by Rhys Ford
I fumbled with turning the deadbolt when I got inside, certain that someone had come in and moved it an inch or two to the left since I’d used it last.
“Or could be the six beers you drank, dork,” I mumbled, tossing my keys on the table where I’d have to hunt for them in the morning. A shower sounded both nice and disgusting. I wanted to get the smell of alcohol off me, but it would sober me up too much. I compromised with a quick splash and a scrub, dousing my head with cold water before staggering over to the bed.
And of course, sleep eluded me. My brain was too busy circling back to Jae’s mouth and the line of his body against rumpled sheets. My alarm clock mocked me, taunting me with its glowing numbers and illuminating my cell phone, which had its own silent sneer going.
“Fuck it.” I had his number. I’d even programmed it in. A punch of a few buttons rolled over into a purring ring, and a sultry voice answered the line, husky with fatigue. “Jae?”
“No, baby. This is Scarlet.” The purr wasn’t for me. It was one Scarlet always had in her voice. She probably practiced it in the echoes of a bathroom, listening for the right pitch that could curl the hairs on a man’s belly. It did nothing for me, but I had to appreciate the seductiveness in that rough velvet purr. “Is everything all right?”
“I was… calling to see if Jae was doing okay.” I could lie. I was a trained liar. Scarlet’s tsking chuckle made me feel like I was three years old again and caught stealing a cookie. Feint, my brain screamed, dodge! “Is he asleep?”
“Yes. Let me go outside. I don’t want to wake him.” I heard movement on the other line and then the sounds of faint street traffic as Scarlet stepped outside of Jae’s stone fortress. “Hold on. Aish, you’re an idiot.”
There was some discussion, a heated exchange between Scarlet and a deep-voiced man. She was shooing him away from the front door, first in English, then with a flare of hot Korean. I was imagining the worst when I heard another rumbling argument from whoever was outside of Jae’s door.
“You okay?” I didn’t like the neighborhood Jae was in. I was liking it even less with what I was hearing. “I can be over there. Get inside. I’ll have someone come around.”
“I don’t need saving, baby.” She murmured into the phone, laughing at me over the line. “That was one of the boys hyung sends with me. Believe me, honey, the last thing they want is going back to him with a hurt Scarlet. Nice Korean boys, thick in body and sometimes in the brain too. Just told him to go sit in the car with the other one, not stand on the doorstep.”
There was a flick of a lighter and then Scarlet’s inhale on a cigarette. I could almost see her standing in the cinderblock enclosure around Jae’s front door, her hip tilted against the wall as she angled the phone against her chin, exhaling a cloud of smoke before returning to the half-drunken pest on the line.
“Honey, why you calling so late?” The polished exotic English she’d spoken at the club blurred under the weight of the hour. Her Pinoy accent was richer now, a darker, earthier sound to her voice. When I didn’t answer immediately, she filled in the silence with a low murmur. “Ah, so that’s how it is.”
“How what is?” Even in the haze of what beer I had left in my system, I had an inkling she wasn’t just guessing at the fire Jae stoked in me. Hell, she made a living at stroking men’s egos and tickling that nerve in our brains that went straight to our dicks. I wasn’t hiding anything from Scarlet.
“I thought you were liking men. I guessed but weren’t sure,” she said. “Most men like you at least look at the boys, but no, none for you. Before Jae, I thought maybe you were funny kind, and not in my way. Not liking either boy or girl.”
“Hey now!” It kind of hurt to have my sexuality stripped away, even if it was imaginary. “I do okay.”
“Honey, I’m sure you do fine,” she said. It sounded like she’d said those words a million times. Probably had. “So you’re gay. Who isn’t right now?”
“Did you tell Jae?” I asked around the lump in my throat. It was one thing to be taunted about being gay, but to be asexual was too much of an insult. “About me….”
“He probably knows. He’s not stupid.” Another drag on her cigarette made a hissing noise in my ear. “I saw when you were here. You want him. Hovering and checking on him, like he was something you couldn’t have right now, but in a little bit, maybe, he give you some honey. I know men. I know how they are.”
“Scarlet, I just called to see how he was doing, not date him. He got kicked in the head pretty hard today.”
