by Martin Limon
By the time the first rays of sunlight were warming the narrow lanes of Itaewon, we were back in our alley, watching the police station. Passersby, scurrying on their way to work, squinted at the two big Americans loitering in the cold shadows. I didn’t mind. I just hoped the police wouldn’t notice.
Captain Kim worked late but he also arrived late and it got real uncomfortable waiting for him. I sauntered over to the Hamilton Hotel once and used a public phone to call Riley at the office. I told him to let Top know that we were following up a lead on the Pak Ok-suk murder case. The less details the better. Of course, Top might get sort of peeved at us being out here, since they already had a suspect and the case was ostensibly wrapped up, but he hadn’t told us not to continue working on it and, anyway, I’d worry about that later. Ernie wasn’t complaining. He’d hung with me through worse shit.
Finally, when it was almost nine o’clock, Captain Kim, in his neatly pressed blue suit, strolled into his place of business. It was nice to have the waiting over but then we had to wait again. There was no telling if, or when, he would release Kimiko. Waiting’s the worst part about being a CID agent and Ernie swore if he ever got out of this shit, he’d never wait for anything again. If he needed a cavity filled, he’d go to the emergency room.
“Yesterday he said we could talk to her,” Ernie said. “So why don’t we just Bogart on in there?”
“He’d probably stall us and then hold on to her until we cleared the area. If we hold tight here, Captain Kim might decide to let her go early, before we arrive to start asking questions.”
She came out just then, into the sun, blinking like a bruised rat, looked around, and then stepped gingerly onto the slippery ice. She was still wearing her short dress, her hair was gnarled and matted, and all traces of makeup had been smeared off her face. She must have been freezing. She teetered down the sidewalk and then up the hill to Itaewon, heading for hearth and home.
We followed, one of us on either side of the street, stopping occasionally in doorways to make ourselves as inconspicuous as possible. There was a fairly healthy crowd of pedestrians but when you’re over six feet tall and Caucasian it’s sort of difficult to put an effective tail on someone. Maybe not in New York but definitely in Seoul.
But anyway, Kimiko wasn’t looking. She was exhausted, beat up, defeated. When she turned up the narrow alley leading to her hooch, we hesitated a while to give her a head start and then we turned the corner.
What we saw didn’t exactly make our day although it did confirm my paranoid suspicions.
The two guys looked very tough, and when we stopped moving forward they just stared at us.
Kimiko couldn’t see us. One of the guys held her arms behind her back and with his free hand he pushed the back of her neck down so her long hair dangled, brushing the ground.
I was getting sort of tired of people pushing her around. Ernie took the first steps forward. And then me.
The bad guys didn’t move.
I did have one comforting thought. One of the great things about living in Korea was that the country had total gun control. You didn’t have to worry about getting shot in the back by some hoodlum looking for a little target practice. Only the police and the soldiers had guns, and for a private citizen to get caught with a firearm was a major offense.
Of course, sometimes the local soldiers got out of line. Every now and then one of them went berserk and holed up in a hotel with hostages. Just didn’t want to sign in off his pass, I guess. Even in the line of duty, they could make you a little nervous. Like at a roadblock when some American got the bright idea that he didn’t have to show his identification, since he was one of the heroes from the Land of the Brave, and an ROK Army soldier leveled his weapon at him. Still, they’re very reluctant to shoot Americans.
We didn’t have to worry about guns, but we did have to worry about the men. They were both tall for Koreans, close to six feet, thin but not skinny, with knots of muscle at various strategic points around their bodies. I noticed the calluses on their knuckles and the stances they were in and, by the looks of them, the years of practice that went into such familiarity.
Ernie took a few steps off to the side of the alley and got his back up against the stone wall. An old habit from Vietnam. If they decide to waste you at least you’ll see them coming.
The hoodlums had turned their attention to us but still held Kimiko, who was muttering vile curses through her constricted throat.
I thought of turning around and walking away, pretending we were just innocent bystanders who happened to stumble on this scene and didn’t want to get involved in any trouble. But that wouldn’t do Kimiko much good. And I didn’t want to lose her after all the trouble we’d gone through to find her. Anyway, my guess was that these guys had probably spotted us following her, because they hadn’t seemed too surprised when we rounded the corner.
I decided to go for one of those lines, like you hear in the movies, that gets everybody’s attention and puts the fear of God in your enemies. My brain churned but all I came up with was, “Why don’t you leave the girl alone?”
Ernie tried to strengthen it some. “Yeah,” he said. “Leave her alone.”
The guy with his hands free had a square face, stubbled whiskers, and a short, thick scar along the side of his neck. I don’t think he understood me. Just as well.
Instead, he looked at us for what seemed a long moment, and then he said, slowly and distinctly, as if he’d rehearsed it, “E yoja dala kamyon dangsin ae jamji chaluhkeita.”
Most of the words were familiar to me but I was too nervous to put it all together. Something about what would happen if we continued to follow her. I tried to remember the sentence as a whole, and the noun jamji in particular because that was a new one to me.
Finally the man got impatient and he waved his hand at me. “Ka! Bali ka!”
