by Martin Limon
“Odi?” the driver asked. Where?
I wasn’t sure how to say the word in Korean, so I just told him to take us to downtown Seoul. He rubbed his eyes. “Where in downtown Seoul?”
I said it as plainly as I knew how.
“The place where they keep the dead people.”
As we rode through the sleeping city, Ernie started to talk.
“The son of a bitch knocked me out.”
His voice sounded hoarse, as if he’d just come off a three-quart drunk.
“Who did?”
“A big guy. Almost as tall as you, but broader. Built like a fucking wildcat on protein supplements.”
“American or Korean?”
“Made in the USA all the way. I was in the byonso,” Ernie said, “squatting over the hole. It was those damn eels the Nurse and I ate downtown.”
I remembered her telling him to send them back because they weren’t fully cooked. As usual, he’d been hard-headed about it and refused.
“Must’ve been tainted or something,” he said. “Anyway, it kept pouring out of me and you know how your knees can cramp up on you when you’re squatting over a Korean toilet.”
“Yeah.”
“I heard a sound. Someone coming in the front gate. Quiet like. I figured it was ajjima’s husband, sneaking in from a soju house, liquored up again. Next thing I know there’s a scream. The Nurse. A stick smashes against wood and glass and ajjima’s up screaming. I’m struggling to stand, pulling my pants up, and by the time I bust out of the byonso, people next door have opened their windows, yelling Dodukiya! Dodukiya!” Thief! Thief!
Ernie turned his head to look blearily at me. “You know how they do when there’s a slicky boy in the neighborhood. So I’m still thinking it’s a thief when something huge lurches out of the Nurse’s hooch, and before I know what’s happening a stick hits me in the stomach, but maybe it’s not a stick but a boot and I take a couple of punches on the way down. The next thing I know some neighbors are carting me downhill to a Gl ambulance.”
I patted him on the shoulder. “Take it easy, Ernie. Calm down.”
“I’ll get the son of a bitch.” His fists clenched. “I’ll get him, George.” The Seoul City Morgue was big and made of cement, and we had to walk down a broad staircase that seemed as if it were leading into hell.
Nobody’d seen a foreigner down here in a long time-not a breathing one, anyway-and we received some surprised looks. The white-smocked attendant at the front desk was engaged in animated discussion with a well-dressed middle-aged man who seemed to be talking about the best place to spend his money to obtain the right kind of funeral for a revered grandfather. The man talking didn’t notice us behind him and the attendant apparently thought it would be unseemly to interrupt the older man just to help a couple of foreigners.
Normally, Ernie would’ve raised some hell, but he just stood there leaning on me. Green around the gills and getting greener.
The morgue workers gawked at the awkward yangnom, foreign louts, waiting at the desk, made comments to one another, and giggled occasionally.
Finally the talker finished and when he turned around his eyes grew big, taking us in. But he recovered pretty fast and strode off in a huff of posed dignity.
I told the man at the counter that I was looking for a woman. Suddenly I realized how stupid that sounded, but as I looked around no one had laughed so I plowed ahead.
I didn’t know the Nurse’s real name. I’d heard it once or twice, but Ernie and I had become so used to just calling her the Nurse that at the moment it slipped my mind. Instead I described the circumstances: A beautiful young woman, knifed to death in Itaewon.
Only one corpse fit that description.
The man escorted us down another cement corridor. Ernie limped, holding his side. With each step the air became colder. On either side were more rooms. The attendant walked into one of them, strode down a row of metal cabinets, stopped, and pulled one open.
The Nurse was completely pale, as pale as I’ve ever seen anyone, and the smooth skin of her cheeks hung unnaturally limp. Her long black hair was matted behind her head and the smooth voluptuous contours of her body lay flaccid beneath the sheet.
Breath exhaled slowly from Ernie’s body. He grabbed the edge of the cabinet and lowered his head.
I lifted the damp linen. Beyond the bare breasts, the flesh just below the center of her rib cage was hideously slashed. A knife had entered, twisting and tearing on its way in. There weren’t many slashes on the arms. Apparently, the attacker didn’t have time to complete his usual ritual.
