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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
They’re baaaack!
>> Kona
Cruz MacKenzie cabbed it to the yacht club and found his old friend Don Dzuraski, the Honolulu attorney turned Kona bartender, shuffling through a new batch of photographs.
"This is the night Daren won the Lotto," he said. "That's him with the winning ticket ... Him and Sonya and the winning ticket ... Here's just after he asked her to marry him and people were going nuts."
Cruz skipped past that particularly painful subject. "Did Daren always wear a beard?"
"Yeah, for as long as I've known him. That was him," Don said, sliding a glass of his house zin across the bar. "I don't think I'd hardly recognize Daren without that beard. I think it was for effect as much as for convenience. I mean, he looked like a sea captain, eh? And did you ever try shaving on a boat?"
"Once." Cruz flexed the toe that was still sore from kicking the bulkhead on Daren's boat earlier. "Was he a straight shooter?"
"You mean honest?"
"Mm." Cruz nodded.
"Yeah!" Don said, indignantly defending the dead. "Daren never tried to screw anybody that I know of." He paused thoughtfully. "Why're you asking?"
As he spoke, Don's head tilted slightly to the left. He heard the sound first on a subconscious level and it slowly registered. It took several more seconds before Cruz recognized the distant drone of many motors.
"They're baaaack!" Don said. "You're in luck, Cruz. There's nothing like Bite Night."
"What?"
"The night the fleet returns from The Bite. Par-teee!"
The low rumble of boat engines rippled from beyond the reef and filled the night as Cruz walked over to the koa and brass doors and swung them open. Beyond flickering tiki torches on the yacht club's lanai, hundreds of running lights approached.
"Keep my tab alive," Cruz called and hurried outside.
>> Off Kona
After writing down the details of that night, all of them, Daren knew he couldn't trust Sonya ever again. Not after she'd plotted against him with the crew of Pet Shop to kill him and split the Lotto money. He'd overheard the two crewmen practically saying so, something about sharing Sonya's millions once Daren was out of the way. He was already in the water then, skinny-dipping, washing off all the loose hairs after shaving off his beard.
He wore only a mask, snorkel and fins, and carried a spear gun in one hand, his favorite nylon neon lime swim shorts in the other, with a big chunk of ahi in the Velcro-down side pocket.
That's when the shark fin had appeared in the moonlight.
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
