My Kind of Town
>> Punchbowl Street Lovers and friends
They'd argued all the way from Aina Haina to the H-1 Punchbowl exit, Lily Ah Sun and her brother Laird, who'd surprised her twice this morning.
First by just showing up -- he was supposed to be getting a Masters from Stanford Business in two days. Second by announcing the main reason he came home was to tell their baby brother Lance that he was going to hell for being gay, but that he could be cured. Thus sayeth Christian X.O. St. James in his new book "Jesus Was Straight, Mister: And You'd Better Be Too!"
"I swear, Laird," Lily said, turning onto Punchbowl, "I'll deck you if you bring this up with Lance now. He just came out of a coma, for God's sake. Speaking of whom, doesn't St. James' Jesus have any compassion?"
"Of course! He wants to save these people!"
"Well, here's the other thing: Mom says what roused Lance out of the coma was hearing Greg's voice -- his lover."
Laird winced at the word. "I'll talk to both of them. They can both be cured. And then they can be, like, tennis partners!"
"Over my dead body," Lily said as they crossed Beretania. She saw a parking space, slammed the brakes and pulled in.
"Why're you parking here?"
"Because, Mr. Graduate Student, we're going to do some research. Ever wonder why our father and his brother quit speaking 21 years ago?"
"No. That's just the way it always was."
"No, it wasn't. And for some reason they refuse to talk about it."
>> Beretania at Punchbowl
The van carrying six prisoners, HPD Detective Sherlock Gomes noted, was apparently heading to OCCC, not Halawa, because it stopped at the light in one of the middle lanes, and didn't turn right toward the H-1. Gomes wondered where the backup vehicle was. Well, it was a short hop from the jail at HPD HQ to OCCC. And O-Trip-C meant these weren't the baddest guys. The light changed and the van accelerated into the intersection.
Stopped in the right lane four vehicles behind TheBus, Gomes had been following from 16th and Pahoa and saw trouble coming even before the tires started screeching. But there was nothing he could do to stop the older model blue Bronco heading mauka on Punchbowl from running the red, speeding into the intersection, smashing the van's driver door.
The impact crushed the driver, knocked unconscious the armed guard riding shotgun and tipped the van over on its right side. Gomes accelerated around TheBus and saw five handcuffed criminals scrambling out of the broken back window and running across Beretania toward the state Capitol. Figuring, apparently, that was the best place to blend in.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin
with weekly summaries on Sunday.
He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com