Slicky Boys

by Martin Limon

  “I hope not.”

  “So we’ll find him in the crowd.” Ernie thought about it for a minute. “Have to wade through a lot of squids, though. Up to our assholes in squids.”

  By the time the sun went down we’d checked out every bar or flophouse or brothel that ever existed on Texas Street. I’d come to the conclusion that Shipton wasn’t here; he was hiding out somewhere else. Still, I believed there was a good chance he’d show that night.

  We found a cozy bar where the girls wore their hair up, held in place by jade pins, and floated around the room in the rustling silk of their full-skirted Hanbok gowns. Texas Street catered to just about every taste. Even if you were strange enough to prefer your women elegant and well-dressed.

  The girls spoiled the effect of their appearance, however, when I listened to their conversations in Korean. They talked about how to get the most money out of a sailor and how to avoid VD and what to do if you got pregnant.

  They were just as foulmouthed as any of the other girls on the street. But I liked the joint. The music was soft and the bar stools comfortable and fish floated in blue aquariums. The gentle notes of a Korean love song warbled out of the sound system. The women here probably serviced over-the-hill bosun’s mates who could hardly get it up anymore.

  Another reason I liked this place was that they had draft OB Beer served in frosted mugs. It had been a hard day. Ernie and I were putting them down pretty good. We were both hungry but didn’t feel like leaving the tap, so we gave one of the girls some money and sent her out for “cut bait.”

  That’s what we called it because it attracted business girls like schools of fish.

  What she brought back was actually small bundles of grease-stained newspaper. She set the bundles down on the bar, unwrapped them, and the aroma of hot onion rings and batter-fried tempura billowed upward. The girls swarmed around us, picking away greedily at the hot slices. Somebody poured soy sauce onto a plate and we all dipped and munched and talked.

  We ate as much as we could and enjoyed the girls rubbing their silk-covered bodies against us. After the chow was gone, however, Ernie seemed a little morose., I wondered if it was the fatigue of traveling. After the fourth beer, he started talking.

  “She was pregnant,” he said.

  “The girl who bought the onion rings?”

  “No. The Nurse.”

  I set my beer down. Looked at him. Waited.

  “She said she wanted to ‘present’ the baby to me, but I didn’t answer her right away.” He sipped on his beer and looked over at me. “That’s why the Nurse said she’d kill herself if my extension didn’t go through.”

  “Because the marriage paperwork takes six months?”

  “Yeah.” Ernie looked at me, studying my face. “You think we’ll catch this guy?”

  I nodded. “We’ll get him.”

  He studied my face for a while longer. “Okay,” he said, “I believe you.”

  A pack of American sailors burst into the room like Irish banshees on New Year’s Eve. Their black uniforms were neatly pressed and their spotless white hats sat at jaunty angles on their heads. I saw the patch on their left shoulders: U.S.S. Kitty Hawk.

  The girls beamed as if a host from heaven had just floated down from the sky. Soon the place was crammed with sailors and every girl was on somebody’s lap, being pulled and tugged and handed around.

  The bartender was too busy to even refill our beer mugs. We tossed down the last of the suds and left.

  Texas Street was like what I imagined Rio de Janeiro must be like during the Carnival season. Except nobody was half naked because it was too cold, and almost all the men wore the uniforms of the U.S. Navy. They traveled in packs. The doors to the clubs were wide open and music and screaming roiled out onto the street and every seat inside was taken and so was every girl.

  There weren’t any Hialeah Compound GI’s around. They had a tendency to stay away when a big ship was in port, resenting the squids for running up the prices.

  Since we weren’t in uniform and wore only our blue jeans and nylon jackets, we were a little conspicuous ourselves. We stayed in the shadows. Scanning the road for anyone who looked like Shipton.

  A couple of times we thought we spotted him, but when we got close we realized it was someone else. We bought bottles of beer from street vendors and drank under awnings, protected from the sporadic rain, keeping an eye on the street scene.

