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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
Off the hook
>> Kona
On his way out, Cruz MacKenzie stopped by the King Kamehameha concierge desk and asked the young woman on duty to FedEx the photo of Daren Guy and Sonya Chan he'd borrowed from the yacht club to the Star-Bulletin.
As he passed the front desk, a young man delivered a stack of West Hawaii Today newspapers. Cruz grabbed one. He loved newspapers, had ever since he was a kid and saw in newspapers a path to a broader world.
He still liked to read the local papers when he traveled. Plus it was good to know what the competition was up to.
Outside, the bellman called a cab and made small talk about the UH football team's last-second win over USC on Saturday and the upcoming game at Las Vegas. It wasn't until he got into the back of the cab that Cruz had a chance to look at the paper.
"Dammit!"
The cabby, a heavy-set Hawaiian man with a shaved head and a goatee, glanced in the mirror.
A photo below the fold on Page One showed Daren Guy holding up his winning Lotto ticket and grinning from ear to ear, Sonya hugging him. He was still wearing his beard. "Jeez-loo-weez, I should have seen that sooner!" Of course! Daren made it back to the boat, shaved and then went for a swim! In his haste and hurt, Cruz had missed a crucial angle. "This let's Mano off the hook!"
"What's that, bruddah?" the cabbie said, hesitant to butt into this guy's conversation with himself.
"Nothing." Now he really had to find Mano Kekai. He also had to start taking this story less personally. It was making him blind to the obvious.
>> Sonya knew Perry Brown, Esq., from the yacht club, where he kept a 75-foot Bill Lee docked, and she'd waited on him a few times.
"I want to offer my sincerest condolences," he'd said on the phone just after she ferried Cruz back to the dock. "And I'd like to offer you my services."
"For what?"
"I think I could be of some help to you, help you establish a secure future. You were officially engaged to Daren Guy, I understand?"
"He proposed that last night, just before he ..." Her voice trailed off.
"You poor thing. Well, I know that mere money will never replace your loss, but it occurs to me that you would have a valid claim to his winnings in the lottery. In fact, I wonder if you might have some time to come by the office so we could discuss this in greater detail?"
She said she could be there in 30 minutes, and Perry Brown said good, he had court later. "I'm on my way!" Sonya chirped.
Indeed she was.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek. His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin. He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com
