by Rhys Ford
“Maybe Seong felt sorry for him.” Bobby peered over my shoulder and whistled at the amounts. “That’s a lot of money for an unemployed guy.”
“Damn, the little shit was blackmailing people. I can’t find the November statement, but there was enough money in his account to set him up for a while. We’ll have to find out where it went. The sons could have gotten it after he disappeared.” I huffed and sat back. “I really wanted him to be a good guy. How the hell am I supposed to go back to Shin-Cho and tell him that his dad was shaking people down?”
“Gotta give it up to him for having the balls.” Bobby drained his Coke and snagged the last piece of bulgolgi off the plate. “What’s in the notebooks? His blackmail notes?”
“No,” Jae said. “I don’t know. It looks like he was writing a book… about being gay in Korea, but he uses names… real names. Maybe he was going to change them later?”
“Pretty dangerous thing to do: take money to keep quiet then spill it all in a book.” I dug through the bank statements until I found the one for November. “When Dae-Hoon disappeared, he had several hundred thousand in the bank. What happened to it?”
“Easy enough to find out. Chase it down from the bank,” Bobby replied. “We’ll need to make a list of who donated to Dae-Hoon’s little literary escapade. Those are the people we need to talk to.”
“We will,” I agreed. “Right after we talk to Scarlet. I want to find out if she knew about Dae-Hoon’s extracurricular activities. She might not want us digging anymore.”
“Like that’s going to stop you.” Jae snorted, and I lifted an eyebrow at him.
I shrugged off his disbelief. He was right. It probably wouldn’t. This had gone beyond Scarlet, and I felt like I owed Shin-Cho the truth… or at least some truth about what happened to his father. Dae-Hoon could have ruined the lives of a lot of powerful men. For all I knew, someone out there knew he’d written everything down, and his sons might be the ones to pay for it, now that we’d cracked open the storage unit like it was the Ark of the Covenant.
“Can’t hurt to ask,” I said. “And you’re right, babe. It’s not going to stop me. Someone out there’s got answers. We just need to find out who that is.”
Chapter Eight
“HOW could he do this? We… were friends. Dae-Hoon….”
One of the constants of being a private investigator is being asked by a husband or wife to prove their spouse is cheating. In all the cases I’ve taken, I’ve never gone back to a client to say their spouse is faithful. I’ve had people deny the pictures I’ve taken are of their better halves. I’ve had people make excuses for their cheating lovers; hoping the person their husband is deep-throating is some long-lost, beloved cousin. I’ve also had people who silently take the photos and cry, their worst fears confirmed.
What it all comes down to is, people seek me out to prove something they already know. It’s either a gut feeling, or red lipstick on a gay man’s underwear. Either way, the brokenhearted spouse has always known. At least on some level.
I didn’t know what to say to Scarlet. We’d put the photos and notebooks in front of her and broken her heart, fracturing the memories she had of a young Korean man she’d once loved as a dear friend. It sucked, and I had nothing to say to comfort her.
I couldn’t even offer her tea.
I sucked at making tea.
“Nuna.” Jae slid an arm around Scarlet’s shoulders. “There’s no way you could have known.”
“But these?” She waved several photos under Jae’s nose. “He… took these! Of me! And hyung!”
“People make mistakes, nuna,” Jae said.
She’d hit anger, betrayal’s stage two, faster than I’d expected. Like most things, Scarlet only did pissed off in the most attractive way possible. The tilt of her head and set of her mouth only showed off her elegant features and long neck. The flush of pink on her cheeks rose to a dark red, and her dark eyes flashed with fury.
Then any passing nod to beauty and grace went up in flames, as she spat out a string of Filipino so hot and complex I didn’t need to speak the language to feel the hairs on my balls curling up in fear.
She was up on her feet, pacing the room to work off her anger. Still on the couch, Jae watched with some bemusement. I was glad he found it slightly funny. I was thinking of hiding the knife set in the kitchen, and possibly my hedge clippers, if I could find them.
I took refuge in my beer, sliding over to sit next to Jae. It was a calculated move on my part. She loved Jae-Min. The chances of something from my bookcase flying at his head were slim to none.
