by Rhys Ford
Funny how she slid him so easily into the past tense when Jae-Min still had difficulties acknowledging his cousin’s death. Brian circled around to sit in the chair next to her, reaching for her hand. They were the picture of grief, his rough face softened with concern for her. It was almost believable, except for the flit of her fingers along the inside of his thigh as he pulled her hand into his lap.
“No one blames you for how you feel. He probably felt guilty about it all,” Park said, patting her arm. “That’s why he killed himself. He loved you, Victoria. He loved you and Will.”
“Actually, that’s kind of why I came by.” I sat back down, ignoring the fact that my knees nearly blackened my eyes. The couch groaned its displeasure at my weight. “His death. Not about how much he loved you.”
“That’s what you said.” Victoria made a show of dabbing the edges of her eyes. “To talk about Henry’s suicide.”
“Yeah.” I went back to my portfolio, sliding Hyun-Shik’s note back into the side sleeve. “Sort of.”
“Sort of?” Park frowned, creasing his eyebrows together until they were a solid black caterpillar crawling over his forehead. “He committed suicide at a sex club. He left a note. What else is there to talk about?”
“Brian!” Victoria hissed. “Will is upstairs! Keep your voice down.”
“Sorry,” he said. I doubted his apology. It was easy to doubt with his thumb stroking the inside of her wrist. The heat of his caress kicked up a wave of her perfume, a floral, musky scent that lingered between them. Nope, I wasn’t convinced at all that he was sorry Hyun-Shik had died—or about where he died.
Maybe it was just me, but it seemed like Brian Park was more interested in the Widow Kim than he should have been. She pulled away from him, wringing her hands together. Her mouth slimmed into a thin line, creasing her pink lipstick.
“Mr. McGinnis, the fact is that my husband Henry killed himself in some disgusting place that he crawled off to have sex with other men.” Victoria’s façade cracked, showing me a glint of the ice she had hidden underneath. “I loved Henry, the Henry that I thought I knew. The man who died was a stranger to me, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I hate him for that.”
“See, that’s what I have a problem with, Mrs. Kim. I don’t think your husband killed himself,” I said softly. “I think he was murdered.”
Chapter 8
I HAD to give Victoria this. She had more balls than Brian. There wasn’t so much as a twitch on her face when I announced that I thought someone had killed her husband. Brian Park, on the other hand, turned the color of a well-done pork chop.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Suddenly the family friend was no longer concerned about consoling the widow as much as he was about tearing me apart. A vein popped up along his forehead, throbbing violently as he stood up. “You think this is a joke?”
“No, I’m quite serious.” I watched Victoria’s expression change from placid grief to a more stricken alarm. She glanced up the staircase, and her face calmed when she saw no one there. “I think Hyun-Shik… Henry… was murdered. The note he left wasn’t an apology about his suicide. It was a part of a note he wrote to someone who was shot to death yesterday.”
“Who? It couldn’t have been his whore cousin, Jae-Min,” Victoria spat. “If it was, I’d have heard Mama Kim’s screaming for joy from here.”
“No, it wasn’t his cousin.” I didn’t have Victoria’s fortitude. I winced when I heard her talk about Jae like that. He’d been right. There certainly wasn’t much love for him at either of the Kim households. “The note was for one of the club’s employees, a man named Jin-Sang Yi. He was a… friend of your husband’s.”
“I don’t need to know the name of my husband’s whores, Mr. McGinnis.” Victoria was done being warm. She eyed me carefully, measuring something she couldn’t put her finger on. From the tightness in her face, I was fairly certain I wouldn’t be getting any invites to any of her upcoming tea parties.
“I think it’s time you got out, McGinnis.” Park paced, shoving his fists into his pockets. A rush of anger made his face a deep red, and it mottled at the lines on his high forehead. “Just get the hell out and leave her alone.”
“Victoria, don’t you want to know the truth?” I kept an eye on him, but I wasn’t going to budge from the sofa. He didn’t come any closer to me, but the threat of violence lingered. “If Hyun-Shik didn’t kill himself, wouldn’t you want to know that?”
