Beware Beware (3 page)

Daphne heard from Jamie an hour later, and she sent me home for the night. It was just after ten o'clock, and Lori was home, unusual for a Friday.

She greeted me at the door, a habit of hers that put me in mind of a little dog. Lori would be something small and energetic, a Maltese or a Yorkshire terrier.

“Are you home for the night?” I asked. She was in her pajamas, a blue-and-white pinstriped two-piece set with girly scalloped cotton shorts. She had a few of these matching sets, and she rotated them weekly sometimes. She saw little sense in washing her pajamas between wears.

Lori and I had been rooming together for about six months, in a two-bedroom apartment in Echo Park overlooking the lake. The ad on Craigslist touted the lakeside location, the jogging path, the calming views. We were savvy enough to visit before committing a thing, and we found that the lake had been drained and fenced off months before. We wrangled down the rent and moved in. Half a year later, the lake was still a yawning dirt ditch, with no apparent signs of a return to glory.

She nodded. “Have you eaten?”

It had been a long time since I'd had a roommate, but I was getting used to it. Lori was messy but surprisingly thoughtful. Within the first month, we figured out our arrangement. Common areas were never cleaned unless I cleaned them, but Lori cooked all her meals for two. She was a good cook—she'd learned from her mother, and she could whip up a good Korean meal in minutes. I'd spent so many years dining like a bachelor—on Hot Pockets and yogurt and a lot of milk and cereal—I hadn't realized how much I'd missed home cooking.

My stomach growled on cue. I hadn't eaten since lunch. Lori nodded and heated up a bowl of kimchi fried rice while I took off my shoes. She placed it on our dining table and sat down next to me while I ate.

“Thanks,” I said. “No plans tonight?”

She shook her head. “I thought I'd hang out with you.”

“Don't let me get in the way of your weekend. You see me every day.”

She shrugged, and I saw in the way her eyes watched her nose that she had something on her mind.

“What is it?” I asked.

She hesitated, bit her lip with her one crooked tooth, and gave me a dolorous, expectant look before sighing. “It's nothing.”

Lori was not quite a friend in the usual sense—she was flighty and giggly and twenty-three, the kind of girl I never got along with even when I was her age. But she was, I had to admit, something more important, a hybrid of little sister, daughter, and mother, slapped together out of mutual convenience and desperation. Less than a year earlier, her mother, Yujin, had been arrested for murder—a murder that I witnessed, and that had happened at least in part because I was there. It was a vision of hell that I'll never forget, but it was much worse for Lori. Yujin was arrested on the scene, and Lori only saw her in prison these days. Yujin may have been one twisted mother, but she was the only parent Lori had.

I made the decision to latch Lori's life to mine. It wasn't a hard decision, and it wasn't one made entirely from guilt. When Lori and I met, I was virtually alone, my father and sister dead, my mother living with family in Texas. I'd had a couple close friends to sustain my social needs—I lost them both within days of meeting Lori. The trouble followed from her to me, but I knew it wasn't her fault. I forgave what there was to forgive, as she forgave my involvement in the calamities that fell on her side.

The truth was, we were both stranded, and we drifted together as naturally as a couple of ions. With her mother gone, Lori couldn't stand living in her house by herself, and I started staying in Yujin's bedroom. When it became clear that the house would have to be sold to cover legal costs, we signed a lease together and made things official.

She called me
unni
like my little sister had when she was alive, and though I hardly knew her before we moved in together, she inspired the same range of emotions as real family. Among these, annoyance bubbled up the most often, followed closely by affection.

“If you want to talk, we can talk, but don't make me fish for it,” I said.

“It's just … boy stuff.”

“Are things not going well with Isaac?”

Isaac was Lori's latest suitor, and they'd been hanging out with some regularity for the past few weeks. He was the first guy she seemed to like at all since last summer, by her admission, an unusual hiatus. It was understandable, of course—Lori attracted deadly men, and they'd brought her enough grief to send any woman running to the nearest nunnery. I was relieved when she started dating Isaac. He was a nice Korean boy, who wore polo shirts and went to church, who feared me a little, though not enough to keep him out of my home.

