Gary loomed over me like a mountain. A big, strong, protecting mountain. It took me a few minutes to get my voice back, but I didn’t feel so bad about my injuries when I saw the damage done to Junichi and Shimazu. They were both crumpled like rag dolls. Well used and abused rag dolls.
Every PI deserves to have a sidekick, and Gary is the biggest and toughest sidekick I know. I had asked him to come to the stadium early to keep an eye on me. I didn’t know what would happen with the two ring attendants, but I thought if they could handle Ishikabe they could certainly handle me. Gary would more than even the odds.
While we waited for the police to arrive, I looked for Ishikabe’s akeni. I found it and looked inside. Even though I knew his trunk had a false bottom, it looked normal inside.
“What are you looking at?” Gary asked.
“I just wanted to see if I could see what they were smuggling. I’ll leave it to the cops to open the bottom because I don’t want to mess up evidence. I guess an akeni is a good way to smuggle things.”
Gary’s face turned red.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Maybe a few of da kine Rolexes might have made it into Japan in my trunk,” he said. “But certainly nothing like drugs. I can’t thank you enough, bruddha. I caused you a lot of trouble and almost got you killed. If I got into some murder scandal it might ruin my wrestling career.”
“You can thank me by paying Enrique Velasquez’s bill promptly, no matter how outrageous it seems. In addition to giving you good advice, he was able to keep you out of the press and there was no inkling you were a potential suspect. And the LA cops will be very happy to take credit for solving a puzzling murder in less than 24 hours.”
“And what about you, bruddha? What kind of reward you want?”
“The reward I want is something that you can’t give me.” I pulled a small digital camera out of my pocket. “I hope the cops get here soon because I’ve got to get a picture of a philandering husband or Enrique Velasquez is going to skin me alive.”
FILIAL DAUGHTER
by
Steph Cha
— :: —
She was standing in front of a dining room table when she was shot, and though she crumpled to the floor and bled onto the carpet, most of the messier spray was contained within the four sharp corners of the table’s glass top. I found this out much later, of course, when such things were possible to talk about—my father marveled at how easy it was to clean up, in the scheme of things, a small blessing that showed how God was looking out for us after all.
When it was clear that she would survive, and the shock and grief had softened into a continual state of dutiful concern, what remained was anger and genuine puzzlement. Why on earth would anyone shoot my mother?
* * *
“She probably deserved it,” was what my sister had to say.
“How can you say that? She’s an old woman, not to mention she’s your mom.”
“I’m crying, aren’t I?”
“Are you going to come home?”
She cleared her throat, making a choked, phlegm-shifting sound. “Maybe.”
“Unni! Come on.”
“Probably, okay?”
Sidney was only four years older than I was, but her life had developed far more than my own. She lived in Chicago, where she cranked out a living as a journalist. I lived in L.A., in the house we grew up in, getting a PhD in math while my mother cooked my dinners. My desire to complete the degree was ever waning, but I had no other ideas and the subsidized student life was pleasantly cushy.
Sidney came through L.A. as infrequently as possible. I hadn’t seen my sister in well over a year, and she hadn’t spoken to our mother in over five. It had been a loud and bitter rupture, and I had every reason to believe in its permanence. Even now I was unclear on the sequence of causes, but I knew that it started when Sidney brought Kenechi home for the holidays.
It had been a while since Sidney had brought a fellow around, and my mother fretted from the moment of his announcement, on a casual phone call a month before the visit. She was worried about Sidney dating a Japanese man, about how her parents and our father’s parents would react to the news. I happened to know that Kenechi was Nigerian, and I would have told her so if I didn’t get the feeling Sidney wanted to keep it a surprise. In that way I was complicit in the scene that followed, and I had my fair share of guilt over the family drama that arose after his premature departure.
I wondered if Sidney even liked this Kenechi, or if he was just a tool to prove some indelible, harmful, and ultimately useless point. They broke up a month later, and while Sidney was happy to blame our mother, I never got the sense that she mourned the relationship.
She was married now, to a white man who seemed, improbably, to blog for a living.
* * *
Her shooter, my mother was quick to mention, was a black man, about forty years old, average height, average weight, with a shaved head. He came into our family furniture store right before closing, looked around for a minute, then shot my mother in the chest. Just the one shot, and then he turned around and left, taking his gun with him. My father had witnessed the whole thing and lamented how quickly it had taken place. If he’d had another minute, he could have gotten to his gun stashed in his desk. I had my doubts about this fantasy, but it seemed to comfort him.
He called 9-1-1 as soon as he realized what was happening, but while the ambulance came in time the police didn’t catch the shooter. My father made a full report, but there wasn’t too much he could say. He’d never seen the man before, and what few descriptors he could communicate came out slow and frustrated, pushed through the tight sieve of a language barrier.
The bullet missed her heart but punctured a lung, and things looked bloody and dour before she made it to surgery. The surgeon, a beefy Indian man, saved my mother’s life. He told me himself, his face gleaming with pride and a misty layer of sweat.
She was awake and recovering by the time Sidney was scheduled to visit. Awake and recovering and visibly petrified.
