by Rhys Ford
“I don’t know,” Scarlet replied softly. “I just want this all to stop.”
We’d been moved from the overly pretentious formal room to a more breathable family space. Scarlet joined us, and the cakes were replaced with a heartier offering of sandwich triangles. They were only heartier if someone were Scarlet’s size. Even in Jae’s long fingered, slender hands, they looked like play food made by a three-year-old.
I ate four of them and tried not to look like I wanted to graze over the rest like some mad cow.
Scarlet picked up another two and put them on my plate, and patted my knee consolingly. “Eat. You’re starting to lose your color.”
I took my time chewing, trying to make the tidbits last longer. Jae sacrificed two of his triangles to me, and I tried to be manly, refusing them with a shake of my head. He leaned over to kiss me and shoved them into my mouth.
“What happened to being careful about someone seeing us?” I mumbled through the crumbly cheddar.
“No one’s here,” Jae said, but he and Scarlet exchanged a look. “And right now, I’m too tired to care.”
I slid over to his side of the couch, reaching behind him to rub between his shoulders. “Hey, they’ll let us out of here soon. We’ll go home. I’ll get us some real food, and we can just chill.”
“Someone set him on fucking fire, Cole,” he ground out. “The same guy who probably shot at you set Kwon on fire. What the hell am I supposed to do with that?”
“I’m going to leave you two to talk this out.” Scarlet was a master at subtle exits. Picking up the dirty dishes, she was out of the room before either one of us could blink. She shut the door behind her, and we were alone.
“Great, now I’ve chased nuna away. Fuck,” Jae swore, and threw himself back into the couch. Grabbing a small bolster, he winged it full force into the wall, saying something in Korean that needed very little translating.
“You didn’t chase her away,” I said. “She loves you.”
The room faced the backyard, a gloomy affair of hedges, classic marble statues, and overgrown roses. There was no light on outside, and the soft illumination from the lamp on the table next to us gave us enough light to see one another. I pulled myself closer, mindful of any more flying pillows. I reached for his hand, but he wavered, refusing to let me touch him. Finally, I grabbed him, wrapping fingers around his.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said slowly. “I’m not going to let myself be set on fire, and I’m not going to let myself get shot to death.”
“Yeah, like you’ve been good at that so far?” he snapped back. “You’ve been shot more times than anyone else I know. Aish! Can’t you dodge at least one of them? How many more people need to die around us? Who’s next? Scarlet? Bobby? Mike?”
“Hey, that’s not fair,” I countered. “We didn’t cause any of this, and I sure as hell didn’t ask to get shot.”
“Cole, you can’t even avoid vomit,” Jae sighed.
“Babe, if I’d known he was going to throw up, I’d have tossed him right out of the car before we even got here. We’re going to have to ride home in that car. Did you think I wanted to smell that all the way back?”
“When is this going to stop?” He didn’t sound angry, more resigned to the nonsense around us.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Soon? Maybe? I don’t know, Jae.”
“Is it always like this around you?” He waved his hand in the air. I could have pretended not to understand him, but I knew he meant the chaos that seemed to follow me everywhere I went. “Does it have to be so crazy?”
“Yeah, pretty much. Life gets shitty sometimes.” Pressing in, I maneuvered him against the couch arm, reminding him of the hour we’d spent before David imploded our evening. He shifted a bit, uncomfortably so, and I grinned, knowing he could still feel the stretch of me on his body. Leaning forward, I ghosted a kiss over his lips. “But it’s good too, right?”
He returned my kiss with a hotter intent, sucking my lower lip into his mouth and tugging on it. Taking one last nibble, he whispered, “Sometimes.”
I carded my fingers through his soft hair and pulled his head closer until our foreheads touched. “I’ll take care of this, Jae. We’ll see this through, and it’ll be fine. It’s just… a bit crazy right now, but it can’t be this way forever.”
“What happens when the crazy stops, and all you’re left with is me?” His tongue darted across his upper lip, and I chased it with my mouth, catching the tip before it disappeared again.
“If all I’m left with is you,” I murmured. “Then I’m going to die a happy man.”
