by Martin Limon
Leaving the U.N. Club after we did could’ve been just a coincidence, and not touching a full beer could’ve meant that the guy either had a sour stomach or suddenly decided to reform.
Maybe.
And maybe he was following us.
I sat at Riley’s desk with a big, steaming cup of snack bar coffee, reading the just-flown-in-from-Tokyo edition of the Pacific Stars & Stripes. I had stopped at the barracks, showered, shaved, and changed into my coat and tie. I felt a hell of a lot better. Revitalized.
The big double door down the hallway creaked open, then banged shut. Footsteps clattered down the varnished wood slat floor. When he burst through the door, he looked as pleased with himself as a deacon on his way to church.
“Ernie,” I said. “What the hell you doing in so early?”
He marched straight to the unplugged coffee um and rattled the empty shell.
“Jesus, no java. How do they expect a man to live?”
I realized that although he was clean and dressed neatly, his eyes were rimmed with red and his cheeks seemed to be sagging a bit.
“She kept me up all night,” he said.
“Miss Ku?”
“Yeah. Crazy broad. I thought she was going to scratch off my third layer of skin.”
I shook my head. This meant more trouble with the Nurse. She’d attacked him with sticks and knives before. All I could do was pray she didn’t get her hands on a bazooka.
In the distance, doors slammed open. Upstairs, shoes pounded on cement. Eighth Army was coming to life.
Ernie found a cup and I shared half of my coffee with him. We sat like dazed prizefighters between rounds, sipping gratefully on life-giving fluid.
I tried to think of the case but nothing fit. Not yet.
When Riley stormed through the door of the Admin Office, he stopped and looked back and forth between us, pink tongue flicking between crooked teeth.
“Damn. The Honor Guard is already here.”
There was so much starch in his fatigues that when he sat down at his desk the fabric crackled.
Ernie started fiddling with the coffee urn again. “Where can I get some coffee around here?”
Riley ignored us. He had already grabbed a stack of paperwork from his in-basket and, licking his thumb every third page, riffled through it.
“I need something from you, Riley,” I said.
“Have to do with the Whitcomb case?”
“Maybe.”
“Name it. At your service.”
“We’re looking for a former GI.”
“Good. That narrows it down to about fifty million souls.”
“He’s here in Korea.”
“Scratch forty-nine million.”
“He might’ve been involved in black market operations. Phony Ration Control Plates. Stuff like that.”
Without looking up, Riley reached for a pad of paper and a pencil and started making notes.
“I figure we should check the KNP Liaison blotter reports. Find out if any Americans have been arrested by the Korean authorities lately for customs violations, assaults, anything at all. If so, I want all the information we can find on them. Date they entered the country. If they’ve left yet. Anything.”
“Won’t be much,” Riley said. “The ROK’s don’t arrest many tourists. Bad for the travel industry. If they get out of line, they just hustle them onto the next flight out of country.”
“Yeah. But find out what you can.”
“A former GI, huh? I’ll check the AWOL register too.”
“Great.” I don’t know why I hadn’t thought about that. The brain wasn’t functioning well this morning.
“And ROK immigration,” Riley added. “See if we’ve got any Miguks who’ve overstayed their welcome.”
“And other foreigners, too,” I said. “There’s always the possibility that he’s not really an American. After all, it was an Englishman who was killed.”
“Right you are. Anything else?”
“Don’t say anything to the First Sergeant about this.”
He looked at me.
“Not until I’m sure.”
He nodded. “I’ll make some calls.”
I stood and grabbed Ernie by the elbow.
“Come on, pal. Let’s go. I’ll buy you some coffee at the snack bar.”
That mollified him somewhat but he was still grumbling as we walked down the long empty corridor and hopped down the stone steps outside to the jeep.
I told Ernie about what Lieutenant Pak had told me and about the guy who’d been following us. He didn’t like it any better than I did.
At the snack bar we bought two cups of coffee and sat down against the wall.
