Dead Soon Enough: A Juniper Song Mystery Read online

  “What’re you getting at, that Van—?”

  “Not necessarily,” I said. “But I get the sense that there’s something going on with him. Have you noticed anything off about his behavior?”

  “You mean recently?”

  “Recently, or even when you were sleeping together.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I can’t think of anything. But honestly, I could have missed something. I don’t think I’ve been objective about him for a long time.”

  “He has a lot riding on your secret staying a secret,” I said.

  “I just don’t see him murdering Nora to keep it. He barely even knew her.”

  “Is there anyone else who’d want to keep this quiet?”

  “I don’t think anyone else knows in the first place.”

  “What about Rubina?”

  She froze. “Ruby doesn’t know. That’s the whole point.”

  “Van and Rubina are married. You don’t think it’s possible that he broke down and told her at some point?”

  “But she would’ve talked to me. She would’ve let me have it.”

  “What if she had good reason not to do that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like maybe she’d rather not introduce a question of maternity.” I pictured Rubina the day I met her, cool and commanding in her kitten heels. I remembered her reluctance to engage in the search for Nora, then her eagerness to have me live under her roof. And now, she was siccing me on her husband. “And maybe,” I continued, “she wants you to suffer.”

  Lusig blanched. “No, not Ruby. You can’t possibly think…”

  She trailed off, and I spoke before she could finish the sentence. “I’m just exploring, here,” I said. “I still think it’s likely that Kizil killed Nora. But if you want to put everything on the table, Van and Rubina might have had motive.”

  “None of this ever occurred to me,” she said dreamily.

  “Maybe not consciously,” I said. “What if I find out what happened to Nora? Do you want to know no matter what that is?”

  She only hesitated for a second before giving a firm nod. “It’s too late to get off this train now.”

  *

  I went straight to Rob’s with makeup and a change of clothes in an overnight bag. He lived in an apartment at Sixth and Main, on the edge of Skid Row, where the addicted, ill, and homeless put up tents every night. His place was a handsome loft, new construction, with hardwood floors and an enviable view—what a difference a block made in this city.

  I’d agreed to spend the day with him before our evening mission—in case things turned dangerous and we were cheated of our lives together. We hung out at his apartment, and I helped chop vegetables and turn fires on and off while he made an early dinner. We dressed up for a night on the town—he put on slacks and a sport coat; I wore a black pencil skirt and a tight blouse, and spent an extra fifteen minutes on my makeup. We left the apartment to get drinks at a trendy speakeasy across the street, one of the places built on nostalgia for a time when Japanese internment and the L.A. riots were things California still had to look forward to. We drank stiff cocktails and smelled each other’s breath for whiskey. We both reeked sufficiently after one round.

  Rob drove to Westlake while I double-checked Van’s location. He was safe at home tonight, and we were free to enter Seoul Tokyo as strangers. I reapplied lipstick in the vanity mirror. I liked vamping it up once in a while, particularly on the job—cinematic dragon ladies notwithstanding, no one suspected a dolled-up Asian girl of anything. All I had to do was giggle with one hand over my mouth, and my disguise would be foolproof. It made me feel like a spy.

  We parked on Olympic to avoid subjecting Rob’s car to scrutiny, then walked up to the front door of Seoul Tokyo BBQ. I put my ear to the door and heard sounds of life that weren’t audible from the street. No raging music, but plenty of conversation.

  “You knock,” I said to Rob.

  “Okay, what do I say?”

  “Just say we’re here to play, but be kind of tentative and respectful about it. How good is your Korean?”

  “It’s okay. My accent’s decent.”

  “Okay. If a Korean opens the door, you bust out your best good-boy Korean.”

  “I can do that. Anything else?”

  “Just remember: You have pockets full of money that you’re itching to give away.” I ruffled his hair and undid the top button of his shirt. “Okay, now knock.”

