Dirty Secret

by Rhys Ford

  Yes, I had a bunch of independent coffee shops right around me, including the granola-munchers across the street, who I avoided on the principle that they wore tank tops in the summer and didn’t shave their armpits. I couldn’t care less if someone didn’t shave their armpits. Hell, I fucked men. Armpit hair came with the territory. I just objected to it being anywhere near the open end of my cup of coffee.

  “There better be fucking gold in that storage locker,” Bobby complained. We’d inched forward for the last fifteen minutes, inhaling exhaust fumes and powdered sugar from the donettes Bobby brought with him. Years of sharing cars with other officers pretty much immunized Bobby against the need for a spotless interior. Anything dropped was vacuumed up or washed off the truck’s leather seat. Mike, on the other hand, had issues with a stray straw wrapper left in his car.

  It was sometimes hard for me to remember whose car I could accidentally spill in, and whose I couldn’t. So I ate off a napkin, getting me some strange looks from Bobby.

  “Want a bib, Princess?” he finally grunted. “Times like these, I miss having a siren.”

  “Why don’t you just lean out the window and scream,” I suggested. “I could even kick you in the balls so you can scream higher.”

  “Don’t get smart with me,” Bobby warned with a wide grin. “You’re not too big for me to pull over to the side of the road and spank.”

  “I’m not your type,” I reminded him. “I don’t take orders well.”

  “True,” he mused, then sobered. “How’s Jae doing? Shit, that kid’s had a rough few months.”

  I’d told Bobby about the shooting while we were in the drive-thru. The first thing he asked was if I’d gotten Jae drunk. Second thing was if I’d fucked the unhappy out of him. I reminded him that sex didn’t solve everything, and sometimes what someone needed was to be held. That’s when he accused me of having a vagina, because, for men, sex solved pretty much everything.

  “Not as rough as Helena and David.” I added Shin-Cho to that list as well. He’d have to spend a lot of time shoring his brother up. The only good thing about that was he wouldn’t be obsessing about Kwon. “Fucking hell, I don’t know what to say to Jae. He’s carrying around this guilt about people dying around him. I don’t know how to fix what he’s feeling.”

  “Well, when you figure it out, you let the rest of us know so we can say it to you,” Bobby replied softly.

  I kept quiet. The past couple of months had been rough on me too. I still wrestled with my guilt over Rick’s death and my growing affection for Jae-Min. I had about as many answers as David Park did right now.

  “You’re not sticking your head into that mess, are you?” Bobby said suddenly. “With the girl’s death, I mean.”

  “Staying as far away from it as possible. The cops have it. What can I do about it?” I debated having another mini-donut. “Look, we’re moving now.”

  “About fucking time.” Bobby shifted the truck and consulted the GPS for the fiftieth time. “A mile. We only have a fucking mile to go. Longest damn mile of my life.”

  “Spoken like a man who’s never been to Comic-Con.”

  “I’ve been to Southern Decadence. Now that’s a mile I’d like to get stuck in until the end of time,” he leered at me.

  It took us another fifteen minutes to go the final mile to the next off ramp. It might have been the longest mile Bobby ever drove, but it was the longest fifteen minutes of my life listening to him drive it.

  The storage place was only a few blocks from the freeway, and we pulled into an empty parking lot. Like most storage places in California, all that was needed to get into the lot and locker was an access code and the key to the lock the renter put on the unit’s rolling metal door. The unit was an interior locker, so Bobby and I spent a few minutes in a cinderblock warren, trying to find where Scarlet put Dae-Hoon’s life.

  “Thank God this was inside. Imagine what a bitch it would be to open this if it’d been outside.” Bobby spritzed the lock with graphite and worked the key in. Surprisingly, it released easily, and I pushed the door up, turning my head aside to avoid the dust storm falling down from its metal slats. I didn’t have a lot of faith in the dangling bare bulb turning on, but a flick of the switch surprised me, and the four by four foot unit filled with light.