“Nuna, I have to ask you a few things.” I caught Scarlet up short on one of her circuits. She turned, her anger only slightly abated. A lick of her tongue against her lips warned me of another spitting curse, but she held her tongue, cocking her head to stare at me with an annoyed look. “Please, sit down. Let’s see if we can work some of this out.”
She sat down on the couch next to the one Jae and I clung to. Scarlet was about to reach for her tea, then decided against it, snagging Jae’s beer instead and taking a big gulp from the bottle. Jae and I silently exchanged looks. Then I handed him my beer since it didn’t look like Scarlet was giving his back.
“Did Shin-Cho tell you about his relationship with Kwon?” I had to get that out of the way. I’d promised Shin-Cho I’d out his relationship if he didn’t tell Scarlet, and I couldn’t really go forward without her knowing. Especially since Kwon and his slimy, leering ways moved him up to the top of my knowing-what-happened-to-Dae-Hoon list.
Scarlet bit at her knuckles, lightly smearing her lipstick over her fingers. Blinking away tears, she nodded once. “Yes,” she said, after she dropped her hand to her lap. “He told me yesterday. I wanted to talk to Sang-Min… to yell at him for everything he’s done, but….” She shrugged helplessly. “After what happened last night, it didn’t seem as important.”
“Does hyung know about Kwon?” Jae asked, then sighed with relief when Scarlet shook her head. “Good. I think he’d kill Sang-Min if he did. I can’t see hyung letting him get away with seducing his nephew.”
“I’m going to be honest with you, nuna. It looks like Dae-Hoon was being paid to keep quiet about other gay men. We’re still trying to figure out who he was extorting, but the list looks pretty extensive.” I tapped the pile of notebooks. “Jae’s coming up with a list of names. I’m hoping I can match them to Dae-Hoon’s bank statements.”
“I should tell hyung about Sang-Min and let him take care of it,” Scarlet huffed. “We have so many secrets, Cole-ah. It’s too heavy to carry. I don’t tell hyung about Shin-Cho, and maybe he never told me about giving Dae-Hoon money to keep these… photos secret. How long do we do this? How much more can we carry?”
“Nuna, we don’t know anything yet,” Jae said. Neko padded in, jumping up onto the couch to see if there was anything she could filch from the coffee table. “Not about Dae-Hoon, anyway. Kwon Sang-Min—we know enough about him to make Shin-Cho stay away from him.”
“To be honest, I’d hoped Dae-Hoon was still alive,” I explained. “It made sense that he walked away from everything to spare his sons from… all of the crap that he’d have to take for being gay. Now, I don’t know. Could someone have killed him over this? And I don’t just mean Seong or Kwon. I mean anyone you might think could have done it.”
“Hyung would never kill anyone,” Scarlet whispered. “I would swear my life on it. Someone else? I don’t know.”
“Grace killed Hyun-Shik because he was gay,” Jae murmured. Bringing up his cousin’s murder wasn’t helping matters. If anything, it fed into Scarlet’s fear and anger. “I’d think what Dae-Hoon was doing would make someone want to kill him. Look at what happened to Shin-Cho. Dae-Hoon could have destroyed a lot of families if this had gotten out.”
“We’re going to have a list of suspects a mile long.” The bank statements would take us some time to match up with the journals, but Jae was willing to dig through the pape
rs to help. “Nuna, can you think of anyone that Dae-Hoon was afraid of?”
“If he is still alive, then that would be me,” Scarlet growled. Jae murmured a small reproachful sound, and she sighed. “It could be anyone, Cole-ah. Most of the men here… in Los Angeles… chose to be here, but others are… in exile from their families… from their chaebol because they are gay or odd. Hyung… he wants to be here. There are fewer eyes on him in America, but at the same time, he will never rise very high in the family because of it.”
“Then… why stay here? If he wants to….” I still wasn’t quite sure how a chaebol functioned. It sounded like a bunch of families where the gene pool was shallow, and no one was allowed to swim in it. “His family owns a bunch of businesses, right?”
