Your House Will Pay

by Steph Cha

  Aunt Sheila had slapped him across the face. “You know what happens to a girl like Ava, people start thinking she was a bad girl? She gets tossed in with the rest of them. The pile of black girls no one’s ever heard of. It is a mass grave, Shawn. Baby, we don’t even know their names, ’cause no one’s talking about them or writing about them for any of us to hear. Is that what you want for your sister?”

  Shawn had turned from her in anger, stunned that his aunt had hit him, a grown man with his own life, his own problems, his own way of solving them; he had turned away because he knew he had nothing to say.

  Nine

  Monday, August 26, 2019

  She couldn’t leave the bedroom without running into Blake. Blake in the den, watching TV, practicing yoga. Blake in the kitchen, drinking his disgusting kombucha. In all fairness, this was his house, and it was his right to hang around, even if it was a Monday afternoon when normal people were at work.

  With Paul gone at all hours and speaking to her as little as he could get away with, Grace was guarding her sanity by staying with Miriam. She’d managed to show her face at the hospital every day, but she was spending most of her time in the spare bedroom, avoiding Blake while her sister ran around doing whatever she did. Going out for lunches and drinks and coffees, but also almost certainly spending more time at the hospital than Grace. It wouldn’t be so bad if he’d just ignore her, as usual, but he’d stop what he was doing whenever she ventured out for a glass of water, asking her questions and following her around with that pitying good-guy gaze.

  Part of her thought she’d be better off at work, where she could distract herself. But she’d asked Uncle Joseph to fill in for her so she could continue what she’d been doing since Saturday morning: holing up and obsessing about her mother.

  Even if Miriam hadn’t spilled Yvonne’s history, Grace would’ve found out yesterday, when the L.A. Times ran a story on her mother’s shooting, which outlined the facts of the Ava Matthews killing in plain, cold text. Grace didn’t really read the news, but there was no way this would’ve escaped her attention. The story had blown up. There were trending hashtags on every social media platform, rampant with opinion and speculation, hot takes and ill will. There was even a new flurry of one-star reviews on Woori Pharmacy’s formerly sparse Yelp page. Grace was getting carefully worded emails from a string of strangers claiming to be journalists, nudging her for fact and comment, offering her a chance to tell her side of the story—this story she wanted no part of and knew almost nothing about. There had even been calls, enough of them that she would’ve turned her phone off if she weren’t standing by for life-or-death news.

  These people were shameless, and no matter how much sympathy they pretended to offer, Grace knew they were not on her side. She responded to none of them, and she saw the way they twisted her family’s silence, the sneering implication that a lack of comment was an admission of vice, when her mother was in a literal fucking coma. She recognized one of the reporters as the professorial man from that night at the bar. His name was Jules Searcey, and he emailed her no fewer than six times, acting like their glancing encounter made them pals. Then he wrote a long, damning New Yorker article linking Jung-Ja Han to Trevor Warren, Alfonso Curiel’s killer, a comparison that struck Grace as breathtakingly unfair. He went on and on about the violence against black bodies in Southern California, about the failures of a justice system that treated black life as something less than human. He kept referring to the mounting unrest in Los Angeles, as if he weren’t actively trying to add fuel to the flames.

  Grace read everything she could find about Yvonne: dozens of articles, old and new, but also blog posts and comment threads, micro-histories, wikis. Now that she knew what to look for, it seemed remarkable and insulting that it had ever been hidden. The shooting was everywhere, the only thing that came up when she searched her mother’s name. As far as most people were concerned, it was the only thing that defined her. This single act, the pull of a trigger, one moment eclipsing every other.

  She just wanted some fucking air, to go for a walk, get away from Blake, maybe outpace the screaming anguish running through her head.

