by Martin Limon
“Keep hands to yourself, Charley,” she said in perfect GI English. “You don’t know how treat lady?”
Ernie splashed back through the mud, breathing heavily.
“They got away,” he said and glanced at the driver. “Who the hell is this?”
“Nice talk, GI,” she said.
Ernie looked at me. “I’ll be damned. A broad.”
“A lady,” the driver said. She glanced at the mess. “Smell so bad around here maybe gag maggot.”
The snow had stopped. As if it too didn’t want to drop into the filth spewed by the honey truck.
I grabbed the lady by the elbow and we sloshed through the sucking muck.
Her name was Nam Byong-suk. We booked her at the Camp Market MP Station, then escorted her to one of the interrogation rooms. Apparently the aroma of the honey truck still lingered in the air around us because the office pukes backed away from us, crinkling their noses, as the three of us paraded down the hallway.
Once we were alone, Ernie offered Nam Byong-suk a stick of gum and I fetched her a cup of coffee. From somewhere within the folds of her filthy jacket she produced a cigarette and I struck a match for her. She took a long drag and blew smoke into the air.
I was right in my evaluation of her. All she really wanted was for us to treat her like a lady. Once we did that, she started to talk.
“I used to be a business girl,” she said. “The best-looking girl in Itaewon.”
“How’d you get into this line of work?” Ernie asked.
“I can’t tell you.” She sipped on her coffee.
“This is serious business,” I said. “You’re about to lose your job.”
“No sweat. I get another one.”
“It’s not so easy to find a job in Korea.”
“It is for me.”
“Because you work for the slicky boys?”
She glanced at me slyly. “Slicky boys?” She sipped on her coffee.
“That’s who you work for, don’t you?” “Ernie asked.
“Not your business.”
“Sure it is,” I said. “Between us only. You must cooperate with us. If not, the slicky boys’ business here will be shut down. Your boss will lose a lot of money and he’ll be very angry.”
“We want to talk to your boss,” Ernie said.
“Not boss,” Nam Byong-suk said. “King.”
“King?”
“Yes.”
I watched as her puckered lips worked away on the cigarette. The room filled with the reek of cheap tobacco laced with the memory of the honey truck.
I asked, “You mean there’s a king of the slicky boys?”
“Of course. How else you think he can control all slicky boys? Without king, without strong man, everybody slicky anything. Pretty soon GI honcho get mad, pretty soon no can slicky anything, pretty soon no more money.”
“The King of the Slicky Boys,” I said. There was reverence in my voice. She liked that. “Tell us about this king.”
“His name is So Boncho-ga.”
I nodded. At the time I didn’t know what boncho-ga meant but I looked it up later: herbalist. She wanted us to call him Herbalist So.
“Where can we find him?” I asked.
“No can find. His place is in . . .” Slicky Girl Nam turned to Ernie, loosely cupping her fist and poking her forefinger into the hole. “What you call this one?”
“Asshole,” Ernie said.
“No. Place where bakchui live.”
Ernie looked at her blankly. I rummaged in my memory for the word and found it. Bakchui. Bats.
“A place where bats live,” I said. “A cave.”
“Yes,” she said. “Cave.”
“The king lives in a cave?”
Slicky Girl Nam nodded triumphantly. “Yes. A cave. He still does. In Itaewon.”
“A cave in Itaewon?” I couldn’t believe it. The entire district was packed with hooches and nightclubs and chop-houses. And every inch of it had been crawled over by GI’s at least a million times. “Where is it?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Nobody know. It’s big secret.”
Ernie and I looked at each other and then back at her. She waved her cigarette in the air.
“No bullshit. King live in big cave. Have—what you call?—rats and bats and everything. Beneath Itaewon.”
The slicky boys lived underground, she said, like moles. And they came up at night to steal whatever they wanted.
“How can I get in touch with him?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Many years I don’t see.”
“But you work for him.”