“As far as I’m concerned,” she said calmly, “Henry killed himself as soon as he set foot inside of that disgusting place. Even if he didn’t love me, Will should have been enough for him. Enough to keep him from going to some boy to suck him off.”
Her beauty was gone, replaced by an ugly temper. With her lips curled back, she looked like a cornered dog defending a bone it had found in the yard. I could almost taste the hatred she had in her heart. Hyun-Shik Kim would get no sympathy from his wife if ever he met her in the afterlife. The most he could hope for would be the tip of her stiletto heel into the base of his skull, and that would be if she was feeling generous.
“You can leave now, Mr. McGinnis,” Victoria said, smoothing her skirt as she stood. “You can tell the Kims that they can chase after ghosts if they want, but I’m going to move on with my life. I married a man who used me. Henry told me he loved me, then snuck around behind my back to fuck other men. A woman I could have at least dealt with. But men?”
“You don’t know that he did that,” Park said. His fingers circled her wrist lightly, drawing Victoria to him. “We don’t know that he was unfaithful to you, Vicki. Don’t do that to yourself.”
“How can I ignore that?” Her voice pitched up, a shrill cut to it as she turned on him. “All those late nights when he was supposedly working? How the hell am I supposed to trust that now?”
“You have to trust that he wasn’t going to endanger you or Will,” he insisted. “That boy was his life.”
“Do you know the most disgusting thing about this, Mr. McGinnis?” Victoria pulled herself up, squaring her shoulders. The temptress was gone, and in its place was a hard, strong column of a woman. “I had to go to my doctor and ask him to run tests on me so I could make sure that Henry hadn’t brought home some disease from his screwing around. I had to subject myself to the looks that I got from the nurses there because my husband couldn’t stop himself from sticking his dick in some man’s ass. God help me if he got Will sick.”
“Vicki, don’t say that.” Park gave up the illusion of friendship and folded her into his arms. “Will’s fine. You’re fine.”
“The only reason I might be fine is because Henry and I didn’t even touch each other for the last year.” She laughed, a sour vinegar of a sound. “I used to think it was because I’d gotten soft after Will. That it was something about me, that Henry didn’t find me attractive anymore. Now I find out that the problem was that I didn’t have the right parts for him. So you tell me, Mr. McGinnis, how the hell am I supposed to care about a man who lied to my face about loving me?”
“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully.
“If he was murdered, it was probably because he pissed someone else off,” Victoria whispered. She struggled to contain her anger, restoring the iciness she’d worn earlier. “I’m not going to lose sleep over him. I can’t. Now, if you excuse me, I’m going to go check on the one real thing Henry left me. Brian, can you see him out?”
We both watched as she headed to the staircase, her heels clicking on the floor when she reached the foyer. The sun from the tall windows turned her hair to a bright honey, and she stood for a moment in its warmth, tilting her chin up when she turned toward me.
“I don’t want to see you again, Mr. McGinnis,” Victoria said, gripping the banister tightly. “If I do, I’m going to call the Kims and tell them that they won’t be seeing their grandson anymore. And honestly, considering how Henry turned out, I’m beginning to think that not having them in Will’s life would be the be
st thing for him.”
I SAT in my car for a bit, resting my forehead against the steering wheel. Curtains fluttered in a window on the second floor of the Kims’ home, so I knew someone was watching me, probably waiting for me to take my suspicions off down the road. I believed Victoria when she said she didn’t care how her husband died. I heard the hatred in her voice and the trembling fear she’d tucked away when she’d spoken about her son being sick.
“I hope to fucking God you used a condom, Hyun-Shik,” I said, turning the ignition key. “Because if she catches anything, she’s going to piss on your ashes and serve it as soup to your parents.”
My head hurt, a gentle throb to let me know that not only had I skimped on restful sleep, but also that the beer I’d drunk lingered somewhere in my body, its yeasty goodness muddying my blood.
“Getting too old, McGinnis,” I sighed, turning my blinker on and waiting for the light to change. “Used to be you could drink all night and wake up a few hours later all fresh and ready to go. Now look at you. Having a few beers and lusting after some young Korean boy. You should know better.”
