Follow Her Home (26 page)

He turned back to Lori. “So my friend over there, see the Chinese guy with the glasses?”

Goatee eyed our table through splayed fingers, like a moviegoer negotiating fascination and fear to the tune of building suspense.

Eyebrows turned to Lori and continued. “He thinks you're cute, but he's too much of a pussy to ask for your number.” He said
pussy
with enough volume and length to cross the room. Goatee folded down the index and ring fingers of both hands.

Lori shot a glance at our side of the table then faced her suitor's proxy. “Oh. I don't know.”

“Come on, just give it to him.” He fished out a phone.

A corner of her mouth receded where she bit the inside of her lower lip. “I, I guess,” she said.

She shot me an uncomfortable look and I interrupted. “I'm sorry, kid, but she has a boyfriend.”

He glared at me with teeth locked together and lips flared in a comic snarl. “Hey. I wasn't talking to you, woman.”

I looked at Luke and threw my hands up. He swallowed the beginnings of a laugh. When our eyes met, we saw the illusion of normalcy pooling with opportunistic hope in their tired corners and looked away.

Lori spoke up, measuring her words with the care of a pastry chef piping cream on her first day of work. “I'm sorry, but I do have a boyfriend. Tell your friend that he's very sweet.” She stuck her tooth out at him with a crescent smile.

“That's too bad. I'll give you his number anyway. Do you have a pen hiding under that T-shirt?”

She shook her head. We were shaking ours before he even got around to looking.

Goatee shouted across the room, “Come back here, Greg.”

I felt a tightening in my shoulders at the sound of that name, and I felt it in Luke, and I felt it in Lori. Greg shrugged. “Well, it was nice to meet you all.” He stood up and rejoined his table, where Goatee was waiting with a closed fist.

“I don't have a boyfriend.” Lori tied her lips together and looked from me to Luke. Her voice came fuzzy and quiet, like padded bunny slippers navigating a long hallway.

“Not in the traditional sense, anyway.” Luke regarded her through dry, glassy eyes. “Do you give your number out to anyone who asks?” I'd known Luke long enough that I heard the sneer in his voice.

Lori didn't seem to pick it up. She nodded. “It's easier that way.”

“It's easier until you get a stalker, and the stalker winds up dead outside your house.”

Her eyes filled with hurt and pleading and sought the ketchup on the table. “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be,” I said, glaring at Luke. “What the fuck are you saying, Luke? That somehow it‘s Lori's fault that Greg was obsessed with her? That your dad's henchman killed him?”

“I didn't say that.” His voice was sheepish, defensive. “But maybe if Lori didn't have men following her around like she was the Pied fucking Piper, none of this would've happened.”

“Be very careful, Luke. That sounds a lot like, ‘She was asking for it.'”

If there was one thing I could never like about noir, it was the story of the femme fatale. A woman could never be beautiful without a taint of evil. The men who fell for her were only victims, helpless sailors tempted by the siren's song, flies zapped by bright lights. Odysseus was a hero for plugging his ears with wax, and Marlowe showed his virtue by resisting seduction. Women were, in the end, traps to be avoided.

Our waitress came, bearing our food with the poise and silence of a mime. When she presented Lori's plate, she said, “And you had the cheesecake,” as if she had been speaking all along. She retreated in long-legged strides.

I picked up my fork and knife and laid a napkin on my lap. “Don't listen to Luke. He's had a rough day too and he's being an asshole. But we do have to talk. Go ahead and eat, but when we're done eating, I have a lot of questions I need you to answer. We didn't kidnap you for kicks.”

She gulped down a small bite of cheesecake. Her face said
I need milk
with more clarity and persuasion than any commercial I'd ever seen.

I set at my food like a starved lion attacking a plump and hapless martyr, with prejudice and marginal enjoyment. I took a long drink of water, put down my glass, and turned to Lori. “Look, we need to get some things straight. I don't know how much you've figured out, but I'm in something of a jam. I've been tossed and dragged around town all weekend and if you're not honest with me now I will flip out.”

