Dirty Secret (6 page)

I didn’t need JoJo yelling at me. Usually Bobby took care of that. I didn’t need taking care of. Today was different. I was… different.

The bag jerked with every punch I threw. I didn’t hear Bobby’s grunts at first, but after a few minutes they grew loud enough to distract.

“Pissed off a bit, Princess?” Bobby was breathing hard when I pulled away from the bag. My T-shirt was soaked with sweat, and I stunk, but I wanted to go another five minutes, maybe even five hours. It felt good to work my body into an aching mess. It matched my insides. “Want to talk about it?”

Even though Bobby was almost twenty years older than me, he was a muscular, beefy guy. The brush of silver at his temples only drew the twinks to him. With a handsome, lived-in face and cut body, he was popular at the bars we went to. He could also beat the crap out of me in the boxing ring, and wiped the ground with me when we went jogging. Except for the liking dick and ass, Bobby was the epitome of an all-American male. Definitely not someone who wanted to talk things out.

“Never thought I’d hear
that
come out of you.” I hugged the bag, peeking around the side to stare at Bobby’s rugged face. “You want me to
talk
it out?”

“I’m trying to save JoJo’s bag. You’re fucking pounding the shit out of it.” He let go of the bag and came around to help me with the Velcro on my gloves. “Is this about Jae? Was he pissed off about Trey?”

“Shit, don’t get me started about Trey. Did he call you?”

“Yeah,” Bobby grunted again, this time with disgust. “Asshole said he wanted his money back.”

“What money? I was doing it for free.”

“I reminded him about that. Trey uses his brain less than he uses that dick of his. And
that
he only uses for pissing and blow jobs. He likes getting fucked. Not the other way around.” He tugged on his own gloves and jerked his chin toward the bag for me to hold it. Waiting until I braced myself against its heavy weight, Bobby gave the leather a few jabs.

“Jae caught some shit from his mom this morning,” I said. “I don’t get why he takes it. It’s like they dump all of their crap on him and expect him suck it up.”

“I’ve gotta ask you, man. Jae, is he worth what he puts you through? Not to sound like some emo hipster, but I don’t want him to break your heart.”

I had to think about it. After losing Rick to whatever demons Ben had chasing him, I drifted around. I didn’t like the club scene. Jumping in and out of different guys’ beds tired me out more than any pleasure I got from fucking them. Jae did something to me. He touched something inside of me that I thought was dead.

“Jae kind of made me realize I still had a heart. Guess it's his to break.”

Bobby stopped hammering at the bag long enough to stare at me, and then he shrugged. “Fair enough.”

I switched topics before we started hugging and sharing cookie recipes. “Hey, do you have some free time? I think I need some help with a job Scarlet gave me.”

“Yeah, sure.” Bobby shifted his feet, driving an uppercut into the bag. It jerked in my arms, and I had to brace myself to keep it steady. “What’s she need?”

I talked about the case as he punched and weaved, going over the last time Scarlet saw her friend at Bi Mil, and the man Dae-Hoon was supposed to meet that night. He whistled when I got to the part of Dae-Hoon’s former lover now being the father of the woman marrying Dae-Hoon’s youngest son.

“That’s too fucking weird.” Bobby stopped hitting the bag. I was grateful for that. My shoulders were numb from holding it steady. “So the families kept in touch?”

“From what I can see, it’s one big incestuous mess. They all know one another, marry each other. It’s like a damned cabal.” I shook my arms out, hoping to get blood back into my fingers. “I’m hoping you can maybe help me track down any cops who were there that night. Maybe someone saw something.”

“I dunno, kid.” He looked skeptical. “You’ve got to remember, this was after the Riots. The boys in blue were taking a beating from all sides. A lot of us did a hell of a lot of things we weren’t proud of. Guys might not want to talk about a raid on some gay bathhouse. Chances are, it got ugly. LAPD wasn’t known for its tolerance then.”

“Like it is now?” I smirked at him.

We’d both tested the blue line’s tolerance of gays in our own ways. I’d spent my time on the force as an openly gay man. Bobby came out after he’d retired and Rick died. He’d been a rock I clung to as I struggled to find some sense in what happened to me. He’d lost a few friends as word of his homosexuality spread through the ranks, but most cops were more comfortable with Bobby keeping his secrets until he got out. They weren’t all that happy with me when I wore a badge, even less so when the union forced the city to cough up millions in damages, after my suicidal partner shot me and my lover up.