I called Mike up as I maneuvered the Rover through the lower canyons. Listening to the chirping ring through my earpiece, I scanned the hillsides, not pleased with the sagebrush choking the landscape. It was looking to be a dry year, perfect conditions for wildfires. After the last wave of firestorms that had ripped through the district, the canyons were preparing for another hard burn.
“Yeah?” My brother answered the phone through a mouthful of something. “What’s up, Cole?”
“I just left the Widow Kim.” A truck slowed in front of me, and I tapped on the brakes, keeping the Rover at a distance. “I shared the good news that maybe her husband didn’t kill himself.”
“And let me guess, she wasn’t too happy about it?” Mike swallowed, a gulping noise that buzzed the phone’s speakers.
“Was that a lucky guess, or did she call you?”
“Called me,” Mike laughed. “You pissed her off. Started making noises about suing me, which I shut down fast enough.”
“She didn’t waste any time.” I wasn’t surprised. Victoria Kim seemed like the type of woman who could quickly put her ducks in a row and then blow them away with a .22 handgun. “Mrs. Kim wasn’t too happy about Hyun-Shik being gay. I think the dying part of the equation was a bonus for her.”
“Think she had something to do with it?” he asked. The sounds of papers being shuffled around nearly drowned out Mike’s voice, and I waited a moment until he was done. “You there?”
“Yeah, I was listening to you do origami boulder, there,” I said, then told him about the original note Hyun-Shik wrote Jin-Sang and walking in on Yi’s death. Mike’s low whistle was enough to sink any doubts I had left over. “I’m kind of worried about Jae-Min. We should keep an eye on him in case someone moves in on him.”
“Wanna just move him into your place? He could be your houseboy.” No one could leer like my brother. It was a disgusting trait he shared with my father. I’d hoped that it had skipped me, but some of my former boyfriends assured me that no, I definitely was a McGinnis in that regard.
I was about to answer when I felt a tap on my rear bumper. It was normal, really, considering the uneven flow of traffic on the freeways. Usually someone who’d gotten a new car and hadn’t quite broken into the rhythm of driving it. The Rover could take most hits without even a blink, so I wasn’t all that worried. Besides, I’d dented it often enough on my own, driving through the hills on camping trips.
I was debating pulling over to see if there was any significant damage when there was another jolt, harder this time, and I glanced up, staring into my rearview mirror. Once was nothing to worry about, but twice seemed aggressive. My mirror was filled with the hard-lined front end of a new Econoline, its windows tinted much too dark to be close to legal. Pound for pound, I’d have to give the Ford the upper hand over my battered Rover. The sun glinted off its chrome, burning my eyes. I blinked, and my vision watered, then cleared right as the van surged again, slamming into the back of the Rover.
The hit jerked me forward, snapping my head back. I lost my earpiece when it hit again, a hard shove with its front bumper against the Rover’s back end. My tires squealed as I was shoved across the roadway. Mike’s voice screaming my name was lost under the crunch of the van hitting the Rover with a hard determination. I heard my rear quarter panel give under the impact, then my forehead hit the steering wheel, and all I could see were stars.
My back end slid out to the right, pushed by the van’s momentum. I fought the spin, trying to straighten the Rover out. I gunned the engine, turning into the spiral. Another hit slammed the side of my head into the car door. More stars, and I tasted blood in my mouth.
“Fucking son of a bitch.” I swallowed, gagging on the taste on my tongue. Mike’s yelling got louder, and the panic in my brother’s voice was palpable. I shouted down at the passenger well, hoping he could hear me, “Shut up! You’re not helping!”
My brother has always been a master of cursing. He didn’t fail me now. The words that came out of the headset were very clear. It was as if he were sitting right next to me. Next to his ability to burp the alphabet, it was one of his greatest talents.
“Screw this.” The other driver brushed up against the Rover, and I hit the brakes hard, letting it rush past me. “Let’s see how you like it.”
