Hardboiled Crime Four-Pack

by Jack Bunker

  I glanced at the wedding ring on my left hand. “It’s been a busy week. Got married and I bought the car wash on Western, where I work.”

  “Congratulations. I mean it,” said Royal. “You got a picture of the lucky lady?”

  I felt embarrassed—that was something I hadn’t even thought of. “I’ll have to catch you up on that next time.”

  Royal took the needle out of my arm and handed me a cotton ball to hold against the puncture mark.

  “Someday. Someday soon I hope,” he said. “I’ll walk down the aisle.”

  This was a tough conversation.

  “All you got to do is find the right guy,” I said.

  “At least it’s legal now,” said Royal. “My people are Democrats. But when it comes to homosexuals, black people are to the right of teabaggers. Same with the Latinos. They love all the social programs, but at their core, they’re Catholic. They got the Catholic family values. No queers allowed.”

  Royal let out a sigh and sang a snatch of the Sister Sledge song. “We are family…”

  He reached into a drawer and took out a plastic-wrapped chocolate chip cookie.

  Royal handed it to me and said, “Here you go, Casper. Get that blood sugar up.”

  * * *

  The rest of the day went by in a blur. During a lull in the action I drove out to Staples and bought an iPad, a scanner, and a download for QuickBooks. I spent the afternoon sipping a Big Gulp and setting up my new accounting system.

  An hour before closing, a skinny white guy carrying a shopping bag showed up.

  “You Wes?” he asked.

  I told him I was.

  “Here you go,” he said, handing over the shopping bag. “Your shirts.”

  I looked in the bag as the white guy walked away. There were two dozen custom-printed T-shirts, with Warsaw Wash printed in blue. I’d asked them to make the capital Ws like drops of water—they’d done a good job.

  I called the guys in and gave each of them two shirts. It was a small thing and didn’t cost me all that much money, but it went a long way to making us feel like a team.

  That evening I stayed in. I sat in my black vinyl chair as Soo Jin watched a Korean DVD I’d picked up from the library—a silly comedy. The English title was My Sassy Girl. Soo Jin seemed to be enjoying it.

  Around nine Yun called but I didn’t pick up. I needed a Fortress of Solitude night, even if my new wife was sitting across the room. Shin Doko’s deadline to annul the marriage was only a couple of hours away. I wondered if there was still any hope of negotiating a truce, or if they were going to come at me charging hard.

  I was almost done with the Colin Powell book, On Leadership. It was the right thing to be reading this week. I had a feeling some of his insights would come in handy.

  Especially the one about being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.

  NINETEEN

  I was up early the next morning. A quick cup of instant coffee and I was out on the street. I liked being able to walk to work instead of battling traffic. The couple blocks of exercise was enough to get my motor running.

  I was the first one at the car wash. I looked at the time on my phone—the guys should start showing up in a few minutes. I kept the chain across the entrance to discourage early birds and began preparing to open, unlocking and raising the sheet metal gate, flicking on the lights, checking the presoak. I’d done this a million times before, but the place was mine now; the feeling was different. When I washed the grime off at the end of the day, I was the owner, not some poor hump making bank for the boss.

  I was standing inside the car wash when movement at the entrance caught my eye. I saw a guy step over the chain and walk toward me—a Korean guy. His hand swept under his jacket and came out with a gun. Still walking toward me, he fired, and I felt the bullet whizz by my ear.

  I flicked a switch, putting the spray nozzles and the floppy wash arms into motion. Instantly there was a wall of water and flailing equipment. No way was he getting through there.

  I heard two more shots—now he was firing blind. I took off, sprinting as fast as I could, keeping the building between me and the shooter. If he thought to hook around the building, he’d be on me in seconds.

  I heard another shot, and the heel of my shoe went flying off.

  I dug in and dashed across traffic, struggling to keep my balance with only one heel. I looked over my shoulder—no one was coming after me. I turned down another street, and then another. For all I knew the Korean was in his car and circling around looking for me. I thought to hide in the library, but it was closed. I kept running until I came to Wilshire and then hustled over to the line of cabs waiting for morning fares. I piled into the back seat of one and told the driver my address.

