by Martin Limon
“Wouldn’t it stink?”
I shrugged. “Not so much. Not sealed behind brick.”
I imagined a desiccated corpse, sitting in the darkness, fading away to bones.
Then Ernie looked up at me. “Oh, no. I know what you’re thinking.”
We had no jurisdiction in Itaewon. Officially, everything we did had to be done with the approval of the Korean government. Years ago an agreement had been signed so American MPs could police the ville but our jurisdiction extended only to our own personnel: G.I. s, the occasional American dependent, or U.S. civilian workers who happened to wander out there. But we couldn’t promulgate our own search warrant.
“You’re nuts, Sueno,” Ernie said.
“It could be done.”
One thing I’d learned here at 8th Army is that if you really want to do something, don’t ask for permission. If we presented a proposal to search the Grand Ole Opry Club to the provost marshal he would almost certainly say no. If we went ahead anyway, we’d be not only searching without a warrant but we’d also be directly violating an order. If, on the other hand, the PMO liked the idea of us searching the Grand Ole Opry Club, he would forward our request up the chain of command. There, it would be staffed to the ROK-U.S. governmental affairs committee, reports would be filed, questions answered, and great minds would cogitate. After a few weeks, if we were lucky, we’d receive an answer. Almost certainly no. But if by some chance the answer were yes, it would already be too late. By then, the rumors about a pending search of the Grand Ole Opry would have leaked out of 8th Army headquarters like rice wine from a broken soju bottle. Nobody keeps a secret for long in 8th Army headquarters. And if any hint reached Itaewon concerning a search, what we sought would either be moved or, more likely, destroyed.
Ernie kept staring at me. “You’re nuts,” he said again. “This is just a hunch. You don’t know for sure there’s anything there.”
“You’re right. But it makes sense, you have to admit that.”
“Maybe.” Ernie kept shaking his head, jiggling the copies of the building plans. And then he began to laugh. “Sueno, you never cease to amaze me. Why can‘t you just worry about getting your twenty years in like everybody else?”
“Moretti,” I told Ernie, “didn’t get the chance to retire.”
Ernie shook his head, a sardonic smile on his chops, knowing I was putting all the pressure on him I could. Finally, he set the paperwork down.
“Sueno, do you have any idea how embarrassing this is going to be if you’re wrong? A couple of Eighth Army CID agents knocking down walls, looking for old bones?”
I nodded.
“We could end up on the DMZ, trudging through snow in the middle of the night, searching for North Korean infiltrators.”
I nodded again.
Ernie rolled his eyes, rubbed the back of his neck, and said, “How would we pull it off?”
I told him.
The members of about a dozen families-men, women, and even children-stood in front of the building that had once been Mori Di’s headquarters but now belonged to the gang of criminals known as the Seven Dragons. Wind laced with stray flakes of snow blew down the narrow Itaewon roadway, a roadway that would later become known by G.I. s as “Hooker Hill.” It was the middle of the morning, about nine or ten, and what had started with a small group of men loudly complaining to one another had grown into a crowd that the nuns estimated at a hundred people.
The ragamuffin Korean civilians wielded clubs and hoes and sickles and broom handles and any sort of weapon they could get their hands on. All of them were screaming, blood in their eyes. In most cases, every bit of wealth that their family retained, whether in the form of gold or jewelry or ancient artwork, had been entrusted to Technical Sergeant Flo Moretti. And with him gone, along with their wealth, and with no economic prospects in sight, all these Korean families could forget about any chance of a future, of education for their children or of being able to afford to set up a business. Instead, they faced poverty, misery, and-possibly-slow and agonizing starvation.
Every person in the mob was prepared to fight to the death.
When faced with this band of desperate people, the Seven Dragons were, at first, caught off guard. Within minutes, they regrouped. By now, the Seven Dragons had attracted dozens of shiftless young men to their ranks. Once these men realized what was going on, they armed themselves with knives and cudgels and prepared to attack.
