Florence Chen is Missing - Episode 1

A retired cop confronts a thief

Warning: contains decriptions of extreme violence.

Won Park was the loss prevention officer of a big box discount store in Queens. He spent his days in a windowless office off the back warehouse, staring at the computer monitor on his small desk to ensure all goods received, stocked, sold and returned were accounted for.

It is the kind of work that, when everything is going well, is incredibly boring, which suited Won, who at this point in his life was over excitement of any kind. All he wanted to do was clock out at the end of the day, have good enough luck to catch an express train back to his rent-stabalized apartment where he’d watch war documentaries on his big screen TV over microwaved dumplings, then later, after a warm shower and a double dose pot gummy, he’d fall asleep listening to Maria Muldaur on his bedside Bluetooth speakers.

When Georgie knocked on his office door then stuck his head in and announced, “We have a situation,” Won sighed. A situation is never about delighted customers or contented workers.

“What’s up?”

“We had a booster in Jewelry.”

“What happened?”

“I opened the display case for a lady to try on some earrings, and she walked off with them.”

“How could she just walk off with them? Were you on your phone?”

Georgie grimaced guiltily and shrugged. Won liked the skinny Dominican kid because although he frequently fucked up, he was incapable of deceit. Won sighed again, then grabbed the computer mouse and shuffled the monitor from its digital slumber and with Georgie looking over his shoulder perused video footage from the store’s plethora of surveillance cameras. Georgie jabbed a finger at the screen and shouted, “That’s her!”

Won glared at Georgie to step away, then turned back to the monitor to watch a small blond woman in a white parka and leggings steering a shopping cart through the checkout line.

Won pushed himself out of his chair. “All right. Let’s see if we can catch up to her in the parking lot.”

Georgie, excited by the hunt and frustrated by Won’s leisurely pace, strode ahead against the current of customers flowing into the store’s entrance from the underground garage.

The white parka-ed woman was loading boxes of snacks and frozen meals into the back of a late model SUV which was also white. Won caught up to Georgie, then put a hand on the young man’s shoulder to calm him down and keep him back. The woman had her back to Won as he approached her.

“Excuse me...”

The woman turned and looked up at Won. She appeared to be in her mid 40’s with pale blue eyes and spray-tan over her wide, round face. Judging by the mega-sized boxes of snacks and frozen meals she was loading, Won surmised that she was a mom of teenagers. A carefully applied bumper sticker on the SUV bragged about a kid being a scholar at a long island high school. Symmetrically mounted on the other side of the bumper was the round logo of the U.S. Naval Academy.

The woman’s face reminded Won of Tamara, and he had to take a moment to push his ex-wife from his thoughts.

“…I’m the head of security here.”

The woman continued to look blankly at Won. Won shifted into formal politeness – the kind of deference most people expect of older Asians, and said, “Would you mind lowering your hood?”

The woman rapidly blinked as she lowered her parka hood until the faux fur lining rested on her small shoulders. Won saw the diamond studs sparkling on her earlobes.

“Has there been a mistake?” He held up the empty earring box.

The woman looked at the empty box, then back at Won.

“I don’t know what that is,” she said. Won could tell that she didn’t believe her own words.

He pointed at the earrings she was wearing.

She swallowed, and seemed to be contemplating a decision. Then she looked into Won’s eyes and spoke in a slow and measured tone.

“These are mine. I wore them in.”

She was a terrible liar, her sharp frown and nervously shifting feet giving it all away. But Won knew from her defiant tone that she was digging in. He seemed to tower over the petite puffy housewife as they faced off in the underground florescent lighting, the woman’s gloved hands clenched into little furry balls pressed against her stomach. More silence passed and Won was disappointed that the quick confession he’d hoped for did not materialize.

He knew how the rest of it would go: the police would be called, probably a couple hours with them reviewing the video footage and getting statements. Her protestations, her overplayed outrage, then threats of lawsuits and having everyone involved fired, along with volleys of insults about his intelligence, his income, his manhood, and his race. Won didn’t mind any of it - he’d been called every variant of asian slur during his years on the job (he could tell by the slur how old a person was and if they’d been in the military - only Vietnam vets used “zipperhead”) and was told thousands of times to “go back where he came from,” that he no longer bothered to respond with one of a dozen ironic clapbacks he’d collected over the years. It was all just noise to him now - the ambience of panic, guilt, fear, mental illness, and helplessness. What Won really dreaded was the time it would take to get her into custody.

