My Kind of Town
>> State Library In the news
Lily Ah Sun guesses right about the first two Ah Sun references she found in the index of stories in the two Honolulu dailies during the year 1975. The first was her cousin Quinn's birth announcement (March 21), the second her own birth announcement less than a month later (April 20). She skimmed both, and didn't notice that the wording in Quinn's announcement and hers were slightly different.
But it was the third Ah Sun reference that puzzled Lily. It too was about her, and appeared in both papers just two days after her birth announcement. What had Lily done to make the papers twice in the first week of her life? And why was this the first she knew about it?
She quickly scrolled down two days and found herself mentioned in Corrections. "The birth announcement for Lily Malialani Ah Sun should have included that the parents are Grace and Shitsuru Ah Sun. The father's name was omitted."
No big deal, Lily thought. But she'd never been more wrong.
>> PanAm Building
HPD Detective Sherlock Gomes polished off his Subway turkey-on-wheat with extra jalapenos while watching his sister Donna answer one phone call after another -- "Thank you for calling Uku Miles Travel. How may I help you?" -- as her mochiko chicken plate lunch grew cold and coagulated. When he'd offered to bring her lunch because both of her employees called in sick, Donna said she needed comfort food. No wonder.
"Eat your lunch," he said when she was at last off the phone. "And give me your headset. I'll take the calls for a while."
"Gladly," she said. Then added, "So tell me what kind of trouble Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka has gotten himself into with you. Oh, and here's his ticket to Portland." And the drug rehab clinic in which Gomes had booked him.
"Our clean-cut senator, I'm sorry to say, has some very naughty habits. When I checked the Makiki Heights address listed for the woman who crashed his car off the Keeaumoku Overpass, he was there."
"I saw the picture in the Star-Bulletin."
"And when I went inside, I found a pipe and some crystal meth, and him bouncing off walls."
"So you made your usual deal? Rehab or jail?"
"Not to mention headlines from hell."
The phone rang, Gomes answered, listened, said "I'll certainly give her the message."
Turning to his sister, Gomes said, "Well isn't that interesting. The senator's aide Machiavelli Yang says he's on his way to see you. "And it's not about a ticket."
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