Dirty Secret

by Rhys Ford

  “Now? Sure.”

  “David really wants to talk to you.” I could imagine him giving one of his helpless people-are-crazy shrugs. “I think he needs to be able to… control something? Right now, everything is bad, so he needs to do something. Maybe he wants to tell you to stop looking for Dae-Hoon.”

  “Can’t do that,” I replied. “Scarlet and Shin-Cho hired me.”

  “I don’t know, then,” Jae admitted. “All I know is he’s pacing back and forth. Nuna’s upset because Shin-Cho went out and got himself shot, and hyung’s grumbling because his sister’s… well, it’s hard being around them.”

  “And you’re outside smoking,” I added.

  “Yes, it was either that or drink coffee,” he grumbled. “They have shitty coffee. And the tea is black or bad herbal.”

  “Do you want me to stop at Starbucks?”

  “Maybe stop at a liquor store instead.” He took another drag, one hard enough for me to hear over the phone. “I might be ready to try being Irish again.”

  IT WENT without saying I hated hospitals. That being said anyway, I needed a few moments before I went past those sliding glass doors. It was times like these when I wish I smoked. If I’d been smart, I’d have taken Jae’s advice and stopped for whiskey.

  Still, it surprised me to find Scarlet lurking at the smokers’ corner, wearing a beleaguered expression and a pair of six-inch black stilettos most women would think twice about wearing. Even in the bright light of day and dressed in a man’s shirt and black capris, Scarlet looked like a torch singer. Her long black hair was up, with a few tendrils down around her face, and her blood-red lipstick left a promise on the cigarette filter, a promise a lot of men passing by were more than willing to take her up on.

  “They’d be surprised at what they found, no?” she growled under her breath when I drew near. Taking one last drag on her cigarette, she snuffed it out in a sand-filled canister. “Do you think any of them would even look twice if they knew what was between my legs?”

  The look on her face was ugly, a soured curl she wore to hold back the tears turning her eyes red. I didn’t have a handkerchief to gallantly whip out to offer her, so I did the next best thing. I wrapped my arms around her and held her tight to my chest.

  “Why?” She gripped my shirt, probably more to stop herself from hitting me than for support. I didn’t have an answer for her. Mostly because I didn’t really know what she was asking. “They hate me. They don’t even know me, and they hate me.”

  “Seong’s sister?” I guessed, and she nodded, sniffing into a piece of tissue she’d hidden someplace on her. I couldn’t imagine where. Her capris looked like they were poured onto her tight body, and left to dry. Probably the shirt. “Fuck her. Baby, you’re so much of a woman, you turn me off when I hold you.”

  Her laughter was good to hear, especially when it washed away the tears in her eyes. I got a fierce hug and a slap on the ass as a thank you. All in all, it was a good trade off.

  “You are a good boy,” she said, hooking her arm around my waist. “Your Jae is lucky to have you.”

  “Yeah, let’s see if he says that when he finds out I didn’t bring any whiskey with me.” I used her for support to walk through the doors. My stomach clenched around itself, and my guts ached, threatening to disgorge my coffee on the lobby’s marble entrance.

  “He’ll forgive you,” Scarlet promised. “You make him happy. I forget sometimes. That’s all a man really needs.”

  The happy man in question was waiting for me in a room crowded by Koreans. There was a clear divide among those gathered. One side of the room bristled mostly with the ubiquitous black-suited security and Scarlet’s lover, Seong. Kwon was there, lurking near a brittle-faced older woman whose expression soured when she spotted Scarlet coming in with me. A man I could only assume was Shin-Cho’s stepfather stepped up behind the woman and placed his hand on her shoulder.

  If Seong had a hand in Dae-Hoon’s disappearance, I was willing to forgive him, because he stood up from where he was sitting and held a hand out to Scarlet. She took it, and he pulled her into a passionate hug.

  Jae stepped out from the cloud of black suits, his eyes narrowed with a slight anger. He was too controlled and distant to be hugged, not like his fiery nuna, but the desire was there. Our fingers brushed as he handed me a cup of the swill he’d disparaged earlier, and I let my touch linger on his skin. I didn’t exactly grin when his cheeks went slightly pink.

