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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
Fleeing the truth
>> Off Kona
A dead man's razor was bad enough. His former beard all over Cruz MacKenzie's hands was way too much. "I've got that room waiting at the King Kam. I'll get cleaned up over there."
Sonya Chan wrapped a blue and yellow plumeria print lava-lava around her as she followed Cruz up to the boat's deck.
The north wind had died and it was a sunny, still morning on the bay.
"That's too weird," was all Cruz could say.
"I guess after winning all that money, Daren was going straight. The beard had to go. I can just see him, planning to surprise me."
"Sure."
She ferried him back to the yacht club in Daren Guy's little motorized dinghy. As they putted past Wet Spot, the boat that had arrived in the middle of the night, a white-haired man wearing dark glasses, captain's hat pulled down low, a blue blazer and white slacks stared angrily at them from the deck, hands stuck in his pockets.
"Must be a friend of Daren's," Cruz said, unable to avoid staring back at the old man whose anger exceeded his years.
"Never saw him before," Sonya said, tightening the lava-lava around her as if she felt a chill. "There's something about the boat, though. I don't know ..."
Fleeing, you tend to forget a lot of things that will later seem important, but in the crucible of crisis make as much sense as, well, a lot of the stuff that happens at City Hall. And Cruz was definitely fleeing.
As they approached the yacht club, he thought of the family of an old housemate, Rick. The father of Rick's girlfriend Nita had been the Coca-Cola distributor for Laos.
But when the communist Pathet Lao took over, Nita's family fled. They brought with them the clothes they wore, not much more.
In their haste to survive, they did not bring out a couple of million dollars American in gold, art, gems, real estate and cash. Cruz was leaving something behind, although he didn't know exactly what it was, or its value. Right now it didn't matter.
Sonya cut the engine, turned the tiller and the dinghy slid gently against the dock. She knew what she was doing, Cruz noted and fled the truth -- she still loved Daren -- without a kiss. "Thanks, I gotta go." He just wanted to shave in peace. Is that such a stupid request? It didn't seem so to him.
"You know how to reach me?" she said to his back.
"Right," Cruz said to the dock.
Sonya said something else, but he wasn't sure what, and didn't really care. He just wanted to be gone. "Hey, Cruz, lighten up!" she called across the water. "You just got an exclusive!"
But not nearly as exclusive as he wished.
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Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek. His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin. He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com