by Martin Limon
“Yeah, Palinki. Thanks.”
There was no mention of Kwok’s death in the Korean newspapers. He wasn’t the type anybody makes a fuss over after they’re dead.
Out on black-market detail I watched the comings and goings of his underlings. They seemed agitated and never stopped ranting at each other. We heard from the KNP blotter report that a couple of them were killed. Knifework. And three or four of Kwok’s nightclubs closed. Pretty soon somebody must have taken his place because things got quiet again. The closed nightclubs were reopened, one of them under a new name and another as a Japanese nightclub, catering to tourists from Tokyo.
Itaewon is going to hell.
Ernie and I didn’t get to work together anymore. The first sergeant kept us separated and kept finding more and more menial tasks for me to perform.
Finally Riley broke the news to me.
“You’re being transferred, George. Up north.”
“At least they waited a decent interval.”
“They’re claiming that it doesn’t have anything to do with your arrest of General Bohler, just manning requirements.”
“Bull.”
“Yeah.”
The DMZ is beautiful. I mean that. I’m at a little firebase overlooking a valley with hills marching off as far as you can see in either direction until you run into the snow-capped mountains. There are no trees, just shrubs, because no one wants their field of fire obstructed.
The hills are capped by sandbagged positions and in the valleys below, rows of barbed wire parallel chain-link fences, and between their fences and ours about a jillion land mines lurk underground, like lethal subterranean mushrooms.
The North Korean across the valley, looking at me through field glasses, sports a brown uniform and a floppy cap with a red star on it and there is no doubt that he is my enemy.
He sits on one side of the line and I sit on the other.
Neat.
I often think about Kimiko and Miss Lim and Miss Pak Ok-suk. And when I get a night off I take the Army bus across the half-frozen Imjin River, but I never go to Seoul. I stay in a village of thatched-roof hovels and drink rice wine and cuddle with country girls who haven’t yet learned how to speak English.
It’s only when the rice wine flows, and won’t stop, that I think of Kwok and Miss Pak, and the Jade Lady dances, burning in my soul.
Turn the page for a sneak preview of
SLICKY
BOYS
* * *
MARTIN LIMÓN
1
“You buy me drink?”
Eun-hi coiled her body around my arm and leaned over the bar, her shimmering black hair cascading to the dented vinyl counter. I inhaled lilacs.
“Tone oopso,” I said. No money. “Payday’s not until Friday.”
She pouted. Red lips pursed like crushed cushions.
“You number ten GI.”
Ernie leaned back on his bar stool. “You got that right, Eun-hi. George is definitely number ten Cheap Charley GI.” He tilted his head back and swigged from a frosty brown bottle of Oriental Beer.
We were in the U.N. Club, in Itaewon, the greatest GI village in the world. Shattering vibrations careened off the walls, erupting from an out-of-tune rock-and-roll band clanging away in the corner. On the dance floor Korean business girls, clad in just enough clothing to make themselves legal, and American GIs in blue jeans and sports shirts gyrated youthful bodies in mindless abandon.
It felt good to be here. Our natural environment. My belly was full of beer and my petty worries had been flushed away by the gentle hops coursing through my veins. Still, I was surprised Eun-hi had talked to me and I wondered why. Usually she remained aloof from all GIs except those who were willing to spend big bucks, which—on a corporal’s pay—didn’t include me.
Eun-hi stood up and pushed a small fist against her hip. She was a big girl, full-breasted, tall for a Korean woman. Long leather boots reached almost to her knees and white hot pants bunched into the inviting mystery between her smooth brown thighs. Dark nipples strained to peek out at the world from behind a knotted halter top bundling her feminine goodness. Eun-hi was a business girl. One of the finest in Itaewon. Finer than frog hair, to be exact. A GI’s dream, a sailor’s fevered vision, a faithful wife’s nightmare.
My name is George Sueño. My partner Ernie Bascom and I are agents for the Criminal Investigation Division of the 8th United States Army in Seoul. We work hard—sometimes—but what we’re really good at is running the ville. Parading. Crashing through every bar in the red-light district, tracking down excitement and drunkenness and girls. In fact, we’re experts at it.
