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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
No ahi in Chicago
>>Kona
Cruz MacKenzie sat down at the shaded picnic table with the LapFlex to compose a column and was still trying to come up with a lead 20 minutes later when Mano Kekai stopped by Mrs. Tamura's for a 6-pack after refueling at the Arco dock. Cruz called him over. Mano offered a beer.
"Thanks, Mano, but I try not to drink when I'm writing. But if I don't come up with a lead pretty quick, I may take you up on the offer."
Cruz told him about the ahi that investigators found in the fringe of Daren's shorts and Mano's eyes narrowed.
"Ahi? Ain't no ahi in this little bay."
"But the shark could have eaten it earlier and..."
"Bruddah, ahi is one deep water fish. You got to go out. Any fisherman knows that. Nobody ever caught an ahi throwing a net."
"So the shark was way out and..."
"No."
"Why?"
"Tigers are a reef fish. Some sharks, like makos, they're deep water species. Tigers cruise the reef. They're near-shore."
"But maybe one ahi comes in a little and maybe this tiger goes out a little. That's what the insurance investigator decided."
"He ain't local."
"She is from Chicago."
"Chicago? I didn't know they had sharks in Lake Michigan. Ahi either." Mano shook his head and said with hard finality: "No. That's not the way it is, bruddah."
Mano popped the top on a can of Bud, took a sip. "One other thing, don't write about what Mano told me about Daren." As in Mano the shark god, who told him a shark had not killed Mano's good friend Daren Guy. "No sense give him even more of a a head start."
"Head start? You really do think Daren Guy is alive?"
"Mano told me. And think about it. He wins the Lotto. He takes out an insurance policy. He disappears. They find half his shorts with ahi in 'em. I'm telling you, bruddah, he's out there."
"And nobody can find Sonya."
"Probably together. Anyway, I gotta go. You sure about the beer?"
"Yeah, thanks though."
Mano headed back to his boat with the beer, Cruz turned back to the laptop with intentions to write about swimming with sharks. Instead his brain went off on its own exploring Mano's theory that Daren Guy had faked his own death by shark attack to defraud Ornellas and the insurance company, and realized what he really needed was to learn more about Daren's life. Best place for that was Honolulu where he grew up. It was time for Cruz to get home. That settled, the words began to flow.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek. His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin. He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com
