It seemed like a year since we’d been able to relax when we met at the Blue Light. The four of us sat in the back room, as usual, but the space felt bigger. And that spaciousness allowed us to breathe a little easier. I could see it in everyone’s posture. We were all kind of blissfully slouched.
The Captain raised his glass. “Well, Four-9 wasn’t exactly successful this time –”
“But,” Chen interrupted, “it’s not like this was our fault. I mean, we couldn’t keep him alive because he was already dead.”
“True,” said Del, “and what I was going to say is that too many factors sort of came to us rather than us anticipating them. That’s not our style.”
“Well,” I said, “I get that, but we were dealing with some kind of seriously complex organization here. I mean, I’d never heard of this anonymous group of people who wield so much power. We know syndicates, and we know criminal networking, but whatever this bunch is, it’s something that we might come up against one day. Ah, at least we’ll have a better understanding of the way they might work.”
“Very James Bond, you mean,” said Kalahiki.
“Highest level James Bond,” I said.
Chen laughed. “Come on. How do we even know that half of what this guy said is even true?”
The four of us thought about this. What did we know? How true was his story? Well, we’d probably never know. MI6 had flown in first thing, picked him up, and for all I know, shoved him out of the plane in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
I said, “It is true that Sean Daniel, the real Sean Daniel is dead, right? We can agree on that, right?”
We came to no concrete conclusions about the case. The beer did its best to steer us away from the real world for a while.
I wandered around Chinatown until I’d sobered up enough to drive home. Pulling into my garage, I noticed someone sitting in the shadows on my stone wall. This didn’t worry me; if the person were there to kill me, he wouldn’t make himself so obvious.
“Looking for me?” I asked as I dropped the garage door.
The person stood up and walked over to me. Under the streetlight, she was easy to recognize.
“Oh, Kathy, what brings you by?” I couldn’t believe I felt nervous. Maybe more than I would if it had been someone gunning for me.
She hooked my arm. “I wanted to hear the rest of the story about this guy. Pretty amazing stuff.”
We walked up to my front door. I fumbled the keys and dropped them on the doorstep.
“Oh oh,” said Kathy, “when Lieutenant Chan loses his keys, do you know why the bad guys breathe a sigh of relief?”
“Why’s that?” I asked, stooping to retrieve them.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It was the beginning of a joke. You were supposed to come up with the punch line.”
When I stood up, it appeared she was waiting for me to finish the joke.
“Hmmm.” I unlocked the door and stepped in. I was so nervous that I tripped over the step up and had to use her to catch myself.
“Good one,” she said. “When in doubt, slapstick always gets a laugh.”
“So am I off the hook?”
“Depends,” she said. “If you got a beer for me, I might let you go. You haven’t completely lost your sense of humor, have you?”
I had no answer for that. I went to the fridge and brought back two beers.
“Great collection of crime novels,” she said. “You go to school on all of these?”
“Ah, no,” I said, handing her a beer. “My life. Ah, sorry, I mean my wife.”
“Freudian slip, David. That’s another way to get a laugh.” She took a sip. “Most of the time.”
Stepping around me, she almost ran to the lānai doors. “Holy Moly, that is one spectacular view of Honolulu.”
She opened the glass doors, walked out, and over to the railing. “Oh man, David. If I had this view, you’d never be able to get me to leave this place. It’s beautiful.”
She looked good in the moonlight. I could almost see the high-school her. It was an odd feeling.
We sat. Kathy lifted her bottle. “A toast. To the man who solved the mystery of Agent Daniel, Sean Daniel.”
That made me laugh. “Well, had I known there would be a mystery involved, I’d have been more in solve-mystery mode than be-bodyguard mode.”
“But it was a mystery in the end.”
“In the end, yeah, it was a mystery.”
“And you figured it out.”
“Yes, I did.”
“You the man, David Chan.
I had to smile at that.
“That’s funny, David.”
I turned to her. “What’s funny?”
“In the moonlight, you almost look like the high-school you. It’s kind of romantic.”
“Say what?”
“Out here, you looking all young and carefree again.”
“Carefree. Those were the days. But, ah, it’s romantic?”
“It is,” she said. Reaching across the table, she placed her hand on top of mine.
I kind of surprised myself by not flinching. The pressure of her hand felt good, felt just right.
“You know how you had to teach me how to laugh way back then?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
She squeezed my hand. “I think I’m going to have to return the favor and teach you about romance now.”
And with that, I had a feeling I would never see another parting from her.
Lanning Lee 