Gradually, over the last few months, more girls like Eun-hi had drifted into the GI villages. More girls who’d grown up in the twenty-some years since the end of the Korean War, when there was food to be had and inoculations from childhood diseases and shelter from the howling winter wind. Eun-hi was healthy. Not deformed by bowlegs or a pocked face or the hacking, coughing lungs of poverty.
She must’ve felt the heat of my admiration. At least I hoped she did. She took a step forward.
“Geogie,” she said. “Somebody want to talk to you.”
Ernie shifted in his stool, straightening his back. I stared at her. Waiting.
“A girl,” she said.
My eyes widened.
She waved her small, soft palm from side to side.
“Not a business girl. Suknyo.” A virtuous woman.
Ernie leaned forward. Interested now.
“Why in the hell would a good girl want to talk to George?”
I elbowed him. He shut up. We both looked at Eun-hi. She shrugged her elegant shoulders.
“I don’t know. She say she want to talk to GI named Geogie. In Itaewon everybody know Geogie. So I tell you.”
“Where is she?” I asked.
“At the Kayagum Teahouse. She wait for you there.”
“Is she a friend of yours?”
“No. I never see before. She come in here this afternoon when all GIs on compound. Ask me to help her find Geogie.”
“How’d she know I’d be here?”
Eun-hi laughed. A high, lilting warble, like the song of a dove.
“She know. Everybody know. You always here.”
It wasn’t true. Not always. Sometimes Ernie and I hit other clubs. But it was true that we were in Itaewon almost every night.
Ernie set his beer down. “What does she want?”
“I don’t know. She no say. You want to know, go to Kayagum Teahouse. Find out.”
She placed one shiny boot in front of the other and thrust out her hip.
“You no buy Eun-hi drink, then Eun-hi go.”
With that, she performed a graceful pirouette, held the pose for a moment, and sashayed her gorgeous posterior across the room toward a group of hell-raising helicopter pilots.
Ernie looked at me, lifting his eyebrows.
“A suknyo,” he said. “Looking for you?”
“Yeah. What’s so surprising about that?”
“Oh, nothing. Except you’re a low-rent, depraved GI and no decent Korean woman would get within ten feet of you.”
It bothered me. Where did he get the idea that I was depraved? Sure, I preferred girls who were young. Eighteen or nineteen. But I was only a few years older than that myself. What was wrong with that?
“Not so depraved,” I said.
Ernie stood up. “Shall we go?”
“Aren’t we going to think about this first?”
“What’s to think about?” he said. “A virtuous woman wants to talk to you. You think of yourself as a knight in shining armor. Maybe a horny one but still a knight. Besides, I’m curious.”
He was right. It was enough to get anybody curious. Itaewon was, by edict of the government, for “tourists” only. Translated— American GIs. And any woman caught in the area of the GI clubs, without a VD card proving that she was a registered prostitute, was subject to arrest. Whoever this suknyo w
as, she had risked losing a hell of a lot of face by coming down here.
“Yeah,” I said, standing. “I’m curious, too.”
I slugged down the dregs of my beer. We grabbed our jackets off the backs of the bar stools and headed toward the big double doors. Outside, the smoke and noise and smell of booze faded behind us. The young doorman bowed. I figured him to be about thirteen years old, either a distant relative of the owner or some urchin they took in off the streets. He was wrapped in three layers of grease-stained sweaters. A gauze mask protected his mouth and nose from the cold.
I took a deep breath and felt the fresh bite of winter.
Itaewon was layered in crusts of snow. Neon lined the road running up the hill, flashing and sparkling through the latticework designs of frozen white lace. Shivering business girls, half naked, stood in alcoves, arms crossed, peering out over the rims of their dark-lined eyes, searching for the next customer.
A GI winter wonderland.
We twisted up our collars and shoved our hands into our pockets. Ernie blew a great billowing breath through tight lips.
