by Rhys Ford
“Who’s going to pay for it?” he asked as I taped the bandage down. It would stay long enough for the gunshot-burnt flesh to heal over, maybe even leave a rakish scar, unlike the rough starbursts that mottled my body.
I’d hoped that, being this close to him, I’d find a flaw or two, perhaps even a pockmark, but God wasn’t a kind God. Not to me, anyway. It was getting harder to stay angry at him, especially with the vulnerable, broken look in his eyes. It didn’t help that Jae’s warm breath ghosted over my neck when he spoke.
“I would have paid for it if I had to. You look half-dead. Hell, a few hours ago, I thought you were dead.”
“I’m not, so no hospital.” Short and sweet, his voice had a cut of steel to it. There wasn’t going to be any arguing with him on the point. So of course, I wasn’t going to back down. “And I don’t take money from people.”
“Why not? From what I’ve heard, you’ve taken money before.” I bit the inside of my mouth as soon as I heard the words leave my tongue. I wanted to take them back, or at least soften the sting in them, but the damage had already been done. His mouth tightened, and the ice returned to frost over his face.
“Get the fuck out.” Jae’s hands pushed against my chest. I was heavier than he was, broader and more muscled, but he had a fury that I couldn’t ignore. A familiar feral gleam returned to his eyes, and if I stayed sitting next to him, there was an unspoken promise in them that I would pay dearly.
Once more, men are stupid. I stayed.
“No.” I pushed back, pinning him to the pillows. The cat fled, voicing her disgust at being dislodged with a low miaow. Jae felt fragile under my hands, his leanness an unfamiliar landscape under my fingers. It didn’t fool me into thinking he was soft. There was hard muscle lurking under his oversized clothes, and his twisting away nearly unseated my grip. “Stop it. Shit, look, I’m sorry, okay? That was an asshole thing to say. I’m sorry.”
He looked at me, untrusting and unwilling to give me even the smallest of openings. I was going to take what I could get, even the slight nod and his shoulders relaxing against the bedding was a victory as far as I was concerned. I almost didn’t hear his whisper, barely louder than the sound of traffic outside. “What do you want from me?”
If I were brutally honest, my answer would include something about him being on his stomach and holding onto the sheets, but since he’d just been shot, I was going to be a bit more gallant. “Did you lie to me about why you were at Jin-Sang’s?”
“I didn’t go over there to kill him,” Jae replied softly. “I went over there to talk to him. There was a loud boom, and then the next thing I knew, you were pulling me up. I don’t even know what happened. I don’t give a shit if you don’t believe me, but that’s all I was doing there.”
“I believe you.” Strange thing is, I did believe him. I was going to chalk that up to lust more than any real gut feeling, but even in my more stupid moments, my instincts didn’t normally lead me astray. “Why didn’t you tell me you used to work at Dorthi Ki Seu?”
“Would you tell someone you worked there?” He arched an eyebrow at me, a black sweep of sarcasm nearly lost under the razored edges of his hair.
“Okay, I’ll give you that.” I nodded. I pulled my hands off of him, not trusting myself with touching his warm skin.
“I figured you’d head down there, but no one would talk to you about me. Everyone down there is Korean or Filipino. We don’t talk to people we don’t know. Hell, we don’t talk to people we do know.” Shrugging, he winced with the effort. “Who told you?”
“I saw a picture of you in Scarlet’s dressing room. I’m a little dense sometimes, but I can put two and two together and come out with four.” I grinned at him.
“You know nuna? Shit.” He eyeballed me. The shoe was now on the other foot, and he was wondering if I was lying. “How do you know Scarlet?”
“I kind of arrested her once when I was a cop. She was out before they did the paperwork, but we kept in touch, and I thought I’d hit her up for information since Hyun-Shik died where she worked.” The cat had come back, kneading Jae’s thigh and looking at me with narrowed, suspicious eyes. “She didn’t bring you up, I did. I saw the photo of the two of you, and she told me you were close. Don’t be mad at her.”
“Nuna probably thought you already knew me,” he said with a tired sigh. “I’d never be mad at her. Are you kidding? I’m closer to her than my family.”
