by Un-su Kim
‘What happened to them after?’
‘They moved into a fortress and turned into dogs.’
Chu looked intrigued as he flipped through a few pages of The Blue Wolves, but he seemed to struggle to understand the sentences and soon lost interest. The Blue Wolves landed with a thunk on top of The History of Syphilis.
‘So what’s this I hear about you killing the girl?’ Chu asked nonchalantly.
Reseng’s earlobes turned hot, and he didn’t respond. Instead, he picked up the bottle and filled a glass a third of the way with Jack Daniels. Chu’s eyes followed him closely. Reseng gazed at the glass for a moment before drinking. It tasted sweeter than the first glass.
‘Where’d you hear that?’ Reseng asked. His voice was calm.
‘Here and there.’
‘If you heard it while on the run, then I guess that means everyone knows.’
‘Lot of crazy rumours in this business.’ Chu raised an eyebrow as if to ask why it mattered where he heard it.
Reseng looked Chu straight in the eye. ‘Did Bear tell you?’
‘Bear is a lot quieter than he looks.’
Chu was taking care to defend Bear, which almost definitely meant that Bear was the one who’d told. There were plenty of places where word could’ve got out, but Bear had no reason to take risks for Reseng’s sake. Around here, no one took foolish risks or went out of their way when it came to Chu. Least of all Bear with his two daughters whom he’d struggled to raise on his own. Reseng understood. Had it been a detective sniffing around, Bear would have taken it to the grave. All the same, he couldn’t help feeling annoyed. When word leaks out, it doesn’t have to travel far before you end up in a plotter’s crosshairs.
‘Did you really think you could save her?’ Reseng asked, not backing down.
‘No, of course not. I’m not the type to save anyone. I’m too busy trying to keep myself alive.’
‘So there’s nothing strange about what I did. You’re the strange one.’
‘You’re right, I’m the strange one. You did what was expected of you.’
What was expected…Those words made Reseng feel both relieved and insulted. Chu moved over to the table and poured more alcohol. The bottle was already almost empty. Chu emptied his glass again, opened the second bottle and poured another shot. He gulped that one down as well.
‘I wanted to ask you something,’ Reseng said. ‘Did you ever go back to see her?’
‘Nope.’
‘Then why let her live? Did you think the plotters would pat you on the shoulder and say, “It happens to all of us”?’
‘To be honest, I have no idea.’
Chu drank another glass of whisky. For someone who had gone without any alcohol for two years, he was having no trouble consuming an entire bottle all by himself in less than twenty minutes. His face was turning red. Did he really think he was safe in Reseng’s apartment?
Chu asked, ‘Have you ever met any of the plotters who’ve given you orders?’
‘Not once in fifteen years.’
‘Don’t you wonder?’ Chu asked. ‘Who’s telling you what to do, I mean. Who decides when you use the indicators, when you step on the brake, when you step on the accelerator, when to turn left, when to turn right, when to shut up and when to speak.’
‘Why are you wondering that all of a sudden?’
‘I was standing there, looking at this girl who was just skin and bones, and I suddenly wondered who these plotters were anyway. I could have killed her with one finger. She was so scared, she just sat there frozen. When I saw how hard she was shaking, I wanted to find out exactly who was sitting at their desk, twirling their pen and coming up with this bullshit plan.’
‘I would never have guessed you were such a romantic.’
‘It’s not about romance or curiosity or anything like that. I mean that I didn’t realise until then just what a cowardly prick I’ve been.’ Chu sounded on edge.
‘Plotters are just pawns like us,’ Reseng said. ‘A request comes in, and they draw up the plans. There’s someone above them who tells them what to do. And above that person is another plotter telling them what to do. You know what’s there if you keep going all the way to the top? Nothing. Just an empty chair.’
‘There has to be someone in the chair.’
‘Nope, it’s empty. To put it another way, it’s only a chair. Anyone can sit in it. And that chair, which anyone can sit in, decides everything.’
‘I don’t get it.’
‘It’s a system. You think that if you go up there with a knife and stab the person at the very top, that’ll fix everything. But no one’s there. It’s just an empty chair.’