  Twenty seconds later, a beefy Korean man opened the door. He was in his forties, with dark glasses and the build of a wrestler; short, but powerful. He wore a black suit that was too small around his chest. His shirt buttons strained.

  “May I help you?” he asked in clipped, impatient Korean. The interior sounds followed him out, a mix of K-Pop and mild chatter, though I heard one victorious shout that I’d never heard more than twenty feet from a blackjack table.

  “We heard we could play here.…” Rob’s voice was meek, but searching. I stood behind him and smiled as daintily as I could manage.

  The bouncer looked at us skeptically. “This is a private birthday party,” he said after a stern pause. “We open for lunch tomorrow at eleven thirty.”

  He started to close the door again.

  “Ahjusshi, wait!” Rob called, slurring the address. “I have money.”

  The door paused long enough for me to step forward and get a hold on it. The bouncer’s face came back into the opening. We waited for him to say something, until it was clear he was waiting on us.

  Rob peeled out a respectable wad of bills—it must’ve been all he brought with him, but he made it look like there was more where it came from. He licked his thumb and made a show of separating out five twenties, each bill slapping against his fingers. He proffered the hundred dollars, which the bouncer took in one oversized hand and slipped into his jacket pocket.

  We waited for the door to open wider. It didn’t. The bouncer didn’t move after he put the money away, not a pixel. His eyes were blacked out by his ridiculous indoor sunglasses, but he had to be staring at us. The effect was unnerving. Rob shook his head and started counting out more bills.

  “The Armenian doctor,” I chimed in. “He told us to come here.”

  The bouncer’s face lost its frozen quality, his eyebrows lifting into an expression of surprise. He was reevaluating us—mentioning Van had upgraded us in his perception.

  If I’d spoken up a few seconds earlier, I might have saved us some money. Rob had been too dramatic with his counting. The bouncer looked pointedly at Rob’s hands, waiting for him to finish.

  But he pocketed the second hundred dollars with less coolness than before, even an air of casual gratitude, like he was a valet and we’d just tipped him a little extra. “IDs,” he said, suddenly a professional.

  We handed him our driver’s licenses, and he pocketed them without even pretending to look them over.

  “Arms out,” he said to Rob.

  Rob complied, and the bouncer patted him down. “I feel like we’re getting on a plane,” Rob said, his tone jokey but mildly exasperated. “Should I take off my shoes and belt?”

  When the bouncer was done, he looked me up and down, detached as a metal detector. I started to put my arms out when he shook his head. “You’re fine.” He pointed to my purse. “Bag.”

  I opened my purse and he scanned it quickly. He didn’t need to pat me down because there wasn’t room between me and my clothing for weapons. I wondered what kind of Korean barbecue joint needed to watch out for guns.

  He opened the door and the familiar smell blasted out at us—meat, soy sauce, sugar, smoke. More smoke on top, from a roomful of lit cigarettes.

  We stepped past the bouncer, and a young Korean woman greeted us with a bright toothy smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. She led us into the main room of the restaurant, though there wasn’t much leading necessary.

  It was a Korean barbecue joint like the many I’d seen before, with a coupl
e dozen tables topped with grills and grill fans. No one was seated at these tables. The noise came from the rooms around the main room, private dining spaces for families and large parties. I’d been in several of these rooms growing up, thrown together with cousins and family friends for interminable birthday dinners without any cake.

  “Are you here for anything in particular?” asked the hostess.

  “No,” I said. “This is our first time. Do you know Van Gasparian? The Armenian surgeon?”

  Her smile went taut at the name for a fraction of a second. It cost me some effort to pretend not to notice.

  “He’s his friend,” I said cheerily, latching on to Rob’s arm.

  “We go to Commerce together sometimes, but he said this was more fun,” Rob said, taking his cue. “More central, cuter girls.”

  “What are you looking to play?” she asked.

  “I thought I’d take a look and go with my gut. Live dangerously,” he said with a flirtatious lilt.