  As curfew approached, things didn’t seem to be slowing down, but a phalanx of a dozen burly guys with batons and Shore Patrol arm bands plowed through Texas Street, warning everybody to get off the streets or back to the ship by midnight.

  We were going to have to find shelter, too. There weren’t any girls available so we faded back a few blocks from Texas Street until we stumbled into a little place that advertised sleeping accommodations. The Koreans call it a yoin-suk, not as high-class as a yoguan and not nearly as luxurious as a hotel.

  The woman who owned it said she had one private room left and Ernie and I could have it for only seven thousand won. About ten bucks. I thought it was a little steep for this kind of joint, but the Kitty Hawk was in, so what the hell. We paid her and told her we had to go back out for a few minutes, and she promised to keep the front gate open for us as long as we weren’t out too late after curfew. I told her we wouldn’t be.

  Back on Texas Street the crowds were beginning to thin. Sailors wandered down to the pier and caught launches that were lined up to take them back to the ship.

  Back in the bar district there was nothing new. No sign of anybody who looked like Shipton.

  Korean National Police had now joined the Shore Patrol and were helping to shoo everyone off the street in the last ten minutes before the world shut down. Bars closed their doors and shuttered their windows.

  When the Shore Patrol reached us, I showed my badge to the guy in charge and asked if he’d seen anyone who looked like the mug in the photograph. He shook his head, but showed it to the other Shore Patrol guys. Nobody remembered Shipton.

  The Korean policemen I asked hardly glanced at the photograph. With a city teeming with foreigners they weren’t likely to be able to tell one from the other—unless he had three arms and horns.

  But they were curious as to why we were looking for him. I told them that he was a deserter, which seemed to satisfy them. Koreans take desertion a lot more seriously than we do. In fact, you can be executed for it.

  When the streets were almost empty, we wound our way through the dark alleys back to our little yoin-suk. Anywhere from six to ten workingmen and poor women lay on the floor of each room sleeping, their possessions jumbled nearby.

  Being rich foreigners, we were ushered into our private accommodations in the back. The old woman even handed us our own porcelain pee pot.

  We rolled out the sleeping mats. After folding my clothes and setting my wallet and badge and pistol under the bead-filled pillow, I turned off the bulb. The room was stuffy but warm, and we were both too exhausted to do anything but go straight to sleep.

  I awoke with a start.

  “Ernie.” I nudged his shoulder. “Wake up.”

  “Huh?”

  He tried to pull the cotton comforter over his head.

  “Wake up. We have to go.”

  He propped himself up on his elbow. “Go? What’re you talking about? It’s still dark.”

  I looked at the fluorescent dots on my wristwatch. “It’s almost four-thirty. A lot of sailors will be up and on their way back to the Kitty Hawk.”

  “So what?”

  “So I finally realized what Shipton’s doing here in Pusan.”

  “I’m glad you figured it out, because apparently he wasn’t getting laid.”

  “No. He has bigger plans in mind.”

  “George, I wish I knew what in the hell you were talking about.”

  “No time now.” I turned on the bulb. “Come on. Get dressed. We have to get down to the waterfront.”

  “Oh, Jesu
s. You really are nuts.”

  “No arguments.”

  In less than five minutes we were up and out into the hallway. The mama-san heard us and emerged from her room and unbolted the front door for us.

  She bowed as we left but I didn’t have time for formalities. I just plowed into the shadows, Ernie close on my heels.

  34

  MIST LACED WITH SALT RUSHED IN FROM THE SEA, slapping the warm flesh of my face and waking me up with each step we took down the dark streets.

  I wasn’t sure if it was a dream I had or just some sort of sudden brainstorm. Whatever it was, it pushed its way up from my unconscious and screamed at me to get up and do something! Ernie was still grumbling, so as we emerged from the alley and turned down Texas Street, I started to explain.

  “It’s always bothered me,” I said, “Strange’s accusation that somebody’d been tampering with classified documents. And right there in J-two, at the same time that Whitcomb was stealing office equipment. But it didn’t seem logical. Whitcomb was a petty crook, not some sort of foreign agent. And even if he had been an agent, why steal a typewriter?