I replaced the sheet and asked the mortician, “The knife went into the heart?”
“Yes“.
“Then she couldn’t have lived very long.”
“After that? No.”
He didn’t ask me who had done it or who I was, and I was glad for that.
I gazed down at her, thinking that she and Ernie for months had been my only family. The only family I’d known for many years. My parents were lost to me at an early age, but I still had that reverence for family that is part of every Mexican’s soul. I raised two fingers to my mouth, kissed them, and pressed the moist flesh against the Nurse’s cold, soft lips.
Then I grabbed Ernie, turned, and helped him down the echoing hallway. We climbed the endless steps together.
The army didn’t matter much to me anymore. Not the CID. Not my future. Not promotions. Not courts-martial. None of the things that most lifers put first. Only one thing mattered now. The only thing worth thinking about: Getting the guy who did this to the Nurse.
Outside, I hailed a taxi. I tucked Ernie inside. He didn’t protest. Just went along with it. His body so limp, I wondered if the life was draining out of him too.
The driver shifted the cab into gear and we lurched forward into the sparse morning traffic.
Ernie leaned back in the seat and rolled his eyes. “She was a good chick, wasn’t she?”
“The best.”
“And nobody’s ever seen anything like her. Not in Itaewon, not in Korea, not in the whole world.”
“Damn right,” I said.
“And we’re gonna find the bastard who offed her.”
“You better believe we are.”
“And I’m going to personally rack his ass up and hang it out to dry.”
“No doubt.”
Ernie nodded his head vigorously, turned, and gazed out at a passing bus. Then he stared at his hands hanging limply in his lap.
Before we made it back to the compound, he was crying.
29
A tall, busty girl, her black hair tied back in a white bandana, brought me another frosty mug of beer.
“Dasi hanbon?” she asked. One more time?
“Yes,” I said. “Dasi hanbon.”
She laughed, still amused by the fact that a foreigner could actually speak an intelligible sentence. As she turned away the skirt of her long blue dress swirled around her thick calves.
I was in the OB Bear House, on the outskirts of Itaewon, a spot where GI’s don’t often go. Plenty of Korean working men stood around at the small shelves against the walls or perched on tall stools surrounding high tables that were just large enough for three or four mugs of beer and a small plate of snacks.
This morning, Ernie had refused to return to the hospital. When I nagged him about it, he took a swing at me. I dodged it and later he apologized, but I knew the murder of the Nurse was about to drive him nuts. He just sat in his room, drinking beer, telling even the houseboy to get the fuck away from him.
There was only one way to pull him out of it: action.
I had to get a line on this killer and I had to get it fast. Eighth Army CID was too inefficient and relied too much on what they were told by the Korean National Police. There were just too many leaks in Lieutenant Pak’s organization. Herbalist So was my last chance.
I needed direct action. I needed expertise in operating clandestinely in the city of Seoul. And I needed it now. Only S
o and his slicky boys could provide it.
The biggest stumbling block was, of course, that Slicky King So and the slicky boys had tried to murder us a couple of days ago.
But I’m a forgiving type of guy. I had to keep in mind that Ernie had pissed him off by slapping herbal tea into his face. And Herbalist So probably figured that if we escaped, we would betray his operation.
Since then, he’d had time to cool off. He must’ve come to realize that we weren’t after the slicky boys, we were after the murderer of Cecil Whitcomb-and the murderer of Miss Ku and now the Nurse.
At least I hoped he’d come to realize that.
After all, he hadn’t made any further attempts on our lives. This I took as a sign of goodwill.
The way I figured it there were two possibilities. If the slicky boys had nothing to do with the murder of Cecil Whitcomb, then Slicky Boy So would be happy to cooperate in tracking down the real killer. More murders could further excite the honchos of 8th Army, disrupting the slicky boy king’s operation and costing him money.
That was the way I figured it. He’d want my help. Sure. No problem.
It was the second possibility that had me worried: Maybe the slicky boys had knifed Cecil Whitcomb.
