by Rhys Ford
“Maybe. How much do you know about Hong Chul?”
“Not much,” I admitted. “But Madame Sun wasn’t that impressed with him. She might be biased, but Wong says he’s been a good boy for a while now. I think Sun’s a bit… old in the head. Hell, she probably thinks I’m sketchy.”
“You are.”
My palm itched to touch him, but we were out in the open and in a Korean neighborhood. I couldn’t reach over and cross the space between us. I clenched my fist, digging my fingernails into my palm, hoping the pain would take away some of the desire to run my hand over his skin until I’d turned it pink with arousal.
“Well, if he is sketchy and he shoots at us, you better hope he kills me, because I’m going to kick your ass,” Jae teased under his breath.
“Honey, if he shoots at us, I’ll jump in front of the bullet,” I promised. “Because I won’t be able to live without you.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I thought of Rick and a night I wished I could go back in time to change. Jae must have seen something in my face, because he took a step toward me, a long enough step to brush his fingers against the back of my neck. I’d barely lived through losing Rick. I couldn’t go through that again with Jae. I just… couldn’t.
“It’ll be fine, Cole-ah.” He’d known me long enough …well enough… to know where my mind wandered off to, and Jae’s touch was calming, dragging me back to the present. “It will all be fine.”
The driveway was two lines of cracked cement leading behind the house, and from the loud clanking sounds coming from the back, I thought I’d try there first instead of knocking on the front door. Jae followed me up the drive, a long-legged duckling stepping over the trimmed down grass lines pushing up through the breaks in the concrete. His sneakers made squicking noises, and I couldn’t help but smile when I caught sight of Jae’s jumping shadow as he played an odd hopscotch behind me.
Someone in the house definitely had a green thumb. An overhead lattice near the house covered about six feet of the driveway. Clusters of long green squashes stretched down from the top, and I had to duck to avoid hitting them. The sash windows on the side of the house were open, and something spicy was simmering inside. It reminded me of coming home when Jae was in a cooking mood. I missed the spicy aroma of his dinners.
I did not, however, miss picking shrimp heads out of my stew.
The banging turned out to be coming from a weathered single car garage. At some point in its life, the structure had lost its rolling door, and plywood covered most of the gap left by a missing side window. In the cramped garage, a young Korean man with a tight crew cut hammered at a length of steel. Behind him, a swirl of metal shapes rose up from a wooden base, their burnt edges beaten and folded in. The sculpture looked a bit like a mutated lotus flower on crack, lopsided and obviously still being worked on.
The guy probably came up to my shoulders. His hands were encased in welding gloves, and one held what looked like huge tongs, their ends pinched tight around one side of the flame-shaped metal. The other wielded a soft mallet, and the steel belled with each strike. His features were coarse, with blunted cheekbones and thick black eyebrows above a crooked nose. Shirtless, his short torso rippled with muscle, and his arms bunched with power every time he swung down.
He had tattoos—so different from Ichiro’s elegant, flowing art—and they covered his arms and back with uneven blue-black jigsaws. Hangul and English battled for space on his shoulders. His arms were a mess of crosses, odd symbols, and more hangul. There didn’t seem to be rhyme or reason to the ink other than to scrawl pieces and parts of whatever he’d been thinking about that day. From what I could read, he was C-Dog from K-town and he really liked his area code, scrawling both pieces of information across his belly in patchy gothic letters.
He turned to pick up something behind him, and what was on his back simply took my breath away.
The tiger was nearly twenty inches long and about half a foot wide in places. Done in shades of black, it wrapped up from his lower back, its head bowing down toward his hip and its tail curling up over his right shoulder blade. Its front claws pierced a banner scrawled with a July date, and its jaws dripped with saliva into marshy grasses near its feet. It was beautiful and totally at odds with everything else on his body.
Nothing on him matched the artistry of the tiger. It was as if his needs changed with that piece. It was something different. Something he truly wanted to wear.
“Park Hong Chul?” I called out loudly enough to be heard over the pong-pong of his hammer strokes.
