Authors: Rhys Ford
T
HE
worst part about being a private investigator is holding your pee while waiting for a guy to crawl out of some other guy’s wife’s bed. The suckiest thing after that is digging through mounds of paperwork for the one tiny item that will prove you’ve got something to chase down. With arrest reports of nearly thirty men, Jae’s notes from Dae-Hoon’s journals, and the names of men off the bank statements, we were definitely in a previously unknown second circle of Hell.
“Can I be racist?” Bobby asked wearily. I didn’t know how he’d gotten the arrest records, but I wasn’t going to argue about privacy laws or any other nonsense. I needed to find out what happened to Dae-Hoon. Screw anything else.
“Sure, go ahead.” I stretched, rocking back in my chair.
“So long as you don’t cut up any of my good sheets to put over your head, I don’t care,” Claudia interjected, staring at him over the rims of her cats-eye glasses.
Bobby grunted at her in agreement and waved the report he’d been going over in the air. “Why the fuck don’t these people have more than seven last names? And all the first names are the same, just jumbled around. It’s like trying to figure out who’s who at a fucking twins’ picnic.”
“I don’t know if that counts as racist,” I replied. “I think it was kind of set up that way. I’ll ask Jae, but I think some emperor did it. Or I might be confusing that with the writing system. I don’t remember.”
It seemed like hours before we hit the last pile, but it was worth the effort. In the end, we had five names that matched either the journal or the bank statement to an arrest report. We’d gone through five pots of coffee and a few orders of Thai spring rolls, but those five names were like finding gold.
“Okay, I’ve got a date.” Bobby stood and stretched. His spine crackled when he twisted from side to side, and I teased him about getting old. “Still got enough in me to see you in the ring tomorrow.”
“Nope,” Claudia announced. “He’s not going to get beat on until the doctor says he can. I’m not spending my days in here smelling that ointment he uses when he’s hurt.”
“Nice, now you’ve got a woman protecting you, Princess,” Bobby teased, dancing out of Claudia’s reach when she leaned over to slap his legs. “Hey now, watch the goods. I’ve got plans for that later.”
“I’ll watch your goods,” she grumbled at him. “Go wash your cup out. I’m not your maid. I didn’t pick up after any of my boys. Don’t think I’m going to wipe
your
ass.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Bobby saluted her.
I gathered up the trash to take out to the dumpster while Bobby washed up. I turned off the lights and held the door open for Claudia to go ahead of me. She stopped to grab her purse and was nearly on the front porch when I heard someone coming up the steps.
“McGinnis!” I knew the skinny guy now standing on my porch. I would probably never get the memory of Trey’s masticated dick out of my head, but it was better than ever having it in my mouth, even before the glass bottle chewed through it. If anything, he looked rougher and more strung out than he did when I’d left him in Urgent Care. He waddled a bit, bouncing around on the balls of his sneakers. A sour smell rolled off him, and his pupils were large, swallowing up his irises.
“Go home, Trey,” Bobby said, pushing lightly at the kid’s shoulder. “You’re tweaking.”
“I want to talk to Cole here about my dick,” Trey slurred, spitting as he spoke. A speck got on Claudia’s bare arm, and she looked down at the drop in disgust. “What are you looking at, bit—”
My hand was around his throat before he could finish what he was saying. Squeezing until he choked on his own tongue, I leaned in until we were nose to nose. “You
ever
talk to her like that around me, I’ll tear off what’s left of that fucking dick of yours and feed it to the cat. Got it,
bitch
?”
Trey gurgled, and I shook him, waiting for his face to turn beet red before I pushed him away. Putting his fingers to his throat, he bent over, gasping for air. If he could, he’d have boiled me alive with his eyes. “What are you going to do about my dick?”
“Probably nothing,” I drawled. “I didn’t put your dick in that bottle. You did. Shit, you weren’t even paying me to be there. If anything, I should sue you for mental trauma, but any judge who met you would tell me I should have known better.”
It was late afternoon, and people were coming back from work. The occasional car drove by, some slowing down to park at one of the restaurants to grab dinner or coffee before heading home. It was something Claudia and I didn’t pay attention to. It was a natural part of the day, kind of like the morning screaming of I love yous from the couple across the street as they drove off to work.
