My Kind of Town
>>Queen's Medical Center The Honolulu Soap Co.:
Sunday digest"It's all over, Mits," Sheets Ah Sun blurted, not bothering with niceties when the brother he hadn't seen in 21 years walked through the door. "We need to talk." Ignoring his wife, Grace, Sheets ushered his brother toward the door.
"Good to see you, Grace," Mits said. "I'm sorry to hear about Lance."
Grace had been wrong, by about 180 degrees. She assumed her husband's depression was because of Lance, who lay here in a coma, and whom they just learned was gay. But if it wasn't Lance that so upset Sheets, what could it be?
She had never really known what happened between the brothers, but she didn't really think it had anything to do with money, as Sheets insisted. At first she'd wondered if it was just coincidence that a week before Sheets and Mits quit talking, their cousin Clarence was reported missing. But then a month later Eddie Sherman ran an item in his column about Clarence performing on cruise ships in Acapulco.
>>Sharing Quinn's hospital bed, Lily Ah Sun snuggled closer to her cousin, who had just zonked out from a painkiller. She lay a hand over his chest and rested her head on his muscular shoulder.
If this wasn't love, Lily didn't know what was.
>>The elevator door closed behind them, and again HPD Sgt. Mits Ah Sun sniffed the faint aroma of eucalyptus, ginger and sea brine. His brother Sheets didn't seem to notice.
"So what's up?" Mits said. "What did you mean, 'it's all over'?" Sheets held up a hand. "Outside."
Mits was filled with his brother's fear and dread as if it was his own.
>>Grace watched carefully as Dr. Aeschylus Wong checked the monitors connected to the tubes and wires running into and out of her unconscious son Lance's head, looking for any clue to what the doctor was seeing and thinking. Dr. Wong gently pinched Lance's thumb and the young man twitched.
Dr. Wong lifted Lance's right eye lid, pointed a pen light in the eye, then repeated the procedure on the left. "Hmm."
What could that mean?!
"We're not out of the woods yet," Dr. Wong said. "But we're definitely going in the right direction, and that's good."
>>Mits followed Sheets into the parking structure and into his car.
"So what's this all about?
"I drove past the site this morning," Sheets said - in Waimanalo, where a radio report yesterday said a new Board of Water Supply well had been contaminated by an illegal dumpsite in the vicinity. Officials were investigating.
"Bad move," Mits said. "Don't you know we always note people who come to look at a crime scene?"
Mits paused, looked at his brother. Sheets was always an upbeat guy, Mr. Positive. Today he was Mr. Roll Over And Die. "Did you stop?"
"No, just rubber-necked a little. But my god, they've got a dozen guys in space suits and a backhoe and they're sifting through everything. If it's there, they'll find it!"
Finding "it" would be very bad. The first person they'd call would be Mits. Twenty-one years ago, he'd been willing to take the fall for his brother. But now, looking at an early retirement and enjoying life with his new Thai wife, Wanphen, Mits no longer cared to go to jail for the brother he hadn't seen in all those years. Now he worried about Sheets falling apart and confessing everything.
"Sheets, listen to me," Mits said. "You're doing the absolute worst thing possible - you're letting your fear show. Your son Lance, his accident, OK, that bothers you, it would any father. But this other stuff, put it out of your head. 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 lost it.
>>Lily exited the elevator into the parking structure, trying to remember where she'd parked her car. Too much had happened too fast the past two days. She was in a hurry. Lily had to figure what to do about her bedroom, which had been shot up, but first she had to get over to the State Library and do research for Quinn. He asked her to check newspaper archives for their fathers' names, focusing on 21 years ago when the feud began.
Lily took the elevator up one more floor when she saw her father's black Cadillac. And inside was her father and Uncle Mits, hugging each other. Her father was sobbing.
>>Kapiolani Boulevard
As the van driven by Wilhemina Orlando turned onto Atkinson Drive, Muhammed Resurreccion's attention was diverted from the Convention Center, where the electronics trade show would take place, to a report on the radio. American special forces were in the jungles of Mindanao working with the Philippine Army in the war against Muhammed's people. Muhammed was about to take his people's war to America, but this upped the stakes.
And now they couldn't say he started it.
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