  Not exactly a grin. But close.

  “Shin-Cho’s out of surgery,” Jae murmured. “He’s going to be okay. The doctors are waiting for him to be settled before they let anyone visit him.”

  “By the looks of some of these people,” I whispered into his ear. “I hope that’s a very long time.”

  I spotted David sitting to the side, away from the fray, but still its poisonous tendrils crept over and consumed around him. He looked rough. That was the only word I could use. From the looks of things, he’d not slept since the rehearsal dinner, and knowing how he felt, I imagined he’d kill for a moment of peace.

  David looked up when I approached, the wariness in his face fading away when he saw it was me. The poised, happy young man I saw at the wedding was gone, replaced by a grief-stricken man worrying if he was going to lose his brother as well. He glanced at the slightly crumpled paper cup he held in his hand. I wasn’t surprised to see it was half-full.

  “You’re the man my brother hired, yes? Cole McGinnis?” David stood up and held his hand out to me. I shook it and nodded. “Thank you for coming. Kim Jae-Min said you would. You’re a good friend.”

  “Yeah, I try to be. Hey, there’s a coffee shop across the street,” I said. “Since Shin-Cho’s not going to be up for company for a bit, we can head over and get something decent to drink.”

  “I’d like that.” He sighed and threw the cup away. “And while we’re there, you can tell me why my brother is digging up dead men, and why Helena had to die for it.”

  Chapter Eleven

  DOT’S COFFEE SHOP was a no-nonsense kind of place. The décor ran to white walls and worn Formica countertops, the gold-flecked kind, with a dented, thick stainless steel ring around it. The booths and spinning counter stools were red vinyl, cracked in places, and the larger of the rips were patched with duct tape.

  Black-and-white tiles covered the floor, and a faded sign taped to the swinging glass front door announced an egg, bacon, and toast breakfast could be had 24/7 for just under four bucks. Its clientele ran to the tired and worn hospital staff running across the street in stained scrubs looking for something quick to eat while the booths were sporadically filled with sad-faced families or couples, their long vigils staining their face with fatigue.

  David fit right in.

  He ordered a large tomato juice with no ice and checked the level of the Tabasco sauce on the table. I went with the coffee and some sourdough toast. The waitress was an older woman with clearly no expectations of a large tip. From the looks of things, people who sat down at Dot’s were doing so only to have somewhere else to wait. We weren’t much different.

  “Thank you again for coming. It’s been… crazy,” David said when his juice arrived in front of him. My coffee was quick on its heels, and we went through the motions of doctoring our drinks to our liking. I used cream and sugar. He loaded up on salt, pepper sauce, and a squirt of the lemon slice that came with the juice.

  “I’m sorry about Helena. I wish there were more I could do for you there,” I apologized. He shook his head, not wanting to touch on the subject. “I’m not sure what I can tell you. I was hired by your brother. Anything I’ve found out is confidential.”

  “I probably know more than you think. Shin-Cho told me he’d hired you, and you found out… things about our father. Very unpleasant things. I’m talking about the blackmail. Not the gay part. I’ve known about the last one for a long time, even though the family tried to hide it from me.”

  “Couldn’t have been easy.” I
t sounded to me like David was much more attuned to the family secrets than his brother. “From what Shin-Cho told me, he’d only recently found out.”

  “Let me tell you about my brother, Mr. McGinnis.” He stirred his juice, more interested in swirling the salt crystals down into its depths than drinking it. “Shin-Cho might be my hyung, but he’s always been… what the family calls fragile. They’ve taken greater care about talking in front of him. He does things without thinking them through. I’ve spent most of my life cleaning up after him.”

  David might have been his father’s spitting image, but the cool, collected exterior he was showing me was pure Seong. It wasn’t hard to see the thread of ruthlessness the family seemed to breed through their men. David finally took a sip of his juice, and set it down carefully before meeting my eyes.

