Follow Her Home (16 page)

“I'm friends with her on Facebook. Let me check.”

I navigated to Facebook and moved to let Luke log in. He pulled up her profile. Los Angeles network, a recent CSUN graduate. Her picture showed her in a deep-cut viscose jade top with butterfly sleeves, layered gold strands decorating the open expanse of her neckline. She was laughing with mouth wide open, painted red fingernails covering her eyes. Her hair stood out bright against a generic nighttime background. This was a picture for public consumption.

Her most recent update: “Lori just checked in @ Red Palace (Los Angeles, CA).”

“What's Red Palace?” I asked.

“I don't know.”

“Google it. Because whatever she's doing tonight, I think we have to be there.”

 

Nine

Marlowe never had the advantages of the Internet. He had to count on overhearing the right address, or stumbling on the name of a venue, written conveniently in someone's black book. I was happy to have the twenty-first century on my side. A search for “red palace los angeles” yielded a place called Red Palace Club on Western and Seventh, in the heart of Koreatown. I looked at the corner clock on the computer screen.

“It's almost eleven. We should go now.”

“Now? We don't even know what this place is.”

“It's a club.”

Luke gave me a once-over and shrugged. I looked down at my gray T-shirt and jean shorts and frowned.

“Thanks. I have heels in my car.”

“Okay. But I'll drive.”

We traced our steps back to Luke's car and he drove us to mine on Lillian. I found my shoes from the night before among other like pairs—a passenger's side full of high heels was one mark of a single woman in Los Angeles. I swapped into the big shoes and found mascara in my purse. I gave my lashes a few swipes in the vanity mirror. We got back into the Porsche and reentered L.A.'s streets through the quiet-throbbing vein of Rossmore. “You know how to get there?”

“It's on Western past the Wiltern, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I got it.”

We rode east on Wilshire Boulevard, where brick condominiums gave way to strip malls and Korean lettering, block by block. The street was unclogged but alive with Saturday traffic, and each slow stoplight revealed the heavy breathing of cars headed into the night. We turned right at the Wiltern, a landmark theater with an ancient marquee, a place that had seen Koreatown sprout up and around it, leaving no lot unturned. Seconds later, we reached our destination. It was less gaudy than I'd expected,
RED PALACE
spelled out on a sign one could easily miss.

We pulled into a sloping lot behind a flashing-silver Mercedes sports car, out of which two middle-aged men in starchy dress shirts and designer jeans emerged from under gull-wing doors. A skinny valet in a black satin vest gave a shallow bow and took the car deeper into the lot. Luke pulled up and a stocky valet with spike-gelled hair took his place in the driver's seat and drove the Porsche to join in with fancy company.

There was no line of well-dressed clubbers peering in from the outside, and we followed the Mercedes men in through a pair of frosted-glass doors.

The first thing I noticed was that the club was well lit. Though it was lively with music and booze-tipped conversational noise, it was clearly not a nightclub. I took in the room—red carpet, high walls, and dozens of glossy wood tables surrounded by plushy red loveseats. On these loveseats sat men between the ages of thirty and sixty, and girls between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five. I scanned for Lori and couldn't find her.

“May I help you?” An Asian woman in a high-neck blouse and pencil skirt came forward, her soft hands folded before her. She was in her early forties, her complexion white and caked with makeup, her mouth drawn heavy with liner. Her short, black hair was pinned away from her face in tight, glossy lines. She spoke to Luke, her English weighed down by a slow, brittle accent, and she looked sideways at me through a fixed smile.

He started to extract his driver's license from his wallet and I did the same. He answered the woman, smooth-voiced and confident: “Yeah, can we get a table?”

“Have you been with us before?”

We shook our heads.

“Would you like a table or a private room?”

At the back of the room, I noticed a well-stocked bar, tended by two men in trim vests, with gelled hair. “Can we sit at the bar?”

“Of course.” She looked at me again with a curious, evaluative gaze, and I remembered that I was dressed for the supermarket. Then she smiled again, conspiratorial, indulgent. “I suppose you will not mind that there is no hostess service at the bar.”

