My Kind of Town
>> Ala Moana Beach Park What naked lady?
A crowd had quickly gathered. Two uniformed cops tried to move them back from the mini-submarine with a big red circle painted on top of the hull -- the unmistakable sign of the Rising Sun. The cops ignored three people standing beside the sub at the water's edge.
"You look pretty shocked," extreme photographer Johnny B. Goo said to HPD Detective Sherlock Gomes. "What did you guys see in there?"
"You guys" included the babe-ette in the high-hipped electric blue swimsuit, who Johnny B had photographed as she rode on top of the WWII-vintage Japanese submarine cowgirl style as it surfaced and then beached itself like a whale at the Diamond Head end of the park. She'd been 50 yards from finishing her swim when she was suddenly lifted up out of the water and found herself on top of a mini-submarine. After it came to rest, Gomes had jumped up on top the sub, forced open the hatch. And when he and the babe-ette -- who turned out to be Dr. Babe-ette, Laurie Tang from the Queen's ER -- looked inside the hatch, they had been obviously shocked.
"You better get a shot or nobody's going to believe it," Gomes said.
Gomes climbed up on top of the sub, helped Johnny B scramble up with his Nikon. Peering into the hatch, Johnny B gasped. "You gotta be kidding me."
Sitting in the pilot's seat was a skeleton.
Johnny fired several shots through the hatch.
"Name's Shinjo Eiki," Gomes said.
"How you know that?"
"The naked lady told us."
"What naked lady?"
"The one who was in there when we opened the hatch, and then climbed out past us."
"I shot everything," Johnny B said. "Trust me, Sherlock, there wasn't no naked lady."
"I saw her too," Dr. Tang said. "She said 'Shinjo Eiki is a good man.'"
"Check your film," Gomes said.
Johnny B had given up film for digital a long time ago, but he let it slide. "Sure." He quickly changed lenses, got a few more shots of the sub's interior with a wide-angle.
"This doesn't make sense," Johnny B said.
"Tell me," Dr. Tang said. "The engine was running. Then after we hit the beach, the engine stopped."
"Somebody turned it off," Gomes said.
He didn't know it, but Johnny B's photos would provide a clue.
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