‘I’ve been in this business for twenty years. I’ve killed countless guys. Including friends of mine. I even killed my protégé. I gave him baby clothes at his daughter’s first birthday party. But if what you say is true, then I’ve been taking orders from a chair all this time. And you broke a defenceless woman’s neck because a chair told you to.’
Chu downed another glass. As he caught his breath, he poured more whisky for Reseng. Reseng ignored it and took a sip of his Heineken. He was tempted to blurt out that he hadn’t broken her neck, but swallowed the words back down with a mouthful of beer.
Instead, Reseng said, ‘You can’t shit in your pants just because the toilet is dirty.’
Chu sneered.
‘You’re sounding more and more like Old Raccoon every day,’ he said. ‘That’s not good. Smooth talkers will stab a guy in the back every time.’
‘Whereas you sound more and more like a whiny brat. Do you really think this tantrum you’re throwing makes you look cool? It doesn’t. No matter what you do, you won’t change a thing. Just like you changed nothing for that girl.’
Chu unzipped the top of his jacket to reveal the leather gun holster under his arm that had been refashioned into a knife holster. He took out the knife and set it on the table. His movements were calm, not the slightest bit menacing.
‘I could kill you very painfully with this knife. Make you shiver in agony for hours, blood gushing, steel scraping against bone, until your guts spill out of your body and hang down to the floor. Do you think you’ll still be mouthing off about empty chairs and systems and claiming that nothing has changed? Of course not. Because you’re full of shit. Anyone who thinks he’s safe is full of shit.’
Reseng stared at the knife. It was an ordinary kitchen knife, a German brand, Henckels. The blade was razor-sharp, as if it had just come off the whetstone. The top of the handle was wound tightly with a handkerchief. Chu preferred that brand because it was sturdy, the blade didn’t rust easily and you could buy it anywhere. Other knifemen looked down on the brand as a lady’s knife that was only good for cooking at home, but in fact it was a good knife. It didn’t chip or break easily the way sushi knives did.
Reseng peeled his eyes away from the knife and looked at Chu. Chu was angry. But his eyes lacked their usual venomous glint. The whisky he’d guzzled must have got to him. Reseng thought about his own knife in the drawer. He tried to recall the last time he’d stabbed someone. Had it been six years? Seven? He couldn’t remember. Could he even get the knife out fast enough? If he made a move for it, Chu might grab his too. And if he did manage to get the knife out of the drawer in time, could he hold his own against Chu? Did he have any chance at all of being the victor?
Unlikely. Reseng took out a cigarette and started smoking. Chu held out his hand. Reseng took out another cigarette, lit it and passed it over to Chu, who inhaled deeply and leaned his head back to stare at the ceiling. He held the pose for a long time, as if to say, ‘If you’re going to stab me, do it now.’
When the cigarette had burned halfway down, Chu straightened up and looked at Reseng.
‘The whole thing’s fucked up, isn’t it? I’ve got all these goons coming after me, hoping to get a taste of that reward money, and meanwhile I have no idea who to kill or what to do. To be honest, I don’t even care if
there is anything at the top. It could be an empty chair like you say, or there could be some prick sitting in it. Won’t make any difference either way to a knucklehead like me. I could die and come back in another form and I still wouldn’t understand how any of this works.’
‘Leave the country. Go to Mexico, the United States, France, maybe somewhere in Africa…Lots of places you could go. Places where you can find work as a hired gun. The other mercenaries will protect you.’
Chu chuckled.
‘You’re giving me the same advice I gave that girl. Am I supposed to thank you now?’
Chu downed his whisky, refilled it, downed it again, then emptied the rest of the second bottle into his glass.
‘Aren’t you going to drink with me? It’s lonely drinking by myself.’
Chu wasn’t joking. He really did look lonely sitting there at the table. Reseng drank the glass of whisky Chu had poured for him. Chu opened the Johnnie Walker Blue and poured Reseng another shot. Then he raised his glass in a toast. Reseng clinked his glass against Chu’s.
‘Oh, that’s much better,’ Reseng said, sounding impressed. ‘I like this Johnnie Walker Blue stuff better than that “real man’s”, or whatever, Jack Daniels.’
