My Kind of Town
>> Queen's Medical Center Punishment enough
No matter what happened from here on out, HPD Sgt. Mits Ah Sun thought, he and his older brother Sheets had already been supremely punished for what happened on that night in Waimanalo 21 years ago. Until that night, they were as close as brothers can be. Each was always there to back up the other. But when they invented a feud as cover, they learned to live without the other, and each found it useful to not think about his brother.
That was enough punishment for Mits. But it could get worse. If the very worst happened and they found the evidence in the illegal chemical dump site that had just been discovered, Mits still had an out, the one that was printed in the paper 21 years ago.
No, on second thought, the worst thing that could happen would be Sheets falling apart and confessing everything. At the moment, he looked like a wreck.
"Sheets, listen to me," Mits said, sounding as stern as their grandfather Ginza Matsuo who had raised them with plantation ethics. "You're doing the absolute worst thing possible -- you're letting your fear show. What you got to do, act like everything's normal. Your son Lance, his accident, OK, that bothers you, it would any father. But this other stuff, put it out of your head. What happened, happened. What's going happen, going happen. Only thing you can do is make things worse by overreacting."
Mits reached across, squeezed his brother's shoulder. "Eh, did I tell you it's good to see you again?"
That's when Sheets really lost it.
>> Lily Ah Sun exited the elevator into the parking structure, trying to remember where she'd parked her car. But she thought she remembered the color code for her floor -- blue? Too much had happened the past two days, and little details like where she'd parked got lost in the shuffle. She should have paid more attention, because she was in a hurry. Lily had to meet a designer at her Portlock home to figure out what they were going to do about her bedroom, which had been shot up last night, but first she wanted to get over to the State Library and do some research for her cousin Quinn. He asked her to check newspaper archives for their fathers' names, particularly focusing on 21 years ago when the feud between them began.
Lily took the elevator up one more floor to 4A and realized to her dismay that each floor was painted red when she saw a familiar car, her father's black Cadillac.
And inside the car was her father and her Uncle Mits, and they were hugging each other and her father was sobbing.
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