Dead Soon Enough: A Juniper Song Mystery (32 page)

I cut her off. “Right. This place. It isn’t on the books. You would’ve lost your job.”

She nodded, and I could see that her eyes were welling. The sight made me push an advantage.

“I mean, not that you couldn’t have found another job. You’re a pretty Korean girl in Koreatown. You could’ve gotten a hostess job anywhere. But I guess the average barbecue joint doesn’t pay illegal casino money.” I lit another cigarette, stuck it in my mouth, took a long drag while I looked at her with concentrated contempt. “This girl’s been missing for months. If she’s alive, she’s not having fun, and you might’ve helped her as soon as she was reported missing. If she’s dead, you’ve held back what could be vital information in a murder investigation.” I shook my head. “I hope you get some great fucking benefits.”

She was tearing up. “I have a daughter,” she said. “Please, don’t torture me. I’m trying to do what’s right now.”

I was moved in spite of myself, but I didn’t show it. She looked about twenty-two, and I did feel sorry for her. In any case, it looked like my guilt trip had done its job.

“What did she want?”

“The first time, she came by herself and charmed her way in. She drank and joked around with the other customers, even the old Korean men who barely spoke English. I swear I don’t remember anything she said. But the second time, she talked to me.” She stopped talking and bit her lip. “She asked if I’d seen the doctor.”

“Did she ask anyone else?”

“I don’t know. I told her where he was gambling.”

“But at the very least, several people must have seen her.”

“Yes, but no one ever mentions it. Sometimes I think I imagined her.”

I thought about what Nora might have wanted with Van, a man she only knew as her best friend’s cousin-in-law and sometime paramour. I was still figuring it out, trying to visualize the connections as I talked to Ara. The only thing I knew was that there could be no coincidence this massive, this hidden, this potentially harmful.

“No. I’m sure you didn’t,” I told her. “Did she find him?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“So when her face came on the news, did anyone talk about it?”

“No one.”

“Did you tell anyone?”

“Yes. I told my manager.”

“Who is he?”

“Please.” She sniffled loudly. “Don’t tell anyone I talked to you.”

I dropped it. I knew what I had to do next, anyway. “Okay. What did your manager say?”

She bit down on her lip again and it trembled. “He said I must have been mistaken, but that to be safe, I should keep my theories to myself.”

Fifteen

Ara gave me our IDs and went to fix her makeup while I collected Rob from the poker table. He was almost sorry to leave—he was about two hundred dollars richer than when he’d started. I explained what I’d found out on our drive back downtown.

“So if Nora found Van, he might have been the last person to see her alive,” he said, gripping the steering wheel.

“And I think she must have found him.”

“But what for?”

“I’m trying to figure that out.” My mind was frothing with ideas, but all of them hinged on knowledge that wasn’t mine to share—about Lusig and Rubina and Alex. Instead I said, as authoritatively as I could, “I have to talk to Van.”

“The man you think is a murderer?”

“The man I’ve been hired to investigate.”

“When are you planning to do this?”

“Tonight,” I said. “As soon as I get my car.”

“You don’t think I should go with you?”

“Wouldn’t make sense. He might talk to me if I go about it the right way. I mean, granted, he wasn’t around a whole lot but I lived in Van’s house. He’s never seen you before in his life.”

“Will you be safe?”

“Safe as I ever am doing this kind of thing. I’m planning to meet him in a public place.”

He looked worried but seemed to know better than to tell me how to do my job.

He dropped me off at my car and gave me a kiss that suggested I should come back to him alive sometime. “Be careful,” he said. “Text me when you get home.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “I’ve met scarier murderers than Dr. Van Gasparian.”

*   *   *

It was close to midnight when I left downtown, and I hoped Van was still awake. I texted him to meet me at the bar with the mermaids on the walls, and that I’d be there in fifteen minutes.

The place was as empty as the last time, and I sat in the same booth with another pint of Guinness in a dirty-looking glass. My phone indicated that Van had read my message, and given how much he was hiding, I knew he’d have to show. He couldn’t afford to ignore a late-night summons from his wife’s private eye of choice.