  It was surprising to see how little of Dae-Hoon’s life he’d left behind. After all the clothes were given away and the furniture sold or passed along, only a few boxes of personal items and books were left. There were about ten boxes in the unit, mostly uniform in size, and all marked with the name of a moving company that went out of business almost nine years ago. The cellophane tape holding the box flaps closed had long given up the ghost, turning yellow and brittle, despite the air conditioning pumped through the units.

  “Let me go grab the duct tape I’ve got in the truck,” Bobby said. “Start pulling things out so I can put them on the dolly. Don’t lift anything heavy. That shoulder of yours is still fucked up.”

  I sneered at Bobby’s back, but started to grab a box to drag it to the flatbed trolley we’d brought with us. My shoulder ached less than the scars along my torso did. I stretched, hoping to forestall the inevitable cramping, when one of the box’s flaps fell open. I peered in and was perplexed by the stacks of notebooks I found inside. Crouching, I drew out the one on top and flipped through it.

  It was all in Korean, handwritten in blue and black ink. Every so often a sandwich baggie with an old photograph inside of it was paper-clipped carefully to the page, with a passage highlighted or heavily underlined near it. Curious, I worked one bag free and pulled out the photograph.

  “Damn.” Bobby whistled. “Hope to hell that guy on the bottom is old enough to be doing that.”

  It was hard to tell how old the guy was, especially since the young man’s face was hidden partially by shadows and his dark hair. I thought he could be Asian of some sort, but I couldn’t be certain. The photo was black and white, their expressions caught between agony and pleasure. Limbs were wrapped into angles I knew were possible, but my hips ached with the thought of it. And the man shoving his dick into the bottom’s ass definitely was Korean. Even though the photo was old, I could even name the man on top: Seong Min-Ho, Scarlet’s lover.

  The small mole by his right eye was the same, and so was the curve of his mouth. More lines were on his skin, but the steady gaze was the same, a piercing focus intended to intimidate and cow if he needed to. In the photo, that focus was slightly off. He was caught in midthrust, his hand curling around his lover’s jaw and his thumb hooked into the corner of the other man’s mouth, making it harder to recognize him.

  On one hand, I wanted it to be Scarlet, just to spare her the pain of seeing her lover having sex with another man. The other part of me wanted to pretend I’d never seen it, especially if it was Scarlet. One does not need erotic images of one’s friends burnt into one’s memory. Or at least I sure the hell didn’t.

  “Shit, there’s tons of these,” Bobby said softly. “What the fuck was he doing?”

  “Something stupid,” I replied. “From what Jae told me, Dae-Hoon was running around with a pretty high-powered crowd, at least guys from influential Korean families. Shit, this blows a hole in my theory that he’s still alive. If they’d known he was taking pictures of them fucking other guys, I can’t see him surviving to talk about it.”

  “Think someone took care of him… instead of him taking a run? Yeah, it would only have to be one really pissed off guy, and that would be the end of Dae-Hoon.” He was flipping through another notebook, whistling at the pictures he found there. “What was this? His insurance? Sex diary? Shit, I don’t even want to know what this guy is doing in this one.”

  That was saying a lot. Bobby had very few things he wouldn’t do. I was beginning to worry for Scarlet. She might have opened a can of worms there’d be no closing up. If Dae-Hoon’s disappearance was linked to the notebooks, I didn’t want Scarlet involved.

  “I’ll ge
t Jae to help us,” I mumbled, shoving the photo back into its bag. “Why the hell couldn’t he write it in English? I don’t want Jae reading this.”

  “Better than it being in Filipino, then you’d be stuck with Scarlet translating it,” Bobby teased. “Jae’s a big boy. If he can’t handle it, he’ll tell you.”

  I made a face. “Never mind. Korean’s fine. I don’t want to go to Scarlet with this. At least not until I know what this is.”

  “Tape it up, and we’ll get this stuff back to your house.” Bobby tossed me one of the two rolls he’d come back with. “Sooner we get done here, the sooner we can get back into that damned traffic.”

  The flat dolly held all ten boxes easily, and I took up the rear as Bobby pulled it behind him. He’d left the truck’s tailgate down and spread out tarp and ropes so we could secure the load. I bent down and grabbed one of the smaller boxes. Bobby nudged my arm.

  “Dude, it’s not heavy,” I protested, nearly dropping the box. “What the fuck?”