“No, everything's fine with Isaac,” she said. “For now, anyway.”

“For now?”

“No, don't worry. It has nothing to do with Isaac.”

“There's someone else already, then?”

That got a laugh out of her, and the tension in her face seemed to soften. “Not exactly. It's just—there's this guy who works with my
samchun
.”

Taejin Chung was Yujin's younger brother, Lori's uncle. He was Lori's only family in Los Angeles, at least outside of prison. He was divorced, with no children, and he and Lori were close. I'd only met him once. My picture of him was certainly colored by what I knew, but he struck me as a quiet, lonely man waiting for his life to spool out. He ran a body shop in Koreatown called T & J Collision Center, the initials scooped from his name to provide a thin illusion of all-American blandness. He worked with a small handful of employees, and he seemed to spend most of his time there. He even lived in a small loft above his office. Yujin had used this shop as a hiding place for the byproducts of her misdeeds. In a town like Los Angeles, cars were big giveaways when something went amiss. If a person was meant to disappear, a car had to disappear with her. When Yujin was arrested, the cops found two missing cars in Taejin's garage—proxies for dead bodies, one of which was supposed to be mine. As far as anyone knew, Taejin was completely unaware of his sister's crimes. I believed in his innocence, but I had little reason to want him in my life.

“One of Taejin's minions?”

She shook her head. “I think he's an investor or something. He loaned
samchun
some money.”

“What's he have to do with you?”

“Well I met him today, at the shop.”

“Ah, okay.” I laughed, getting it. “He liked you. What's this guy's deal?”

“His name is Winfred. He's probably thirtyish. Korean guy. Tall. Muscular.”

“A dreamboat, huh?”

She blushed. “No, he isn't my type.”

“You don't like him better than Isaac, then?”

“
Unni
,” she said, turning redder. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I think I like Isaac
a lot
.”

“What's the problem then?”

“When I was talking to Winfred,
samchun
was looking at us funny, like, watching us. I told him later that Winfred asked for my number, and he turned kind of pale.”

“So he doesn't like him. You're basically his daughter, you know.”

“I know, and at first I thought that was it. But then he told me to be nice to him.”

“To Winfred?”

She nodded, and something heavy sank deep in my gut.

“Well be nice to him, then. It's easy enough to be nice.”

She nodded again.

“And if you're supposed to be much nicer, come talk to me.
Unni
's got your back.”

 

Two

Lori and I spent the night in our pajamas, talking and watching TV. She told me more about Isaac, and I made us ice cream sundaes—my sole contribution to our culinary life. All in all, it was an above-average Friday night. My social life had never been vibrant, but these days, its embers barely glowed.

When I woke up the next morning, I was ready to delve back into my new job. I worked the whole weekend, and Monday morning I reported to the office to share my findings with Chaz and Arturo. I didn't have much, but I walked in as excited as I was nervous.

At 9:30, Chaz sent an e-mail to me and Arturo requesting our presence at a debrief meeting in his office at 10:00
A.M.
, “to touch base on Ms. Song's assignment.” I heard him giggle when he hit Send, and both Arturo and I submitted verbal RSVPs without leaving our desks.

We gathered right at 10:00, and Chaz let me sit behind his desk while he and Arturo took the client chairs. I made sure they both had coffee when they sat down.

“So,” Arturo started, “Chaz tells me he gave you your own client.” He eyed me over the rim of his paper cup. He wore his skepticism like a name tag.

Arturo—or Art, as Chaz, and only Chaz, called him—intimidated me. He was one of the few people I'd ever known who had that particular effect. There was nothing physically imposing about him—he was five foot seven or eight, with a bit of a paunch, and, oddly, the sculpted calves of a furniture mover. He wore his straight black hair in a crew cut, and his face, brown-skinned and handsome, was clean shaven. His features were stern but not scary. He was younger than Chaz, but he was the one with gravitas, the straight man of the duo. If they were my workplace parents, then Chaz was my dad and Arturo, my father. I was afraid of disappointing them both.