“Just die an old, happy man,” he grumbled, and bit the end of my nose. “Or I’m just going to finish you off myself with a pillow.”
“Ah, you frighten me,” I teased.
“You should be scared.” Jae smirked. “I’m going to fill your mouth with kim chee paste and duct tape it shut, then smother you with a pillow.”
“So you’ve thought about this?”
“No, that’s off the top of my head,” Jae replied airily. “Imagine what I could come up with if I had time to think about it.”
“Very frightening,” I asserted. I slid my hand down to the back of his neck, cupping him lightly. “Bring it, baby.”
We kissed.
It was sweet and slow. In the dark of a single light with the world raining down around us, it was a promise of a starry night once the clouds cleared.
Damn, I wanted a lifetime of those kisses.
“I’ll wait for this, you know,” I whispered when we came up for air. My mouth was barely on his, and our lips touched then broke apart as I spoke. “For this. For you.”
“Suppose it’s too long?” He closed his eyes and turned his head, resting his temple on my forehead. “Suppose….”
“I intend to die a happy old man, remember.” I stroked at his nape, making him sigh. “I’m not sure I’m going to be as happy waiting for you as I’m going to be actually having you, but I’m willing to find out, jagiya.”
His eyes flew open, and he stared at me in mild shock. “Who taught you that word?”
“Huh.” I pursed my lips and stood, pulling him up with me. “Guess I know a little bit more Korean than you thought.”
Chapter Twenty
LOS ANGELES in the pouring rain is a miserable place.
People forget how to drive, someone at Metro arbitrarily decides to send out only the buses that break down in the middle of the street, and more importantly, the city apparently bought its traffic lights at a garage sale, because as soon as there is the slightest hint of moisture in the air, they start blinking purple.
Goddamn light trees don’t even have a purple, but they were certainly doing their fucking best to blink it.
When I’d agreed to meet Yeu in Koreatown, there hadn’t been a whisper of an incoming storm. If I’d known, I’d have suggested we drive up to San Francisco to have dim sum at Hang Ah. It would have taken me less time to drive there than it did to get down Wilshire.
Parking was crap. I finally gave up looking for something on the street and went into the four-story garage across the street from the restaurant. The light on Sixth and Kenmore was out, so it was a quick game of Frogger through the crowd and the rain to reach the hole-in-the-wall eatery. I’d been there before with Jae. They made a pancake with kim chee I used to be suspicious of, but now it was something I looked forward to.
Jae also picked out any eyeballs from my food before I looked at it.
I was man enough to know my limitations. Eyeballs, when not attached to a human being, and staring back up at me from my food, counted as a limitation. I also didn’t like tongues, but on a shrimp those were harder to see. When one restaurant gave me a whole fish as panchan, Jae just took the head while I pretended to study the décor.
The décor sucked. The fish, however, was great.
I realized when I got to the restaurant tucked into the corner of the strip mall, I had no idea what Brandon Y
eu looked like. The place was half-empty, caught between the lunch and dinner crowds, and the storm probably kept everyone but the die-hard eaters away. When I entered, a trim, distinguished Korean man stood up at one of the back tables and waved me over.
He didn’t look like the type of guy people imagined at a gay bathhouse raid, but then those kinds of guys also usually found their jollies elsewhere. Attractive and fit, Yeu was a little shorter than me with wiry, muscular arms. He had a natural tan, and laugh lines around his brown eyes. He’d come to our meeting in slacks and a button-up shirt, rolling the sleeves back to expose a thick leather-banded watch on his wrist. The gold band on his ring finger was scuffed a bit, definitely not a new piece of jewelry, but it still glinted when he extended his hand.
“McGinnis? I’m Brandon Yeu.” He shook my hand when I offered it. He must have read the slight confusion on my face. “I looked you up. There’s a picture of you on your website.”
“Hi. Please, just call me Cole.” I’d forgotten about the site. Mike’d put it up for me when he had his security firm’s redone. For all I knew, he could have plastered on pictures of me when I was three, riding the furry pony I’d gotten for Christmas butt naked except for a cowboy hat and a gun belt.
