Dirty Secret (7 page)

A blushing, young Scarlet stared out at me from an old photograph. Beside her, an equally young Korean man with slight acne scars on his cheeks grinned as well, his arm around her. Bright honey highlights streaked their hair, thick swathes of blond through their natural black. Scarlet’s brilliant pink lipstick was nearly as eye-catching as the rubber bracelets around the man’s wrist, his hand dangling over Scarlet’s shoulder. The date on the back told me the photo was taken only a week before Dae-Hoon disappeared. From the looks on their faces, they had not a care in the world.

Apparently, the world didn’t care for them either.

Other photos captured moments of Dae-Hoon’s life, small snippets of time someone thought to snatch from the stream. I stopped at one showing Dae-Hoon with two young boys, his slender arms cradling David and his face lit up with a smile for his Shin-Cho.

Hard to believe the little boy Dae-Hoon was holding would be marrying his lover’s kid in a few days.

“Fucking creepy,” I muttered. Separating out an envelope from the photos and a file folder, I slit it open and shook out the paper inside. For every ounce of her femininity, Scarlet’s masculine side resonated in her writing. With a strong, slashing penmanship, she thanked me again, and I grimaced at the check attached to the note.

“That’s a lot of zeros.” Claudia peered over my shoulder. “Way too many zeros to go find a probably-dead man.”

“Yeah, it’s more than what we agreed to. She and I are going to have to have a talk,” I grumbled. The folder rattled, and then a key ring fell out, a flat plastic card marked with a building letter and numbers. “Bobby and I are going to go digging through a storage locker tomorrow.”

“She gave you a lot of money for that? I could have gotten one of my boys to do it for twenty bucks.”

“It’s been sitting for years. We’re hoping there’s something in there that can tell us if Dae-Hoon was in trouble,” I said, waving the key under Claudia’s nose. “Fire up the DeLorean, Claudia. Tomorrow morning, Bobby and I are going to make a trip back to the ’90s.”

“Huh, well… just don’t come back with any of those stupid Hammer pants,” Claudia said, taking another sip of her coffee. “You dress bad enough as it is.”

L
IVING
behind my office had its advantages, mainly cutting down on commute time, so I had time to kick back after we shut down for the day. One of the biggest disadvantages was I was easy enough to find, especially when I wanted that time to relax before heading back out. Still, it was a surprise to find a sullen looking Shin-Cho standing on my front porch. Even more of a surprise was the bright red splotch starting to bruise under his left eye.

In the light of day, and admittedly after I’d had sleep, I noticed Shin-Cho was fairly attractive. Stockier than Jae-Min, his handsome face was heart-shaped but lean, probably from his stint in the military. The short-sleeved T-shirt he wore showed off his muscular arms, and his jeans were artistically torn at the knee, letting peeks of tanned skin show through. If I had to guess, I’d say Shin-Cho dressed that morning to impress someone, and by the looks of the mark on his face, that person didn’t buy into it.

“Hey.” I jerked my chin up. “Looks like you need some ice for that. Come on inside.”

“No, no, I’m fine. Outside is okay.” Shin-Cho shook his head. “I needed to… talk to you.”

“If it’s about your Dad’s stuff, I just got the key.” I held it up for him to see. “I was going to hit up the storage place tomorrow.”

“It isn’t about that.” His shoes squeaked as he kicked at the stoop’s cement slab. He fidgeted and shoved his hands into his pockets, hunching his shoulders over.

“Let me just open the door to air out the front room.” Using my shoulder to hold the screen door open, I fit my key into the lock. Undoing the dead bolt, I turned the knob and swung the heavy wood door back. I let go of the screen door, letting it bounce back onto the latch so the cat couldn’t get out. “Okay, what’s up?”

“There’s something I didn’t tell you… something I don’t want
nuna
to find out.” Despite the cold nip in the air, Shin-Cho looked like he was sweating up a storm. “It’s about Kwon Sang-Min.”

“What about him?” I leaned against the porch post, kicking lightly at the door when Neko came to investigate it.