“Okay.”

“I'll start easy. Where is my car?”

“It's at my uncle's shop.”

I made a mental note to call Chaz. “Do you have the key?”

“No.”

“My phone?”

“No.”

“Your mom.”

“Yes.”

I paused and pushed my hands against the edge of the table. “Did you know your mom was getting money from Mr. Cook?”

She bit her lower lip, hard, and shook her head. “No.”

“You didn't know until just now, when I told you.”

She nodded.

“Do you know why?”

She shrugged and shifted in her seat.

“Come on, Lori. This is an easy one. And for the record, you lied to my face the other night. I think I deserve more than that.”

She lifted her eyes to mine and they gazed wide and unfocused, the dark pupils shivering, so black they held the blue of night sky, the blue of deep ocean. “When did I lie?”

“About Mr. Cook. You told me you weren't sleeping together.”

She shook her head about the pivot of her eyes. “I didn't lie.”

“You mean—”

She nodded. “Mr. Cook is very kind to me, but that's all.”

I felt Luke rustle in his seat. “Are you really telling me that you and Cook aren't sleeping together?”

She nodded.

“And you never have? Not even once?”

She turned a uniform, fiery red.

I looked at Luke and turned back to her. “Lori?”

“You're going to laugh at me.”

“Try me. I could use a laugh.”

She put a hand to her face and spoke quietly, her voice obstructed by her palm. “I'm saving myself. For my husband.”

“What?” I cocked my head and looked at her bright red face through the tawny blinds of her spread fingers. “Really?”

She nodded again.

“I have to ask—why?”

“It's a religious thing, I guess.”

I remembered her in her Sunday dress with the Peter Pan collar, coming back from church, just over twelve hours ago. “No judgment here, Lori, I'm just curious—are there a lot of virgins for Jesus working the Red Palace?”

Her face flushed darker still. “I'm not perfect. I know it's a weird job. But my mom is always there to watch me, and I just, I don't know, I guess I flirt, but I don't, like—”

She'd given herself all these excuses before, but they still fell clumsily from her tongue. “You don't sleep with your customers, then.”

“Of course not.” She was relieved to be interrupted, and to deny dishonor rather than defend her innocence.

“Your friend Albert seemed to think it was standard operating procedure.”

She glowered at the sound of his name. “He's not my friend.”

“I'm going to take a wild guess—he tried to sleep with you.”

“Me and every other girl there.”

“Well, that explains a lot.” I shook my head. “Still, I can't believe you're a virgin. I mean, don't take that the wrong way—it's just, this whole thing started 'cause Luke told me you were sleeping with his dad. And somehow I'm the sluttiest one here.” I looked at Luke. “Sluttiest girl, anyway. So if you and Cook aren't having an affair, can I ask what in Christ's sweet sacred name you are doing? 'Cause I will throw you to those undergrads if you try to tell me it's strictly professional.”

She cleared her throat. “We have lunch every Saturday and dinner every Wednesday after work.”

“So, what, all you do is grab meals together?”

“Sometimes if he has no one else to go with we watch movies. One time we went to the Getty. That was nice.”

“Has he ever made a pass at you?”

“Never.”

“You just go on these dates. Like a couple of regular normal healthy people.”

“They're not dates, really. He's a lonely man and I keep him company.”

Luke's fist hit the tabletop with a loud thud and a tinkle of disturbed silverware. “How would you know?”

She startled, and in a nervous pricked tone she asked, just to say something, “What?”

“How would you know that my dad—
my
dad—is a lonely man?” He stood up without waiting for an answer. “I'll settle up. Meet me in the car.”

Lori's lips started to form Luke's name and I touched her hand and said, “Let him go.”

“I didn't mean to—” She sighed. “Is he okay?”

“Be realistic, Lori. Why would he be okay?”

“His dad never cheated.”

“Maybe not in every sense of the word, but we're past that now anyway, aren't we.” I watched Luke leave the diner, his back long and sullen. “So Cook confides in you, then.”

