Dirty Laundry (6 page)

“Never piss off a jackrabbit,” I said, turning back to the mess of papers I’d left on my desk. “They’ll cut you.”

“Cole, Ichiro—”

“Mike, do you know what Ichiro means?” I turned in my chair and glared at him. “You follow enough baseball to know. It means
first son
. That’s what he was to her. She
left
us, Mike. She fucking left us with our asshole father and walked away.”

“We don’t know what happened between them.” It was a weak protest but the best one Mike had. Neither one of us knew what went on between our parents. Ichiro might, but he wasn’t on my buddy list at the moment.

“
We
happened between them.” I shoved the chair back, its wheels squealing across the floor. “Her
sons
. And now you want me to go sit around a fire and make s’mores with the kid she had after us? The kid she raised but couldn’t be bothered to drop us a fucking letter about?”

“That wasn’t his fault.” Mike’s chin came up, thrusting forward to challenge me. “He’s our
brother
, Cole.”

“Don’t want the one you got? I’m not good enough? Too gay? Too fucked-up?” I shot back. “So you’re going to go with the new one? What? He’s straight? Got kids? Has his shit together? Maybe he plays golf and can hook you up with some connections in Tokyo.”

I’d gone too far. Even as the words left my fucking mouth, I knew I’d gone too far. Mike reeled back a step, as if I’d punched him in the stomach, and all of the emotion drained from his face.

“Fuck you, Cole,” he said, not without some heat. His words were a calm, thin line, drawing something firm between us. “I didn’t deserve that.”

“No, you… fuck. Mike….” I reached for my brother and winced when he pulled away. “Dude, I’m sorry. Fuck, I just… this is too fucking much for me to deal with. You
knew
her. All I got were a couple of fucking pictures and a middle name I couldn’t pronounce. What the hell am I supposed to do with a guy who had her around? Especially after—”

“Barbara? Our stepmother?” Mike crossed the distance between us and placed his hands on my shoulders. Pushing me back down into my chair, he leaned over to look me in the eyes. “Baby brother, I know what she did was shitty and Dad fucked you up something bad, but none of that’s Ichiro’s fault. He didn’t know we thought Mom was dead.”

“I have a hard time believing that, man.”

“Cole, it’s true. He’s as pissed off about this as we are. He wanted to reach out to the brothers no one would talk about. You’re the one who’s always on my case to be more tolerant. Why can’t you find some of that shit for him?”

“Maybe.” I ground my teeth. “I’m just not fucking ready for this. For him. I need some time, Mike. Just some fucking time.”

“Time I can give.” Mike slapped me lightly on the face, stinging my cheek. “Just stop being a damned asshole about it.”

I
GOT
nowhere closer on the Madame Sun case, having only the shreds of information I’d gleaned through what I could find on the computer. Until Wong could e-mail me a few reports on the sly, I wasn’t going to find a connection between May Choi and Eun Joon Lee on the Internet. Setting aside my notes, I stared at Claudia’s empty chair and chewed on my lip.

She’d insisted I hire someone to cover the phones for the few more weeks she’d be out, but seeing someone else in her chair would feel like a betrayal of some sort. But, I needed someone in that chair if I was going to hit the streets or needed to go on a run.

But I wanted that person to be Claudia. I
needed
that person to be Claudia.

Lacking that, I reached for the phone and dialed up the next best thing, her oldest son, Martin.

“Hey, man,” Martin’s voice rumbled, lightening slightly when he realized it was me. “Mama’s asleep. I got her to take one of those pain meds.”

“Actually, I called to talk to you. I need some help.” I outlined what I needed, and he listened, murmuring every once in a while. “I’m hoping someone in your family might want to answer phones for me. Maybe even a couple of the kids? Even if just in the afternoon.”

Halfway through the conversation, I realized Martin might have reservations on sending another of his family to the exact same spot his mother’d been shot. Something with sharp teeth began to gnaw on the inside of my stomach. I’d be lucky if
Claudia
wanted to return.