  The driver looked back at me and said, “You know, you could walk that easy.”

  “I know. Humor me, OK?”

  “Hey, it’s your dollar.”

  In minutes I was unlocking the door to my apartment. Soo Jin came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, a second one wrapped around her hair. She didn’t have to show up for work until ten. She asked, “Why are you here?”

  I kicked off my shoes and dumped them in the trash. They were cheap loafers from Payless, not worth getting fixed.

  “We thought I might be safe, being white?” I said. “Well I’m not. A Korean dude showed up at the car wash and started shooting at me.”

  Soo Jin’s mouth opened in a tight O.

  “I was alone,” I said. “The other guys hadn’t shown up yet. Shit, they’re probably there now.”

  I dug my phone out of my pocket and called Manuel.

  “Homes, what’s going on?” asked Manuel. “I got here and the car wash was working all by itself.”

  “Are the police there?”

  “No. What happened?”

  “Anybody hanging around?”

  “Just the crew, man.”

  “Look around. You see a Korean guy watching you?”

  “We’re in Koreatown,” said Manuel. “There’s a bunch of Korean dudes.”

  “I’m going to need you to dig deep. You want to be number two at Warsaw Wash, you’re going to have to step up. Get the place opened and running and then come to my apartment.”

  “You in trouble, Wes?”

  Manuel must have known the answer to that question: he’d never called me Wes before.

  * * *

  Manuel got to my apartment a half hour later. Soo Jin and I had already packed. I handed him my keys to the car wash and told him I was going to have to lie low. That some people had a problem with me, but it didn’t have anything to do with the car wash, and no one was going to come after him and the guys. I gave him the account number for the bank and told him to pay the crew each day and bank the rest. Order supplies if we needed them and pay in cash. I’d call him later in the day.

  Manuel had said, “You can depend on me, homes.” He’d also given Soo Jin a favorable glance. It was clear he was thinking there was more to the story than I was telling him. But Manuel came from East LA, where you rarely heard the whole story, only bits and pieces, with the most important parts usually left out.

  TWENTY

  I drove my Dodge Dart around the block, with Soo Jin by my side and our suitcases in the back seat. I was careful not to drive directly by our apartment and instead circled warily around. Then I saw it—the Jeep Rubicon parked a block away. I hung a quick right and disappeared, putting distance between me and the Jeep. I looked in the rearview and was relieved when I didn’t see it following me.

  It was a full-court press, and I had only one player on the boards—me. I was going to have to find some allies.

  I turned to Soo Jin, who looked sweet and unperturbed by all the morning’s drama. “Honey, it’s time I met the family.”

  * * *

  I sat in a carved wooden chair made of some kind of tropical wood. I faced a sofa where three Koreans sat—an elderly woman, an old man, and an old, old Korean woman. W
hat was left of the Nang family.

  We were at what amounted to being Nang headquarters—a sprawling low-slung house on Magnolia Street at the outer edge of Koreatown. Unlike Ms. Tam’s and Yun’s homes, the décor could have come from an Asian prop house. The ornate furniture was heavily lacquered. A tall wooden screen with three partitions showed a scene of strangely painted clouds with golden dragons cavorting among them. A ceramic tea set was on the table, with tiny cups that couldn’t have held more than a couple of mouthfuls of tea.

  Soo Jin sat quietly by herself in the corner, her hands folded in her lap.

  There was something peaceful about the room—but it was the peace of the dead.

  The old man was named Kyu-Hook. The names of the women weren’t offered, and it was clear that Kyu-Hook was going to be doing the talking for all of them.

  “We are honored that you have taken Soo Jin as your wife,” said Kyu-Hook. “Of course, we have spoken with Ms. Tam in detail, and we understand you entered into the marriage in full awareness of its unique exigencies.”

  “I was there when Dae-Hyun was killed.”

  “Then you are a brave man to have taken up our offer.”