She nodded. “I'm his friend. I mean it.”

She did mean it, and I wondered how firmly she believed it. “When did this start?”

“I don't know. About a year ago?”

“Did you know your mom knew about it?”

“Of course. I don't hide things from her.”

“Well, she doesn't extend you the same courtesy.” I shook my head. “Why didn't you tell me this yesterday? You sure have been acting like you had something to hide.”

“I'm not supposed to talk about it.”

“Says who?”

“Mr. Cook. My mom,” she said softly.

“Did Greg know you weren't sleeping together?”

She nodded. “He cornered me a few months ago and he kept asking and asking until I told him we weren't. I thought that would make him go away.”

There was a moment of silence, unscripted and eerie, for the dead man. “Cook buys you things, doesn't he?”

She nodded.

“Nice things?”

She nodded.

“Did it ever occur to you why he might do that?”

“I've asked him before. He said he had enough money and that he wanted me to have nice things. I don't know, I used to feel weird about it but I guess at some point that stopped.”

I scratched the back of my neck and squinted. “Did he ever ask you for anything? Like, oh, locks of hair or maybe pictures of yourself gussied up like a geisha?”

She reddened. “I didn't know those were for him.”

“Lori, I think you need to have a long talk with your mother.”

We sat in tight silence, grabbing for our glasses, taking slow gulps and looking about the room. After a while, Lori spoke up. “She isn't a monster, you know.”

I decided not to point out what Yujin Chung had done to me that day. I could tell Lori wasn't done talking.

“My grandmother brought her to the States to give her a better life, but she couldn't follow through. She drank bleach and died when my mom was thirteen. My mom found her.” She looked at me with a plea in her eyes. “You never forget something like that. It changes you.”

I swallowed the thick dryness in my throat.

“And it wasn't just the trauma. She was a thirteen-year-old girl with a nine-year-old brother, no mother, no father, and she didn't speak English.” Her voice welled with pity. “Please understand her. She's had it hard her whole life.”

I was sorry for Yujin Chung, and I was sorry for Lori, but I kept my mouth shut. I didn't tell her I knew a couple good sob stories of my own; that I had a mother, too, who had been through the ruinous episodes of a hard damn life without emerging cruel and weaponized against the world.

We left the diner in clunky silence and found Luke waiting in the car as promised.

I got into the front seat and asked, “You okay, man?”

He nodded. “Fine. Where are we going?”

Before I could answer, Lori spoke from the backseat: “I can't go home.”

“I know. Taking you back was never the plan.” I didn't point out that her mom would be waiting with knives. I looked at Luke. “We can call Jackie.”

*   *   *

Luke handed me his phone with Jackie's number on the screen. I took it and put finger to touchscreen to call my ex's widow just a handful of minutes shy of 3:00
A.M.

She picked up after two rings. “Luke?”

“Hi, Jackie, it's Song.”

“Goodness gracious, Juniper, it's almost three in the morning. Are you okay?” Her voice came through with the thin transparency of crinkling cellophane. It carried the weight of exhaustion and the tormented keenness brought by long, wakeful hours.

“Are you at home?”

“No, I'm at my parents' house. Why?”

“I need to ask you a favor. A pretty big one.”

“What's going on?”

“It's a long story, and I hope to God it's in its last chapters, so look, at some point, soon, I hope, we'll you and me get a cup of coffee and I'll tell you the whole thing. But first, can I drop off a … well, a person, at your parents' house? She needs a place to stay.”

“What? What person?”

“Her name's Lori, she works for Stokel. You'll hardly notice her. She's very small.”

“I'm not even—”

“Jackie, please? I wouldn't be asking you now of all times if it weren't important. I'm in trouble, and she can't go home right now without me getting into more trouble.” I hesitated. “I'm getting to the bottom of what happened to Diego. It's like swimming down a jar of mayonnaise, but I'm getting there, and I promise you'll be the first person I call when my nose hits the glass.”

“Okay,” she said too fast, with a tremble. “Okay.”