  Miriam’s place sat on a hill in Silver Lake, near some kind of ugly reservoir where Miriam loved to go running. She was always talking about how much she loved it, how running released endorphins and helped keep her calm and happy. Grace wasn’t a runner—the few times a year she ventured cardio exercise, she had to tear her room apart looking for her one sports bra—but she wondered if a brisk walk would have the same effect. God knew she could use some endorphins about now. Grace looked up the reservoir and started walking in that direction.

  Miriam’s street was residential enough that there weren’t many pedestrians. Grace was grateful for the quiet, she realized, and thought better of her plan to wander toward a greater concentration of people. She didn’t know how she was supposed to arrange her face or how she was expected to behave. She kept her eyes trained on her feet, studying the ground. Step on a crack and you’ll break your mother’s back. She walked carefully, on smooth pavement only, avoiding even the nicks and pockmarks.

  Then something—someone—poked her shoulder, startling her off her game, and she stepped on a big crack with the widest part of her right foot.

  “Shit,” she said, turning around.

  The boy before her looked maybe old enough to drink, a thin, blond, emo-looking dude, wearing slim jeans and black plastic-framed glasses. She’d never seen him before, and her first thought was that he wanted directions. Grace didn’t know east from west in Granada, let alone these confusing hills. She wished he’d bother someone else.

  “Excuse me,” he said, his tone insistent and demanding. “You’re Grace Park, aren’t you?”

  She blinked and took a step back. She’d never been approached in person by a stranger who knew her name, and it left his mouth like an accusation, cornering her in her own skin. He had to be a reporter, one of the vultures circling her family for snatches of misery and death. What was she supposed to do when she couldn’t just hit the spam button or hang up the phone? She felt her body go heavy with dread.

  “Why?” she asked. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Evan. Evan Harwood. I work for Action Now. Have you heard of it?”

  She shook her head, getting ready to move.

  “Well, I know your sister, Miriam,” he said, not quite masking his disappointment. “I was hoping to talk to her, actually, but I wonder if I could just ask you a few questions.”

  She snapped back around and power walked away from him, stopping just short of breaking into a run. She made it to the end of the block before turning to see how she was doing. He was right behind her, his stride as urgent as hers.

  “I’m not interested,” she shouted. “Please don’t follow me.”

  He kept apace with her, pressing after her. She could hear the even rhythm of his steps; she felt like the first victim in a slasher movie, stupid not to start running. She was gearing up to take off when her foot caught on the tall side of a broken-up slab of sidewalk. She lost her balance and lurched forward, careening toward the pavement. The fall was fast—she had a second, maybe, to decide whether to absorb it with her face or her hands. Hands, she chose hands. She shot her right hand out, too late, and knocked her chin against her wrist, which already felt good and shattered. She tasted blood and turned around to see Evan Harwood—now a respectful distance behind her—recording her on his phone.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she spat.

  The boy ignored her question, and without acknowledging his role in her fall, he pressed the advantage it gave him. He planted his feet, standing over her, and said, “I just have a few questions.”

  “How about ‘Are you okay?’” She ran her tongue over her teeth, testing them for looseness. They held firm.

  “Any updates on your mother’s condition?”

  Her bottom lip was split. She dabbed at the ragged cut with her uninjured hand
and drew away blood.

  “Have the police shared any theories about who might have done this?”

  A thirtysomething couple approached from the opposite side of the street, the woman locking eyes with Grace in concern, the man a few steps behind her, guiding a white pit bull on a leash.

  Grace spoke to the phone camera, loud enough for the pedestrians to hear. “Whoever’s watching this, you should know that this dirtbag stalked me so hard he made me trip, and instead of helping, he’s interrogating me.”

  The woman jogged up and extended her hand. “Are you okay?” she asked, casting the boy a sidelong dirty look.

  Grace took the hand with righteous gratitude, and was about to tell off the boy, when he spoke again, his tone hurried with the frantic, fuck-all spirit of a half-court shot flung right at the buzzer.

  “Could this be retaliation for the murder of Ava Matthews?” he blurted out.

