My Kind of Town
>> Portlock Dead giveaway
An instant after Quinn Ah Sun got off his shot with his Glock 9mm, a slug from the .22 hit him in the right thigh. It spun him around and he went down, dropping the Glock.
Still lying on the bed, Mickey kept the .22 on Quinn as he reached to pull up his surf shorts, unaware that the sound of gunfire and flying plaster had roused Rosalita Resurreccion.
Quinn had kept his cell phone on, kept the line open to HPD dispatch.
"Central," he whispered hoarsely into the earpiece, grimacing through the pain in his leg. "I'm 10-15 (officer in trouble). This is 10-11 (emergency, expedite immediately), repeat 10-11. And send me a 10-10 (ambulance)."
Quinn's Glock had landed four feet away and Quinn was crawling to retrieve it when he heard "Leave it right there!"
Looking over his shoulder, Quinn saw the .22 pointed at him as the guy struggled to pull his shorts up and get up from the bed at the same time. With all that shaking, Quinn hoped the trigger wasn't overly sensitive. He also saw Rosalita moving behind the guy who had been about to rape her, but refused to focus on her. That would be a dead giveaway.
>> Queens Medical Center
Sheets Ah Sun was old school, but he could figure out why his youngest son Lance had been at the hate crimes bill rally. He'd suspected it for years, since that day when Lance was about 10 and he preferred baking snickerdoodles to fishing for akule.
Lance had been in a coma since hitting his head on a curb earlier today when he was attacked by a skinhead on the capitol grounds during the rally. But even sitting here in the intensive care unit, seeing Lance with a tube in his nose and another leading from a puka in the back of his skull, Sheets Ah Sun was thinking about the upcoming graduation of his eldest son Laird from Stanford Business. The whole family was supposed to leave in two days, and he hoped Lance's unfortunate incident would not alter his plans. At the graduation dinner, Sheets would announce that he was naming Laird president of the Honolulu Soap Company. He hadn't discussed it with Laird recently, but that had been the plan all along.
Lily wouldn't like it, but this was still Sheets' company and he'd do what he thought was best. Speaking of Lily, they ought to call her and tell her the bad news about her brother. Sheets reached for his cell phone, not knowing the lives that one call would impact.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin
with weekly summaries on Sunday.
He can be emailed at dchapman@midweek.com