“My father isn’t the only one who slept with Kwon Sang-Min,” he said, swallowing. “I have too. Quite a lot.”

“Fuck me,” I swore. Opening the screen door, I shooed the cat away. Jerking my head toward the house, I growled at Shin-Cho and said, “Get the fuck inside. You and I are going to have a little talk.”

Chapter Five

I
NEEDED
a beer. Badly. Problem was, Jae would be at my house in a couple of hours to pick me up, and my thirst for beer was really just my body distracting me so I didn’t choke the shit out of Shin-Cho.

The same Shin-Cho that was perched on my couch and picking at the ruffled edge of a throw pillow Maddy thought I needed.

I left the beer in the fridge and came back with a couple of Cokes. Shoving one at Shin-Cho, I popped the other open and took a big gulp. He looked at me through his lashes like a little kid who’d been caught shaving the dog or eating the last chocolate chip cookie. Exhaling hard, I shook my head at the complicity of subterfuge by the men around me.

“Wait a minute. Don’t you have to be at a wedding rehearsal?” I frowned at him. “The dinner’s tonight, right?”

“The rehearsal was an hour ago. They’re having the dinner later.” Shin-Cho looked at me oddly. “I came here so I could talk to you before the party.”

“Okay, start from….” I sighed. Who the hell
didn’t
sleep with Kwon? “Actually, I have no damned clue where you should start from. Just start some place, and I’ll catch up.”

“Please don’t tell
nuna
,” Shin-Cho pleaded. The guy looked desperate, and from the puffy redness around his eyes that matched the welt on his face, I’d guessed he’d gotten very little sleep the night before.

“How’d you get here?” I asked.

“I drove.”

That he drove himself was good. It meant there wouldn’t be any sunglass-wearing, straight-faced security drones to rat out his visit to my place. Still, keeping secrets from Scarlet didn’t sit right with me. The truth had a way of seeping out, usually in a frothy pile of crap aimed directly for the closest fan blade.

“Okay, we’re going to talk. Then you’re going to go home and tell Scarlet everything you’ve told me.” I held up my hand when he opened his mouth to object. “Ah! Nope. Not hearing anything other than yes from you, because the next time I see her, I’m going to ask her straight up if you’ve told her. If you haven’t, then it’s your shit to deal with. Not mine. Got it?”

The yes took a long time in coming, but eventually he nodded. “Okay. Yes.”

“Good, ’cause I’m not getting on her bad side,” I said firmly. “She’s the closest thing to real family Jae’s got. I’m sure as hell not going to let you fuck that up. I screw up enough without anyone’s help. How about if you start with how you hooked up with Kwon? And if that pop on your face has anything to do with him.”

His hand flew up to cover up the spot on his cheek, and Shin-Cho’s eyes slid away from my face.

“Yeah, okay,” I hissed between my teeth. “Start talking, Shin-Cho.”

Shin-Cho rolled his unopened Coke can between his hands, leeching the moisture off the aluminum. “Um… I was… nineteen? Twenty? I can’t remember when. It was at Christmastime, near my birthday.”

“Wait, American nineteen or Korean nineteen?” Koreans counted their ages from birth, rather than turning one after a year. It screwed me up when talking to Jae-Min and some of his friends. Some of them counted the Korean way, adding a year to their elapsed age. If I owned a bar in Koreatown, I’d have given up carding drivers’ licenses after about a week.

“Ah,
man-nai
… full age. Western age, nineteen,” Shin-Cho translated. “He came to our house in Gangnam. My mother was throwing a Christmas party. A lot of our family’s friends were there.”

It was a familiar story, an older man approaching a younger one with a bit of alcohol and a practiced song and dance. When I was younger, I’d bitten at that fish myself, but unlike Shin-Cho, I hadn’t planned on making a meal of it. Their torrid love affair lasted almost two years, exploding in a spectacular confrontation when Shin-Cho discovered his then-lover making out with another man at a Seoul dance club.

