Beware Beware (9 page)

“That's not how it works,” I said. “The police want anything that could be relevant. When you're investigating something, you have to look at every possible clue, even ones of the mildest interest. You don't know what's going to pan out, and you have to sift through a lot of noise and bullshit, but if you don't do that, you get nothing. So this fight, it could be noise and bullshit, but it's more interesting than the average nugget.”

He swallowed. “Okay.”

“With that in mind, can you think of anything else that might be of interest? Any other enemies present?”

“Not that I know of, no. I'm sure not everyone there was a fan, though. Part of being famous is that people come to your parties even if they don't like you.”

“What time did everyone leave?”

“Around three, three thirty.” He pressed fingers into his eyelids. “After that, it was just me and Joe.”

“What did you do after everyone else left? Did you go straight to bed?”

“No,” he said. “We did a little coke and stayed up for a while, talking. He was upset about Theodore showing up.”

“Did he seem scared, anxious, anything like that?”

“No. Just vaguely sad. We ended up spending more time talking about work stuff, the great movie we were going to make together.” He smiled. “It was about fathers and sons, the soul of America, all that. It would've been great.”

“Did he seem like he'd taken enough Rohypnol to knock him out at that point?”

“No, he was too alert.”

“Did you go to bed before him?”

“Around five in the morning he said he was tired so he went to bed, I thought, and I passed out in my room. Next time I saw him, he was dead.”

“You didn't hear anything?”

He shook his head. “I slept like a log.”

“And as far as you know, you were the only two left, at that point.”

He nodded.

“But it's not like you did a sweep, right? There could've been stragglers. In all likelihood, the murderer was in the penthouse while you guys were having your heart to heart.”

A cold pallor came over his face, and his eyes contained a ghastly brightness. “What do you mean? I could have stopped him?”

“Oh, no, that is not what I was implying. Jesus, no, it wasn't your fault. What were you supposed to do anyway, to someone who got into a famous man's penthouse with the purpose of killing him?”

“But who could it have been? Song, as far as anyone knows, I was the only one around when he died.”

“Well, it doesn't sound like you were the only person with opportunity. It sounds like about a hundred people had opportunity. Once they were in the party, it might not have been that hard to stick around somewhere.” I drummed the table. “Even so, maybe you should line up a lawyer. Just in case.”

*   *   *

When we left the office, the night was thick with a cold, watery dark. I pulled a cigarette from my purse and held it unlit while I started to say good night.

“Wait,” said Daphne. “Have you eaten?”

“No,” I said, suddenly hungry. “Have you?”

“I'm starving,” she said, and Jamie nodded weakly. “Why don't we get dinner? We're not going to get anything done tonight, so let's try and make the best of it. At least I'm out here visiting, right?” She smiled faintly, not even trying to convince anyone. “You know anywhere good?”

I took them to Park's Barbeque on Vermont near Olympic, the southern end of Koreatown. It was a popular spot among Koreans and non-Koreans alike, where Daphne and Jamie wouldn't feel out of place.

It was after nine already, but the restaurant was busy, alive with chatter. We waited inside and scanned a wall of signed photographs of the owners posed with an impressive range of celebrities, both American and Korean, of several levels of fame. Most of them featured a smiling Korean woman about my mother's age, and I wondered if she had a good eye for famous faces, or if the less recognizable patrons piped up and offered themselves. I thought of Joe Tilley and his sad, suffering narcissism. I scanned the wall for his face and concluded he'd never eaten at Park's.

I caught Jamie studying the same pictures with a look of loss. He was about as hard to read as a Kabuki mask. I was relieved when our table was ready.

Our waiter spoke English, and we ordered three portions of
galbi
, thick strips of marinated short rib, a dish so iconic in Koreatown that Seoul restaurants had
L.A. galbi
on their menus.

“If you want anything to drink, we can get Hite,” I said. “It's kind of like beery water, but it's good with the meat.”

