My Kind of Town
My Kind of Town
>> Queen's Medical Center Familialarity
His cousin Lily -- no, they had to stop thinking of each other like that -- was sitting on his bed and Quinn Ah Sun was telling her what he'd learned minutes before in a conversation with his mother in Las Vegas, filling in some of the pukas in the old newspaper clips about the Ah Suns that Lily copied.
"And then there's my dad's stolen .45," he said.
Like Quinn, Lily's Uncle Mits was a cop. "Right, we read about that."
"So after he shows up at the Pearl City Tavern early when he was supposed to be going to play poker in Waimanalo with your dad and Bobo, and says Bobo never showed, he gets totally hammered. My mom's gonna drive him home and when they get out there, his trunk's been popped and his .45 is gone."
"After Bobo disappeared."
"Weird thing is, my mom said he was more relieved than angry."
"Wait, go back a step. Let's say your dad's gun and his morose mood did have something to do with Bobo's disappearance. What would he possibly have against his hanai brother that would make him ..."
"Bobo owed my dad a couple grand, loaned it to him to pay off a gambling debt, but he wouldn't shoot a brother over that."
"What then?"
"This is where it starts to get heavy, Lil, especially now that we know it was your dad who wrote Bobo's postcard from Miami saying he was alive and well."
Lily slid closer on the bed to Quinn. "And now we that know he's not really my father ..."
"That's what I'm getting to." Quinn took a deep breath, plunged ahead, looking for the right words like a man lost at sea hoping for the Coast Guard. "I'm not sure how to say this, but about a month before your mom and dad got married, she had a girls'-night-out bachelorette party."
Born not quite eight months after the wedding, Lily had wondered over the years where and how she was conceived. In a moment of youthful passion that wouldn't let them wait until the wedding night, she'd imagined.
"My mom was Auntie Grace's designated driver. They hit all of the nightspots and ended up at Nick's Fishmarket. Turned out Bobo was filling in for the singer they'd gone to see. Long story short, Auntie Grace was having way too much fun, my mom wanted to go, it was getting late, but your mom wanted to stay. And Bobo said he'd drive her and her friend home."
Head swirling, stomach churning, Lily picked up photocopy of a Donnelly column from the nightstand. It included a mug shot of Bobo. Suddenly she could guess why he looked so familial.
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