by Rhys Ford
An older Korean man, conservatively dressed and immaculately groomed, approached the man, standing by the rope. He was let in with a respectful nod, and continued through the door and up the stairs. Another followed a few minutes later, and then a pair of men, speaking to each other as if they were headed to have dinner.
A round of applause jerked me back, pulling my attention to the stage, and I clapped loudly. Scarlet took a bow, then another, sweeping her arm back to include the piano player in her due. The mountain stood nearby, watching me stand up and finish my soda.
“Just go through the door?” I rattled the ice in my glass and left a five on the table for my server.
“I’ll take you.” He didn’t grab my elbow, but his massive paw brushed at the back of my arm as if he was used to steering people around.
I left the sedate nightclub atmosphere as a troupe of dancers took the stage, the slender men dressed in brightly colored robes that slightly resembled kimono, but not quite. One smiled at me, bowing his head slightly so as not to dislodge the elaborate wig he wore.
Like most entertainment clubs, backstage was chaos. Clothes and lights were fighting for space with a sea of men in various stages of naked. Several were sitting in front of long mirrors, trying to apply makeup, while others jostled and elbowed to get into costume. A hallway continued past the main room, and I hugged the wall when an older man wearing a tight, black-fringed dress sashayed out of a dressing room. An envious chatter from the others followed him as he headed out to perform.
The mound of muscle took me to a room at the end of the hall. A sparkling gold star was stuck to the door, a spatter of Korean boldly painted beneath it. I couldn’t read it, but I guessed it was Scarlet’s name. I knocked and turned the knob when I heard Scarlet give me the go-ahead.
Her dressing room was an oasis of fabrics and color. Overwhelmed by the glut of sequins, feathers, and frills, I almost missed seeing Scarlet wiping pancake makeup off her face, the bright lights of her vanity mirror turning her skin a white-gold.
“Hey, Scarlet.” Even close up, she was flawless. I knew a lot of women who wanted to look as good as Scarlet did right now. Sadly for them, they couldn’t even come close. “I see you’re still gorgeous.”
“Honey, you are sweet. I haven’t seen you in a while.” She stood, tightening the sash of an orange satin robe around her narrow waist. Leaning over, she brushed a kiss over my cheek, patting at my chest as she sat back down. The sultry torch singer, for the most part, was gone. The only trace of her remaining was the diamonded sweep of black hair arranged on Scarlet’s head. “How have you been?”
“Nothing worth mentioning.” I settled into a chair, watching as Scarlet made short work of her face, layering a more sedate foundation with a flick of delicate fingers.
“You’ve come for something, no?” Dark eyes met mine in the mirror. “I saw the card you gave the doorman. You’re a private investigator now, right? Did you get tired of being a cop?”
“Cops got tired of me being a cop,” I said. It was the only concession I was going to give the past. I had other things I needed to deal with. “I’m here about Hyun-Shik Kim’s suicide. I thought maybe you’d be able to talk to me about him.”
“Hyun-Shik?” Her fingers stilled, and the ghost of her Adam’s apple bobbed in her throat. “Oh, you don’t want to sniff around the Kims, honey. Big teeth lawyer.”
“Papa Kim is the one who hired me. My brother, Mike, does some work for him.”
“Mikio McGinnis is your brother? Ah, I should have known.” She turned, her eyes wide with surprise. “You’re prettier than he is. He must be jealous.”
“You know my brother?”
“He does some work for my lover, sometimes. Nice man. I’ve met him a few times. Hyung hires his men to take care of driving me if someone else can’t.” She pushed her vanity bench back, stepping behind a dressing screen. The robe was flung up over the edge, a splash of tangerine against the brown wood. “Do you have a Japanese name too? Or just Mikio?”
“It’s Kenjiro, but I never use it,” I called out over the screen. “Mike’s first name is Colin. He hates it.”
“Colin’s a nice name.” She stepped back out, dressed in a pair of black pedal pushers and a white man’s shirt. Leaving the tails out, she fluffed at the back, satisfied with how the fabric fell over her trim backside, and sat back down at the vanity to undo her hair.