I thought about the Tiger Lady’s kisaeng house and the deep caverns beneath the streets of Itaewon and the phoney ration control plate we had found at the Hyundai Print Shop. None of it did any good. I didn’t know what we had. I didn’t know how big it was. Or if any of what we’d learned had any importance at all. The case was wrapping itself around me like the tentacles of a giant squid, and I knew that if I didn’t swim up for air soon it would drag me down into the slime and devour me bit by slowly chewed bit.
As if he were reading my thoughts, Ernie began to speak.
“Miss Ku didn’t say much,” he said. “Just that the guy was American and that he gave her real detailed instructions on what he wanted her to do. Go to Itaewon, find us, pretend she was a jilted girlfriend, and give us the note. She only saw him twice. The first night he came in with Print Shop Chong. Three or four nights later, he came back and made the deal with her. She doesn’t even know his name.”
Ernie glanced at me nervously. I knew what was happening. He was feeling guilty for having cheated on the Nurse. But that was his business. I had no opinion about it one way or the other, but he kept on chattering—unusual for him—as if he wanted to justify himself.
“I tried to pry more information out of her. But I believe that’s all she knows. After all, it was a straight money proposition. She does a job for him, he pays her.”
“But she saw him one more time,” I said.
Ernie ladled more sugar into his coffee. “What do you mean?”
“In Itaewon. After she talked to us. To receive the second half of the money.”
“Yeah. Then, too.”
It bothered me. It was bothering both of us.
“Eun-hi saw him in the U.N. Club. Miss Ku saw him outside the Kayagum Teahouse. The guy was watching us.”
Ernie nodded. “He sure was.”
We sat in silence. I looked at him. No wiseass remark. No cynical sneer.
He felt worse about cheating on the Nurse than I had thought.
“We have to find out his name,” Ernie said. “But how?”
I stirred my coffee and gazed into the black swirl. “There must be a way.”
“How?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “I have to think about it.”
Ernie respected that. He was never one to push. Still, he was worried.
“I think we might be getting close. And if we get close enough, this guy’s liable to know it.”
“And come after us, you mean?”
“It could happen.”
Ernie shuffled in his seat and glanced around the crowded cafeteria. “Sure would be nice to know what he looks like.”
“Sure would.”
When we returned to the office, there seemed to be a lot of barking into phones and pacing back and forth.
Riley pulled us aside. “A call just came in from the KNP Liaison. You ever heard of a place called the Tiger Lady’s?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We’ve heard of it.”
“Lieutenant Pak of the Namdaemun Precinct wants you two guys down there ASAP.”
“What happened?”
“There’s been a killing. Some gal. Something he called a kisaeng.”
As we reached the doorway, the First Sergeant’s voice bellowed down the hallway.
“Ba
scom! Sueño!”
I looked at Ernie.
“I didn’t hear anything,” I said. “Did you?”
“No. Not me.”
We ran to the jeep.
24
THE KILLER SQUATTED NEXT TO THE BODY, KEEPING HIS feet out of the blood, trying to fight back the rage that pumped into his brain—blinding him.
It was still dark out and bitterly cold. Snowflakes swirled in the gusting wind, like spirits endlessly tormented by the night.
With the back of his hand the killer cleared his vision, forcing himself to concentrate.
She’d been dumped here, an arm and a leg cruelly twisted beneath her limp body. She wore a nightgown and a robe. No slippers. Red welts stood out angrily on the soft flesh of her neck. Her fingernails had been shredded and, before her death, oozed crimson, which was now clotted and dark.
Tortured.
How much information had she given them? Probably everything. But it wouldn’t do them any good. They still wouldn’t find him. No one would.
Not, at least, until he took his revenge.
Cuts had been sliced along her arms. Not fatal. At the top of her flat belly gaped a long gash. Probably the final death-dealing wound.
The killer almost laughed.
So that was their game. Put the blame on someone else. An old trick.