I didn’t notice the small two-door coupe slowing down in front of my building. My focus was more on Trey, and dislodging his barnacle ass from my front porch. If push came to shove, hopefully one of Claudia’s mountainous boys would be by soon, and the three of us could hold him until the cops came. My first choice for his jailer was Bobby, since he’d gotten me into this mess to begin with.
Trey was hit first. One moment I was looking down at him, and the next I was eating pieces of his hair and bone. The shots were loud, echoing, and bouncing back against the buildings around us. Bullets tore through the thick wood posts holding up the porch roof, and I felt the sting of something crease my back.
I stood there, waiting for more bullets to hit me. I was back at that damned restaurant, wondering why Rick stopped talking… horrified when his body started to come apart in my hands. Any moment now, I’d go under, submerged in my own darkness and pain.
“Get down!” Bobby screamed.
His shout broke me from my memories, and I dove to the ground. Claudia’d gone down awkwardly, and she moaned, curled over onto her side. Bobby’s hands were under her arms, and he yanked hard, trying to get her to cover. His shoulder was bleeding, but from the looks of things, it wasn’t bad, just a graze.
Things were happening too quickly to do anything more than react. I grabbed Claudia around the waist, careful to keep my head down, and heaved, dragging her behind the hip-high broad stone wall I’d opted to close in the porch sides. Trey’s body twitched and flailed on the steps, his limbs refusing to believe his head’d been blown clear off his shoulders.
My ears were ringing, and it took me a moment to realize the shooting had stopped. A siren was circling in the distance, and I heard a babble of screams coming from the street. One high-pitched screech was making my head hurt as the woman kept keening and yelling about going after the car.
The scars along my side were protesting the rough treatment, and they seized when I tried to sit up. My shoulder barely whispered a complaint, and I sent it a silent thanks. My back was sticky when I drew my hand across where it stung, but the blood was only a smear, not a gushing wound I had to worry about.
Claudia was a different story.
There’s a point when fear is actually painful. It starts with the tightening of gums, as if my teeth were trying to escape the emotional horror that was coming. Following that, my stomach tries to flee, turning inside out like a ravenous starfish. Bile filled my mouth, and I swallowed wrong, taking the acid into my lungs and searing what air I had left inside of me.
I couldn’t move. Even as I watched Bobby work on Claudia’s chest and stomach, I was frozen in place. Her rosy complexion was ashen, and her hand was freezing cold when I squeezed her fingers. I was like a little kid again. Jostling her shoulder, I begged for her to wake up, promising anything I could just to see her open her eyes.
“Hold it together, Cole.” Bobby’s gruffness snapped me back into focus. “Fucking don’t fall apart on me, man. I don’t need that shit right now. Put your hands on her chest and push in. We need to keep the bleeding down.”
She was soft, a pillowy woman whose core was harder than steel. Other than Bobby and Mike, she’d been the first one I’d opened up to, after the shooting. Even Maddy’d taken a bit of time before I warmed up to her, but Claudia’d strolled into my heart, and threw open the windows I’d hammered shut to keep the light out like I was something that just needed a good spring cleaning. It wasn’t the first time I’d touched her, but it was the only time when she hadn’t hugged me back.
That’s how Claudia’s son Marcel found us, our hands clasped over his mother’s lifeless body, trying to hold her together. He’d come to pick up his mother, something the brood divided among themselves, so everyone could have that half-hour drive alone with the woman who was the center of their family.
His scream was a horrible thing, anguished and tearing, drowning out the ambulance’s sirens rounding the corner. His howls lasted seemingly forever, and we fought to have him give us space to hold her together, but he wouldn’t let go.
It took both of us to pull him off her, and even then, it was a mean struggle. The EMTs were brisk, a crack triage team who had her hooked up to strings of plastic tubing with blood and fluids before I could find my voice. A gurney whisked her into the back of the ambulance, and Marcel stumbled around, mutely holding onto Bobby for support. Our hands were covered in Claudia’s blood, and the cops were beginning to tape off the front walk, keeping the onlookers from strolling up the cement path to take a closer look at the dead body on my steps.
