My Kind of Town
>> Honolulu Soap Co. Copping a plea
Coming clean? HPD Detective Sherlock Gomes wondered if Sheets Ah Sun realized his pun. Apparently not. Ah Sun was also, apparently, out of story. He sat back in his chair and it squeaked, rust on rust.
"I appreciate your forthrightness, Mr. Ah Sun. And I have a couple of questions." He glanced at his notepad. "The auto mechanic who introduced you to the Waimanalo dumpsite, what was his name?"
"Oh, he passed away a while back. Howard Okata, worked out of his house in Aiea."
Gomes noted it. "And the 'mistakes' you made with various soap recipes. What exactly constitutes soap-gone-bad?"
"Eh, mistakes happen, like in any business. Heck, that's how I invented liquid soap. Total mistake! But like I said, I was raised plantation style by my grandparents, and you don't throw nothing away. So I took it home for my family, and my wife and kids thought it was such a great idea. But it was just blind pig luck."
But other times, other mistakes ... "You hate to throw anything away, yet two or three times, you said, you dumped things at the Waimanalo site. What was different about those batches."
"One time, too strong, would have burned the skin. I tried like a son of a gun to figure out some way to use that stuff, but sometimes you got to swallow your mistakes."
"Or dump them."
Sheets shrugged. "One other time, the batch came so hard, it wouldn't dissolve and, you know, suds up like."
"And the third time?"
"Maybe was only two." Two that he could talk about. That's why Sheets was copping a plea to dumping, hoping to skate around the night that Bobo went for a dip in the toxic pit. "So how much trouble I'm in?"
"Not my call. I'll write up the report, file it. But I imagine the statute of limitations is up."
Sheets let out a grateful sigh. Gomes put his notepad and gold Cross pen back in the pocket of his silk aloha shirt. This guy, Sheets thought, may be a detective, but he's no plainclothesman.
"Thank you for the tour, Mr. Ah Sun. I enjoyed it. To be honest, ever since small kid times I loved field trips to the bakery and the dairy and the newspaper, to see how things worked behind the scenes." They each had such distinctive aromas, as did this place.
"Glad you enjoyed it," Sheets said, showing Gomes to the entrance.
"And say hi to your brother for me when you see him."
Oh, Sheets would be doing just that, and soon. Mits needed to know that his colleague was on the scent of crimes that could lead directly to him.
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