My Kind of Town
>> Kalihi at King The Honolulu Soap Co.:
Sunday digestRunning late to meet her brother Lance's lover, Greg, at Queen's, Lily Ah Sun normally would have sped her car through the light that turned yellow just as she was about to enter the intersection. But this time Lily braked hard. A tailgating taxi she hadn't previously noticed nearly ran up her exhaust pipe, screeching to a stop just inches from the bumper. In her rearview mirror, the Samoan cabbie made what-the-hell-are-you-doing motions with his hands. But Lily didn't care. She wanted to read the paper.
She'd bought a copy of the afternoon Star-Bulletin from a street hawker and had to read an item on Page One that grabbed her eye. Beneath the fold, a three-deck headline over a one-column story: Bloody/Death/At Portlock.
Meaning the guy who'd broken into her house was dead -- the guy who tried to rape her maid Rosalita until her cousin Quinn came along and shot the creep. Lily remembered how brave Quinn had been, how selfless, how he'd also been shot in the right thigh and how much he bled all over her bedroom.
OK, maybe she was still furious with him for what she saw in his room at Queen's earlier. But after what Quinn had done for her and Rosalita and Elizabeth, the least she could do was answer his questions. And what Quinn told her on the phone didn't make any sense. He thought Lily dropped off just one photocopy from her research into the Ah Suns. In fact, it had been a stack, which she'd hurled at him and that hoochie mama who was kissing him. With a flurry of paper swirling through the air, she'd sworn at them and stomped out.
The other weird thing was that Quinn thought that one story -- about the disappearance of "popular entertainer Clarence 'Bobo' Ah Sun" -- had something to do with the change in her feelings.
The real reason seemed fairly self-explanatory to Lily. Either he just didn't get it or he was in deep denial. But maybe Quinn was just knocked out from the painkillers and the little b-i-t-c-h was taking advantage of an unconscious man. If that was the case, Lily was soooo wrong.
The cabbie leaned on his horn. Yikes, the light had turned green. The horn kept blaring. Lily shocked herself by hoisting a middle finger.
>> Arizona Memorial
When he saw Muhammed Resurreccion approaching, Navy intelligence officer Lt. Martin Luther Washington turned and wandered inside the Visitor Center, appearing to be a semi-confused tourist, unsure of where he was supposed to go for the tour.
He continued to look slightly baffled while in fact observing Muhammed posing for a photo in front of the Arizona's huge anchor with Rosalita and her 6-year-old daughter Elizabeth. Marty's gal "Sandy," Muhammed's driver and known to him only as Wilhemina Orlando, took the photo with a disposable camera.
Marty seemed to get his bearings as Muhammed and his trio entered the Visitor Center. Giving a courteous nod, he motioned for the two women and a little girl to go ahead of him.
So, as planned, he was the first person in line behind Muhammed. Close enough to strangle him. Maybe later.
>> Queen's Medical Center
This wasn't quite the same as sitting astride his BMW boomer with the wind in his face, but HPD solo bike Officer Quinn Ah Sun was exhilarated to finally be out of his hospital bed.
"I never knew a wheelchair could be so much fun," he said over his shoulder. Not that he'd ever want to be in one of these things very long. But after being cooped up, he was grateful to take a spin in anything.
"The fun's just starting, my dear," Nina Ramones said, pushing the chair into an elevator, heading for Pediatrics.
She wondered if guys have ticking clocks too. No harm in giving Quinn a subtle message. The off-duty nurse was divorced and tired of sleeping alone, and old enough to worry she'd never be a mother.
When the doors slid open, they faced a young couple, obviously checking out, the husband holding an infant in a blue blanket and so absorbed in the moment he didn't recognize an old friend.
"Eh, Stevie!" Quinn exclaimed as Nina wheeled him out. Quinn and Steve Kawamoto had been HPD recruits together. "Congratulations, brother!"
They chatted a bit, catching up.
"You did good," Quinn said as the family boarded the elevator.
"This is the greatest," the new dad said. "The greatest feeling ever."
The doors closed.
"Amazing," Quinn said. "He's the last guy I thought would want to have kids."
Nina couldn't have gotten a better endorsement of her desires.
>> H-1, Kokohead-bound
Even as she was sticking her left hand out the window and extending her middle finger, Lily knew it was the wrong thing to do. Not on moral grounds. On self-preservation grounds.
She glanced in her rearview mirror. The taxi was where he'd been for the past mile, inches from her bumper, the big Samoan cabbie shaking his fist. In the past Lily had occasionally flipped off really rude or dangerous drivers. But she always kept her hand below window level so they couldn't see. But just enough stuff had happened in the past two days that this time Lily lost it.
That, apparently, sent the cabbie over the edge. Another case of Finger Rage.
Lily knew the Beamer could out-run his aging Chrysler New Yorker and leave him in her exhaust, but traffic was too heavy. There was no place to run. She hoped he was just being a jerk for a while, that he was on his way to pick up a rider somewhere and he'd leave her alone.
But when Lily took the Punchbowl exit, the taxi stayed on her tail.
>> Arizona Memorial
Maybe it was because he was trailing a suspected Muslim terrorist from the Philippines, but Navy intelligence officer Commander Chuck Ryan thought post-9/11 security at the Visitor Center was way too lax. Rangers checked purses and fanny packs, but everybody else -- including Ryan -- just sailed right through. He noticed an elderly couple, the man wearing a VFW hat and carrying a bouquet of flowers, get waved through with a nod and a smile. No doubt the same guy waved Muhammed Resurreccion and his flowers through too. It sent a shiver up Ryan's back.
Maybe he was worrying too much. But he couldn't help it. Worrying was part of his job description. Sure, he understood where the policy was coming from -- this was just a National Park. But it was located at the heart of arguably America's most important Navy base.
>> Punchbowl Street
She was scared, on the verge of panic, but she was smart and Lily forced herself to think. The last thing she wanted was to be confronted alone in the Queen's parking structure by the big Samoan cabbie. Waiting to turn left onto Miller Street, she saw an HPD motorcycle and a blue-and-white parked in the ER lot.
Lily hit the gas and made a 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.
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 Nina pushed him outside 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 pulled it over yesterday. His cousin Lily's car.
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