Chapter 28
December 24, 1997 (Pacific Time) - Los Angeles, Baldwin Hills
Aaron pulled out the oven rack to check the brisket. It was the second night of Chanukah. Even the house knew something was missing. This year, the dinner table would be one less than the last eight years. Uncle E had never spent all eight nights with them, but he was always there on whichever of the nights fell on Christmas Eve. A phone call was all he would be able to manage this year.
'Stop thinking like a twelve-year-old,' he reminded himself. 'You're nineteen.'
"What was that, Aaron?" Inez walked into the room with the mail, slung her tote bag onto a barstool, and threw her car keys into the bowl next to the phone nook.
"Just talking to myself."
"Was it a meaningful conversation?" she teased.
"Not really. Anything there for me? I'm expecting something from the summer intern program."
"No, really?" Inez widened her eyes and feigned shock since Aaron had only mentioned it five or ten times since he'd been home for winter break.
"Funny, Mom. You're a laugh riot."
He wished that was true but felt something was bothering her.
"Nothing yet," she said. "I'm sure it will come in soon, and I'm looking forward to your being around this summer. You didn't apply to a company in Irvine just for me, did you?"
"Noooo...It's a good opportunity, so why not kill two birds. I want to spend my summer here."
"You're a bad liar, Aaron. Something you picked up from E, I guess." She smiled. "How's the brisket?"
"Almost done."
"I'm going up to take a shower," she said and headed up the stairs to her bedroom. "Remember what I said about the phone. Don't answer anything that isn't from South Korea. Understand?"
"Still not sure why, but yes, for the millionth time, Mom, I understand."
Her voice disappeared into the bedroom, "Just checking."
She told him she had changed the home phone number when she started getting annoying crank calls in the middle of the night. Aaron had accepted that - at first. But now, he was beginning to wonder if there was something more.
She may be a tough cop on the job, but Aaron knew she was breakable.
December 24, 1997 (Eastern Time) - Hazzard, the Duke farm
Luke and his new ready-made family living on the farm had been an adjustment for all of them, especially for Uncle Jesse, Bo, and Daisy. Daisy had moved out to stay with Mizz Tisdale until she needed to report to Emory in May. She had convinced Uncle Jesse and the boys that it was for Emma's benefit, as well as hers.
Bo had offered to move into town, but Sophie wouldn't hear of it. He'd ramped up his insistence in the four days since they had found out about Annie.
It was a good thing he couldn't think of her as anything but Annie, so he didn't accidentally call her by her real name. He didn't think that would be a problem because it sounded silly coming out of his mouth. Who names their kid something that has to be pronounced with a French accent anyway? Of course, Daisy had told him people in southern Louisiana don't have a problem with it.
Bo kicked at a popped-up nail on the front porch with the toe of his boot, trying to decide if he should just go in and pack his stuff while everybody was busy and move into the boarding house in town. 'Dang-it,' he thought, scraping a bit of leather off his left boot with the head of the nail. 'Guess I should at least wait till after Christmas.'
Picking up his jacket from the arm of the swing, he headed out to the Charger and threw the jacket onto the passenger side seat. Taking a sliding leap over the hood for old times' sake, he slid through the window into the driver's seat. Within seconds, he was only a cloud of dust left in the yard.
Christmas Eve in Hazzard was a time for family. Uncle Jesse's family had expanded somewhat beyond what he had been used to in past years. Like Thanksgiving, there were children in the house. His eyes gleamed while protecting his ears, with every excited squeal from Emily and every eight-year-old complaint about all the required chores associated with the holiday hoo-hah from Caleb (who Jesse suspected was secretly enjoying the dickens out of it all).
Jesse and Luke were busy in the kitchen, making Jesse's famous crawdad bisque. Even though the tree had been decorated for days, Daisy and Sophie were watching the kids put more crap on the tree than it could possibly hold when Alvin Dobbins arrived on the porch and knocked on the door.
"I'll get it!" Daisy said to anyone who might be listening.
When she opened the door and saw through the wire mesh of the screened door who it was, she tried to give him a warm Christmas Eve greeting but couldn't quite find it in her. The man was more of a gossip than Miss Maybelle, although less forgivable, and twice as fast at spreading it as the HazzardNet. She still hadn't quite forgiven him.
"Do I need to sign anything?"
"Sorry, Daisy," he said, feeling the slight chill that wasn't coming from the weather. "It's addressed to your Uncle Jesse."