Then, if we had drunk the potion that Herbalist So offered us in the dungeon, it probably would’ve proved fatal. And if I walked back into his clutches again, I’d probably never walk out.
Still, what choice did I have? I had to take the chance. I wasn’t going to catch this killer, whoever he was, without help.
This afternoon, I’d gone to visit the retired slicky boy, Mr. Ma. I told him I wanted to meet with Herbalist So because I was sure that we could work out our differences and that we needed one another’s help. He was noncommittal, but listened to me.
Finally, he sent his son Kuang-sok scampering away with a whispered message. When he came back, Mr. Ma told me to be here, at the OB Bear House, at eight P.M. Alone.
When I tried to drink the first beer at the OB Bear House, my hand shook so badly that I was forced to prop my elbow against the wall to raise the mug.
That had been two hours ago. I was still cooling my heels. No word yet. My stomach twisted like an undisciplined beast. This was my fourth liter of beer but I felt more sober than a chaplain at Sunday services.
A neat young man wearing thick, round-lensed glasses sat next to me, sipping on his beer and studying a textbook with a number of mathematical notations on its pages. He shifted his umbrella in his lap, recrossed his legs, and spoke to me in English.
“You shouldn’t drink so much.”
I looked at him. Amused. Good thing Ernie wasn’t here. He was liable to pop him one for a remark like that. Me, I was just curious. Koreans don’t usually interfere with other people’s business, especially foreigners.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Herbalist So doesn’t like it.”
I set my beer down. “Why didn’t you talk to me earlier?”
“We had to check you out.”
I glanced out in the street. No sign of So’s sentries, but they were out there somewhere.
“I’m alone,” I told the neat young man.
“I know.”
He picked up his umbrella, rose, and said, “Follow me. About ten paces behind.”
Sadistic little bastard, I thought. He had waited until I ordered a fresh beer. I glugged down as much of it as I could and hurried after him. Pellets of frozen rain spat against my face. Still, I managed to keep the swiftly moving young man in sight. He crossed the MSR, away from the main nightclub district, heading up a winding road that led into a somewhat higher class residential district. We turned down a number of narrow lanes. They were clean, well kept. Upturned shingle roofs rose behind high brick walls. Ernie and I never came up here because the debauchery of Itaewon didn’t reach this high.
After we walked for about ten minutes, the young man snapped his umbrella shut and stepped into a small tearoom. I followed him in. The joint wasn’t much bigger than a four-man room in the barracks.
We walked past a half dozen empty tables, pushed through a beaded curtain, and through another door into an outdoor garden with metal tables sheltered beneath a large canvas awning.
Herbalist So sat at one of the tables, an elegantly designed glass lamp in front of him. He wore a three-piece business suit and a huge wristwatch. A brand the PX never carried.
The neat young man with the umbrella disappeared. Shadows hovered beneath grinning demons carved into the stone-walled enclosure. Bodyguards.
I sat down in front of Herbalist So.
“You look good in that outfit,” I told him. “On Wall Street you’d fit right in.”
He stared at me for a moment, his lips tightening. “You’re drunk.”
“I had a couple of beers. Who wouldn’t after what I saw last night?”
“I’ll tell you who wouldn’t. A smart man wouldn’t.”
I let the insult sit for a while. The rain pattered against the canvas above us. I needed him. I wasn’t going to start an argument.
“You’re wasting your talents, Agent Sueno,” So said. “Stop drinking and you’ll become somebody. We Koreans always knew you were smarter than the other CID agents we’ve seen. You’ve learned our language, you keep your word, you do not bully Koreans or think you’re better than us. You don’t look down at the things we’ve had to do since the war to make a living. All the other agents showed us nothing but false bravado and an inflated opinion of themselves. You have more than that.”
I didn’t particularly like being lectured by a thief. Sure, I drank more than I should, but that was my business.
“I may be a drunk,” I said, “but I’m not a thief.” I knew I’d lose his goodwill, but I was angry enough that I didn’t care.
