Those were the assumptions I was working under. None of them stopped me from pursuing my goal.
“You need to call Swan right now and tell him that he needs to talk to the police.”
“What?” said Chul-Moo, who was still on shoes.
“Do you have his phone number?”
“Yes,” said Chul-Moo uncertainly.
“Call him, and tell him Dahlia Moss says he needs to call the police. They already know, so it’s going to come out anyway. It’ll be way better than the alternative.”
Chul-Moo continued to look at me in bafflement. “Just call him,” I said. Still bafflement.
“On your phone,” offered Daniel. I would have put this down as a ridiculously unnecessary detail, but they were apparently the magic words needed to provoke Chul-Moo into action. Very slow action.
He picked up his cell, looking ever uncertain, and pressed an icon on the screen. He held it up to his face, watching me and waiting, and after a moment spoke:
“Hello, Swan,” he said. “There’s … a woman here.”
I could not hear what Swan was saying.
“Yes,” Chul-Moo said after a pause, “exactly.”
If this sounds strange and ominous to you, then congratulations, you and I are of like minds. If this doesn’t sound suspicious to you, I’m sorry, you are wrong. I took the phone from Chul-Moo’s hands, who clearly hadn’t expected this as a possibility at all, and held it up to my face.
“Yes, Swan,” I told him. “It’s Dahlia.”
“Wait, what? Who is this?”
“You can’t possibly have forgotten me already. How are you doing?”
“I’m … fine. How did you find Chul-Moo?” asked Swan.
“Well, he’s not wearing shoes, which tends to make a fella stand out in a crowd,” I told him. “But who cares about that. You need to call the police, pronto.”
“The hell I do,” said Swan. “I’m not involved in any of that.”
“You’re involved now, because I told the police, and they’re going to come looking for you.”
“But I didn’t do anything! I thought you were keeping me out of things.”
“Yeah, well. You vanished on me,” I told him. Although, to be honest, this actually wasn’t related. I had ratted him out before he had vanished.
“I didn’t vanish,” said Swan. “You left me tied to a chair, and I got out. What, I was supposed to just stay in the chair?”
“I found a man that could cut handcuffs for you!” I told him. Is it wrong that I should expect a guy to be grateful for this service? This goon thanked Daniel and not me.
“I appreciate that, Dahlia,” said Swan. “I really do. But as it happens, I didn’t need him. Chul-Moo came along, and now I’m golden. What I need, actually, are shoes, because mine were apparently stolen by that woman. I can’t fly home without shoes. The TSA just won’t allow it.”
“I’m assuming this is all a preamble to say that you’re going to call the police?”
“No,” said Swan. “Maybe. I mean, what would I say? It’s a very strange conversation to start.”
“Tell them you have information that’s related to the murder at the Endicott Hotel.”
“I don’t have information related to the murder at the Endicott Hotel. I didn’t even know that happened until you told me.”
“Tell them you have information that might be related to the murder.”
“Well,” said Swan. “Maybe.”
Swan, I could tell, was reconsidering the story that he had told me, which was so dopey that it couldn’t possibly be true in its entirety. Which bits of it were lies I wasn’t entirely sure, but I was willing to bet my teeth there was some solid fibbing in there somewhere. I preyed upon this very detail, in fact.
“They’re going to call you very soon, probably. So you’ll want to figure out what you’re going to tell them. If you have to make it up on the fly, they’re going to be on to you, and you’re going to end up stuck with the unadulterated truth.”
“I told you the truth,” said Swan, but his heart wasn’t in it. And he left out the word “unadulterated,” besides. “But fine,” he said. “I’ll call them.”
I had not observed that Mike3000 was watching me have this conversation until it was over. He certainly wasn’t hiding; he was built like a truck and had neither the body nor temperament for sneaking about. I just wasn’t looking at him.
Daniel was looking at him, and was even standing between the two of us, which I suppose might count for body guarding in some circles. Circles in which people are easily assassinated, probably.
“Mike3000,” I greeted him, regretting the 3000 only after I said it, because it managed to both seem formal and really dumb at the same time.
“Miss Moss-Granger,” said Mike. He sounded a little pricklier than the last time I’d spoken to him, and this wasn’t just because he wasn’t calling me Dame. “I have a question for you.”
“I am filled with answers,” which, friends, was clearly bullshit.
“Why were you looking for Karou Minami earlier?”
As this tale is filled with unforced errors, I think it wise to bring extra emphasis to the rare situation when I get things right. Case in point: I could have lied here, but I didn’t. I kept my cards close to my chest and answered with a question.
“Why do you ask?”
“Well,” said Mike. “You seemed to think that Karou was alive when I spoke to you earlier, but from what I’ve heard, you two were the people who discovered his body.”
Chul-Moo, who was watching this conversation, made a face as though he were a reality-show contestant about to witness a catfight. As though I were about to throw a drink at Mike, who in turn would tear off my wig. (Please note: I was not wearing a wig. This is a wig of proverb.) I believe Chul-Moo even mouthed the words oh shit.
