My Kind of Town
>> Queen's Medical Center The Honolulu Soap Co.:
Sunday digestLily was grateful to find her cousin Quinn alone when she peeked inside his room.
He was sleeping. Lily didn't want to wake him. He needed rest for his leg to heal. But she might not have another chance to speak to him for days. She leaned down, kissed his forehead.
"Hey there, sleepyhead," she whispered.
Startled, Quinn jumped awake.
She kissed his forehead again, stood up. "Sorry to wake you, but I didn't want to leave without saying good-bye."
"What?!" She'd found another reason to dump him when he was knocked out?
Lily understood, patted his hand. "No no no." She explained that she was due at Pearl Harbor for questioning because her maid Rosalita and her daughter Elizabeth had been aboard the Arizona Memorial shuttle boat that had been knocked out of the water by the terrorist bomb. The terrorist being Muhammed Resurreccion, the cousin of Rosalita's late husband. And Lily had met Muhammed.
Quinn felt a bond with Rosalita. He'd stopped an intruder from raping her last night, and took a bullet to the thigh for his trouble. "They OK?"
"Physically, yes."
"I may be gone for a few days, Quinn. If my travel agent can get me out tomorrow, I'll fly up to San Francisco for Laird's graduation a day early."
"How come?"
"There's a great opportunity for Ola." As in Ola Essences, her phyto-cosmetic company. "The owner of an international chain of spas wants me to create a special line for him."
"Good for you." But thinking dang, I'm going to miss her.
"That means the research into Bobo Ah Sun in the newspaper archives will have to wait. But I did learn a few things about him since I saw you."
Lily described her phone conversation with columnist Dave Donnelly and how he couldn't recall any communication with or about Bobo since he did an item about Bobo back in 1981.
"There's something else, Quinn. You met Ho'ola?" "The goddess? Hard to miss her, eh?"
"I was in the elevator, praying for her to help our family, and she appeared and said she couldn't help Bobo anymore. 'Bobo went bye-bye.' Could that have anything to do with why our fathers don't want to discuss him?"
>> Queen's Medical Center
Sheets Ah Sun had never been one to kiss his sons, not even when they were little guys. A male kissing a male?
But here he was with a gay son. Not that he was caught entirely off guard. Ever since that day when Lance was about 10 and Sheets tried to pack him and Laird, the older boy, off to go papio fishing at Hau'ula and Lance said no, he'd rather stay home and bake snickerdoodles with his sister Lily, Sheets knew something wasn't right with the boy. He attributed Lance's dancing with the Honolulu Ballet and working as a free-lance window-dresser to his artistic side. But he'd never admitted that his youngest son was gay.
It was tough to avoid that conclusion after Sheets walked into Lance's room and saw a guy kissing Lance, who'd just come out of a coma, and calling him darling. When the guy hugged and kissed Sheets too, he'd punched him. Lily insisted that he apologize, for Lance's sake, and pushed him in the room.
"Sorry, eh," Sheets said to Greg. "You guys, uh, you caught me off guard."
He didn't wait for a reply, turned to Lance. "Nice to see you back with us, boy. You had me worried."
"Dad," he whispered hoarsely, reached out a pale hand, weakly grabbed his father's.
It was weird, no doubt about it. But Sheets could handle for his son's sake. When Lance squeezed his hand, he squeezed back.
Grace Ah Sun didn't know which was the bigger miracle, that Lance had come back or that her husband was accepting his son's gayness with such equanimity? Married 28 years and he still surprised her in ways that deepened her love for him.
>> 2002 Wilder
What residents of this luxury condo gained in security, they gave back in privacy. Within the first weeks that Jonah Pelekiko went to work as a security guard, he was amazed at how much he knew already about each of the residents. After a year he knew how often they returned with shopping bags in the back seat -- Neiman's, Macy's, Ross's? He knew their regular visitors, the occasional visitor who left at 2 in the morning, the elderly gent who received visits from young women in short skirts every Thursday afternoon at 3 o'clock.
The dark blue Nissan he'd just checked through was driven by a new visitor for Dr. Laurie Tang. The gentleman was handsome in a Mediterranean way. On a clipboard, Jonah had written both the car license plate and the number of the visitor parking pass the driver showed him, noting to himself it was the same parking pass Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka always used. The doctor had obviously taken it back.
Another car turned up the private drive, Jonah stepped from the guard booth with his clipboard.
"Wow, what kinda car is this?"
"Barracuda," HPD Detective Sherlock Gomes said. "1971."
Jonah, Farrington High, class of 1997, had never seen such a vehicle. "Classic, brah. Anyway, excuse me, sir, who will you be visiting?"
"Laurie Tang." He gave the apartment number.
As the guard wrote his license number on the clipboard, Gomes -- skilled in the art of reading upside-down -- saw that he was the second visitor who had recently declared apartment 1527 as his destination.
The guard waved him through and Gomes thought, party? Maybe Laurie was pressed for time and ordered from one of those grocery delivery services?
Salvatore Innuendo, the driver of the dark blue Nissan, had parked near the elevator. Gomes would have to cross in front of him, right to left. He watched from behind tinted windows as Gomes parked, walked toward the elevator. He lowered the driver's window halfway, raised a blowgun to his lips, waiting for the open shot.
>> Pearl Harbor
Lily Ah Sun hated cheap fluorescent lighting. You'd think with the billions America spends on its military, the Navy could find some decent light fixtures.
A door opened, and the impersonal look on Commander Chuck Ryan's face reminded Lily to keep a lid on her little Ms. Smart Mouth. Keep the social commentary to herself, tell him the simple truth and she'd be out of here in minutes. He nodded politely, a totally different man from the one she'd met yesterday at the gym with the twins Shauny and Fawn Nakamura. He'd hit it off with Fawn, but apparently wasn't cutting her any slack as the introducer.
A young officer trailed Chuck into the room and the impersonal look in his eyes chilled Lily. So did the thick folder he carried.
"Lily," Chuck said, "this is Lt. Garvey Tanonaka."
"Ms. Ah Sun," he said in clipped tones, showed her his ID indicating he too was with Navy intelligence.
He took a seat across the table from Lily, placed a yellow legal pad on the desk, beside it a small tape recorder. Chuck sat three chairs down.
"Ms. Ah Sun, how long have you known Muhammed Resurreccion?"
"I just met him today."
>> 2002 Wilder
The dichotomies in Sherlock Gomes' professional and personal lives were about to intersect. As an HPD detective, Gomes wanted as much information as he could find. The more facts he gathered, the closer Gomes came to the truth.
He had a rather different approach with the women he dated. Some things from our past lives are best left behind.
There were things he did not want to know about Dr. Laurie Tang, particularly her intimacies with men. But here he was to ask her about Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka.
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