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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
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>> Honolulu
In the old days, say six months ago, it would have been easy. Call Kaiser, ask for patient Dillon Tanonaka, and they'd tell you if he was a patient or not, and if so what his condition was. Now, with the new privacy law, hospitals couldn't reveal anything, not even whether Dillon Tanonaka was or was not a patient. The intent of the privacy law was noble, but it sure made covering a tragedy a lot tougher for journalists. So Cruz MacKenzie would just have to wait for the police report.
All Cruz could do now was hope Dillon Tanonaka was the lone survivor of the plane crash in Pearl Harbor. He was one guy who could shed some light on Daren Guy's past. Instead, the odds said he had just become another piece in a puzzle that got bigger and murkier the harder Cruz looked at it.
At last he fell asleep, enjoyed the warmth of Jasmine Kekai beside him, but awoke her with a see-you-later kiss at 7 a.m.
"You work on Sunday mornings?" she said with a disbelieving frown.
"Sunday morning is the best time to be in the office."
"God, Cruz, work is your religion." She shook her head.
"I love Sunday mornings. Usually I'm the only person in the building until 10 when the general assignment reporters and photographers start filtering in. I can get a lot accomplished."
She shook her head again, but also kissed him again.
With a Big Buzz tankard of 7-Eleven coffee, Cruz sat down at his desk, tuned the radio to the 49ers-Dolphins game and opened the Sunday paper, which confirmed that Dillon Tanonaka was among the nine who had gone down with the plane. Cruz wanted to get on to other things and hit the "Create" key on his computer keyboard.
"So how's the shark beat?" It was the paper's editorial cartoonist
"Aaron, what brings you in on Sunday?"
"Today is my anniversary. I've been hiding the wife's present in my office."
"Good timing, I need a favor. Didn't you work for HPD before you came here?"
"Yeah, I worked at the cop shop part-time during college."
Cruz showed him the picture of Daren Guy. "Could you draw what this guy might look like without the beard?"
"It's been a long time since I did police composites, I dunno ..."
"It's guess-work, I know. But maybe if you did a couple, it would give me an idea of what to look for."
"Who is this guy?"
"Daren Guy."
"I thought he was dead."
"Probably is. But I've got this nagging feeling that maybe he's not."
"Give me 20 minutes. By the way, my wife's sister went to school with him."
"You got her number?"
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