by Martin Limon
She unlatched the chain and let the door swing free, hustling off as she did so toward the hallway. “Sit down,” she shouted over her shoulder. “I’ll be out in five minutes.”
It took fifteen. When she returned, Ernie and I had taken seats in the front room. She wore black leotard-like pants, a pullover sweater, and hair piled and pinned atop her head. She’d put on makeup, which had probably taken most of that time.
“Okay,” she said, sitting down without bothering to offer us coffee. “What do you want?”
“How’s Jenny?” I asked.
She seemed surprised by the question. “Fine. She’s at school,” she said.
“She must’ve been delighted to see you.”
She reached for some cigarettes and a white ceramic ashtray. “You’re not from Defense Youth Activities,” she said. “You’re cops. Why are you here?” She lit up, again without offering us any. “I don’t like the Army much,” she said. “It’s come between me and my husband. And I don’t like living on this base. It’s so freaking boring. And the women all think that if their husband gets promoted, they get promoted. As far as I’m concerned,” she said, “they can kiss my heinie.”
Ernie was silent. Apparently, he’d decided to let me handle this interview. For the time being, anyway.
“That woman you met at the O’Club,” I said. “The Korean one. What’s her name?”
“Her Korean name?”
“Yes.”
“Hell if I know. I can never keep them straight. I just called her Shin.”
“Shin?”
“Yeah. Like the leg bone.”
I jotted it down.
“What’s this woman’s story?” I asked.
Evelyn exhaled a long drag and eyed me suspiciously. “What do you want to know about her for?”
“Was she authorized to come on base?”
“Probably not.”
“So how did she get into the O’Club?”
“The way most local women do, I think. Flashed a smile to some GI who could get her in; pretended to be grateful to a big strong man for helping her.”
“So an officer escorted her into the club,” I said. “As a guest.”
“Probably. She had a lot of friends.”
“And the staff treated her well?”
“The Korean staff, yes. Especially the young women. They liked her style. She was young and beautiful and smart—and friendly. It was nice to have someone to talk to who wasn’t a prig.”
“How’d you first meet her?”
Evelyn puffed again, thoughtfully. “She sent me a drink at the O’Club. And told the waitress to ask if I wanted to join her. So I did.”
“You two got along?”
She shrugged. “Well enough.”
“How’s her English?”
“Better than mine,” she said, chortling. “Bob’s always telling me I embarrass him at social functions. That I talk like a gutter whore.”
“When you drink?”
“Yeah. I like drinking. And speaking my mind. Anything wrong with that?”
“Not as far as I’m concerned.” I paused, flipping through my notes. “So you went downtown with this woman?”
“Yes,” Evelyn said. “That was the second or third night I saw her at the O’Club.”
“Did you arrange to meet with her?”
“Not formally, no. I just figured she’d show up at happy hour.”
“Why’d you agree to go downtown with her?”
“It sounded like fun, the way she described it. I told you, I was usually bored out of my mind.”
“You went to the Blue Heaven Nightclub.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Pretty good. How’d you know?”
“Trade secret,” I said. “After that, you fell off our radar.”
She gazed at me coolly. “And what radar is that?”
“When a military dependent vanishes without a trace, we get worried.”
“Afraid I’ll do something to embarrass the command.” The last word was freighted with resentment. “You want me to tell you where I went?”
“That’d be nice,” I said.
She took a last drag and stubbed out her cigarette. “I wanted a little excitement. With people who knew how to laugh and didn’t look down their noses at me. And I found it out there in downtown Seoul in those fancy nightclubs. Shin was nice enough to show me the ropes. Introduce me to rich men. Sometimes, I’d sit in a booth with half a dozen of them, all of them focused solely on me, vying to light my cigarettes. They poured me scotch. Not cheap bar scotch like I used to serve back in Austin, but the good stuff. Chivas or Johnny Walker Black. I like that feeling of being catered to.” She stared at Ernie and then at me, challenging us. “Anything wrong with that?”
I shrugged. “Not that I can see.” Again I shuffled through my notes. “Where’d you stay?”
She shrugged again, more pointedly this time. “Here and there.”
“Like where?”
“Shin has an apartment. Pretty nice place.”
“Where?”
“How the hell should I know? A high-rise somewhere in Seoul.”
“Did you two always go out together?”
“At first. Then I started going out on my own.”
“Why didn’t she come with you?”
“She’s a businesswoman. Has responsibilities. Me, I was sort of on vacation, you know—a vacation from Bob. You know he likes to be called Major Bob? Especially in the sack.” She chuckled. “Once I was familiar enough with the clubs and had dates lined up with some of the businessmen, I’d just get ready, go downstairs, and tell the cabdriver the name of the place. Even though I don’t speak a word of Korean, they always got me there. Once or twice,” she said, grinning devilishly, “the guys sent a car for me. With a driver and everything.”