“I used to call him Colleen.” The memory was a good one. Nothing infuriated my brother like minimizing his masculinity. “Probably why he hates it.”
“But you’re here for Hyun-Shik, not small talk, yes?” Scarlet plucked the diamond hair picks from her hair, setting them into a velvet case. “I don’t really know what goes on upstairs, baby. Not really.”
“Scarlet, I know how these places work. I’m sure you know something, maybe?” She gave me a glance in the mirror, briefly meeting my eyes before she plucked at the bobby pins along her sweep. I pressed closer, leaning in until we were almost touching. “I’m just looking for some information. Something about Hyun-Shik’s death doesn’t work for me, and I want to know why.”
“Boys like you are trouble, dongsaeng,” she said. “You poke at things you should leave alone. What happens when it comes back to you?”
“Is there something I should be worried about?” I tried for a reassuring smile but wasn’t so sure I pulled it off. “Hyun-Shik killed himself, or someone helped him do it. Either way, I was hired to see what I could find. What can you tell me? Anything?”
Scarlet pulled her hair free, letting it fall in a black wave down her back. Working her fingers around her temples, she undid the last of the bindings and picked up a hairbrush, separating out hanks of hair to finish untangling the strands. For a minute, I thought she wasn’t going to say anything to me. Then, with a sigh, she began to talk.
“Hyun-Shik started coming here when he was in college. His father bought him his membership,” she said, waving the brush at my reflection, warning me to shush.
“Kim bought his son the membership? The same man that insists his son wasn’t gay?”
“Anything I say to you here isn’t going to go anywhere, yes? You keep it between us. I like you, honey, but I’m not going to start trouble for the Kim family. Hyung depends on the father to do business for him.” Waving her finger under my nose, she nearly hit me with the end of the brush.
“Not a word to anyone,” I replied, running the tip of my finger over my mouth in a show of silence.
“Mr. Kim knew his son was iban. It wasn’t a surprise to him. Maybe the mother didn’t know, but the father did.” Emotions flitted in her moist, dark eyes. Whatever Scarlet was thinking, it wasn’t just about Hyun-Shik. “A lot of fathers try to help their sons in some way. Mr. Kim probably thought that a membership for Hyun-Shik would be a good idea.”
“Membership gets you what upstairs?”
“Dorthi Ki Seu membership only gets you upstairs. You have to pay for everything else.” She kept her attention on her hair, brushing at tangles. “You can get a lot of things upstairs: drinks, drugs, and boys. Most men go up there for the boys, but they do other things too.”
“Hyun-Shik’s father was okay with him spending money on that?”
“Maybe he thought if Hyun-Shik had a place to… dabble.” She paused, thinking of how to phrase something. “Dabble is a good word. If he dabbled upstairs, he wouldn’t be out cruising like some of the others his age. No one sees what happens upstairs. No one comments. Everyone’s reputation is safe, and everyone is happy.”
“Hyun-Shik couldn’t have been too happy,” I commented. “He killed himself upstairs.”
“Most men come here because they’re sad inside, and for a little while, they can pretend that loving men is normal. In here, it is normal.” The brush stilled, caught in the length of her hair. “I am so lucky, honey. I have a man who loves me, but he cannot love me in the sunlight. Not if others are around. Most of the men here don’t have that kind of f
reedom. They cannot even love in the darkness. Hyun-Shik was one of those men.”
“But in here, he was normal,” I murmured. The walls held too many secrets, hidden things that crackled over my skin. To me it was simple. I was going to be who I needed to be to survive. Not being gay wasn’t an option. It wasn’t easy, but it was better than living a lie.
“Why get married if you’re—” I was cut off by Scarlet’s trilling laugh.
“Ah, so easy for you, honey. Everything is black and white.” She worked at the hair at her neck. “Asian men have to get married. It’s what they do. You are born, go to school, then you get married. Next, you have children, then take care of your parents while you bully your children through school. After you are done with that, it’s your time to be taken care of. Everything is a cycle.”
“So he got married and kept coming back to get himself off? Maybe just enough to blow some steam?”
