My Kind of Town
House call
>> Punchbowl Kai
Salvatore Innuendo knew this apartment well. The church owned it and had put him up here during his therapy. Overwhelmed by guilt and failure, unable to function, he'd come to Hawaii courtesy of Cardinal Andretti, who shipped him off, thinking a change of scenery would dim memories of the day Innuendo, a young Vatican Security Office agent, was walking beside Pope John Paul II's car when the Holy Father was shot by a would-be assassin. The counseling did help pull him back from his new fascination with suicide. But his faith had been lost. Innuendo had been touched by great evil that day, and it touched him still.
During those days of disarray, he often sat in this corner bedroom watching a new condominium arise, girder by girder, floor by floor. And as he observed the construction of 2002 Wilder a block away, he reconstructed himself into the man he was today.
Innuendo's perch in the darkened corner bedroom now gave him a straight-line shot inside Dr. Laurie Tang's condo at 2002 Wilder. He'd watched through the scope of his Blaser R93 hunting rifle as she and HPD Detective Sherlock talked over a glass of wine. Gomes, his target for the evening, sat just out of sight, hidden by curtains pulled to the side.
Later, he'd watched as the doctor disappeared for several minutes, then reappeared in one of those lava-lava things, wrapped at the waist around a yellow swimsuit. Gomes suddenly appeared, and Innuendo was about to squeeze the trigger when the doctor touched Gomes' arm and motioned for him to go ahead of her. Her image filled the scope. Innuendo watched them leave, carrying towels.
While they went swimming, Innuendo would go visiting. He walked the block to 2002 Wilder carrying a small black duffel bag, entered the building and took the elevator to the 15th floor using the passcard the doctor had given to Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka. Using the senator's key, he entered No. 1527 and gave himself a quick tour.
>>2002 Wilder
Sherlock Gomes' swimming lesson was going well as Dr. Laurie Tang held him on her out-stretched arms and glided around the shallow end so he could "feel the water." But then he took an accidental gulp of water and came up sputtering.
"I can fix that," she said, and demonstrated a form of mouth-to-mouth not approved by the AMA. Sure enough, he stopped choking. But the mouth-to-mouth continued. That's when the night was filled with sirens. On a nearby deck chair, first her pager went off, then his.
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