“Like I said, honey, he’s asleep now.” Scarlet sighed. “I’ll tell musang you called to see how he was. You go back to sleep now and try to pretend you didn’t call for something different.”
I tried protesting. I even made a few noises that sounded like I meant to grumble at being shoved aside, but her tsk pierced my eardrum, and I had to hold the phone away from my head.
“It’s not wrong to want him. My Jae-Min is pretty, and maybe you both can kiss each other’s boo-boos away.” The traffic noise subsided, followed by the solid clunk of the heavy metal door. “Go back to bed, baby, and dream of something really good.”
MORNING did not come gently to me. In one of life’s ironies, there were songbirds outside of my open bedroom window, trilling away at the sun that seared my eyeballs. Blinking away the crust on my lashes merely allowed more light to hit the back of my aching skull. Mumbling, I tried to make the morning go away with a pillow over my head, but the songbirds were soon drowned out by the ringing of my phone.
“You up, boy?” The crackle on the other side made my teeth ache, and I debated hanging up to avoid any long-term damage to my fillings. On a good day, Claudia’s voice had an edge to it, a matriarchal, authoritative ring. In the state I was in, I recoiled from the shrill she put into it.
“Yeah, I’m up.” Struggling to find the alarm clock, I captured it before it slid off the nightstand and reassessed my morning to early afternoon. “Did you want something?”
“I’m leaving,” she announced. “Figured I’d check to see if you were dead before I left.”
“Kind of you,” I mumbled around a mouthful of foul breath. Sometime during the night, my tongue had decided to lick the inside of a sneaker, and it was all I could taste. “Isn’t it Saturday? You’re not supposed to be at work.”
“I needed my pay, so I called you up, but you didn’t answer, so I came over to check. I don’t want to come to work for a dead man. They don’t pay,” Claudia said. “I wrote myself a paycheck, and your brother called. He said you can call that Kim woman if you wanted to. He talked to her already, and she’s fine with talking to you. He left you her number on your phone, but since you didn’t call him back, he called me.”
“Thanks,” I said with a nod, then immediately regretted it. I was hoping Mike was talking about Victoria Kim and not Hyun-Shik’s mother. Of course, I’d not spent any time with any Kim other than Jae, so it could have been anyone. “Have a good afternoon.”
“Get out of bed, boy,” she ordered before she clicked off. “And take a shower. You must reek to high heaven.”
I stumbled in and out of the shower, washing off the night sweats and the filth I’d picked up in my mouth. As I toweled off, my fingers brushed against the whorl of scars on my side. It was larger than the others, the bullet tearing through more skin and muscle.
Of all of my wounds, that one hurt most often. The tangle of nerves worked through the scar tissue sometimes misfired and cramped up my side. The pinkish pucker was still raised, smaller tears working out from the epicenter to form a starburst pattern over my ribs. The doctors had worked hard to get my heart going again, stitching up the veins and arteries torn apart from the piece of metal that had rattled against my ribs. By the time I’d woken up from the drugged daze they’d put me in, the world had gone on without me.
When I’d left the restaurant with Rick, things had been pretty good. We’d shared a house and a life. Even his small runt of a dog ha
d begun to take a liking to me. I’d just been assigned my first case as lead, and the dinner we’d shared was a kind of celebration. If someone could celebrate being handed a drug dealing case. I’d kissed him goodbye, holding his face in my hands and tasting his mouth before heading to the car where I’d thought my partner, Ben, was waiting.
“Yeah, he was waiting,” I muttered around a mouthful of toothpaste, spitting out the minty froth into the sink. The bitter taste was back, but it had nothing to do with beer or anything else I’d swallowed. Staring at my reflection in the mirror, I said, “Is that what happened to you, Hyun-Shik? Were you at Dorthi Ki Seu thinking things were good and the people you trusted had your back? Is that why you went there? Did someone call you over, or did you go looking for someone?”
