My Kind of Town
>> Queen's Medical Center Cool heart
HPD Sgt. Mits Ah Sun was on his way to a home up Pacific Palisades where there was a report from a neighbor about a "domestic" that seemed to be escalating. Over the years Mits had responded to domestics that had involved all kinds of ethnic races, married couples, unmarried couples, parents and kids, siblings and homosexual couples. It was always ugly.
Ask any cop, domestics are the worst -- nothing but raw nuked emotions, love soured into hate -- because both parties are so volatile and unpredictable. And one of them, sometimes both, resent cops showing up.
In responding to a regular criminal complaint you kind of know what to expect, but not when desire and anger and hurt and retribution are thick in the air.
Mits knew what it was like. He'd been wildly in love once, and crushed when Flo left him and Quinn when the boy was just 11. Never again. Yes, he loved his new wife, Wanphen, the girl he'd brought from Thailand two years ago. He loved her beauty, her perfect skin and figure, her generally cheerful disposition, her happiness in pleasing him. But it was a love without runaway emotions. Wanphen had a term, "jai yen," cool heart. It was a trait admired by Thais. Mits liked love better that way.
His cell phone rang once. Then twice. Then again. Mits picked up on the fourth ring. "You going by the hospital," he heard his brother Sheets say, "visit your boy?"
"Pau hana, sure."
"I think we better talk. Your compatriot Sherlock Gomes just left the plant. Was asking why I drove past the dumpsite in Waimanalo."
"Babooze!"
"It's OK. I told him about dumping a couple of batches of bad soap there years ago. He bought it."
"Oh really? You not smart enough to listen to my advice, so you arouse suspicion. And now you think you going outsmart Sherlock Gomes? You know what, Sheets? Get plenty guys at OCCC and Halawa thought the same thing."
"OK, OK. I gotta go by the hospital, see Lance. I'll call you when I get there."
"And, Sheets, forget the code already."
Clicking off, Mits knew their secret was probably safe, even given Gomes' deserved reputation for figuring out cases that mystified others, unless investigators at the illegal chemical dumpsite in Waimanalo found the one piece of evidence that pointed directly at him. His pistol wasn't likely to have survived 21 years in that toxic brine, but you never knew.
For the first time in his career, Mits was actually relieved to arrive at the address where the domestic was reported. The sound of breaking glass and a man swearing got his mind off his own sins.
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