Without arguing the point with him, she turned, keeping the screen door closed, and disappeared into the kitchen. A minute later, Jesse Duke came to the door.
"You got something for me, Alvin?"
"Yes, Sir, Mr. Duke. It's from Enos all the way from someplace in South Korea called Goyang-si." He said, slaughtering the pronunciation. [In all fairness, he did try.]
Jesse opened the door and stepped out onto the front porch. "Didn't ask you who or where it was from, Alvin. Do I need to sign anything?"
"Yes, Sir," Alvin said and gingerly handed him a yellow and brown pad. As Alvin gave Jesse the small package, there was no mistaking the unspoken words behind the older man's stern expression.
December 24, 1997 (Eastern Time) - Hazzard, Annie's place
Annie lived down a narrow lane in a small house off the other end of Mill Creek Road just before it hit Highway 20. The road, not much more than a cow path that led back to the house, didn't even have a name. Bo wondered how many times he'd passed her place while outrunning Sheriff Rosco, or Cletus, in the last nine years without ever really noticing it.
Not being much on books, that was Daisy's thing; he hadn't spent time at the library. And he couldn't remember if he had ever seen her at any barn dance or hayride or anything else. And she definitely had never come into the Boar's Nest. Until he met Annie in the clinic that day, he had never noticed her. Guess that was the point; to blend into the background. Be invisible. Until good ole Bo Duke came along and messed everything up.
Driving through Hazzard County at the snail's pace of 40 mph, something he used to swear a race car was never meant for, gave him some time to think. That day, after Annie had said she was this Kate woman's sister, he'd grabbed her by the hand, pulled her into his room, and slammed the door.
"Why didn't you tell me? Damnit, Annie! Didn't you trust me?"
"Bo...it had nothing to do with trusting you."
"Oh, yeah!"
"Yeah!" she said defiantly, crossing her arms.
"Did...Enos warn you about me, I mean..."
"No, of course not. I only talked to him or even met him twice."
...?
"I was sixteen the first time Katie hid me from Etienne...that's Hebert's first name. It was at a Catholic Convent...Don't laugh. I know how cliché' it is, but I think that's why she chose it. The convent's also a girls' boarding school. She registered me under our paternal grandmother's maiden name." Annie looked away. "I guess she was making pretty good money..." Her voice trailed off.
Bo put his arm around her.
"It's alright. I need to tell you."
"You don't have to. I'll do whatever it takes to keep you safe. I think that's probably why ole' Enos chose Hazzard."
She just nodded and continued, "I was there almost three years before Sister Angelica knocked on the door of my dorm room one night in May 1988. When I got to Mother Superior's office, he was there. He was Officer Strate back then. He wasn't in uniform, but he showed me his ID, and Mother Superior verified he was there to get me to a safe place."
Bo wanted to tell her she could have told him in the beginning, but deep down, he felt like he knew why she hadn't. "Guess we shoulda' been payin' a little more attention to what Enos was doin' out in L.A. too."
"People lose track of each other sometimes. I was really angry with Katie while I was at the convent school and for a while after that. I had plans to do other things than hiding here in Hazzard. I'm afraid I gave him…Enos, a pretty hard time when he was prepping me for life here," she sighed. "Can't believe how patient he was. Once I had lived here for a few months, I couldn't imagine being anywhere else."
"You know, I don't remember Enos comin' back here after he left in...um '87...till he came back for the reunion," Bo said, obviously trying to work out why Enos wouldn't have at least come by to see them.
"He said there was too much risk for him to let anyone know he was here, and it didn't fit the backstory. There was a house and a job waiting for me, and he gave me ID papers, medical history, education history...and a new name that I guess Katie must have picked. Then, he put me on a bus in Atlanta bound for Hazzard. When I got off the bus in town, I had the feeling he was somewhere, hidden, making sure I arrived safely."
"I'm sorry you had to do this all alone for so long," Bo said.
"I wasn't completely alone. He told me how to safely communicate with Katie."
"You've been talking to your sister all this time?"
"Not talking, communicating...and only a few times a year...through the personal columns of the Los Angeles Times. The library has a subscription to the big city papers like Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. I knew about the raid and the accident. That's how I found out about what happened to Enos and Katie on Halloween night."
Guilt that he had not been the man she could have trusted with who she was nearly overwhelmed him. "I'm so sorry, Annie."
