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My Kind of Town

by Don Chapman

Friday, May 18, 2001


Highlight of the day

>> Zippy's -- King Street

Just 12:45 p.m., but it had been a long day already for HPD solo bike Officer Quinn Ah Sun. He ordered tea and fruit -- no donuts or rice, he was training for the Police Olympics in weightlifting -- and sat down to write reports of the two incidents he'd handled today.

First the car of Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka crashed off the Keeaumoku overpass and landed upside down on the first base line.

Quinn was the first officer on the scene and watched paramedics pull an unconscious young woman from the car. She was the lone occupant -- drunk, loaded on ice, stark naked. Then Quinn assisted the Traffic Accident Investigation Section team in their investigation, which turned up no ID, but a drug pipe and lots of fingerprints. A search for the identity of the driver was underway.

Minutes after the senator's car had been winched onto a tow truck, Quinn received an urgent call to provide crowd control for the hate crimes bill rally at the Capitol. The rally was larger and louder than anyone anticipated, with angry shouts and taunts between a division of gays and a platoon of Gabbardites. But there was no trouble until a skinhead lunged at a gay couple, threw a punch, and a young local guy tripped and fell and hit his head against a concrete curb. Then the gays set upon the skinhead and would surely have kicked him to death if Quinn hadn't waded through the brawl and gotten to him. But along with being rescued came getting cuffed and read his rights.

But now as Quinn worked on his two reports, it was images of his first encounter of the day that flashed through his mind. He'd pulled over a woman in teal BMW for speeding on the H-1. And as he stood at her door, they'd shared a wordless gaze that lingered, and he'd fallen into her hazel green eyes and felt his breath being taken away, and all he wanted in the world was her.

But then he'd looked at her license, and read her name out loud, stunned and confused. "Lily Ah Sun?"

And she'd seen the name stitched in gold on his blue uniform, and said, "Quinn?"

"Long time, cousin." Twenty-one years to be precise.

So he let her off with a warning. And she'd given him her business card and said to call. The card's gardenia scent had been wafting up from his shirt pocket all day, filling his nose with remembrances of her. And the moment he was done with these damn reports, he was going to call her.




Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin.
He can be emailed at dchapman@midweek.com



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