I drank slowly while I waited, mulling over the facts as I knew them, trying to fit them into one coherent story. The loose threads were starting to come together, and my mind buzzed with a final sense of convergence that had been missing when Kizil was my primary suspect. I prepped my phone to record whatever Van had to say. I had a feeling I’d want to have it on tape.

He arrived around a quarter after midnight, in a sweater and wrinkled slacks. He looked alert, but I guessed he’d run out the door as fast as he could manage without freaking out Rubina. He had the nervous air of a hunted man.

I waved him over and he sat across from me, keeping his eyes trained on mine.

“What’s this about?” he asked without preamble.

I decided not to keep him in suspense. “I want to talk to you about your gambling addiction.”

He blinked. “What gambling addiction?”

“I followed you to Seoul Tokyo,” I said. “I know it’s not just a Korean restaurant.”

“You followed me?” He rose in his seat, his voice prickling with anger. Then he slumped back down. “Oh, God. Ruby.”

I didn’t confirm his wife’s involvement, but I didn’t have to. “Tell me about the gambling,” I said.

“I need to talk to my wife,” he said, gathering himself up to leave. “If I have to have this conversation, it should be with her.”

This was true enough, and if his gambling were the end of it, I wouldn’t have confronted him directly. But I couldn’t let him go now. “We’re having a conversation you won’t want to have with your wife,” I said. “You told me that if it ever came down to it, I should side with Rubina over Lusig. Does that mean you’d like me to tell her whatever Lusig tells me?”

He stopped moving and gave me a long, searching look. “I need a drink,” he said, and walked to the bar to get one.

I didn’t stop him. Given everything else, falling off the wagon was the least of his problems. And besides, he might talk more easily with some booze warming his gullet.

I watched him take a shot and come back with a tall glass of what looked and smelled like straight vodka. He sat down wearily. “I knew the minute I met you that you would ruin me one day.”

“I don’t traffic in anything as grand as that,” I said. “All I do is turn on the light.”

“I knew,” he continued, ignoring my wisdom. “God, it was so fucking idiotic to begin with. She knew it was nuclear to send a private eye after Lusig. That’s why she didn’t consult me. If she’d asked my opinion I would’ve dissuaded her in a second.” He pressed a thumb deep into his brow. “But once she figured out hiring a private detective was something she could do, I knew it was only a matter of time before she put you to every possible use.”

“It’s not my fault you have a mountain of shit to hide. And honestly, what did you think was going to happen? You’re married. Money problems don’t stay in the closet.”

He took another sip of vodka. “I know. It was only a matter of time until this came out once I started using the joint account.”

“Do you have other accounts?”

“We have separate accounts on top of our joint account. I had a trust fund kick in when I turned thirty-five.”

“Then why dip into— Right. You depleted it.”

His expression was soggy with shame. He added another swill of vodka to the mix. “I grew up wealthy,” he said.

“I’ve gathered.”

“I understand that this isn’t sympathetic, but I truly did not know that money could be so finite. That everything I had could slip through my fingers so quickly.”

“How did it happen?”

“The same way it happens to anyone. I started gambling. I didn’t stop.”

“When did you start?”

“Not until a couple of years ago. After the house was bought.”

“After you stopped drinking?”

He nodded. “It seemed less harmful. We had plenty of money, and I was making more of it every day.”

“You said you didn’t think you could have a family with an alcohol problem. It didn’t cross your mind that gambling might get out of control, too?”

“You’re right.” He took another gulp of vodka and set the glass down hard. “I’m a failure of a husband. A failure of a father before Alex was even born. Is that what you want to hear?”

“No, I don’t care how sorry you feel for yourself. I want to hear what happened.”

I waited, and after a sullen minute, he continued. “I heard about this place, Seoul Tokyo. From a coworker. Korean guy with a high-roller dad. He was telling a fantasy story, the kind that happens once in a while if you play regularly enough. Heroic gamble, six-figure payoff.”

“How much do you have to gamble to get a six-figure payoff?”

“Six figures. Many, many times.” He laughed emptily. “I have stories like that, too. A few of them. Always told myself I’d quit if I was far enough ahead. Never fully believed myself.”

