Beware Beware (26 page)

“Basically. Just stressed out. Client was arrested today.”

She blinked meaningfully. “Song, your client—he isn't the guy they say killed Joe Tilley, is he?”

I stiffened at the name of the dead man. It wasn't generally acceptable for a private eye to go around advertising her client list. I shouldn't have said anything about Jamie getting arrested—it was too much of a giveaway. But now that she'd caught on, I realized I'd put out the bait on purpose. I wanted her to ask, because I wanted an excuse to tell her.

When Diego was around, I had his ear whenever I wanted it. I could tell him anything, and I'd know with absolute certainty that I could trust him to keep my confidence. But Diego was dead, and Jackie was, by default, my oldest friend. I was aching to talk to her.

“This stays between you and me,” I said, and I started to recount my bloody adventure.

She listened, slumped back against the couch, with a look of worry and horror taking shape on her face.

“Wait,” she said. “Wait, wait, wait. This Winfred guy, he was murdered, too?”

“Yeah, can you believe it?”

She was silent for a while, but a tightness in her features told me to wait for her to talk.

“It's happening again,” she said finally.

“What do you mean?” I asked, as if I didn't know.

“People are getting killed, lives are being ruined, and you're standing there, in the middle of it, dragging the whole mess around.”

“It isn't like that,” I said. “This is my job.”

“Then don't bring it to me. You shouldn't have told me these things.”

All at once I saw myself as she saw me, and the vision left me mortified and stinging. I missed Diego with fiercer longing than I'd felt for anything in a long time. “I'm sorry,” I said. “It's just that if Diego were here I'd be telling him, and you—”

“Well guess what, Song,” she said icily. “Diego's not here. He died during your last rampage across the city.”

She softened when she saw the tears forming, and though we made up, I left shortly after. Neither of us mentioned Cristina. I didn't get to see her at all.

 

Fifteen

I was supposed to meet Donnie at El Cholo on Western, in the heart of Koreatown. It was an old stately Mexican joint that pre-dated the big influx of Korean immigrants in the sixties and seventies. It was a survivor from another phase of the neighborhood, a jellyfish swimming among dolphins.

I had more time on my hands than I'd thought I would, and decided to settle in early. I chose a booth in the back corner of the restaurant. A waitress in a full flamenco skirt came by, and I asked her for a margarita. I wondered if I was wasting my time meeting Donnie. He'd insinuated that he might know something about the Tilley murder, but now that I was waiting for him, I started to doubt he had any solid information. I hoped I was wrong. I felt the screws tighten with Jamie's arrest, and any lead was worth chasing down. Besides, I had to eat dinner sometime.

Donnie arrived looking more put together than he had before. He wore pants and real shoes, and a short-sleeved button-down with a tank top underneath. His hat was gone, and I saw that his hair line was prematurely receding.

“Sorry,” he said brightly. “Traffic, am I right? I'm starving.”

He sat down and opened a menu. We ordered dinner, tamales and fajitas, and I gathered, more or less, that I was on a date.

“You like Mexican food?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“How about Mexican dudes?”

“Some of them. Are you Mexican?”

“Yeah, girl, I'm a Cholo.” He laughed.

I saw a dubious opportunity and took it. “What's your last name?” I asked.

“Perez,” he said.

I remembered the same last name on his car's registration. A mom, maybe, or an aunt.

“And you're like, Korean or what?”

Donnie was talkative, and I spent most of the meal nodding and letting him expound on dogs and soccer and Batman. He struck me as sweet and harmless for a member of a criminal organization, maybe a Bobby Bacala sort of guy. He wasn't too smart, which was okay by me.

“So,” I said, when there was a lull in his conversation. “Do you really know anything about Joe Tilley's murder, or were you just trying to lure me out to dinner?”

“You caught me.” He smiled. “Honestly, I have no idea how that worked.”

I smirked. “So Tilley wasn't scamming Young King somehow?”

“Doubt it. And neither was Jamie, as far as I saw.”