“Yeah? What do you want?” He’d stopped hammering, glaring at us over the bent steel. Jutting his jaw out, he tilted his chin up defiantly. Looking me and Jae over, he growled, “I already talked to the cops. What the hell do you want?”
“I’m not a cop,” I replied. “Cole McGinnis of McGinnis Investigations. Madame Sun hired me to look into a couple of things.”
If Hong Chul had been suspicious before, he was steeped in it now. He put down the mallet, slowly worked the gloves from his hands, and tossed them onto a workbench against the wall. Having nothing more substantial than a business card, I still held one out. Despite having the gloves on, he’d gotten dirty at some point, and his fingers were smudged with black soot, smearing it over the engraved paper.
He glanced at Jae, then his eyes snapped back for a second look. Jerking his chin toward my lover, he grunted, “Hey, I know you. You’re that photography dude. You had some stuff at the Korean Festival a couple months ago.”
First I’d heard of Jae showing his photos, and I turned in time to see him duck his head.
“Just a few things.” He had the good grace to give me an apologetic look. “Nuna is a good friend with one of the organizers. They just wanted more stuff for their art show. It wasn’t a big deal.”
“It was nice. You do some raw stuff.” Hong Chul dismissed Jae’s humility with a derisive snort. “Only black and white?”
“For those shots,” Jae mumbled. I could see we were going to have a discussion about keeping me informed about his showings. “I do color sometimes. Depends on what I want to show.”
“It was cool. I didn’t get anything done in time for it, but maybe next year.”
Bringing Jae was a good idea. Hong Chul’s shoulders relaxed, and I didn’t get the feeling he was ready to rip our heads off. He might have been shorter than me by a head, but he looked like he could double for Stretch Armstrong. Pounding steel with a mallet seemed like a great workout program. I’d have to mention it to Bobby. His attention wandered back over to me. “If you’re not a cop, why are you here? I didn’t have anything to do with what happened over at Sun’s place. Shit, I haven’t even talked to Darren in months.”
“Actually, I didn’t want to talk to you about Darren Shim,” I said. “I really wanted to talk to you about a woman you were dating, Vivian Na.”
The tough on his face melted, and Hong Chul inhaled sharply. The beat in his throat skipped twice, and he blinked furiously, but that didn’t stop his eyes from pinking with tears. Then, for the second time in a week, I heard something that made my head reel.
“I never dated Viv,” he confessed. “We were close, yeah, but that’s ’cause she was my sister.”
A TINY knot of a Korean grandmother served us hot coffee on a back porch barely wide enough to fit four plastic lawn chairs. Jae and Hong Chul spoke in reverent tones to the stooped-over old woman as she ferried cups back and forth from the kitchen, standing to take things from her as soon as she came outside. I didn’t understand a word of the chatter, but my smile must have been good enough because she patted me on the chest every time she tottered by.
They grew them small in the Park household, because when we’d all been given cups large enough to float our bladders, I spotted a little girl peeking out from around the back doorframe. Not much more than a toddler, her wispy black hair was pulled up into a single spout on top of her head and tied off with a bleeding-eye pink hair
clip. Smiling shyly, she edged out onto the porch, stepping carefully onto the painted planks, then bolted across to hide behind Hong Chul.
If any place on that porch was safe, it would be by him. He flexed his arms and growled playfully at her, scooping the little girl up into his arms. The grandmother clapped softly and motioned the girl to go back inside, but Hong Chul waved her off.
“It’s okay, halmeoni, I’ll watch her.” Hong Chul planted the girl on his lap and blew a raspberry on her belly. She giggled, kicking up her feet and wiggling toes with nails painted nearly the same shade of pink as her clip. Pulling at the hem of the toddler’s green plaid shorts, then tugging on her purple floral blouse, he laughed, “Did you dress yourself today, baby girl?”
His grandmother said something to Jae that brought a blush to his cheeks, and she cackled before stroking his hair down. After checking on the girl one last time, she headed back inside, leaving the back door open behind her.
“She likes you,” I whispered over to Jae.
“Mostly, she wants to know what I see in you,” he shot back in a hot whisper. “She said you’re too big to be a good guest. You’d break everything in the house when you turned around.”