We got two tall cold bottles and three plastic cups. I was grateful for the liquid support. It was nice to be out on a Saturday night with people I liked, but as I struggled to find a neutral topic of conversation, I started to regret tagging along. I could have been at home now, pants off and under the covers, with a book and a glass in my hands. Instead I was socially engaged with two clients, one all but accused of murder. It wasn't exactly professional.

“So,” I ventured, after a minute's silence, “I mean, Jamie, I've heard so much about you.”

“Yes, I've gathered that.” He laughed, and his laughter was surprised and mortified, but not devoid of humor. It broke some thin membranous strain in the air, like a finger pressed against a soap bubble. “I have no right to be upset about it, you know? So I'm glad it's all just out in the open now.”

We grilled beef at our table and I gave them the rundown of
banchan
, the dozen side dishes to go with our meat and rice. I showed them which sauces to dip the
galbi
in, and when they showed interest, I even threw kimchi on the grill, a nifty trick I'd once heard described as a Korean secret. We ate well, and by the time we were done with dinner, we'd had a few beers each.

An hour later, we ended up at Gaam, a Koreatown lounge, drinking soju and smoking cigarettes while Korean pop blared above us. I hadn't been there in a while, but it had once been a hangout, before I lost my closest friends to death and betrayal. I remembered against my will my last drunken visit, a fun, rowdy night, just eight or nine months past. The nostalgia left a bitter taste, and I did my best to blow it out of my mind.

We shared one bottle of soju, and when it was time to order another or leave, we agreed to split one more, shrugs all around. I taught them a drinking game I used to play, and we took turns flicking the peeling coated aluminum of the green soju bottle cap until a long strip separated from the coil, a hot potato command to drink.

About an hour in, I started feeling good. The music sounded softer, and I looked at Daphne and Jamie with an overwhelming sense of kinship and benevolence.

I caught Jamie staring at me and said, “What?”

He smiled. “This is going to sound creepy,” he said, “but I'm pretty sure we met, like before any of this happened.”

I felt a sharp thrill of happiness, like he'd just paid me an enormous compliment I only half deserved. I hoped it didn't show in my face.

Daphne raised an eyebrow. I hadn't told her about the parking incident after all. “What's this about?” she asked with placid curiosity.

“On Rodney. I swooped in on your parking spot?”

The heat settled evenly on my cheeks, and I tried not to look too sheepish. “Yeah, that was me,” I said. “I remember. Daphne, your boyfriend is a saint.”

“I think you're using that word wrong,” she said, smiling. “What did he do?”

I told the story and she looked at Jamie with an expression of mock admiration.

“Well, God knows you couldn't have a pretty girl walking around mad at you.”

He laughed. “Oof, you've really got me figured out.”

The tone was suddenly celebratory—we drank soju and ignored the terrible things that had brought us together.

“
Unni
,” someone said. “
Unni!
”

It took me a few seconds to consider that the voice was calling me.

I turned around, and there was Lori, standing on high heels four feet behind me. She looked tired but overjoyed to see me, and it took me a startled second to notice the man at her side.

He wasn't Isaac. This man was older, between thirty and thirty-five, with coarse sun-worn skin and hair cropped close to disguise the retreat of his hairline. His features were distinctly Korean—thick eyelids, square jaw, flattish nose. A white scar cut across one black eyebrow. He was almost handsome, in a rugged way, but the sight of him repulsed me. This was Winfred, then, the unwanted admirer, with one large hand claiming Lori by the waist.

I stood up, unsettled, and the outer layer of my buzz flaked off. “What're you doing here?”

“I'm here with my friend,” she said. Her voice was soft and sunny but her eyes sought mine with purpose. She was relieved to see me, but she didn't want to show it. When I bent down to hug her, she clung to me, and I waited for her to whisper in my ear. She didn't.

“Hi,” I said to the man, when Lori let me go. “I'm Song, Lori's roommate.”

“Winfred,” he said. He held a hand out for me to shake and almost crushed my fingers.

“Come join us.” I motioned to our table. There were a few leather stools scattered nearby, and I started to gather them, holding Lori and Winfred in the corner of my vision. He whispered something in her ear.

