Dirty Kiss (30 page)

“Tell anyone you heard it from me, and I’ll kill you.” The threat was meaningless. He tried to kill me every time we got into a boxing ring together. Luckily I’d grown up with Mike, so my dodging skills were extraordinary. I grunted a yes to get him talking and nearly choked on my own spit when he ran down Brian Park’s rap sheet.

“You’re kidding me. Did you talk to Jae about what you found?” My mind alternated between blown away and gearing up to be pissed off at Jae-Min. It wouldn’t be unlike him to have known about Park’s past and not said anything. I was beginning to think honesty had a very different definition in his dictionary than it did in mine.

“Yeah, I asked him. He gave me a look, then shrugged. I’m not sure if that meant he knew and it wasn’t important or that he just didn’t care. Want to talk to him?”

“No,” I muttered into the phone. The last thing I wanted was another fight about Jae keeping secrets. “I’ll ask him when I get home.”

“Want me to tell him that you love and miss him?” Bobby made kissy noises into the phone.

I hung up on him without answering and called Papa Kim’s office. With any luck, Park would still be there and I could swing by to talk him up. The receptionist answered, speaking in a fluent babble of Korean that I had no chance in hell of understanding. Unless she called me baby, idiot, or any other endearment, I was pretty much lost.

“Um, I’m sorry,” I replied. “I’m looking for Brian Park. Is he in?”

“Hold on, please. May I ask who’s calling?” She sounded hesitant to put me through, then switched me over.

I listened to the phone on the other end ring, and then Park picked up. “Hello, Brian. How are you doing?”

“I’m fine.” He sounded confused. I could imagine he was wondering why the private investigator in his friend’s death was calling him in the middle of the afternoon. If he’d gotten word that I’d suffered injuries from a few badly placed pipe bombs, he certainly didn’t offer up any sympathy. “What do you want, McGinnis? I don’t have a lot of time.”

“I need to ask about a couple of things,” I replied, watching a pert-assed man throw a wobbly Frisbee at his golden retriever. The dog bounded after it, glad for the game. The man caught me looking and smiled, an easy invitation if I wanted it. I smiled back but dropped my eyes, keeping focused on the notes I’d written down.

“I don’t think we have anything to talk about,” he said, trying to shove me off. “Unless something new has come up about Henry. In which case, you probably should talk to Mr. Kim.”

“Actually, I was thinking we could talk about the first time you met Hyun-Shik.” The Frisbee spun again, and the dog drew closer, bounding after the plastic disc with an unabashed joy. “Or maybe the first time you got arrested.”

There was a long silence on the other end, and if I hadn’t heard him breathing, I would have thought Brian Park hung up on me. There was a long sigh, and then he responded in a whisper. “Not here. Not at work.”

“Where, then?” I admit I felt a cheap thrill of elation. For the first time since Jae had gotten hurt, I felt like I’d made it out from behind the eightball. The hard part was going to be staying there.

He gave me directions to a place near his work. Someplace quiet we could talk, or rather, I could ask questions, and he could talk. Casting one final look at the dog’s long-legged owner, I started the rental car and drove off.

Park was there before me, sitting in a far-off corner of an old-fashioned coffee shop. The place had a diner feel to it, brightly lit and running to black and white with dots of red here and there, a far cry from the trendy brown on darker brown corporate shops seemed to favor. The smell of burnt coffee lingered in the air, and a selection of flaky pastries withered slowly inside of a glass display case. I ordered a large coffee and a bear claw, then was pointed to a table sporting a meager variety of condiments when I asked for cream and sugar. Brian shifted nervously as I fixed my coffee, becoming visibly uncomfortable when I sat down and smiled at him.

“Hi. How are you and Victoria doing?” I was aiming for friendly, but he wasn’t going to play along.

“Let’s just get this over with. What do you want? Money?” Leaning forward across the table, he hissed under his breath, drawing the attention of the woman behind the counter. If you want someone to notice you, whisper loudly in public. It’s better than wearing plaid with polka dots and clown shoes. “Is that what I need to do to make you go away?”

“Actually, if you could tell me who killed Hyun-Shik, that would be great,” I said, sipping the coffee. Despite the darkness of the brew, or maybe because of it, it was surprisingly good. “And stop whispering. People are going to start looking at you like you’re crazy.”

“I keep telling you, I don’t know who killed him.” He played with his cup, turning it around in his hands. “I’m not lying to you. I don’t know. Hyun-Shik was a friend. We were close.”

“Does Mr. Kim know you used to work at Dorthi Ki Seu?” I leaned back in the chair, watching his face carefully. “Is that how you first met Hyun-Shik? Was he one of your customers?”

Saying something out loud gave it weight, and my words hit Park like a ton of bricks. He visibly deflated, folding in on himself. Looking at his blocky form, I couldn’t imagine him working the upper rooms, but then, I’d been wrong about Jae-Min too. Assuming I believed he was only a dancer. I was still working on that.

Brian let out a shuddering breath and covered his face with his hands, rubbing at the worry lines forming on his forehead. He mumbled from behind his fingers, barely loud enough for me to hear him. “I’ll pay you anything to keep quiet. I can’t have that come out. I just can’t.”

“I’m not here to extort you,” I said. I probably didn’t sound very reassuring since he gave me a dirty look as he dropped his hands. “No, really. I’m not looking for anything but Hyun-Shik’s killer. Jin-Sang died because he knew the suicide note Hyun-Shik supposedly wrote wasn’t real. I haven’t figured out why Jae’s important in this, but he’s been targeted, and now someone’s trying to kill me too. So I’m more than a little bit invested in this.”