“Liar,” I teased, but I still sat back with a niggling worry in my brain. If Hong Chul’s grandmother parsed that Jae and I were lovers, I had to be more careful when I was around him. “Does she really think—?”
“Don’t worry about it. She also said she’s got a couple of granddaughters she can marry us off to,” Jae replied. “I told her you were half Japanese, and she said it didn’t matter. They’re getting old. She’ll take anyone she can get.”
“Nice. I’ll toss Ichiro at them.” I paused, realizing I didn’t know if my brother was single.
The little girl appeared to have overcome her initial shyness and edged closer to me, her eyes wide with curiosity. My experience with kids was pretty much limited to tossing out full-sized candy bars on Halloween, so I wasn’t exactly sure what to do when she began to climb into my lap. Shocked, I panicked and made helpless noises at Hong Chul, but he’d begun to stir sugar into his coffee.
“Just let her sit with you,” Jae suggested. “She’ll get bored in a few minutes and climb down.”
Hong Chul finally looked up from his coffee and spotted her on my lap. Patting his thigh, he called her over. “Aish, Abby, don’t bother him. Come here, halmeoni brought you some juice and cookies.”
Drawn by the bribe, she dismounted my lap with all the aplomb of an Olympic gymnast and pranced across the boards to her cookies. Hong Chul pulled her onto the empty chair beside him and handed her a kid’s cup to sip from. She drank noisily, burbling bubbles back into her juice through the plastic straw.
“She’s cute.” I didn’t know what else to say. The last little girl I’d been in contact with got me arrested while wearing a dog strapped to my belly. She’d been cute too, and all she got me was a night in jail and a pissed off Jae-Min.
“Yeah, she’s kind of why I’m trying to get my shit together. Her mom and I hooked up a couple of years ago. Karen didn’t want a kid, but I couldn’t… I didn’t want her to get rid of it. So, I got Abby, and Karen went back to partying,” Hong Chul replied. “Viv liked her… Abby. She didn’t like Karen much.”
“How did you—” There wasn’t an easy way to bring this up in a conversation so I plowed ahead. “How did you find out you and Vivian were siblings?”
“My grandfather. Well, from some stuff he left behind. I was going through his office and found what he wrote. Viv and I were friends before that, but it kind of made things… real, you know?” Hong Chul picked up his coffee cup, nudging his chair into an angle to prevent Abby access to the stairs if she went wandering again. Jae and I both murmured some words about being sorry for his loss, and Hong Chul ducked his head in a quick thanks.
“Did he know Vivian? From Madame Sun’s?” I asked.
“Yeah, Grandpa liked her but didn’t want us dating. I told him it wasn’t like that between us. It wasn’t. She had a hard time over here. Viv’s family back in Korea treated her like crap, and when she found out Madame Sun was her mother, she wanted to come over here because maybe it would be better.” He shook his head, obviously troubled by something. “She was too used to Korea, you know? Things are different here. Guys here are more… sexual. She was… kind of conservative. Not how she dressed, but inside. You wouldn’t know it by looking at her, but she was. Holding hands was a big deal for her.”
“Can I ask how you two are related?” I kind of already knew, but I wanted to hear it directly from Hong Chul. Abby had dislodged herself from her chair, and for a moment I was scared she’d head my way again, but she seemed more interested in Jae’s sneakers.
Hong Chul glanced at the open door. “Abby, go find halmeoni and ask her to watch cartoons with you, okay?”
Jae helped her down, and she gave us all enthusiastic waves before snatching up the last of her cookies. She stretched up as far as she could reach, grabbed the doorknob and, with a very serious look on her face, pulled it closed behind her.
“She’s like an echo. I probably am going to catch crap for saying shit in front of her. She’ll bust that out during dinner.” Hong Chul chuckled, then sobered. “Gangjun Gyong-Si seduced my mom back in Seoul. He was my grandmother’s fortune-teller, and my umma would come with her to his place.”
“Your grandmother here?” Jae motioned to the house.