“Many people work for him. Still we don’t see him. Somebody tell us what to do, we do.”
Layers of command, insulating the top boss. It made sense. I thought of trying to work my way back, one slicky boy manager at a time. It wouldn’t work. They’d never talk to us. Not unless we found leverage to force them to spill their guts, and that would take too much time.
“Who would know how to contact this Mr. So?”
“You no can talk to him.”
“Why not?”
“You foreigner, right?”
“Right.”
“No foreign bastard ever talk to King of the Slicky Boys.”
“Why not?”
“He don’t like. If you ever talk to him, if you ever see his face, then you die.”
She sliced her forefinger across her throat.
Ernie chomped on his gum furiously. “Knock off the bullshit, Nam. We’re CID agents. This Slicky Boy So is nothing but a thief. We’ll talk to him whenever the hell we want to talk to him.”
“No, you won’t. Only one way you talk to king.”
“What’s that?”
“You keep messing with slicky boys . . .” She waved her hand toward the village, maybe indicating the wrecked trash truck. “. . . then king find you. When king find you, he talk to you, but you no talk to anybody after that.”
Ernie leaned forward, nose to nose with the old hag. She didn’t back off.
“After I talk to Slicky Boy So,” Ernie said, “I’ll come back to Camp Market and tell you about it.”
“No, you won’t. You be beneath Han River. Only talk to fish.”
She started to laugh and she kept laughing and she didn’t stop until she was hacking away with a smoker’s cough. Finally, she spit up phlegm. We had all we were going to get from her.
Maybe she was just looking for attention. Maybe all her years of walking the streets and catching GI’s had driven her bonkers. Maybe both.
An hour later we turned her over to the KNP’s. Ernie and I handed them our written statements and drove back to Seoul.
11
“LOOKS LIKE A MARX BROTHERS MOVIE,” ERNIE SAID.
“Yeah. Doors slamming, people running in and out. All they need is a bottle of seltzer.”
“And a horn.”
Ernie and I stood on a hill in Itaewon, hidden behind a dragon-engraved portal varnished in shiny red lacquer.
Six Korean deliverymen pulled wooden crates off the back of a truck, dragged them into a small courtyard, pried them open with a crowbar, and reached in and yanked out the contents.
The customers, a GI and his Korean wife, looked worried. She stood on tiptoes and whispered something in her husband’s ear. The GI nodded and stepped toward the Korean man in the blue cap, the head honcho of the delivery team. The GI cleared his throat and spoke.
“Ajjosi,” he said. Uncle. “Slow down. We need to check each item off the inventory as you open the packages.”
The honcho stopped barking orders at the other workmen and looked at the young GI, a sneer quivering on his lip.
“You no trust us?”
The GI lowered his head and stuck his hands deeper into his pockets.
“Sure, I trust you. It’s just that with everybody opening crates and grabbing everything, I can’t keep track of all the household items.”
The elder man waved his
hand and turned back to his workers. “After we finish, you cheeky cheeky everything. Now we no have time.”
The GI glanced around, concerned by the swirling madness of packaging being ripped apart and men running in and out of the front gate with lamps and radios and irons and clothes and nobody seeming to be in charge.
The wife was too good a Confucian to argue with the older deliveryman. She’d already lost enough face just by being married to an American.
Her GI husband seemed on the verge of losing his temper but he swallowed it, figuring, I suppose, that it would just make things worse.
We gazed down on the commotion of the baggage delivery. The snow was holding off but the sky over southern Seoul was gray and brooding.
During the ride back from Camp Market, Ernie and I had decided to hit the slicky boys again on another of their operations. Keep peppering them with jabs. Become a bother. Until they could no longer ignore us.
The GI down below was married so he’d been approved for quarters off-post, and he’d rented this little hooch in Itaewon. The deliverymen were from the 8th Army Transportation Office and it was their job to deliver the GI’s hold baggage, personal effects above and beyond what he could carry on the airplane coming over.