  “Maybe Strange and his buddies are just hysterical, I thought. They get together, exchange suspicions, and work each other up into a frenzy. But still the coincidence bugged me.”

  Ernie snorted through his nose, head down, not saying anything. We walked quickly past the shuttered shops and nightclubs.

  “Remember the note Miss Ku gave us?” I said. “There was something in there about ‘I haven’t told anybody yet’or something like that. As if whoever wrote the note knew something incriminating about Whitcomb. What would anyone know that was incriminating?

  “At first I thought it was that Whitcomb was messing with an innocent girl. Well, that’s out now.’ But there’s something else the person who wrote the note might’ve known. He might’ve known about the only real crime Whitcomb committed. Namely, that he stole typewriters. How would he know that? If he was a fence, he might know, but a fence would be making money from Whitcomb—he wouldn’t be threatening him. So maybe it was somebody who was there when he stole the typewriters. Somebody who caught him red-handed.”

  “Why wouldn’t he have turned Whitcomb in?”

  Ernie was starting to wake up now. We reached the end of the row of dark nightclubs and started down the long slope that led to the pier. A few shadows were clustered on the quay. Sailors waiting for the next launch to take them out to the Kitty Hawk. In the distance the harbor was pitch-black. Shrouded by mist. I could see nothing.

  “He wouldn’t turn Whitcomb in,” I said, “because he was there in the J-two office in the middle of the night for no good reason himself.”

  “He was the one after the classified documents,” Ernie said. “Whitcomb’s killer.”

  “Exactly. And he stumbled into Whitcomb.”

  “And Whitcomb wouldn’t realize right away that he was talking to another thief, because the man was American, maybe even dressed in a military uniform. He would’ve bluffed Whitcomb into thinking that he was straight.”

  “So when Whitcomb received the note, he thought the guy wanted to deal somehow. Maybe get in on his action. Maybe even open the door to richer hunting grounds.”

  “And instead he wanted to gut him and leave him for the rats.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “And this man was Shipton?”

  “Right again.”

  “And Shipton wanted to kill him because Whitcomb was the only person living who could link him to the theft of those classified documents. Why didn’t Shipton just kill him in the J-two office?”

  “Might not’ve had a chance. Whitcomb would’ve been nervous, on guard, backing away. Killing him then might’ve attracted too much attention, proved there was another man there that night.”

  “So he used Miss Ku to get in touch with us and hand the note to Whitcomb.” Ernie nodded his head in thought. “But why us?”

  “Shipton wanted somebody official to contact Whitcomb, to add to the threat, make it more likely that he’d show up. And do you know of any other CID agents who hold court daily in Itaewon?”

  “Just us.”

  “Besides, if he had us involved in some way, he figured we couldn’t pursue the case wholeheartedly.”

  “He had that wrong.”

  “Yes, he did.”

  Three sailors emerged from an alley, laughing and exchanging lewd stories. Ernie and I slowed to let them get a few yards ahead of us.

  Ernie furrowed his brow. “But Shipton has already shown us that he has no trouble slipping on and off military compounds. Why wouldn’t he just kill Whitcomb himself? Why involve us and Miss Ku?”

  “You saw how Whitcomb lived. In a barracks with a dozen other men. They sleep together, shower together, eat chow together. Even run the ville and pick up girls together. Getting Whitcomb alone would be Shipton’s main problem.”

  “But the meeting in Namdaemun involved his thievery operation, so Whitcomb wasn’t sharing that with any of his pals.”

  “Right. So he’d come alone.”

  “But why kill him at all? Whitcomb was just a longnose slicky boy. He wasn’t likely to blow the whistle on Shipton. He probably didn’t even know his name.”

  “But he saw his face.”

  “So?”

  “You’d be right if this was just one thief spotting another. But Shipton was after military secrets. And for those to have any value, you have to sell them to somebody who can use them.”

  “Like the North Koreans?”

  “Yes. And they wouldn’t want to jeopardize a guy with as much potential to steal prime information for them as Shipton.”

