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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
Very little erasing
>> Honolulu
The newsroom was dim, nobody else around this early on a Saturday, and the newspaper's library was still locked, but Cruz MacKenzie had a secret key.
He opened the door to the library -- it was a dark day in journalism when they stopped calling it "the morgue" -- turned on the lights and walked quickly to the dead picture box, where photos from that day's paper are sent to be filed after publication. He located the 8-by-10 black-and-white original -- left over from they days before digital took over -- in half a minute. Sure enough, it was a horizontal shot that had been cropped to a vertical two-column in today's paper, and showed the full boat. Cruz Xeroxed the photo and took it back to his office.
In the published photo, smiling Pet Shop publisher Cue Garbanzo had a bikini-clad girl on either side. In the full photo, though, he was actually surrounded by a dozen young women in bikinis. Cruz knew the third one to the left of the publisher. Sonya Chan leaned coquettishly on the rail, setting most of her new store-bought breasts free of her top, lips parted, a come-hither look. He and Sonya had met aboard the boat during a press reception for the release of the "Girls of Hawaii" pictorial.
But the boat, the boat ... Imagination and not-so-subtle wishes can color what you see. Like the green fabric he'd found. He wanted it to be a match with Daren Guy's shorts, but was it? And now Pet Shop looked a little like ...
Cruz held the photo at arm's length to get a different perspective ... tilted his head ... tilted the photo ... and suddenly saw it!
He grabbed a notebook and pencil and printed PET SHOP in block letters. With very little erasing and new writing, it suddenly became WET SPOT!
Cruz called Nick Ornellas and left a message on his machine: "I think we may have just solved two boating mysteries. Call me."
Then he called and got the answering machine for "Dillon Tanonaka and Aloha Skydive. Please leave a message after the beep. And for anyone who is involved in the stadium jump tonight, we're meeting at the commuter terminal, hangar 2, at 3 p.m. to run through everything. Thanks for calling. And we'll see you in the sky!"
He left a message: "Cruz MacKenzie calling. Thanks very much for your message, Dillon. Yes, I would like to talk with you about Daren Guy. If it's convenient, give me a call tomorrow morning at the office."
Cruz had known other sky-divers over the years and was looking forward to meeting Dillon Tanonaka. All of the others were about half-looned and quite quotable.
That made his job so much easier.
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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