My Kind of Town
My Kind of Town
Getting out-copped
>> Queen's Medical CenterIf he's lucky, it happens sooner or later to every man who fathers a son. Later is better. For while the day that your son first beats you -- at H-O-R-S-E or chess, whatever the competition -- is a day of pride, it is also sprinkled with a dose of your own mortality. Thus the torch is passed, as it must inevitably, whether you're ready to hand it over or not.
HPD Sgt. Mits Ah Sun knew days like that. The day when Quinn was 14 and Mits could no longer get his fastball past Quinn's bat. The day at the Koko Head shooting range when Quinn scored higher on the pistol test.
Now it was happening again, but with rather higher stakes. Quinn was out-copping him. He'd figured out the whole bloody thing, everything but what happened to Bobo's body and Mits' .45. And he wanted answers to those.
"What it looks like to me," Quinn said, still waiting for his answers, "is that Uncle Sheets got away with a nearly perfect crime."
"My brother didn't get away with anything!" Mits said, his vehemence surprising them both. "Nobody did! OK, there was no trial, no jail. But for 21 years there's been the fear of it. For 21 years he's lived with guilt, and so have I. For 21 years he's been punishing himself, and so have I. For 21 years we haven't been able to meet or speak. You think you and your cousin Lily missed out? You've no idea what's it like to have a brother and not be able to speak to him for fear that one of us, somehow without meaning to, would do or say something that tips off the world to what happened that night in Waimanalo. No, he didn't get away with anything!"
"So that's where it happened."
"Yeah." Mits swore softly.
"You were there?"
"We were on our way to play poker. I saw in one of the columns that Bobo was in town, entertaining on a cruise ship. So I went down, invited him to play cards. See, he owed me a couple thousand I loaned him. Told him he could earn it back. We picked up Sheets at the Soap Company, he rode in the back. I'd folded up my uniform, put it on the back seat with my .45 on top. All of a sudden, Sheets goes crazy, puts the gun to Bobo's head, tells him he knows that Bobo raped Grace just before the wedding and got her pregnant. He had me drive to this illegal dumpsite and ..."
"The one that's been in the news?"
"That's it."
"Did you hear the latest? They think they found human remains."
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