My Kind of Town
>> Ala Moana Beach Park The Dawn Patrol
Having already finished their walk around the park, a group of retirees who called themselves the Dawn Patrol chatted over coffee and a copy of the morning Star-Bulletin at the snack stand across from the Magic Island parking area. And not one of them could believe the news on Page One about Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka.
There was a huge photo taken by Johnny B. Goo of the senator looking disheveled and wild-eyed, throwing a long-neck bottle of beer at the photographer, the bottle spewing foam. Below that was another photo of the senator's car lying upside down on the first base line at Cartwright Field, paramedics lifting the body of a stark naked young woman from the wreckage.
The accompanying story by Cruz MacKenzie said that the woman, Serena Kawainui, was the lone occupant when it crashed off the Keeaumoku Overpass. Initial reports showed she was drunk and had been smoking crystal methamphetamine. The story went on to say that, based on a call from a Star-Bulletin reader, MacKenzie and Goo found the senator at a Makiki Heights home. Other than the airborne beer bottle, the senator declined comment. He later received a visit from an HPD detective.
"I cannot believe," said Shiro Matsuda. "I knew his father. Good family."
"Eh, I was going vote for him for governor next year," said Dot Chang.
Several others said they also planned to vote for him. The consensus now was auwe.
None of them would have believed either that the guy wearing dark glasses and a Dodgers cap pulled down low who just vroomed past on a mo-ped and whipped into the Magic Island parking area was that same Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka, much less the evil on his mind.
>> Royal Hawaiian Hotel
Lily Ah Sun awoke and, as she did every morning, made a mental to-do list for the day. At the top of her list was visiting her cousin Quinn at Queen's. Second was calling an interior designer to take a look at her bedroom, order new carpet, repaint the walls, buy a new bed. The carpet and the bed were soaked in blood, the walls splattered with it, plus there were big gouges missing in the wall above her bed where bullets had lodged -- all the result of the attack on Lily's maid Rosalita, and then Quinn interrupting the attack, shooting the creep, but also getting shot in the thigh.
The bedroom motif had been white before. Lily would tell the designer to make it something more masculine because when Quinn got out of the hospital, he was coming home with her.
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