by Steph Cha
“Speak for yourself,” I said. “I’m practically drowning in husbands.”
“Ha, I wasn’t even speaking for myself. I got a nice lady. Young and pretty, teaches grade school.”
“Nurturing type. No wonder you’re so damn friendly. You must’ve met her last week.”
“It’s been three weeks. That’s three years in lesbian time.”
“Congratulations,” I said. “From the bottom of my heart.”
“How did we get on this topic?”
“You wanted to rub your happiness in my face.”
“Oh yeah.” She laughed.
“Joke’s on you. I’m happy you’re happy. Maybe we should get dinner this week, and you can tell me more about your happiness.”
“My happiness and maybe a little information, I take it?”
“How ungenerous,” I said, taking a tone of exaggerated indignation. “Don’t you miss my face?”
She sighed. “Sure. How’s Wednesday, seven?”
“Okay. How’s Korean food? My treat.”
“Perfect,” she said. “In the meantime, I guess I’ll see what I can do for you.”
*
I went into the office and found I had nothing to do. I had no other cases on my docket, and the phone didn’t ring all morning. There was no point trying to follow Lusig around—that jig was up, and I needed my cue to start dancing the next one.
Arturo came out of his office at around one in the afternoon. I had my head down on my desk, and I was listening to the amplified sound of my fingertips drumming by my ear.
“Hey, Song,” he said, his authoritative voice startling me upright. “Are you busy right now?”
I looked behind me and saw him standing in his doorway with the shade of a smirk on his face. I shook my head. He knew I wasn’t busy.
“What’s up?” I asked. “You have something for me?”
I felt a tick of anticipation. As the ex–homicide cop on our team, Arturo brought in the most interesting cases, discounting a few outliers. He handled death threats, high-stakes security; he tracked down missing people. If there was a single PI who embodied my old conception of what this job entailed, it had to be Arturo Flores. He was a handsome bachelor in his mid-forties, a little gruff, with a subtle, dry sense of humor, and an honorable streak the length of Los Angeles. He had the experience and air of competence to land quality work, and I’d learned a lot under his supervision on a variety of jobs. Chaz made a point of giving me chores and buffing up my basics, but Arturo passed me the sexy stuff. I always preferred Arturo work to Chaz work.
Arturo liked to use me as a tail because no one suspected the Asian girl, and he’d even gotten me to strike up conversations with targets, mostly in bars, with the occasional staged encounter at a bookstore or Target. On one long assignment, he’d had me move into an apartment in Reno and befriend a woman who’d worked for a building manager and run off after cashing a month’s worth of rent checks. I’d stayed there for over a month, gathering intel at gambling tables and feeling like a goddamn spy.
I hoped he had something good for me. I hoped it’d be good enough to let me forget about a missing activist. If I had a tail, it probably would’ve wagged.
“I wouldn’t ask if you had anything better to do, but…”
My mental tail stopped wagging; my expectations deflated like I was a disappointed heiress in an old English novel. Excitement converted to a sudden dread of drudgery, roiling in protest in my stomach. I could feel a bad task coming.
“… I need some trash pulled.”
I stifled a groan. I would’ve let it out if Chaz were the one asking, but I knew there was no complaining when Arturo asked for a favor. I didn’t point out that this was Chaz work.
Of the many boring and unpleasant things that came with the job, the trash pull was probably my least favorite. There was nothing metaphorical about the phrase, as I’d hoped when I’d first heard it—this trash wasn’t digital, it was actual garbage placed in actual garbage containers placed on actual curbs fronting actual homes. It looked like garbage, it felt like garbage, and it sure as hell smelled like garbage. Of course, the garbage sometimes contained valuable information, the kind of stuff private investigators might go to humiliating lengths to find. The other advantage was that this brand of stealth snatching was legally sound—trash was no longer private property once it hit the street for collection.