  “I already knew about the money. My stepfather told me before the… party,” David announced. “Hyung talked to me about it last night. That’s when I told him I already knew about it, but how my father got it… that wasn’t something I knew.”

  “So you knew, and you didn’t tell your brother? Kind of a big secret to be keeping from a guy who theoretically is entitled to half of what your father left behind.”

  “The only thing my father left behind was his two sons,” he said firmly. “When I found out how he got the money, I knew it wasn’t ours. It belongs to the men he preyed on. My father wasn’t the victim here, not where the money is concerned.”

  “I’ll give you that,” I conceded. “But his disappearance does make him a victim if one of those men killed him.”

  “It would be best if my father stayed disappeared.” The fatigue and anguish of the past two days were hitting him, and David fought to keep his words from running together. I pushed my plate of toast toward him, and he picked up a piece slathered with butter, biting into it with disinterest.

  “Because he was gay?” I asked softly.

  The look David gave me was nearly comical. It was a perfect blend of disgust and astonishment, before resolving to a scoffing dismissal. “No, for me, it’s because he used those men. For the family, yes, because he was gay. For me, I don’t know if I can forgive what he did to those other men. I just don’t know.”

  Waving the toast point, he continued, “My brother has always idolized my father. They were close. Too close for the family to like. There are some people who worry that my father… that our uncle… influenced my brother to be the way he is. Some whisper behind our backs that my father touched Shin-Cho when he was younger, and that’s why my brother has a hard time finding his way in life.”

  “Is that what you think?” I asked cautiously. Hearing David repeat the accusations that his father molested his older brother didn’t jibe with the image of Dae-Hoon Shin-Cho gave us. Still, stranger things have happened than a son worshipping the man who betrayed his trust.

  “No,” David practically spat. “My brother is who he is because he’s Shin-Cho. My father, my uncle, or even hyung’s lover has nothing to do with Shin-Cho loving men. But I can’t protect him from the rest of the family. I made the family angry by asking him to be my best man, but he’s my brother. Who else would I ask? He’s my brother.”

  “He wanted to find out what happened to your father.” My coffee was refilled by the same waitress, a ninja with a glass pot moving about the booths on crepe-soled shoes. “It doesn’t bother you that Dae-Hoon walked away from his life?”

  “Bother me?” David appeared to be thinking on it, then shrugged. “No, not now. Maybe when I was younger. Now, no. It was a long time ago. My uncles, the Seongs, raised me. I know it bothers Shin-Cho. He misses our father, but he’s chasing a ghost. He’s spent his life chasing ghosts. It’s why I didn’t tell him about the money as soon as I found out. I’d already angered the family. For once in his life, I needed him with me. I was getting married.”

  “How did your stepfather find out about the money?” I added more sugar to my coffee. “Did the bank contact him?”

  “Han Suk-Kyu said the bank here contacted my mother a month ago, but since the money is my father’s, it’s really his sons’. Mine and Shin-Cho’s. They were doing an audit of some kind and needed to update the account information. I don’t have all the details. I found out about it before we… before the rehearsal.”

  I gave David some time to compose himself. He looked away and took a deep breath, blinking rapidly until his eyes cleared. Shifting in his seat, he began to play with one of the forks on the table.

  “It’s a lot of money.” The vinyl on the booth seats squeaked as I leaned back. Even at minimal interest, after so many years, Dae-Hoon’s account could be in the millions. “Why’d he wait so long to tell you?”

  “Shin-Cho… he’d just left the military. Things were difficult. Han Suk-Kyu thought it would be a nice surprise, like a wedding present from my father, and something for Shin-Cho to use to get on his feet. He wasn’t very happy last night when I told him I wanted to give the money back.”

  “How is the money yours?” I asked. “Your parents were still married when he disappeared.”

  “It’s complicated,” David said. “My mother remarried. In Korea, she doesn’t have any claim to my father’s estate any more. That includes anything he might have overseas.”

  “Did you talk to your brother about this? About giving the money back?”