“So you got into this place. Became a high roller. And then what, you ended up six figures in debt?”

He nodded and drank. He looked miserable, damp with a nervous sweat.

“But you’re still playing,” I said. “You’re paying for past debts, and still creating new ones?”

“I’m not losing like I used to. If I pay a couple grand a month for a while, I will be in the clear.”

“You were hoping Rubina wouldn’t notice a couple grand a month?”

“It didn’t seem impossible.”

“How can you possibly know you’ll pay it off if you keep gambling? You spent what must’ve been a sizeable trust fund. How do you know you won’t sink the joint account, hand over the house?”

“I wouldn’t do that to Ruby,” he said earnestly.

I almost laughed. “You don’t seem to have the best self-control.”

“They won’t take everything,” he blurted.

“And who’s ‘they’?” I asked.

“Do you even have to ask? Some scary fucking people.”

“Criminals,” I said. “The organized kind.”

He nodded. “The casino extended me a line of credit. It didn’t occur to me to ask where it was coming from.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Maybe it did occur to me. But I didn’t want to know.”

“How on earth do you know they won’t take everything?”

“That wasn’t an option. So, I struck a deal to stanch the bleeding.”

“Jesus. This is some
Godfather
shit,” I said. “Tell me how.”

“One night I was at the tables, and I got called to the front of the house. This man I’d never met before told me to get in a car. I knew I couldn’t say no.”

“Who was he?”

“He calls himself Hong. Who knows if that’s his real name.”

“Korean man?” I felt a twinge of disgust.

“I don’t know. Korean, Chinese. Asian, yes. That’s about all I know. I don’t even know his role, except that he was sent after me.”

“Was it just him?”

“No. There was the driver. Boris.”

“Hong and Boris,” I said, trying out the names. They sounded fake, placeholder aliases for an Asian and an Eastern European. “They just up and introduced themselves?”

“I learned their names later,” he said. “Boris, by the way—I know what Boris does. He’s pure muscle. I knew that as soon as I saw him. I thought he was going to be the last face I saw on this earth.”

“Where did they take you?”

“I don’t know where, exactly. They blindfolded me. I thought I was being taken to be executed. I was begging for my life and no one was responding. I almost pissed myself.”

“But they didn’t execute you.”

“No. They took me to a house. When they took my blindfold off, I was looking at what I thought was a crime scene. There was blood on the carpet, and it was leaking out of a dead man.”

“Only, he wasn’t dead,” I guessed.

He looked at me curiously. “You see where this is going, then.”

“You got lucky, or unlucky, depending on how you look at it,” I said. “The mob was in the market for a surgeon.”

He nodded. “I saved that man’s life. Who knows if that’s a good thing. I never found out who he was.”

“And I’m guessing they didn’t thank you profusely, forgive your debts, and drop you off to live in peace with your family.”

“The way I understand it is they’d been looking for a surgeon they could trust.”

“You mean a surgeon they could pinch by the balls when they held him in their pocket. Did they know what you did for a living before they extended that line of credit?”

“Yes,” he said. He looked mildly embarrassed, and I pictured him pulling rank at a card table, demanding the respect due to his prestigious profession.

“So you became the mob doctor. I’d think that’s a full-time job. Is it not?”

“No. Emergencies only, and not all emergencies. Only injuries they don’t want taken to the hospital,” he said.

“Injuries that imply criminality.”

“It wouldn’t help anyone if they started to overuse me. As it is, I’ve already had to leave an overnight shift without any notice. That kind of thing draws attention. No one wants me drawing attention, at work or at home.”

“You, least of all.”

“Me, least of all.” He stared at his glass and took a long sip.

“Have they ever had you kill anyone?” I asked.

He wiped his mouth and curled his upper lip in a display of disgust. “Good God, no. I’m a doctor.”

“We’re well beyond the scope of the Hippocratic oath here. Doctors have easy ways to kill people. I had to ask.”

“I would never do something like that,” he said.

I wondered if he’d convinced himself I wouldn’t ask about Nora. “Did you ever see anyone they’d hurt?”

“I tried to learn as little as possible about what they did, who they hurt, if they hurt anyone at all.”