While this fight was brewing in the middle of Itaewon the American MPs were back on the compound. Since most G.I. s work during the day outside of Itaewon, the MPs didn’t bother to patrol the ville until after regular duty hours. The KNPs were in Itaewon but not where the crowd was gathering. They were at their comfortable heated police station, staying put. The Seven Dragons must have warned them off. They’d known this fight with the families who’d entrusted their wealth to Mori Di was inevitable and wanted it to end quickly and decisively.
The nuns told Cort that the Seven Dragons envisioned a shining era of postwar corruption opening before them. They had money; they had power; they had influence and they didn’t want a lot of whining men, women, and children yapping at their heels, threatening their corrupt empire. They wanted to settle the issue now-in blood.
The families threw themselves at the front door of the Grand Ole Opry Club. Using improvised battering rams, they knocked it down. But the Seven Dragons were ready for them. As the mob poured in, from the wooden rafters above, men rained bricks down upon their heads. Still the crowd surged forward. At the far end of the open room, the Seven Dragons had locked the big double doors and barred them with metal rods. The crowd surged up against the doors, pushed against them, but could go no further. In confusion, the crowd turned back on itself but by now more people had pushed into the huge room and were milling around like cattle. Bricks kept falling.
Then a phalanx of Seven Dragon punks rushed down the stairs. Another group attacked through the side door that led into the kitchen. The crowd fought back on both fronts but that’s exactly what the Seven Dragons wanted. Upon a shouted order, the two groups of Seven Dragon fighters pulled back. Small groups of enraged men fighting for their families last possessions followed in small groups, pushed forward by the mob. They found themselves outnumbered by the Seven Dragon minions. One by one, the rioters were ground into mush.
The main body of rioters realized things were not going their way. More and more people had crumpled to their knees, victims of the vicious rain of bricks that had never relented. The bravest men, the ones who had taken the lead, had been knocked back down the stairs or had entered the double door of the kitchen never to return. Panicked, the crowd started surging back toward the front door.
A third squad of Seven Dragon lackeys, all holding sharpened broom handles, were waiting for them. The first rioters out the door tried to stop but they were pushed forward by the rushing mob and fell down the steep cement stairs. Many were impaled on the sharply pointed tips of the waiting broom handles. More screams. More blood. More panic. And then the Seven Dragons ordered their men on the stairs and in the kitchen to charge into the main room. They did and now the rioters were set upon from all sides.
Once the mob had been totally routed, the Seven Dragons and their vicious auxiliaries waded through the blood and the bodies. Some of the women, especially those with children, had not charged into the building but had waited outside. Now, the Seven Dragons’ lackeys turned on them. The women screamed and attempted to run away, children clinging to their skirts. The women were attacked from behind, clubbed, stabbed, and knocked down. Some of them were murdered immediately. Others were dragged into side alleys and gang-raped. Children wandered through the gore and the screaming crowd, crying and calling for their mothers.
The Seven Dragons laid out the unconscious and bloodied attackers in a huge pile in the street. Then the Seven Dragons ordered gasoline poured atop the bodies. Amidst the screams of the few relatives cowering in the distance, one of the m
en struck a wooden match, watched it sizzle, and then tossed it onto the pile. As the bodies began to smolder and then burn, some of the rioters actually roused themselves and stumbled away from the growing conflagration. Children dragged their fathers out of the pile. The bravest bystanders pulled bodies away from the flames but they were quickly beaten back. In the end, the children and the few still-conscious women managed to save only a handful of men from the fire.
Not a single Korean National Policeman appeared.
7
Cort was appalled. He’d been monitoring blotter reports every day since he’d been in country and he’d never heard of any such incident. He asked a question to make sure he understood correctly what the nuns told him.
“The Korean police did nothing?”
The nuns nodded their bald heads. Yes. Nothing.
How many people died?
More than a dozen. Many others were wounded and scarred for life.
Did anyone retrieve their valuables?
No one.
Does anyone know what the Seven Dragons did with those valuables?
Shrugs all around. But the nuns did know that soon after, Itaewon began to explode in a riot of bright lights and fancy nightclubs.