“I have to admit, I was kind of surprised to hear from you,” he said as an older woman set glasses of barley tea in front of us.
I ordered bulgogi, hoping it was the one without bones, and Yeu ordered something with a lot of Ds and Ks in it. It sounded like the rice cylinder bobbles and ramen dish Jae liked, but I’d have to wait to see if I was right.
Opening the portfolio I’d brought with me, I extracted the check David had the bank cut for me a few hours ago. Passing the envelope over to Yeu, I said, “The Parks would like to extend their apologies about this. Shin-Cho and David would have come, but there’s been a few tragic events in the family. They send their regrets.”
Events seemed to be too small of a word for Helena’s death, Shin-Cho’s injuries, and the terror that seemed to follow the Park brothers, but it was the best I could come up with. Yeu didn’t need to be burdened with details, and from the relief on his face, I guessed he was glad to keep our meeting short and concise. Formal family apologies seemed to run for hours and did nothing but make people uncomfortable.
He opened the envelope and took the check out, staring at it for a few seconds. Tapping it against the table, Yeu grinned up at me sheepishly. “To be honest, I wanted to tear it up into little pieces and fling it back in their faces.”
I shrugged and said, “They were kids when this all happened. They’re just trying to make things right.”
“I know. It was a moment of pride and outrage that lasted as long as my husband reminding me our son’s going to be in college soon.” He put the check back into the envelope and grinned at me. His front tooth had a chip in it, an endearing flaw in his smile. “He’s still a freshman, but I might as well worry about it now.”
“Is your husband Korean? ’Cause I’ve got to admit, it seems like most of the Korean guys I meet are gay.” I took a sip of the cold barley tea. “Could just be who I’m hanging out with. My boyfriend’s Korean.”
“Probably because it’s easier to be gay and Korean here than in Korea,” Yeu replied. “There, you don’t even say the word, or they look at you funny. But no, my husband’s Chinese. Same problem, though. His family’s kicked him out of the registry. My father was the same way until my son was born, and my brothers’ wives only had girls. Now I’m the favorite.”
He did what all parents do, producing a photo from his phone with seeming ease. A cute pre-teen boy with Yeu’s nose and smile stared out at me from the screen, his arm around a fierce looking Korean patriarch whose eyes shone with pride.
“Dean’s a smart kid. I want the best for him.” Yeu put his phone away. “My father’s offered to pay for his college, but… it’s important for me to get him through it.”
“Yeah, I know how that is.”
“Doesn’t stop my father from trying to buy him a car, but I’ve stalled him at least until Dean’s got a license.” He chuckled. The meal arrived, and we thanked the woman, tucking into our food. A few seconds later, she came back with a small cast iron pot of steamed egg froth, urging me to eat more, then patting me on the back as she left.
Yeu laughed. “Guess you’ve been here before.”
“Yeah, Jae likes it here,” I replied. “He gets spoiled rotten. Probably because he’s prettier than I am.”
We ate in silence for a bit. The bulgolgi was perfect, and I’d been right about the D-K dish. Yeu picked out pieces of noodle with his chopsticks, and ate without slurping the red sauce across the table. Lacking that skill, I kept fighting with my rice until I gave up and reached for the spoon.
“I’m not really sure what I can tell you about that night.” Yeu finally broached the topic I’d come for. “Yes, I did see him, but I was pissed off at him so I didn’t stop to talk. When the cops came through the door, I’d just arrived.”
“Dae-Hoon was upstairs with someone else. That person went out the back, but she didn’t see Dae-Hoon leave that way. Were you in the front?”
“Yeah, I wasn’t fighting them. They put cuffs on me and had me sit against the wall outside. They were bringing one of those trucks to take us to the station,” Yeu recalled. “The cops were pulling people down the stairs. Dae-Hoon was one of them, but so were a lot of other men.”
“Do you remember anything about the person he was with? Anything?”
“Just a cop. He was wearing a uniform, I think.” Yeu looked away, frowning as he tried to dredge up memories of that night. “He was white… and big, but that was pretty much every cop there. Dae-Hoon wasn’t put at the wall like the rest of us. The cop took him outside and put him in a black sedan. It could have been an unmarked car. I don’t know. I didn’t really think about it. I had other things on my mind at the time.”