“Did you ever think that maybe if you left things alone, it would all go away?” he asked. His voice rose, desperate and shrill. “Why can’t you leave things alone?”

“Because, despite what people think, I finish what I start.” I took a sip of my coffee. “How close of a friend were you to Hyun-Shik? As close as Jin-Sang?”

For a moment I thought he was going to get up and run, leaving me with unanswered questions and a very good cup of coffee, but the resignation on his face deepened when he realized I wasn’t going to walk away from this mess. There’s always that moment when someone surrenders to the inevitable, and Park was definitely at that line.

“You have to promise me that Mr. Kim won’t find out.” He shook his head, rubbing at his eyes. “I’ll lose my job. Hell, I’ll lose my career.”

“I’m not interested in destroying you. I couldn’t care less about what you did. Shit, you could be doing it now, and I wouldn’t care,” I admitted over the lip of my coffee cup. “I just want the truth for a change, all of it. Nothing watered down and nothing left out.”

“I met Hyun-Shik there. He was one of the guys I saw. Look, it was a shitty time. I was messed up.” Park’s eyes glazed over, and for a moment, I was sorry I’d made him remember things he’d probably thought he’d left behind in the past, but thinking about the bruises on Jae’s neck and shoulders cured me of any remorse I might have nursed. “He’d just gotten a membership, and he’d come by. We hooked up a lot until Jae-Min showed up and my parents shoved me into college. When I graduated from school, Hyun-Shik got me an intern job at the law firm. Probably because he felt bad about tossing me over for his cousin.”

“Did you know Jae-Min when he worked there?” I was fishing. I knew it. Park didn’t, and he nodded, making my guts lurch.

“I knew him, but I wasn’t working there, and he didn’t work the rooms. Not like we did. Most of the younger guys just dance.” Park shrugged. “He could have made a lot more money than what he got from tips. A couple of the older guys would have paid a lot for a piece of his ass, even if he was illegal.”

It never is a good thing to punch the shit out of the person who is telling the truth, but my fists itched pretty badly. I tightened my mouth to keep my tongue under control, smiling widely when the counter lady came by to refill our cups and sling a pot of cream and packets of sugar on the table.

“Tell me about Hyun-Shik and Jin-Sang,” I prodded.

Park laughed, a short, bitter snort that left me in no doubt as to how he felt about his boss’s ex-lover. “Jin-Sang was a user. I knew what I was there for. I needed the money, just like everyone else, but Jin-Sang always had to push it further. He’d beg for things: more money or clothes. Hyun-Shik would give him what he could, but he didn’t have a lot of disposable income. That came later, after he married Victoria. Mr. Kim gave him a promotion and a bigger salary. That’s when I got hired to work for him.”

“He’d stopped seeing Jin-Sang by then.” I thought back to the note. “He’d broken it off before he married Victoria, and after his son was born, Hyun-Shik decided he was going to go back to him?”

“No,” Park said, shaking his head. “We didn’t talk about Jin-Sang, but I know Hyun-Shik was done with him. If he was going to Dorthi Ki Seu, it wasn’t going to be for Jin-Sang.”

“Did you know he was going to the club that night?” That was the big question. I still didn’t have a good answer for why Hyun-Shik Kim had gone to Dorthi Ki Seu that night. If it wasn’t to see Jin-Sang, then who?

“I knew he was going, but it wasn’t for sex. He said he was meeting someone.” Park added a packet of sugar to his coffee, rattling a spoon around the edges of the cup. “Hyun-Shik told me that he’d be home later. I was going to drop off some contracts, and he’d meet up with me around midnight. By the time I got to his house, the cops were already there, and I found out he was dead. They’re the ones who told me it was a suicide.”

“Were you surprised when the cops told you he killed himself?” The picture I had gotten of Hyun-Shik didn’t seem like the type of person to kill himself. He was too self-centered and, from the looks of things, had the world handed to him on a silver platter.

“Yeah, I thought, why would he do that?” Park nodded. “Hyun-Shik got everything he ever wanted. The only time someone said no to him was when his mother insisted Jae-Min move out. It’s hard to pretend your son’s not gay when he’s fucking his cousin under your roof.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised. Eventually, Jae’s idea of the truth would dawn on me, and I’d learn to accept the hidden mines that seemed to litter the landscape of his past. But surprise was definitely right up there on the list of emotions I was running through, a close second to pissed off.

“Wait a second.” I stopped Park for a moment. “How old was Jae when he got kicked out?”

“I don’t know. Fourteen? Fifteen? There were a lot of guys that age working there.” He made a face, trying to think back. “I didn’t pay much attention then. I was busy with school, and I didn’t care.”

“Hyun-Shik was an adult by then.” I exhaled hard, wondering why the Kims’ son hadn’t been murdered before someone got him in Dorthi Ki Seu. “Did he expect Jae to work the rooms like Jin-Sang?”

“Like I said, I didn’t care,” Park replied. “One of the trannies downstairs took Jae in after one of the customers roughed him up a bit. He wasn’t anyone I worried about. Look, I’ve got to get back to work soon. Mr. Kim’s going to be looking for me.”

“Almost done,” I said, scribbling down notes. “Are you sure your girlfriend Vicki didn’t know Hyun-Shik was gay?”

“No, it was a shock to her. I’m pretty sure of it.” Brian fidgeted, and I saw him glance away. By now, I was beginning to get an idea that he wasn’t confessing everything he knew, especially when he shifted nervously when I cleared my throat.

“What aren’t you telling me?” I pried. He was an oyster of information. The right pressure and a sharp prod and pearls spilled out. I just had to string them together and make some sense of it all.