“Yes, and other interests,” Scarlet replied. “If he were in Seoul, he would be expected to work for the family’s companies, either as a department head, or even a chairman of one of the smaller businesses. Instead, he is here. The Los Angeles business is his, although it is connected to his family’s. His influence is limited in Seoul, but here, with other Koreans, it is strong.”
“And that’s a bad thing?” I was still confused.
“Compared to what his family owns, his business here is… small,” Jae explained. “He has sons. Hyung’s staying here so his sons can be a part of the chaebol’s influence, not just his business. It’s better for them there. They have more opportunities.”
“By staying here, away from Seoul, he protects his sons from scandal… any scandal,” Scarlet said softly. “He protects his sons from me.”
“You’re someone he should be proud of.” I reached over and touched Scarlet’s hand. It was hard not to be angry, at least a little bit. I let it fill me for a moment before I took a deep breath. “I thought everyone knew about you… and him.”
“Everyone close to him knows, but we do not… cross certain lines,” she said. “And thank you. You’re a sweet boy, Cole-ah.”
“The party.” I exhaled. “Jae said something about the party and the wedding being a place for… wives.”
“It was… for chaebol,” Scarlet replied. “His wife is in Seoul. If she were here, she would have gone. Society will only allow so much being shoved in its face. It’s something hyung and I both know… both agree on. His sons have benefited from hyung’s older brother’s guidance. Their uncle is seen as their main influence. In that way, any scandal that falls on hyung doesn’t touch them.”
“I kind of guessed that for Dae-Hoon,” I said. “That’s why I thought he was still alive. Now, I’m not so sure.”
“We all have secrets.” Scarlet sounded tentative. “But I still can’t imagine anyone I know doing that.”
“Doesn’t mean they did it themselves. There’s lots of people a guy can call up to take care of a problem. Murder isn’t a new thing,” I reminded them. “People have been doing it probably before there was fire.”
“How about if I look through the list of men, and nuna can see if anyone jumps out at her?” Jae suggested. “Maybe that is someplace to start?”
“I have a couple of someones to start with,” I said. “For one, Kwon. He had the most to lose. Secondly, and I hate to say this, but Seong is someone we have to look at. There was no reason for him to keep paying Dae-Hoon after he quit the firm.”
“Unless hyung was doing it for his nephews.” Jae cleared his throat.
“Probably someone else to add to the list.” I began to write down a list of people to talk to. “Where is Ryeowon staying?”
“Near us. On Van Ness,” Scarlet said. “Ryeowon didn’t want to stay with us. Well, she won’t stay with hyung if I am there. And he refuses for me to be anywhere else.”
“Good for him. What about her husband? She remarried, right?” My handwriting suffered when I wrote quickly. At the rate I was going, I’d have to pay Jae to translate my own notes too. “Is the husband here?”
“Yes, he’s here,” Scarlet replied. “His name is Han Suk-kyu. He’s a department head for the Seongs’ media business. The boys went with her, but they came to visit hyung every once in a while. I don’t think they’re close to Suk-kyu. They’re closer to hyung’s older brother, Min-Wu. I don’t know about now… since what happened with Shin-Cho.”
“Did David do his military service?” Jae asked. “Or are they going to try to avoid it?”
“Service?” I tried to remember what Jae told me about the Koreans and their military. “They have to enlist before they’re what… thirty?”
“Yes, for almost two years.” Scarlet drained the rest of Jae’s beer and set the bottle down a bit too hard. The glass clinked against the storage chest I used for a coffee table. “David was in a skiing accident when he was younger. They won’t take him.” She shrugged and smiled sheepishly. “He has a rod in his ankle, I think. The alarms go off in the airport when he goes through. It’s very embarrassing for him.”
“Did hyung go?” Jae asked. His voice was soft, and there was something in his tone that I didn’t understand. Scarlet didn’t seem to have that problem, shaking her head emphatically.
“No, he didn’t. The family… got an exclusion for him.” Her hands needed something to do, and she picked up a bottle cap to play with. “Now, everyone is more likely to go. Before, for the chaebol, not so much.”
