My Kind of Town
Beyond modesty
>> Portlock
After the .22 slug hit him in the right thigh, Quinn Ah Sun went down and his Glock 9mm landed four feet away in the hallway. He was crawling to retrieve it when the guy in the bedroom said, "Leave it right there!"Quinn froze, glanced over his shoulder.
Keeping his .22 on Quinn, the guy struggled to pull his black shorts up and get up from the bed at the same time. Quinn saw Rosalita moving behind the guy who had been about to rape her.
She was acting on an instinct that ran deeper than mere modesty. This was life and death. She saw the beast who had tried to rape her struggling to pull his black surf shorts up with one hand and pointing the silver pistol at a man on the ground in the doorway. He too was bleeding, a crimson splotch spreading across the right leg of his jeans. And then Rosalita saw the butcher knife on the bed. In a twinkling it was in her hands, and she was very glad that she'd sharpened all of Miss Lily's kitchen knives yesterday.
>> From Quinn's perspective, the butcher knife that the petite Filipina maid now clutched seemed almost as big as she, more machete than knife, but he refused to focus on her.
>> King Street at Pensacola
Stopped for a red light, HPD Detective Sherlock Gomes was reaching for his cell phone to order dinner to go from the Olive Tree in Kahala -- he had the onos for muscles ceviche and lamb souvlaki -- when the phone rang."Detective Gomes, this is Anna Tomi from Queens."
"Right." Gomes had spoken with the assistant ER director earlier today.
"How's our girl?"
"Much better. She regained consciousness about 30 minutes ago."
"Is she able to talk?"
"Yes."
"I'm on my way."
Dinner could wait. Gomes wanted to talk with the young woman who earlier today had crashed Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka's car off the Keeaumoku Overpass. Gomes had just come from visiting the senator. The Democrats' best hope in 2002 was loaded to the gills, on ice among other things. Gomes had spotted a glass pipe on a corner table. The pipe was currently in a baggie in Gomes' briefcase. In two days, the senator would be on his way to a rehab center in Portland, part of the private deal Gomes had made. Now he wanted to hear Serena Kawainui's side of the story.
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