"Bo, I have been happy here."
"I'm glad of that, anyway. You said you met Enos twice?"
"After he put me on that bus, I didn't see him again until this April when he came by the library. He didn't acknowledge that he knew me. He introduced himself like it was the first time we'd met and said he was donating some books to the library. He put five books on the desk and made sure I noticed that one of them was a volume of Poe's poems, then he said, "Pleased to meet you, Ma'am," and then he left...The Poe volume had a recent picture of Katie and a letter in it. I was sad when things didn't work out for him and Daisy, but I guess everything turned out for the best."
"I don't remember seein' you at the end of the race."
"That's because you had a couple of girls wrapped around you at the time."
"Oh."
"It's okay, Bo." She put her head on his shoulder and sighed, "I sometimes wonder..."
"Wonder what?"
"If I'm the only one."
After sitting in the General for a few minutes, Bo hurried up the walkway and knocked on the stained-glass door.
"Annie, it's me," he said softly. When there was no response or sign that anyone was headed for the door, he knocked again. Still no response. "Annie?"
Just before his heart nearly stopped, Annie came around the corner of the house. He gathered himself together, lest she realize that when she didn't answer...
He didn't want to think about it and jumped over the railing on the porch, swooped his arms around her, and held on for dear life.
December 24, 1997 (Eastern Time) – Hazzard, the Duke farm
Sophie wiped her hands on the apron and called from the kitchen, "Uncle Jesse, I think the rice is done, and the black-eyed peas are ready."
When Jesse came into the kitchen, she asked, "Bo and Annie should be here soon. He left nearly an hour ago. Do you think we should put on the biscuits since most everyone is here?"
"Well, Rosco hasn't showed up yet. Man's gonna be a day late and a dollar short for his own funeral. He's supposed to bring the machine for that video thing that Enos sent. And I reckon if it's been this long for Bo and Annie, they got things to talk about, so I wouldn't wait for them."
"You think Enos's aunt and uncle will come?" she asked.
"Don't know. I'm sure Frank would want to come but hard to tell with Judy," he said, with a long-held sadness in his voice. "Let's just hope they do! So you and me are gonna' go ahead and make them biscuits with everybody bein' here in mind."
Uncle Jesse had been grateful to have a woman in the house again. Since Lavinia died, Daisy had filled the void very well. But she had been on her own, and mostly gone, for years. He was happy about that. Honestly, he was. But it had left the farmhouse feeling empty of a woman's warmth and care. As wild as she was when she was younger, Daisy had kept that feeling in the house.
Now, the farm felt like a home once more. Sophie always made sure there were fresh wildflowers on the table for every meal and that everyone sat down together, at least for supper and Sunday dinners. At the table, there was scolding about not eating vegetables and not-so-good table manners, lunches of bologna and cheese to fix on weekday mornings, always with a package of those curly things that got orange powder everywhere – it was wonderful.
Bo and Annie finally arrived and said hello to Bertha Jo and Emma Tisdale, warming her hands by the fire. B.J. was relaxing on the couch and looking like she was ready to pop any day, though she wasn't due for another three weeks.
"Where's Bubba?" Bo asked.
"On the back porch teachin' Caleb and Emily the proper way to crack pecans. But I'm not real sure how many are gonna' be left for me to make pecan pies tomorrow."
"You need somethin' B.J. I'd be glad to fetch somethin'."
"I'm fine, Bo. But thanks for offerin'."
There was a knock on the door to announce another arrival, and Rosco stepped inside, carrying an armload of wrapped presents while Flash waddled in beside him decked out in a Santa suit and hat. Judy Strate followed Rosco in, shaking her head at the hound and muttering, "What silly things will people come up with next?"
Frank brought up the rear, carrying three more packages.
"Frank, you can just put those over there under the tree. Thank ya' kindly."
Rosco was juggling the packages and paying attention to what Frank was doing with the other gifts (some of them might be breakable) "Tchh tchh, there you go just set um down gentle like."
"Can I help Sheriff?" asked the soft sweet southern voice of Sarah Jane Bascom.
Rosco nearly dropped the packages right then and there. He had gone to pure jelly. Sarah Jane reached for the bottom box to steady the load. "I can take a couple of them."
About that time, Emma, Annie, and Bo had joined in to offer their assistance. Daisy swooped in, took the boxes Sarah Jane had offered to remove, and pretty soon, all the gifts Enos had sent to the sheriff for distribution were under the tree.