“It looked that way,” I replied. “I need you to be straight with me, Jae.”
“No pun intended, yeah?” He moved the cat off his leg and onto his chest. She settled down into a loaf, closing her eyes and purring as loud as her little body let her. His long fingers stroked at the cat’s petite head. Each time he ran his hand down over the back of her neck, it was giving me naughty thoughts. About him. Not the cat.
“Yeah.” Shifting on the bed, I drew away slightly. I was going to have to ask some hard questions, and the way I was feeling, I’d do more consoling than getting answers. “I know Hyun-Shik took you there to work at the club. Why did you agree to do it?”
“I needed the money.” He looked at me like I was crazy for asking.
“You were living with the Kims. They didn’t give you money?”
“No.” Jae pushed himself up until he rested against the pillows, moving slowly to keep the cat steady. “Auntie kicked me out when I was a junior in high school. She said I was a bad influence on Hyun-Shik. I couldn’t go back to NoCal. I needed to have money to finish school.”
“You were a kid. How much of a bad influence could you have been?” I swore under my breath. “You were underage. Do they still have kids working there? Shit, we should have shut that place down when we had the chance.”
“Good luck with that.” He laughed. “Scarlet’s lover wouldn’t let you. She likes it there. It makes her happy. Hyungnim will do anything to keep her happy.”
“What does that mean?” Now was the time to ask him. Like the cat, he seemed calm, willing to be stroked into purring. “Hyung. I keep hearing all of you say that.”
“It’s like… sir?” He cocked his head, thinking. “Not really, but kind of. You say it when a man is older than you.”
“You used it for Hyun-Shik. He wasn’t that much older than you. What? Five years?”
“About five,” Jae agreed. “But it doesn’t matter how many years. Older is older.”
“Okay.” I wasn’t going to go any further. Respect from me had to come in both directions. It didn’t seem that way for Jae-Min. “How long did you work at Dorthi Ki Seu? Did you know Jin-Sang from there?”
“I worked the rooms for….” His eyes grew distant, thinking back. “A few years. Maybe four? Jin-Sang was there for the last three years. As far as I know, he never stopped working there.”
I’d worked Vice. I knew whores from all walks of life. As he spoke about a life he’d once led, I heard the street-tough remoteness in his voice, and I grew more pissed off at Hyun-Shik for giving up a young boy to other men for pleasure.
“You told me your cousin wasn’t cheating on his wife.”
“He wasn’t,” Jae replied. “He’d broken it off with Jin-Sang right after he got married. Hyun-Shik wasn’t seeing anyone. He wasn’t even going to the club for sex. Maybe a drink once in a while with a friend, but he didn’t go upstairs. Not that I know of.”
“Was he with you?” I pried.
“Like sex? Not me.” He laughed at me. “Hyung wasn’t into me. He was done with me right after I went to dance in Dorthi Ki Seu.”
“Dance?” That was a new one for me. “What do you mean dance?”
“Yeah, dance. Music playing, wearing underwear or something for them to stick money into.” Propping himself up on one elbow, Jae looked at me curiously. Realization dawned on him. It crept into his face, and it looked like he didn’t know whether to laugh or get pissed off. “What did you think I did upstairs? Shit, you thought I fucked up there? You thought I was one of the rent-boy
s?”
I threw it back into his face, hard and fast. “Why else would you be ashamed of working there?”
“Because people react like you do when they find out.” The bitterness was back, coloring his words. “You’re like all of the rest of them. That’s why I didn’t say anything. Who the fuck are you to judge me?”
“What did you expect me to think?” I asked, pushing for a moment. He was angry, I got that. I had my own anger to work through. “You hand things off to me in bits, and I’ve got to piece them together. I was pissed off when Scarlet told me you worked upstairs. I figured Hyun-Shik dragged you over there like a piece of meat and offered your ass up to whoever wanted it.”
“Hyun-Shik brought me there to see if they would let me dance for the upstairs clients.” He spoke slowly, as if I were an idiot, which, by all accounts, I seemed to be. “They pay money to have guys dance for them while they sing karaoke. Sometimes they want sex, but sometimes they just want to act stupid and get drunk. Jin-Sang did sex. I didn’t.”
