by Rhys Ford
“Are you two going to be there for a bit?” I started up the car. With traffic, it would take me about half an hour to get to the club, more if the freeway was feeling particularly puckish. “I need to find someone who saw Hyun-Shik that night. He met someone, and it wasn’t Jin-Sang Yi.”
“I can ask one of the boys in the front. They’re usually working,” she said. I nearly lost her as I pulled onto the street, a blare of horns erupting around me. “One of them might have seen Hyun-Shik with someone, but I can’t promise anything.”
“I’ll take anything right now, Scarlet.”
The freeway gods were kind to me, clean open lanes with only a few rough spots to negotiate. When I pulled up to the club, the sun was settling against the horizon, leaving long trails of lemony light and deep shadows behind. Dorthi Ki Seu was beginning to get ready for the evening when I walked in.
Under the bright florescent lights, the club appeared worn around the edges, its floor-length curtains faded around the hems. A couple of white-shirted waiters, their ties either undone or left completely off, set about taking down chairs, arranging the seats carefully around round tables. Another stood on a ladder, replacing the blackened bulb of a stage light. Below him, the stage glinted in spots, cast-off sequins from dresses caught in the cracks of the painted wood.
“I’m looking for Scarlet,” I said quickly when one of the bouncers detached himself from the long bar and approached me, his glowering frown deep enough to carve his face into deep crevices.
“Honey!” Scarlet swept out from the back, shoving aside the curtains with one elegant push of her hand and stalking into the main room. “It’s good to finally see you on your feet.”
“That sounds particularly dirty,” I said, kissing her cheek. “You look nice.”
“Thank you.” She wore her femininity well, her long hair in a smooth, complicated up-do that defied my reasoning. A line of small diamonds winked at me from a barrette nestled amid the loops, as bright as her wide-toothed smile. Jae followed, his hands tucked into his jeans pockets, a pretty shadow attached to a beautiful woman.
“Hey, baby.” I reached for Jae, intending to kiss his mouth, but he pulled back, his eyes sliding around the room.
Our worlds were different. For me, to kiss him was natural, a normal thing. He shied away. Even though the people around us knew he preferred men, Jae kept up the pretense. He was used to hiding who he wanted without even a second thought, and it hurt me in ways I didn’t think possible. Not for the first time, I was angry at the world for doing this to him, taking away the simplest pleasure of a kiss from a young man.
He leaned into a semi-hug, and I felt the smallest brush of his mouth against my jaw. It was all I was going to get, but it was enough to make me hard.
“Cole, come here.” Scarlet dragged me away from my temptation into sin, her ringed hand motioning one of the larger mounds of meat toward us. “This is Johnny. He was working that night.”
He lumbered closer, and I involuntarily took a step back. The Korean looked like he’d been hewn directly from a granite slab, his face pitted with pockmarks and a dark red scar sliced down one cheek, an angry, vivid line on his pale skin. His uniform shirt had long since given up its battle with his arms, the hems stretched out with popped stitches. If I were the management, I might briefly consider having a talk with my bouncers about adhering to a more proper dress code, but only if I wanted my face rearranged with their fists.
“Hi.” I debated shaking his hand but decided I wanted to keep my fingers.
“Miss Scarlet said you wanted to ask some questions.” His voice matched his girth, full bodied and dangerous.
“If you don’t mind,” I said. Scarlet and Jae abandoned me, heading to the bar for something cold to drink. The air conditioning hadn’t yet kicked in, and the club was stuffy, the air stagnant and still. I sat down, hoping he would join me and relax. His paw swallowed the back of the chair, and it made a loud noise as he pulled it out to sit down. “Did you know Kim Hyun-Shik?”
“Yeah, I knew him.” Crossing his arms over his chest, Johnny stared at me from across the table. I was guessing verbal skills weren’t high on his priority list. A good bouncer knew when to keep his mouth shut, and that usually was always.
“Were you working the night he died?”
“Yeah, or I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you.” He glanced over his shoulder to where Scarlet stood. I wasn’t sure if he was checking to see if she was watching him cooperate or if he was assigned to keep her safe. I didn’t think she’d come to any harm by the bar, except for the real risk of choking on the lime pith in her gin and tonic. “He sat over there.”
