My Kind of Town
>> Queen's Medical Center Blind-side hit
The guy in a wheelchair who just sped silently from behind an ambulance, HPD Detective Sherlock Gomes suddenly realized, was Quinn Ah Sun. The solo bike officer was at Queen's after being shot in the thigh. Which explained why his right leg was elevated, sticking out in front like a bulky hood ornament, as well as the IV drip bag swinging precariously above him. But what was he doing out here in the ER parking lot playing wheelchair racer?
In a heartbeat Gomes knew the answer, and that with his Glock 9mm locked in the trunk of his Barracuda the best he could do at the moment was distract the Samoan cabbie who had chased a young woman in a teal BMW into the lot, rear-ended her and was trying to yank her out of her car by the throat.
"Hey, asshole, I said stop!" Gomes screamed, sprinting toward the cabbie. "Police!"
The cabbie, his left leg flexed and locked behind him for leverage against the woman, glanced up at Gomes an instant before Quinn's right leg plowed into the cabbie's left knee. Gomes heard an ugly pop. The cabbie went down like he'd been shot.
Lily Ah Sun, feeling his grip on her loosen, clutched at her throat and gasped for air between sobs.
Lying on the pavement, the cabbie grabbed his knee, howling. Towering above him in the wheel chair, Quinn kicked with his good leg at the cabbie's head. But he saw it coming, rolled toward the chair, ducked. Quinn's heel glanced off the top of the cabbie's head an instant before the chair toppled over, punches flying, not to mention the IV drip bag.
And Lily started screaming again, echoed by the screams of another woman not far away.
>> Arizona Memorial -- Theater 2
In the sixth row down from the theater entrance, Commander Chuck Ryan eyed several seats directly behind Muhammed Resurreccion and his three females companions. He wanted to sit close enough that he could comment in a neighborly kind of way on the beautiful bouquet of flowers that Rosalita Resurreccion carried and ask if he could smell their sweet island aroma. He didn't trust those flowers and wanted to see what else might be inside the bouquet.
But before he could get there, a punked out teenager ran down the row from the other side and claimed the five seats for his family.
Ryan took a seat two rows behind Muhammed. He would not be smelling any flowers during the movie. But he was close enough to reach out and grab the suspected Filipino Muslim terrorist if he had to.
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