“They think he did it,” I said. “They arrested him. Did you see that happen?”

“Nah,” he said. “I got taken off him the minute he got mixed up in that murder. Ain't nobody—”

“You what?”

My tone froze him and he looked at me with shifting eyes.

“Then what were you doing outside my house the other morning?”

“Shit.” He smiled guiltily and rubbed at his forehead.

I remembered him sleeping while Jamie drove away. “You didn't even know he was there, did you?”

He shook his head.

“So who were you looking for?” I swallowed a thick glob of saliva. “Me?”

“Alright, just between you and me, okay?” He motioned for me to bring my face closer. “It was this other guy. Same kind of deal. Boss thought he was misbehaving.”

“What other guy? Why my house?”

“I guess he was supposed to show up there. And he did. About an hour after you left.”

I felt a tingle at the back of my head, a premonition that started to make me dizzy.

“What was his name?”

“Something funny. Like a dog's name.” He tapped at his chin with one finger. I took a long sip from my margarita, letting him know he should keep on thinking. “Got it,” he said with a high laugh. “It was Winfred Bark.”

“No,” I said reflexively.

“What? You know the name?” Donnie looked at me with concern, then started waving his hand in my face. “Earth to Song, is anyone home?”

I batted the hand away. “You know that's a dead man, don't you?”

“Who? Winfred Bark?”

“He got shot in the face, sometime yesterday.”

His jaw dropped and he brought a hand up as if to put it back in place.

“You're that surprised?” I asked. “I mean what did you think Young King wanted with him?”

“I didn't think anything. I just did what I was told, you know?”

“Which was what?”

“See if he showed up at that address, and if so, follow him and see where he went.”

“And where did he go?”

“He stood outside that apartment for a while, I guess trying to get let in. Then he went to another apartment in K-Town, maybe just home. I don't know.”

I didn't ask him what he did next. I could fill in the blanks as well as he could, and I didn't want to alienate him. I regretted telling him Winfred had died at all.

“You look kind of shaken,” I said. “I mean, you hang around with some scary people. Dead bodies aren't so unheard of, I wouldn't think.”

“I'm new to this crew. I was just doing, like, small-time drug stuff before. Stupid street stuff.”

“For the Rampart Gang?”

He shook his head. “Nah. The San Fernando Cobras.”

“Sounds like a shitty baseball team. Is that Tin Tin's outfit?”

“Yeah.”

“But not Young King's? How'd you get involved with him?”

“I met him at a party and tried to sell him shit. He kind of clowned on me but we hit it off and he ended up recruiting me.”

“And what, there were no consequences from the Cobras?”

“People respect the Young King. And now I'm like the go-between.”

“How long's it been?”

“Just a few months.”

“Better benefits?”

“What?”

“How do you like the new job?”

“It's been good. I just work for Young King now. It's like, simple. But I haven't seen any shit yet, you know?” He shook his head. “Young King, he keeps things clean.”

“What's that supposed to mean? Obviously, he isn't avoiding criminal activity.”

“You don't understand. Young King is special.”

“How so?”

“He has presence, you know? He doesn't come off like some thug. He's smart, and that's why people respect him.”

“For his brain.”

“He didn't go to college or nothing but he knows people, like it's a gift. He can just tell who's going to prosper, who's going to fold, what he can do to them, what they'll let him get away with. And that's why he's the Young King.”

He was talking fast now, and I felt sorry for him, this naïve little gangster in awe of his master.

“Maybe,” I said gently. “But maybe he kills people, too.”

*   *   *

When we stepped out of the restaurant, there was a man leaning against the building, watching the doorway. He was short and muscular with a ruddy tinge to his skin. He looked young, maybe twenty-four or twenty-five, and he was dressed like a high school student, in a big white T-shirt and cargo pants. But there was something dead serious about his demeanor, his graceful feminine features turned stony through the set of his jaw, the hard glint in his deep brown eyes. There was a cold intelligence in his expression. He turned these on Donnie, who stopped moving. “Hey man,” Donnie said. “What're you doing here?”

