Dirty Laundry (32 page)

“I don’t know.” He scraped at his beard with his fingers. “Maybe she married someone with the same last name, as Eun Joon did. Do you know how many people are named Yi? I never thought about it. I only hired him because she called me up and asked me to give him a job. He complains a lot. Not my type. I like my men to be… more like you.”

I knew when Gyong-Si set up shop in Los Angeles. Terry was—maybe—at most a year younger than Vivian or Hong Chul. After doing a round of quick math, I shook my head at the man’s obtuseness. “Gyong-Si,
think
about it. Terry isn’t just your assistant. He’s your
son
.”

“S
ON
of a bitch.” I slapped at the dashboard of Bobby’s truck. “We read the name wrong. She even told me people got their names confused.”

“Yeah, you said that already.” He hit me lightly with his fist. “Stop beating up my truck, asshole, and tell me where we’re going.”

It was early enough in the day, and I wanted to talk to Joon Eun Yi again. If someone was stalking Gyong-Si’s past conquests, she was going to be on the killer’s list.

Bobby was easily persuaded to come with me. The promise of a cold beer and a hot hamburger went a long way in compromising any plans he might have had for the day. Right after his dick, his stomach pretty much ruled the roost. I’d pay for feeding him the burger and beer with a run around Los Angeles or going a few rounds in the ring, but it was a small price to pay.

I’d see how I felt about making that deal later when I was licking my wounds under a hot shower.

The main street fronting the complex was eerily quiet. Like most LA streets, all of the parking spaces were taken, including the half space people usually left behind a red zone, but no one was out walking. After Bobby drove up the street for the second time, I directed him to the small parking lot behind the apartments. He pulled into a space directly below the Lees’ balcony and gave me the evil eye.

“If I get towed, you’re going to be paying for it,” he barked at me.

“You’re not going to get towed.” Looking around the lot, I gestured wildly. “There’s, like, three cars here. By the time someone wants this space, we’ll be long gone.”

“Shitty things happen to my trucks when I’m with you.” Bobby continued to grumble as we walked to the pass-through leading to the complex’s courtyard. “I should be happy if all that happens to
this
one is it getting towed.”

“
One
truck gets blown up and it’s all my fault?
One
!”
Pointing out the obvious—that I’d not been the one to blow his truck up—had no lasting effect on Bobby. His derision continued when we found the passage to the courtyard blocked by a locked security gate. Someone was certainly serious about keeping out the riffraff. Grabbing the heavy chain wrapped around the door handles, he rattled the padlock to see if it could be opened.

Much like Bobby’s mind about my involvement in his dead truck’s demise, the gate remained closed.

“Okay, so we walk around,” I said to Bobby’s disgusted hiss. “Come on. It’ll help you work off that burger I’m going to buy you.”

Not much had changed in the complex since I’d last been there. The trees were still tall and bushy, their tops reaching the upper floor roof, and the courtyard resembled an ancient rainforest. Someone’d gone wild with the fertilizer, because a pungent organic-fishy smell hit us in the face once we got past the front archway. The patches of lawn interspersed between the flower beds glistened from dew, and a butterfly dive-bombed my face when I stepped out into the dappled rays coming through the trees. Despite the cloudless sky, the morning was still bitter, and the wind whistling through the archway and pass-through cut down to the bone.

“This is kind of nice,” Bobby murmured, looking around. Cocking his head, he frowned. “And kind of too… quiet. No toys or anything on the walkways. Mostly adults?”

“I think most of the people who live here either are retired or work during the day. Kind of feels like one of those places.” I pointed to the stairs near the pass-through to the parking lot. “That’s the only way up. Yi said she has the place next to the Lees. Let’s see if she’s home.”

He sidestepped a sprinkler head that had popped up suddenly. A few feet down, the dirt beside the sidewalk sprouted a row of black spigots. “Those things better not go off. These are new boots. What exactly are you hoping to get from her?”

