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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
Lover’s leap
>> Off the Big Island
Daren Guy eagerly took the money from Sushi Leclaire, counted it even more eagerly. Ten hundreds to a pack, a thousand bucks, and he had 20 of them -- $20,000! More than plenty to tide him over until the insurance thing was settled. And more to come.
But Daren was not so busy counting money that he failed to see the .22 pistol tucked among the other stacks of cash in the brief case. Sonya Chan saw it too, fingered the safety on the spear gun.
That's when they heard someone shout "Banzai!" and looked up to see a body hurtling from the deck of the Tuna Maru toward them.
One of the 12 Filipinas they'd just picked up screamed "Hideki!!!"
One of the Tuna Maru's crew was apparently abandoning ship. "Agnes!!!" he answered, waving his arms as he plummeted, trying to maintain an upright position, his only hope of surviving the 7-story fall.
In a semi-jack-knife position, the body went past in a blur, slicing into the water with a resounding ka-shoosh, kicking up a splash 30 feet high.
Sobbing, Agnes raced to the rail, looking overboard for signs of Hideki. He surfaced a moment later, floundering, dazed and disoriented from the impact, exactly the kind of behavior that attracts sharks.
"Daren, throw him a life ring!" Sonya shouted, immediately realized the tell-tale pink life rings were stored below with the tell-tale pink sails. Tell-tale and incriminating. She understood that as long as the Tuna Maru was here, Daren would not bring out anything pink and would let the lovestruck idiot drown before revealing Wet Spot's real identity to the captain and crew.
Grabbing one of the lines used to tether the ship to a dock, Sonya -- wearing an itsy-bitsy yellow bikini -- leaped into the water, grabbed Hideki by the collar and dragged him back to the yacht. Agnes and Sushi pulled him aboard gasping. Sonya followed, stood dripping beside a speargun.
The gloaming was giving way to dusk, and Daren turned Wet Spot for the Big Island, leaving behind Tuna Maru. The yacht labored along slowly, overloaded with the 12 Filipinas, Sushi and Hideki, plus Daren and Sonya. At this rate, he calculated, from 200 miles off shore, it would be at least 36 hours before they reached Kona, minimum, and by then it might be dawn. In which case they'd have to bob around off shore for another day, and he wanted to get rid of these people and get on with his plans.
And so, he decided to gamble. When night fell and the moon stayed behind the clouds, Daren took out the smallest of the pink sails and with Sonya and Hideki rigged and unfurled it. It was imperative they get to Kona while it was still dark tomorrow.
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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
