My Kind of Town
Curtain call
>> 2002 Wilder
Something was different, HPD Detective Sherlock Gomes noticed the moment he and Dr. Laurie Tang began to disentangle from their second kiss of the evening. The man did have a knack for compartmentalizing, not to mention observation.The curtains had been pulled to the edges of the sliding screen door that led to the lanai. Earlier, when he'd been questioning Laurie about Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka, she'd had the curtains pulled wide to reveal the fading colors of sunset through the floor-to-ceiling glass. Later, as she changed into her swimsuit, Gomes watched Honolulu city lights sparkling, and when he first saw Laurie in a pareau wrapped at the waist around a yellow swimsuit, it was a reflection in the glass. He'd jumped up and they went straight upstairs to the pool. Now the curtains were pulled so that the glass was covered.
That could mean several things. An automatic timing device that closed the curtains? Blown shut by the wind? Or ... someone who didn't want to be detected in reflection? Gomes wanted a moment to think. Trouble could be just around the corner that turned left into the kitchen or, a few steps past, the corner that turned right into a hallway.
"Laurie," Gomes said, touching her arm.
She'd never heard her name said just that way, husky and urgent. She liked it, and pulled him close, smelled testosterone in the air. But when Gomes whispered in her ear, it wasn't sweet nothings she heard. It was a plan that involved the holstered silver pistol that hung from his bare shoulder, and a script for what Laurie must say and do.
>> Makiki Heights
Machiavelli Wang was brilliant, he had to admit it. The story he'd just concocted would get Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka back in the race for governor, especially with the mayor out and the other Democrats combining to evoke as much excitement as a humid afternoon of house painting. Assuming, of course, that Salvatore Innuendo took care of Sherlock Gomes.Here it was: The senator didn't go AWOL, he was detained against his will by a group of Native Hawaiian terrorists. Of course he hadn't known they were terrorists when he'd agreed to a lunch meeting at Zippy's-Beretania. They were merely activists. Part-Hawaiian himself, the senator was concerned about native rights. But he didn't make it inside for lunch. The senator was asked to get into a van, blind-folded and driven around for an hour. The mask was removed after they arrived at a cabin that was surrounded by banana trees. For three days they "educated" the senator, often threatening to kill him. That they let him go spoke volumes about his statesmanship.
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