My Kind of Town
>> State Library The Honolulu Soap Co.:
Sunday digestLily Ah Sun glanced at her watch. Researching references to the Ah Sun family in both Honolulu dailies during 1981 had taken just minutes. Lily needed to be home in Hawaii Kai in an hour to meet the decorator about giving her bedroom a new look after last night's shootings. But she was also fascinated by her family research. Who was this Clarence Ah Sun?
But just on a whim, she pulled down the golden-brown volume for 1974, the year before she and Quinn were born. Whim? Later, she would come to believe it was nothing less than divine inspiration.
But for right now, all it said was: Ah Sun, Clarence - SB B-4 7-4. Meaning a story about the mysterious Clarence appeared in the Star-Bulletin, page 4 of the B section, on April 17..
And then a reference to her father: Ah Sun, Shitsuro - SB A9 4-17, A A-10 4-18.
Lily checked her watch again. She had to hurry, but her research was going fast. Lily took down the volume for 1975, the year she and Quinn were born.
>> State Capitol
Retrieving his car from the cavernous parking garage, Machiavelli Yang experienced a rare moment of self-reflection. Usually he was too busy managing other people's lives to think much about his own. But analyzing the task ahead with the lovely Donna Gomes, Machiavelli considered the science of bending people to his will while allowing them to think they're really in charge. He knew all the tricks, of course.
Machiavelli didn't know his travel agent well, but did know that, at 32, Donna was still single. She might welcome the opportunity to meet Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka. Certainly his contacts would be good for her business. And, as always happened, his inherent charm would soon have her hooked. Unless she learned about his demons. But part of Machiavelli's job was masking them.
>> State Library
Compared to 1981 and 1974, 1975 was a quiet news year for the Ah Suns. That was the year she and her cousin Quinn were born - Quinn who lay at Queen's with a gunshot to the thigh and asked her to do the research for him, hoping to find clues to why their fathers had quit speaking 21 years ago. That the brothers had spoken for the first time today was good, but the mystery remained: what had been so terrible that they tore the family apart for all those years?
As expected, she found both her and Quinn's names.
Ah Sun, Quinn Kalani Ginza - SB B10 3-22, A C6 3-22.
Ah Sun, Lily Malialani - SB B10 4-23, A C6 4-23.
Those, Lily knew, were birth announcements. Then she was taken aback by a third:
Ah Sun, Lily - SB B10 4-24. A C6 4-25.
What had Lily done to make the papers twice in the first week of her life?
>> PanAm Building
To Donna Gomes, it appeared many Hawaii folks were getting over their fear of flying in the wake of 9-11. And she was grateful. The slowdown after the terror attacks nearly killed her company. Now that things were picking up and she'd brought them back, both came down with the flu and were out.
Well, Donna thought, there are worse things than being so busy you don't have time to think about not having a boyfriend.
She heard a knock on the door and her big brother Sherlock the HPD detective walked in and handed her a white bag holding a mochiko chicken plate lunch from L&L, kept the Subway bag with his usual turkey on country wheat.
>> State Library
Armed with her notes, Lily checked out the appropriate rolls of microfilm and slid the first into the viewer.
Scrolling through the film to find the reference to the Ah Sun family, Lily quickly saw that this process was going to be time-consuming and glanced at her watch. Uh-oh, she needed to be home to meet with the interior designer in 30 minutes.
But then a story about her father appeared on the screen. It was a business brief in the Star-Bulletin that appeared on April 17, 1974, announcing that former Royal Hawaiian Hotel waiter Shitsuro Ah Sun was starting his own business, the Honolulu Soap Co. The story reported that he had already signed up Sheraton hotels to provide their guest soap in distinctively printed wrappers.
Lily quickly located the only other Ah Sun reference in the year 1974, for the mysterious Clarence Ah Sun. It was an item in Dave Donnelly's July 4 column, saying that entertainer Clarence "Bobo" Ah Sun postcarded from Acapulco, saying Bobo was performing aboard a cruise ship and wanted to send his aloha to his ohana back home. The column included a thumbnail-size head shot of Clarence, and it sent a chill through Lily. He didn't look anything like her father or her uncle, but he had a familiar look.
Lily glanced at her watch. Criminy! She had to be home in 15 minutes. But no way she was leaving the library yet. Clarence Ah Sun, and her family's mysterious rift, had her hooked. Lily reached for her cell phone, called home. Her maid Rosalita Resurreccion would have to let the designer in and convey a message of regret that Lily couldn't be there in person, as well as Lily's desire to have a more masculine look to her bedroom. That would be appropriate because when he got out of the hospital, Quinn was coming home with her.
>> PanAm Building
HPD Detective Sherlock Gomes polished off his Subway sandwich 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 from L&L grew cold.
"Eat your lunch," he said when she was at last off the phone. "I'll take the calls."
"Gladly," she said. Talking around a bite of chicken, she added, "So tell me what kind of trouble Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka has gotten himself into. 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, he was there.
"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."
"Well isn't that interesting," Gomes said. "The senator's aide Machiavelli Yang says he's on his way to see you."
>> State Library
Lily had guessed right about the first two Ah Sun references for 1975. The first was Quinn's birth announcement, the second her own birth announcement less than a month later.
But it was the third Ah Sun reference that puzzled Lily. She 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.
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