Beware Beware (10 page)

And then I heard the deep, sleepy breaths coming from over my shoulder. As I turned to see who was there, my chest went tight with panic.

Relief took over right away. Lori lay on top of the covers, curled up in a kittenish ball, her rounded back turned away from me. I stroked her hair and got up to put on a T-shirt and administer to my headache.

She woke up when I thudded off the bed. “
Unni
,” she said, her voice clouded with sleep. “Are you okay?”

“I feel like shit,” I said. My throat rasped and my mouth tasted putrid. “How did we get home last night?”

“Do you not remember?”

“No,” I said, deciding it was easier to speak than to shake my head.

“I drove.”

“Were you okay to drive?”

“Easily,” she said. “I had, like, two drinks all night.”

“Smart girl. I had at least three.”

She laughed. “Oh
unni
. You had at least three before I even got there.”

“Did I get sick? I feel awful.”

“You puked on the sidewalk, and you puked a lot more at home.” She sat up and crossed her arms. “I held your hair and then I made you sleep on your side so you wouldn't die in the middle of the night.”

“Thank you, Lori. You didn't have to sleep here. I've gotten sick before.”

“Oh. I mean, your friends are still here. I let them sleep in my room,” she said.

“Darling, you're almost
too
sweet,” I said, rummaging for the bottle of Advil I kept on my dresser.

She got out of bed and left the room. When she came back, she was carrying a tall glass of water. “Drink it all.”

“Thanks.” I gulped and it hurt my head. My brain felt three sizes too big. “So, how'd you get rid of the creep?”

She twisted her mouth into a grimace. “I said I had to get you home.”

“That was enough?”

“And Daphne helped me say so more forcefully.”

I smiled. “Was I useless?”

“A little bit. I think you wanted to say something but you weren't really moving at that point.”

“So, am I right in thinking you didn't love his company?”

She sighed. “I don't really know what to do about him.”

“What was that yesterday, anyway? A date?”

“That's not how I was thinking about it.”

“Did he ask you out for a drink?”

“Yeah.”

“And you said yes?”

She chewed on her lip. “He asked me like right after we first met. I kind of skirted it, but then he kept texting me.”

“He wore you down?”

“Not exactly,” she said. “I talked to
samchun
about it.”

“What did he say?”

“He said what he told me before. ‘Be nice to him.' He just kept repeating that like it meant something until I finally asked if he wanted me to say yes to the drink. Then he practically begged me to go.”

“That's fucked up,” I said. “Winfred must have something on your uncle. Do you know what it is?”

She shook her head. “I don't know. Money?”

This seemed likely, now that I thought about it. Yujin Chung was being tried for murder. The stakes were about as high as they could get, and Taejin and Lori made the decision to hire the best lawyer they could. They sold Yujin's house, but it was entirely possible that that wasn't enough. Taejin lived in an apartment over his shop, and I guessed he had little in the way of valuable assets.

“You think he borrowed money from Winfred?”

“I don't know.”

“Well,” I said. “You don't have to cover his debts. That's his problem.”

“His problems are mine. That's how family works.”

*   *   *

Lori left for church and I went back to bed. When I woke up, the apartment smelled like coffee. Daphne handed me a cup as I stumbled out of my room.

“Lori said we could help ourselves. Hope you don't mind,” she said.

“Of course not. Thank you.” I sat down and pinched my brow. “Jamie still in bed?”

“Yeah.”

“He do any better than me last night?”

“Just barely,” she said, sighing. “But I think he had a good time.”

“Listen, I'm sorry I got so sloppy. Unprofessional of me.”

She laughed. First thing in the morning, her face unmade, and she looked like a skincare model. Marlowe had a line about women like her—he said he only knew four in his life who could throw back their heads laughing and still look beautiful. I remembered the line because it made me feel self-conscious about laughing for a while, back when I laughed often and gave a shit about such things.

“You kept saying ‘Please don't tell Chaz. Please don't tell Chaz.'”

