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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
Drop it!
>> Off Kona
Daren was anxious, he was bored. He wanted to get moving with his plan, but he was forced to wait. He wanted Sonya, but could he trust her after what he overheard the two dead guys saying before they were dead? Could he trust anybody? Should he?
Random images of that night had been doing freefalls through his head for three days, but now that he had nothing to do but wait they were more persistent. He wanted to sort them out. He would write down everything, just the way it happened, in order, every detail. And then he wouldn't have to think about it any more.
He sat down at the desk, wrote on the pink stationery he found there, starting with when he returned to his boat, shaved off his beard and went skinny-dipping. Well, he had swim shorts. But his favorite nylon neon lime swim shorts, with a chunk of ahi in the side pocket, were not on his body per se. Oooh, good legal term, per se.
And he scribbled on, letting the memories and the words flow.
>> Kona
Cruz paid the cabby, actually a tight-lipped cabette, and as she accelerated away he turned to face two very large Polynesian males stepping out from behind a parked van. Both were heavily tattooed. One held a machete.
"Gentlemen," Cruz managed to say. "What can I do for you?"
The one without the machete stepped up and snatched the LapFlex computer out of Cruz's hand.
"Your money, too, bruddah," said the other, hyperventilating. He swayed from foot to foot, slapping the flat machete blade in the palm of a meaty hand.
They both perspired heavily, their eyes wide and bloodshot. Ice, no doubt, that damn crystal methamphetamine. It was ruining even more lives in their generation than cocaine did in his.
He reached into his left pants pocket, where he always carried his money, and started to hand over his money clip -- a sacred souvenir from the Kapalua International golf tournament the year he played with Greg Norman in the pro-am, it meant more to Cruz than the money -- when he heard a distinctive metallic click to his left. Their heads spun around faster than Cruz's. A dapper fellow in a pink Ralph Lauren button down shirt, gray Italian silk slacks and black Gucci tassel loafers pointed a Glock 9mm pistol at Cruz's two new acquaintances.
"Drop it!" he barked.
Cruz dropped the money clip. It hit the ground an instant before the LapFlex crashed against the blacktop and broke open, chips and wires exploding across the parking lot.
"Jeez! Not you, you fricking idiot! And not you either, MacKenzie. You! Drop the blade, now!"
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