But I had no intentions of getting in a catfight with Mike, or anyone. But especially Mike, who would have been—if we are to continue the cat metaphor—a much larger cat than me. Like a jaguar or a puma. So I deflected.
“I was trying to figure out who it was that had been killed, actually.”
“Why not just say that?” said Mike. “I mean, it’s very weird to pretend that a murdered man is alive. It’s more than weird—it’s suspicious.”
I was annoyed. For once, I was completely on the up-and-up, and Mike3000 seemed to be implying that I was some sort of backstreet skulker. “Well, I wasn’t walking around with him like it was Weekend at Bernie’s, Mike. And I figured it was the business of the police to mention murders.”
“I don’t find that explanation very believable,” said Mike.
“I think you’re ‘othering’ me, Mike. This is exactly the sort of thing your therapist was talking about.”
“Leave Gwendolyn out of this!” said Mike.
It struck me that Mike3000 was very upset. Like, I think he might have been crying earlier, which made me wonder if he didn’t know Karou better than he had initially let on.
“You seem a little broken up,” I told him.
“That’s a normal person’s reaction to finding out your friend was killed,” said Mike.
I was caught between the precipice of wanting to investigate and not wanting to seem like a dick. Were they friends or not? Why had Mike said that they weren’t earlier?
I decided to ask, but I went for it in the gentlest tone that I could manage. Which just came out as: “So were you guys friends, or what?”
“Karou was my bro,” said Mike. “I’d known him for years.”
“You said he was weird and he was obsessed with socks.”
“He was weird and obsessed with socks. These things are both true.”
“You also said that you didn’t know him well,” I told him.
It was, traditionally, at this point that my boyfriend, Nathan, would add that I had an “interrogative manner.” I honestly looked for him to say the line, but he wasn’t around. Daniel didn’t say it either, and Chul-Mo
o just yawned at me, apparently disappointed that we hadn’t descended into wig-ripping chaos.
But it was now Mike3000 that was on the defensive, and he looked surprised that I had called him out. In fighting games, this is called a reversal.
“I thought you were maybe meeting him.” said Mike. “Like, sort of a groupie.”
“What difference would that make?” I asked.
“Well, then you would ask personal questions about him. Like: Is he a nice guy? That sort of thing.”
“He wasn’t a nice guy?”
“He was a nice guy, but maybe in the way that Tony Stark is a nice guy.”
“He was nice but megalomaniacal and an alcoholic?”
“He’s nice, but under a crusty shell of not being nice. And he’s sort of a cad. Honestly, I assumed that he had ditched you. Karou’s always hooking up with girls at these sorts of things—and he’s been known to, you know, if a girl doesn’t look enough like her picture, sometimes bail.”
“You’re saying that you think I’m not attractive enough to meet up with Karou?”
I was really just toying with Mike at this point, because what did I care? I had a boyfriend and a half at this point, and Karou was missing large parts of his skull. Chul-Moo was interested in this turn, however, and leaned forward. Honestly, some reality show ought to use him for reaction shots.
“I misread your relationship to him,” said Mike. “And for that I apologize. But if you have questions about Karou, you should ask Chul-Moo, there. He’s his partner.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Yes,” said Chul-Moo. “I’m out of the tournament now. That’s why I let Swan take my shoes.”
Mike3000, weird and sweaty, seemed obviously torn up over the death of his friend. But Chul-Moo on the other hand was rather cold and distant about the affair. Not serial-killer cold, but arch, as if this had been a curious but interesting development in his day. I know there’s no correct reaction to death—people are sometimes suddenly inclined to fits of laughter, after all. But damned if Chul-Moo didn’t seem a little distant about it all. Part of it was that he was just watching me and Mike, like we were actors in his drama.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” I asked him.
“I’m sorry,” said Chul-Moo. “I should go. I have a pressing appointment.”
He said this in such a dignified and authoritative voice that it was easy to forget that he wasn’t wearing shoes.
“You don’t have an appointment,” I said. “And I’ve got some questions for you too.”
Chul-Moo pouted at me—a gesture he managed well, despite committing very little of his face to the activity. “Who are you,” mused Chul-Moo, “to be asking us all questions in the first place? I’m very sorry you ran across Karou’s body, but I don’t see how that gives you the right to be entering into everyone else’s business.”
“That sounds like something a dodgy person would say,” I told him. “A person with something to hide.” This was the sort of technique I’d developed playing Werewolf, and it rarely worked there either. But Chul-Moo, for whatever reason, seemed to accept this.
“Fine,” he said. “I can answer your questions. But later,” he said, glancing at Mike3000. “And privately. My room is across the hall from Swan’s. Which I guess you know where.”
We bid adieu to Chul-Moo, and Mike as well, because Daniel had to drag me along to another Dark Alleys match. No time for murder when there’s an extremely important fighting tournament to tend to. Priorities is what I am saying.
The tournament was going very quickly now, it seemed, with so many players missing. A bludgeoning will really wreak havoc on your scheduling, I guess.
Speaking of quick tournaments, we won, again, handily, as our opponents failed to show up. There’s a line in WarGames that goes: “Sometimes the only winning move is not to play,” and I thought of it now, as it was also apparently our strategy for advancing in the tournament.