What few illusions I had left when I started this job dispersed at the smell of my first trash hit. I was looking for signs of infidelity, and one of the first steps was a visit to the alleged mistress’s house. Chaz went with me, and he laughed at my discomfort as I pulled the heavy bags out of their containers, holding my breath and tugging delicately with gloved hands. He laughed harder when the husband showed up and started fucking his mistress while we hid with her garbage in my car. We put it back, and the sorting part became a lesson for another day.
I sighed. “Sure, Arturo. Tell me where and when.”
“Trash gets picked up tomorrow morning, so it’ll be out there tonight. Here’s the address. I think it’s near you.”
The address was in Silver Lake, a quick drive from my place. Not that distance was a major impediment after midnight.
“What am I looking for?”
“Just get the bags and bring them in tomorrow. I’ll sort them myself, unless you’re having another slow day.”
He almost gave me a smile. He knew damn well I was scheduled for another slow day.
We made a policy of leaving trash pulls until dark, so I had the rest of the day to kill before I had anything I had to do. Chaz and Arturo were both busy, so I couldn’t even burden them with my frustration and boredom. I’d have to figure out how to keep myself occupied.
Was there any harm, I wondered, in doing a little light digging?
It wasn’t hard to find Nora’s boyfriend online. I remembered his face, and I matched it to a man named Chris Oganian in Lusig’s friend list on Facebook. From there, it was cake to find out where he worked, at a hedge fund in Century City. His company bio listed his résumé under a picture of him in a nice suit, crossing his arms and looking all business. He went to Wharton. I might have guessed as much.
Century City was a pretty deep drive from Koreatown. I couldn’t exactly step outside and run into Chris by accident. I tried to think of a valid reason for me to cross town, but I more or less knew I didn’t have one. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone to Century City. It was a business center with a big mall, so there wasn’t much for anyone who wasn’t employed there or currently in high school. I used to go when I was in high school, to watch movies or hang out at Abercrombie, which was as close to a club as any of us knew of when we were fifteen. At some point in my adult life, I realized that this hot spot of my youth had nothing to offer me anymore. I wasn’t working there, and there was nothing interesting about the neighborhood.
It was also impossible to get to from the Eastside, or from anywhere else, really—the only people who were happy with their Century City commutes were the rainmakers who built their offices there in the first place. They came from Beverly Hills or the Palisades, while their underlings trudged in from less extravagant zip codes. There was a Metro extension in progress that would include a Century City stop, making things easier for workers to get to their jobs. The Beverly Hills school district had succeeded in delaying it with groundless petitions and bad-faith lawsuits. The line was set to run under the high school, and there was a panic about the safety of the children—never mind the profitable oil drilling that was already in place beneath the same campus. The real reason seemed much more obvious and sinister—classic fear and disdain for outsiders.
Icarus Capital was right on Avenue of the Stars, at what looked like a desirable address, a short jaunt from the mall. Did I need anything from the mall that I couldn’t get at a closer mall?
I was about to ask Chaz to talk me out of or into unnecessary snooping, but he was on the phone and had been
for almost an hour. I was the only idle body in the office, and I knew I could go home if I wanted. In which case, what was the harm in plumbing my own curiosity, on my own time?
I sent an e-mail to Chris’s company address, introducing myself as a friend of Nora’s and Lusig’s. I asked if he was free for coffee in the afternoon and left the office as soon as I sent the e-mail. I hoped he’d respond, but I’d see him either way. I wasn’t going to Century City for nothing.
I left a note for Chaz on my desk, in case he wondered where I’d run off to: “Circumventing death by boredom.” He could call me if he needed me, or just pick up the Post-it and roll his eyes alone.
As I sat in an unwarranted afternoon traffic jam, driving with all the speed of a kayak headed upstream, I remembered why I never traveled this far west. I thought of the poor tourists with their rental cars sitting in traffic from Brentwood to downtown, from Hollywood to Disneyland, going home to cold climates and rejecting sunny California because of a fundamental misunderstanding of this city. Our United Neighborhoods of Los Angeles, each one its own universe if not its own island. I’d spent more time in Connecticut than I ever would in Venice, even if I died a white-haired woman fifteen miles away.
