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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
Assuming they lived
>> H-3
Trouble, HPD officer Quinn Ah Sun was thinking. I'm in trouble. I'm in so much freakin' trouble. Te-Wu couldn't kill the second Lama Jey Tsong Khapa, but getting caught in the middle of a damn icehead gang war or something just might. All because Quinn wanted to fulfill the young holy man's wish to ride on Quinn's BMW motorcycle. Oh lord, am I in trouble.
Assuming they lived.
With the black SUV driven by a dead man skidding directly toward where they knelt behind a waist-high concrete barrier, with missed shots fired from the pursuing baby blue Honda zinging past, Quinn had called "Down, now!" and protectively thrown his body over that of the living Buddha.
Hoping he would continue to be.
As the SUV crashed through the flimsy gate, Seth was spinning the wheel to correct the skid when he took a shot to the throat. He was a good driver, and if he'd lived would've brought them out of the skid, heading back down the freeway. Instead, he slumped against the wheel, all 6-foot-4, 270 pounds, locking the wheel. With his cousins Tai and Wili still firing at the Honda, the SUV began to flip sideways. Tai and Wili didn't stay shooting for long.
The first flip, Wili, firing out the rear driver's side window, was thrown half out the window, half crushed when the SUV rolled over on him. His twin Tai, in the front seat, was bounced around like the last piece of popcorn in the bag. Later, city medical examiner Dr. Kanthi von Guenther would determine the fatal chest wound was accidentally self-inflicted with the .45 he clutched even in death.
Quinn and the young lama could hear it coming, the distinctive rumble and clatter of metal crumbling, glass shattering, punctuated with gunfire, and then the screeching of the Honda's brakes. Quinn braced himself for the coming impact.
That's when a sense of calm came over him, of total peace -- he was at peace with his life, with the universe -- and saw himself and the young lama being enveloped in a halo of light.
The impending sound of mayhem was just inches away now, louder, more menacing, the moment of impact upon them. Quinn felt the concrete barrier tilt, glanced up, saw the nose of the tumbling SUV graze the top of the barrier, a mangled body dangling from an open window, and watched in awe as it went airborne, sailing over his bike that still idled, landing on its top and rolling over again, coming to rest on its wheels, blocking the ramp that leads inside the Department of Transportation offices.
The Honda sped through the plaza, whipped a U-turn, roared back toward town.
Quinn leaped aboard his bike, the lama behind him.
At the time it seemed the right thing to do.
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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