My Kind of Town
>> Above Waialua On the same team
Other than being arrested by Sherlock Gomes in the middle of a press conference at the Capitol, this had been a superior day for Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela-Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka. Enroute to OCCC in an HPD van, he'd been hijacked by a gang of Hawaiians who mixed selling drugs with radical politics -- and who thought they were grabbing their leader, Isaac Kunia. Except that a last-minute-switch in the van's passenger list was made, and Donovan had been face-down and semi-conscious in the overturned van when they snatched him.
And now here he was in heaven, or someplace awfully close to it. Not only was this house in the middle of a banana patch a crystal meth lab, they also grew a forest of hydroponic pakalolo. And there was a well-stocked fridge with plenty of brewskis. The senator was a Bud man, but he wasn't going to argue with Mr. Miller.
Yeah, the handcuffs he still wore were a pain in the okole, but the senator could still smoke a doobie and light the ice pipe, so it wasn't all that bad. And the senator had pretty much disappeared into a cloud of smoke since arriving here, paying little attention to the six armed men.
"Turn on the TV," the guy who'd ridden shotgun on the drive out here said. The guy who'd been the driver jumped to it, went straight to MTV.
"Naw, one local stations," Shotgun said. "Da kine news."
Donovan floated in and out of his cloud of smoke, puffing on this, toking on that, until he heard Shotgun call "Eh, you, ovah heah!"
Donovan focused on the TV, saw himself being arrested at the Capitol. Then the picture flashed to an HPD van that lay on its side in the intersection of Beretania and Punchbowl. "Details at 5," a voice-in-a-can said.
"So, brah, you somebody, eh?" Shotgun said.
Donovan shrugged, grinned.
"We got problems," Driver said. "They going be looking for braddah heah, prob'ly more than for Isaac."
"I say get rid of 'im," said a big guy -- Backseat Right -- who was holding an actual shotgun. "He only going be one beeg headache."
Through his fog, Donovan could see at least that he was in trouble.
"Eh, guys," he said with his best vote-for-me smile, "I'm on your side."
"Watchu mean?" Shotgun said.
"You saw me getting busted there, right? You know why? Drugs, brah! Drugs! We're on the same team!" The senator paused for effect, smiled, made eye contact with his rescuers/captors. "Eh, where'd that pipe go?"
Driver jumped up, fetched the ice pipe. This group, Donovan saw, needed a leader. And he was born to lead.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin
with weekly summaries on Sunday.
He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com