ERICA IS SOMEWHERE IN DEEPEST Queens, sweating and straining, huffing and puffing—and it feels so good.
“Run the pattern one more time,” Grandmaster Nam Soo Kyong tells the class, which obediently runs through the Tae Kwon Do series of stretches, kicks, and lunges yet again.
The dojang is crowded; about half the practitioners are Asian, the rest are the usual New York mosaic of colors, shapes, and ages. Erica found the place online, where it earned rave reviews. Then she dressed down, stuck a cap on her head, and took the subway out to Flushing. She walked down from the elevated station to find a thriving neighborhood of fruit-and-vegetable stands selling exotic produce she’d never seen before, restaurants, clothing stores, fish markets spilling onto the sidewalks thick with shoppers. Every sign is in Korean, incomprehensible chatter fills Erica’s ears, the air is aromatic with exotic spices, car exhaust, and fresh fish—immigrants bring such entrepreneurial energy to this city, to this country, she thinks. These are people hungry for the American dream, and she hates the way they’ve been demonized by xenophobic ideologues.
Nobody in the dojang seems to recognize Erica, which is both disappointing and liberating. After the warm-up, the class breaks into partners and the sparring starts. Erica finds herself facing off against a teenage Korean girl—who is fierce. She and the girl exchange head-height kicks and blocks, jumping and spinning—the whole body focused on the foot, concentration fierce. And then, between kicks, total relaxation, which conserves and marshals the energy. All of it performed with breath control—exhale on the kick.
Tae Kwon Do was developed in Korea in the 1940s, a hybrid of Japanese karate, Chinese martial arts, and ancient Korean self-defense and combat exercises. It goes beyond the actions and moves—stressing courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-discipline, and invincibility.
Erica took her first class when she was a freshman at Yale. She had two motives. One was to make sure that her father was the last man who ever hit her. The other was that Yale’s urban campus was foreign territory to a girl who’d grown up in all-white rural Maine. The uncomfortable truth was that it took her some months to get comfortable with all the diversity. Once she did, she fell in love with the melting pot. And with Tae Kwon Do.
Erica came to think of her classes in New Haven as lessons in adulthood. Early on, she was tempted to go home and test what she’d learned on her father. But that rage for revenge faded as her practice strengthened. Why sink to her parents’ level?
The fact is Erica has never been back home since that late-August day when she left for Yale. Her mother drove her to the bus station. When they arrived, there was a moment of silence. They sat there, the engine running, daughter off to forge a life out of the trauma and chaos of her childhood, mother back to the leaky prefab, her pot pipe, and her black-market painkillers. Sitting in the rickety Chevy, there was so much to say. And nothing to say. Her mother lit a Kool. Erica got out of the car, got her one suitcase out of the backseat, and turned toward the tiny bus depot.
“Erica,” her mother called.
Erica turned back. Her mother was leaning across the front seat toward the open passenger window.
“Listen, you’re off to that fancy school now. No one in this family has ever had that kind of chance. Then again, no one’s ever had your brains.”
Erica was buoyed—her mother was going to send her off with words of encouragement.
“But just remember, you can change a lot of things in your life, but you can’t ever, ever change where you come from. And deep down, you’ll never be better than any of us.” She snickered, took a drag of her cigarette, and drove off.
With each Tae Kwon Do move, Erica feels herself growing more centered and engaged in the moment. She tries to stare down the fear that has been festering inside her since she found those glasses in front of her computer, that ratcheted up after the elevator jerked to a sudden, terrifying stop, that was further fueled by the water bugs crawling out of the red roses. But no matter how deeply she breathes or how graceful her moves, she can’t shake the sense that she’s in danger.
The class ends. Erica thanks her sparring partner and the grandmaster. She is so glad she came. Not only because her practice feels tuned up and sharpened, but because she renewed her connection to a discipline that has been important to her, that helped her survive at Yale. And that may help her survive in the days ahead.
As she walks out into the New York evening, she turns on her cell phone and sees there’s been a call from Moira. She calls her back on her prepaid.
“Hey, Erica, we just heard from a source in the LAPD that there’s been a break in the Barrish case. No word on what it is.”
“Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll call Detective Takahashi.”
“And, Erica, I did some serious digging on Fred Wilmot.”
“Find anything interesting?”
“I’d call it disturbing. Wilmot and Nylan Hastings have been best friends since grade school. They grew up together in Winnetka, a rich suburb of Chicago. Hastings went off to Stanford, Wilmot to Brown. He was the first person Hastings brought on board when he founded Universe. When he was at Brown, Wilmot was accused of selling cocaine to his classmates. It was never proved and the school handled it internally.”
“Not exactly the best character reference, but we all make mistakes at that age.”
“It’s the mistake he made when he was ten that disturbs me. With his best friend Nylan watching, he doused a neighbor’s golden retriever with lighter fluid and set it on fire.”
Erica stops dead on the sidewalk. “Oh no.”
“Then they stood there and watched it burn.”
“I feel sick, Moy.”
“Erica, you’re working for men who have ambitions beyond our imagining. Cold, ruthless, predatory men, men who light dogs on fire. Be careful.”
Should she tell Moira about the glasses, the elevator, the water bugs? She doesn’t want to alarm her friend even more. And she doesn’t want to jeopardize her career by leaping to any unproven conclusions. Those glasses were probably a cheap stunt by Claire Wilcox. She has no proof the elevator incident was intentional. The water bugs were pretty juvenile in the end. Erica has an awful lot at stake—her future with Jenny, her show, her power, her salary. She can’t let overblown fears derail her. She’s got an investigation to pursue.
“Thanks, Moy, I will be careful. Now let me look into this development in the Barrish case. You may see me soon.”
“Every cloud.”
Erica hangs up and calls Takahashi.
“Erica, you must have some good sources.”
“Starting with you.”
“The DNA results are back on the blood that was found in the trunk of the stolen Lexus. Arturo Yanez is a match. No big surprise there. But we also found some prints and got a match. They belong to one Miguel Fuentes. Six priors including attempted murder. Member of the Nortenos, one of the most notorious gangs in East LA.”
“So Yanez’s murder was a paid gang hit.”
“Yes.”
“Do you have a location on Fuentes?”
“We have a last known, but we’ve already been there and he’s long gone. He’s probably trying to get out of the country. The airlines, bus companies, and border crossings have his name, picture, and description.”
“I’ll be in the studio in about forty-five minutes. Can I get you on for an interview?”
“Call me ten minutes before you’re ready to go live.”
“Are you at LAPD headquarters?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll get a crew down there ASAP. And listen, would I be in your way if I came out there?” This question is strictly a courtesy—the press can go where it wants—but Erica is developing a relationship with Takahashi and wants to be deferential. It could pay off later.
“A good reporter is always welcome.”
Erica hangs up and calls Greg. He’ll deal with getting an LA crew to police headquarters. “I may want to fly out there to cover this.”
There’s a pause. “I understand why you want to, Erica, but it has to be cleared with Nylan. And as you know, he wants you elevated, not out in the field where you’re just one of many reporters.”
“Kay Barrish died in my arms. This is my story.”
“Agreed. But we have to be very strategic. Figure out the best way to present it to Nylan. Let’s talk when you get here. Now let me get that LA crew in place for your Takahashi interview.”
Erica hangs up. Even Greg seems to be backing up Nylan. Even Greg. And that elevator, shuddering and then stopping . . . she was all alone in the dark. Trapped. Is it a trap? Erica steps into a nearby doorway and hugs herself. The fear that she’s been fighting—that she’s not safe at GNN, that she’s being watched and controlled and manipulated by Nylan and his money and power and sickness, that she’s in danger, not safe, not safe—springs to full leering life.
Several passersby look at her, curious. Do they recognize her, the blonde woman huddled in a doorway? An elderly Korean man approaches her. He smiles, a kind smile. “Do you need directions?”
“No, no . . . I’m fine. I was just, um, talking on the phone. I’m going to the subway now, that’s all, thank you.”
As Erica crosses the street, she tries to rid her mind of the image of that poor golden retriever burning to death on a suburban street.