I looked over to where he pointed. It was a smaller table, nearly hidden by a froth of palms and overgrown ferns. The spot was secretive, the perfect place to have a talk away from the rest of the action in the club.
“Why don’t you tell me what you saw?” I said.
“He shows up and sits down. I hadn’t seen him in a long time, but I knew who he was.” He nodded toward the young man changing the light bulb. “Took him about four minutes before he was talking to Kwang-Sun, trying to get him upstairs.”
“Not something he should be doing?” I asked, cocking my head to look at the young man. He was young, a lot younger than I like, but some men prefer that. Thinking back on how old Jae had been when Hyun-Shik had probably seduced him, it wasn’t much of a stretch to believe Kwang-Sun had caught Hyun-Shik’s eye.
“No,” Johnny said, tapping at the table to get my attention. “The upstairs boys work there because that’s what they do. Kwang-Sun’s not going to do that. Not if I can help it.”
“Is he your lover?” I ducked to avoid the spit flying from Johnny’s pursed snort.
“My baby brother,” he answered with a smile. “He’s going to go to medical school. I’m not going to let some asshole like Kim Hyun-Shik fuck him up like he did his cousin or Jin-Sang.”
“Fair enough,” I agreed. “So you scared him off Kwang-Sun, then what?”
“Some blonde woman came in. I didn’t see her face, but she was pretty fine. Long legs, and dressed nice. Expensive-looking. I remember thinking she had to be white because her hair was very blonde and natural-looking.” Johnny’s eyes were distant, trying to call up the details of that evening. “I thought she looked out of place. Most of the women who come in here aren’t… really women. Or if they are, they’re hookers. She didn’t look like one.”
“You didn’t see her face?”
“No, she was too far away, but she made it straight to Hyun-Shik,” he replied thoughtfully. “I guess he called her or she called him, but she went right over there. I didn’t pay him too much attention after that. He kept away from Kwang-Sun, and my shift started.”
“Anything else you can remember?” It wasn’t much to go on, but I had a sneaking suspicion I knew who had met Hyun-Shik that night.
“Nope, that’s it. Just some white girl.” Johnny headed back to work, which to me looked mostly like standing around watching the waiters get the club in shape for opening. Scarlet had disappeared while I was talking to the bouncer, but Jae remained behind, leaning against the bar. He headed over when the other man left the table, carrying the sodas he’d gotten from the cold case.
“Do they know you stole those?” I asked, taking one of the chilled bottles from him.
“You’re welcome.” He sat down in the chair Johnny had vacated. “Did he help?”
“Yeah.” I wiggled the bottle at him. “I’m going to head out, and I’m taking this with me. You going to be okay?”
“I’m with nuna. She has a driver that makes that guy look like he’s a twig.” Jae pointed at Johnny. “I’ll be fine. Where are you going?”
“I think Victoria came here and, with Jin-Sang’s help, killed her own husband.” I told him about the blonde talking with Hyun-Shik, adding the part about Kwang-Sun at the end, and Jae nodded, as if his cousin hitting on a young man was no surprise.
&
nbsp; “Do you really think she killed Hyun-Shik?” Jae asked after digesting the information. “She’s a bitch, but a killer? I don’t know, Cole.”
“I didn’t think so at the time, but now, yeah, it looks like it,” I said. “To be fair, Hyun-Shik didn’t seem like a very nice guy.”
“Nice and Hyun-Shik were rarely in the same sentence together,” Jae agreed. “He once told me the only reason I made tips as a dancer was because I had a pretty face, not because I actually could dance.”
“He sounds like an asshole,” I commented. He nodded, sipping at his soda with a delicious pout of his mouth, and I cursed Hyun-Shik for getting himself killed. I thought I’d have enjoyed beating him to death for putting those shadows in Jae’s eyes. “Jae, why do you want to know who killed him? If he was such an asshole, why do you care?”