She’d written a note and left it, as he’d instructed, at the message drop: Contact. Two Americans.
He was miles away when he received the transmission. Still, he’d dropped everything and returned immediately. As fast as he could, but not fast enough. He gazed down at the corpse.
She’d done her best. In her note she said that she would try to delay one of them. Apparently, she succeeded. Her only reward had been death.
He touched the dead woman’s cold flesh. Just meat. Like so many he’d seen before.
When he first brought her into the operation, he’d used terror to train her. He showed her the photographs he’d taken of her younger brother and sister on their way to school, of her mother beating laundry with a stick at a stream near the family home. He’d demonstrated to her how he would kill them—running the edge of his blade lightly across her neck—if she didn’t do exactly as he instructed. Or if she tried to run away.
At first she’d trembled with fright, but she was stronger than most. She accepted the situation. She even seemed to enjoy the work, especially after he paid her for the first completed missions.
He remembered the long nights they’d spent together. And her lust for pain. Ever more pain.
And now she was gone. Stolen from him.
A pot clanged against stone.
He swiveled in a crouch, ready to fight, and surveyed the darkness.
No movement.
Inside the big building, people were starting to stir. The sun would rise soon. He glanced back down at the body.
His fists clenched. They’d pay for taking this from him. This that was his.
Like a shadow blown by the wind, he floated into the gloom.
25
ERNIE AND I PUSHED THROUGH A CROWD OF GAWKERS outside of the House of the Tiger Lady. We entered the cool confines of the main ballroom. A uniformed policeman escorted us down the hallway.
The huddled kisaeng, their faces naked and raw in the morning light, almost leapt back in fright when they saw Ernie.
Outside in the alley, Lieutenant Pak was hunched over in a conference with some older men. Our blue-clad escort went out, conferred with him, came back, and asked us politely to wait here in the hallway.
Ernie was nervous, chomping on about three wads of gum, glancing back and forth, fidgeting with the knot in his tie. I told him to wait, took a few steps toward the back alley, turned a corner, and saw the body slumped in a puddle of blood.
Miss Ku. Her eyes still open, mouth slack. Her neck twisted and her stomach gouged with something sharp and long. Blood had dried like a frozen waterfall of cinnabar slime.
She was in her nightclothes: Silk gown with only a bathrobe wrapped around her slender body to protect her from the cold. The job looked familiar. The same long, deft jab below the sternum, slicing into the heart. Probably while holding her from behind with a powerful arm crooked around her frail neck. Then letting her go. Letting her slump to the ground in death.
There were cuts on her arms. Whoever had killed her had toyed with her, as Whitcomb had been toyed with. If it was the same killer, it made sense.
What didn’t make sense were her fingers. The tips were raw and red. The nails had been ripped back one by one.
Another thing that didn’t make sense was that the body was too close to the back of the Tiger Lady’s kisaeng house. On the other side of the wall resided a couple of dozen women, and at least some of them must be light sleepers. Yet the killer had finished his bloody night’s work while disturbing no one.
There was blood on the cobbled road but not much. Not as much as we found beneath Cecil Whitcomb.
I turned, took a few deep breaths, and returned to Ernie.
Something pushed through the crowded hallway. People were jostled, slammed against walls. The Tiger Lady, gray-black hair splayed like the mane of a lion, eyes as intent as the eyes of a viper, plowing through the bending reeds, heading right for us.
Ernie straightened himself and stood away from the wall.
She screeched. “Shangnom-al” You bastard! And launched her crimson claws at his eyes.
Ernie twisted his head away just in time, but she sank her nails into his shoulder. He rotated his body and pushed her, slamming her into the wall. Like some enraged simian, she rebounded and renewed her attack.
Women screamed. Policemen cursed.
Ernie bounced back and grabbed her wrists as she came toward him again. Somehow he managed to retain his balance with her weight pushing against him.
I moved forward to help but three girls emerged from the crowd, swinging tiny fists, and simultaneously punched me in the stomach. I held my belly and looked at them.
