My Kind of Town
A matter of trust
>> PanAm Building
"Excuse me? Matchmaking?" Donna Gomes said. "Not for me, I hope, Mr. Yang."
Machiavelli Yang smiled rather sheepishly, in an affected way. "Well, actually, yes. But please don't misinterpret my proposal as impertinence."
Sounds pretty damn impertinent to me, HPD Detective Sherlock Gomes thought, listening on his cell phone from his sister Donna's storeroom at Uku Miles Travel. She had him on the speaker phone.
"I am here on behalf of my boss, Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka. I'd like for you two to meet. Perhaps you could attend the East-West Center gala with him."
"You're kidding, right?"
"Not at all, Donna. I think you two would be a perfect match."
The perfect match would turn Machiavelli's employer into Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka-Gomes and guarantee the Portuguese vote in the senator's run for governor.
>> Queen's Medical Center
Carrying a few too many pounds around the middle, Gwen Roselovich tried hard to be attractive, but short skirts, clingy tops that spilled cleavage, pouffy hair, heavy makeup and 20 pounds of Hawaiian heirloom jewelry jangling on each wrist merely combined to make her look like a hoochie mama. And that was from the front.
The rear view -- which is what Lily Ah Sun got when she burst into Quinn's room to share the exciting research she'd done on their fathers in the State Library newspaper archives -- was disgusting. The short skirt had hiked halfway up the woman's okole, and she was kissing Quinn, and he was obviously responding, and not complaining.
And in that moment Lily knew she could never trust Quinn. He was one of those guys, handsome, fit and charming, who women can't stay away from. And he was all too willing to oblige them. Lots of them. Any of them. Case in point, Gwen Roselobitch, who Lily had chased away last night.
"Damn you, Quinn!" Lily shouted. "Here's your freaking research!"
Lily hurled printouts of all those news stories, turned on her heel as sheets of paper flurried around her, and stormed out, slamming the door behind her for punctuation.
The crash of the door pulled Quinn back to consciousness, at long last, from the painkiller-induced dreams, none of which were as weird as seeing the lipstick-smeared face of Gwen Roselovich from Dispatch hovering over him or looking down and seeing himself exposed.
"What's going on?" Quinn said groggily. "What was that noise?"
"Nothing," Gwen said. "Absolutely nothing to worry about. Everything's going to be alright now, Sweetie."
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