“Because he’s family,” Jae said, shrugging his shoulders under the shirt he’d stolen from my dresser. “Because he helped me when I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I owe him that at least.”
“He brought you here.” I looked around the room with its worn drapery and the smell of sex lingering in the air. “This wasn’t much of a help.”
“It was something,” he replied. “I thought I was in love with him. Maybe I was then, but Hyun-Shik didn’t love anyone but himself. He was honest about that. Hyung told me from the start that he didn’t love me but he’d help me at least get on my feet. So yes, he was an asshole and a cheat, but considering the rest of the family, how was he going to be any different?”
I had to give Jae that. For all of Hyun-Shik’s faults, he had at least seemed to do what he could to help, first with Jae and then with Brian Park. I found my keys in my pocket and picked up the soda bottle.
“I’ll see you at home,” I said, catching myself before I kissed him goodbye.
Standing, Jae leaned his head back, leaving me a touch of his mouth on mine. Murmuring against my lips, Jae breathed into me, a soft laugh escaping him when I sighed.
“Don’t get shot at or blown up again,” he said, pushing me toward the door. “I’ve got plans for you, hyung. And they don’t include you lying in bed unconscious.”
PERSONALLY, I would have loved to go home with Jae-Min, kick everyone out of my house and see how much my bed could withstand. Or at least how much my bruised-up body could take. It would be a sacrifice, but one I would be willing to make. Instead, I fought my way back down through the canyons and into the depths of Los Angeles’s heat. Despite the sun being down, the inner valleys retained their mugginess, a sweltering stew instead of air that clogged the pores. As the amber lights of the cities flickered on, it caught on the low brown haze, turning the night sky to a deep sienna.
Smog sometimes made for lovely sunsets, but it was hell on the lungs. I was about to take the toll road when my phone buzzed me. Clicking on the headset, I frowned when my brother’s voice bellowed at me from the speaker.
“Where the hell are you?” Mike had never been subtle or one for hellos.
“Hi, Mike,” I chirped back. “How are you?”
“I need you to get your ass back here.” From the sound of my brother’s strained voice, he wasn’t in the mood for any of my usual crap. “Did you talk to Brian Park this afternoon?”
“Yeah. Why?” I took the off-ramp and circled around to get back on the westbound lanes. Avoiding a long-trailer semi, the SUV bounced a bit on the uneven cement freeway, its new tires catching on the grooves ground down to leech rain from the surface. “Did he call you or something?”
“Cops were called out to his apartment about an hour ago, Cole. He was shot in the back of the head.” Mike’s words chilled the warmth Jae had left in my stomach, and I swallowed the sourness rising up my throat. “His secretary told them he canceled his afternoon appointments to meet with you. They want you to come in.”
“Hey, he was alive when we finished,” I protested. “We met at a coffee shop, and then I headed straight down to Dorthi Ki Seu. I couldn’t have killed him.”
“Just get over there. I’ll meet you there.”
“That’ll look good, me bringing my brother with me.” I snorted. “I’ll be fine.”
“Cole, as soon as you open your mouth, you stop being fine,” he replied sharply. “And I’m not going as your brother. Until I get another attorney in, you’re going to have to deal with me. I don’t want you talking to anyone about Brian or what you discussed with him. Not unless I’m in the room.”
“Are they charging me?” I knew better than that, but it was good to poke at my brother’s doomsday predictions. The detectives on the case were following the first thread they hit, regardless of who was on the other end. There was silence on the other end of the phone, and I nodded triumphantly, even though I knew Mike couldn’t see me. “No, they’re not. Mike, you know how this works. I’m going to go in and let them ask their questions. I’ll call you if I run into any problems.”
The dial tone in a headset is a very loud thing, especially when the person on the other end doesn’t have the satisfaction of slamming the receiver down. I anticipated another call from my brother after he paced around his office for a few minutes, so I turned my phone off and headed back into the mess I’d inadvertently left behind me.