  “Don’t look….” I don’t know why people say that. Humans’ first instinct is to turn around and look. It got me slapped on the back of the head. Bobby hissed at me, “Can’t you listen to me once in a while?”

  “If I listened to you every time you told me to do something, I’d have hooked up with that het chick you thought was a guy.”

  “She looked like a twink. Can’t blame me for that,” he grumbled. “Now, I’m telling you not to look ’cause there’s a car over there… the one with the blackout windows. It’s right past the gate. Been sitting there since we came in, pulled in after us.”

  “Yeah? So they’re getting a storage unit.” I shrugged and shoved the box onto the truck bed, then glanced at the car. It was a black sedan with windows tinted so dark they nearly matched the paint.

  “It doesn’t take that long to get a unit,” Bobby said. “They also were behind us on the freeway. I spotted it then. I was wondering what cop didn’t notice the window film’s dark enough to be illegal.”

  “Why would they be following us?” I asked softly. “No one’s interested in what we’re doing. Hell, no one even knows I’m working on Dae-Hoon’s disappearance. They’re just getting a unit. Quit being paranoid.”

  “I’m not paranoid.” He hefted one of the boxes marked “books” like it was made of air. “I’m an ex-cop. So are you, if ever you remember.”

  Bobby was freakishly strong, with arm muscles the size of small children. I often cursed my genetics and questioned my masculinity around him, especially when we sparred. It made me want to drag Mike along with us, but my brother had fast fists. I’d take a pounding from him too, then afterward they’d bond over a beer.

  We loaded up the truck quickly and tied the tarp down over the boxes and dolly. Passing through the gate, I snuck a peek at the sedan bothering Bobby. The driver and passenger were familiar, both stern-faced, sunglass wearing Asian men in suits. They watched Bobby’s truck roll by, their heads nearly turning as one as we passed.

  Much to Bobby’s disgust, I did what any normal guy would do.

  I waved at them and smiled like an idiot.

  “Boy, I am disappointed in you,” he sighed. “Why do I take you anywhere? Now they know we spotted them.”

  Needless to say, the sedan didn’t follow us out of the parking lot. I sat back in the seat and helped myself to one of the last donettes, getting more sugar all over the floor mats. Motioning gallantly with my donut, I gave Bobby permission to drive on. “Home, Jeeves. We’ve got shit to dig through.”

  “You know,” Bobby said through gritted teeth, “The longer I know you, the more I understand Mike beating the shit out of you when you were kids.”

  JAE-MIN was awake and drinking coffee when I strolled in behind Bobby and his trusty, box-laden dolly. I stole a kiss from Jae as I took the mug from his hand. He tasted slightly of my mint toothpaste. The gulp of coffee I took from his mug tasted like it could use more sugar.

  “I can’t believe you waved at them.” Bobby’d grumbled nearly the entire way, and I’d kept quiet, silently gloating.

  “I waved so they wouldn’t pay attention to me taking a picture of their plate with my phone.” I waved my cell under Bobby’s nose. He mumbled something derogatory about me and snatched it from my hand. “I’m not totally stupid, you know.”

  “You act like it,” Bobby replied. “I’ll go call it in and see if someone can chase it down for us. Grab me a beer, Princess. I need one after spending the morning with you.”

  “He loves me,” I reassured Jae, who stood in the doorway between the foyer and the living room. “Really, I complete his life.”

  “Huh.” The look I got was a doubtful one, as if Jae didn’t quite buy into Bobby’s deep, abiding affection for me.

  “Are you busy?” I lifted one of the smaller boxes and brought it into the living room. “I could use your help. Dae-Hoon left a bunch of notebooks behind, but they’re all in Korean.”

  “And you want me to translate.” Jae pursed his mouth and leaned against the doorway. “I’ll need more coffee then. Is this how it’s going to be? Every case you take is going to have something Korean that you need me to translate?”

  “Just the ones with Koreans in them.” I grabbed his arm before he could head into the kitchen. “Hey, I’ve got to warn you. There’s some… stuff in these. Photos. Sex photos. I think one of the guys I saw is Scarlet’s hyung. If you don’t want to….”

