Free Dirty Kiss by Rhys Ford Page A

comes, and one of the favorites goes away. It’s how these things are. Like I said, dongsaeng, I don’t pay much attention to what goes on up there. I’m an entertainer. I don’t do those things.”
     
    “Did he kill himself before or after he saw Jin-Sang? Do you know?”
     
    “Had to be after. I think the upstairs manager refused the payment in respect to Mr. Kim,” Scarlet murmured. “It would have been bad to take money for Hyun-Shik’s entertainment.”
     
    “So Hyun-Shik went upstairs, had a little fun, then killed himself?” I sat back in my chair. Stranger things had been known to happen. Some suicide victims killed themselves after a good meal while others were too distraught to think beyond doing the act. People were crazy things, but paying for sex and then taking a handful of pills seemed strange. “You mentioned drugs upstairs. Is that where Hyun-Shik got the pills?”
     
    “Oh no, honey.” She shook her hair out, setting the brush aside. “Upstairs doesn’t do pills. Mostly jutes or sometimes nga nga. Pills take too long, and they’re not good with whiskey. That would be too many problems.”
     
    “He had to have brought them with him, then.” Things were getting complicated. “The biggest question that I can’t seem to answer is, why? And why here?”
     
    “That I don’t know, honey,” Scarlet said with a shrug. “His note said what? He was ashamed? Of loving men? Then why kill himself here? Pfah, your questions make things worse.”
     
    “That’s why I’m asking.” Her cell phone rang, a snippet of a song I didn’t recognize, vibrating the tiny silver device across the vanity table. “You want some privacy?”
     
    “No, stay there,” she ordered, poking at my chest with a sharp fingernail. Answering, she sighed, hearing someone’s voice on the other end. “Hyung! Yes, I am done. Just one show tonight.”
     
    The rest was in Korean, a bubbling flow of words that I didn’t have to understand to know what was being said. Cooing was universal, and Scarlet’s coquettish laughter made me smile. It’d been a long time since I’d sat and chatted someone up on the phone, not since Rick and I were first dating.
     
    I stood, stretching my legs. The drive up and down the coast was hell on my belly, the scar tissue knitting together the nerves of my abdomen muscles. I was beginning to cramp up, and reached around to work the kink loose. Twisting around, something caught my eye, a familiar face smiling back up at me from a silver frame.
     
    Sneaking a peek at Scarlet, I made sure she was still deep in conversation before I walked over to the tall dresser sitting in the corner of the room. Many of the photos were of Scarlet, some vacation shots with a solemn-faced, older Korean man and others with young men who were obviously entertainers. The one that caught my eye was larger than the rest and placed to the side with the smaller shots around it.
     
    I knew the honey-brown eyes that stared up at me, and seeing his face hit me in the gut. Jae-Min was younger in the photo, a few years maybe, at the most. His hair was longer, fringed around his face, making his features nearly gamine, but the sensual pout of his mouth was the same, a hint of a smile dimpling his cheeks.
     
    Cracking the back of the frame to see if there was a date on the back of the photo probably wouldn’t be a good idea. Scarlet sounded like she was wrapping up her call, a final coo into her phone and then a throaty tenor sigh. In that small exclamation of passion, I heard the man Scarlet hid inside, so proud of the love he shared with another man.
     
    Scarlet came up behind me, her chin resting against my upper arm to see what I was looking at. I tilted the frame so she could see the picture I was looking at. There was another whispering murmur, lighter and sweeter this time.
     
    “Ah, my musang.” She touched Jae-Min’s face with the tips of her fingers. “He’s Hyun-Shik’s cousin. Is he on your