Clothes were simple. Jeans, a black T-shirt, and a pair of leather boots I’d scuffed into a workable softness. Grabbing my phone and wallet from the nightstand, I stopped in front of the Art Deco armoire I’d gotten from a consignment store in San Diego. I’d fallen in love with the golden tiger oak piece when I’d first spotted it amid the other furniture. I’d given Rick a hard time about doing the gay thing while on vacation. I was too butch to go antiquing, and he’d never let me forget that I’d been the one who ended up paying someone to deliver it to our house in Los Angeles.
The armoire wasn’t just a pretty piece. It also had a concealed drawer at the top where I kept my gun. After what happened to Jae and Jin-Sang, I wasn’t going to go out without a bit more protection. Bobby had pulled strings to get me a Concealed License, and I’d never really had a need to use it, but after yesterday, sliding on a shoulder harness seemed like more than just a good idea.
Some cops were in love with their guns. I liked them well enough, but I didn’t need one on me at all times. My father schooled both Mike and I on how to handle a firearm, when we were young. Mike loved them more than I did, but I was the better shot, much to his disgust. I blamed it on his wimpy stance and unsteady hands, but only if I wasn’t within reach. I might be taller, but my brother still could kick my ass if he wanted to.
It’d taken me a few months to get over the flinch when I heard a gunshot, and I still felt the echo of a recoil on my face when I pulled a trigger. Bobby helped me work through that on the range. Nothing like blowing away a few targets to help with controlling my rage, he told me.
He was wrong, but I wasn’t going to argue. At least I’d put away the gun-shyness I’d developed.
I rigged up, tucking in the Glock Mike had given me for Christmas. I gave him a singing fish, three video games, and a couple of ties. After a few rounds of country-western tunes, we were ordered to take the fish outside and drown it. His wife didn’t have much of a sense of humor, but it made for great target practice for the Glock. Shooting up a robotic fish on Christmas Day is one of the best memories I have.
I called Victoria Kim and got a snot-voiced woman who informed me that Mrs. Kim would be available to me between the hours of three-thirty and four that afternoon. The address she gave me wasn’t far from the elder Kims’ abode, and its proximity to Mommy and Daddy made me wonder if Hyun-Shik hadn’t fully untied the apron strings.
“Half an hour isn’t a lot of time to talk about your dead husband, Victoria.” I pondered the timing of the interview.
The neighborhood was nearly cookie-cutter identical to the one Hyun-Shik’s parents lived in. Perfect lawns with two-inch grass blades were studded with flower beds and the occasional tasteful statuary, a fountain or two to break up the monotony of green and color. Houses here ran into the millions and were strictly kept in line by association rules.
The snot-voiced woman answered the door, a tall, scrawny rail with saline blobs perched squarely on her chest. Her face went along with her voice, pinched and thin with narrowed eyes that looked me up and down. I gave her a smile and faked some pleasant social twitter as I introduced myself. She wasn’t buying it, and her sniff told me as much.
“I’ll tell Victoria that you’re here.” She sniffed again, toddling off on break-neck stilettos. “Wait in the living room.”
If femininity could be sterile, Victoria’s house did it. Every wall was covered with a subtle wash of color, blush white that ran dull when the light hit it. I looked at the furniture, spindly upholstered things that wouldn’t hold my weight. One of the couches looked promising, a bit sturdier than the rest. I kept it in mind as I looked around the room.
There weren’t any personal touches among the still-life paintings, except for a single photograph of a little round-faced boy dressed in a bright red robe. I’d seen the same picture in the Kims’ gallery, as well as a flurry of others. Strange that the mother of the child would only have one image of her kid.
“Hello, Mr. McGinnis.”
She was taller than I’d expected, coming up to my chin, and had the perfect rosy skin and long waves of blonde hair that someone would expect from a Californian beauty. Turned out in a high-waisted, black pencil skirt and button-up white shirt, she sauntered in, taking advantage of being the prettiest thing in the room. Perky breasts and slender waist coupled with long, tanned legs, she looked more like one of Mike’s naughty-secretary fantasies than the grieving widow.
If I were into women, I’d have been all over her.
Luckily, I wasn’t into women.
“Please, call me Cole.” I made some noises about how lovely her house was, and she gave me a thin smile, as if she believed me but I was taking up her time. I added another mark to my not-liking-women checklist. “Thanks for seeing me. I know this must be a hard time for you.”