“It’s common. Usually after the first child, maybe the second. It depends on the man.” Her shrug was a practiced, elegant lift. “Some men never come back. Duty to the family comes first for most Asian men, and shame can make a man go against what he wants.”
“Did he have a regular? Did Hyun-Shik see someone here all the time?”
“He came to visit Jin-Sang Yi.” She spelled it for me as I took out my notebook. “Hyun-Shik didn’t visit as much after he got married, but when he did, he usually had Jin-Sang sent to him.”
“Any of the other boys get jealous about that?”
“No, it’s very… practical upstairs.” Scarlet moved on to another section. “Well, sometimes. I think Jin-Sang would be upset if Hyun-Shik didn’t send for him, but that’s probably because of the money. I can’t say it was for love. Upstairs boys make a lot of money, baby.”
“How much is a lot of money?”
“The popular ones can make about five thousand a night, depending on what they’re being paid for.”
“Five grand?” I was in the wrong business. Catching a glimpse of my face in the vanity, I didn’t think I could pull in that kind of cash. “Jin-Sang is one of the popular ones?”
“Popular enough, I think.” She shrugged. “Sometimes a new boy comes, and one of the favorites goes away. It’s how these things are. Like I said, dongsaeng, I don’t pay much attention to what goes on up there. I’m an entertainer. I don’t do those things.”
“Did he kill himself before or after he saw Jin-Sang? Do you know?”
“Had to be after. I think the upstairs manager refused the payment in respect to Mr. Kim,” Scarlet murmured. “It would have been bad to take money for Hyun-Shik’s entertainment.”
“So Hyun-Shik went upstairs, had a little fun, then killed himself?” I sat back in my chair. Stranger things had been known to happen. Some suicide victims killed themselves after a good meal while others were too distraught to think beyond doing the act. People were crazy things, but paying for sex and then taking a handful of pills seemed strange. “You mentioned drugs upstairs. Is that where Hyun-Shik got the pills?”
“Oh no, honey.” She shook her hair out, setting the brush aside. “Upstairs doesn’t do pills. Mostly jutes or sometimes nga nga. Pills take too long, and they’re not good with whiskey. That would be too many problems.”
“He had to have brought them with him, then.” Things were getting complicated. “The biggest question that I can’t seem to answer is, why? And why here?”
“That I don’t know, honey,” Scarlet said with a shrug. “His note said what? He was ashamed? Of loving men? Then why kill himself here? Pfah, your questions make things worse.”
“That’s why I’m asking.” Her cell phone rang, a snippet of a song I didn’t recognize, vibrating the tiny silver device across the vanity table. “You want some privacy?”
“No, stay there,” she ordered, poking at my chest with a sharp fingernail. Answering, she sighed, hearing someone’s voice on the other end. “Hyung! Yes, I am done. Just one show tonight.”
The rest was in Korean, a bubbling flow of words that I didn’t have to understand to know what was being said. Cooing was universal, and Scarlet’s coquettish laughter made me smile. It’d been a long time since I’d sat and chatted someone up on the phone, not since Rick and I were first dating.
I stood, stretching my legs. The drive up and down the coast was hell on my belly, the scar tissue knitting together the nerves of my abdomen muscles. I was beginning to cramp up, and reached around to work the kink loose. Twisting around, something caught my eye, a familiar face smiling back up at me from a silver frame.
Sneaking a peek at Scarlet, I made sure she was still deep in conversation before I walked over to the tall dresser sitting in the corner of the room. Many of the photos were of Scarlet, some vacation shots with a solemn-faced, older Korean man and others with young men who were obviously entertainers. The one that caught my eye was larger than the rest and placed to the side with the smaller shots around it.
I knew the honey-brown eyes that stared up at me, and seeing his face hit me in the gut. Jae-Min was younger in the photo, a few years maybe, at the most. His hair was longer, fringed around his face, making his features nearly gamine, but the sensual pout of his mouth was the same, a hint of a smile dimpling his cheeks.
Cracking the back of the frame to see if there was a date on the back of the photo probably wouldn’t be a good idea. Scarlet sounded like she was wrapping up her call, a final coo into her phone and then a throaty tenor sigh. In that small exclamation of passion, I heard the man Scarlet hid inside, so proud of the love he shared with another man.