“Yeah, halmeoni was upset, but my mom was a kid, you know? Maybe not even sixteen.” He stared down into his coffee as if he could see the past in its creamy depths. “My grandparents arranged for her to marry my dad, and then they all came over here. Harabeoji… my grandfather… didn’t want me to know that my dad wasn’t my real father. I haven’t told them I know. I’m not going to. My dad’s been there for me through everything, and he loves Abby to death. They did their best to raise me right. Not their fault I fucked it up.”
“Couldn’t have fucked it up too much if you’ve got Abby,” I pointed out. “Some guys would have just walked away.”
“Nah, I don’t want to be like that.” He shrugged it off. “She’s my kid… my family… you’ve got to take care of family. It’s just what you do.”
I didn’t want to correct him on that. I’d had plenty of experience with family walking away.
“How did your grandfather know Vivian was your sister?” Jae asked softly.
“I guess Madame Sun told him. I didn’t read everything he wrote. Most of it was about people I didn’t know, and not a lot of it made sense. I saw Viv’s name and read from there. She and I are about the same age. There might be a couple of others. It’s been… shitty since harabeoji died, and now Viv—” His voice broke, and he coughed to cover it. “We didn’t know we were brother and sister. Not until after Grandpa died, but it was like… suddenly everything made sense. Why we felt like we were close even… why she loved Abby.”
“Do you still have those papers?” I inched forward on the chair’s seat. “It might help clarify a few things.”
The suspicion was back in his face. “What kind of things?”
“I’m trying to find out who killed Vivian. I was there at the coffee shop when she died. I was supposed to meet with her about Madame Sun’s clients when the shots came through the window.” I leaned forward, keeping my voice down. “It was fast, Hong Chul. I’ll tell you what I told her mother; it was very quick. She never knew.”
“And you think it’s got something to do with Gyong-Si?” He cocked his head and stared me down. Hong Chul might have stepped back into line, but it wasn’t hard to see him as an intimidating piece of gangbanger.
“It looks that way. So far, everyone who’s died is connected to him in some way.”
“The cops are saying Darren’s probably the one who shot Viv, but they don’t know why. I wish James Bahn hadn’t killed him. I’d want to fuck him up something fierce.” The power in his voice left me with no illusions of what he’d do to t
he person who’d targeted his sister. “If someone else’s responsible for this shit, then I want a piece of them. She was my sister too. Fuck, she was my sister before I even knew we were related. I owe her. She was there for me when Abby got sick a while back. I’ve got to be there for her now, you know?”
“Darren might have killed her. I don’t know,” I admitted. “But there’s got to be a reason. Maybe someone hired him?”
“Maybe. Yeah, he didn’t really even know her.” Hong Chul’s eyes grew distant. “I think they might have met like once or twice, but that’s it.”
“If it wasn’t him, then it was someone else we don’t know about. So far, everything I’ve got connecting comes through Gyong-Si,” I said. “If you’ve got something that can point me toward someone else, I’d like to take a look at it. Before someone else gets hurt. Or worse, killed.”
“You find out who did this, you tell me.” His eyes burned with a nearly religious fervor. “Because I want to be there when they drag him in. I want to make sure that fucking bastard pays for what he did to me… what he did to my family. ’Cause if the cops don’t do it, then I’ll find someone who will.”
Chapter 16
“SO WHAT do you think?” I turned down the main thoroughfare toward my place. “Think he’s telling the truth?”
“What? Hong Chul?” The look Jae gave me could have been called incredulous if not scathing. He’d been thumbing through the papers Hong Chul gave us, briefly murmuring over some of the man’s comments. “What would he lie about?”
“Him and Vivian Na being lovers.” I had to stop the Rover as a bunch of bearded slackers ambled across the street toward the granola girls’ coffee shop.
“No.” Jae’s disgust was palatable. “People can just be friends. You and Bobby are just friends, no? You’ve never….” He trailed off, going someplace in his mind that he probably didn’t want to go. I opened my mouth to respond, but he leaned over and pushed my jaw shut with the back of his hand. “No, I don’t want to know. No matter which way it was, I don’t want to know.”