I kept the van to the right of me, edging the Rover’s formerly pristine front end against its rear. Accelerating, I hit the van’s back end, shoving it forward. The canyons flew past us, purple and grey lines of brush dotted with yellow. The scent of rubber and acrid smoke filled the Rover, and I choked on that more than I did my own blood.
Blinded, I gassed the Rover again, hoping to hit the van hard enough to push it into the median. The Rover’s front end gave, hooking into the Ford. The other driver slammed on his brakes, a flash of red lighting up the van’s rear, then the crinkle of plastic as the Ford’s taillights broke. I couldn’t stop fast enough, tangled into the other car’s backside, so I twisted the wheel, hoping I could at least put the side of the Rover into the van.
My world tilted sideways, then stopped. Sparks of light burst along the edge of my awareness, and then I choked, feeling blood fill my nasal cavities. Something gave way, the sound of metal tearing drowned out the rushing in my ears, and then there was a muted hum of noise that echoed through the Rover. I realized the sound was the running engine, punctuated by the rush of cars passing by. A few cars slowed to avoid the debris we’d left behind.
Mike’s yelling was a tin mosquito in my ear, and I fumbled to reach the headset lying on the carpet. I coughed, spitting mouthfuls of mucus and blood, and the throbbing in my face turned to a roaring pain. Swallowing, I tried to clear the viscous liquids at the back of my throat, trembling as I brought the earpiece up to my cheek.
“Mike, shut up. It’s okay,” I said, blinking to clear away the haze from my vision and waving aside the acrid smoke from the burning tires. A hand reached through the open window, and I jerked away, thinking it was the driver of the van coming to finish off the job.
“You okay, man?” Unless the owner of the Econoline was a dreadlocked woman, I was safe. She cocked her head at me, giving me a wide-eyed once-over. “You need an ambulance?”
“Nah, I’m good.” I must have sounded convincing, because she went back to her car and took off. My face hurt from where I’d hit it on the steering wheel, and my shoulders were wrenched from trying to keep the Rover upright. The Ford was long gone, leaving a trail of smashed plastic and glass in its wake.
“Cole, stay there. I’ll get someone out there to you,” Mike practically shouted into my ear. His voice only served to make the ringing bells in my temple take up another chorus.
“No, really, I’m all right.” I tested my teeth with the tip of my tongue. “Car’s a bit banged up, but I think it’s drivable.”
My brother’s heavy sigh reminded me of m
y father’s. I’d heard a lot of my father’s sighs in my lifetime. Mike’s was a nearly exact mimic. “What the hell happened? Did you roll the car?”
“No, I think someone’s not happy with me,” I said, hawking out another mouthful. It was more spit-colored this time, splattering on the scrub grass growing against the side of the highway. The Rover pulled forward without any issue, and I sped up on the shoulder, easing back into the flow of traffic. Mike buzzed in my ear, complaining about my stubbornness.
“Get to the doctor,” he scolded. “Or better yet, get over here and I’ll take you.”
“Nope,” I refused, listening to the Rover creak a bit when I switched lanes. The front end made a little noise, but nothing I was too worried about. “I’ve pissed someone off, and I’m going to find out who. I need to make sure that Jae’s okay. Someone’s going through Hyun-Shik’s friends, and sooner or later, they’re going to get to him too.”
I ENDED up in front of Jae’s squat brick apartment. If anything, the early dusk light made the place look even more depressed. I parked the Rover, easing the seat belt off. A sharp pain darted through my belly, and I gasped, swearing at the tightness curling the scar tissue under my shirt. Pressing my hand on the tear, I hissed through the pain in my side.
Around me, people continued their lives, televisions blaring and screaming at children who wouldn’t eat their dinners. It was early enough that the evening news filtered through the noise, a steady droning update on the price of being human. The neighborhood was like one of many in the county, a collection of poor on the edge of desperate.
Before I’d left the force, I’d been working on establishing contacts in a community like this one, spackled together homes bursting with families too large for their walls. It made for a tense living, and despite the glowing stories of success that occasionally surfaced in the news, most of the time, life here was a brutal, hard ride where violence was fed to a child in its breast milk. Death was a common visitor for one reason or another.