“Stop worrying about your delicate feet.” He slapped my back with the flat of his hand, and I reached back to rub at the sting. “And I don’t know. Maybe she knows someone who wants Gyong-Si to suffer? They were close, and he seems kind of self-absorbed—”

“Kind of?”

“Okay, very,” I corrected myself. “She’s one of those women who collects gossip. If there’s any dirt on someone, I think she might have it. Especially if it’s about Gyong-Si. I’m hoping she knows about someone like that. Or at least we can warn her to go to the cops if someone suspicious comes around.”

The sprinklers went off full blast before I could go any further. The water was fucking cold and, for some reason, shot out in hard, pounding sheets. Dodging against the outside wall of the apartments didn’t do us any good. The blasts of water coming from the popped-up heads were like being bombarded by fire hoses. I felt the sting of the blast through my jeans and tried to skip out of the way, only to fall prey to the next shot arcing toward my crotch.

“Shit, head to the stairs, kid.” Bobby took a shot of water to his chest. The water continued to ratchet upward, leaving welts on his cheek and jaw. “What the fuck is—”

We never made it to the stairs. A shot came out of the shadows above us, scoring a groove into the cement by our feet. Another followed, then, like the sprinklers, a line of blasts cut us off from the archway.

Braving the beating lines of water, Bobby and I dove toward the center of the courtyard, both of us looking for cover among the tree trunks. Cowering behind one of the smaller palms, I pressed my back to the striated trunk and looked around for any sign of the shooter, catching the last bit of a water stream on my shoulder. Bobby somehow ended up farther in, a few feet away behind a eucalyptus.

“Can you see him?” Bobby shouted above the chunking sound of the sprinklers and loud gushes of water. I shook my head, and he bared his teeth in frustration. “Tell me you brought your gun!”

Shaking my head so the shooter couldn’t hear my response, I grumbled to myself, “Who the fuck would bring a gun to talk to a fortune-teller?”

I dug my phone out of my pocket and sighed at its flickering screen. Soaked down to the chips, the screenshot I’d taken of Neko for my background glowed a demonic red before being cut through with blue dots and lines. Holding my phone up for Bobby to see, I lifted my eyebrows and pointed at him, asking him if his was any better.

His mouth turned into a sour fish kiss and he shook his head, then pointed back toward the parking lot.

“Really?” I grumbled over the water noise. “You fucking leave your
phone
behind and you give me shit about a gun?”

He shrugged and took a peek out from behind his tree. Our gunman must have had a better view of Bobby’s hiding place, because the second his face popped out from behind the trunk, another shot went off and pieces of papery bark flew into the air.

We were a lot closer to the back of the complex than the front. Making it to the stairs would be tricky, especially since I couldn’t guarantee we could get to the shooter before he cut into us. From the looks of things, the first floor was either deserted or filled with people with more common sense than Bobby and I had.

The water pouring out of the sprinklers was freezing, and I shivered, feeling a ripple of ice starting to kiss my blood. Rubbing at my shoulder to get my circulation going, I took another look around the trunk, trying to spot a way to get to safety. Short of getting inside one of the lower floor apartments and then smashing out through a back window, things did not look good. There didn’t seem to be anyone to hear the gunshots, even if they could over the gushes of water, and the gunman wouldn’t have to wait long for us to either begin to stiffen up under the cold water or float in the lake forming in the complex’s courtyard.

I was about to damn myself and dash to the archway for help when a man’s voice called out to me from the upper floor.

“Mr. McGinnis?”

I rolled my eyes at the
really?
face Bobby gave me. I wasn’t surprised the guy knew who I was. Chances are, we were on the same road map, circling around Gyong-Si’s offspring. Thing was, he and I had totally different reasons for doing so. He wanted them dead, and I took offense to that. Sticking my head out a little bit, I shouted back, “Yeah? What can I do for you?”

Scintillating conversation at its best, but there wasn’t much else to say, short of begging him to let us go. Considering he’d just spent the last minute or so trying to blow our heads off, I didn’t think it was going to be an option.

