The Ninja Daughter

by Tori Eldridge

  “Except you.”

  “I don’t need a name to tell me who I love and who loves me.”

  I shook my head in amazement. He might have adopted Ma’s customs, but that didn’t make him Chinese.

  “What’s the matter, Dumpling? You look like you’re carrying the weight of the world.” He glanced at my wrists. “And taking a beating for it.”

  I had forgotten about the scratches and bruises left from the Ukrainian’s rope. The inside edge of my right wrist looked particularly agitated because of the bits of nylon that had wedged into my skin. Stan had used tweezers to dig out the ones he could see, but the finer threads remained. They would work themselves out eventually. But right now—only two days since I had showed up at Stan and Aleisha’s refuge, beaten and exhausted—the threads were irritating my skin into angry red streaks.

  “I scraped it on a wall.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It happens.”

  “I’m sure it does.”

  He sounded so reasonable. I didn’t believe it for a second. “Go ahead. Spit it out.”

  He shrugged. “Those don’t look like scrapes, is all.”

  He was right. The marks didn’t encircle my entire wrist, but they curved enough to look like exactly what they were. I held up my left hand as well; if he had noticed one wrist, he had noticed them both. I crossed them right over left then raised them into left-forward Jumonji no Kamae so he could see how the marks lined up. He didn’t say a word. He just sipped his tea and waited. Baba could outwait a rock. I needed to give him a plausible explanation, preferably without lying.

  “You know I train hard.”

  He nodded.

  “And that the training involves defenses against realistic fighting situations?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, there you have it.”

  I rested my elbows on the table and stared at him over the tiny cup of tea, just as he was doing to me. Neither of us said a word. We just sipped our tea and waited for the other one to flinch. Finally, Baba put down his cup. I did the same.

  “You’re done, then?” He glanced at my empty bowl, but I knew he wasn’t referring to the jook. He was asking if I had said all I intended to say.

  I nodded and watched as he picked up that blasted lacquer serving tray and left.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Having showered and dressed, I switched on the kettle and studied the giant Metro map on the wall as I waited for the water to boil. I did this often, which was why I knew all the bus and rail routes that ran, like arteries and veins, through LA County. I even kept track of the maintenance and expansion plans, like how the subway Metro wanted to build between Union Station and Cerritos. I liked the idea. Any rail line that took me through Chinatown to anywhere was a good thing.

  The kettle clicked, and I made myself a cup of Dragonwell. Then I sat down at my computer and tried to make sense of the images covering the screen like a storyboard sequence for a detective show. Dark garage. Well-dressed man. A couple of gangster Koreans. What could go wrong? Except that what seemed about to happen didn’t.

  I bypassed the images of the Koreans bleeding to death while Tran wiped his blade. I didn’t need photos to remember that scene: it would haunt me forever.

  Instead, I selected the photos of the bald, tattooed Korean when he was still alive. There were two of them: one of his front and the other of his back. I chose the first and zoomed in on the tattoo emerging from under the collar of his green and yellow bowling shirt. No letters or symbols. Just a continuation of the same scaly design that snaked down his arms. I checked the other photo and zoomed in on the back of his neck. Embedded in the design were four capital letters: LGKK.

  Interesting.

  The Last Generation Korean Killers were a gang that had formed after their predecessors, the Korean Killers, had died out. As far as I knew, the descendants had succumbed to the same fate. Or had they?

  Now that I knew the guy was—or had been—LGKK, I checked the photo of him lying face down with his shirt raised up in the back and saw a gun wedged into the waistband of his pants. I had been right: he had been going for it when Tran attacked. He just didn’t have the experience to know it wouldn’t work.

  People liked to quip about not bringing a knife to a gunfight, but when it came to close quarter fighting, they had it in reverse. At twenty-one feet, an expert shooter would have a hard time getting his weapon drawn, sighted, and fired fast enough to stop a knife attack. This bozo would have been screwed at thirty.