He studied me. A chill ran through my body and it wasn’t from the cold wind. His eyes seemed to pinch into my soul.
I had been foolish. Maybe the men in the shadows didn’t understand English, but they certainly understood that their leader had been insulted. The loss of face would make Herbalist So harder to deal with. Maybe impossible to deal with.
“No,” the king of the slicky boys said softly. “You are not a thief, Agent Sueno. When you take money to do a job, you do it. Even if it results in death.”
I lowered my head. So was right. We all have our shortcomings. Mine were legion.
I knew I had to be contrite to get what I wanted. Especially now that I’d mouthed off.
“This man I hunt has killed three people already: the British soldier, a young kisaeng called Miss Ku, and a former student of nursing. I need your help to find him.”
“Yes. You do need my help. What do you want me to do?”
I told him about the print shop in Mukyo-dong and about the phony ration control plate we’d found there and how the owner had done business with the killer and claimed the man owed him money.
“I believe there’s more information inside the shop,” I told Herbalist So. “On the killer of these three people and his black market activities. Also I believe the owner knows more than he told me.”
“And you wish us to talk to him?”
“Yes. Meanwhile, I will be doing everything I can to identify some sort of renegade American from our files. But so far we have nothing to go on. No fingerprints, no name, no identification numbers. Only a vague description.”
“So this Miss Ku, the player of the kayagum, we led you to,” So asked, “she has been killed? And this nursing student?”
“Yes.”
“It seems that death follows in your wake, Agent Sueno.”
I didn’t answer.
“For our services there will be a price.”
“It’s in your interest to stop this man, too.”
“It was,” he said, staring at me, “when it was thought that we might have been responsible for the death of Lance Corporal Whitcomb. But with these new deaths, the trail of evidence will lead away from us. We are satisfied now
. Our operation is secure.”
I thought of telling him that if he didn’t help me I’d bust his entire syndicate wide open. That I’d put everything I’d learned about the slicky boys into a report for the eyes of the 8th Army Commander, he’d assign a task force to the problem, and we’d put the slicky boys out of commission for good. But I knew it was futile. So’s contacts ranged too widely. Even if the 8th Army honchos listened to me, Herbalist So would just keep his head down and when the staff changed at 8th Army and another crisis arose that seemed more important, he’d swing right back into normal operation. And, of course, there was always the possibility that in order to avoid the inconvenience, he and his boys would decide to drop me below the ice floes bobbing in the Han River.
Despite what he said, however, I knew he wanted to help. A murderer on the loose would cause everyone to be nervous. Him, 8th Army, the Korean National Police. It couldn’t be good for his business. But I had insulted him. That had to be overcome.
“Yes,” I said softly. “Your operation is secure. But, still, I need your help. What Can I do to get it?”
He studied me without replying. I kept my eyes down, my hands folded in my lap.
Maybe it was my imagination but I thought I heard a sigh of approval coming from the shadowy men surrounding us.
Herbalist So’s voice spread out clear and smooth amidst the clattering rain.
“Our assistance will require two things.”
“Name them,” I said.
“A favor, at an unspecified future date.”
“What sort of favor?”
Herbalist So spread his fingers. “Only time will tell. When we need one, Agent Sueno, we will call on you.”
I thought about it: the trouble helping the slicky boys could land me in. I also thought of the Nurse. Her slashed body, the life drained out of her beautiful face.
I nodded my head. “You’ve got it. What’s the second condition?”
Herbalist So leaned back slightly in his chair. Overhead, the rain grew louder. “That will require a seibei.”
I looked up at him. I knew what a seibei was. I’d seen it done in documentaries about ancient Korean life but I’d never heard of a foreigner being required to do it. But then I realized that although we Americans saw it as a form of degradation, Herbalist So thought of his offer as a compliment. Maybe some sort of an initiation. After all, if I was going to be doing favors for him in the future, I was, in effect, becoming a member of his organization. A slicky boy myself. But more important, if I turned him down, I would be insulting him again. I not only wouldn’t receive his help, I would be lucky to get out of here in one piece.