“It’ll just have to be until Mama feels better.” Martin interrupted my panic attack. “She’s going to come back to work. You can lay money on that.”

“I’d understand if she—” I couldn’t get the words out. The bossy woman who’d moved into my life was too big a presence for me to let go. I’d bribe her with more money and a hot limousine driver if I had to, to get her back, but I couldn’t be certain she’d be safe. Swallowing my reluctance, I said as much to Martin.

Martin was definitely his mother’s son. “Bullshit, Cole. No one’s ever safe. You did your damned best for Mama, and she’s coming back. She’d kick my ass out of the way if I ever even tried to stop her. If any of the kids want to work for you, we’re okay with it. You hear me?”

“Got it,” I murmured, rubbing at my face. “Just until she comes back, then?”

“Just until she can come back,” he reassured me. “Let me see what everyone’s schedule is. I’ll get back to you later, okay?”

I hung up and leaned back in my chair. It squeaked once, then again when I rocked back and forth. It took me about five seconds before I was stir-crazy. My phone still didn’t have any messages from Jae, but that wasn’t unusual. If I wanted some attention, I was going to have to beard the lion in his den.

“’Course, I probably want to do things to my lion that never crossed David’s mind,” I mumbled to myself. It was too early to drop in on Jae. He’d growl and shove me back out the door if I crawled into his space this early in the afternoon. Armed with addresses of the crime scenes, I made the decision to sniff around the areas in case someone felt like talking. Even after a couple of weeks, something like a shooting was juicy gossip for a neighborhood.

I closed up the office, made a quick stop into the house, where Neko was appropriately worshiped, then left with a helping of tuna and egg. The arrival of cat food rendered me useless in her eyes, and she ate noisily, growling over her food.

“You’re welcome,” I said to the cat.

She did not deign to give me a reply I could understand, but it was pretty clear from the abrasive snarl she gave me, a coarse
fuck off
was somewhere in there. I locked the door behind me, leaving her eyebrow deep in the stench.

T
HE
City of Angels operated mostly on a grid pattern, with a few winding streets tossed in to fuck up a tourist trying to get from Hollywood to downtown. Adding to the confusion are three of the worst intersected freeways known to mankind. An innocent stranger to the molasses gridlock around the downtown exits could unsuspectingly take the wrong course among the five hundred options available amid the endless construction and find himself circling the area, hopelessly lost until he either ran out of gas or went mad from the hell he couldn’t escape.

Bobby was dead certain many of the street people trudging through downtown muttering to themselves were actually motorists who finally abandoned their cars and set to walking the cement and steel desert until the end of their days. I wasn’t all together certain he was wrong.

With this in mind, I kept to surface streets to head to Koreatown. The Wilshire area is ringed by a predominantly Hispanic zone on three sides with an affluent upper-class district to the North. Unlike most of LA’s neighborhoods, where the lines of demarcation were clear, rich on one side, poor on the other, Koreatown is a mishmash of middle class and poor, dotted with high-end stores and fantastic restaurants. The best hole-in-the-wall food can be found in the oddest corners, but getting there is always tricky.

I cut through Beverly Boulevard, turned down Western, and hunted down the address closest to me, the townhouse where Eun Joon Lee allegedly surprised her murderers. The townhouse was located near an all-you-can-gorge Korean barbeque place Jae took me to once to meet his friends. A space opened up and I parked on the street then strolled down to get a feeling of the place. Like much of Koreatown, residences ran mostly to apartment buildings, with the occasional complex of condos to ease the monotony. The Lees lived in one such rabbit warren.

It was a sans-serif U-shaped beige building formed around a garden courtyard with tall trees, thick flowering bushes, and spots of lawn mounds green enough to look fake. To call the place condos was misleading. They were converted apartments sold as individual homes and probably now governed by a rabid homeowners’ association to dictate the height of the greenscaping. From the looks of the courtyard, someone on the HOA was hoping someone would stop by and film a scene of
Jurassic Park V
in its murky green depths.

