Dirty Laundry (12 page)

T
HE
shooting was nearly over before it truly began to sink into my head. There is a long moment when the brain can’t quite catch up to what’s happening—the loud pounding booms nearby, the screams of people, and then the smell of blood. Nothing makes the brain freeze over more than the smell of human blood in the air.

Even if someone’d never smelled that much human blood before, the brain knows it’s been spilled. The small remains of a primal lizard consciousness perks up and is ready to scatter at the scent of its species’ own blood. It sticks to nostril hairs, and for a long, panicked moment, the brain wonders if the blood it’s sucking in belongs to its own meat suit.

That’s usually when the screaming starts. Either because the pain hits or the terror that it might. But most of all, it’s because blood is all you can taste, and you drown in it, trying to find some dark corner where the chaos can’t reach you.

I couldn’t save Vivian Na. She was gone before I’d taken another breath. But I could drag a terrified young woman under the tables. Her friend was silent, sobbing into her own hands, and I reached through the noise and flying glass, snagging her around the waist to drag her to safety. She fought me, raking my bare arms with her long nails, slicing me open. I bled, shallow scratches of pinkish water, nothing like the ocean of red spreading out around us.

The gunshots were only whistling echoes in my eardrums, leftover burns among the continuing screams. Fear grew to horror, and the crying began, the women I’d pulled under the table included. Keeping my head down, I scrambled to my feet and nearly stepped on a slender young Korean man clutching his leg, blood seeping slowly from his fingers.

My side argued with me, the muscles twisting around their captured nerves and scar tissue. Spasms dug their claws in deep, and I had to huff my breaths to ease away the pain. It fucking hurt, but probably not as much as the burning hole through the kid’s thigh.

“Hey, it’ll be okay.” Any thought of going anywhere but right to his side was gone. The blood wasn’t spurting, but the bleed was constant. I grabbed a few of the linen napkins from the table and gently peeled his hands back.

His jeans were soaked through, and I pressed down on the wound, staunching the flow as best I could. He blinked, and I swallowed, caught by the pain on his face. He looked
nothing
like my lover, but all I could think about was Jae. I’d done this once, pressing my cold fingers to Jae’s broken skin to hold his blood in. Hopefully, I’d have the same luck with the kid as I did with Jae then. The ashen clamminess on his skin was normal, I told myself, and one of the women I’d yanked aside crawled out to touch my arm.

“Is it over?” She was shaking, shock ripping through her as brutally as the bullet tore through the young man I was pressing down upon. “Are we okay?”

“Yeah, you’re fine.” I nodded over to the other woman. “See how she’s doing. Dial the cops if you can. We need to get some help down here.”

I needn’t have bothered telling her to call 911. Sirens were cutting through the air before she crawled back under the table to retrieve her phone. A few feet away, Vivian Na’s body cooled, her life turning the floor sticky as people ran through her pooling blood to get to the door.

“Why did they do this? Were they trying to kill us? Is she dead?”

The
they
she was talking about was obvious. Whoever held that gun was the enemy. Her phone bobbled in her hands, and she clenched her fingers tight around the case to stop her own trembling. The boy moaned, and in another scenario, I’d have been happy to hear that tortured sound, but it wasn’t Jae beneath me, and the harsh sounds weren’t ones of pleasure.

“I don’t know.” Admitting ignorance wasn’t a sign of weakness. It merely showed me what I needed to do to solve the tangled situation dumped in my lap. “But I’m going to find out.”

There wasn’t any going back to save Vivian Na. As I pressed down on the kid’s leg, I realized I’d never even heard her speak in person, much less found out if she knew anything about the Madame Sun murders. The shooting had come through the outer windows, the café’s interior lit up like a carnival sideshow. It’d been the perfect setup. Outside on the street, we’d all been sitting ducks.

Someone wanted to silence her. While others had been hit by stray bullets, the majority of the shots were meant for her, rending her apart.

“What the hell did you know, Vivian?” I turned to look at her body. “What was so fucking dangerous you had to die for it?”

“Y
OU
sure you’re not a lawyer, McGinnis?” Wong shot me an exasperated look. “’Cause you seem to show up around dead bodies more than an ambulance chaser.”