Scarlet came up behind me, her chin resting against my upper arm to see what I was looking at. I tilted the frame so she could see the picture I was looking at. There was another whispering murmur, lighter and sweeter this time.
“Ah, my musang.” She touched Jae-Min’s face with the tips of her fingers. “He’s Hyun-Shik’s cousin. Is he on your list of people to talk to?”
“We’ve had our talk.” I put the picture down. It was hard. For some reason, letting that piece of time go made me shake. “I saw him at the Kim house this morning.”
“Aish! Hard to believe that he was there. That woman treats him so badly.” Her disgust was palpable, nearly sticky with distaste. “I wouldn’t have gone back there.”
“Looks like you know Jae-Min well.”
“Ah, our Jae.” Scarlet smiled as she took the frame from me and put it back on the dresser. “He’s one of my favorite people. Have you seen his photographs? I have some he took of me at home. You should see them. They are beautiful but so very raw. He’s very good.”
“How did you meet him? Did Hyun-Shik bring him here for an evening?” I had a tickle of jealousy in my chest. Somehow the thought of Jae-Min coming to Dorthi Ki Seu for a round of sex and games while his cousin watched disturbed me, and I couldn’t figure out why.
“For an evening?” Scarlet padded away, bending over to retrieve a pair of bright red pumps from under the chair I’d been sitting in. “Hyun-Shik didn’t bring Jae-Min here as a guest. He brought him here to work.”
“What? Jae-Min worked here as a waiter? He didn’t tell me. For how long?”
“A waiter?” She was an elegant line, graceful as she slid her foot into one shoe. “Oh no, honey. Jae-Min wasn’t a waiter.”
My chest constricted, and a numbness crept over my jaw. I didn’t want to hear what she was saying. The rush of blood in my ears was like a tidal wave, blocking out my senses. I needed to ask Scarlet to explain, but I knew I wasn’t going to like the answer. “What did he do, then?”
“Jae is much too pretty to be a waiter. No, honey, Hyun-Shik brought him to work the rooms. That’s how I met my musang,” she replied, checking her appearance once more in the mirror and patting at the edge of her lush mouth. “Our Jae-Min became one of our upstairs boys.”
Chapter 5
“THAT son of a bitch played me! He worked down there, and he didn’t say jack shit to me about it.”
My living room was large, nearly half of the building, but it was still too small to work off a good rage. I kept bumping into one of the sofas and hitting my shin against the coffee table. At past midnight, it was too late to start pushing furniture around to make room for my long legs. More importantly, shoving the couch to the wall would disrupt my bleary-eyed brother’s perch.
“Cole, I’ve had a long day, my beer is half empty, and I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.” Mike yawned, more for show than anything else. He usually went to bed at two in the morning, so showing up at my house to talk about the Kim case was well within his working day. Snorting derisively at my growl, he picked at the remains of his carne asada burrito, stabbing at chunks of meat with a fork. “Mr. Kim played you?”
“No.” I was disgusted, trying to sort out my confusion. The one thing I was clear on: Jae was at the center of my anger. “Not Mr. Kim. I’m talking about his nephew, Jae-Min.”
“That’s the guy that stayed with them for a year, right? The second or third cousin.” Mike picked at his teeth with the tine of his plastic fork. “What’s he got to do with Henry?”
“Henry, huh? I’m sticking with Hyun-Shik. You can call him Henry.” I stopped, standing in front of my brother. “Yeah, let me tell you some things about Mr. Kim’s little boy.”
I spent a few minutes outlining the deceased’s connection to the club he’d died at, including his pimping his younger cousin out to the management. Mike absorbed the information without commenting, letting me talk myself out.
“So, you’re pissed off because Mr. Kim’s son is gay?” Mike asked finally. “Or because he set his cousin up as a whore?”
“No,” I said, plopping down on the couch next to my brother, nudging his leg with my bare foot. “Okay, kind of. Why didn’t the Kims just tell you some of this up front? They probably didn’t know about Jae-Min, but the rest of it. His father knew some of it.”