“Jesus Christ, really? I'm sorry.”

“I don't care, Song. It's better this way anyway. We're friends now. All this stuff we have to deal with together? I'd rather you were my friend than a stone-cold professional.”

The coffee warmed me, and it mingled with a surge of gratitude in my chest.

“Aw, shucks,” I said.

“Don't worry, though. We'll still pay you.” She twisted a lock of hair around one finger and tugged at it with a curious look on her face. “One question, though.”

“Sure, shoot.”

“Why didn't you say anything about meeting Jamie before?”

The grumpy, aching clouds in my head dispersed in a snap. I opened my mouth to say something defensive and closed it before I could say anything patently insincere. I gave her a guilty squint and smiled.

“I'm sorry about that,” I said. “Honestly, if I thought it mattered, I would've mentioned it. Do you think it matters?”

“What, to the case at hand?”

“Yeah.”

“No, obviously not. I was just wondering why you didn't mention it, since it's a pretty funny coincidence. We could've had a good laugh.”

I sighed, rubbing at my eyes in bemused embarrassment. “Okay, sure, fine. Don't get mad, alright?”

She smiled and leaned back, folding her hands on the table. “Oh, I see.”

“It was kind of a charming encounter, and I thought you might think it was weird I remembered his face after meeting him for just the one second.” I panned my hand in a small voila gesture. “There it is—I thought your boyfriend was cute.”

“Thought?” She was grinning now, with good humor and mischief in her eyes.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “I think lots of people are cute. You're cute, I'm cute. That guy I made out with last night, I think he was cute, wasn't he?”

“He was. Not that it would've mattered.”

We laughed, and for the moment, I felt remarkably at ease. My attraction to Jamie was a trivial thing, but it was apparent now that I'd been carrying it like a secret. There was release in putting it out there and finding it was nothing to worry about. I felt that much closer to Daphne, and in spite of the mess all around us, I found a measure of lightness and pleasure.

“That Winfred, though,” she said, her voice suddenly dry. “Not so cute.”

Her expression was somber now, and my humor dissipated with hers as I remembered the way he'd touched Lori. I rotated my coffee cup in my hands and stared into the slow swirl of liquid.

I didn't have time to respond. Jamie stumbled out of Lori's room with mussed hair and uneven steps, like he'd left one foot behind in sleep.

“Great, great, great,” he said, half mumbling. “There's coffee.”

I was about to say something about Winfred, but when I looked back at Daphne, there was a simple, cheery smile on her face. Whatever her thoughts were on Winfred, she didn't mean to share them in front of Jamie. I kept my mouth shut and wondered why. After all, Jamie had witnessed the same things we had—was it just a subject best kept between us girls?

Jamie helped himself to a cup of coffee and looked from me to Daphne with a quizzical tilt of the head. “Why so quiet all of a sudden? Were you guys talking about me?”

Daphne and I made eye contact and the silence dissolved into a new round of laughter, its minute, strained quality nearly forgotten.

*   *   *

It was eleven o'clock when the three of us took a cab back to Koreatown to pick up our cars. It dropped us off at Sixth and Mariposa, where our cars had cooled on the street overnight. My hangover had more or less cleared up after a long shower, and I did my best to emit an aura of competence as we stood on the sidewalk and discussed our immediate plans.

“I'd like to talk to Theodore Tilley as soon as possible,” I said to Jamie. “Do you know how I can get in touch with him?”

He thought for a moment and started fiddling with his phone.

“Ha,” he said. “I thought I had his e-mail. He e-mails me once in a while to stalk his dad.” He showed me the address on his phone.

“Thortilla?”

He rolled his eyes. “Thor Tilla. He gets upset if you say it like
tortilla
.”

“What's a Thor Tilla?”

“It's Theodore Tilley's stage name.”

“Stage name?”

He smiled. “I hope you do get to meet him. I'll leave it at that.”

“I guess the odds are good he's swamped or depressed. Both, probably.”