“I thought he was here, in Los Angeles.” Shin-Cho bit back his anger, but it fueled his words. “Sang-Min told me it was my fault, because I spent too much time at school so he needed to look elsewhere. Then I find out he’d told that man the same thing. He was doing us both. Maybe even others. I never saw him again. I didn’t answer his calls. Then David tells me he’s marrying Sang-Min’s daughter, and I thought: God, can it get any worse?”

“Shit,” I swore under my breath.

“Yes, shit.” Shin-Cho slurred the word, making it last on his tongue. “Now I find out about my father? How am I supposed to feel? What am I supposed to do?”

It was getting harder to understand him as his frustration grew. Korean began to drop into his English, and after a few words, he pressed the cold can to his forehead and closed his eyes. I let him have a moment, then tapped his leg.

“Hey, if I’m going to help out, I need you to focus, okay?” He opened his eyes and stared at me without comprehension. “I need you to stick to English so I can understand you. Can you do that?”

“Yes.” He struggled with the word, then swallowed. “Yes, I can.”

“Good.” I reassured him as best I could with a smile. “What happened today? Did Kwon hit you?”

“After the rehearsal,” Shin-Cho said. “I thought I’d be fine when I saw him, but….”

“Yeah, sometimes actually seeing your ex can punch you in the gut,” I sympathized. “You were at St. Brendan’s, right?”

“It’s pretty,” he murmured. “Myung-Hee… Helena… wanted to get married there. David thought it was cool.”

“So what happened between you and Kwon?”

“
Nuna
lent me her car so I could drive myself. The parking lot was full, and I came later, so I parked at the far side. I told David I would see him at the party and went to the car. Sang-Min followed me.” Shin-Cho finally opened the soda can, and I half expected it to foam over, considering how he’d abused it. “He was smiling and hugged me. I told him to let me go, and he told me it didn’t matter anymore, because we were going to be family. No one would think anything if he hugged me.

“He knows why the family sent me here. He said he was sorry I couldn’t be more… careful, but now that I was in LA, we could go back to how things were.” Shin-Cho hissed. “He told me I looked good. Better than I did before. And he touched me… like he had the right to. I pushed him away and told him I wasn’t my father. I won’t go crawling back to him every time he throws me away.”

“Fuck,” I swore. “So now he knows you know about him and your dad. Guess it was just a matter of time. I’d have to try to talk to him at some point. He might as well know that’s come back up.”

“He hit me with the back of his hand. He wears a ring. It’s very big. It scraped me. I think that’s what made the mark.” He gulped at the soda, making a face at its taste. “He said my father was a whore, someone who would go to any man, and that he wasn’t the only one who slept with him. That’s when he told me I would be no better than my father. Because I had no wife… no family… I would be passed around from man to man until I got too old and they were tired of me. Then he walked away.”

“He’s full of shit.” The look Shin-Cho gave me told me he thought I was crazy. “Just because you love guys doesn’t mean you can’t have a good life with one. Look at Scarlet and Seong.”

“You… you don’t understand, do you?” Shin-Cho murmured sadly. “If Uncle dies before she does, she will have nothing left of him. His family will not take her in. His sons will not take care of her. There will be nothing for her. If she dies first, she leaves nothing behind. No children, no family to remember her. No matter what happens, she’ll be nothing after she dies. There’s no future for her to live for.
Nuna
has nothing… will be nothing.

“I don’t want that. I don’t want to die alone with no one remembering me,” he growled. “I want a son, someone to make sure I’m taken care of when I’m old. I want my mother to be proud enough to brag about me. I don’t want to be my father. I
can’t
be my father, because no one cares that he lived. Just me.”

I
T
WAS
nearly six thirty when I heard a key in the front door. I’d somehow missed Neko in my house hunt earlier that morning, and she’d greeted me when I’d come in, screaming for food and love… an interchangeable pair in her mind. A quick step around her winding body and a dubious-smelling helping of tuna and egg cat food made her happy enough to let me go shower in peace. I was out of the shower when Jae called out to me.

“Up here!” I’d gone into my walk-in closet and stared at the bank of clothes hanging there. I’d put on a pair of comfortable briefs, then was stymied by the choices I had to make. “What the hell do I wear to this thing?”