Chu laughed. He seemed genuinely amused. He didn’t say much as they worked on the rest of the bottle. Reseng didn’t have anything to say either, so they drank in silence. Chu drank far more than Reseng. When the bottle was empty, Chu stumbled into the bathroom. Reseng heard the sound of pissing, then vomiting, then the toilet flushing several times. Twenty minutes passed and still he did not come out of the bathroom. All Reseng heard was the tap running. His eyes never left Chu’s knife where it sat in the middle of the table.
When Chu still hadn’t come out after thirty minutes, Reseng knocked on the door. It was locked and there was no answer from inside. He got a flathead screwdriver to pry it open. From the already full bathtub, water was flowing onto the floor. Chu was asleep on the toilet, hunched over like an old bear. Reseng turned off the water and helped him to the bed.
Once he was stretched out flat, Chu started to snore like he was getting the first good sleep of his life. His snoring was as loud as he was tall. It was so loud that even Lampshade timidly poked her head out from inside the cat tower, crept down to the bed and started sniffing at Chu’s face and hair. Reseng sat on the couch and drank several more cans of beer, then fell asleep watching Desk and Lampshade enjoying their new toy: they swatted at Chu’s hair and walked across his chest and stomach.
When Reseng awoke in the morning, Chu was gone. His big backpack was gone too. All that was left was his kitchen knife with the handkerchief wrapped around the handle, lying in the middle of the table like a present.
A week later, Chu’s body arrived at Bear’s Pet Crematorium.
By the time Old Raccoon and Reseng got there, it was raining hard, just like on the day of Chu’s visit. Bear held an umbrella over Old Raccoon as he got out of the car.
‘Is it done?’ Old Raccoon asked.
Bear looked surprised at the question. ‘I haven’t started yet.’
Chu’s body was in a toolshed. Bear had refrigerators for storing bodies, but they were small, meant for cats and dogs. He didn’t have anything big enough to fit all of Chu’s 190 centimetres. Old Raccoon unzipped the body bag. Chu’s eyes were closed.
‘I counted twenty-seven stab wounds,’ Bear said with a shiver.
Old Raccoon unbuttoned Chu’s tattered shirt and counted the stab marks himself. Other than the one that entered at the solar plexus and pierced a lung, most of the wounds were not fatal. The assassin could have killed him easily but instead he’d taken his sweet time, dancing around the vital spots, playing with Chu like a lion cub toying with an injured squirrel. Chu’s right elbow was broken, the bone jutting through the skin, and his left hand was still locked tight around a knife. It was the same style and brand as the kitchen knife he had left on Reseng’s table. Reseng tried to remove the knife from Chu’s grip.
‘I tried, too,’ Bear said. ‘It won’t come loose.’
Old Raccoon gazed quietly at Chu’s corpse for a moment before gesturing that he’d seen enough. His raised hand trembled. Bear hurriedly zipped the body bag shut.
‘Hanja hired a real beast this time. He calls himself the Barber. Have you heard of him?’ Bear asked.
‘Only rumours,’ Old Raccoon said gravely.
‘They say he’s a cleaner. And that he’s merciless. He specialises in taking out people like us. Pretty scary guy. What’s the point of stabbing someone twenty-seven times? Seeing the great Chu taken out this way…what chance do the rest of us have?’ Bear looked scared.
‘We should be grateful to him. For taking out garbage like us,’ Old Raccoon said in his usual cynical way.
Bear loaded Chu’s body onto a cart and trundled it over to the incinerator. Together, Reseng and Bear lifted him onto the stainless-steel tray. Chu’s feet stuck out past the end. Bear tried to bend his legs onto the tray, but rigor mortis had already set in.
‘Damn it. Why’s he got to make my life harder with these long legs of his?’
Bear flopped down onto the ground and burst into tears. Reseng gave him a pat on the shoulder and stepped outside. Old Raccoon stared wordlessly at Chu’s body, his face expressionless. Finally Bear got up. His eyes were bloodshot as he closed the door to the incinerator and turned on the power.