Jae gave me an I’ll explain later look, and I nodded. We had a lot of those kinds of looks, usually given to me when talking to Scarlet or his other friends. It seemed like a lot of my conversations with people Jae knew happened after they left.
“Do you want to talk to Seong hyung before Cole does, nuna?” Jae asked.
“Does he have to?” Scarlet blinked, and her eyes watered, threatening to ruin her makeup. She reached for a napkin and dabbed at her lashes. “No, no… I know he does. Yes, I’ll talk to him first. I should talk to him first. At least… so I know… what he knew… what he did.”
“Do you want me to stop?” I hated asking that, mostly because I’d hate stopping. “There are men who should… know about these books. Or maybe one who knew and didn’t want it to get out.”
A man was more than likely dead, and he’d left an array of victims behind, victims that should at least know their secrets were safe. But, in doing so, I was running the same risk as Dae-Hoon and opening myself up as a target. Someone in Dae-Hoon’s many notebooks might have decided to permanently rid himself of his financial drain. Opening up old wounds and murder tended to bring out the worst in people.
“No, I don’t want you to stop.” Scarlet dropped the bottle cap and squeezed my fingers. “Someone should pay for Dae-Hoon’s death if he is dead. I don’t think the police would look into it.”
“That’s something else we still haven’t looked into,” I said. “If the cops were there at Bi Mil that night, someone might have seen something, or know about Dae-Hoon. Bobby’s looking into that end of it.”
“What happened to all the money? The money he got from the other men?” Jae mused. “Did his sons get it?”
“I don’t know,” Scarlet admitted. “Things were complicated then. It was easier to let the family deal with him being gone. I took care of his apartment, but I paid movers to pack everything. His wife… she’d already left for Korea. I don’t know if there is anything in there his sons might want. If there is, please set it aside. It might help them now that… Helena is gone.”
“We’ll look, nuna,” Jae reassured her. “Let Cole do this for you. He’ll figure it out. I know he will.”
IT WAS late by the time we bundled Scarlet up and headed home. My stomach was dead empty except for a couple of beers sitting there, and Jae’s belly grumbled as Scarlet’s car pulled away from the curb.
“Why didn’t you tell her about the men in the parking lot?” Jae asked. “She should know someone was following you.”
“Not until Bobby comes back with some info on their license plate,” I replied. “Honestly, I don’t know what to think about the car. It could be innocent, or maybe even
some guys Kwon sent after me. Shin-Cho really fucked us over by telling Kwon.”
“Huh.” It was a neutral noise, one that said he wasn’t ready to commit one way or another. I was very used to that noise.
His hands were shoved into his jeans’ pockets. We were outside. Touching wasn’t something we did when we were outside. The thing at the Kwons’ was an anomaly, a step or five away from Jae’s normal. It didn’t mean I didn’t want to touch him. He’d told me once he wished he felt safe enough to be touched. When he leaned against me as the car turned the corner, my heart sang like we were in an old black and white film’s dance number.
It was stupid, but I grinned anyway.
The best part about my neighborhood was its mix of residential properties and small businesses. Old Laundromats were now restaurants, and some of the smaller homes were converted to shops, as in the case next door, a florist. A particularly enticing offering on my street was a tiny Italian café. It specialized in a Chicago-style pizza with enough cheese to choke a cow. The smell of tomato sauce, basil, and garlic tempted me.
“Want to get a pizza?” I knew what to say to seduce my lover. I was romantic that way. “Extra cheese and lots of mushrooms….”
“No pepperoni.” He tangoed back, flirting with the offer. “Sausage.”
I succumbed with a nod, then froze when Jae slipped his hand into mine. He took a step, but I was rooted in place, nearly jerking him back. He cocked his head, and I felt his fingers beginning to slip free, but I tightened my grip, stepping forward. “Don’t let go, Jae. Okay? Just don’t.”
“I want to try to… be in your world right now,” he murmured. “Just for a little bit. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said as casually as I could. Mike left me a message while we were with Scarlet. He needed an answer about Jae or Maddy was going to kick his ass, because she needed to know how many people were going to be at her dinner table. “Mike texted me earlier. His parents….”