Cort spent the night with the nuns because there was too much snow outside to drive home safely. In the morning he fastened chains to the back tires of his jeep, ate a warming breakfast of hot rice gruel and dried turnip, thanked the nuns, and left.
Upon his return to 8th Army, he checked with the MPs who’d been on duty during the day of the bonfire. There were only two of them. One of the MPs, a guy name Smith, told Cort that he and his partner had been aware of the fire.
“The KNPs told us they were taking care of it,” he said. “Only Korean nationals were involved and they didn’t want us there.”
“You weren’t curious?” Cort asked.
“I’ve seen fires before.”
“Did the KNPs tell you that there’d been a fight before the fire and that during the fire people were injured?”
“They said something about it. Told us it was Reds agitating.”
That would explain 8th Army’s indifference. Any action taken against Communists would have been condoned. If there had been violence, the honchos of 8th Army would just as soon not know.
Cort thanked the MP named Smith and asked him to write out a report. The young man agreed, according to Cort, but something must’ve gone wrong. A copy of Smith’s statement was never included in the SIR.
Tonight the Grand Ole Opry was jumping.
The Kimchee Kowboys, the most popular band on the G.I. circuit, was performing. Only two days had passed since the end-of-month military payday and so, by the time Ernie and I arrived that evening, the place was packed. And noisy. It was the noise I was counting on.
We entered the club at different times. I melted into the crowd for a while but instead of joining in the frivolities, as soon as I figured no one was watching, I made my way to the back steps behind the latrines. While I waited, I checked the tools I’d stuffed inside my winter coat: a wooden mallet and a chisel. All I figured I’d need. As soon as Ernie joined me, he started mumbling. “You’re nuts, Sueno. Really nuts.”
I ignored him. Together, we sneaked down the back stairs.
A faint green glow from fluorescent bulbs followed us down the cement steps. At the bottom, the door leading to the storeroom was padlocked. While I shone the beam from my flashlight on the lock, Ernie stepped forward and, using the small crowbar he had stuffed under his jacket, he popped open the lock. I picked up the broken lock and dropped it in my pocket. I closed the storeroom door behind us and switched on the overhead bulb.
Pallets of OB Beer, product of the Oriental Brewery, in brown bottles and wooden crates, Korean-made, met our eyes. The days of pilfering American beer from the PX supply lines were over. But judging from the crowd upstairs, and their general state of inebriation, the Grand Ole Opry was still selling plenty of suds. And making a hell of a profit.
The Kimchee Kowboys clanged determinedly into a new song, the heels of their boots pounding on the wooden stage. The bass player and the drummer set up a driving rhythm. They were a hell of a sight, five Korean musicians wearing sequined cowboy outfits and broad-brimmed hats. I wished I could go upstairs and drink beer and enjoy the show but no time for that now.
“Come on,” I told Ernie. “Over here.”
We took off our jackets and started heaving crates of beer away from under the delivery ramp. It was cold down here, though not refrigerated. The howling wind outside kept the temperature close to freezing. Clouds of our breath billowed in front of us yet within minutes we’d both worked up a sweat.
“How much beer do these lifers drink?” Ernie asked.
“Enough to float the Seventh Fleet,” I replied.
Finally, the brick wall of the angle-roofed room was revealed. We stood back and looked at it.
“Maybe nothing’s in there,” Ernie said.
“Maybe.”
But there was only one way to find out. I knelt in front of the wall and poked the tip of the iron chisel into the mortar between bricks. I pulled the wooden mallet out of my pocket and, keeping time with the rhythm of the Kimchee Kowboys’ latest, I started to pound. Dust flew. The chisel slid, held, and then gradually started to edge deeper into the crusted mortar.
Ernie knelt a few feet away from me, pulled out his own mallet and chisel, and began hammering to the same driving rhythm. When the song stopped, we stopped. After a few seconds, a new song-this one having something to do with mom and trains and prison-started up. Ernie and I, like two convicts making a break for freedom, resumed our rhythmic labors.