But for now, I was stuck in this sluggish crosstown caravan, bristling with impatience, checking my e-mail at every stoplight. I kept an eye out for word from Chris, but it was mostly to curb my boredom. I turned the radio on and listened to NPR at low volume, getting irritated when it started up with a traffic report.
Then, like a sign from heaven, a story came on about the upcoming Armenian genocide centennial. I raised the volume and shook my head, letting the timing take on maximum significance.
The story started with a rundown of the events of the genocide, and I marveled at its precarious status in our understanding of world history. The reporter introduced the murder of a million people as if it were a subject that could lie outside the knowledge of an informed public radio audience. I guessed I couldn’t be too surprised—until this week I’d known almost nothing about it. And I was an Angeleno, in a city where Armenian-Americans were prominent.
The reporter segued into a brief note on the legal battle over the genocide memorial, and when she mentioned Nora Mkrtchian, I found that my ears had already been waiting for the name. There was no news on the missing girl, but I wasn’t the only one sitting in a car, still wondering where she’d gone.
I arrived, at length, in Century City and parked at the mall, where I could cross a walkway to Chris’s building and get validation on my way out. I didn’t want to mess with office building rates, and I had a feeling Chris’s company wouldn’t spot me for parking.
I kept my eyes on my phone, but I hadn’t heard back from Chris by the time I reached his work address. It was one of the tall office buildings that made up the Century City skyline, one of those block towers surfaced by reflective gridded windows that looked more LEGO-built than full of human life. There was something forbidding about all this structure, and I felt suddenly shabby as I put my hand to a door of bright polished metal and glass.
The lobby gleamed with veined marble, like a giant five-star hotel shower. The elevator banks held the chrome fixtures. Icarus Capital was on the nineteenth floor, and I spotted the right set of elevators, for floors 12 through 20. I’d been naïve to imagine walking right in and pressing the button. There was an electronic turnstile in the way; past that, a security guard who was starting to pick up on my stilted presence.
I sat down on one of the low beige chairs designated for waiting. It was almost offensively uncomfortable, with expensive buttery leather wrapping a thin cushion that did nothing to make me feel welcome.
The colossal security desk was about twenty feet away, and there were two people behind it on rolling chairs jacked up to meet its height. Both wore suits and blank, smiling expressions. They looked like they’d take secret pleasure in walling me out.
Or maybe I was being unnecessarily antagonistic. After all, most visitors to this building probably had legitimate reasons for being there. I thought about turning around and going back home. The lobby was sparsely populated, and I would be conspicuous if I waited hours for Chris to come out, not to mention burning a big chunk of my day for nothing but curiosity. No one had asked me to come. Was it so important to talk to Chris that I’d be willing to try and pull one over on the security guards? Was I so tantalized by this case that I would turn into a fanatic?
I went outside and smoked a cigarette, leaning against a high stone planter with one eye on the lobby through the glass wall. I was almost done when someone called my name. “Juniper Song? Is that you?”
I looked up and saw a small Asian woman in a blue sheath dress, approaching with evident caution. My eyes went straight to her belly, which was three times as wide as the rest of her. I knew this woman, but it took me a long second to place her—she was a high school classmate I hadn’t seen since graduation.
“Kelly Pak?” I asked with relief at the recognition.
“Yes! I thought it was you.”
I stubbed out my cigarette and moved toward her, trying to leave the smoke behind me. Unless she’d gained weight in a very weird way, she was at least five months pregnant.
“I take it you’re not here for a cigarette break,” I said.
She laughed. “No, just searching for a snack.”
