry a few times, as he was trying to drag me into the digital generation, and I knew his name was PhysWiz, referring to his Ph. D. in physics from