“Nice,” I said.
She glanced at Ernie. “Don’t you talk?”
“Not when my partner here is doing such a good job.”
“He smarter than you?”
“By a lot.”
She laughed out loud and reached for her cigarettes. “You want one?” she said, offering the pack to Ernie.
“Never touch the stuff,” Ernie said.
She waved the pack toward me, but I shook my head. She lit her cigarette.
“So are we done here?” she asked. “I have a lot to do. The house is a mess.”
“Don’t you have a housemaid?”
“I fired her,” she said.
“Why?”
“She was stealing.”
“How do you know?”
“How do I know? Shit’s gone, that’s how I know.”
“What’d she steal?”
“This and that.”
Accusations were occasionally levied against the maids, but they rarely turned out to be true. Given the miserable state of the Korean economy, a steady job on base was far too valuable for a middle-aged woman to jeopardize with petty theft.
“Maybe you just wanted her gone,” Ernie said. “Out of your way.”
She seemed amused by Ernie. “Why would I want that?”
Now it was Ernie’s turn to shrug. “For the same reason you don’t like the other officers’ wives. Catty competition.”
She laughed out loud. “That old hag? Please. I just didn’t like giving her the hundred dollars a month.”
“You’d rather spend it on yourself?”
“Why not? It’s my money.”
“What about Jenny?” Ernie asked. “Do you love her?”
Evelyn Cresthill’s face tightened, anger creeping into her expression. “Of course. What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about leaving your daughter here, alone and afraid, while you were out having a good time, drinking in
nightclubs, having rich men light your cigarettes.”
“What would you know about it? Goddamn it, I have a right to go out—to live instead of staying cooped up in this dump day after day.”
“Did Shin pay you,” Ernie continued, “or did you take money directly from the men?”
She grabbed a nearby cushion and threw it at Ernie. I stood. Evelyn was reaching for the glass ashtray, but I snatched it up before she could hurl it at Ernie’s head. He was also standing now.
“When are you going back, Evelyn?” he asked. “When you’ve recharged your batteries? When you’ve been to the bank and taken out enough money? When you’ve convinced Mrs. Bronson to watch your daughter for another week or two?”
“Get out!” she screeched, pointing at the front door. “Get the hell out of my house before I call the MPs.”
We did. And once we were on the porch, she slammed and locked the door behind us. As we walked to the jeep, I said, “You’ve been reading that book again.”
“What book?”
“The one about how to make friends and influence people.”
“I was hoping she’d tell us more about the gangs and how they operate.”
“It sounds like she doesn’t know much.”
“What was the point of all this? How did Miss Shin profit from showing Evelyn Cresthill around town?”
“Maybe she took a cut for Evelyn’s company from the businessmen without telling Evelyn.”
“Maybe,” Ernie replied. “Seems sort of penny ante.”
“Maybe she just does it for kicks. Or to promote her business, whatever that is.”
“Do you think Evelyn could find that apartment building?”
“Sure. She had to know the name of the place to tell cabdrivers. You want to go back and ask?”
“Probably not a good time.” Ernie climbed in behind the wheel of the jeep. “Evelyn Cresthill stumbled onto a good thing. High living. Glamour. Beats the hell out of a bake sale at the Officers’ Wives Club.”
He started the engine.
“If you were in her shoes,” I asked, “if you were a woman, would you do the same thing?”
“Hell no, I’d do worse. Those Nipponese businessmen would never know what hit ’em.”
“And the daughter?”
“Well, yeah, that’s different. Leaving a ten-year-old alone, that’s the rough part.”
-20-
The Cosmos Hotel was the newest in downtown Seoul. More fancy high-rise joints had been planned, but so far, the Cosmos was the most modern of available digs. At the marble-topped check-in counter, I asked for Corrine Fitch.
The Korean clerk thumbed through a card file.
“F.I.T.C.H.,” I said, spelling it out.
He looked at me, slightly offended. “I know.” He returned to his search. Finally, he pulled out a card, stepped away to a phone, and dialed. Ernie glanced around the lobby. Well-dressed young Korean women in high heels clattered to and fro. Three of them, holding each other by linked elbows, headed straight for the elevators.
“Pros,” Ernie said.
“How can you tell?”
“Three young Korean women alone, dressed to the nines. No way they could afford one of these rooms. Those girls have been picked out of a catalogue and are on their way to see clients.”
“Three together?”
“Japanese businessmen travel in groups.”
Entire planeloads of Japanese men, usually from the same company, arrived at Kimpo Airfield practically by the hour, which was part of the reason so many new hotels were being built.