I didn’t have any trouble with that one. “Go!” he said, as if he were talking to a dog.
He shuffled another step towards us. “Bali ka, sikya!”
Fighting words.
I felt the old fear rise within me. The fear of bullies, the fear of gangs, the fear of the mean, pitiless, sun-seared streets.
The fear made me angry.
I returned the insult—”Yoja manjijima, sikya!”—speaking to him as if he were dirt.
He understood that. Like a scorpion he was on me, stinger raised. The bottom of his foot slammed my chest and I hurtled back against the stone wall.
He was a little too confident about his own expertise and let the foot linger on my chest, knee bent, while he leaned forward to punch me in the head. I twisted left, covered. The punch landed on my arms. He was much quicker than me but the road was slippery and I was now above him, on the incline. I pushed forward and his footing gave. He slid down the hill and landed on his butt. Bounding across the alleyway, I pulled the other guy off Ernie and heaved. Kimiko snarled and missed him with a snap kick as he twisted down the alley. He careened into his buddy and for a second they both lay on the road.
The one with the scar sprang upright, reached out and yanked his comrade to his feet.
We were like three glaring musk-ox— Ernie, Kimiko, and me—rump to rump, defending the herd.
By this time a small crowd had gathered on the main road and was starting to gawk. The scarred guy sneered and said, “Ka ja,” to his friend, and they both walked away, dusting themselves off.
I suppose I could have gone after them and tried to arrest them, but for what? Given her track record, I doubted Kimiko would have testified against them, so it would have been Ernie’s word and mine against theirs. And I’m not so sure Captain Kim would have been enthusiastic about the whole thing. Besides, I was afraid of them and not at all certain that we’d come out as well in the next round. I was happy just to see them go.
Kimiko straightened out what little there was of her dress and tried to dust it off, pulling the hemline down below her soiled panties.
“Why you
help me?” she said.
“Lady in distress.”
She stared at me for a moment, her face lined with little creases, the nose rounded and slightly protruding, the lips fleshy, her hair like a snarled black mop. Fifty, at least. But her body was trim and her bosom soft and round. Her stock in trade.
Kimiko squinted. “You CID?”
Cover in Itaewon lasts for about five minutes. We’d been here for months.
“Yeah.”
“So you follow me? Cheeky, cheeky.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“To find out about Miss Pak.”
Kimiko searched my face and then slowly turned away. “Yes. Come on.”
The three of us trudged up the hill, and about halfway up the block Kimiko turned right through the open gate and we followed her into the courtyard with the charred remains of the rented home of Miss Pak Ok-suk.
The landlady stood in the courtyard, arms folded.
The doors to Kimiko’s hooch were open. Ripped open. Splintered wood and tattered strips of white paper lay strewn across the narrow wood-slat porch. Kimiko stood frozen for a moment, then spoke quickly to the landlady.
The men had come here about an hour before curfew, searched the room, and then waited all night. In the morning they tore the room apart, searching everywhere, under the vinyl-covered floors, behind the wallpapered plasterboard. Apparently they had found nothing that satisfied them.
None of this seemed to faze Kimiko. She wasn’t the type of woman to place a lot of value on possessions. She didn’t even carry a purse, at least I’d never seen her with one, and her room was as spare and utilitarian as it was possible to be. Now it was a shambles.
She stepped into the room and I followed. The plastic and wire armoire had been smashed, and the few dresses within were shredded, carefully—with a knife. The bottles on her little makeup table had been crunched, making a sweet reeking smear across the floor. The mirror was splintered into a million shards. She rummaged through the mess, calmly, but found nothing that she wanted to keep.
The landlady brought a short broom and a dustpan and together they set to work cleaning up. In a few minutes everything was out in the trash and the cement floor, splotched with vinyl, started to look like home again.
Kimiko told us to come in. We took off our shoes, crouched to pass through the doorway, and sat down cross-legged on the floor.
“I no have coffee,” she said.
“Yeah. That’s all right,” I said.
“You got cigarette?”
“No. I don’t smoke.”
She looked at Ernie. He shrugged.
Kimiko frowned but let it pass and then started talking, without preamble, about Miss Pak. She talked for maybe twenty minutes and when she was finished she just stared at us.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“And what about you? What will you do now?”
Kimiko lifted her shoulders and let them drop. “I will do what I always do. Make money from GIs.”
We got up.
“Tonight,” she said, “you see me, you buy me drink.”
“We’ll see. Who were those men who attacked you and did all this?” I waved my arms around the room.
“I don’t know.” Her face showed no more emotion than the bottom of an empty soju bottle.
“What were they looking for?”
Kimiko didn’t bother to answer. She just shook her head.
At the bottom of the hill Ernie pulled out a stick of gum, unwrapped it, and popped it in his mouth.
“Did you believe her?”
“Some, yes. Some, no.”
“I think she’s holding a lot back,” he said as he waved down a cab.
It was sort of hard to argue with that.