  “So maybe the North Koreans ordered Shipton to kill Whitcomb.”

  “Maybe. And they probably have big plans for Shipton. Very big plans.”

  “If they have such big plans for him, why are they allowing him to black-market?”

  “After he committed the first murders, of his Korean fiancee and her boyfriend, he was living on the lam. Black market was a natural way for him to support himself. It’s easy money. He probably grew to like it.”

  “So maybe the North Koreans don’t even know he’s black-marketing.”

  “Maybe not. Or if they do, they don’t want to force him to stop and piss him off.

  “He’s arrogant.”

  “Wouldn’t you be? After evading everybody these last few months?”

  “But it can’t last forever.”

  “That’s why I think he’s building up to a big score.”

  “Hit the big one and then slip out of the country with the loot?”

  “That could be it.”

  “I’m glad you figured all this out, George,” Ernie said, “but I still don’t know what we’re doing up this early.”

  “Going to the Kitty Hawk.”

  “To the Kitty Hawk? What in the hell for?”

  “Classified documents,” I said. “You forget, Ernie. That’s what Shipton was after at J-two. That’s what he’ll be after here.”

  “Why go after such a difficult target when he’s been doing so well on the army compounds?”

  “That part I haven’t figured out yet. Unless it has something to do with the tunnels Strange told me about.”

  “Tunnels and an aircraft carrier? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “No, it doesn’t. But the Kitty Hawk is a mother lode of classified information. Shipton and his North Korean handlers will see it as a gold mine too good to pass up.”

  “And he was a squid himself. He’ll know his way around.”

  “Right.”

  “So maybe you’re right and he’ll go after Top Secret info while they’re in port. But how the hell are we going to get on the ship?”

  “Bogart. Like we usually do.”

  “Yeah,” Ernie said. “But usually we don’t do it before breakfast.”

  A crowd of sailors had gathered at the pier, laughing and playing grab-ass and talking about the Korean gir
ls in the bars last night. Ernie and I stayed close to them, trying to blend in, which wasn’t too hard because the guys with overnight liberty could wear civilian clothes and were dressed pretty much like us.

  Deep in the mist a steady churning grew. The sailors moved toward a metal gangway. We moved with them.

  With a final roar of its engine, a large flat launch with the U.S. flag waving at its tail edged expertly up to the bottom of the slippery steps. Sailors filed down. There was a little shoving, but we shoved back, and found ourselves sitting on one of the hard benches of the launch.

  Luckily nobody tried to talk to us and Ernie and I stared grimly forward; two sailors too hung over to bother messing with this early in the morning.

  As the engines fired up and we moved away from the quay, I felt the rolling swell of the sea beneath the metal hull. It was invigorating. I liked it right away and decided I felt at home on the sea, although I’d never been in a boat before. Except for one time. During a summer program sponsored by the County of Los Angeles, when they’d taken me and a lot of other orphans to Pacific Ocean Park. We rode around the pier and back. I got seasick. Where I grew up, in East L.A., there wasn’t much opportunity to earn your sea legs.

  The little launch plowed through the waves but we could only see about twenty yards to our front. The impenetrable curtain of mist seemed to recede before us, and the faster we moved the faster it ran away.

  Twenty minutes later a huge metal wall appeared without warning in the center of the sea. Sailors started to shuffle in their seats and I realized that the wall must be the aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk. The launch moved down the wall until it found another metal staircase, this one leading up to a hatch in the hull. Light poured out of the opening and was diffused into a golden haze by the millions of airborne droplets of seawater.

  Beneath the ladder, the sailors secured the launch with hooks on the ends of chains, and one by one we clambered off the rocking platform and climbed the stairwell. I went first. Ernie right behind me.

  At the top of the stairs we finally met the inevitable: officialdom.

  I had been watching the sailors above me. Each flashed his identification card and gave a halfhearted salute to the navy chief in his crisp white uniform. When it was my turn I mimicked the sailors as well as I could, trying to act as bored and as hung over as everybody else. The chief hardly looked at me. I stepped past him.