  “Yes. He told me about what our father did. I spoke to Suk-Kyu-ah after that.” He sighed heavily. “My brother isn’t… he doesn’t make good decisions about his life. Look at last night. With everything going on, he left Uncle’s house and went looking for… sex. Why? And why did Scarlet lend hyung his car to go out there?”

  “Her,” I corrected.

  “What?” David cocked his head in confusion.

  “Scarlet. Her,” I repeated. “She prefers to be called her. We call her nuna.”

  We stared at each other for a long second. I hoped I’d improved my unreadable expression, but I wasn’t going to bet on it. My own brother said I was the worst poker player in the world. More specifically, he said a kid hyped up on cotton candy had more control than I did.

  David made a small sound and nodded thoughtfully. “Sorry, I think of her as a man. I’m not… used to all of this.”

  “No worries,” I said, shrugging it off. “Takes a while. She was your dad’s best friend. What he did came as a shock to her too, and I think she’s sorry she didn’t get to see you guys grow up.”

  “It sounds like a lot of people have regrets from that time,” he admitted. “I can’t take that money. It’s got my father’s blood on it. And I have to wonder if it has Helena’s blood on it too. None of it made sense to me. Why would someone kill her? Then Shin-Cho told me about how my father got the money. Maybe someone he stole from was trying to get back at him through us.”

  “You think someone shot her to get back at your family for this?” I contemplated the possibility. “Unless they weren’t aiming for her. She wasn’t the only one hit.”

  The timeline of events lined up a little bit. Someone in Dae-Hoon’s pictures could have known Han Suk-Kyu was going to tell his stepsons about the money, but if revenge was a dish best served cold, shooting Helena would be like a frostbitten TV dinner from the back of the fridge. It was a very roundabout way of getting back at someone, especially if that someone was Dae-Hoon, and not Kwon.

  He could have fried me on the spot with the anger that flared up in his eyes.

  “I know it’s probably not something you want to hear.” I leaned closer. “I’d like to agree with you that it’s connected to the money, because it would make some sense of things. Hell, it could still be connected, but I have to toss it out there that she might not have been who they were aiming for. They could have been trying for you, or even Shin-Cho, and just missed. Hell, the shooting in the alleyway could be connected. It might not have anything to do with two gay guys making out behind a bar.”

  David looked away, turning the thought over in his head. His
features were still, and his eyes grew distant. Finally, he licked at his lips and calmly nodded. “That makes sense. Especially if it was someone who lives here. Not everyone goes back and forth to Seoul like Uncle does. They can get to us now. Not like before.”

  “I’d suggest you take precautions,” I said. “Even if we don’t know for sure, it’ll be a smart thing to do. Your uncle’s got guys he uses. I can talk to him about getting some protection if you want.”

  “No, I’ll be fine.” David smiled. “It’s funny. The family distances itself from Uncle because of… Scarlet, but he’s the first one who offered to help after… Helena. And now, here with Shin-Cho, he’s the one I can count on. No matter what happens between him and the others, I’m still his family. There’s nothing more important to him than that.”

  “Yeah, I get that.” I did understand what he meant. Maybe not to the depth that he and Jae meant it, but if I hadn’t had Mike, my life would have been beyond shitty after my father kicked me out, and it would have been pure hell after Rick died.

  His cell phone sang out a little tune, and David grimaced. Checking the message, he sighed heavily, and gulped down the rest of his tomato juice like it was a shot of moonshine.

  “Shin-Cho’s been moved. I want to head back over in case he wakes up.” Putting down the glass, he dug out his wallet and put a twenty down on the table. “If Shin-Cho agrees, I’d like to know what you find out. Especially if… all of this is because of my father.”

  “I can’t make any promises.” I stood up to follow him back over. “It’s up to Shin-Cho.”

  “That’s fine,” he said softly, and gave me a slow, assessing look. “I can’t promise you what I’ll do if you find out who did this. So we’ll be even.”

  I DIDN’T stay at the hospital much longer after that. After checking in with Jae, I’d wanted to see about talking to Seong about Dae-Hoon, but Scarlet was against it.