  She re-upped her empty smile and turned to me. “Do you play, too?”

  “I’m just here to watch and drink,” I said with a giggle. “Maybe I’ll keep you company.”

  “I’ll take you to our main floor,” she said, ignoring my idea.

  We looked around at the empty tables topped with cold grills.

  She pointed to a stairwell to our left. “Follow me.”

  The stairwell was lit, and as we ascended, the noise from the upper level gathered around us. We followed her down a hallway of closed doors to the one at the end, which opened onto a giant room set with multiple round tables, each one occupied by a white-shirted dealer and a number of gambling men, most of them Asian. I’d been in analogous rooms in other restaurants many times before—they were logical venues for the big Korean gatherings I remembered from my childhood, celebrating baby’s first birthdays, or eating cold noodles and battered fish fillets in funeral clothes. And now here was a banquet of an entirely different kind, without the festivity of a true casino to mask the aura of sweaty desperation.

  We walked around, watching the action, and Rob selected a poker table where he could sit on the sidelines without bleeding too much money. When I turned to look for her, I saw that the hostess was no longer in the room.

  “I’m going to find her. I think she might know something I don’t,” I whispered in Rob’s ear. “Good luck.”

  He squeezed my hand. “You, too.”

  I stumbled around the restaurant, playing the lush, giggling and whoopsying as I burst through closed doors. She wasn’t anywhere, and I knew better than to ask after her. Instead, I went outside, where a Korean hostess might take a cigarette break—or in this case, to get away from smoke and trouble for a breath of fresh air.

  I found her standing at the edge of the parking lot, shivering and smoking with great concentration. I walked up next to her and lit my own.

  “What’s your name?” I asked, dropping the ditz act and hoping she wouldn’t leave.

  “Ara,” she said. “And you’re Juniper.”

  I raised an eyebrow, then remembered the bouncer had taken our IDs. “Song,” I said, holding out a hand.

  She took it politely. “You’re a private investigator.”

  I nodded and showed her my license.

  We stood smoking in silence, and I waited for her to speak. She’d figured out I was a private eye because I’d asked about Van. Yet here she was, standing next to me, neither objecting nor walking away. Something told me that if I stood still and listened, she would give me what I wanted.

  “The Armenian doctor,” she said after another cigarette. “Why were you asking about him?”

  I inched closer to her. “I’ve been hired to see what he does in his free time. I followed him here.”

  I crushed my cigarette and looked at her straight on. There was something twitchy about her demeanor, her body held tense and ready to spring. The corners of her red-painted mouth were slightly upturned, but not in a smile.

  “Someone else came looking for him,” she said.

  “Was it an Armenian woman?”

  She nodded, and I pictured Rubina following her husband in the dark, finding out everything she’d hired me to find out.

  “Dark hair?” I continued, my mind racing, trying to parse her motivations. “Short and thin, in her late thirties?”

  “No. She was younger.” She shook her head, shutting her eyes closed tight against what she was about to say. “It was the Armenian girl. The one who went missing.”

  I nearly lost my footing. “Nora?” I asked. I pulled out my phone, where I had her picture open in a web browser. “This girl? Nora Mkrtchian?”

  Ara nodded and looked over her shoulder toward the door.

  “When was this?” I pressed on.

  “She came twice. In February.”

  “February what?”

  “The first time was the night before Valentine’s Day. The second was two nights after. The sixteenth.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  She nodded. “I saw her on the news after she disappeared. It was less than a week later. I recognized her right away.”

  “What time on the sixteenth?”

  “Midnight, at least.”

  It was later than anyone had seen her that I knew of—after she left Kaymak’s.

  “Why don’t the police know about this?”

  She started to scrunch up her face in a display of tortured conscience. “I—”

  I cut her off. “Right. This place. It isn’t on the books. You would’ve lost your job.”

  She nodded, and I could see that her eyes were welling. The sight made me push an advantage.