Rosco was left flustered and discombobulated in front of the bakery lady. He remembered that he was still wearing his hat and quickly removed it, holding it against his chest in a fidgety grip with his left hand and smoothing his hair with his right. He was wearing the suit he'd worn to the Atlanta airport to pick up Daisy – the one Sarah Jane, although she had no idea why he needed it, had helped him pick out.
When Jesse caught Daisy spying on them, he made her jump when he tapped her on the shoulder. "You changin' your career from ecology to matchmaker, Daisy? Tried yer hand with Bo and Annie, and now you done set your sights on settin' up poor Sarah Jane with Rosco. What'd she ever do to you, anyway?"
She fanned her hand at him. "Oh, Uncle Jesse, Bo 'n Annie were already in love before I ever knew about her. And Rosco's been hangin' out at the bakery every morning for the last three months."
Uncle Jesse gave her a look that clearly said 'horse manure' but let it go when Sophie alerted him that the last batch of biscuits was ready.
December 25, 1997 (Korean Time) - Goyang-si, Republic of Korea
Enos swung his legs over the mattress and was met with pain in his heels when they hit the floor faster than he anticipated, still getting used to the bed resting on a thin platform close to the floor in the middle of the room. Soonie had tried to convince him to get a bed frame since they were both used to sleeping above the floor. But he stubbornly insisted that 'if they were going to live in Korea, then they were going to abide by the customs.'
The previous day had been eleven long hours of paperwork and meeting rooms at Interpol, to 'on-board' for his new job as a Criminal Intelligence Officer. The job title was more than he'd even dared hope for; and much more than he expected. Considering the scrutiny his life had been subjected to since he first applied back in November, his expectations ran more along the lines of data gathering and distribution at some cubbyhole computer station in the nether regions at the Seoul NCB. That, at least, meant gainful employment in an environment where he could access and monitor notice responses, sightings, anything that resembled information to hone-in on where Kate was.
Criminal Intelligence Officer meant he would be working with South Korean law enforcement and other countries' police agencies. Cases involving trafficked people was an issue even Interpol was just then beginning to get a handle on. He would be liaising directly with the Los Angeles County police jurisdiction on specific cases, including one Katherine Denine Broussard, for whom Interpol had issued a missing person alert in the form of a Yellow Notice.
It was full light outside when he dragged himself out of the warm bed on Christmas Day – Christmas Day in Korea, that is. Christmas was recognized and even decorated for in the R.O.K., but it was not a significant holiday. However, the day off was utilized more as an excuse, although Koreans rarely needed that, to socialize.
The clock said eight in the morning – but that was Korea time. Right now, it was Christmas Eve at two in the afternoon in Los Angeles and five in the evening in Hazzard.
Soonie had been up for an hour getting everything ready. The approval for visitation rights had come the same day he'd found out about the new job. Today, they were finally going to meet Gem. He was excited and nervous at the same time. The thing that made Enos most anxious was that he would be meeting Mun Chung-hee, Soonie's abeoji.
But first things first. He would be making phone calls to Los Angeles and Hazzard in an hour or so and wanted some alone time with his wife before plunging into the day.
December 24, 1997 (Eastern Time) – Hazzard, the Duke farm
Christmas Eve dinner had been somewhat buffet style due to having so many people – Uncle Jesse counted sixteen and three quarters, including himself and Bertha Jo and Bubba's unborn baby boy. Fetal Ultrasound had been around for over twenty years in the big cities, but only the last couple of years at the Hazzard clinic. Jesse was still amazed that some machine could tell you the sex of your baby long before it was born. When Lavinia was midwiving, the mother tied her wedding ring to a string and hung it over her belly. If the ring swung in a circle, the baby was a girl; if it swung back and forth, the baby was a boy. He wondered what Lavinia would think of the newfangled method.
He took her picture from the mantle and held it. She had meant so much to him, to them all. He still missed her. She would have loved the new energy in the house tonight. When Daisy called to him and said, "It's movie time," he put the frame back on the mantle among the other wedding photos: Enos and Soonie, and the most recent of Luke and Sophie.
Emily sat on Luke's lap and whispered in his ear, "What about presents?"
"Afterwards, I promise," he whispered back.