  “Cole-ah, I worked at Dorthi Ki Seu. I’ve seen… people I know do things.” His shrug was nonchalant. “It won’t be the first time. Since you took my coffee, I’ll grab Bobby his beer while I’m in the kitchen.”

  He was stronger and more jaded than I ever gave him credit for. His sweet, pretty face hid some dark secrets, something I knew but kept shoving aside. Jae’d survived a hell of a lot more than I cared to admit. It was time I acknowledged that.

  I still wanted to wrap him up in a blanket and keep him safe from the world. Fuck, if I had my way, I’d join him under that blanket, and we could just stay there until the end of time.

  There were two boxes of notebooks. I pulled those out first and set them aside for Jae. The rest of it seemed to be books and personal papers. Thankfully, a lot of it seemed to be in English, so Bobby and I wouldn’t be too useless. Bobby came back first, and he frowned, seeing me alone in the living room with the dolly full of boxes.

  “Where’s Jae? Do we have to get someone else?”

  “Nah, he’s probably grabbing us something to eat. He likes to eat when working,” I said. “Well, he likes to have food around him. I haven’t noticed him eating much of it while he works. Usually, Neko ends up eating the fishy bits, and then he picks at the kim chee.”

  “That shit’s hot,” Bobby muttered as he sat down on the short couch against the wall. I’d perched on the end of the longer one, standing up to help Jae with the tray of panchan and drinks he brought with him. “Speaking of hot…. Hello, Jae.”

  “Boyfriend,” I reminded Bobby. “Mine.”

  “You going to let him talk about you like that?” Bobby teased Jae.

  “It’s the first time I’ve heard him call me his boyfriend,” Jae replied smoothly. “I’ll have to think about it.”

  Our eyes met. Mine were probably confused and a little bit apprehensive. His were unreadable. At least until he gave me a little smile; then they warmed up enough to make me want to drag him upstairs even with Bobby in the house.

  “Focus, Princess,” Bobby said, smacking me on the leg. “Happy time later. Right now, let’s get this shit done.”

  “I’m that easy to read?” I asked.

  “A blind man across the street can read you,” Jae murmured, and he kissed me as he settled down on the couch beside me. “Let me see what’s here.”

  The living room was quiet except for the sounds of us turning pages and the crunch of pickled vegetables being eaten. I’d offered Bobby a second beer, but he shook his head, telling me to bring him back a Coke. I brought b
ack two and a refill for Jae’s coffee. My lover mumbled a half thank you as he read, a frown wrinkling his eyebrows. I’d given him a small blank book to make notes in, and he wrote something down every once in a while, frowning more every time he filled a page. I peeked over his shoulder to see what he’d written, only to find it was in Korean.

  “That does not help,” I pointed out.

  “I’ll type it up in English later. Go back to what you were doing,” he grumbled at me. “Or just go away. This is hard. Most of the slang he uses is old. I’m having trouble with some of the words.”

  The books were mostly useless, although one box held letters and family photos. I put those aside for Jae. A red-rope folder full of bills caught my interest, and I thumbed through them, trying to get an understanding of what Dae-Hoon’s finances looked like.

  “Shit, even his bank statements were in Korean,” Bobby grumbled. “Yeah, I know, culturally insensitive, but damn it, this bank’s on Wilshire. Would it have killed them to use English?”

  “You’re right. You’re a dick. Some of it’s in English,” I said. “It’s pretty easy to understand he was getting a lot more in than he was spending.” The same entry appeared over several of the statements, spaced out every two weeks. “I’m guessing this is his paycheck. Jae, where does it say he worked?”

  “He worked for Seong hyung,” Jae said without looking up from his reading. “He was a liaison between the clients and the embassy. Nuna told us that.”

  “Of course he was,” I said. “Wait, didn’t Scarlet say he walked away from everything? Even his job? What? Six months before he disappeared?”

  “Yes.” Jae sounded annoyed, and he finally glanced up at me. “Why?”

  “Because these deposits into his account continue up until he disappeared.” I waved the pages at him. “Seong kept paying him… even after he quit. There’s also other deposits, bigger ones.”