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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
Playground prank
>> Liliha
It was the oldest of playground pranks. Sneak up behind someone standing with most of their weight on one foot, barely bump the back of their knee and it was like they stepped into an elevator chute. Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka knew it well from school days.
The senator, one of 200 monks in orange mendicant robes attending the dedication of a shrine at the boyhood home where the second Lama Jey Tsong Khapa announced his Buddhahood, eagerly awaited the opportunity to see a living Buddha up-close. The three months with these monks had been the best of his life. There really was something to Buddhism. Besides, he was still wanted by the law after getting busted by HPD Detective Sherlock Gomes, and this was the best cover he could conjure.
Here was his up-close-lama opportunity. The dedication service was over, the young lama was heading back to the waiting limo, following Gomes, and would pass within a few feet of where the senator stood in the second row of monks. As the lama came nearer, it seemed to Donovan, he looked like a pretty normal guy. And then as Gomes passed, the monk in front of Donovan, the one he thought was packing a piece, reached his right hand inside his outer robe. As if going for a shoulder holster.
That's when divine inspiration hit him, and Donovan just barely bumped his left knee into the back of this guy's right, and down he went. Up went a black pistol, flung high -- the legs go down, the arms go up -- and sort of floated above the monks.
It was such a subtle move, almost no one saw it. But Officer Quinn Ah Sun, who'd been keeping an eye on the hard type posing as a monk, did. "Gomes! Behind you!"
He whirled, saw a pistol floating in air, one monk starting to throw a jab at another monk, but before he could the young lama was leaping and kicking the guy in the head, and he was going down for the count.
The pistol was coming down, monks started to scatter, not wanting to even touch such a symbol of violence. Donovan knew better. The last thing they wanted was the gun hitting the pavement and going off.
Again divine inspiration blessed him, and he reached up with his robe, and caught it softly. Never actually touching it, because hands can leave fingerprints, with head humbly bowed he held the gun out to Gomes as if in an apron. He instantly identified it as a Chinese version of the Russian Tokarev. A serious killing weapon.
A phalanx of helmeted SWAT team members appeared and whisked the lama into his limo. Gomes turned his attention to the guy on the ground. The senator backed away, blending into the sea of orange.
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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