They all waited while Rosco fiddled with the machine that would convert the TV into a movie screen. When everyone started getting antsy, Caleb got up and showed Rosco that he had neglected to add the converter to the leads coming out of the video player and where to insert the chip.
"Enos said this was about forty minutes long, but there was somethin' special for Uncle Jesse at the end," Rosco said. He had brought his serious side tonight. Possibly to impress Sarah Jane.
The video was narrated mostly by Soonie, who also translated where necessary. It began with a vista view of Seoul that looked much like Los Angeles at a distance, albeit with a light covering of snow. Closer in, at street level, the camera lens captured a tour of pagodas and coy ponds in Ilsan Park. The dancing fountain delighted Emily no end, and she asked more than once to see it again.
While Soonie provided the overview and history, they were treated with the Changing of the Guard at Gyeongbokgung Palace, where docents and visitors alike wore traditional hanbok; then, a walk through Hwagyesa, a Buddhist Temple.
The Gwangjang Market garnered the most attention from the Hazzardites gathered at the Duke place on Christmas Eve. So many weird and exotic foods at dozens of street stalls. Through the constant chatter in Korean between vendors and customers, they could hear Enos munching on what he called kogo. Soonie, who along with most of the local Koreans was dressed in Western-influenced casual, made a purchase of her favorite street food, Korean Barbeque.
When the camcorder zoomed in on Enos's wife, Emma Tisdale murmured with an impishly delighted smile, "Well I'll be."
From Seoul, the landscape changed to the satellite city of Goyang, where Enos and Soonie lived, and the house they lived in, the one, according to Emily, with the 'funny looking roof and the dinner table with the legs cut off.' Luke explained to her that many people in Korea sit cross-legged on the floor when eating. He covered his mouth and whispered an aside to Sophie that he'd like to be a fly on the wall to see how Enos was managing that.
The scene changed to scenes of forested terrain on the drive north through Uijeongbu, Pocheon , towards North Korea. When Enos stopped the car, the camcorder captured the view of a serene range of mountains. They could see hills covered with Mongolian oak that had gone dormant for the winter and then heard Enos's voiceover.
'It looks peaceful, but out there are hundreds of thousands of live mines spread all over this entire region. So, this is as close as we can get right now. Soonie's cousin, Kim Ji-woon came with me today. He's kind of a Korean War historian, so I'm gonna' let him take over.'
The camcorder lens turned to show Ji-woon waving at the camera, then he moved away to capture the small village he called Jigyeong-ri.
'The Battle of Chipyong-ni,' Ji-woon said, speaking in English with a decidedly Korean accent, 'was fought here in February 1951 and is referred to by some as the Gettysburg of Korea. The hill my new cousin and I are here to see today is in the mountain range you are seeing now. The hill itself cannot be viewed where we are.'
'Hwasalmeori,'he continued, 'which translates to Arrowhead Hill in English, is inside the DMZ, which inside the CCZ, which is within the border zone. Getting close to the border fencing or the guard stations is out of the question. Even after forty-five years, not enough mines have been cleared. Our border with North Korea is also the most heavily armed border in the world. We still experience skirmishes with the north that break out on occasion.'
The camcorder panned the area 180 degrees.
'The UN command called Hwasalmeori, Hill 281, the site of some of the bloodiest battles of the war. My grandfather fought alongside US and French troops in one of the South Korean regiments. He is still buried up there, somewhere.'
There was a pause during which they heard Enos ask Ji-woon if he was okay. He responded in Korean, which Enos seemed to understand.
'We are hoping to obtain permission,' Ji-woon continued, 'to get closer within the next few months. Once permission has been granted, and we can be assigned a CCZ escort. We will have to wait until the one road in is clear of snow, in the Spring, to get to the top of a hill in the safe zone with some field glasses, to get a better view of Arrowhead.'
Enos took over the narration.
'But right now, Uncle Jesse,' he said, 'this is the closest we can get to where your brother was reported as missing in action in October 1952, and Ji-woon's granddaddy was last seen alive...Uncle Jamie's not alone. The South Korean government thinks there are around three hundred South Korean, French and US soldiers still buried up there on that that hill. One o' these days, they wanna' bring um all home.'29
When the video ended, a feather dropping on the floor would have sounded like a crash of thunder, and there were tears in Uncle Jesse's eyes. Even Emily recognized the solemnity of the moment and buried her head in Luke's shoulder.