“You stay back, Goddamn-uh!” one of them said.
Ernie and the Tiger Lady rocked back and forth like two bulls in a pen until finally the Tiger Lady collapsed and fell to her knees and covered her eyes with her withered palms. She started to cry.
“Nuga, nuga, nuga kurei?” Who, who, who would do this?
Two of the policemen pushed through the crowd of wailing kisaeng and helped the Tiger Lady to her feet. Another emerged from the hallway and called for Ernie and me to accompany him. The girls ignored us as we left, all their attention turned toward the moaning Tiger Lady.
When Ernie saw Miss Ku’s body I thought he was going to collapse. I grabbed him around the waist and helped him down the alley past it, out into the coldness of the morning air. Lieutenant Pak and the other policeman were waiting for us. Ernie pulled himself together although his face was as pale as I’d ever seen it.
Lieutenant Pak strode forward and poked his nose in Ernie’s face.
“You sleep with her,” he said, pointing at the corpse.
I stepped between them. “Wait a minute. He’s in no condition to answer questions. Not yet. He needs a chance to recover.”
There is no right to immediate counsel in Korea. You either answer the policeman’s questions or face the consequences—from a jail cell.
Ernie laid his hand on my shoulder. “That’s okay, George. I’ll talk to him. I need to.” He unwrapped another stick of gum, put it in his mouth, and turned slowly to Lieutenant Pak.
“Yeah. I spent the night with her. I came late. She wasn’t busy, we went to her room and talked.”
Lieutenant Pak tried to keep his face from moving but the eyes crinkled involuntarily around the edges. Korean men weren’t happy about Americans spending time with their women. But since fraternization was inevitable, they preferred that Gl’s stick to the business girls in Itaewon. The ones who’d teen designated for the job.
“In the morning she let me out the back door.” Ernie turned, point
ing. “This door here. She was wearing the same clothes she has on now. The silk nightgown. The robe.”
“After you left, did she lock the door?”
“No. She wore slippers and she followed me out into the alleyway.” He pointed again, to a spot about ten yards in front of the back door. “When I reached the main road, down there, I turned one last time and waved. She waved back.”
“So she was standing there, away from the door, alone, when you left her?”
“Yes,” Emie answered: “And it was still dark.”
“We found sandals,” Lieutenant Pak said. “They must’ve fallen off her feet in a struggle, and the tops of her feet are scraped raw, as if she’d been dragged.”
Ernie shook his head. “I don’t know anything about that.”
Lieutenant Pak stared at him. Waiting to see if he’d fidget.
“Check her pockets,” Ernie said.
“Why?”
“You’ll find a stick of ginseng gum. I gave it to her just before I left. It probably has my fingerprints on it.”
Lieutenant Pak studied Ernie some more. Without looking over his shoulder he shouted an order to one of the uniformed policemen. The policeman answered, trotted off to the body, and after bending over it and checking, returned to Lieutenant Pak.
“Nei. Issoyo.” Yes. It’s there.
I spoke up. “He wouldn’t have left such clear evidence if he was planning on killing her.”
Ernie winced.
Lieutenant Pak half smiled. “I said nothing about killing.”
He hadn’t and suddenly I felt embarrassed. But it was what everyone was thinking.
“You know I didn’t kill her,” Ernie said.
Lieutenant Pak’s eyes probed Ernie’s face. “We’ll see.
He turned to me. “This woman who calls herself Miss Ku, she is same woman you saw at Kayagum Teahouse. The one who wanted you to black-market?”
I didn’t answer.
“And maybe she knew something that you didn’t want anyone else to know.”
A chill of fear went through me. Pak was close to finding out that we had been paid to deliver the note to Cecil Whitcomb, thereby demonstrating a motive for Ernie to murder Miss Ku. What with the way military justice works, just the suspicion was enough to get us both locked up. I had to give him something else to think about.