“He’ll come,” said Sang-woo. “He has a girlfriend. I met her at the casino. If he don’t come, I told him next voice mail I leave for his wife.”
Anthony laughed into his fist. “Sang! You savage!”
A minute later, Mike’s 4Runner drove cautiously down Avalon. Sang-woo made eye contact with Mike through the windshield and motioned him toward the carcass of the liquor store.
Mike stopped the car at the intersection and rolled down his window, leaving a lane between the car and the corner. Sang-woo suppressed a smile — Mike was scared, all right, the greasy little weasel.
“Park the car!” Sang-woo shouted at him in Korean. “I just want to talk, but you better talk to me.”
“I’ll park across the street,” said Mike. “We’ll sit on that bench. Only us.”
“What’s he saying?” asked Anthony.
“He wants to talk alone. Over there.” Sang-woo gestured toward the bus stop on the other side of Avalon. “You guys stay here. Watch us — do the mad dog. Then five minutes, you walk over.”
Mike parked his car and got out while Sang-woo crossed the street. There were a few other people at the bus stop, but they watched for the bus and paid the two Korean men no mind. In every direction, Sang-woo could see broken windows and burned-out buildings, but in some ways, it felt like things were going back to normal. The fires had stopped. The soldiers were gone. People left home. They walked the streets. They took the bus.
Sang-woo sat on the bench next to Mike and pulled the policy out of his pocket. “Remember this?”
Mike nodded. He looked tired and sheepish. Sang-woo could see his sunken eyes, his armpit sweat, the shape of a wifebeater under his thin, rumpled shirt.
Sang-woo unfolded the paper. It was creased and limp, but the print was clear. “It’s worth $280,000.”
Mike leaned over to glance at the numbers. “That much? Are you sure?”
“You should know what it says. You sold it to me. ‘South Central is so dangerous. Who knows what could happen? Protect your business. Think of your kids.’”
“Let me see it.”
Sang-woo set the paper down on his lap and jabbed the number with his middle finger. “Total loss, $280,000. Are you telling me that isn’t what this says? Are you telling me you lied?”
“I didn’t lie!”
The sweat stains on Mike’s shirt had spread. It felt good to see him squirm after weeks of talking to his answering machine, but Sang-woo knew what that meant: Sang-woo’s sure winner, his insurance and most responsible bet, had been a gamble after all.
“Look around, brother,” said Mike. “You think you’re the only one trying to get paid?”
Sang-woo hadn’t spoken to Mary Yoo — he’d felt lucky and didn’t want to catch bad luck from a sad-sack virtuous immigrant sucker like her. But maybe he was the sucker. Happy Hamburger was gone, but maybe Mary had insurance. And if she did, surely she’d had better sense than to buy it from Mike Shibal-Sekki Koh.
“What do you think your job is? Selling pieces of paper? I paid. What did I pay for?”
Mike said nothing. Sang-woo grabbed him by the collar.
“I want to talk to your boss. Where’s your office? We can go now.”
“The office? It’s not—” Mike pushed Sang-woo’s hand away. “My boss doesn’t work in LA.”
“What do you mean? Where does he work, then?”
“The company is in Antigua, okay?”
“Antigua? Where the fuck is that, the East Coast?”
“It’s in the Caribbean.”
The Caribbean — Pacific Marine and Fire wasn’t even in America. It hit Sang-woo like a punch in the gut. “You sold me a cruise-ship island insurance policy, you son of a fucking dog?”
He could hear Eun-ji now, telling him he should’ve listened to her, should’ve gotten insurance from a reputable place, like the companies that advertised on TV. But no, this one wasn’t on him. Sang-woo had called those places, had been told, more or less, that they didn’t do business in South Central. The one quote he managed to get was so laughably high, it wasn’t worth considering — they couldn’t pay the premiums and keep enough profit for the business to make any sense. Mary Yoo could have done no better.
“I swear, I thought they were legit. You have to believe me.” Mike cowered, and it made Sang-woo want to throw him down, stomp him into the pavement.
He did believe him. Mike Koh was a loser, the kind of guy who spewed cash on lucky numbers, who put more chips on the table — without fail — whenever the dealer was a woman with big breasts. He was a smiling optimist, the stupidest type of gambler, who went along with whatever felt good without stopping to think for a single second in his shibal-sekki life. So yeah, Sang-woo believed him, but he didn’t care if Mike had conned him on accident instead of on purpose.
Mike wouldn’t look at Sang-woo, though he couldn’t stop himself from taking nervous peeks across the street, where Anthony and Wallace had been glaring, just as instructed. Sang-woo knew from Mike’s expression when they left the corner and started making their way across the street. He had to tamp down a grin — Anthony was putting some real menace in his step. Sang-woo owed him whether or not the policy paid, but Anthony knew as well as anyone that you couldn’t wring money from a broke Korean with a burned-out store.
“You’re gonna get me that money,” said Sang-woo, gesturing at the two Black men coming in their direction. “Or I won’t just talk to your wife. I’ll send these guys to talk to her.”
Mike stood up like something had bitten him in the ass. “Come on,” he said, almost shouting. “You might get paid still, you know? Why threaten me, huh? I’m nobody. That’s why I wasn’t ready to talk to you — because they don’t tell me anything. I promise, none of this is my fault.”
He pleaded, and Sang-woo said nothing, just tuned him out while Anthony and Wallace closed the distance.
“I’ll do my best, okay? I promise you, I’ll do my best, it’ll just take time.”
Sang-woo stood up and faced Mike, so close he could see the sweat pooling in the creases of his forehead. He stared at this idiot’s idiot forehead and before he knew what he was doing, he raised his hand and flicked it, right in the middle, as hard as he could.
Sang-woo hadn’t done that since his school days in Korea, and he was pleased to see he still had the bully’s touch — it looked like he’d almost broken skin. Mike let out an indignant sound, a choked little whimper, and cupped a hand over the fresh injury.
“Your best isn’t worth shit, Mike. Get me the money.” He threw his eyes at Anthony and Wallace, now just fifteen, maybe ten feet away. “Go.”
Mike did as he was told, all but running to his car, and Sang-woo sat back down.
Anthony sat next to him with a heavy sigh. “I don’t know, Sang. I don’t like your chances.”
Sang-woo laughed.
Maybe the moron would come through, like morons sometimes do, or maybe Sang-woo should just accept that he’d lost this one: thousands of dollars in premiums and the payoff he was owed, all burned up with his store, his only stable means of making a living. It felt bad — like getting stacked in Hold’em when he’d gotten his chips in good.
He crushed his cigarette under his shoe and put a fresh one between his lips. He took a deep, steadying breath, letting the cigarette dangle. Weeks had passed since the last of the fires went out, but he could still smell smoke in the air. It clung to the neighborhood like a grimy film, the way it stayed in Sang-woo’s clothes and hair, hot and sooty and shameful, so that Hana always knew when he’d had a smoke, when he’d let another day go by without even trying to keep his promise.