“Never?”
“It’s not any of your fucking business, but no, never,” He growled at me, sitting up and shoving my shoulder. “You just met me yesterday. What the hell do you care?”
Yeah, that’s what I was asking myself too. I just didn’t have an answer. “Maybe because you were a kid.”
“Hyung, I was never a kid. I knew what I was doing. Hyun-Shik didn’t force me into anything.” For some reason, that seemed sadder to me than the outside of the building. He meant it. There wasn’t any apology in it. For Jae, it just was. I think that made it all the sadder still. “I needed the money to live on. Then I went to college, and I had to pay for that too. I quit as soon as I started doing well with my photography. I don’t make as much, but hell, at least I don’t get shit thrown into my face.”
“Then why did you go to Jin-Sang’s?”
“I thought you needed some help. That’s why I went to Jin-Sang.” He continued working the sheets around his fingers. When I touched his arm, Jae didn’t pull back immediately but edged away after a few seconds. I wasn’t sure if he’d forgiven me or just was too used to people treating him like a whore. “I knew he wouldn’t talk to you unless someone asked him to. Even then, he might not have, not without wanting money for it. He didn’t do anything without first getting paid for it.”
“What did you think he knew about Hyun-Shik’s death?”
“The note was bothering me.” Jae-Min pointed toward the crate he used as a table. I could see the copy of the note I’d given him lying with a stack of papers. “I thought I’d seen that before.”
“That same note? Your cousin didn’t write that?”
“No, he wrote it,” Jae said with a shake of his head, and then winced, pressing the heel of his palm against his forehead. I reached for him, but the look he shot me warned me off. “Hyun-Shik wrote something like that to Jin-Sang when he married Victoria. I thought it was the same note, or at least a part of it.”
“Hyun-Shik was refusing to answer his phone, and one night, Jin-Sang came home from the club and found the key to his apartment holding down a note,” Jae murmured, rubbing his hands into the sheets to warm them up. “He was drunk and yelling at me like I had something to do with it. I don’t remember all of it, but I think that piece you gave me was at the bottom.”
“That phrasing you talked about.” I thought back on what Jae-Min had said in the kitchen. “It wasn’t regret over killing himself. It was about giving up Jin-Sang?”
“Jin-Sang was a whore my cousin fucked. Hyun-Shik liked him, but he screwed a lot of people. It’s what he did. He wasn’t giving up Jin-Sang. He was giving up everyone.” Jae smirked. “He had to stop when he got married. Victoria would have his balls if she caught him. Have you talked to her yet?”
“No,” I replied. “I didn’t think there was anything here but a suicide. Now, I’m not so sure.”
“So you think someone killed Hyun-Shik? Really?”
“Yeah and my gut tells me Jin-Sang’s death is connected to it too,” I said, nodding my head. “So I guess I’ll have to see what Victoria has to say about her husband.”
“She’s a bitch. Don’t let her good manners fool you.” His face turned waxen, and he turned his head, struggling to keep his nausea down. “I don’t feel good.”
“It’s the concussion. Let’s get some soup or something into your stomach.” I stood up, and he grabbed at my hand. “What?”
“Why don’t I call Scarlet? She’ll come over and take care of me. She’s not working tonight.”
“I don’t mind.” He didn’t look good. Not bad, because someone as pretty as he was never was going to look bad, but there was a need for sleep and food on his face. “I can crash on the couch. You shouldn’t be alone. Remember?”
“I know,” he said with some regret. “But you’re going to have to go.”
I waited for a heartbeat. Mike always said I was slow about catching on and often expressed surprise that I’d made detective. “You don’t want me here? Okay, no problem.”
“No, the problem is, I do want you here. Too much.” He let go of my hand, pulling back into the pillows. Regret curled his mouth, and I wanted to kiss the wickedness back into it. “You’re hot, and you’re taking care of me even when you’re pissed off, which kind of gets me off. So yeah, I’m going to call Scarlet, and you’re going to go home. Now.”