  “No,” I said. “It was an opportunity. I wasn’t being brave.”

  Kyu-Hook smiled. “The Chinese character for opportunity and crisis is the same.”

  I’d heard that before. It seemed it was always trotted out when somebody wanted to give you a pep talk; a Chinese version of Vince Lombardi’s “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

  “Well, this is a crisis for sure,” I said. “That’s why we’re here. I met with Shin Doko two days ago and tried to convince him to deep-six the blood feud. He refused. Today he sent someone to gun me down. Luckily the only thing they hit was my shoe.”

  “It’s fortunate that Shin was unsuccessful. But he will try again. He’s been successful five times in the past with Soo Jin alone.”

  Kyu-Hook offered me some tea, and I held the tiny cup as he poured.

  “From Seoul,” said Kyu-Hook. “Mountain ginseng.”

  “I could use a boost.” I took a sip. It was bitter and strong. I wished I had a quart to drink.

  “The women of the Nang family are all past childbearing age,” said Kyu-Hook. “What is left of the Nang family is in this room. Soo Jin is our only chance to keep the bloodline going.”

  I knew the Nang family was on the losing end of the feud, but I didn’t know it was this bad. Only four left on the team and only one that could take the field.

  I put the empty teacup back on the tray. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

  “You can ask,” said Kyu-Hook. “I’ll decide if I answer you.”

  “What about you? Why don’t you get a woman pregnant—hell, get ten women pregnant—and keep the Nang family going that way?”

  “Twelve years ago I suffered an extraordinary experience with influenza. An unfortunate side effect was that I am now sterile.” Kyu-Hook gestured to the elderly woman next to him. “Chun Hei is my daughter, and Soo Jin’s mother. Chun Hei has suffered even more than Soo Jin.”

  I looked at Chun Hei. The suffering was written all over her face. Most Koreans were a lovely brown. Chun Hei’s face was a sickly yellow. The skin sagged so much under her eyes I could have done it up with a safety pin.

  “It is my desire to have a great-grandchild—a boy,” said Kyu-Hook. “One that will keep the Nang family alive. Did Ms. Tam tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  Kyu-Hook glanced at the old, old woman and then said to me, “When you and Soo Jin have a baby, you will have to give it to us, to adopt and raise.”

  “No, Ms. Tam never told me that. It doesn’t seem like a detail you’d gloss over in a business arrangement.”

  “It is necessary,” said Kyu-Hook. “It is not a trick. In Korean culture, when Soo Jin married you, she left the family she was born into. She is no longer a Nang. She is part of your family. If you have a boy, you must give him to us to raise as a Nang. Only a boy can keep our bloodline going.”

  It took me a second to wrap my head around the concept. My mind had been so much on the business side of things—getting the down payment on the car wash—that I’d neglected the human side of the equation.

  “Will I get to see the boy?”

  “Of course,” said Kyu-Hook. “He will be a Nang, but he will know you are his father.”

  Maybe it would be for the best, having someone else take over the responsibility of parenthood. I didn’t feel like a husband, and being a father had never been part of my agenda. What kind of father would I be anyway? I’d been bought and paid for. Even my own dad hadn’t sunk that low.

  “As Soo Jin’s husband, you are in great danger,” said Kyu-Hook. “Your wedding vows have made you into a target. The Doko family is forbidden to kill the women of the Nang family, but they will stop at nothing to kill you.”

  There was a red lacquered box on the table in front of Kyu-Hook. He reached out and undid the clasp on the box. Inside was a stack of cash. The top note was a hundred-dollar bill.

  “We will pay you to disappear with Soo Jin.”

  “How much money is inside that box?”

  “Thirty-five thousand dollars. If a boy is born, there will be more.”

  It was tempting. Soo Jin and I would have to choose a place that had no ties to our past lives. That would be easy for me: eliminate Pittsburgh and LA and you had it covered. I’d heard good things about Portland. A big city like Chicago, we could probably get lost in. Maybe the key would be finding a city with hardly any Koreans.

