My Kind of Town
>> Queen's Medical Center The Honolulu Soap Co.:
Sunday digestTaking the elevator to see his nephew Lance, HPD Sgt. Mits Ah Sun was kicking himself for having lied to his son so poorly. But finding the photocopy of an old newspaper story about Clarence "Bobo" Ah Sun's disappearance in Quinn's room caught Mits off guard. He knew where it came from because he'd received other newspaper photocopies from Gwen Roselovich - after Quinn's cousin Lily had thrown them across the room when she saw Gwen with Quinn. Mits thought the problem was solved. Obviously, Gwen missed this one.
Wouldn't that be a helluva thing, he thought, getting busted by my own son?
>>Honolulu Soap Co.
Lily Ah Sun turned pulled her BMW into the space reserved for, according to a stencil on the wall, "Lily." Next to it was a space reserved for "Sheets," her father. Funny, when she parked yesterday Lily thought that when she became president of the Soap Co. she'd always keep that space reserved for her father. But now that he'd confided he was turning the company over to her younger brother, Laird, Lily figured she wouldn't be parking here much longer. She was going to take her Ola Essences private, out from under the hindering wing of the Soap Co. Lily had another thought that made her smile. Instead of going independent, maybe she'd do a takeover of the parent company. A hostile takeover. Very hostile.
>> Queen's Medical Center
When Dr. Aeschylus Wong dropped a copy of the afternoon Star-Bulletin on a lunch room table in front of Dr. Laurie Tang, it quickly drew a crowd.
Johnny B. Goo's Page One photo of Laurie wearing a high-hipped swimsuit was a revelation to her ER colleagues on a number of counts. Some - particularly the men, but also one closet lesbian nurse - were impressed with Laurie's body, lean and curved, which was always hidden behind baggy scrubs.
Others, like charge nurse Van Truong, were amazed by the look on Laurie's face as she gazed up at a hunky guy. Laurie was a pleasant person, but dead serious about her work, and none of them had ever seen such a rapturous look on her face, one that said she was ga-ga in love. And after the news in the Bulletin's morning edition about a young woman crashing Laurie's boyfriend's car off the Keeaumoku Overpass, no one who gathered around the table could blame her.
Still others were most impressed by what Laurie and the guy - identified in the caption as HPD Detective Sherlock Gomes - were standing on: the top of a WWII-vintage Japanese mini-sub that had just beached itself at Ala Moana Beach Park.
"Where did it come from?" said Dr. Wong, a WWII buff.
"I was just finishing my swim and all of a sudden it surfaced and lifted me out of the water," Laurie said.
Van, the other women and an openly gay male nurse couldn't help admiring Sherlock Gomes.
"Is this serious?" Van asked.
"Really, we just met. Um, but he is coming to my place for dinner tonight."
Laurie was about to change the subject and ask Van about her first experience with an Internet dating service last night when her pager chirped. Laurie grimaced. It was her boyfriend, Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka. As much as she didn't want to talk to him, at least he was a good excuse to avoid more questions. Besides, he ought to know that he was now her ex-boyfriend.
>> Pearl City
One of HPD Detective Sherlock Gomes greatest gifts was the power of concentration, to shut out everything except the matter at hand. Not today, after meeting Dr. Laurie Tang. As the widower Sheila Fernandez tearfully explained how she'd come home to find every one of her family photos stolen, all Gomes could think about was the family photos he and Laurie would be framing in years to come.
>> Honolulu Soap Co.
Lily was just sitting down at her desk when the phone rang. "Aloha, this is Lily."
It was her maid, Rosalita Resurreccion.
"Mum, Mr. Resurreccion would like to take Elizabeth and me to Pearl Harbor."
Lily had left Rosalita and her 6-year-old daughter Elizabeth at home with Muhammed Resurreccion, the cousin of Rosalita's late husband Jesus. There was something about the visitor from Zamboanga Lily didn't like. To Lily, he seemed to be acting, playing a part.
But Lily knew that Rosalita felt "utang na loob," a debt of honor, for Muhammed's "bayanihan," help of a family member. It was Muhammed who arranged for Rosalita's work visa after Jesus drowned when a ferry sank off Cebu.
"Of course," Lily said. "Everyone should see the Arizona Memorial."
>> Queen's Medical Center
Mits opened the door, was glad to see just Sheets and Lance, who lay unconscious. This is a helluva a way, he thought, to meet your nephew for the first time - because Lance was born after the brothers quit speaking 21 years ago.
"We have a problem," Mits said. He wanted to get this over with before his sister-in-law Grace returned. "Lily and Quinn are up to no good."
"I knew it." No good could ever come of the cousins' accidental reunion.
"Apparently Lily went to the State Library, made a bunch of photocopies of old newspaper stories, all of them about the Ah Sun family." Sheets swore under his breath.
"Remember my plan to keep them apart?" Mits continued. "It worked, mostly. I asked a girl from dispatch who has the hots for Quinn to visit him. She was there when Lily walked in. Lily got jealous and threw the stack of papers across the room. Gwen retrieved them and gave them to me - except one that landed under a chair."
Sheets remembered too well the stories that were printed 21 years ago. "Which one?"
That's when the door was flung open. Grace hurried in, trembling.
"The kids know," she said, her voice shaky. "They know about Bobo."
Mits nodded. "The story about Bobo's disappearance."
Sheets swore again.
"And you," Grace said accusingly, leveling an angry glare at her brother-in-law, "just made it worse."
"How?" Sheets said.
"When Quinn showed me the story," Grace said, "he asked me who Bobo was. I just said he was a cousin. End of story, no big deal. And then Quinn says, 'But, Auntie, if that's all there is to it, how come my Pops said he had no idea who Bobo is?'"
"I can smooth it out," Mits protested. "I'll just tell Quinn that he caught me off guard." Which was true. "I'll tell him that Bobo owed me money over bad gambling debts." Which was also true. But it had nothing to do with why Bobo had allegedly disappeared.
"Lily and Quinn aren't kids any more," Grace said sharply. "The lies you told them years ago won't fly now, especially if they're working together."
But the parents had no way of knowing their children were no longer speaking. Feuds ran in the family.
>> Honolulu Soap Co.
Lily should have stuck with softball. She had a heck of an arm. Lily played one year in Pearl City before her father and uncle quit speaking, and her father uprooted his family and moved to Kailua just in time to sign Lily up for softball and Laird for Little League. Lily was the better player, a star shortstop in the Ko'olau Bobby Sox program - at least in the younger age divisions. Then at about 12 she discovered boys, and playing sports suddenly became not cool.
Earlier today she'd shown off her arm, flinging a stack of photocopies across Quinn's hospital room. And at the moment she was fighting the urge to chuck the spiral-bound document on her desk like she used to fire a strike to first base.
Lily picked up the document, thought better of it. At work, Lily had to be in control - of her company, of her emotions. And besides, she'd worked too hard on this proposal to reorganize the Soap Co. to just trash it.
She took a deep breath, set the reorganization plan back on her desk, smiled. It didn't matter if her father rejected her ideas and chose the schoolboy Laird over her experience. Because there were other ways to take over a company.
As for Laird, a recent Stanford Business grad shouldn't have too much trouble finding work.
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