Hardboiled Crime Four-Pack

by Jack Bunker

  Seconds later the first cruiser pulled up to the curb, and the bar went dead silent. That’s when I realized that all the police were going to get as far as testimony was a lot of “I don’t know” and “I didn’t see.” And that’s what happened. The police tried to get the story in English and got nothing much at all. When a Korean-speaking cop showed up, there was even less said.

  One of the first two cops on the scene eventually got around to me. With a hand on my elbow he guided me back toward the corner of the bar, near the kitchen. He was a Latino with a rough complexion.

  He glanced at the other patrons and then looked me in the eye. “What did you see?”

  I told him exactly what I’d seen, leaving out the part about the car and the shooter.

  He pointed at the body on the floor. “You ever seen this guy?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  He gave me a hard look. “What are you doing in this place?”

  “Drinking beer,” I said. “It’s close to my apartment.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I manage a car wash.”

  “I run you through the system, what am I gonna find?” asked the cop.

  “Nothing. Not even a parking ticket.”

  He held out his hand. “Give me your ID.”

  He took my wallet and walked away.

  I watched him make a call.

  A few minutes later he came back with my wallet and handed it to me, saying, “A young guy like you hanging around here, with a bunch of bucketheads, I don’t like it.”

  I kept my mouth shut. Growing up in Pittsburgh I learned early that the less said to cops, the better.

  I walked over to Ms. Tam and the young girl I now knew was named Soo Jin. She was fresh-faced up close, delicate. She wouldn’t look me in the eye.

  “Ms. Tam,” I asked. “You all right?”

  I don’t know why I asked her that—she was the toughest person in the room.

  “Bad business,” said Ms. Tam.

  THREE

  I watched my crew swarm over a green Honda Pilot, soaping it up and scrubbing it down before giving the signal to proceed through the car wash. You wouldn’t find a Korean working at the Warsaw Wash. My crew was all Mexican—not one of them with papers. Hardworking guys who lived four to a room, sending most of what they earned back home to their families.

  The Honda Pilot came through the car wash, and the driver stepped out, a tiny Korean lady. She took a seat in a row of chairs against the wall and watched as three workers buffed and dried her car, vacuumed the interior, and dressed her tires. When they were done she stuck a dollar in the tip jar and drove off.

  A worker named Manuel, in rubber boots and black rubber apron, came over to me during a lull in the flow of cars.

  Manuel bobbed his chin up and down. “So you were there, huh?”

  “You talking about last night?”

  “Yeah. At that karaoke club.”

  I looked out toward Western Avenue. “It was terrible. Bloody.”

  “You’re lucky you didn’t get shot, homes,” said Manuel.

  I nodded in agreement. “They say it was a shotgun.”

  “You ever be in the war?” asked Manuel.

  “No,” I said. “Never wanted to be, either.”

  Manuel said, “Why they didn’t do that guy in the street? That stuff be pinche, shooting where they had women and all.”

  A car drove in, and Manuel drifted off to hose it down. I wondered if Saja would be open tonight, or if I’d find it sealed off with yellow crime scene tape.

  LA may have been huge and sprawling, but my orbit was tight and contained. Saja was three blocks east of the car wash, and my apartment was two blocks north. I did my shopping at a Ralphs supermarket, one block west, and I got my reading matter and DVDs at the public library, right across from Ralphs.

  I guess I wasn’t much for new experiences. I’d only ever been in two places, really. I grew up in Pittsburgh. When I was nineteen a buddy of mine, Will, asked me to drive to LA with him. He was going to be an actor, and he wanted me to come along for moral support. There was nothing holding me in Pittsburgh so we drove straight across the country, taking turns driving and sleeping. Will only lasted eight months before he gave up on his dream and went back to enroll in a community college in Pittsburgh. I stayed on in LA—I had my job at the car wash. Six years later, I still had it. The only difference after Will left was I moved to the smallest apartment I could find, what they call a bachelor. It was one room and didn’t have a kitchen, but that worked for me. I got along fine with a microwave, small refrigerator, and a Mr. Coffee.

  A black Toyota Camry drove in to be washed. It was a gypsy cab belonging to one of my favorite customers—Yun, a Korean woman in her late thirties who worked twelve-hour shifts. I watched her get out of her car and walk back to where I was standing. She was wearing jeans, high-heeled sandals, and a burgundy Aéropostale T-shirt. She stood close to me—too close—and peered at my face. There was always a sexual charge coming off Yun. I knew she was married so it never went anywhere.

  I took a step back and asked, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Yun grinned. “They told me you had blood splashed all over your face. I was checking to see if you missed a spot.”

  Yun licked the tip of her finger and rubbed it lightly by the side of my lip. “There. That’s better.”

  Yun was ten years older than me and always seemed ten steps ahead.

  I said, “So you heard?”

  “Lots and lots of talk,” said Yun. “I’m glad you weren’t hurt.”

  “No one got hurt. Just the poor guy who got his head blown off. Have you heard anything about them catching the guys who did it?”

  “You know how it is in Koreatown,” said Yun, looking away. “No one is going to talk.”