“Yeah, I feel bad for him,” he said, sounding chastised.

“I didn't mean to imply you didn't. I'm just wondering if I'll be able to get to him.”

He bit down on a peeling part of his lower lip. “Don't tell him you're working for me. Be vague, maybe hint that you're connected to press and you're interested in hearing his story.”

“You think that'll get him to talk to me?”

“Honestly, yeah. Like I said, I don't know him that well, but what I do know is that he's desperate for attention. I don't think that changes because his dad gets murdered. He might be grieving, but I'll be shocked if he passes up this chance for the limelight out of some notion of class.”

It was a damning portrait, but I hoped, rather selfishly, that it was on the mark.

“Try and relax today,” I said as we parted. “I'm going to try and track down Theodore. I'll do my best to find out more about Tilley, with or without his help. In the meantime, you can always call me if you need anything. I'm also going to see if I can find you a decent lawyer.”

“That bad, huh?”

“I don't know, but it can't hurt to line something up, can it?”

“She's right,” Daphne put in, taking his hand. “We might as well be prepared.”

We swapped hugs and agreed to meet at the office again the next day.

*   *   *

I sat in my car and sent off an e-mail to Tilley's son, with my phone number and a request that he get in touch as soon as possible. I told him I was an investigator interested in his father's murder—I kept it vague and suggestive, but there was no need to lie. I left enough room for him to draw his own conclusions, and I indicated that I was particularly interested in talking to him. If Jamie was right, my e-mail should have been enough to spark Theodore's interest. Then there was the other element, which Jamie had all but ignored. Theodore was the son of a murdered father, and he might be itching to talk to anyone who might give him information about an investigation. If he was the murderer, that was doubly true. Whether he'd see the e-mail anytime soon was another question. I imagined he had a lot on his mind.

I googled Thor Tilla and found a YouTube channel with a handful of videos with view counts ranging from four to six figures. The most popular one was a music video for a song called “Hollywood Pimp,” and I watched the first thirty seconds with mild fascination. The production value was evidently high—nifty camera work, beautiful extras—but the song was terrible. Thor Tilla was on-screen in a low V-neck and flashy chains, rapping slowly about living the life of a celebrity. I looked for him on Wikipedia. He didn't have his own page, but he was mentioned in a note on Joe Tilley's, as part of his personal life. Theodore was a twenty-three-year-old USC grad pursuing a career in “musical performance and production.” I found his Web site, his Twitter feed, and a pop-culture blog that covered every one of his music videos with snarky, explosive delight. His name never came up independent of his father's, but he had used that association to carve out his own shitty niche in the cultural consciousness.

And here I was, a nobody waiting to hear back from this tiny eminence. I waited with my head leaned back against the seat rest, my phone in hand, puzzling over my next move. Theodore Tilley might not even call today, and I didn't like being idle.

I dialed Jackie Diaz, the widow of my best friend, my college boyfriend, who'd been murdered for looking out for me, not a year earlier. When Diego was alive, she was wary of me, and there was no way she didn't blame me for his death. It was straightforward enough—if I had never been born, Diego would never have died trying to help me. I blamed myself, every day. It was a miracle she didn't hate me now. While Jackie would never call me her friend, there was a bond between us that calcified when we lost Diego. I never thought of her without a spike in emotional activity, of remorse and affection and longing.

She picked up. She always picked up when I called. “Song,” she said. “How are you?”

The last time I saw her was in December, two days after her daughter was born. Cristina had Diego's dark eyes and even newborn, his curly black hair. I fell apart crying before I left the hospital, and Jackie and I hadn't tried to see each other since. I couldn't tell if she was happy to hear from me.

“Not bad,” I said. “Work's been interesting.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“Oh boy. “I let out a dry laugh. “I mean, no. I guess not. How are you? How's Cristina?”

“She keeps me up all night, so she's good and I'm tired.” She sighed heavily, a sample of her exhaustion.

“Are you home now?”