“Let me see who was around then,” Bobby said, twisting his body to work out a kink in his shoulders. “I’ll have to find out who was arrested. Does Scarlet remember the date? That’ll go a long way in locating the records.”

“Yeah, I can probably get you an exact date.” I flexed before my arms could start cramping up. “This guy… Dae-Hoon… he worked for Scarlet’s… husband? Shit, I don’t even know what to call the guy.”

He shrugged and stepped back from the bag, taking off his gloves and tucking them under his arm. “Stick with sir. That always works for me.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. We headed toward the showers, nodding at JoJo as he coached a thin young man on how to keep his elbows in when he punched.

The locker room was icy, kept cold by the gym’s thick cinder block walls. I shivered when I walked in, overheated from the workout. A slender, muscular man passed us, heading for his workout. Bobby brazenly checked him out, eyes raking over the guy’s legs and torso, lingering for a moment on his shoulders before making eye contact. The guy turned slightly and smiled at Bobby, who tilted his head to check out his ass. There’d be an exchange of phone numbers before we left. If he’d been alone, there’d be an exchange of bodily fluids too.

I waited for Bobby to break away from his flirting. “This Dae-Hoon guy was a bit… radical.”

“Radical?”

“He got divorced. Well, he was trying to get divorced,” I said. “So he could go off and be… gay. I don’t know if he was expecting his lover, Kwon, to do the same, or if he just needed out.”

“So he was Korean, but came out of the closet screaming show tunes?” Bobby whistled under his breath. If it was difficult for Jae to be openly homosexual now, Dae-Hoon’s actions in ninety-four were unbelievable. “Seems like every Korean guy you meet is gay.”

“Seems like it,” I laughed. “And that Kwon guy, but I guess I’ll meet him too.”

“Think Kwon had something to do with his disappearance?”

“I don’t know. It’s an idea. I think we’ll know more once we chat some people up. Kwon looks good for something. Scarlet and Dae-Hoon’s kid think he’s a douche.”

“We’ll want to circle around Kwon. See where he was first.” Bobby shed his damp shirt and smacked me with it as I went by him to get to my locker. “So where do you want to start? Cops, or Seong?”

“I’m thinking cops, but let’s hit up the storage unit first,” I said, rubbing at the sore spot on my arm. “I’ve got to go back to the office and see if Scarlet had the key dropped off. Wonder if Claudia wants to help us dig through Dae-Hoon’s stuff.”

“Yeah, you bring that up to her.” Bobby snorted. “And when she’s done killing you, I’ll hit on Jae at your funeral. It’ll give me something to do besides drink.”

“Thought Jae was too much trouble.”

“Hey, he’s pretty. I like pretty,” Bobby said, wincing when I punched his arm. “But he’s your trouble, Princess. You’re welcome to him.”

“
W
ANT
some coffee?” My office manager, Claudia, held up the glass pot she’d pulled from the automatic drip machine. After years of working in the school system drinking swill, the woman brewed strong, hairy-chest coffee for our office. Just the smell of the stuff kept away rats, roaches, and any other vermin within a five-mile radius.

I nodded and shrugged off my jacket, tossing it onto a hook on the coat tree we had by the door. A pile of pink message slips were stacked on my desk, and I eased into the old-fashioned leather chair I’d found at an estate sale, listening to the pleasant squeak when I leaned back. Claudia put a mug in front of me, swirls of cream still whirling through the dark brew. Tapping a spoon on her own cup, she sipped, and waited until I finally let go of the sigh I was holding in.

“Did too much, boy?” There was no sympathy in her voice. I wasn’t expecting any either.

The woman raised a squillion children and grandchildren in a predominantly low income area, progressively moving them to better neighborhoods as soon as she could. She didn’t entertain any excuses about her boys being poor or black. Claudia had expectations, and woe to the son who didn’t rise to them. Being a member of Clan Claudia was like belonging to a lifelong survivalist camp. Her boys—and there were a herd of them—were expected to cook, clean, and repair things on the fly, and the women, or in Maurice’s case, the man, they brought into the family had better do the same.

She ran her crew like a troop of Spartans: fall on the battlefield and be eaten by predators. I wasn’t one of her kids, and she scared me to death.