  I moved on to the last photo that showed the design Tran had painted on the hood of the Hyundai. Two Korean logograms. One resembled an upside-down funnel over a stubby letter L, and the other reminded me of a pagoda temple. Tran had used something waxy, like lipstick or crayon, but with a wider delivery system: stage makeup perhaps, the kind that came in thick sticks like a push-pop. He hadn’t painted it in blood as I had previously thought, but the color matched the blood, which together with the chartreuse paint job, made the hangul characters look like a hideous Christmas decoration.

  Most Asian languages were written in a common collection of logograms that stemmed from Classical Chinese. Over time, each culture also developed additional methods of writing. The Koreans used an alphabet system called Hangul that grouped letters into blocks of syllables. It had a simpler, rounder look than any of the Chinese-based characters, which was why I recognized it. But that didn’t tell me why Tran had known how to write it. The Koreans had not considered him to be one of their own. So, either they were wrong, or Tran had gone out of his way to learn these two blocks of Hangul. But why? Personal grudge? Gang enforcement? Hired hit? I needed to know what the characters meant. Since I couldn’t copy and paste from the photo to an online translator, it took some doing.

  When I finally deciphered them, I sat back in my chair and sighed.

  Obey!

  That was the extent of Tran’s message.

  “Huh.”

  I pulled up a news report about last night’s murder to see if there might be a clue about what Tran had meant. Nothing. Although the article did mention the LGKK gang tattoo on the back of the bald guy’s neck and offered a bit of history.

  “The last known generation of Korean Killers disbanded in 2000 when their leader got deported back to South Korea. So, it is unlikely that this crime had anything to do with the LGKK. Although we will still investigate that possibility. At the moment, it seems more likely that the execution-style killing was a part of a recent turf dispute between Asian street-racers.”

  I understood their deductions; I just didn’t agree with them. It seemed more likely to me that a new generation had resurrected the Korean Killer legacy and tread into another gang’s territory. Although that still wouldn’t explain why Tran had assassinated those kids.

  Kids.

  The Korean punks would have been Rose’s age if she had lived. I shoved my chair away from the desk and my computer screen full of death. The cops hadn’t found Rose’s murderer; I had. And they sure as heck wouldn’t find Tran.

  I hadn’t reported the crime last night, and I wouldn’t report it today. What would be the point? A forensics team wouldn’t find any DNA samples under the Koreans’ nails or footprints on the cement floor. And if my eyewitness account led to a search warrant, no one would find anything in Tran’s house. I had seen the place. Tran didn’t even keep mementos of his life. He certainly wouldn’t keep incriminating evidence. Nope. If I reported this crime to the police, it would come down to my word against Tran’s, and after observing the prelim fiasco with Mia, I had a good idea of who would win.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I found Mia at the old Farmer’s Market section of The Grove eating beignets and jambalaya in front of a Jewish pastry shop. She had been asleep when I called on the phone and looked as if she had hung up and rolled into yesterday’s yoga sweats, which were now dusted in powdered sugar. I waited for her to glance up at me then slip
ped into the seat beside her.

  “How you doing?” I asked.

  She held up a donut, dipped it into the stew, and stuffed it in her mouth. Apparently, Mia was an eat-through-your-misery kind of gal.

  “So, what did you want to talk about?” she asked while chewing. “You sounded kind of bent on the phone.”

  I had practiced numerous ways to approach this conversation during the bike ride from my place to the market. None of them felt good. I didn’t want to frighten Mia any more than I assumed she already was, but I no longer believed Tran had tried to kill her. After witnessing his deadly efficiency, I couldn’t see him botching a simple strangulation. In fact, I couldn’t see him choosing that method at all. Unless it had been personal.

  “Well, I thought if I got to know you better, I might find a connection between you and Tran.”

  She shrugged. “I only know him from the club.”

  “Right, but there might be another way he knows you.”

  “Uh, that’s kinda scary.”

  I gave her a reassuring smile but didn’t argue. She was right; Tran was scary as heck. “So are you involved in any social groups?”

  “Like what?”