  Even as I ran these possibilities through my mind, I knew I was too stubborn to walk away from Warsaw Wash. I knew full well that I was never going to make the history books running a Koreatown car wash, but from an early age I never had a strong desire for the world’s admiration. Making it on my own terms was good enough for me.

  Anyway, once you start running, how do you stop?

  I said, “Thanks for the offer, but hold on to your money. We’re going to lie low for a while, but we’re not running away.”

  Kyu-Hook closed the lid on the box. “This resource is here if you change your mind.”

  “We’re going to have to find another place to stay.”

  Kyu-Hook nodded in agreement. “It’s not safe in your apartment or even here. Shin Doko has men watching the house. In fact, he may already know you have come to see me.”

  That info didn’t sit well. I stood up and said, “In that case, we have to move.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ve never had a problem like this before. Up to now I’ve managed to slip in between the raindrops.”

  Kyu-Hook allowed himself a slight smile at this bit of whimsy. My mom used to say that to me all the time if she sensed I was avoiding responsibility.

  Soo Jin came over to my side and said softly, “I’m late for work.”

  * * *

  I dropped Soo Jin off in front of the Koreatown Plaza and told her I would pick her up at seven. I managed a quick drive past Warsaw Wash, and from the glimpse I got things seemed to be normal. I didn’t dare stop.

  I headed south on Western and took the ramp to the 10. I was glad to see that the traffic was light. Sometimes the 10 slowed to a crawl for seemingly no reason at all. Maybe LA itself was the reason.

  I was at a loss—more confused than I’d ever been. I was a man of set habits. Work, home, supermarket, library, and the Saja Room. That was about it. I was an easy person to find if I kept to my routine.

  Running to the police wasn’t going to work. I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I was certain they’d treat me like a criminal. There was no denying how unsavory it was marrying a woman for a cash payout. Also it was clear to me that the LA police had no clout when it came to a three-hundred-year-old blood feud. Maybe they’d make an arrest or two, but the Dokos would be swarming all over me as soon as the police looked the other way.

  I wond
ered how I’d fare if things turned really tough. I wasn’t tuned to violence—my last fistfight had been in junior high. I was in reasonably good shape, mainly because I ate well, I didn’t have any addictions, and I was on my feet most of the day. I imagined what it would be like facing a martial-arts-trained Korean armed with nunchucks and shirikans. I didn’t like where my imagination took me.

  I was also clueless when it came to firing a gun. If you handed me a pistol I wouldn’t know where the safety was.

  I didn’t feel up to the task of defending myself, but no one else was going to do it for me.

  I swung down the exit for the 405 and headed south, toward Redondo Beach. I needed to talk to someone.

  It might as well be Jules.

  * * *

  Redondo Beach was another world—far, far away from Koreatown, even though it was less than an hour drive. The air was clean and the ocean was blue. There was a feeling of prosperity in the air. Even the seagulls seemed relaxed.

  Jules had been surprised to see me, although he welcomed me into his home. I got the impression my dropping in was a welcome diversion. He put a finger to his lips and motioned me to a chair. He disappeared upstairs and I heard low voices. When Jules offered to sell me Warsaw Wash, he had mentioned a problem with his wife. The way he was talking—the low, caring tones—made me think his wife was sick.

  Jules came back down the stairs. “It’s Mary. She’s going to take a nap. Let’s go out back and talk.”

  Jules’s house was orderly. Everything was clean; the furniture was solid. Abstract paintings hung on the wall, swirling with colors. I stood in the kitchen as Jules poured us cups of coffee. I followed him out the back door to the patio.

  We sat down, and Jules put a baby monitor on the table in front of him. He pulled a pack of Winstons out of his pocket. “Mind if I smoke?”

  “No problem. It’ll remind me of one of the places I can’t go anymore—the Saja Room.”

  “You got eighty-sixed?”

  “Not exactly.”

  I filled him in on what went down the last week or so. The arranged marriage, the blood feud, getting shot at. Jules hung on every word.