The way things should’ve been done is the delivery-men should hand him the inventory and he’d tick off the items one by one, making sure they’re properly accounted for. But by unwrapping everything at once and having some men carry items in and others carry torn packaging back out, and not giving the GI a chance to check all items against the inventory, they were ripping him off.
The CID office had received complaints about this type of thing, but since it didn’t happen to officers—the slicky boys were smarter than that—the head shed just figured the young troopers were being hysterical. Or maybe they were trying to pull a fast one. After all, once GI’s submitted a claim to the Transportation Office for missing items, they’d be reimbursed, at depreciated value, for everything they lost.
And the expense was budgeted for. Thanks to the largess of the American taxpayer.
“Check it out.” Ernie pointed at the flatbed truck in front of the hooch.
At first glance, there didn’t seem much place to hide anything. Just two seats in front with only a roll bar on top, no cab, and a flat wood-plank truck bed in back. But as Ernie pointed, one of the workmen lifted the front seat, revealing a space probably designed as a tool storage chest. The worker quickly stashed something inside.
“Toaster,” Ernie said.
“They already got the blender and the iron and the coffeemaker, right?”
“Check.”
“Not a big haul.”
Ernie reached in his pocket and pulled out a stick of ginseng gum. He didn’t offer any to me because he knew I couldn’t stand the stuff. Tasted like burnt tree roots. Ernie liked it because it kept his metabolic rate high. Why he needed his metabolic rate any higher than it already was, I couldn’t figure.
“Maybe it’s not a big haul,” Ernie said, “but you pull ten or twelve of these deliveries a day, every day, five days a week. A little here. A little there. Pretty soon you have a fat pile of long green.”
“And the GI’s don’t complain because they get their money back from the government?”
“You got it. And they can buy new stuff in the PX.”
“So we’re going to put a stop to it?”
Ernie grinned. “Maybe not all of it. But this one.”
The head honcho deliveryman supervised the last of the splintered crates and wrapping paper being returned to the truck. Brandishing a clipboard, he handed the GI a pen and pointed to the bottom of the inventory.
“You sign.”
“But I don’t know if received everything.”
“You think we slicky from you?”
“No. It’s just that I don’t want to sign until I’ve checked everything.”
The honcho pointed to the truck. “We have six more delivery today. Many more GI wait. We no have time check everything.”
The Korean wife stepped forward and grabbed her husband’s elbow, the smooth skin of her face starting to crinkle.
The GI still hadn’t signed. The honcho pulled out another sheaf of papers and handed them to the wife. He explained in Korean.
“If anything’s missing, you fill this out, take to Eighth Army, they will give you all your money back. You cannot lose. Now tell him to hurry because we are busy.”
The wife accepted the papers from the honcho, bowing slightly, grasping them with both hands. She turned to her husband.
“You sign. Bali ball” Hurry.
The GI signed.
The honcho grabbed the clipboard, ripped off a copy of the inventory, thrust it at the GI, and hurried out to his truck.
Ernie elbowed me. “As soon as they fire up the engine and roll forward, we take them.”
That would be proof of intent to abscond with the pilfered goods.
Ernie trotted down the hill. I stayed on the other side of the narrow road, keeping my eyes open.
As the truck driver started the engine and rolled forward, Ernie hopped up on the running board, holding up his badge.
“CID. You’re under arrest. Pull over now!”
The slicky boys must all have attended the same training session. They knew that with American rules of evidence, if you escape, and you destroy the tangible proof of your crime, it is much harder to convict you. The driver here made the same move the driver at Camp Market had.
He stepped on the gas.
This time, though, Ernie was already aboard the truck.
I ran after them, shouting. “Chong ji!” Halt.
They didn’t listen.
The truck careened down the hill. The red brake lights sparkled to life at the bottom of the incline, but only for an instant. The driver jammed the gears and plowed forward, into the heavy afternoon traffic.