  The crew finished up with Yun’s car. I noticed she had a photo of her kids taped to the dash.

  Yun got behind the wheel and powered down the window. She gave me a serious look, unusual for her.

  “I know you’re gonna go back there,” she said. “Be careful.”

  FOUR

  It was five minutes to closing when the owner of the car wash showed up. It was unusual to see Jules in the middle of the week. He usually rolled in on Friday afternoon before the Sabbath. He didn’t really have to come in at all, since he kept track of all the deposits online. Most of the business was cash, and he liked me to deposit it directly into a savings account at a Citibank a couple blocks away. He said he trusted me, but I also think he had his ways of knowing whether or not I was skimming off the cream. I’d been tempted in my early days at the car wash and had almost taken the plunge a couple of times. But I never did fall into the trap of taking what wasn’t mine. The urge to steal from Jules eventually disappeared, and I settled into running his business the best I could.

  Jules was an old-school Jew pushing seventy. His kids were grown and in solid professions. I’d had a few discussions with him about me buying the place. These talks always ended with Jules saying, “What am I gonna do if I retire? Sit on the couch and watch Judge Judy?” I had a feeling that was what he was doing already, since I only saw him once a week.

  He had me over for dinner a couple of times, to his house in Redondo Beach. I think in some ways he considered me his working-class son—the one who was meant to inherit the family business.

  Today he looked like he had something on his mind.

  Manuel fastened the chain across the entrance to the car wash, a closed sign dangling from the links.

  Jules gestured toward the car wash garage doors. “Lock up and then come with me.”

  I secured the padlock. “Where we going?”

  “Nowhere. For a sit in my car. I got something I want to talk about.”

  We walked over to his powder-blue Grand Marquis parked at the curb. We got in and he rolled down the windows to let in some air. Even this late in the day the heat was brutal.

  “I never
had a guy with me this long,” said Jules. “One year—two, tops—and then they were gone. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. It’s been good for me, you sticking around. But good for you, I’m not so sure.”

  I didn’t like the sound of this, as though he was preparing to kick me to the curb. “I’m not complaining, Jules. This is what I do. I’m good at it. No one’s going to give me any awards for doing it, but I’m fine with that.”

  “I’ve been at this location since seventy-two,” said Jules. “It’s been good to me. I’d like to see the right person get it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m selling. I’ve got my reasons—some personal stuff with my wife. I don’t want to get into it. But it’s time to sell. You get first crack. But I’m a businessman—I’m not going to give it away.”

  This was happening too fast. I’d been saving for this day the last three years. Problem is I thought I had a few more years before Jules and I had this conversation.

  “What’s your price?”

  “Two hundred K. But for you, I’ll cut you a break on the down payment. Give me twenty-five grand and pay off a thousand a week and it’s yours.”

  I had $9,000 saved. That was it. My car was an old beater, a 1999 Dodge Dart. I couldn’t break a thousand selling it on Craigslist. The only thing I had that was worth any money at all was back in Pittsburgh, a 1970 Chevy Nova. I’d left it garaged at my dad’s house waiting for a day like today. It would sell overnight if the price was right.

  I asked, “How much time can you give me?”

  Jules looked disappointed by my question. “Not what I was hoping to hear. Something like this, you either have it or you don’t.”

  “I’ve given you six years, Jules. Give me three days at least.”

  “I’ll give you five days. Do what you have to do and then we’ll sign some papers.” Jules pointed at the car wash. “That little baby’s been good to me. They can outsource the hell out of this country, but they’ll never be able to outsource plumbers, barbers, and getting your car washed.”

  FIVE

  The public library had a long bank of computers for patrons to use. But those computers you had to reserve in advance. Off in a corner was a lone PC that was available for only fifteen minutes at a time. This one you didn’t have to reserve. The problem was it usually drew an odd group of users—street people and those who had an emotional screw loose.

  I was next in line and waited for a guy in a suit to finish up. From time to time he’d glance over his shoulder at me in a pissed-off way. It was odd to see a guy in a suit at the free computer. Then I took a closer look and saw that the seam in the left shoulder of his suit jacket was starting to go, and his socks had lost their elasticity and were drooping around his ankles.

  The third time he looked over his shoulder he snarled, “Do you mind?”

  I said, “Mind what?”

  “Giving me some privacy. You’re breathing down my neck while I’m doing my banking.”

  I glanced down at my feet—I was standing behind the line of tape they’d stuck to the floor. “Hey,” I said. “You want privacy don’t do your business in a public library.”

  He looked down at the keyboard and muttered a low, “Jerk…”

  A few minutes later the monitor’s screen went black—his fifteen minutes were up. He walked away without looking back, and I sat down and signed in. In seconds I was on the Kelley Blue Book website, checking out what my 1970 Chevy Nova would be worth—up to $11,000. I checked some other sites for car collectors and found I could make a little more—it all depended on condition and how many of the original features were still intact. Then I took a whirl on Craigslist and got some encouraging numbers. My Nova was nowhere near cherry, but I could still net some good dollars. If I could unload it quickly, I’d be within passing range of the down payment Jules was looking for.