I sat down on the hard ground, hitting the dirt and grass with my clenched fists. The tears I’d been too scared to let go finally came, and I bit my lip, sobbing in hitched breaths as uniforms began corralling people who’d seen the car flee. My fingers trembled when I dug out my cell phone, and I swallowed, unsure if I could even speak as I dialed. A soft voice answered on the second ring, amused and affectionate in my ear.
Shaking, I struggled with what to say, then finally gave in to my fear and pain. “I need you, baby. Please… just come. Claudia’s been shot, and… I need you. Bad.”
T
HE
hospital waiting area looked much like it did when we visited Shin-Cho, except for the sheer bulk and noise of the people gathered there. Unlike the nearly wake-like atmosphere around Shin-Cho, Claudia’s clan gathered as a wall of strength. A few were standing together, praying with their heads down and hands clasped around each other’s waists. A man I didn’t know stood with them, clutching a bible in one hand as he led them with a sonorous, flowing voice. In a corner, a couple of toddlers played on the carpet, watched over by a teenage boy who’d not yet grown into his feet.
I did a fast headcount, then lost track of the final number just as quickly. Most of Claudia’s sons were there, as well as wives and grandchildren. I recognized some of them, but others were strangers, including a small Asian woman sitting beside a large, grieving dark-skinned man. She ran her hand over his bald head and gave me a tiny smile when I walked into the fray.
I made it three steps in before someone who looked like Malcolm came up to me and put his hand on my chest. I had to look up to meet his angry eyes. Most of Claudia’s brood and sub-brood were taller than me by five inches or more, a mean feat since I topped over six feet in my socks.
“Get the fuck out of here.” He chewed his words, spitting them out at me in a rapid fire burst. “You’re the reason Nana’s here.”
“Sit down, Gareth, and that’s your one warning about swearing.” A petite black woman in a sleeveless dress scolded the young man. “You’re making a fool of yourself. Your grandmother would want him here. Don’t make me slap some sense in you.”
He glowered at me for another moment, then shuffled off to stand against the wall with other members of his herd. They gathered around him, either offering support for his speaking up or chastising him for being an ass. It was hard to tell with the worried looks everyone had on their faces.
“Hey. Good to see you, man.” Martin, Claudia’s oldest, approached me. Drawing me into a bear hug, he squeezed what little life I had left in me, after seeing his mother shot. I felt like a child standing next to him, and if he’d wanted to, I was pretty sure he could pop my eyes out of my skull just by slapping the back of my head. “Momma’s doing okay. The doctors say she was lucky. The bullets didn’t hit anything they have to worry about. They’re taking them out now.”
“Thank fucking God.” I reeled back with relief. Just as quickly as I spoke, I deflected the sharp looks I got from most of the adults with an apology for my language. “I’m sorry about this, Marty. I really am. I’ll take care of all of this. Promise.”
“I know, dude.” He grinned down at me. “You’re a good guy. Hell, Momma says you’re the kid she had with the ice cream man. “Come on. Sit down. We’re just waiting for the doc to come back and tell us where they’re going to put her.”
Next to me, Jae was eyeing the massive collection of Claudia’s legacy. He edged closer. I didn’t blame him. Emotions were running high, and there was no guarantee that we’d make it out the doors before some pissed off Claudia-kid tried to rip our heads off. He hovered, finally perching on the arm of the chair one of the grandkids had been told to give up custody of so I could sit down.
There was too much noise around, and it was too hot. Every few seconds, someone brushed against my leg or arm. With each passing second, my skin grew tighter around me until I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Something horrible was working out from deep inside my chest, and I rubbed at the scars on my side, willing them to stop rippling spasms through my torso.
I didn’t realize Jae’d stood up until he tapped me on the shoulder and crooked his finger for me to follow. I looked around, not wanting to leave the room in case someone came with answers to questions I couldn’t even voice. He silently insisted, sliding his hand under my upper arm and pulling me to my feet.
“Come on,” he murmured into my ear. “Let’s go outside for some air. I asked Martin to call me if they find something out.”
It was a shock to see the night sky. I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe some part of my brain was willing time to stop, but the world didn’t care that one of the women in my life was bleeding out on a table somewhere. Around us, people were shuffling into the hospital, intent on their own business. An older couple passed by us, carrying flowers and a bunch of balloons shouting “Congratulations” across their Mylar skins.