My Kind of Town
>> Punchbowl Street Loaded flowers
She was scared, on the verge of panic, but she was smart and Lily Ah Sun forced herself to think. The last thing she waneted was to be confronted alone in the Queen's parking structure by the big Samoan cabbie who at the moment was on her bumper. Waiting to turn left on Miller Street, she saw an HPD motorcycle and a blue-and-white parked in the ER lot. An ambulance crew was chatting with some guy. Lily hit the gas and made a terrified dash across two lanes of oncoming traffic, figuring the taxi would have to wait.
But he followed, cutting in front of an SUV and a van that had to screech the brakes to avoid hitting him broadside.
In the parking lot, HPD Detective Sherlock Gomes heard the screech and looked up from his conversation with EMS guys Vic Lipman and Yvonne Morales.
"What does that guy think this is, the Indy 500?" Lipman said.
Quinn Ah Sun heard the screech too a moment after off-duty nurse Nina Ramones pushed his wheelchair out of the ER to get some fresh air and late-afternoon sunshine.
His cop instincts kicked in. Looking up, Quinn saw a blue New Yorker taxi on the tail of teal BMW as it squealed into the ER lot.
He knew that Beamer. He'd pulled it over yesterday. His cousin Lily's car. "Faster, Nina! Over there!"
>> Arizona Memorial
Anyone who saw Muhammed Resurreccion standing at the top of the circular steps outside the Visitor Center with a smile on his face might have guessed that he was happy to watch his 6-year-old niece Elizabeth running and playing on the big lawn with his driver, Wilhemina Orlando. In fact, that's exactly what Rosalita Resurreccion, widow of Muhammed's late cousin Jesus, thought as she sat on a bench out by the water, Muhammed's loaded flowers lying across her lap.
Muhammed noticed Rosalita glancing back at him, he smiled at her and waved. In fact, his smile had nothing to do with the happiness of a child. It had everything to do with all of the targets lying right there before him. The Missouri would be a worthy target. Likewise the bridge to Ford Island. Bring it down, maybe block the channel. What was the U.S. Navy thinking when they built that bridge?
But there, gleaming white in the sun across the blue water, was the best target of all. When it went up in a cloud of steel and concrete and marble, the whole world would hear. Perhaps then the world would begin to take seriously the plight of his people on Mindanao.
That's why Muhammed couldn't help smiling.
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