  “Singles networking, square dancing, running, that sort of thing. I’m just trying to get a feel for what you do when you’re not working at the Siren Club.”

  She laughed. “Well, not any of those, I can tell you that. And it’s past tense, remember? I don’t work there anymore. But to answer your question, I guess I like to hang out, shop, eat…” She motioned to the market. “Normal stuff. Nothing weird.”

  “With your friends from work?”

  She shrugged. “Used to. With Therese mostly. But I don’t think we’ll be hanging out much after she bailed on me.”

  I nodded. While Mia’s friend had testified on her behalf, she hadn’t offered much in the way of emotional support. I wondered if anyone else had. “Dating anyone?”

  She brushed the sugar from her fingers and picked up the coffee cup beside her plate. “No.”

  Touchy subject. I pushed it further. “Is that why you were interested in J Tran?”

  Coffee spewed back in the cup. “What the fuck does that mean?”

  I sat back and watched as she patted the dribbled liquid off her chin. “Well, according to the statements from your coworkers, you were really into him.” I held up my hands to forestall her objections. “Hey, I’m not judging, honest. Tran’s hot, no doubt. I get it.”

  She glared at me for a moment then huffed and began picking at crumbs and flicking powdered sugar off the table. “How was I supposed to know he’d go all psycho killer on me?”

  “No way you could.” I meant it. Even I, who lived a secret and often violent life, had been shocked by the savagery I had witnessed in the Koreatown garage. Was that where I was heading? Was J Tran the male version of future me? I shuddered and shut that door before something really scary could jump out of the closet, and got back to a safer subject. “You testified that Tran had flirted with you at the club. Did he ever ask you out?”

  Mia tore a corner off a napkin and rolled it between her fingers. “Not exactly. But he danced around it, if you know what I mean.”

  “Did he ever ask about your hobbies, background, the people you knew?”

  “Just where I was from and if I was an actress. The usual pick-up topics.”

  I watched as Mia rolled the paper into a tiny spear, which she used to poke at the clumps of sugar. “What did you tell him?”

  “That I grew up in Vegas, wanted to be a showgirl, but wasn’t tall enough.” She nodded at my disbelief. Compared to me, Mia was a giant. “I’m five eleven,” she said. “That’s tall but not showgirl tall. Besides, I was a lousy dancer.”

  “Did you tell that to Tran?”

  “Hell no.”

  We shared a laugh. “So what was it like growing up in Vegas?”

  “Hot.” She smiled. “And boring. I lived in a trailer park with my mom, so we couldn’t afford a whole lot. Just the basics—school, booze. Lots of booze.”

  “What about the acting? Is that why you came to LA?”

  She shrugged and tossed the paper spear at a roaming pigeon. “Turns out I suck at that, too.” She held up a hand. “And no, I didn’t tell Tran.”

  “Did you ask about him?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Ye-ah. I mean, you’ve seen him. His life had to be more interesting than mine. He’s certainly better looking.”

  She had a point. While Mia had a generic Scandinavian appeal, Tran had the dangerous exotic thing down pat. “What did he tell you?”

  “Nothing. He kept turning the conversation back to me, like he had read somewhere that women like men who make them the center of attention, or some shit like that.”

  I chuckled. Mia and I were in firm agreement about that garbage, but I still wasn’t any closer to understanding her connection with Tran. I tried a new direction. “Do you have any Korean friends? Any links to their community?”

  “That was random.”

  “I know. But it might be relevant. Do you?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve had Korean barbecue a couple of times. Does that count?”

  “Probably not.”

  “So what does any of this have to do with Tran?”

  I shook my head, wishing I knew. “Just examining possibilities, that’s all. In the meantime, be careful, okay? Keep your doors locked, turn on your security alarm as soon as you enter your apartment, and draw your curtains at night.”

  She bit her lip. “You’re scaring me.”

  “Just looking out for you, that’s all.”

  The judge had dismissed her case, the police had a city full of perps to catch, and any friends Mia might have had before the incident had faded into the background. If I didn’t look out for her, who would?

