“Now don't be like that, Ian. We're just going to have some drinks, okay?” I took my time cleaning the glasses with my shirttail. Maggie poured the glasses half full, and I raised mine with my left. “To old times.” I stayed in that pose, with my glass held high, for what must've been thirty seconds, waiting for a reluctant Ian to clink glasses.
Maggie stopped after one, but Ian and I were into our fourth when he started to loosen up. I smiled and laughed at all the right times while he yapped about the time he busted that pimp, how he had the pimp down, and he was about to cuff him when one of the guy's bitches came screaming in, buck naked, and started trying to pull Ian off her guy. He managed to snap the cuffs on the pimp, and then he wrestled her down, and since he didn't have another pair of cuffs, he had to restrain her until backup arrived. They came storming in, and there he was, lying on top of this bitch, and she's bucking like a fucking horse…
He kept prattling on with that big mouth of his. Telling us about the time he stopped an armed robbery when he was off duty. He was just going to the store to pick up some booze, and there was this punk, you know the type, with the fresh tats and the hotshot attitude. And he could tell right away that the punk was up to no good. The punk was all jumpy and shit. Ian, Sr., played it cool; he acted all nonchalant and waited for the punk to make his move, and then he jumped the little bastard and took his lase-pistol. That was when the kid went after the owner with a blade, and Ian had to shoot him.
I remembered that incident. It was a long time ago, but the way I heard it, the kid was hopped up on stims when he tried to knock over the liquor store. Ian jumped out from one of the aisles and screamed at the kid to freeze, knocking over a whole rack of bottles in the process. The kid reflexively jumped away from the spray of shattering bottles, and Ian fried him in the back.
“You sure taught that punk a lesson,” I said.
“Damn straight I did.”
I kept tipping my glass to my mouth every so often, but I'd already stopped drinking. He kept rattling on, his tales getting taller and taller. He was talking mostly to Maggie now. Her face was a hell of a lot prettier than mine. I kept up the illusion that I was keeping up with him in the drinking department by emptying my glass through a hole in the floor, the cheap booze running down the side of an oil drum that served as a pontoon.
I kept the hooch flowing and soon enough Ian, Sr., was 180 proof. His exaggerated yarns were turning into paranoid rants. He was going off on some doctor now. “This bitch must think I'm stupid, trying to rip me off. She thinks I don't know how much a fucking pill costs? I ain't no damn pushover. She thinks those degrees on the wall give her a license to bend me over.”
Blah, blah, blah… This was the way he'd always get at the bars. Always the victim of some imagined wrong, talking nonstop trash. I remembered how one night, he started off on some bullshit about a mechanic who jacked up the price on him and how he was going to go down there and teach him a lesson. “Let's go,” I'd told him. I wanted to see him teach this mechanic a lesson. That's when he told me to butt the fuck out or he'd have to take me to school. Had we been alone, I might've blown the comment off, but I couldn't let him get away with it when there were other cops around, watching. What kind of enforcer would let something like that pass? I gave him a good ass-kicking that night, and if need be, I was ready to do it again. “Hey, whatever happened to your wife?”
“That whore? Who gives a shit?”
“When did she leave?”
“That was seventy-three. She ran off and never came back. She knew better than to come back. She knew she could beg all she wanted, but I wouldn't take her back. No way. She knew better.”
“What a bitch, leaving you to raise two kids by yourself.”
“Damn straight. I did right by my kids. Not that it did much good. They both got too much of their mother in them.”
“What do you mean? Your son's a cop, and a good one.”
“No thanks to her. I was the one that got him that job. You'd think he'd be thankful after all I did for him. He should be over here every night thanking me for getting him that job. Shit, Juno, you know how many favors I had to cash in to get him that job. They wouldn't even take him the first time. They thought he was too soft, so I got him that guard job at the Zoo. Remember that? A year as a zookeeper and there was no way they could call him soft anymore. He was such a momma's boy when he was little. He wanted to be a chef. You believe that? I had to drag his crying ass to the Zoo most every day. That toughened him up. You better believe it.”
“What about your daughter? What's she up to?”
“How the fuck should I know? I disowned her.”
“Why?”
“Because she's a whore, just like her mother. I tried to give those kids discipline. But how do they thank me? Michelle runs off with her loser boyfriend, and Ian Junior's too busy for his old man.”
“How did you discipline them?” Maggie asked.
“I never laid a hand on either one of them, if that's what you're asking. I was a good father, dammit. I never touched them. I'd just talk to them, tell them how it was.”
“Who was the boyfriend?”
“Sumari. Sumari Cho. Ian, Jr., caught him trying to rape his sister and beat his skull in.”
Maggie was incredulous. “You're saying she ran off with the boy who tried to rape her?”
“I told you she was a whore. Just like her mother.”
“Why didn't you arrest him?”
Ian turned venomous. “What makes you think I didn't, bitch? You whores are all alike.”
My blood was rising. I got up and waited for Maggie to do the same. We walked out together before Ian, Sr., said something I couldn't let pass.
I let Maggie lead the way. I didn't want to think. I didn't want to feel. I just kept following, looking down the whole way, hoping we'd get there fast. I needed to keep working. I didn't like this alone time one bit.
She found the fish market wedged between two other fish markets. A neon sign over the door read “Cho's.” We crossed a wide wooden beam that bridged the gap between the walkway and the shop entrance. Fish hung in the window, lathered up in yellow antifly gel and hooked through the gills. Two men were behind the counter cutting and slicing. They wore bloody aprons dotted with flies that took off and landed with every filleting stroke.
The tall one took a long look at Maggie before saying, “Can I help you?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We're looking for Sumari Cho.”
“You got him.”
His head looked normal. I didn't see any signs that this guy's skull had been beaten in by a young Ian. I figured it for one more of his Ian, Sr.'s, exaggerations. “This is Officer Orzo. I'm Officer Mozambe. We'd like to ask you some questions.”
He looked Maggie up and down and up again, trying to be subtle, but not getting away with it. “What about?” he asked with fish slime smeared on his cheek.
“Is there someplace we can talk?”
“Yeah, sure.” He wiped his hands on his apron and pulled off the gloves. He brought a bucket of innards with him and took us into the back room. He passed a sliding barn-style door that was closed except for a small crack through which I could see the river. Next to the door was a chute that Sumari made a show of pouring the bucket through, trying to show off his muscles. Oily fish pieces clung to the corners of the chute. The flies were having a heyday.
Sumari said, “You can ask me anything you want.” His eyes were on Maggie's chest, the outline of her bra showing through her rain-dampened shirt.
I wasn't at all happy about an accused rapist looking at Maggie. “You can start by putting your eyes back in their sockets, asshole. Tell us about Michelle Davies. We hear you tried to rape her.”