  “I mean, not that you couldn’t have found another job. You’re a pretty Korean girl in Koreatown. You could’ve gotten a hostess job anywhere. But I guess the average barbecue joint doesn’t pay illegal casino money.” I lit another cigarette, stuck it in my mouth, took a long drag while I looked at her with concentrated contempt. “This girl’s been missing for months. If she’s alive, she’s not having fun, and you might’ve helped her as soon as she was reported missing. If she’s dead, you’ve held back what could be vital information in a murder investigation.” I shook my head. “I hope you get some great fucking benefits.”

  She was tearing up. “I have a daughter,” she said. “Please, don’t torture me. I’m trying to do what’s right now.”

  I was moved in spite of myself, but I didn’t show it. She looked about twenty-two, and I did feel sorry for her. In any case, it looked like my guilt trip had done its job.

  “What did she want?”

  “The first time, she came by herself and charmed her way in. She drank and joked around with the other customers, even the old Korean men who barely spoke English. I swear I don’t remember anything she said. But the second time, she talked to me.” She stopped talking and bit her lip. “She asked if I’d seen the doctor.”

  “Did she ask anyone else?”

  “I don’t know. I told her where he was gambling.”

  “But at the very least, several people must have seen her.”

  “Yes, but no one ever mentions it. Sometimes I think I imagined her.”

  I thought about what Nora might have wanted with Van, a man she only knew as her best friend’s cousin-in-law and sometime paramour. I was still figuring it out, trying to visualize the connections as I talked to Ara. The only thing I knew was that there could be no coincidence this massive, this hidden, this potentially harmful.

  “No. I’m sure you didn’t,” I told her. “Did she find him?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “So when her face came on the news, did anyone talk about it?”

  “No one.”

  “Did you tell anyone?”

  “Yes. I told my manager.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Please.” She sniffled loudly. “Don’t tell anyone I talked to you.”

  I dropped it. I knew what I had to do next, anywa
y. “Okay. What did your manager say?”

  She bit down on her lip again and it trembled. “He said I must have been mistaken, but that to be safe, I should keep my theories to myself.”

  Fifteen

  Ara gave me our IDs and went to fix her makeup while I collected Rob from the poker table. He was almost sorry to leave—he was about two hundred dollars richer than when he’d started. I explained what I’d found out on our drive back downtown.

  “So if Nora found Van, he might have been the last person to see her alive,” he said, gripping the steering wheel.

  “And I think she must have found him.”

  “But what for?”

  “I’m trying to figure that out.” My mind was frothing with ideas, but all of them hinged on knowledge that wasn’t mine to share—about Lusig and Rubina and Alex. Instead I said, as authoritatively as I could, “I have to talk to Van.”

  “The man you think is a murderer?”

  “The man I’ve been hired to investigate.”

  “When are you planning to do this?”

  “Tonight,” I said. “As soon as I get my car.”

  “You don’t think I should go with you?”

  “Wouldn’t make sense. He might talk to me if I go about it the right way. I mean, granted, he wasn’t around a whole lot but I lived in Van’s house. He’s never seen you before in his life.”

  “Will you be safe?”

  “Safe as I ever am doing this kind of thing. I’m planning to meet him in a public place.”

  He looked worried but seemed to know better than to tell me how to do my job.

  He dropped me off at my car and gave me a kiss that suggested I should come back to him alive sometime. “Be careful,” he said. “Text me when you get home.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “I’ve met scarier murderers than Dr. Van Gasparian.”

  *

  It was close to midnight when I left downtown, and I hoped Van was still awake. I texted him to meet me at the bar with the mermaids on the walls, and that I’d be there in fifteen minutes.

  The place was as empty as the last time, and I sat in the same booth with another pint of Guinness in a dirty-looking glass. My phone indicated that Van had read my message, and given how much he was hiding, I knew he’d have to show. He couldn’t afford to ignore a late-night summons from his wife’s private eye of choice.