The Lees purchased a corner unit, giving them the spacious view of the complex’s parking lot. It was one of the places farthest from the archway entrance I’d walked through, and I got halfway past the courtyard before I was apprehended by a plump, older Korean woman wearing a floral housedress bright enough to blind someone wearing a pair of night-vision goggles. Her short salt-and-pepper hair was permed into loose curls around her mischievous face, and I gave her a short head nod to greet her.

“
An nyoung ha seh yo, nuna.
” I slaughtered the hello, but she dipped her head down and grinned at me. Jae at least would have been proud I tried, even as he winced and tried not to throw up at my pronunciation.

“
Aish
,
halmeoni
more like it.” I didn’t know the word but murmured something negative, and she tittered. She glanced toward the Lee place, then back to me. “You are another policeman?”

“No,
nuna
. I’m a private investigator. I was asked to look into what happened here.” Schooled by Jae’s admonishments, I avoided saying the word murder or death, letting my new companion lead the conversation. “You lived near to her?”

“Over one. Next door.” She nodded toward an orange and yellow door. “We have almost the same names, so sometimes it confused people. She was Eun Joon Lee but I’m Joon Eun Yi. The postman always gets our mail wrong. My sister is scared the thieves were looking for me, but I told her she was silly. What do I have? No, Eun Joon had much more to take, and that is why they were there.”

“Have the police been back since… the first time?”

“Pfah, the police do nothing. Just like when that crazy man down the street blew up all the garbage cans.” Ms. Yi made a face. “She was nice, and her husband … Dong-Ju Lee…worked hard for her. It is very sad.”

“Her husband’s last name is Lee?” I checked my notes. Eun Joon was in her early forties, but I had no information on her spouse. I was guessing they were similar in age or he was older. “Same last name, then?”

“They were cousins but no children. That’s a shame. Now, he is alone.” A calculating look briefly flitted over her smiling face. “Did he hire you?”

“Someone was concerned about the incident. Were you close to Mrs. Lee?”

“Eun Joon was—not to say anything bad—”

I nodded so both of us could silently agree that, while Eun Joon Lee was a saint, her ignoble death necessitated at least a modicum of gossip to be shared.

“Her family has money, more than her husband’s, and she never complained about where they were living….”

“But?” I seeded the conversation. There was always a
but
to gossip. It’s what made talking behind a neighbor’s back so delicious.

“Always high class, you know?” Ms. Yi sniffed the air, her neck wattle flapping back and forth under her chin. “She lived here like us, but she was very picky. Everything had to be just so, very Korean. Hardly anything from here. Even the music she listened to, very old. I was older than her, but her music was too old for me, more like my mother’s.”

I took it as an avenue to slide the conversation to where I needed it to go. “So she did a lot of things here that she’d do in Korea? Like a fortune-teller?”

“
Omo
, she wasted so much money on those people she went to. Not just one but two!” Ms. Yi made a disgusted face that rivaled anything Neko gave me when I put chilled cat food in front of her. “Let’s see, she saw Madame Sun and Gangjun Gyong-Si. I don’t go to either one of them. Too rich for me. What is wrong with Madame Hae-jung? Nothing! So she is younger! We were all younger before.”

“She went to two fortune-tellers?” I frowned. “Did they know about Mrs. Lee seeing both of them?”

“Hah!” Ms. Yi wrinkled her nose and slapped my arm. It stung, but nothing like being shot. I was thankful for that small favor. “You don’t tell something like that. Especially to those two. Sun and Gyong-Si butt heads all the time. If they see each other on the street, you watch them, because one might start screaming at the other. Madame Sun is a better fortune-teller, but some of the women, they like going to Gyong-Si. He says he likes men so women like talking to him, but I don’t know. I don’t believe that. I know better.”