Won wanted to go back to his office and the spreadsheets listing inventory SKUs. He wanted to finish the word puzzle on his phone – he had a twenty-day streak going. Now the day was going long, and she wasn’t going to be easy.

Then, for reasons that he never could understand, he thought of the bodies. So many over the years – back alleys, desolate vacant lots, messy bedrooms - but four in particular always came to mind.

The bloated corpse of the Mexican woman wrapped in heavy duty garbage bags, hands and legs duct-taped and swollen like overripe fruit, her body dumped in the weedy expressway culvert surrounded by roadside garbage: ant infested fast-food containers, plastic bottles filled with trucker urine, broken-strapped sandals.

Then came the image of the blond-haired toddler dangling in the otherwise empty hallway coat closet, an electric extension cord cinched tight around his distended neck. Won remembered the naked boy’s flawless white skin and golden hair the color of ripened wheat.

Then there were the two elderly sisters lying in their quaint living room decorated with souvenirs from a lifetime of travel, the arterial blood from their stab wounds soaking the antique area rug so much, Won’s feet made squishing sounds as he approached the bodies, while down the hall a small dog frantically yelped behind a closed bedroom door.

They came to him in flashes – sometimes before sleep, or as he lathered his hair in the shower, and now, standing before a Nassau County mom wearing earrings she hadn’t paid for. Too familiar to him to evoke horror, these cases had come to him far past the point in his career where he could feel the novelty of outrage. If he had to describe the memories – something he’d never tried to do with anyone – he’d talk about feeling a peculiar sadness, and an equally vague desire for everything to stop, which would invariably lead to the question, “What do you mean by ‘stop’?” Which is why Won never discussed these feelings with anyone.

Tamara had vicarious knowledge about the bodies Won investigated, and his task of having to learn why they were dead, then find who killed them. She knew that to get people of interest to talk, he’d sometimes play a tough cop, other times a father figure, but usually fell back on his Charlie Chan demeanor for the discomforting inscrutability that compelled people to fill in the gaps. His guile at getting confessions earned him promotions and accolades from his bosses downtown, and twice he got a congratulatory note from the mayor. But she could tell that once he’d seen them, the bodies did not go away, and year after year she tried to get him to talk about them – no mean feat for her as a WASP. But after too many silent nights, and too many unjustified blasts of rage, she left him to his mind emptying distractions. He was fine with the divorce, figuring she’d be better off, but when she took Rachel with her, his heart almost broke because the kid was the only thing Won felt was worth living for. But even that loss subsided under the routine of work, and when he completed his twenty years, he took an early pension and got this simple job that tired him enough to sleep at night, with the help of the pot gummies and Maria Muldaur.

Won was astounded when four years ago he got a text from Rachel – then a teenager - asking to spend more time with him. Won was not used to interest or kindness – both made him uncomfortable because he was certain it was misguided and he did not know how to reciprocate. But Rachel made her visits easy, tidying his cluttered apartment and clearing the miniscule counter space in his nearly abandoned kitchenette to cook exotic recipes she’d favorited on her phone, carrying the conversation with stories about her school, her friends, and her hopes. She was the one person Won was incapable of pushing away because she was everything he’d hoped a daughter would be.

The white parka-ed woman was waiting for Won’s next move, but instead of stepping further into her personal space, he stepped back, worked up a smile and put the empty earring box in his pocket. “My mistake. Have a nice day.” He quickly turned and walked away, leaving her stunned by the sudden vacuum of impending conflict.

Georgie followed Won back to the store entrance, literally hopping with indignation. “Yo yo yo – man – why’d you let her go?”

“Not worth it.”

“She’s a fucking thief!”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Justice! I want you to do justice!”

Won smiled. “Go back to work. I’ll take care of the loss report.”

“Rich white lady gets to walk. God damn.”

Georgie turned his back on Won and stomped away in a pantomime of righteous disgust. Won envied the boy’s belief, but it was not in his job description to inform the young sales staff that most of what we covet, fret and worry about every day exists on the thinnest veneer stretched over a bottomless pool of chaos. The only way the young man would learn it was by becoming an old man, or taking the express route of becoming a New York City homicide detective.

Won checked his phone – a text from Rachel was waiting to be read. He hadn’t heard from her in weeks. As he rushed to his office, past crowds of people distractedly mulling the purchase of disposable goods, Won let himself suffer the truly wounding recollection that he’d gotten solid evidence and convictions for every victim except the woman in the culvert.