“I needed to start stretching out the muscles. It’s healed enough for some bag work.” I protested the scoffing hiss Claudia threw at me. “What? Did you think I was going to let Bobby punch the shit out of me? I needed to loosen up, not take another trip to the hospital.”

The loosening up part wasn’t a lie. I’d debated calling Jae, after finding out he’d left before I woke up, just to see if he was okay, or pissed off about life. Rick had needed constant reassurance and interaction. Jae’s wariness and fierce independence still threw me. Working out the kinks in my muscles seemed a pleasant alternative to pacing a hole in the floor.

“You end up in the hospital again, I’m going to duct tape you to the bed until I decide you’re good to go.” Tapping the stack of messages, she said, “Your boy called. He said for you to call him back when you come in. He should be back from Long Beach by then. I think he was down at the docks for something or other.”

“What the hell is he doing in Long Beach?” I didn’t expect an answer. Jae often went on excursions into no-man’s lands for his artistic work. Weddings and portraits paid his bills, but they didn’t scratch that creative itch he had inside of him. Shuffling through the messages, I frowned when I saw Trey’s name. I held the slip up for Claudia to see. “Was he an asshole to you?”

“He said something about suing you for damage to his dick. I listened to him for a few minutes, and told him if he was stupid enough to stick it into a bottle, then he could make do without it. Dangerous enough now just having sex. If he wanted his dick chewed off, why didn’t he just go have sex with a shark?”

I thought back to what I’d seen in the emergency room as the doctors were picking out the glass shards. “Yep. That’s pretty much what it looked like too.”

She moved easily for a large woman, probably honed from years of chasing down recalcitrant children. It took her less than a few seconds to retrieve a package from her desk and bring it over to me. “Scarlet honey sent this over for you. She called here to make sure you got it. She told me about her friend. I can’t believe you’re taking money from her.”

“I didn’t want to,” I said absently. The seal on the plastic courier bag was a bitch, and I ended up using my teeth to try to tear it enough for me to pull it open. “She and Jae ganged up on me. Trust me; you don’t want to get into an argument with two Asians about money. You’ll lose every time. It’s like going against a Sicilian when death is on the line.”

“Give me that,” Claudia sighed, and held her hand out for the package. “I’ll cut it open. You go call him outside. I don’t want to hear the smoochie noises you make when you talk to him.”

I gave up on trying to chew through the plastic. Grabbing my coffee, I headed outside to the building’s front veranda. I’d not checked my phone since leaving the house earlier. I had four texts, one of them from Jae asking me to call him when I could. I dialed him back, and he answered before the second ring.

“Hey,
agi
.” His purr reached hot fingers into my gut and grabbed my balls. “Are you back at your office?”

“Yeah, planning on coming over?” I could entertain fantasies of my washing machine, but it was already late afternoon, and I had to catch up on the business, especially after wasting the morning sleeping.

“No, not for that.” He’d paused long enough to make me smile. Jae liked sex. He didn’t like getting touched in public, but close the door and things got interesting. “I have to ask you a favor.”

“Sure.” I took my first sip of coffee and gagged at its sweetness. The sugar cut through the bitter, but it took a moment to brace my throat for it. “Whatcha need?”

It sounded like we weren’t going to talk about the morning phone call, his meltdown and anger or my inability to fix his world. I was good with that. I still didn’t know how to fix his world, and even if I did, I wasn’t sure he would let me.

“Andrew’s sick. I need help tonight at the rehearsal dinner. Can I borrow you? It’s at eight.”

Andrew, Jae’s sometimes assistant, was as flaky as Claudia’s pie crusts. He was usually less sick, and more stoned to the gills, but he was cheap and at least knew what camera Jae asked him to fetch. I was already up to help at the reception, a risky thing for Jae since I could barely operate the point-and-shoot I used to take pictures of cheating spouses. He had to be desperate to ask me on such short notice.

“Yeah, of course.” I checked my watch. “I’ve just got to go through some stuff Scarlet sent over and return some calls, but after that, I’m all yours.”

“You were mine before I called.”

Yeah, he still had a good hold of my nuts. We cooed at each other as manfully as we could, then I hung up and went inside. Claudia’d mastered the package, neatly dissecting it like it was a formaldehyde-marinated frog in a biology class. I refilled my coffee cup, leaving off any sugar, and went back to my desk to dig through Dae-Hoon’s life.