Cort did his best to convince the honchos of 8th Army that the Seven Dragons were a menace. He also promised that, given enough resources and enough search warrants, he could find Mori Di’s remains and put the Seven Dragons out of business. But 8th Army didn’t want to hear it. Already, Itaewon was the wonder of the country. Nightclubs, lit up and operating seven nights a week, offered such amenities as cold beer and cocktails and shaved ice in every drink along with gorgeous women to serve those drinks and entertainers on wooden stages and the best musicians in the country. The 8th Army G.I. s, who were Itaewon’s only customers, were happy. And if the G.I. s were happy, and there were no major incidents in the ville, and there was no hint of any Commie activity, the honchos of 8th Army were happy.
The Seven Dragons provided order. Maybe not law, but order. And in a country recovering from chaos, that was considered to be a good thing. And with their newfound wealth, the Seven Dragons soon made friends in high places. First within the Korean government and, before long, at 8th Army itself. Charities were contributed to, transportation and free food and free beer were provided to officers for their promotion or retirement parties. And with the money the Seven Dragons made from the girls and the booze and the debauchery of Itaewon, they expanded their operations into construction, Moretti’s old bailiwick. The only organizations with enough money to order new construction projects were, coincidentally enough, the Korean government and the 8th United State Army. The Seven Dragons became richer and more influential every day.
And Cort became a pest. People groaned when they saw him coming and rolled their eyes after he left. But for a while he convinced his superiors to keep Moretti’s SIR open. And on his own time he kept adding to it, although less often than before.
***
A door slammed above us.
Ernie stopped hammering. So did I.
A small pile of gray powder lay on the floor beneath me but I still had not managed to pull even one brick out of the wall.
Footsteps.
Ernie stood and switched off the overhead light. We crouched in darkness, hidden behind a wall of stacked cases of beer.
Someone entered, mumbling to himself, cursing “Miguk-nom”-loutish Americans-and switched on the overhead light. He grabbed what I believed was a case of Seven Star soda water, and
carried it outside. After setting it down, he returned, switched the light off again and carried the tinkling bottles upstairs.
Without speaking, Ernie and I returned to our labors.
The reports in the SIR became fewer and Cort only bothered to write one up once or twice a month. He was using his own time to investigate because the provost marshal had long ago pulled him off the Moretti case and assigned him to new duties, mostly involving the accountability of 8th Army supply lines. Since the end of the war, these lines had been porous. They had started prosecuting G.I. s for diverting supplies and selling them on the black-market. Their Korean co-conspirators were occasionally rounded up by the Korean National Police for dealing in contraband but keeping tabs on the millions of dollars in military supplies arriving in Korea was a project that would keep the MPs busy for years. Ernie and I, on the black-market detail, were still fighting that battle, however reluctantly.
Cort wrote a personal memorandum that he left in the SIR file. He didn’t mention names but someone in his chain of command had once again ordered him to lay off the Moretti case. It was over, ancient history, don’t stir it up now! But it wasn’t over for Cort. He kept working, gathering data, trying to figure a way to assault the impregnable fortress that now surrounded the Seven Dragons.
And every day the walls of that fortress grew higher.
***
Ernie was the first to pull a brick free. I stuck my nose into the opening and inhaled. There was a musty odor but nothing else in particular, other than dust. I shone the flashlight and looked inside. An open space stared back at me, about the same length as my elbow to my fingertip. How high this opening went I didn’t know but probably up to the angled ramp. Whatever we were looking for, however, would probably be resting on the dirt floor beneath, a floor that I couldn’t see.
We kept hammering.
When the Kimchee Kowboys took a break, we took a break. While we sat in the darkness, listening to the conversation and drunken laughter upstairs, someone clomped down the steps. Two people this time. When they switched on the light they were cursing and laughing. They grabbed crates of beer and carried them upstairs, making two trips, and then they switched off the light and left us alone in the dark. Evidently, they weren’t concerned about the padlock and they made no effort to lock the outside door. It figured that on a busy night they’d just as soon leave the door open. When the Kimchee Kowboys started up again, Ernie and I resumed hammering.