“She got dead
after
I got here.” I’d been accused of being macabre before but never a lawyer. I wasn’t sure if I was offended or not. “Her name’s Vivian Na. She’s Madame Sun’s assistant. I was meeting her here to ask her a few questions about Choi and Lee.”

“And she happened to be the
one
fatality in the shooting?”

“I think she was the target of the shooting. Everyone else was just collateral damage.”

“Got any evidence of that?

“Just a feeling,” I said, shrugging.

“I can’t take a feeling to court, McGinnis. How about if you talk to me about what happened when you got here?”

Wong arrived a few seconds after the blue throng, chugging through the courtyard in a Crown Vic battered enough to be in the demolition derby. Someone on the bottom of the food chain secured us both coffee, and Wong pulled me aside to grill me once it got around I’d been there to meet the victim.

Vivian Na was no longer a name. She’d become the
victim
, and depending on the detective who caught her case, she’d either remain a faceless number on a homicide report or her murderer would be an unholy grail the cop couldn’t shake free.

Luckily for Vivian, she got the latter in Detective Dexter Wong.

“Not much to tell. Honestly, she never even had a chance to speak to me except for over the phone. We touched hands, and then she went down.”

“And you called her because she’s Madame Sun’s assistant? What were you thinking she could tell you?”

“I was going to see if she knew Lee was seeing Gyong-Si or if Choi’s related to him.” The splash of Vivian’s blood on me was drying. One of the crime scene people took pictures of the spray, and there was some talk of taking my shirt with them for evidence. “There’s bad blood between him and Sun. I’m looking for something to connect the chain of events. Sun believes someone’s targeting her clients.”

“What do you believe?” Wong drew me out, looking up from his notes.

“Come on, tell me you can’t see this is all stitched up into Madame Sun,” I ventured. “First Choi, then Lee, and now Vivian Na. All of them have some connection to Sun.”

“There’s definitely a connection,” he grunted at me and stabbed my aching side with a bony finger. “But you’re going to step away from it and let me do my job. If there’s something fucked-up going on, I’ll find it. You agreed, remember?”

“She died right in front of me, Dex.” Pursing my lips, I stared at the café’s shattered windows. “Fuck, she probably died
because
of me.”

“The entire world doesn’t revolve around you, McGinnis,” Wong retorted. “But in case it does, let’s go over what she said to you on the phone.”

It wasn’t a lot. Our conversation had been brief and to the point. Meeting me was something she was resigned to do, not something she’d sought out. I didn’t have much to give Wong other than Na’s general irritation at having to start her night later than she’d expected. I knew exactly where she’d been headed after talking to me, and Wong took down what little I had to add on his tiny brown notebook.

Clicking his pen, Wong sighed at his spare scribbles. “We still on for that dinner?”

“Um, yeah, about that.” I scratched at the back of my neck. “Jae and I are taking a break. Well, Jae’s taking a break. I’m learning how to deal with it.”

“A good break or a bad break?” He shifted closer, keeping his voice down. It seemed like an odd place to have a bonding session with a newly minted friend, but sometimes, I had to take my special moments where I could get them. “Is he just busy or did shit happen?”

“Kind of shit happening.” Swallowing, I found a chunk of my pain lodged in my throat. “His sister showed up out of the blue. I kind of outed him.”

“Fuck, that’s a bad one.” Wong whistled under his breath. “Asian families are weird, you know? When I was in high school, my mom kept throwing Chinese girls at me. Then she was happy if the girl was Asian. Now, she’s just thrilled if the girl’s got a pulse and I don’t pay her by the hour. Pretty sure by the time I hit forty, she’ll take anything with a womb, even if she’s got three boobs and shaves twice a day.”

“Somehow, I don’t think I’m ever going to fit into that timeline there, Wong.” I smirked ruefully. “Jae’s family’s never going to be happy he’s with a guy.”

“Probably not, but hang in there.” He shrugged. “Don’t you think they just want him to be happy?”

“They should, but I don’t know if that’s high on anyone’s priority list but mine.” Nodding my chin over toward my Rover, I frowned at the strips of yellow tape blocking off the courtyard’s driveways. “Am I going to be able to get out of here?”

“Yeah, about that.” Wong glanced apologetically at my trapped car. “You got enough money on you for a cab?”