My mother was no saint, I knew, but she was, fundamentally, a kind, timid woman who cared deeply about her family. Her rift with Sidney broke her heart. Sidney’s wedding, to which my father and I were named individually on the invite, left her catatonic for a week. I was the only family member in attendance—our father sat it out in protest, refusing to walk such an ungrateful daughter down the aisle.
Sidney and I had grown up with the same mother, and I sometimes reviewed my stash of shared memories with a feeling of mournful disbelief. Our mother had labored over our lunches, sat and suffered with us through our homework. When we had menstrual cramps, synchronized and horrible, she had swaddled heated rocks for us to hold against our bellies. I remembered the day Sidney pricked herself with a diabetic’s syringe she’d found discarded in the street. Our mother had held it together until the all clear, and then she’d broken down right there in the doctor’s office, releasing an animal howl. We had always been loved.
“It isn’t about love,” Sidney once said, exasperated, when I pleaded our mother’s case. “You can be awful and still love your children.”
“Whatever that poor woman did to you,” I said, “surely she’s been punished enough?”
I wondered, as I waited for her at the airport, if getting shot in the chest was finally punishment enough.
As soon as Sidney and I entered our mother’s room, I was sent out for coffee, a ten minute errand if I hurried. I wasn’t even sure who’d initiated my expulsion—the trio of father, mother, sister seemed to work in concert to push out the outsider. I left sullen, head given to bitter thoughts from a younger me.
It was just as well, I told myself. The atmosphere in that room turned thick when Sidney walked in, instantly oppressive when my mother turned to look at her and made eye contact. It wasn’t my job to bear witness to the scene, and if my presence wasn’t needed, that shouldn’t bother me.
There was a Starbucks in the
hospital, and I drank my own cup of coffee before ordering for my family. It was evident they wanted time without me, and I was just fine giving it to them. I almost laughed imagining my father mediating between his wife and older daughter. He was outclassed; he simply didn’t have the equipment. I’d been their middleman for the last five years, and I knew the size of the rift between them. It wasn’t going to close to the coaxing whispers of Jesus talk and fatherly meekness.
After a reasonable interval, I walked back to the hospital room with three coffees in a cardboard tray.
I wasn’t planning to eavesdrop, but Sidney never was any good at modulating her voice. I could hear her half shouting from three feet away from the door. I paused and slid the rest of the distance to the outer wall, resting against it and listening for a pause in the conversation.
She and our mother were speaking in Korean, not bothering to keep their voices down. I felt the blow of another insult. My parents spoke good enough English that they’d always been able to use it at home. Somewhere in the four years between me and my sister was a small generational gap. She spoke enough to converse with our grandparents; I spoke enough to order food and ask for the restroom. Sidney’s Korean was still much worse than our mother’s English, and there was only one circumstance that led them to speak Korean to each other: it was their code language when they didn’t want non-Korean speakers to understand them. In most situations I’d seen this kick in, I was the only non-Korean speaker present.
So I listened harder than I might have, out of spite. I couldn’t glean much but there was a word Sidney kept spitting, like it was the crutch of her argument. Beol. I traced it in hangul on the palm of my hand, and made a note to look it up later.
When they hit a lull in their battle, I knocked quickly and barged in. The coffees were still warm, but I didn’t see any reason to hide that I’d been listening. The room turned silent with the suddenness of a radio losing power, and I felt a wince of satisfaction at the caught looks on their faces.
“Grace,” my mother said. “Thank you for bringing home your sister.”
I nodded and passed around coffees.
Beol, it turned out, could mean “bee” or “field” or “pain” or “punishment.” Punishment. That was the likely word of the day. Sidney thought our mother was being punished.
* * *
Until Sidney came home, it hadn’t occurred to me that she and our mother shared secrets that they kept, individually, from me. I was the good daughter, the good sister, the neutral ground; I was the ally and confidante. How could they, these two enemies, join to keep anything from me?
Their secrecy made me think of the shooting in a new light, one that sent my mind into strange directions involving old grudges, criminal pasts, witness protection. I imagined my mother as the besieged heroine in a conspiracy movie, fleeing from villains pouncing out of the shadows. She’d been shot—that was dramatic enough to make me wonder.
And I kept wondering, about the kind of man who would shoot my mother, a frail immigrant lady minding her own business in a furniture store. He’d gone straight for her and left without demanding or taking anything but a bid for her life.
I had to wonder, because no one else seemed to care. My father warned me not to talk about it, saying the topic upset my mother. Fair enough, but it had to be discussed sometime—the man who’d shot her was still out there. A police officer had come to the hospital, to take her statement when she was out of the ICU. I waited outside, and he was in and out in five minutes.
He looked at me as he exited the room, apparently startled by my presence. I took the opening to ask him why he was leaving so quickly, with a note of accusation unhidden in my tone. He told me his interview with my mother was over, as if I hadn’t understood as much on my own. Then he handed me a business card and said I could contact him if I had anything to ask or tell.
He was a black man, and I wondered if my mother had said something offensive to send him away. She gave no indication of anything at the time, except that she was too tired to talk—a wave of her hand, dismissing all questions.