  She snapped upright, surprising the Good Samaritan, who almost lost her own balance when Grace yanked and let go. Under ordinary circumstances, Grace would have fallen over apologizing, but she had other things to say.

  “Retaliation?” She set her teeth and felt her blood welling in the cut. “My mother is in the hospital, and you have the nerve to track me down and talk to me about retaliation?”

  “But it’s true that your mother, Yvonne Park, is the Jung-Ja Han who used to own Figueroa Liquor Mart?”

  The couple was watching and listening closely now—even the dog was sitting at attention, her ears pointed and open. Grace couldn’t tell if they were enthralled by the scene or if that was a look of recognition crossing the woman’s face. She wanted to order them to mind their own business and leave.

  “My mother is my mother.”

  “What would you say to people who think this is justifiable revenge? That your mother got away with murdering a teenage girl?”

  Somewhere deep inside her head, a voice piped up and told her to ignore this stupid boy, to cut her losses, turn around, and walk away. But it was too small and timid to overcome the flood of furious indignation, the need to put this ignorant kid in his place.

  “That girl hit her first. She beat her up. And you know what? She wasn’t some skinny little kid, she was five-five and 135 pounds!”

  She knew she was shouting. It felt good, intoxicatingly good, the release more pleasurable than anything she’d felt since before the shooting. She saw the boy pointing his phone at her and wanted to slap it down, but she would have to stop her flow, and she couldn’t stop, it was like the clear water of truth gurgling up from the depths of her, the purest part, bright and exploding with love.

  “I’m twenty-seven years old and I’m five-five now. I weigh 130 pounds, and I know I’m bigger than my mom. What if some savage six-foot fifteen-year-old boy started beating you up? Would you defend yourself? I bet you would. I bet if some high school Shaq punched you in the head, you’d forget he was supposed to be a kid.”

  The boy’s eyes bugged and he coughed out a disbelieving laugh that infuriated Grace. “This wasn’t a self-defense case. She was convicted of manslaughter—she was declared guilty in a court of law.”

  “She’s suffered enough,” she said.

  “For killing a child?”

  She cast her eyes down and turned, holding her swollen wrist, and sprinted away. This time, no one followed her.

  Ten

  Monday, August 26, 2019

  Shawn had been dealing with cops since he was a child: talking to them, ignoring them, avoiding them when he could. They were never not part of his life. Palmdale wasn’t like South Central back in the day, but even here, squad cars always patrolled the neighborhood, rolling down their windows to talk to anyone who looked worth talking to. Sometimes it felt like they were out fishing, putting out lines in active waters, just to see who they could reel in.

  So far, though, the Palmdale cops hadn’t given Shawn much trouble. Could be he’d aged out of the deepest part of the hood pool; it wasn’t like it was when he was younger, when a cop would sooner put him against a wall than say hello. Maybe it was that he was rarely out without a woman or a baby these days. Made it harder to imagine him getting in trouble. And that’s what it came down to, in a way—people were lazy, they reached for the first thing that came to mind and held on to it like it was true. These cops were white boys: healthy, clean-cut, beef-eating kids in starched uniforms who’d been taught to fear black boys with tattoos and baggy pants. They were the same kids who quoted Samuel L. Jackson and thought they’d like to have Morgan Freeman for an uncle.

  Shawn could tell right away that Detective Maxwell wasn’t one of those cops. He wasn’t young, he wasn’t in uniform, and he’d driven a long way to talk to Shawn.

  “Nice place,” he said, nodding his head as he scanned the kitchen, still cluttered from dinner. He was a man who commanded a room; there was something aggressive even in the way he looked around, as if he meant to see more than anyone wanted to show him.

  Jazz set coffee down in front of him. Shawn almost smiled. She was playing the polite hostess, but she’d chosen the ugly mug she’d gotten in a white elephant exchange, the one shaped like a shaggy cat’s paw. They never used that mug; Jazz would die before pulling it out in front of good company. Maxwell said his thanks and took a sip, showing Shawn the pink paw print painted across the bottom.