“Come on,
oppa
. I want you to meet my friends,” she said.

The sweetness in her voice made me cringe. She called him
oppa
, the male equivalent of
unni
, an address for older brothers that turned disturbingly flirtatious when deployed outside of family.

Lori used to make a living pretending to like strange men. She worked in her mother's hostess bar just a half mile from Gaam, pouring drinks for men who paid for her company. She didn't sleep with them—they weren't even supposed to touch her—but she learned the prostitute's art of false enthusiasm, the shell of love where there was none to enclose. It was a handy skill, one she could use to get her way.

I asked Jamie and Daphne if they minded a little extra company, but they were drunk enough that they didn't mind the intrusion. I made introductions and we ordered two more bottles of soju.

“It's a party, then,” I said. Lori sat close to me, her knees touching mine. Winfred clung close to her other side with a dark, sullen look in his eyes.

When I looked at Lori, she was staring at Daphne with evident admiration. “How do you know
unni
?” she asked.

Daphne blinked back with a polite smile. “Who?”

“Oh.” Lori blushed. “Song, I guess.”

“Let's see,” said Daphne, putting a hand on Jamie's shoulder. “How do we know Song?”

The two of them fell into a shared fit of laughter.

“I know them through work,” I said. I nodded at Daphne. “Is that about right?”

“Song's helping us sort some things out,” she told Lori. “But let's not get into
that
mess. We're here to have fun tonight.” She reached across the table, filled a shot glass to the brim, and handed it, sloshing over, to Lori.

Lori's eyes went big as Daphne motioned for her to down it.

I'd almost forgotten about Winfred until he said, with a lewd lilt, “Don't even act like you don't want it.”

He was smiling now, a slight snarl that bore no teeth. I couldn't tell if he'd meant to be funny, and I was still studying his face when Daphne interrupted my train of thought.

“Wait, was that a joke?” she asked, turning the full force of her attention on the man. She wasn't shouting, but her voice pulsed at a level above the noise of the bar.

The smile dropped off his face, but he answered, “Yeah, so what?”

“It wasn't funny.”

He rolled his eyes and took the shot glass out of Lori's hand, spilling half on the table and half down his throat.

“Daph,” Jamie said. “Not now, huh?”

She gave him a sharp glare, but Jamie's face was so tired and beseeching that even I felt my heart soften. She let it go.

It was a strange night. No one was actually happy, and to cope with the large miseries hulking in our shadows, we let the soju flow. After another hour, you wouldn't know that we weren't celebrating. Even Winfred grew boisterous in a way that no longer made me flinch.

We stayed until closing and walked over to an even shadier bar with a long Korean name, none of it written in English. It was the kind of after-hours bar that only existed in Koreatown, serving booze long past two with no pretense at legality. The waiters stood ready to pack it all up at the first sign of cops—I'd seen it happen before, at other bars just like this one, all long since found out and closed for business.

I kept an eye on Lori and Winfred, and every now and then she found and squeezed my hand—an assurance that she was in control. Lori was a lightweight, but I could tell she was the most sober of all of us. She had ways of making alcohol disappear without actually ingesting it—another trick of the trade.

I wasn't the only one watching her, either. Winfred must have pinged Daphne's Spider-Sense. Her gaze flicked over to him and Lori every few minutes, like she was guarding both cat and canary. She shook her head when she saw me notice, and I felt a thrill of sisterhood.

Despite the tension, the night passed in a rather enjoyable blur, the shutter speed of my brain falling by the minute. At one point, we joined forces with a group of Korean boys, fellow voyagers stinking of tobacco and soju. The last thing I remembered was a stranger's tongue in my mouth, rolling around like a pig in mud. It felt good and I didn't mind him, though I didn't like him, either.

 

Six

When I came to the next morning, I was lying under the covers with just my underwear on, a trash can right next to my bed. It was light out, and as soon as I moved my head, a world-class hangover throbbed against its walls. I closed my eyes and tried to fall back asleep, knowing I should at least get up to take a dose and a half of Advil.