“Cold out,” he said. “Colder than a GI’s heart.”
At the Kayagum Teahouse it was easy enough to spot her. She wore a white cotton blouse buttoned all the way to the neck, and her face was a smooth oval, like an oblong polished pearl. Her mouth was moist and red, and shining eyes gazed steadily at the world in dark seriousness. Her name was Miss Ku.
She handed us a note, intricately wrapped into the shape of a flower, and asked us to deliver it to Cecil Whitcomb, a soldier of the British contingent of the United Nations Honor Guard.
As a civilian, she wasn’t allowed on the compound to deliver it herself.
I was hesitant at first but Miss Ku pleaded with her eyes. They’d been lovers. They’d broken up. She wanted to see him one more time.
Each word was pronounced carefully. Precisely. As if the English had been memorized after long hours of study in a library. She told me that she was a graduate of Ewha, the most prestigious women’s university in the country.
She apologized for becoming involved with Cecil. It was a mistake. She’d met him at a British-Korean Friendship Day at the British Embassy. He was in civilian clothes and she didn’t know he was in the army. She bowed her head.
Soldiers are low on the Confucian hierarchy. Almost as low as prostitutes and actors.
Ernie and I waited. Something was screwy. I didn’t know what, but something.
I noticed her hands. Long and slender with short cropped nails and small calloused knots on the fingertips. She slid an envelope across the table. It was stuffed with a short stack of five-thousand-won notes. About a hundred bucks’ worth. This changed everything. Greed usually does.
Ernie snatched up the money and shoved it deep into the pocket of his nylon jacket.
I looked around. No Americans in the Kayagum Teahouse. Only young Koreans of college age, boys and girls, hunched over steaming cups of ginseng tea. No one to spy on us. And besides, we weren’t taking a bribe. Just working a side job. Nobody could say we were doing anything wrong.
We’d do it. Why not? Easy money.
I picked up the paper flower and slid it into my breast pocket.
When Miss Ku smiled, the radiance of her gemlike face filled the room.
That alone would’ve been payment enough.
The next morning we gave the note to Lance Corporal Cecil Whitcomb.
Looking at Whitcomb, I wondered why a woman as gorgeous as Miss Ku would bother with a guy so unimpressive. His body was bony and pale. Dark brown hair fell over eyes that made him seem as if he hadn’t quite woken up.
Ernie and I towered over him. Ernie is over six feet tall and I’m almost six foot four, and I was about two shades darker than the nearly translucent Cecil Whitcomb. On duty, CID agents have to wear coats and ties, which is what we had on. Cecil was on a work detail. He wore baggy fatigue pants and a grease-smeared woolen shirt.
He was nervous about two cops cornering him outside the unit arms room, but he unfolded the paper flower and read the message, showing no expression on his long, shadow-eyed face. Somehow he had managed to bedazzle Miss Ku, and now he’d turned his back on her. It didn’t make sense. But it wasn’t any of our business. Our job was just to give him the note.
I glanced down at the printing. It was in English—in a careful hand—and said something about a meeting downtown and something about “I haven’t told anyone yet.”
When he finished reading, we waited for him to talk. He didn’t. We decided to hell with him and walked away.
Ernie shook his head. “A couple of goofballs.”
That summed it up. At least it seemed to at the time.
After work, the sun lowered red and angry beyond the hills overlooking the Yellow Sea. I noticed how cold it was. The temperature must’ve dropped ten degrees in the last couple of hours. A flake hit my head. White fluff whistled through the air. Snow would complicate things, but it wouldn’t stop us from running the ville. Nothing would.
A half hour before the midnight curfew, we stood at the central intersection in Itaewon, gazing at the sparkling neon through a steady sprinkle of snowflakes. Kimchi cabs slid on the road and people had to grab handholds to climb up even the most gentle incline.
“Another world of shit,” Ernie said.
“Looks like it,” I said.