The next hour was spent with the adults flipping through photo albums with pictures and memorabilia of Uncle Jesse's brother, James Leroy Duke while Caleb and Emily opened their presents from South Korea.
December 25, 1997 (Korean Time) - Goyang-si, Republic of Korea
The phone call to Inez and Aaron did not go as well as Enos had anticipated - or hoped. It was nothing he could identify – just a weird feeling. He was still stewing over why he felt like there was something he should understand when Soonie reminded him he had planned to call Uncle Jesse and the family before leaving. It would already be past seven in Hazzard.
Soonie had opted not to participate in her husband's phone call to the De Pina/Shapiro household. Although she and Inez had managed cordiality, she was well-aware that she had taken away something that Inez had wanted, even if her husband did not understand that. Knowing how she would have felt had their roles been reversed, Soonie gained no satisfaction from twisting the knife.
However, she did relish being included in the call to her husband's 'family' in Hazzard.
The call was raucous and noisy and the most beautiful thing Soonie had ever heard. She had not understood how much she longed for the feel of family until that moment when she was welcomed, without reservation, into the Hazzard County fold. It was a stark contrast to what awaited them at her father's house.
When Enos told everyone about the baby, only Emma Tisdale was not taken by surprise. She declared that she knew it as soon as she saw Soonie at the market.
Their reception at the house of Mun, to put it mildly, had been cold. After it was over, Enos felt as if he'd lived through some perverted version of 'I Was a Male War Bride.'30 The war being between Soonie and her father. For the first time, he understood what he and Soonie were up against and the increased distance she had put between her and her father by marrying him.
The afternoon had started out with some measure of civility. Enos was careful to follow Soonie's lead about the removal of shoes, which slippers were for guests, and where to stand and how to bow when meeting her father. Much to his surprise and despite her protests otherwise, Soonie made her best effort to honor her father in his own house.
And Mun Chung-hee was civil, barely. All of Enos's practice with addressing his new father-in-law, preparing the gift to present to him, and the etiquette training with Soonie and Mizz Baek had gone for naught. They had walked into a no-win scenario. If not for the court-ordered visitation, Enos was sure they would never have been able to see Gem. And it made Soonie dig in her heels like a pickaxe stuck in a block of cement. On the scale of relative honorifics, the daughter was at the bottom of the list.
The visit with Gem went better and as well as could be expected. She was a timid little girl and didn't understand why she couldn't see her 'appa.' Mun Eun-kyung, Gem, was three and a half feet tall with black hair, cropped short with bangs, and sported a headband. She wore glasses too large for her face, which could not obscure that she and Soonie had the same beautiful eyes, deep and brown. She wore a green pinafore over a white shirt with a Peter Pan collar, white knee socks, and the ubiquitous slippers.
She took the doll Enos had bought for her and said gamsahabnida when prompted her but said little else until Mizz Baek asked her, in Korean, to show her aunt and uncle the garden. This, she gladly did, as long as Mizz Baek accompanied them.
Baek Sung-mi had been housekeeper to the Mun household for more than thirty-five years. She had also been a nanny to the children of the household, Soonie and her half brother Jae-sung. Mrs. Baek had visited them when they first moved to Goyang-si, and she had attended their Korean wedding. The poor woman was trying to be fair and loyal to both sides of the battle of wills that would dominate Soonie's life, along with prolonged morning sickness, for the next several months.
When Enos and Soonie arrived home, she was too angry to cry.
"The next time, we can see her again somewhere besides your father's house. The court order only said that we can't take her out of the city," Enos said, trying to comfort his wife.
She was apparently too angry to talk to him either because she went to their bedroom and closed the door. It was two hours before she reappeared.
December 24-25, 1997 (Pacific Time) – Santa Monica
Gordon Thompson sat in his car, asking himself why the woman in bungalow number twenty bothered him so much. The 'bungalow' was not much more than a stereotypical beach shack in a row of stereotypical beach shacks that had been slightly modernized. He had started his law enforcement career in Santa Monica; wasn't all it was cracked up to be in the brochures. The city had as much of a seedy underbelly as LA, stuff they didn't put in the brochures.
And it wasn't what he had 'run past her' that night that was digging worry lines into his forehead to go along with the gray hairs he blamed on Strate. It was her analysis, among other things.
