My Kind of Town
My Kind of Town
The Twin Thing
Around Oahu
Even before the killer Pac-Man virus attacked her computer, Fawn Nakamura knew something bad was going to happen. Now, even though she was relieved that she'd backed up all of the Full Faith Fellowship Gospel Tabernacle's business records after an e-virus attacked her computer, her sense of impending doom grew. It was, she knew, the Twin Thing. Something bad was happening to her identical but very different twin Shauny.
Fawn had tried to talk her out of driving to the North Shore with a guy she'd never met and had known for only two months after linking up with him on the Internet.
She dialed her sister's cell, got a busy signal. That was a good sign, wasn't it? After returning a call for Pastor Cal about flowers for Easter, Fawn tried Shauny's cell again. This time she got a message that it was temporarily out of service. Meaning dead battery. Not the first time in history a dead battery had enough juice to fuel dread. She prayed.
At the ranch above Kahuku they'd rented for two weeks, meanwhile, members of the exclusive international hunt club were gathering for their biennial hunt. So exclusive, the club did not have a name or an address.
Having deposited the beautiful, and knocked out, Shauny Nakamura with the others out back, Victor Primitivo headed into the ranch house, where a Texan, a German and a Saudi were drinking cocktails and watching Neal Cavuto on Fox. The news was fabulous -- a stock market war rally. Primitivo did the numbers. Just like that he'd made 10 million. Who said war was hell?
At Waimea Bay, something was eating at Lono Oka'aina and he couldn't enjoy the breath-taking power of the 28-foot waves that were thundering in. It had been bugging him ever since back at Turtle Bay, when he'd seen an older haole guy seemingly put something in a Japanese beauty's pink wine. It had happened so fast, like a magician, Lono wasn't sure he'd actually seen it.
But then after just three glasses of wine, she'd gotten so blitzed that she'd staggered out, leaning on him. Lono left cash on his table to cover lunch and tip, and followed them back to the parking lot and -- after she had kissed him drunkenly and he had kissed back and groped, a scene that had a tourist guy staring too -- saw her slump, then him lift her up into his Escalade.
It sure seemed like he'd slipped her a date-rape drug, but Lono didn't know what to do about it or who to call. A public-address announcer said the next heat of The Eddie was about to begin. Lono started looking for a place to sit. Down the beach he spotted that same tourist.
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