“We’re getting through it. I’m sorry I can’t offer you much in the way of refreshments. No one’s really been to the store other than to get food for my son.” Her nearly tear-filled eyes were practiced, almost flawless except for the telltale pinch of her cheek between her teeth. I had a boyfriend once that mastered crying at the drop of a hat, and she looked exactly like he did when he was trying to pull one over on me. “Please sit down.”
“I won’t keep you long. I’ve only got a few questions.” The couch held up, but my legs were too long for it, and I ended up squatting like I was sitting at a preschooler’s desk.
“I don’t know what I can tell you.” Victoria sat in a chair right next to me, crossing her legs and leaning forward to give me a bit of cleavage. I played her game and gave them a bit of a glance. “I don’t know what I can say about Henry’s death. It was all such a shock to me.”
The tears were gone, replaced by a slight widening of her eyes and a sliver of a pout on her lower lip. It looked good on Jae, a natural slope to his full mouth. Victoria stocked it in her arsenal, along with her tears and breasts.
I wondered if I was being too hard on her, not giving her the benefit of the doubt, when an Asian man came down the foyer and walked into the living room. He was built like one of the bouncers at a trendy nightclub, his thick chest packed into a dress shirt that buttoned up to his neck. His features were coarse, like God hadn’t quite finished with him before he’d wandered off to be born. A thick bristle of black hair stood out on his square head. It was so much like Mike’s and Hyung-Shik’s haircuts, I almost asked him if it was just a number you picked on a menu at the stylist, but the grim set of his face gave me pause.
If I were a betting man, I’d say he wasn’t happy to see me there. When he thrust his jaw out at me, it was like I’d won the jackpot.
“Who’s this?” He remained standing, spreading his feet apart and looking down at me.
“Cole McGinnis. I’m investigating Hyun-Shik Kim’s death.” I did the obviously male aggression thing to do. I stood up and offered my hand to him, looking down at his shorter height with a half-smirk. “And you are?”
He didn’t take up my offer of a handshake, turning instead to the grieving widow and placing his palm on her shoulder. Victoria turned slightly, angling her knees toward him, and I watched their eyes dance together for a moment before she tilted her head toward me, sweeping h
er hair behind her shoulder with an elegant push of her hand.
“Mr. McGinnis,” she said, ignoring my offer to use my first name. The heat of her body language cooled down considerably toward me as she focused her wiles on him. “This is Brian Park. He’s… was… one of Henry’s coworkers.”
“Coworker?” I kept it a question. “Nice of you to come by and help out.”
“I’m more of a family friend, really.” He shot her a look, his fingers working into her shoulder like a cat kneading a lap. “I met Henry through work, but we became close friends. Of course I’d be here for Victoria.” She perked up a bit, brightening back into the feminine archetype I’d first met.
“Huh.” I took out my notebook, scribbling down some nonsense. “Park, that’s Korean, isn’t it? And you work for Mr. Kim, Hyun-Shik’s father?”
“Yes, I work for his firm. Hyun-Shik was my manager, but we became friends,” he said. Crossing over behind her, he leaned against the back of the chair, placing Victoria between us. “I don’t see what being Korean has to do with anything.”
“I was just wondering if you’d seen the note he left and if you could read it.” I drew out a copy I had tucked into the notebook, offering it to Park to read. He shook his head, not taking the paper. “No, you didn’t read it, or you can’t read it?”
“I didn’t read it because it’s a private matter. A lot of our clients are Korean.” He pursed his lips. “Being able to understand hangul is a job requirement.”
“Did either of you have any idea that Hyun-Shik was going to Dorthi Ki Seu that night?” I asked, watching their faces.
“No,” Brian responded firmly. Victoria remained silent, clasping her hands in her lap. “He kept that part of his life secret. Neither of us even suspected he… liked men. He kept it hidden from me. Maybe someone in his family knew, but I didn’t.”
“If I’d known, I wouldn’t have married him,” she finally spoke up, clearing her throat. The wash of tears was back, swimming just on the edges of her lashes. “I hate that he made me live a lie.”