He almost started the car to leave and had nearly turned the key when a wrap on the window startled him. He put his right hand on his gun holster and unsnapped it. When he saw who it was, he pressed the window button, and before it was even half the way down, he snapped, "Geeze, Elektra. Don't EVER sneak up on a cop like that! What the hell are you doing out here by yourself in the middle of the night?"
She leaned down to make eye contact through the open window and held up a netted carrier with a bottle of wine inside. "I think a better question is, 'what the hell are you doing out here by yourself in the middle of the night?' You might as well have a neon sign above you that spells COP in big bright letters. Do you let all your stakeout subjects sneak up on you like that?"
Now she was just trying to piss him off and doing a damn good job of it.
"Come on in, and I'll open this," she said. Not waiting for an answer, she walked ahead toward her bungalow and pulled out her keys. She didn't look back when a skateboarder sailed past and checked her out on his way. The guy was still fixated on her posterior as he turned the corner. That was when Thompson overcame the fact that Clarissa Van Der Pelt annoyed the hell out of him, got out of the car, and followed her into the bungalow.
Elektra deposited the wine bottle on the kitchenette counter and went to the bedroom, separated from the living space only by a louvered partition. When she came out, the black wig was gone, replaced by her own long, straight natural brunette mane. She had removed the nose ring.
Thompson had always known the short-cropped jet-black hair was a wig – one of the things that made her mysterious, intriguing, and, yes, sexy – also frustratingly confusing.
"I'm serious, Van Der Pelt. Why were you out at midnight?"
Tommy was standing with the flaps of his suit coat flared back by his knuckles on his hips, his holster strapped just behind his right fist. Elektra's take on his body language was that he was trying to make some sort of statement.
"Because I knew you'd be out there. You've been there at the same time every night for four days. I spotted you the first night."
"I wasn't...I wasn't trying to be inconspicuous."
"So, there was a time before that when you were inconspicuous? Have you been stalking me?"
"No, I haven't been stalking you," he said, raking his fingertips through his hair. "But you know that."
She gave him a pixie-ish smile and said, "Sit." Then, she went to the kitchen to retrieve two Bordeaux glasses from the cabinet above the sink. Setting them on the coffee table, she poured each glass a third full of the Napa vintner Cabernet Sauvignon.
'She knows her wines,' he thought, finally obeying the command to 'sit' but said, "You really enjoy making fun of me, don't you? Beer would have been fine."
"You shouldn't make yourself such an easy target," she said and sat on the divan next to him. "And I thought wine would be better for tonight, this morning, whatever."
Elektra took a healthy sip from the glass she had poured for herself and eased into a comfortable position against the cushion. Thompson had both his hands around the bowl of his wine glass, hovering over his knees. He had begun to stare into the burgundy liquid, swirling it around like it was cognac when he felt her palm on his back. He immediately stiffened.
"Relax, Tommy, I know why you're here. Enos is five thousand plus miles away, and you need somebody to watch over."
Even though he would never tell her that was partially true, he put down the glass and turned to her. "You know that's not why I want to be with you."
"I know it's not the only reason."
"Is it always going to be like this with us?" He threaded his right hand in her hair and pulled her towards him.
When they were close enough to nearly touch, she whispered, "Probably," before he gave up all pride and pretense. He ignored the other reason he was there (that could wait until tomorrow) and lost himself in her mouth, her neck, and every other part of her he'd wanted to touch for months.
References:
(29) Sources: / / Yonhap News Agency article April 20, 2020 / Stars and Stripes June 3, 2019
Just a note for reference regarding military personnel whose remains were still buried underneath Hill 281, Arrowhead as of December 1997. After nearly 70 years, "the first excavation mission inside the DMZ since the armistice agreement" was undertaken by around 100 South Korean troops and forensic experts and began in April, 2019 by first clearing mines and then excavation of the hill. "As of June, 2019, a total of 456 bone fragments had been unearthed on the ridge, with DNA analysis pending." A plethora of military artifacts were also found buried under the ridge. The six month project was supposed to be a joint project with North Korea considering Hill 281 is "500 meters away from the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) thanks to the inter-Korean Comprehensive Military Agreement signed on September 19, 2018." Unfortunately, North Korea did not show up to take part in the excavation. So South Korea, "depsite being in a technically-at-war situation," proceeded with the project on their own without interference with their northern neighbors. (Source: koreanbizwire)
(30) I Was a Male War Bride is a Howard Hawks film (comedy) starring Cary Grant (1949)