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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
Nowhere to go
>> Big Island
Sushi Leclaire sat disconsolately in the driver's seat of the rented van with nowhere to go. The new lava flow, the chopper pilot who'd just landed said, crossed the road leading out of Pele's Bath, closing it. And so here he was with the 12 lovely Filipinas hed recruited from the bars of Manila, and no way of getting them to the house in the hills above Kona where the living room was set up as a video studio.
He would be arrested, the girls would be deported. So he sat, forehead on the steering wheel.
"Hey, Soosh, cheer up!"
It was Sonya Chan, and the former fiancee of the recently dead Daren Guy was not in a mourning mode, not in that glittery silver bikini.
"What is to cheer up about?" he said glumly.
"Look!" she pointed to where his girls waited at the waters edge.
"What?"
"Its back on the boat, Soosh! Let's go!"
"You would risk this?" Meaning skippering a yacht wanted by police and the Coast Guard, and carrying a load of illegal aliens.
"I care about those girls," she said. "Especially after what they did for me." Mobbing Daren when he attacked her, saving her life.
"We'll get you and the girls off the boat, then I'll turn the boat over to the authorities."
Sushi burst out of the van with a huge smile. "Let's go! I will hug you later!"
As he ran down to the beach, Sonya went back to where Cruz MacKenzie, Nick Ornellas and the chopper pilot spoke with Virgil Root about the attack from Daren that left his two companions dead and Root bleeding and groggy. She waved at Cruz, beckoning him to a private conversation.
"These girls, they're not legal, but you saw what they did for me. So I'm going to get them and the guy they're with to Kona. Its the least I can do. I was wondering if you want to come along. I need some friendly company. Plus, Daren left behind a written confession. I know how you like exclusives."
And so Sonya ferried the girls and Sushi and Cruz out the yacht once called Pet Shop but now known as Wet Spot, and they hoisted anchor and turned for Kona.
It was dicey, choppers seemed to fill the sky now as the media and tour operators hurried to see the surprising new lava flow as it sizzled and steamed into the sea. But Sonya kept the girls below and out of sight.
The dozen beauties, as well as Sonya in her bikini, would normally have been distracting, but when Cruz started reading Daren Guy's hand-written confession on the boat's monogrammed pink stationery, they could have danced naked and he wouldn't have noticed. He had a scoop with a capital S.
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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