The man shoved off the wall and walked toward us with large, confident steps. “Come with me, Donnie. I need to talk to you.” Then he looked at me, and his gaze was both distant and penetrating. “You come, too.”

“Sorry,” I said. “Who are you?”

He pressed his hand to his stomach, and the T-shirt moved around the outline of something hard in his waistband—something hard and mechanical. “Just come,” he said. He flicked toward a black Corolla with his head, and we followed.

He got in the driver's seat, and Donnie sat up front. I climbed into the back, feeling my heartbeat in my ears. I'd only seen a gun up close once, and that one, sure as Chekhov's, had fired away.

The man turned to me and, handing me a black handkerchief, ordered, “Give me your stuff and put this on.” I obeyed, taking care to show him the empty inside of every pocket before tying the blind tight around my head.

“What's going on, man?” Donnie asked, and by the mixture of chumminess and suppressed fear in his tone, I gathered we were riding with the Young King.

I tried to recall everything I knew about this man, and found that the list of facts was frightfully short. He'd been responsible for recruiting Jamie into the drug business; he'd sent little goon Donnie after two men who ended up on different sides of two different murders. And now, he had kidnapped me from the side of the road, with nothing to lure me but the threat of death.

Young King was silent, and Donnie persisted. “King? Yo, King? What's going on?”

When he piped up for a third time, I heard a clapping sound—Young King had silenced Donnie, I guessed by putting a hand on his mouth.

I kept quiet, and the three of us drove in bumpy silence for a distended, indeterminable period of time. I could see nothing through the black cloth of the handkerchief save for variations in texture when I blinked. Instead, I felt the road beneath us like I was an animal, running on treacherous ground. Each turn sent my inner compass spinning, and each bump reached up and grabbed at my stomach. When we finally stopped, it was after a series of short turns that suggested we were prowling along residential streets. Young King pulled in and got out of the car with the engine still running.

I felt Donnie turn to me, and without seeing him at all I read my worst fears reflected in him.

“You'll be okay,” he said in a tight whisper, addressed, ostensibly, to me.

“The key.” I looked down and moved my mouth as little as possible. “Is it still in the ignition?”

“Yeah. But he's right there.”

We were considering the same mode of escape, weighing its improbability, its possible necessity.

“Where are we?” I asked. “Where did he go?”

There was a heavy sound like the fall of a ladder, and Donnie said, “Shh, he's coming back.”

Young King returned to the car and drove it forward some fifteen feet. I wondered if he could sense our impulse and failure to run. I wondered if he left the key in the ignition on purpose.

He killed the engine and the car filled with light.

“You can take that off now,” he said.

I pushed the tight handkerchief up on my forehead and rubbed my eyes. We were sitting in a small garage—a residential one, not like Taejin's. I stopped myself from looking around too frantically. I wanted most of all to catch a glimpse of Young King's face in the rearview mirror, but I found I couldn't bring myself to look. I remembered standing in the bathroom as a child, chanting Bloody Mary twice before giving up and finding my mother. As if something irrevocable would happen if I dared myself to stare into the glass.

The light faded out again, and we sat in the dark listening to a close din of crickets. My face was warm and getting damp with the creeping perspiration of imminent illness. The handkerchief felt like a blanket on a hot night, and I pulled it off my head.

After several minutes, Young King spoke again, for the second time all night. “Donnie,” he said. “Come help.”

Donnie unbuckled his seat belt like he was on a timed trial, and the two of them exited the car. As I hadn't been given instructions, I stayed put in the backseat, my eyes still adjusting to the unlit space.

I watched them through the screen of the rear window as they walked to the open garage door. They stood silhouetted against the jumbled dark of the Los Angeles night. I tried to make out any landmarks, to see if I could guess at our location. There were no clues on that backdrop, no stars or skyline I could even try to navigate.