My Kind of Town
>> Queen's Medical Center You scream, I scream
The sound of two women screaming for the same man rose in dissonant harmony as he grappled with another on the gray concrete of the ER parking lot.
Nina Ramones, still standing just outside the ER entrance.
Lily Ah Sun, still sitting in her car. Both screaming, neither yet aware of the other, focused as they were on Lily's cousin Quinn and the Samoan cabbie trading punches, curses and grunts. The cabbie had rear-ended Lily's car and was trying to drag her out of the window by the throat when Quinn crashed the wheelchair, in which Nina had previously been pushing him, into the cabbie's knee and took him down. The wheelchair now lay on its side, a dented wheel still slowly spinning.
The cabbie rolled on top of Quinn and threw a punch with a fist as big as a toaster oven. Quinn jerked his head out of the way, the cabbie punched pavement but barely flinched and raised his bloodied hand again.
With his good leg Quinn kneed the cabbie in the chest hard, a blow that would have taken the air from most men. The cabbie just grunted, with his good leg tried to stand. But Quinn leg-whipped him and, with no ligaments still intact in his left knee to speak of, the cabbie toppled heavily back to terra firma. Nina and Lily screaming all the while.
Quinn was unaware that the heavy bandage on his right thigh was rapidly turning crimson, the wound where he'd been shot reopened when the wheelchair toppled. But he felt his strength leaking away and now it was all he could do to raise an arm to block the cabbie's next punch.
But it never came. From somewhere out of the scuffle a shiny black tasseled loafer shot through the air and kicked the cabbie in the head, knocking him over and, for the moment, unconscious.
"Nice shoes," Quinn said between gasps. Detective Sherlock Gomes, apparently, shopped at Nordstom's. But what Quinn really admired was the Glock 9mm in Gomes' left hand.
That's when Nina and Lily each realized she was not the only woman calling Quinn's name and running to him.
>> Arizona Memorial -- Theater 2
Out of the corner of his eye, Commander Ryan of Navy Intelligence glimpsed a left-tackle-large black man with a shaved head taking an aisle seat on the left side three rows behind Ryan. It was hard to miss Lt. Martin Luther Washington, who had in fact played defensive end at SMU and was known for his quick feet. Ryan was glad they were on the same team today and that Marty was watching his 6. Because when the movie ended, things would happen very fast.
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