Chu’s body was nearly fully cremated by the time Hanja arrived. In addition to the driver, there was a slender man sitting in the black sedan with Hanja. Reseng stared closely at him. He didn’t look like he would be the one they called the Barber. He was far too young to be the source of the terrible rumours associated with the name. Besides, the Barber wouldn’t come all the way out here just for this.
Hanja got out of the car and bowed politely to Old Raccoon, who responded with a barely perceptible nod. Even though it was two in the morning and a long way from anywhere, Hanja was clean-shaven and dressed in a suit and tie.
After glancing around distractedly, he walked over to where Reseng was squatting on the ground in front of the incinerator, smoking. The overpowering smell of Hanja’s aftershave wafted ahead of him.
‘I’m late, but I didn’t want to miss sending off a great warrior,’ Hanja said.
Reseng looked up at him. Hanja gave him a wink to show he was joking.
‘I heard Chu stopped by your place before coming to see me.’
‘That so?’ Reseng asked, his voice low.
‘I would think you’d have called me.’
Reseng took a long drag on his cigarette and didn’t respond. Hanja took a silver pill case out of his pocket and popped a few mints in his mouth.
‘If you’d called me, you’d’ve got some of the reward money. Didn’t I tell you I was giving half to whoever gave us information leading to his capture?’ Hanja’s voice had a teasing lilt.
‘I suddenly forgot your number,’ Reseng said, stubbing his cigarette out on the ground.
Hanja took a business card out of his gold-plated case, leaned down and slipped it into Reseng’s front pocket.
‘Make sure you call next time. We all have to work together.’
With that, Hanja walked over to Bear, took a thick envelope out of his jacket pocket and handed it to him. Bear bowed at a ninety-degree angle as he took the envelope. With each word that Hanja said to him, Bear bowed again and said, ‘Yes, sir, yes, sir, of course sir.’ His business with Bear concluded, Hanja lowered his head and looked into the incinerator for three seconds. Then he bowed politely once more to Old Raccoon, got in the car and left.
Reseng lit another cigarette. We all have to work together. The words echoed in his head. Maybe Hanja was right. Guys like them had to work together. Because, unlike them, real men guzzled Jack on an empty stomach, wailed like cats on the toilet and died with their hands wrapped around a kitchen knife.
X
The incinerator light turned off.
Bear open
ed the door and waited for the heat to dissipate. Smoke billowed out, revealing the white bones of the old man and his dog. They looked as lonely and forsaken as a camel’s skeleton in the middle of the desert, eroded by sand and wind.
Bear flicked away his cigarette and got to work. He spread a mat on the ground, placed a small table on top of it, and set the table with a candle, incense, a bottle of rice wine and a wine cup. Bear checked to see if anything was missing, then looked over at Reseng as if to ask why he wasn’t joining him. Reseng waved him off.
‘Go ahead and ask for forgiveness so you can go to paradise,’ Reseng said. ‘I don’t mind going to hell.’
Bear lit the incense by himself and filled the cup with wine. He bowed twice, kowtowing before the hot, white pile of bones resting inside the incinerator. He closed his eyes in contemplation for several long minutes while mumbling something under his breath—a prayer, perhaps, or an incantation. Then he stuck his finger in the wine cup and flicked the wine evenly into the air around the table and in front of the incinerator. Reseng, who had no idea how Bear had come up with this ritual, sat off to one side and smoked until Bear had completed his ceremony and put away the mat. His insides burned from the cigarette smoke making its way up and down his throat.
Bear used a long metal hook to pull the tray out along the rails. Smoke was still rising from the bones. They looked too bare and insignificant to have belonged to the old man and his dog, who’d been laughing, chatting and gallivanting around the garden only hours earlier. Bear pulled on a fresh pair of white gloves, picked up some tongs, and started carefully collecting the old man’s bones.
‘What should we do with the dog’s bones?’ Bear asked.
‘Mix them together.’
‘What? We can’t do that. Who mixes human and dog bones…?’
‘That dog was like a gift to the old man. He would have wanted it that way.’
Bear thought it over for a moment and then added Santa’s bones to the box with the old man’s.
‘Back when this gentleman was a general,’ Bear murmured, ‘he used to drop by now and then, but never in uniform. He was so dapper…’