Ernie and I were discussing which bar to hit next, when an icelaced gust of Manchurian winter roared up the main drag. An Eskimo trudged through the swirling wind. When he came near, I saw that he wasn’t an Eskimo at all. Another long nose. And then my eyes focused. It was Riley, the Admin Sergeant from the CID Detachment.
He pulled a thick wool scarf off his neck, scanned the street, and spotted us.
“What does he want?” Ernie said.
The first glimmer of worry shot through my brain. “We’re on call tonight, aren’t we?”
“Sure,” Ernie said. “But I left ajjima’s phone number.” He was talking about the landlady of the Nurse, his steady Korean girlfriend. “She would’ve come and found us if we had a call.”
I wasn’t so sure. Not in this blizzard.
Riley stormed up the road, stopped when he reached us, and motioned toward Ernie’s right hand. Ernie handed him the liter of soju, a fierce Korean rice liquor. Riley rubbed the lip of the bottle with the flat of his palm, tilted his head, and glugged down a healthy shot. His Adam’s apple undulated down his skinny neck as the searing liquid fell to his stomach. When he finished, he blew some breath out between his thin lips, thought for a moment, and slugged down another swallow. With red-rimmed eyes, he looked back and forth between us.
“Where have you guys been?”
“Right here,” I said.
“But you’re on call tonight.”
“Ernie left ajjima’s phone number.”
“But she wasn’t there when the First Sergeant called and her daughter answered and she can’t speak English.”
Ernie spoke up. “So the First Sergeant ought to learn Korean,”
Riley looked at Ernie as if he just realized that he should be committed to the looney bin.
“You know the First Sergeant hates Koreans.”
“That isn’t our problem,” Ernie said. “We left a good number.”
Riley let his head loll on his long neck, as if his skull was suddenly too heavy for his shoulder muscles.
“Okay, okay. So you guys have an excuse. What else is new? But when the First Sergeant can’t get through, he calls me in the barracks and orders me out of the rack and sends me down here to find you. At the Nurse’s hooch the daughter draws me a map and says ‘soju’ and pretends like she’s jolting down shots and I wander around the ville until I find you.” Riley spread his hands. “So it’s over now. So forget it. But we got bigger problems. Problems downtown.”
Suddenly I was worried. Not about the First Sergeant or about not being available when we were supposed to be on call—I’d been through
that sort of trouble before—but about what had happened downtown.
“What problems?” I asked.
“Dead GI,” Riley said.
Ernie and I waited.
“Well, not a GI exactly.”
One of the business girls standing in the shadows plucked up her courage and sashayed toward us. Riley saw her coming and waved her off. She pouted, a gentle snort erupted from her nose, then she turned and marched back to her comrades waiting in the darkness.
“They found him downtown, near Namdaemun,” Riley said. “Gutted with some sort of big blade. Body in a snowdrift. Blood everywhere.”
He was warming to the subject, but I didn’t need the details. I’d examine those when I arrived at the site. I interrupted him.
“What do you mean, not a GI exactly?”
“I mean he’s not a GI. Not technically.”
Ernie leaned forward. “Then what the fuck is he?”
“He’s British. Member of the United Nations Honor Guard. A Lance Corporal. Name’s Whitcomb.” Mustard gas slammed into my nostrils. An old man pushed a cart past us loaded with the still-burning cinders of perforated charcoal briquettes. Things that had burned brightly, heating the flues beneath the floors of Korean homes, but that now were dead. And useless.
It took about five seconds for our brains to start working again. We left Riley standing in the snow and stumbled and slid down the hill, running toward the line of kimchi cabs waiting patiently in the somber night.
2
After stomping through the snow to the 21 T-Car motor pool, Ernie flashed his badge and managed to get the keys to the jeep from the half-asleep dispatcher. Twenty-one T-Car is a military acronym that actually means 21st Transportation Company (Car), which maybe makes a little more sense.
Despite the frigid air, the motor started right away. Ernie grinned.
“Amazing what a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black will do for an engine.”
The bottle went every month to the head dispatcher who made sure the jeep was properly maintained and always available when Ernie needed it.