“Anything else?” My notes were lean. I needed to find the cop that escorted Dae-Hoon out of the building. He was the next step in the chain to Dae-Hoon’s disappearance.
“Not that I can think of. The cop put Dae-Hoon in the car and drove off.” Yeu shrugged. “I was put into one of those paddy trucks. Went down to the station, got arrested, and left the next morning to tell my father I was gay. I’d spent the night in jail because of it. I guess I was just tired of getting pushed around. That’s the last time I saw Dae-Hoon.”
We lingered a bit over the food, mostly talking about football, and disparaging Los Angeles’ inability to get a team, much less keep one. I refused a third helping of the steamed egg but ate the rest of the fishcake. Yeu polished off the rest of the panchan and declared it was time for him to head home.
With Jae on an engagement party shoot until ten, I’d have the house to myself, not something I actually wanted. Crossing the street, I climbed the stairs to the third level of the parking structure where I’d left the Rover. Dialing up Bobby to see if he wanted to watch a game, I’d just exited the stairwell when the lights went out.
The structure’s walls were high, barely letting in the watery outside light. The cold storm front doused nearly all of the sunlight, hanging a dark gray veil over the area. Lightning crackled across the sky to the west, a brief scatter of forks followed by an earthshaking rumble. Another boom followed, this one close enough to make me miss hearing Bobby’s machine pick up on the other end. I blinked, trying to get my eyes adjusted to the lack of light, when another flash went off right over me, filling my eyes with a painful white-blue wash.
“Son of a bitch,” I swore into the phone as Bobby’s voice mail wound down. My eyes were watering, and the blinking only seemed to make it worse. The Rover was a large gray mass at the other end, and I crossed over toward it, avoiding the lakes pooling up from the rain as it came in from the sides. “Yeah, ignore that, Bobby. Sorry, lights are off down in Ktown. Hey, if you want to catch a game tonight, let me—”
The first shot went wide, hitting the car
parked a few spaces from where I was standing. Startled, I twisted to get down, flinging myself to the concrete, and my phone skittered out of my hand, landing somewhere in the dark recesses between a car and the containment wall. I saw a bit of a flash coming from the right, but other than that, I could barely see in front of me. I ducked down and tried to look for some cover. The level hadn’t had many cars on it when I’d parked, and there seemed to be even less from what I could make out from the fuzzy blurs swimming in front of me.
I ran, slamming my hip into the shot-up car. My foot splashed through a stream pouring out of the front of the compact, the oddly metallic smell of radiator fluid hitting me in the face. Wiping the damp off my lashes, I let my eyes adjust to the dim light while I huddled at the rear of the backed-in tiny car. I couldn’t see my phone, but there was little chance of it surviving hitting the concrete. They seemed to break with only a sharp look and a scolding. I didn’t think smacking into congealed rock would do it any good.
“Bad place to be, McGinnis,” I muttered. “And why the hell don’t you carry a fucking gun?”
It was a moot point. Said gun was safely snoozing in a lock box at the top of my armoire, probably dreaming of electric pigeons. I poked my head out a bit, jerking back when another bullet whizzed past my head and slammed into the high concrete barrier behind me.
Of course I’d parked the Rover at the far end of the level, but even if I reached it, it was still only made of steel and glass. I was fond of the new Rover. I’d just gotten the seat to where I wanted it, and the mirrors were adjusted perfectly for me to see out the back window and sides. I’d be damned if I was going to turn it over for target practice. If anything happened to it, my insurance company would insist my next car be a tank.
I decided to try reason.
Shouting over the edge of the car, I kept an eye out for any movement. “Look, I’m guessing you’re the asshole that’s been trying to kill me lately. Want to tell me why?”
Having only been targeted for death twice in my life, I had a fifty-fifty chance of whoever was shooting at me giving me a reason. Jae’s cousin had been more than happy to bare her soul, while Ben went to his self-inflicted grave with all of his grudges against Rick and I buried with him.