“You know I’m going to have to kill you and your friend.” He sounded almost delighted, a flippant slant to his voice. Like Jae, he had a smooth roundness to his English. I didn’t recognize his voice, but he sounded vaguely familiar. “You might was well come out and get it over with.”

“Dude, I don’t even know who you are.” If anything, the water got colder. Either that or my core body temperature was beginning to drop. I’d lost feeling in my toes, and from the blue splotches creeping into Bobby’s lips, he wasn’t doing much better.

“Really? I would have thought you’d have figured it out.” A shadow emerged from the stairwell.

The light hit him, and I saw Bobby frown, struggling to put a name to the face. I had no such problem. Even distracted by the Beretta he held pointed at my head, I recognized him straight off.

I’d only really seen him twice. Once when he picked his mother up at my office and when he’d been in the conference room after Vivian’s death. He’d mastered the dutiful son look then, in his dress slacks and polo shirts. Now, he was working on serial killer and doing a damned fine job. Even as shitty a dresser as I was, I knew green khakis did not go with an orange Hawaiian shirt.

“James Bahn—fuck.” He’d seemed like a decent kind of guy. It’d all been an act put on for his mother—an act that probably also included him being the loving older brother to his wayward illegitimate sister, Vivian Na. Bobby ducked back behind his cover, but not before he gave me a
who-the-fuck
look. “Madame Sun’s son, right?”

“Good to know that, for some of you, we don’t all look alike,” he sneered at me. I scuttled around the trunk, carefully aligning myself so he couldn’t get a clear shot.

“Pretty fucking shitty thing to say there, James.” The numbness was eating away at my feet, and my fingers joined the party, tingling when I flexed them. “Kind of racist, actually. Especially since I’m half Japanese. What do you want to let us go?”

“Let you go? I can’t do that, Mr. McGinnis.” I heard him shuffling in between the shots of sprinkler sprays and strained to figure out if he went left or right without getting my head blown off. “Or should I call you Cole?”

“Whatever makes you happy.” I caught a glimpse of Bobby’s shoulder emerging out from behind the eucalyptus. Shaking, he came into view, curled up onto his haunches and balancing on his toes. He motioned toward the next tree, pointed to himself and then again to the tree. I shook my head, hoping to keep him in place, but Bobby frowned furiously, negating my concern. I took a deep breath and shouted at James, hoping to keep his attention on me. “What are you doing here? Besides trying to kill me?”

Bobby took off before James could answer, and suddenly, the bushes around Bobby were peppered with two shots. I heard Bobby’s pained grunt and toppled over, trying to sprint toward him. My legs weren’t responding, and I shook from the cold. The sunlight coming through the trees wasn’t hot enough to warm us up, and I was struggling to get some feeling in my limbs when Bobby rolled under a stand of thick hibiscus bushes, their yellow pollen dusted over his short hair.

He was clutching his left arm, and a trickle of blood seeped out from between his fingers, soaking into the cedar mulch chunks around the stand’s roots. Making eye contact, Bobby mouthed at me,
I’m okay.

Nodding in return, I went back to shouting at James. “Let me guess, you’re here to kill Terry Yi.”

“Smart man.” His laugh was loud, telling me he was closer than I’d have liked. “You’re not as stupid as you look. I thought I’d kill his mother too, since I’m here. You, on the other hand, are becoming a problem I sorely need to get rid of. And now your friend too. Such a shame. Especially after everything you’ve done for Mother.”

Cursing the water spray leeching the warmth out of my body, I dug around the tree, hoping to find a rock or something to throw at his head. “Want to give me the five minute evil villain monologue, or should I just guess? It has something to do with Gyong-Si and your mother.”

“Gangjun Gyong-Si? That bastard?” Any calm in James’s voice melted away under the heat of his furious reply. “For a gay man, he’s ruined a lot of lives by sleeping with women he should have left alone to begin with!”