Most cop houses have an atmosphere to them. To the general public, it probably looks like everyone is working or scurrying about with something important to do. Things are usually very different if you know what to look for. There’s a sense of desperation and frustration that comes with being a cop. Most of the people a police officer meets on a day-to-day basis really don’t want to see him and will in fact, at times, either run away or possibly even take a shot at him. Murders happen, and robberies seem to come like tidal waves, hitting every few seconds without fail. It’s a good day when someone confesses to killing someone else, and it’s a banner day when there’s a drug bust that takes a serious crimp out of what’s on the street, but for the most part, being a cop means getting used to being a speed bump for a bullet train.
I smelled the frustration first. It rolled off the female detective I was escorted to, her frenetic tapping of a pencil against the side of her desk a strong barometer of which way the storm was blowing. She gave me a quick glance, rifling through a sheaf of papers, and then pointed to a battered metal chair next to her desk.
Detective Dell O’Byrne looked more Latino than Irish. Her long brown hair hung straight down her back, pulled into a queue with a no-nonsense black hair band. Tanned and lean, she had a strong face, high cheekbones, and sharp eyes, nearly as dark as her hair, which took in every detail of my face. I would lay money down that she could describe me to a sketch artist, down to the small scar on my chin. Leaning back, I drank in the chaos around me, watching uniformed officers maneuver handcuffed suspects down a corridor to a detention area.
The detective hung up the phone and turned in her chair, staring at me down her long nose. She was younger than I had initially thought, only a year or so older than I was, but she wore her badge on her skin. If I’d seen Detective O’Byrne on the street, I’d have known she was a cop without even a second glance.
“Cole McGinnis?” Standing, she was nearly my height and had a strong grip. Grabbing a manila folder from her desk, she waved me toward an open door. “Let’s go in there and talk. It’s more private.”
The rectangular room was painted in latter-day drab, the station’s budget running toward faded puke instead of the warm beige that covered most of the walls. A long mirror separated the room from the observation alcove. The light was on behind the glass, and I could see past the one-way mirror into the empty side room. If O’Byrne had suspicions, that light would have been off and the small room would have boasted one or two other cops, each watching me and taking notes.
“Have a seat.” She sat without waiting for me and opened the folder, flipping over the top sheet. I pulled back the heavy chair, sitting down across from her. “Nice bruises you got there on your face, Cole. Did you run into someone who
didn’t like you? Maybe Park?”
“Nope.” I tried a grin when she looked up from her papers, but O’Byrne didn’t look impressed. “Someone tried to blow me up. I ended up face first into my front lawn.”
“So I guess that someone doesn’t like you.” Her smile did nothing to make her beautiful, but warmed her face. “Tell me about your meeting with Brian Park.”
I had nothing to gain by hiding anything, not with Park being dead and my one lead on who killed Hyun-Shik resting on the memory of a pissed-off bouncer. Leaning back in the chair, I sketched out my steps, starting with the Kims hiring me to investigate the death of their son and ending with my conversation with Brian at the coffee shop.
“You’ve got a Glock registered to you,” O’Byrne said slowly. “Fire it recently?”
She lifted the folder so I wasn’t able to see anything other than the back fold, its surface doodled over with blue stars and leaves. A few words stood out, part of a grocery list. From what was written, I gathered the detective had a cat and a fondness for hot dogs, but beyond that, I couldn’t read anything from her expression.
“A few times at the range,” I admitted. “Just to keep in practice.”
“People seem to have a difficult time staying alive around you, Mr. McGinnis.” The glint in her eye gave me an uneasy feeling that she was looking for a way to pin something on me, if only to keep me out of the way. “I’ve asked around about you when I found out you’re an ex-cop.”
“I can imagine.” I met her gaze with a steady stare, keeping eye contact until she glanced down at her notes. I didn’t fool myself into thinking I’d intimidated her. I wasn’t sure if she was talking about Jin-Sang Yi and Brian Park or Rick and Ben. Either way, she was right. I didn’t seem to be a good luck charm for the people around me.
“Did you go to that coffee shop with the intention to blackmail Brian Park? Maybe to kill him?” I couldn’t have been more surprised unless O’Byrne had punched me in the face. She waited until I finished choking on my own spit, leaning back in her chair. “It’s not an unreasonable question, McGinnis.”
