My Kind of Town
>> Ala Moana Beach Park Choke news
"Who are you?" HPD Detective Sherlock Gomes said brusquely. He wasn't happy that this old guy seemed to appear out of nowhere, catching him off guard not just with his presence but also with his question about what Gomes and Laurie had seen inside the WWII-vintage Japanese mini-sub that just beached itself at the Diamond Head end of the park. Gomes had been caught unawares because he was paying too much attention to Dr. Laurie Tang from Queen's ER, with whom he was sharing a park bench. She still wore the electric blue swimsuit from her swim, towel wrapped low around her hips. The old guy had snapped Gomes back to reality, his favorite place. "What do you do?"
"Jimmy Ahuna. Howzit." He nodded, smiled. "I fish mostly since I retired from the Pearl Harbor ship yard. That's how come I seen that sub, two times now --fishing."
"You saw it before today?"
"Sure. Queen's Beach, couple weeks ago, thrownet that time."
"Geez, with the Japanese markings, why didn't you notify someone?"
"I did. Called da kine, at the paper, Cruz MacKenzie."
"And?"
"I think mister bigshot reporter thought I was lolo."
Gomes was asking detective questions, Laurie thought, not pertinent ones. "You said you know the woman we saw inside the sub?"
The sub had lifted Laurie out of the water in the final yards of her swim.
Gomes, waiting to talk to her about her boyfriend Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka, jumped up onto the sub and was able to twist open the exterior latches to the sub's lone hatch.
"What's her name?"
"Ho'ola," Jimmy said, as if that should explain everything. From their blank looks, it obviously didn't. Well, even among Hawaiians, Ho'ola was not as popular as some of the other deities like Pele. But for generations his family believed in her. "Ho'ola, goddess of life -- rescuer, healer, saver, preserver."
"Why did we see her, and you saw her, but nobody else saw her?" Laurie said. Gomes added: "She didn't even show up in photos that a guy from the Star-Bulletin shot, except for a cloud-like thing coming up out of the hatch, kind of hovering over us."
"She only reveals herself to whoever she wants to reveal herself." This was all too much for the super-logical Gomes. "I'd like a better explanation than that."
"I no can help that, bruddah. An' you no can help the goddess touching you. She blessed you, the two of you, together. She told me. Blessed you and your children."
Gomes choked a fraction of a second before Laurie did.
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