  Chapter Eighteen

  As I unchained the Merida from the tree, I wondered where I should go next. My conversation with Mia had offered some insight about her but nothing that connected her to Tran. If I wanted to know more about him, I’d have to get it directly.

  I checked the tracker. Tran’s car was still parked at his residence. Was he sleeping in after a hard night’s work, dark muscular body sprawled across white sheets…

  What the heck, Lily?

  I shook the image from my mind. Six years had passed since my one and only sexual experience. I didn’t appreciate the pornographic fantasy.

  If you have that much energy, go clean your room!

  That’s what Ma use to say when I got boy crazy in high school. I hadn’t really understood it then, but now it made perfect sense. I laughed, startling an old man as he ambled through the parking lot in my direction. I pointed to my ear as if I had a Bluetooth hiding in my hair. He nodded with understanding but veered away just the same.

  “Good going. Way to scare the locals.”

  I checked to see if the old man had heard that, too. If he had, he ignored it and continued across the lot to his parking space.

  I clipped on my helmet, and started to leave when I saw Mia. She was heading into the plaza toward the ritzier part of this development. Since I didn’t know where else to go, I followed.

  She stopped at a kiosk that sold colorful East Indian dresses and chose a lacy number with spaghetti straps, which she held against her baggy sweatshirt. On the rare occasions when I needed something new to wear, I found it online, or I tore through stores like a Marine on a search and rescue mission. I would no more amble through a promenade mall than I would feel myself up in public. Mia, on the other hand, seemed quite comfortable doing both.

  Wait a second.

  She didn’t have any friends, and she wasn’t dating anyone. So why did she need a new dress?

  I once asked Rose the same thing. She called me clueless. And she was probably right. Why shouldn’t Mia want a new dress?

  Mia’s cellphone rang, saving me from further rumination
s.

  “Freddy. Finally! Why haven’t you called?” Mia sounded both excited and petulant; I gave her a ten for complexity and execution. “Yeah, but the press is gone now,” she continued. “I’m yesterday’s news. Trust me, no one cares about me anymore.” She crossed her free arm under her breasts and made a fist beneath the one holding the phone. “Not even you.”

  For a woman who wasn’t dating anyone, Mia looked an awful lot like a pissed-off girlfriend. Then her back straightened and she assumed a more assertive posture. She even unclipped and tossed her hair. “Then come see me. I’m at The Grove. Isn’t that near you?”

  She looked proud and strong, and I really wanted her to win. Come on, Freddy, I thought. Get off your ass.

  Then her chin dropped and her back slumped, and Mia grew petulant again. “I seriously doubt we’ll run into your wife. Doesn’t she have a play date or something? Please, Freddy, I really need to see you.” She listened for a moment then smiled. “Sure, that sounds great. Ten minutes. See you there.”

  Freddy had a wife? No wonder Mia had lied. At least she had the grace to be discreet. Although as I watched her march back to the kiosk, buy the lacy dress, and dash into a nearby coffee shop, I wondered if that discretion—along with her attire—was about to change.

  Five minutes later, Mia emerged wearing the new dress and a determined expression.

  She had brushed her blond hair into a silky cascade, and applied lip gloss that glistened in the sunlight. If Mia wanted to rekindle her romance, she looked well prepared. The fabric’s buttercup-yellow flattered her fair looks, the artful lace accented her cleavage, and the flared cut of the skirt slimmed her waist and made her large calves look almost delicate. In five minutes, Mia had transformed herself from a frump into a vision. I should be taking notes.

  I rolled my bike behind a booth selling cellphone accessories and waited for her to pass. Then I fell in behind a pair of chatty mothers strolling their babies. The kiosks disappeared, and the plaza transitioned into storefronts on an open boardwalk. There was a fair amount of morning shoppers to hide behind if Mia turned around, but I knew she wouldn’t. Mia had told Freddy she would meet him in ten minutes. Eight of those minutes had already passed. She needed to hurry.