She led the way through one side of the club, where we passed several closed, numbered doors. Those were the private rooms, then, where we might find Lori. When we reached the bar, she said, “Enjoy your evening.” Then she bowed and padded away on light feet.

When she was out of earshot, Luke leaned toward me with his eyebrows. “Where are we?”

I studied the spread of men and girls, the keen, red-faced jollity of the former, the short-skirted pleasantness of the latter. The crowd was around 90 percent Asian, but the 10 percent that wasn't was exclusively male. The scene gave my insides a whirl.

“She said hostess, right?”

“Yeah, I was wondering what that was too.”

“I think we're in a hostess club.”

“What's that?”

“Look around.”

He turned his head back to the room and started to nod. “It's weird, I'll tell you that.”

“I think the way this works is that all the girls are hostesses. They're getting paid to entertain the men. Accounts for the uniform age disparity, right?”

“What do you mean, ‘entertain'?”

“I've never been to a hostess club before, obviously. I don't think I know anyone who has, either. But they're fairly common in Asia. The understanding is the girls are like modern-day geishas.”

“High-end hookers?”

He said the last word a notch louder than he should have, and the bartender chuckled. “No prostitution in the Red Palace. That's the party line. You guys want a drink?”

I gave him a curious stare, and stayed on him long enough that he might notice me lingering. He was about my age, with a look of hard luck in a thick, black set of unmovable eyebrows. He stood around six feet, and despite peculiar proportions, his wide nose, thin eyes, and taunting mouth formed a face with some appeal.

“Can I get a scotch and soda?” asked Luke.

“I'll have the same,” I said.

He was quick with his hands and he presented our drinks with a white smirk. “I haven't seen you around here before.”

“First time,” I said. “Hey, what'd you mean about the party line?”

“What're you talking about?” He winked. “You didn't hear anything from me.”

I took a swallow of my drink. “What's your name?”

“Albert. You?”

“You Korean?” I smiled. “Of course you're Korean. Albert.”

“Hey, there are Chinese guys called Albert, too.”

“Yeah? Are you one of them?” I took another gulp from the tumbler and blinked at him over the rim. “Didn't think so.”

“So what's your name?”

“Take a cigarette with me and maybe I'll tell you.” I felt Luke's questioning eyes, and I knew if I turned to meet them I'd blow the act. I motioned to the other bartender, who was listening in without much stealth. “He can take care of my friend a few minutes, can't he?”

“I guess I can take a few minutes.”

As he came out from behind the bar, I gave Luke's shoulder a light tap. “I'll be right back.”

I followed Albert to an outdoor patio through a rear exit. There wasn't much in the way of seating except a long red bench affixed to the wall, and clusters of patrons and girls stood around smoking and inhaling smoke. When the rest of the country gave up cigarettes in waves, only Koreans seemed to have missed the warnings. With half the bars in Koreatown flouting laws to allow smoking indoors, we would be the race that kept lung cancer relevant. The Red Palace kept things legal, and the patio was crowded. The space was mercilessly well lit, and every forehead around shimmered as if anointed with oil.

We settled, standing, in a spot comfortable enough that eavesdroppers would have to be trying, and I withdrew my pack of Luckies and shoved it toward him, carton cap flipped down.

“Thank you.” He pulled out a cig and I did the same. I fished around for my matchbook and brought that out, too. I'd sunk a whole afternoon a few years back learning to light matches with one hand. A sharp drag of calloused thumb gave us flame.

“So.” I lit Albert's Lucky, suctioned between two lips and pinched like a joint where yellow paper turned to white. “If this is an establishment for horny men, how'd you end up behind the bar?”

He chuckled and exhaled a milk cloud of smoke. “Oh, I don't know. They like a man to pour their drinks, I guess.”

“How long have you been working here?”

“Almost a year.”

“So you know a thing or two behind the scenes, I take it.”

“You could say that.”

