I took a left turn on Alakea when I noticed the late model Cadillac parked in front of the Mandalay restaurant with its four ways on.
There was an older man dressed in a nice dinner jacket with the wing-tipped collar and bow tie. He wore the classic cumber bun around his waist. His dark slacks were creased in the right places, and on his feet, he wore a pair of corfram shoes. He had a flat tire, his car was already jacked up, and with a crowbar, in his hands, he was about to perform the dirty deed. I pulled over a few feet in front of him and parked with my blinkers on as well. At that hour, Alakea was dark and save for the few people standing at the bus stop, there was no one else around. The entire strip was empty, it probably wasn't a safe place for a person so well dressed to be caught unaware. I got out of my car and walked toward the gentleman with my hands up. The second he caught sight of me. I exclaimed, "I'm unarmed. I just stopped to see if you needed any help?"
The man shook his head and laughed, "As you can see, my wife is in the car glued to her damned phone, she's no help. Listen, we're in a rush; we gotta get to this dinner at the Pacific Club. You see the way I'm dressed, right? If you can change this tire in less than fifteen minutes, I'll give you one hundred dollars. Hell, if you can get her done in ten minutes, I'll make it two hundred!"
"I'll do my best," I took the crowbar from him and undid the lug nuts without a problem. After removing the flat the gentleman told me to just place it on the sidewalk and to leave it there. He had no plans to recycle it. The new tire was on in no time and once it was off the jack I had plans to tell the well-dressed man to not worry about the money. "Pay it forward" is what I had intended to say. Instead, I heard the car door slam and the locks click, the ignition turned over and the reverse lights went on. The tires screeched briefly as he aimed his car to run me over. In my state of panic, I stumbled over my own two feet and fell back flat on the blacktop. He missed me completely. The Cadillac sped forward and made a U-turn in the middle of Alakea and headed straight toward me. Driving the vehicle was a red-eyed demon with a mane of wild white hair, its fangs were bare and it howled wildly behind the steering wheel. The older woman in the passenger's seat held the cell phone to her face and was completely oblivious to what was happening. I immediately turned and ran into the alleyway between Cafe' Julia and the Kamamalu building in a desperate attempt to get away. I could hear the Cadillac picking up speed behind me and I made it out of there just in time before the demonic driver could sideswipe me. It was almost as if it anticipated my next move because as I ran mauka up Richard street, the car barrelled left too. It was either pure luck or strange circumstance that there wasn't any traffic heading in the oncoming direction. That would have been a disaster. Some instinct told me to run through the Kinau exit gate of the 'Iolani Palace. I barely made it when I noticed that the crazy demonic driver did not follow me, the car was parked outside the entrance, and when the monster behind the wheel got out of the Cadillac, he was the finely dressed older gentleman again. He reached into his inside coat pocket and removed a wallet and threw it at me. It landed less than a foot away from where I stood.
"I didn't mean anything by it, I was just bored! I wanted to have a little fun, that's all! You did well though! You got that tire changed in less than ten minutes, that's a record…..as magic and as supernatural as I am, I couldn't have done that myself. A deal is a deal, two hundred fair and square." He winked at me and gave me a salute and drove off into the night as his real demon self. I had to call my brother to come to pick me up at the palace and drive me back to my car. I left the wallet right where it was; let some other sucker pick it up and have bad luck. Accepting money from a demon is like taking a bite of that first Lays Potato Chip…..and we all know how that works out.
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