The redhead running the desk was increasingly apoplectic at the state of affairs because the crowd just kept getting thinner. Arguably there was too much of a police presence for people to have fun, but by this I mean any police presence at all. I had noticed that there were a number of gents who smelled pleasantly of marijuana, and the aftermath of a murder investigation was probably not their scene.
“I can’t believe that so many good players have left,” said the redhead, “and yet you two are still here.”
“It’s a good thing we beat those kindergartners,” said Daniel, which made the redhead’s face contort. Usually snooty people like this are the sort of folk I tend to beat up on, but I actually felt sort of bad for the guy.
“Why not just reschedule this whole thing?” I asked.
“We can’t,” said the guy—I never learned his name. I’m sorry—“do you know how expensive it is to rent a steamboat?”
Feel free to read over that sentence a few times before we go on to see if it makes any more sense to you. It certainly didn’t make sense to me. I tried thinking of something that rhymed with “steamboat” that would have been more logical. “Dream coat”? “Scream throat”? “Themed float”? I had nothing.
The redhead could see that I was confused and explained.
“The finals of the tournament are on the Major Redding.”
Daniel and I both looked at him blankly, and for once I was glad Daniel was there, because looking uninformed always goes down better with an accomplice. This is why Fox News usually has more than one caster.
“Right,” we said.
“Why are the finals on a steamboat?” asked Daniel, and I was again glad to have him around to voice the question. You know, maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if someone went around saying “Voldemort” all the time either. It’s kind of a pretty name, if you can divorce it from its connotations.
“Take a flyer,” said the redhead in a tone that made it interchangeable with “go to hell.”
I picked up a flyer, but I didn’t look at it. I wasn’t overly concerned about the finals, because we still had two more matches, and it seemed statistically unlikely that absolutely everyone we faced would disappear ahead of time. Besides which, I got a phone call.
“Dahlia Moss?”
I had expected that the phone call might have been from Charice, or possibly Nathan, who was due for a call. But it was neither of these possibilities. It was Chul-Moo, of all people.
“Can you come up here?” he asked.
“Chul-Moo. Up where?”
“To my room. Across from Swan’s. We went over that.”
“How did you even get my number?”
But I already knew the answer. Swan had shared it with him. Thick as thieves, those two were.
“You’re ready to talk about Karou?” I said. Although, now that he was volunteering, I wasn’t exactly sure what questions I wanted to ask him.
“I suppose,” said Chul-Moo. “But mostly I’m anxious about Swan. He’s not back yet. He should be back by now.”
“You’ll see your shoes again someday.”
“Please,” said Chul-Moo. “Just come up.”
I had commented earlier that there was a marked scent of marijuana wafting about the tournament, and I found the source of it now.
“Hey,” said Chul-Moo, who seemed different from when I spoke to him earlier. For one, he was clearly high. “Come on in,” he said. “Can I get you anything?”
Anything in this case would appear to be a hit off his bong, or at least this was what I assumed. It was a tiny hotel room that mirrored Swan’s completely and it wasn’t as if he had a minibar at his disposal.
“I’m fine,” I said, stepping in again. These rooms were starting to become comfortable to me, even with marijuana smoke, or hell, perhaps because of it. “Why did you want to see me?”
“Swan told me that you were a private detective,” said Chul-Moo.
This was only mostly true, as I was simply taking classes in that direction, but I decided to just say yes
I was.
“I think I might need a private detective,” said Chul-Moo.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I’m a little worried that the attack on Karou was meant for me.”
Chul-Moo said this in an even tone, as if this were just the sort of thing people often and casually said, but he looked a little wild-eyed. I gave a look to Daniel, who looked dutifully opaque, as a good bodyguard should.
I do not, as a rule, usually partake of pot, mostly because it makes me very paranoid, and I’ve got plenty of paranoia without drugs in the first place. It was perhaps through that lens that I regarded Chul-Moo now, because he did not seem overly broken up in the lobby when he wasn’t high.
“Why would you think that?” I asked him.
“He was my teammate,” said Chul-Moo. “We were entering the tournament together.”
“Okay,” I said. “But that wouldn’t explain why the attack was meant for you.”
“Well,” said Chul-Moo, “Karou and I were the favorites to win, and so I think someone decided to weed the field.”
I was pretty sure this was all paranoia, because there were some logical problems with Chul-Moo’s theory. First, even if we assume everything he said was true, why kill someone before the tournament even starts? At least wait a couple of rounds—your opponent might get eliminated, and then you’d be saved the trouble of committing a murder. Right? If you’re going to kill a guy, you ought to be efficient about it. But I played along with the idea.
“How much is the prize money for this thing, again?”
“Twenty thousand—ten grand per person,” said Chul-Moo.
Ten thousand dollars was not, in my mind, a lot of money to kill for. You couldn’t buy a used Kia for this kind of money, and was it worth killing for a used Kia? A Honda possibly, but a Kia? Probably not.
The Astonishing Mistakes of Dahlia Moss Page 9