“I hope that's okay,” I said. “Chaz thinks I can handle it.”

“Don't worry, Song. We already talked it out, and Art's on board.” Chaz winked. “What have you got? Regale us.”

I filled them in on Daphne and her request, and then I told them everything I'd learned about Jamie, both first- and secondhand. They listened dutifully while I ran through what I knew.

Jamie was a Boston native who'd moved to New York for college with all of his optimism intact. He'd graduated from NYU with a mule's load of student loans and bigger dreams than ever. Since the age of fifteen, he'd worked as a dog walker, a babysitter, a library clerk, a waiter, a bartender, a bookstore cashier, a substitute teacher, and now a ghostwriter, but his aspirations were for Hollywood glory. These brought him to Los Angeles, where he lived with two roommates, old friends trying to crack different parts of the same Hollywood game. One of them owned a basset hound, but Jamie was the one who walked her.

He was an upbeat, charismatic guy, and very well liked—Daphne told me as much, and I could see it, too. He had an inordinate amount of human contact. After six months in Los Angeles, he saw more friends in a day than I saw in a month. Over the weekend, I'd followed him to and from two boozy brunches, two sit-down dinners, downtown cocktails, and one house party.

So far, though, I had found nothing incriminating. He had no record of any sort, unless you counted a school reprimand during his sophomore year of college. His proceedings in Los Angeles seemed cheerfully harmless. Daphne wanted me to keep at it.

“So long story short, you had a boring weekend,” said Chaz.

I shrugged. “It wasn't so bad. I got to drive around town a lot. Got some reading done.” I found myself wishing I had more to report, something big and exciting to get my bosses' attention. “But is there something else I should be doing? Should I be getting in there a bit more or what?”

“I wouldn't worry about it,” said Arturo, looking unworried and unimpressed. “Sounds like this guy just came off a bender, so he might behave himself for a bit. Just keep following him if that's what the client wants.”

“Thanks,” I said. “How about—well I was wondering, can I get a GPS tracker? Stick it on his car and monitor where he's going? That would save me some legwork, I guess.”

Chaz laughed, and I felt my cheeks prickle with embarrassment. I knew Chaz and Arturo used trackers once in a while, but I'd gotten the idea from television.

“Your legwork is cheap, Song. Equipment is not. This is a recession,” Chaz said, still chuckling. It was a phrase I'd heard him use many times before, and I had no doubt he'd kept it in steady rotation since 2008.

“And besides,” chimed in Arturo, “you're still new to this. You shouldn't rely on technology to do your detective work. Not until you've nailed down the basics.”

I nodded. “Okay, fair enough. Just had to ask.”

“Is that it, then?” Arturo placed his hands on the arms of his chair.

“Sure. Think so.”

“Then get back out there,” said Arturo. He stood up and left with a halfhearted salute.

I followed suit and let Chaz take back his desk. “You're doing great,” he said, his hand warm on my shoulder.

*   *   *

When I parked on Jamie's block a little after eleven, his car was still in his driveway. According to Daphne, Jamie was a late riser, and it looked like I hadn't missed a thing by going into the office. Shortly after noon, he came out of the house dressed in jeans and a red flannel shirt. I followed him to another lunch, with yet another friend, at a busy café in Los Feliz. It was amazingly busy for a Monday afternoon, full of young people who could afford the luxury of sit-down weekday lunches without submitting to the drudgery of the nine-to-five grind.

After he ate, he drove up to Joe Tilley's, and I grabbed a torta from a taco stand on Hillhurst. I took a walk around the neighborhood and circled back after an hour. Jamie left a while later and went straight to a happy hour downtown.

After three days of constant surveillance, I was beginning to get frustrated with his packed, unstructured schedule. I felt no closer to my actual goal, and Jamie's volume of social activity was making me almost ill with anxiety. There was something about the sheer level of apparent
fun
that I wanted to scorn, and I had to wonder if I was jealous. I hated the idea of it, that after all I'd been through I could envy the lifestyle of the popular kid in the lunchroom.