Chapter 6: The Police

Six weeks passed.

Long enough for us to believe the past had lost interest.

Then the police called.

Matt’s wife immediately phoned him at work. He’d told her nothing about that night. 

I was never her favorite person. I kept Matt out too often and too late. The money he made from his photographs was a joke. An insult.

She never called him at work unless something crossed a line. This time, it had.

Years later, Matt sent me several emails describing what happened next. He was sitting with two students—brothers—when his cellphone buzzed. His wife’s ring tone was the Imperial March. Darth Vader calling.

Her voice was hard—sharp, seething.

“Hey!”

No hello. Just a sound meant to stop him.

“The police called.”

They traced Matt through the credit-card receipt from Tartine.

She gave him the investigator’s number. She told him to handle it. Then hung up.

The students watched Matt’s face tighten. They asked, “Teacher… OK?”

He walked to his motorcycle and sat without starting it. Helmet beside him. Phone in his hand. He called.

A voice answered. Matt introduced himself.

The detective repeated Matt’s name in Korean. It sounded different—official, formal. He was no longer just a citizen. He was a suspect. What followed barely registered: something about an assault at the pie shop.

One line hit hardest:

“Two-on-one.”

That’s how they framed it.

Matt felt the air leave his lungs.

A police record.

In Korea, a record follows you. It costs you jobs. Trust. Reputation. Matt had been considering going home to apply to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. That door slammed shut.

After he spoke to the investigator, he didn’t call his wife. He called someone else.

Years earlier, Matt had helped an international consultant who was leaving Seoul for Pyongyang, North Korea. He needed someone who would get rid of documents and not ask questions. Matt did just that.

Before leaving town, the consultant gave Matt a scrap of paper folded into a tiny square. Meant to disappear into a wallet.

Inside was one name.

Shane.

And one phone number.

If you ever have a problem you can’t solve, he’d said, call him.

Matt dialed.

He said, “I’ve got a problem.”

Shane said, “OK.”

Matt told him everything. About Tartine. The call. The accusation. Me.

“If I’m going to help you, you need to be completely honest. Don’t talk to anyone until I get in touch with some people.”

He didn’t name them. That night he called back. Already in motion.

“Detective Park is a man I trust,” he said. “You need to meet him for dinner and drinks. Don’t worry, Matt. I’ll be there to watch the room.”

*

The next night, Matt walked down a darkened street toward a barbecue joint. The air was thick with grilled beef and soju. By then, he’d told me about the police call. 

Matt said he’d take care of it. I wondered when my editors would get the call. Just to be sure, we went back to Tartine, looking for cameras.

In his telling, he entered a private room. Men sat around a table. Detective Park from violent crimes—quiet, composed, built for ugly situations. Two lawyers, eyes sharp. And a Korean-American with the FBI, handling crimes involving U.S. servicemen. 

The FBI man shook Matt’s hand. He didn’t talk much. He wore his smile like a costume. He didn’t belong in that room. But there he was—quiet, watching.

A bottle of soju sat on the table. In Korea, the youngest pours. So Matt poured. By the end of the night, his sleeves smelled of grilled beef and alcohol.

Everyone spoke in Korean. Matt watched and listened. The clink of shot glasses grew louder as the night wore on. Not celebration. A test.

Park was middle-aged. Solid through the shoulders. Not built for show. Shaped by years in cars and hallways, stepping into rooms where suspects were already building alibis.

His face was plain. No theatrical expressions. No wasted movement. The eyes did the work—steady, patient, measuring. Like he could wait all night. When he listened, he didn’t nod.

Park roasted garlic on the grill beside the meat. Then he reached over and took Matt’s hand. Turned it over. Studied his knuckles like a police file.

“Do you like to fight?” 

“No, sir.”

Matt said the calluses came from martial arts.

That was all Park asked him that night. Matt went home drunk. Not cleared. Not safe.

His wife was waiting. She wasn’t happy.

Shane called again. Another meeting—with detectives. Fingerprints this time.

They wanted something else. A name. 

The big guy.

Me.

“Who was he?”

“What was his name?”

“Where did he live?”

Matt pictured reporters outside police headquarters.

Cameras.

Questions.

My name spreading before I even knew I was wanted. I’d be brought in for questioning, a foreigner frog-marched down a hallway full of cameras. A line of questions I couldn’t answer cleanly.

The headline would write itself:

“LA Times Reporter Spits on Korean in Seoul Bakery.”

When they asked again for my name, he said, “I can’t answer that.”

No drama. No defiance. Just refusal.

They told Matt there was an easier way: Take responsibility. Pay a fine. Offer an apology. Let it end quietly—if the kid in the pastry shop agreed.

Clean. Efficient. But it required an admission. A police record would follow him—home, into his marriage, into whatever came next.

Days later, investigators called him back. Before he spoke with detectives, Matt went to the Violent Crimes unit—to Park.  

He didn’t know the lead investigator—or whether he could trust him. He understood why police wanted a second name. He also knew what would happen if that name escaped the room. 

“If I give them what they need, can it end with me?”

Park shifted in his chair. 

“Are you asking me to sway an investigation?”

“No, of course not.”

He paused.

“I’m asking you to keep this from turning into something bigger than it is.”

Park didn’t promise anything. But something in his face moved—a fraction. 

That was all Matt had.

SATURDAY: The Passenger—The Debt I Brought Home.