I
ENDED
up calling that cab. The driver was a former Long Island native who regaled me with what was wrong with Los Angeles and why New York was better. When I asked him how long he’d been in LA, he told me fifteen years. Since he looked to be in his midtwenties, I wasn’t going to put much stock into his opinion of the Big Apple versus Tinseltown. He wasn’t old enough to have seen anything other than his grandmother’s backyard and possibly a few playgrounds. During the slow drive out of Koreatown, I learned he was a vegan and was studying to be an actor.

He was about to get into the reasons method acting was the true form of his craft when we pulled up in front of my place.

I tossed him what I had in my wallet and listened to his grumbling of a small tip before he drove away. Rolling my eyes in the plumes of exhaust he’d left behind, I dug my house keys out and headed up the walk. The scent of pizza from the Italian restaurant down the street made my mouth water, and I checked the time. I could maybe be lazy enough to get them to deliver a Chicago-style pie.

As soon as I spotted the woman waiting for me on my front stoop, I debated turning around and ordering a pizza in person. Maybe even eating it on a train to New York, because the cabbie sounded pretty convincing, and I should at least check things out before making up my mind.

I would have if I wasn’t damned certain she’d run me down like she was a cheetah and I was a tasty gazelle.

“Nice legs,” I said, eyeing Maddy’s blades. “Did you run here on those, or did you stash your car someplace because you knew I would book it as soon as I saw it?”

“I parked in the back. Since you were out, I took a run. I’ve got my norms with me so I can change them out.” My sister-in-law studied my face. There couldn’t have been much to see under the hundred-watt bulb in my porch light, but whatever she saw there made her frown. “Is that blood?”

“It’s not mine.” Ultimately, they’d taken my shirt, but my hands were still marbled with blood. No wonder the cab driver thought I was sketchy. Even wearing the old gym shirt I’d had in my Rover, I looked like an extra from
Sweeney Todd
. He’d definitely deserved a larger tip.

“Let me in so I can yell at you.”

“Do you have to?” I unlocked the door and grabbed the soft case she used for her prosthetics. “Shit, these are heavy. How do you walk in them?”

“Good leg muscles. I can crack a walnut with my thighs. That’s why I usually wait until I’m having sex with your brother before I start talking about things I want for the house. One wrong word and I can pop his weenie like a grape.”

“I really didn’t need that in my head.” Putting the case in the living room, I said a quick hello to Neko, who peeked down from the landing to see who came in. Dissatisfied with the present humans, she ducked back into whatever black hole she’d come from. “Want something to drink? Dunno what I have.”

“Whatever’s cold,” Maddy called out from the couch. “Did you eat yet?”

“I was going to get a pizza,” I admitted, handing her a chilled bottle of home-style root beer. “Want to stay for a slice, or is this screaming at my head going to be quick?”

“Pizza would be nice.” She’d gotten her blades off and was packing them up into sleeves. “And no, I probably won’t be quick.”

Mike’d always had a fondness for tall, pretty blondes. He’d scored when Maddy gave him the time of day. Even barefaced and slightly dewy from a light run, she was a beauty. One that could kick my ass five ways from Sunday but still gorgeous, with her strong Norwegian features and powerfully lithe body. If I’d been straight, I’d have been terrified to ask her out. She was that far out of my league. I could only admire my brother’s brass ones for thinking he even had a chance with her much less begging her to marry his sorry, uptight ass.

The Italian place had a deep-dish sausage, mushroom, and garlic someone ordered but didn’t pick up. Five dollars plus tip and it was mine. They’d even warm it up for me. I’d barely come back down from cleaning up when the skinny kid doing the deliveries was at my door with a slightly steaming pizza dripping with cheese and a cocky smile that earned him a ten buck tip. I’d given the cab driver less, but he didn’t wiggle his ass in glee when I handed him the money Maddy fronted me.

I served Maddy on a paper plate and dug a slice out of the box to chew on. She studied the pizza, then shrugged, leaning forward to pick it up for a bite. Cheese gushed out of her mouth, and she laughed, shoving strings of it in with the back of her hand.

“This is like battle pizza,” Maddy said around another bite. Nestling back into my couch, she wiggled her upper legs, stretching out her muscles. She’s stripped off her legs and left her truncated knees bare, enjoying the cool air. “I don’t think I can open my mouth wide enough.”