Kelly and I had been friendly in high school, but all potential intimacy had been sabotaged by a current of fierce competition. We were the two high-achieving Korean girls in our grade, and had a lot of classes together throughout our years of schooling. The way I remembered it, the competition had been mostly on her end—she managed to find out my scores whenever tests were returned, whether by looking over my shoulder or asking directly. Strangely, this didn’t bother me, even if it did mean we would never hang out off campus. I was happy for her when she went off to Harvard, though maybe it helped that I happened to know she was waitlisted at Yale. I had to admit, I hadn’t been above that kind of thing, and it was possible Kelly remembered me as the instigator in our rivalry.
“Well what are the odds, huh? Not every day I run into Greenwood folk.”
“It’s every day here, pretty much,” she laughed. “Jeff Bloom works in this building. Molly Richmond works next door. There are at least a dozen of us on this block.”
I nodded, as if I remembered who she was talking about. I should have figured, in any case. My prep school churned out professionals with impressive reliability, and professionals clustered in Century City.
“It’s like the old days at the mall.”
“Basically, yes.”
“And you work here?” I asked, though it was clear that she did.
“Yes! I work at Goldman.”
“Doing what?”
“I’m an I-banker.”
I whistled. “Tough job for a pregnant lady.”
She frowned. “I’m not pregnant,” she said after a long pause.
My mind blanked and I had to stop myself from bringing a hand up to cover my open mouth.
She laughed loudly, slapping her thigh. “Oh my God, your face! Of course I’m pregnant!”
“Jesus. Still a joker,” I said, as if Kelly Pak had ever been a joker.
“I’m sticking around until baby, and then we’ll see. Maternity leave is generous. What’re you up to?”
I smiled. “I’m a private investigator.”
“Wow!” she said. “Now that you mention it, I think I might have heard something about that. You were always interested in that stuff, weren’t you? Did you always want to do this when you grew up?”
Her tone was suddenly a note too cheerful, and I almost winced as I registered the condescension. It disappointed me.
“Actually I wanted to be a ballerina. Barring that, an I-banker.”
She laughed. “Touché, Song.”
“When’s it due?” I asked.
“July 4, my Independence Day.”
“That joke only work
s if you’re planning to sell it once it’s born. Boy or girl?”
“We’re waiting to find out.”
“That’s some willpower,” I said. “When’d you get married anyway?” I asked, noticing a rock on her finger the size of an almond.
“Let’s see, we bought the house in 2013, so…” She tapped on her chin like she was thinking very hard. “It’s been three years. How about you?”
“Widowed three times, unfortunately. Series of freak accidents.”
She scowled. “I can’t tell when you’re joking, Song.”
“Okay. That was a joke. Here’s the punch line—nobody loves me.”
“That’s not true,” she said, too quick and too reproachful.
I laughed. “I know.”
“So what are you doing in Century City?” she asked, changing the subject abruptly.
“Private investigation,” I said, as gently as I could.
“Of course. Well,” she said with a smile. “I guess I’d better get my snack.”
We hugged, and the hug felt unnatural, especially with a fetus in the way. She left and I resumed smoking.
It bothered me that Kelly Pak felt sorry for me, and it bothered me that it bothered me. I could imagine her going home to her husband and telling him that she ran into an old classmate, one who’d made interesting life decisions. I wasn’t jealous of her—it was hard for me, even at my most self-pitying, to envy a pregnant woman of any kind—but I didn’t like for her to see me as a failure, to breathe deeply in her sense of a life well lived at my expense.
My mind was swirling unpleasantly in this slow, useless pattern, when Chris Oganian appeared in the building lobby, walking from the elevator bank to the coffee kiosk just inside the doors. I took a long drag off my cigarette, then stubbed it out to make my way in.
I had no good way to approach him without making it clear I’d been waiting for him to show up. I felt suddenly self-conscious, like I was about to ask him to spot me two dollars to help me get to the airport.
I walked in and went up to him by the kiosk, where he was tapping a packet of Splenda into his coffee. I tapped his shoulder, and he flinched at my touch before turning around with a look of displeasure.