Chapter 7
“SO HE kicked you out?” I wasn’t going to give Bobby the satisfaction of teasing me, but sometimes, after a few beers, my tongue doesn’t do what I want it to. “Because he was turned on by you?”
“Yeah, pretty much.” I counted glass bottles, soldiers I’d lined up on the bar, wondering if the bartender was going to cut me off soon. I got my answer when I signaled for another and he tipped off the bottle cap without even flinching. The bartender was elevated to archangel status. I reminded myself to leave adequate tribute.
“Did you tell him you were gay?” I saw Bobby smiling around the lip of his glass. “Although I think that horse has left the barn. I’m pretty sure he already knows.”
“Nope, I was too….” I couldn’t think of the word. It was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t reach it. “Yeah, I don’t think I need to tell him.”
“Chickenshit?” Bobby offered up. Always helpful, that Bobby.
“No,” I denied emphatically, then shrugged. “Maybe. I met him yesterday. It’s not like we have a relationship.”
“Cole, we’re guys. We fuck first and then look for happy ever after.” He drained his whiskey and sighed before asking one of the guys behind the bar for a club soda. “That’s the best part about being gay. We don’t have to deal with all of that crap women bring to the table. We screw and then see if we like each other. That way, if the sex is bad, we’re not stuck with someone we don’t like.”
“That’s what I love about you, Bobby. You’re a romantic.” Tipping the bottle back, I doused my face with beer. Somehow my mouth moved when I wasn’t looking. Wiping off the foam, I muttered at him, “Laugh and I’ll kick you in the nuts.”
“You couldn’t find my nuts right now if I had my pants down and was waving them in front of you.” Hooking his hand under my arm, he pulled me off the bar stool. “Come on, I’ll walk you home, Princess.”
“I’d like to see you say that to me when I’m sober.” Thinking hard, I remembered he sometimes called me that when we were boxing, usually when he was pounding the crap out of me. “Never mind. Forget I said that.”
“I’m pretty sure you will.” Bobby paid for the last of my beers and hustled me outside. I struggled to get back in. After all, I’d promised to leave the bartender an angelic tip. “I left him something extra. Home you go.”
The cold air hit me hard, and I drew in a lungful of ice. With no cloud cover, the basin’s heat had fled to the stars and the night sank its chilled bite into the city. After the searing day, the desert grew cold. By one in the morning, there’d be frost on the gr
ass that would be dew when the sun rose. It was no wonder I kept losing some of the bushes in front of my place.
Compared to the Chicago winters I’d endured as a teen, I’d take Los Angeles’s chilly nights during any drunken stumble back from a bar. I felt the urge to break into song, probably my father’s Irish blood.
“I should learn the words to ‘Danny Boy’,” I mumbled.
“God no,” Bobby said, guiding me around a lamp pole. “I’ve heard you at karaoke. You utter one note, and I’m leaving you in a pool of your own puke.”
“I don’t puke.” The beer was making it hard to think. “Okay, I’ve puked once or twice, but that was a long time ago. I was thinner then.”
“And you’re mountainous now.” He snorted as he turned me up the walk. My legs were firmer than they’d been when I’d slid off the barstool but still a bit weak. “Sleep this off. Go dream of your pretty-faced little boy.”
“He’s not a boy.” The crafty bits of my mind sent me images of Jae’s pale body stretched out onto a soft bed, one leg crooked and that damned mouth of his open just wide enough for me to slip my finger into. Swallowing, I tried to push away the image, not liking where I was going. Sure, I wanted Jae’s body under me, his sleek skin glowing with a sheen of sweat. I wasn’t dead. He turned me on. For some reason, there was something about his feral, lying sweetness that made me twitch. “Trust me. You’d want him too.”
“Yeah, from the sounds of it, I would.” Bobby deposited me on my front stoop, waiting for me to open the door and get inside before he left. “Get some sleep. Skip the gym tomorrow. I’m giving you a get-out-of-a-beating card.”
“Yes, Master,” I burbled, and he laughed, slapping me on the ass.
“If only you played those games, Princess.” Kissing me on the back of my head, Bobby pushed me into the hallway. “Don’t forget to lock the door. I’ll see you later.”