  Back in my small apartment I stalled as long as I could. I took a shower. Ate a microwave burrito. Took out the trash. But I could stall only so long before making the call to my dad back in Pittsburgh. He was three hours ahead on the clock, and if his habits were the same, he’d be half-drunk by nine and asleep by eleven.

  I hadn’t called my dad for six months, and that had been the obligatory call on his birthday. The call had been short—before we got into anything real he was signing off with a “Thanks for calling” and then hanging up. I’d gotten used to it over the years. Mom died when I was fifteen, and my older brother, Steve, moved out as soon as he could, when he was seventeen. The seven years after my mom died, my father and I occupied the same house, but we rarely spoke to each other. The only meals we shared were accidental, when we happened to put plates of food on the table at the same time. I’d never gotten the feeling he loved my mom, his wife. But her death left a hole in his life that was filled with steady drinking and a diet of Fox News. The only time he got excited was when he repeated a nugget of wisdom from Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity. His job as a manager at Home Depot left him little to talk about. When I was eighteen I asked him if he could get me a job there, and his answer was, “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  The Chevy Nova had been Steve’s car. He’d passed it down to me when it was in bad condition. I remember him telling me, “She has good bones, but she needs a lot of work.” Over the years I’d fooled with it, bringing it back to running condition and keeping it clean.

  I sat down in the one comfortable chair in my room—a black vinyl easy chair from IKEA that had been left behind when a tenant moved out of the building. I’d been the first to claim it from the lobby where it had a piece of paper taped to it with the message, “Take me.”

  I punched numbers into the phone, and my dad answered on the first ring.

  “Hi, Dad, it’s Wes.”

  There was a pause, then, “Are you all right? It’s late to be calling here.”

  “Yeah, I know—I should have called earlier.” This was met by silence on the other end. I picked up the slack and said, “I’ve got an opportunity out here. You know that car wash I’ve been working at? I’ve got a chance to buy it. My boss is retiring.”

  “You got that kind of money?”

  “I’ve been saving. I’ve got some of the down payment on hand. I’m not asking for a loan from you or nothing like that. But I could use a favor.”

  “What kind of favor?”

  “I’m going to sell the Nova. There may be some buyers coming by the house to give it a look and maybe even test-drive it. I think I can move it real quick. Hopefully it wouldn’t be too much of a drain on your time, handling the sale.”

  There was another long pause, and then he said, “I sold that years ago.”

  “What?”

  “I sold the Nova.”

  I felt like someone was squeezing my heart. “That was mine.”

  “It was Steve’s. And where do you think he got the money for it?”

  “No, Dad. That was my car. You didn’t have the right to sell it.”

  “You left the fucking thing in my garage for six years. You’re a man. You take care of your things. Take responsibility. Otherwise, you face the consequences.”

  “This isn’t right.”

  “That’s the way the cookie crumbles.”

  “Hey, you could’ve told me you didn’t want it in your garage. I would have done something about it.”

  I heard laughter on the other end of the line, and then my father said, “You better do your push-ups—you’ll be washing cars by hand the rest of your life.”

  SIX

  A Korean was standing in the middle of the floor, singing into the cordless mic, mangling “Proud Mary,” really struggling with the “Rs” in the “rolling on the river” line.

  I held up my empty bottle of Hite and got Min Jee’s attention. “One more.”

  I’d made a second call after my dad hung up on me, to my brother, Steve. When he picked up I could hear his two kids in the background and his wife yelling. I asked him about
a loan, and his answer came back quick:

  “No.”

  He didn’t give me a reason, and I didn’t ask for one.

  Steve and I hardly ever spoke. He and his family lived in a town house apartment in South Jersey, where Steve worked for a trucking outfit. It was a sore point with him that I’d never been out to meet his kids. I sent presents at Christmas and for their birthdays, but he and I both knew that wasn’t enough. Thing is, even before his kids came along, we rarely saw each other.

  Our family was like a chemical compound: mix hydrogen and oxygen and you got water. Mix isolation and disinterest and you got my family. We could change things through an act of will if any of us cared enough. Thing is, we didn’t. If Steve had called me for a loan, I doubt I would have parted with the nine grand I’d saved toward buying the car wash. I was no different from him. No different from my father. Asking for help came hard; refusing help came easy.

  The singer finished the Creedence song with a strangled note that ended in a gurgle.

  I hadn’t been that surprised to find the Saja Room open after last night’s bloody shooting. If it’s one thing Koreatown understands, it’s business. The flow of dollars must be kept open and constant. There was no time to mourn. Cart off the body, bag the evidence, and scrub away the blood. Do it fast—overnight if possible—so you can open the next day, pouring beer and soju and cranking out the karaoke.

  And anyway, the guy who got his head blown off wasn’t a regular.

  Kwan came through the door and took the stool next to me. Kwan was different; he was a regular, maybe the regular. He not only drank in the Saja Room, he also ate there. While I kept my daily limit to two beers and a tip, Kwan probably dropped fifty bucks a night in the place.

  Min Jee came over. Today her gold earrings were a leaf design that enfolded the lobes of her ears.