“I've never been to a hostess club before. I'm fascinated.”

“What do you want to know?”

I smiled. “Well, how's it work?”

He moistened his lips and, to my delight, started to talk. “These men come in.” He pointed vaguely at the men on the patio, the slack-bellied, stiff-haired men in business casual. “They have a lot of cash, all of them. You know a table costs something like two hundred dollars an hour, so you need to have a lot of cash. A lot of these guys are regulars, too.”

“Jesus, two hundred an hour? For what?”

He smiled again, sly and conspiratorial in a way that started to look lascivious. “What do you think?”

“Why don't you give me the party line first?”

“They get table service. Their choice of booze and some things to munch on. The girls serve them, and they sit with them, in or around their laps.” He made a snorting sound. “The story is the girls just talk to them in high-pitched voices, laugh at their jokes, make them feel like big men. And of course, they throw money and booze around like some goddamn philanthropists.”

“And what's behind the party line?”

“I probably shouldn't say, right?” He took another suck at his cigarette, still holding it like a blunt.

I studied his face and waited. He was dying to tell me.

“Well, isn't it obvious? Who pays that kind of money without a happy ending?”

“So you're saying what, this is a brothel?”

“Maybe not technically. But all the hostesses are gold-digging sluts. I know they're spreading their legs for money in a way that can't be legal.”

And with that, I noticed he was suddenly ugly, his complexion sick and blotched with an angry shade of red. I took a heavy, scratchy sip of nicotine and tried to regain a flirtatious smile. “Is one of these sluts named Lori Lim?”

“Yeah. What about her?”

“Do you know if she ever entertains an older white guy?”

“She entertains a few of them, probably. It's her job. But you mean one in particular, don't you?”

I nodded. “You've seen him?”

“Tall ginger creep, about thirty. He's here a couple times a week. How could I miss him?”

I felt my pulse spike and did my best to hide it by tensing the muscles in my eyelids and staring at the lumined tip of my cigarette.

“When was the last time you saw this guy?”

“Actually, he was here last night. I just saw him for a second. Lori wasn't here, so he probably left quick.”

I heard a cardboard click as that jigsaw piece fell into place. I could finally see that part of the puzzle well enough to know which way to orient it while I waited for the rest to come in.

“How about a guy in his fifties? Kind of tall, gray hair.”

“We get a few of those, and I see Lori with them now and then. I can't pick out a face, though.”

“And you think Lori's sleeping with all these men. Just all of them.”

“Probably. I mean, you've seen her in action, right? She pretty much invites guys to unbutton their pants.”

“Look, I could care less if she screwed every guy she ever met. That's her business.” I didn't know how much more Albert I could tolerate, but I cursed myself as I heard the sharpness enter my tone. I made it sweeter and lowered my voice to a scandalized whisper. “Tell me, though. Do you actually know if she sleeps with men for money?”

He dropped his cigarette and snuffed it underfoot. “You still haven't told me your name.”

“Oh, I'm sorry.” I gave him the first name that came to mind, with a big smile. “It's Chastity.”

“Why so curious, Chastity?” He smiled back, his eyes like two raisins folding into soft dough.

“It's interesting stuff.” I shrugged and put out my Lucky Strike, scrubbing out the embers with platformed toes. The interview was over. “I'm getting thirsty again. How about you make me another drink?”

“How about I get your number first?” He touched my wrist, a gesture meant to make me comply.

“Maybe later.” I shook him off and gave him my least confrontational glare. “I wouldn't want you thinking I was some kind of whore, Albert.”

*   *   *

I made my way back to the bar while he stayed behind for another cigarette, which suited me. The moment I reentered the building, my eyes found Lori, her delicate figure softly presented in amber light. She wore a short dress of jade crepe de chine with spaghetti straps and a vertical ruffle falling down the bodice. A tall, curved heel on an oyster satin shoe combined with a messy up-do to bring her to a height from which she conversed with Luke eye to eye as he sat on a bar stool, with his back in my direction. The Chanel rested on the bar beside her.