On Sidney’s second afternoon in town, she ordered me, with the bossy prerogative of an older sister, to spend the day at home. They were all okay without me.
* * *
I made tea alone at my parents’ house and called the number on the business card.
“Officer Davis? It’s Grace Park. You’re handling my mother’s case?”
“Yeah,” he said. There was an edge of hostility in his tone, at the very least a gruffness. Unless I was just feeling sensitive.
“I’m sorry, I don’t have anything to report, but you said I could call to ask questions?”
He sighed. There was no question about it—he was being rude. “Okay. What’s your question?”
“Why did you leave so quickly yesterday?” I held back my follow-up question: Aren’t you interested in finding out who shot my mother?
“Neither of your parents has much else to say. In fact, it seems like they aren’t that interested in dwelling on the incident.”
“You think finding justice would be ‘dwelling on the incident’? My mother was shot, not insulted on the playground.”
“I’m aware, and I’m taking this violence very seriously. I’m only letting you know that your parents may not be so invested.”
I shook my head. My parents were not careless, forgiving people who took life lightly. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“There’s a rumor going around,” he said.
I could hear him hesitating. “What rumor?” I prodded.
“It’s just something I heard, and you’d know better than me.”
“Okay, what is it?”
“Some people are saying that your mom killed a boy.”
I laughed. “What? No.”
“Like I said, it’s just a rumor.”
I hung up and finished my tea, tried to disperse the strange gloom introduced by our conversation. I didn’t believe him, of course, but I didn’t tell anyone what he’d told me, either. In retrospect I must have reserved room for the possibility that the rumor was true. Nothing else could have stopped me from sharing my sense of insult at such an outrageous accusation.
* * *
It was only days later, after the stress of dealing with a contemptuous sister and a hospitalized mother had abated to reasonable levels, that I sat in front of a computer and found myself looking for trouble.
And I wasn’t looking for trouble, really. What I wanted was news, what the world was receiving of my family drama. I did a Google News search for my mother’s name, “Jiwoo Park.”
The shooting had gotten coverage on local news sites that mentioned her by name, as well as on the L.A. Times, which only referred to her as “the victim.” The reporting was sparse. My mother had survived, after all.
Even with my wealth of firsthand knowledge, I felt a scorching thirst for information. The fact that what I wanted to know most—the who and why—was unlikely to be on the internet didn’t stop me from seeking out every word on my mother’s story.
I searched for her on Twitter and was surprised to find a number of hits. The top tweet was only a day old, and it had been retweeted almost a thousand times. It said: “Not to spread rumors, but word on the street is that shooting vic Jiwoo Park = Jiyeon Kim. If true, she sure had that coming.”
Beol, Sidney’s voice echoed in my head. Beol, beol, beol, a chant like the dull and distant tolling of a bell.
There were dozens of replies, and I could tell from a quick scan that they were poorly written and full of racist content.
I googled Jiyeon Kim. How could I not?
* * *
I was three years old in 1992, when Jiyeon Kim shot thirteen-year-old Darius Bronson in the back of his neck. It happened in Kim’s Furniture Store, a now defunct outfit on Western, in Koreatown near the freeway, when Los Angeles was on fire. It was after the Rodney King verdict, when the riots were in full flare. The Korean community wa
s on red alert for looting and other acts of malice. Just before the Rodney King beating, Korean liquor store owner Soon Ja Du had murdered a fifteen-year-old black girl over a bottle of orange juice. She never went to prison. Koreans and blacks treated each other like enemies. The LAPD ignored Koreans in favor of beleaguered whites, and Koreans loaded up on guns and paranoia.
I didn’t remember any of this, not the faintest flicker of turmoil in the early years of my Los Angeles childhood. Sidney must have remembered, and my parents, too, but they never talked about it around me. I’d always assumed that we’d been untouched out in suburbia.
I’d certainly never heard of Jiyeon Kim, the woman who’d earned the title of “Soon Ja Two” in the media, sometimes “The Evil Soon Ja Du.”
She and her husband had stood their ground when the riots began, protecting their store from looters. Darius Bronson had been in Koreatown with his older brother, an angry, boisterous sixteen-year-old who had shown up looking for an outlet for all the aggressive energy inside him. The street was wild and disorganized, and while his brother ran around courting the rush of war, Darius walked into Kim’s Furniture Store and dashed for one of the beds on the floor. Jiyeon Kim screamed, watching the black flash run by, and as Darius started to jump up and down on the mattress, she reached for her gun and shot him dead.
Her aim had been freakishly true, had snapped off his life like the bud off a stem.
Darius Bronson was unarmed and undangerous. He was a thirteen-year-old boy with Downs syndrome, jumping on a bed while his brother played outside with his own friends.
* * *
Jiyeon Kim was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, but she never served a day in prison. There had been an outcry, but by the time her verdict came down, Los Angeles was all rioted out. As far as I could tell from the internet, she’d disappeared successfully from the public eye. It was only in the last few days that her name had resurfaced, equated so blatantly with my mother’s.
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