8
After showering and putting on fresh clothes back at the compound we went to the snack bar. I got a cup of hot coffee and a copy of the Stars & Stripes. The sports page I didn’t read, the front page was beyond belief, and I thought the editorials were a bunch of drivel. I don’t know why I bought it every day. Just that stray article, I guess. About the little girl who had been missing in San Diego for two weeks and then was found and reunited with her father, or the old people confined to their homes in Pittsburgh, who were brought food and companionship by the local kids in the elementary school. I liked to read about people doing the right thing and I wondered how I so often ended up doing the wrong thing.
Ernie plopped into the seat in front of me and clinked down a plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, and hash browns.
I said, “Worked up an appetite last night, eh?”
“The Nurse. She keeps me healthy.”
Now that the table was guarded, I went to the serving line and ordered a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich with a tall glass of cold milk. After I got back, we ate breakfast quietly for a while, amidst the clinking of glassware and the murmur of shuffling customers, both of us thinking about what Kimiko had said.
Miss Pak had been an excitable girl: alive, barely able to contain herself in anticipation of all the wonderful things that were bound to happen to her in life. Her eyes sparkled, according to Kimiko, and she loved to laugh uproariously, eyes wide, even at the mildest joke casually thrown out by some GI who was unaware that he was such a comedian.
She loved men and trusted them, and it was Kimiko who had set her straight. Get the money first. No matter what they say, no matter how much they like you, in the morning they will see things differently. And they’ll start thinking of how many days it is until payday and how much they could do with that ten or fifteen dollars’ worth of freshly minted Military Payment Certificates.
Miss Pak had listened but she’d faltered a couple of times, especially when the guy was young, like her, and made her laugh.
She was pretty, and when she strutted out on the dance floor with her short skirt and her tight blouse, all the men watched. There might be twenty girls on the floor but everyone kept their eyes on Miss Pak Ok-suk.
Kimiko had borrowed some pungent Korean cigarettes from the landlady and she told us about Miss Pak with a clinical detachment as the room filled with smoke. It was a purely professional analysis from an experienced observer.
Kimiko had contacts, and she felt that Miss Pak Ok-suk was wasting herself running from GI to GI in Itaewon when she was young enough and pretty enough to make some serious money. So Kimiko hooked her up with some of the older Americans around, the kind who don’t want to be seen running the ville in Itaewon, also a few rich Koreans and even the stray Japanese tourist. Miss Pak was making good money but, like so many young girls, she had to go and screw it all up.
She got hooked up with Johnny and they put in their marriage paperwork. Kimiko told her not to trust that. The whole process took six months or more and usually, after talking to his immediate supervisor, his commanding officer, the chaplain, the legal officer, and the personnel officer, and after whatever new hurdle the Army bureaucracy had cooked up, the young GI would change his mind.
Kimiko knew. She’d had marriage paperwork put in on her a half dozen times and it had never gone through. She told Miss Pak not to fall for it, but the girl had stuck with Johnny and this is how it turned out.
I asked her if she had seen Miss Pak on the night she died. She said she had. Briefly. She tried to talk her into going to one of the big hotels and finding a couple of rich tourists. Miss Pak refused. The last Kimiko had seen of her was when she left Miss Pak on the front steps of the Lucky Seven Club. She had no idea where she’d gone after that, back into the club, or elsewhere.
I was about halfway done with my BLT, and I was already finished with my cold glass of milk so I got another one. Ernie pushed his empty plate away, sipped on his coffee, and read the Stars & Stripes.
I wondered how much justice we’d done that girl. So far, we didn’t have much more than when we started. We knew that she’d been murdered, but exactly how, we still weren’t sure. The Korean medical
examiner’s report had been vague. Asphyxiation. That could have been from strangling or from the smoke of the fire. And if it was from the fire she must have been knocked out or drugged or something. No one was too interested now that a GI was in custody. My guess was that the family had fallen under the wing of a lawyer who specialized in claims against the U.S. government.
No one had any particular interest in proving that Spec-4 John Watkins hadn’t been the one to commit the murder. Certainly not the family. They didn’t want to blow a bundle. And not the Korean National Police, who were glad that, once the GI suspect was turned over to them, they’d get the press off their backs. Even Eighth Army was ambivalent about the whole thing. With Spec-4 Watkins as the sacrificial lamb, their public-relations problem was solved and they could go back to business as usual.
Of course, maybe Johnny Watkins did kill her. I couldn’t be sure that he hadn’t, but it didn’t seem to fit. He just wasn’t mean enough. But who knows? I’m wrong about people more often than I’m right.
Then there was Kimiko. No one in Itaewon had known Miss Pak Ok-suk better than Kimiko. Not even Johnny. But why would she want to kill that young girl? Was she stepping on territory Kimiko considered to be her own? Or maybe it was jealousy engendered by years of bitterness and ridicule in the oldest and toughest of professions.
And why had those guys come looking for Kimiko? They had been after her for something. Only what? Kimiko didn’t appear to have any money at all. Or had she been squirreling away a little bit at a time over the years, with a big stash somewhere? Or maybe they were looking for something else.
Kimiko hadn’t seemed too concerned about the whole thing. She’d relaxed right away, as soon as they left, and she didn’t seem worried that they might come back.
The Korean National Police? They hadn’t gone at this case aggressively. Like Milt Gorman said, they must be protecting someone, or something.