  When Jazz sat down next to Shawn, Maxwell smiled indulgently, like he knew the game she was playing and had let it go on long enough. “Actually, Mr. Matthews,” he said, “I was hoping we could have a word alone.”

  “I’d rather stay,” said Jazz.

  He kept his eyes locked on Shawn. “I’m asking nicely, aren’t I?”

  “Does he need a lawyer?”

  “Don’t see why he would. This is a casual conversation, in the comfort of his own home,” Maxwell answered lightly. “Does your girlfriend always speak for you?”

  It was a transparent play—get the black guy to talk by insulting his manhood. That told him something, at least: Maxwell thought he was stupid.

  “I’m alright,” he said to Jazz. “You should check on Monique anyway.”

  She kissed his head and went to her daughter’s room, leaving the two men in silence. The detective finished his coffee before speaking again.

  “Do you know why I’m here?”

  “I have a pretty good guess,” said Shawn.

  “So it wouldn’t surprise you to hear that Jung-Ja Han was shot Friday night.” Maxwell watched him, pupils glinting.

  Despite himself, he felt the nervous reactions of a guilty man—the lump in his throat, the sweat coming on under his skin. “I did hear that.”

  “Did you know she was still in L.A.? Crazy to think about, that she’d just stick around after getting away with murder.” Murder, he called it. Not manslaughter. He was slick.

  “I didn’t know until Friday night.”

  “What time Friday night?”

  “I found out by text. My phone’s in my pocket if you want me to check the time stamp.” There was only one gun in this house—under the detective’s jacket, probably, which hung loose on the big man’s frame—but Maxwell didn’t know that, and Shawn knew better than to bank on the benefit of doubt. He moved only after Maxwell gave him the go-ahead and, even then, with demonstrative caution. He pulled his phone out and found Tramell’s text. “Nine seventeen.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Is that important?”

  “Yvonne Park—that’s what Jung-Ja Han goes by these days—Mrs. Park was shot just after seven P.M., when the store was closing up. I know it’s all over the news now—did you see the L.A. Times story yesterday? Sunday edition, front page.”

  Shawn nodded. The victim’s identity made it more than an average shooting, and after sparse initial coverage, the media had been all over the story. He’d spent hours tracking the coverage, reading greedily.

  “Well, it’s all over the news now, but Friday night? It was just starting to trend on
social media. Maybe that’s how it got around to you, maybe not. But yeah, I’d say it’s important who told you about the shooting two hours after it happened. Give me a name.”

  He thought about Tramell, the former fat kid who’d flirted with gang life before marrying his girlfriend, who was seven years older and entirely unimpressed by thug posturing. These days, he was an X-ray tech with two daughters who drove for Uber on his off days. His one vice was that he smoked weed in his garage some nights after the girls were in bed. Tramell was about as likely a suspect as Ava herself, returned from the dead.

  Even so, he hated the idea of bringing a detective down on his house, especially one who was so obviously grasping at straws. There was a time he would’ve been ashamed to consider it. When it came to police, to give an inch was to snitch; to drop a name for any reason was the basest kind of betrayal.

  But he couldn’t afford to think like that anymore. He was a man with a record and a family. “Tramell Thomas,” he said, as if it cost him nothing. Tramell would have to go to bat on his own.

  Maxwell wrote the name down.

  “Where were you when you heard?”

  “I was home. About to go to bed.”

  “At nine o’clock?”

  “I’m an old man, Detective, and I wake up early.”

  “For work, right? You work for Manny’s Movers, over in Northridge.” He had a notepad in front of him, but he wasn’t consulting it. “I talked to your boss this morning. He said you no-showed Saturday.”

  Manny had spoken to the police about him. There it was—the flash of heat between his ears. It passed quickly. Manny had his own self to worry about, too. “That’s correct. I took the day off.”

  “First time in a few years.” He flipped the pages of the notepad without looking down. “What, you don’t get sick? Lucky guy.”