Ernie was still holding on. I couldn’t be sure but it looked as if he were trying to claw his way over the driver.
When I hit the bottom of the hill, I could still see the truck. The traffic was heavy, as usual on an afternoon in Seoul. Our jeep was parked two blocks away. Too far away to be of any help now. I kept running after the truck, pushing through the crowds.
Ernie punched the blue-capped honcho. The driver was trying to help his boss but couldn’t do much because he had to keep his eyes on the swirling flow of traffic. The guys squatting in the back seemed confused at first. Then they started to move forward. One of them clutched a short crowbar.
Shit! Even if they didn’t get the best of Ernie, one false move and someone could fall off the truck and be crushed beneath the wheels of the oncoming herd of kimchi cabs.
I wished I had a pistol. Korea is a country with complete gun control. Only the police and the military are allowed to possess weapons. Seldom do we carry arms on a case. Busting a guy for stealing a toaster didn’t seem to require heavy armament, but after dealing with these slicky boys for half a day, I was starting to reconsider.
The traffic ahead opened up and the truck zoomed forward. By now, Ernie had rolled the honcho out of the way and had managed to lift up the front seat. The truck was bouncing wildly, and by cursing and threatening and using the vinyl-covered seat as a shield, Ernie somehow kept the irate deliverymen at bay.
He raised a stainless steel toaster aloft in the air. Suddenly, he tossed it forward and the deliverymen flinched. The toaster bounced once on the back of the cab and caromed off into the cars behind. It hit a bumper and bounced back, hit another and started being kicked around like a soccer ball.
Undaunted, the guy with the crowbar moved forward but Ernie flung the blender at him. It hit his shoulder, flew off into the traffic, and the crowbar clattered after it.
After that, Ernie unleashed his entire arsenal: the iron, a radio, a makeup mirror, the coffeepot. All the appliances crashed into the pavement and were smashed to smithereens.
Cab drivers slammed on their br
akes, tires squealed, men cursed.
Up ahead the traffic bunched up and the truck slowed.
Ernie leapt off the truck running, stumbled, hit the pavement with his shoulder and rolled, and finally came to a halt.
I plowed through the pedestrian traffic, knocking people over, ignoring their curses. Ranting, I finally reached him.
“You crazy son of a bitch!” I shouted.
Ernie ignored me and glanced back at the escaping truck. The driver gunned the engine and pulled quickly away. The men in the back growled and slammed their fists into open palms. Ernie watched them fade into the distance.
“Fuck you too,” he said softly.
I knelt down. “Are you out of your gourd? Jumping on a moving truck like that?”
He fingered his head. “No. My gourd’s still here.”
“And your shoulder?”
He rotated it. “No problem.”
“Hey,” I said. “No arrest is worth that much risk.”
“They didn’t get their damn toaster, did they?”
He swiveled toward the road. A half dozen cab drivers had pulled over and were examining the damage to their headlights and grillwork. One of them picked up the dented iron, chattered away to his comrades, and pointed at us.
“Time to fade into the alleys,” Ernie said.
“Yes,” I said, helping him up. “Let’s do that.”
12
WE CHECKED THE KNP LIAISON OFFICE ON COMPOUND and had them contact Lieutenant Pak at the Namdaemun Precinct. The homicide investigation downtown had stalled. All leads resulted in nothing so far and they were beginning to discount any thought that the murder of Lance Corporal Cecil Whitcomb might have been a mugging gone wrong.
“They’re counting on you,” the Liaison Officer told us sourly.
Although it was still midafternoon, we purposely avoided the CID office and slid on back to the barracks. In my room, my soiled blue jeans still lay in a crumpled heap on the floor, and they still reeked of field manure.
I sighed and picked them up and carried them down to the latrine. Using hand soap, I washed them as best I could. After wringing them out, I returned to my room and dried them on the radiator.