“No answer,” the clerk said.
I showed him my badge. “What room number?”
“I’m sorry sir, I can’t—”
I glanced at the card in his hand before he could shield it from me. Room 706. Ernie and I marched toward the elevator bank. Once inside, I hit 7.
The door to room 706 was locked, but I politely asked one of the maids to open it. Using English, I explained that I was a friend of the American woman staying there and we were supposed to pick her up, but she hadn’t answered her phone, so I wanted to make sure she wasn’t ill. The maid didn’t understand a word of this. Still, she was intimidated by the presence of foreigners and impressed by my confident reasoning. She turned and knocked on the door. When there was no answer, I motioned for her to use her key. She looked worried, looking around as if someone else might appear to give her the right answer. I then flashed my badge and switched to Korean, asking politely until she finally slid the key home and twisted the lock. Ernie and I pushed past her into the room. She backed away and quickly disappeared.
“Do you think she’ll call security?” Ernie asked.
“I doubt it. Better to pretend she never saw us.”
To most Koreans who were just trying to make a living, Americans were much more trouble than they were worth. Who knew which powerful people she might offend if she complained about two US military cops?
The bed hadn’t been touched, other than a slight muss in the coverlet where someone had sat down. A suitcase on wheels, the same one we’d seen her pulling behind her at Kimpo Airfield, sat next to the bed. It had been opened, but not much had been removed.
“When I called her yesterday,” I told Ernie, “she answered like she’d been expecting a call from someone else. And she hung up in a hurry.”
The business suit we’d seen her wearing was hung neatly in the closet, the heels below that on the floor.
“So she changed,” Ernie said, “and went out.”
“Yeah. But where?”
“Not another missing woman,” Ernie said.
We searched the room and found nothing except for some notes jotted on a pad next to the phone. Doodles, really. I was trying to make sense of them when someone burst through the door.
I was expecting hotel security, but to my unexpected delight, it was Corrine Fitch.
“Oh, you’re here,” she said, almost relieved. “Sorry about the nine o’clock. This Seoul traffic is worse than New York.” Then her face clouded. “What the hell are you doing in my room?”
“You didn’t make your appointment,” I said, “and you didn’t answer your phone. We were afraid something happened to you.”
This seemed to mollify her somewhat. She wore corduroy pants, hiking boots, and a windbreaker over a T-shirt with the logo for some sort of hockey team.
“You’re from New York?” Ernie asked.
“Yes. Well, I suppose you could say I’m originally from Korea.” She slipped off her windbreaker, hung it in the closet, and said, “It’s a long story. I’ll be right back.” She stepped into the bathroom and shut the door. As the fan whirred, Ernie sat on the bed and I sat at a chair next to a small table by the window.
“What do you think she’s up to?” Ernie asked.
“Haven’t the foggiest.”
“She looked like she was ready to climb Mount Tobong.” The peak north of downtown Seoul. “Not your typical criminal defense attorney.”
She emerged from the bathroom, hair brushed back, and said, “Well. Let’s talk. Shall we go to the coffee shop? I’m starving.”
Ernie and I both stood. In the elevator, we were silent amid a crowd of Japanese businessmen in suits and heavily made-up young Korean women, seeming to prove Ernie’s earlier theory. All of them stared straight ahead, no one touching or even talking. When the doors opened onto the main lobby, we stepped out and watched the occupants depart in two separate groups, the women following the men.
Corrine Fitch noticed Ernie and me staring after them. “Who are they?” she asked.
“No one,” I said.
We found an elegant coffee shop downstairs and were escorted to a table next to a huge plate-glass window. I quickly scanned my menu, which was in English, Japanese, and Korean.
“That
American breakfast sounds good,” Corrine said.
“Yeah. Sausage and eggs,” Ernie replied. “But the eggs will be overcooked and the sausage will be soft and gummy, like those Vienna sausages from a can. And there won’t be any potatoes. For toast, they’ll give you something that tastes like burnt Silly Putty.”
She gazed at him. “So you wouldn’t recommend it.”
“No. And the Korean breakfast will be second-rate. Within two blocks of this hotel, there are probably fifty restaurants that serve better—and cheaper—Korean food. The best thing on the menu in these tourist hotels is usually the Japanese breakfast. Miso soup, steamed rice, and roast mackerel. You can’t screw that up.”
“Okay,” she said. “The Japanese breakfast it is.”
A chubby-cheeked waitress approached and Corrine Fitch placed the order. After handing the young girl our menus, Corrine smiled at us. I admired the golden smoothness of her face and felt a small stab of jealousy at Ernie for hogging the conversation.
“So you guys must be old hands,” she said to us.
“Yes,” I replied. “Is this your first time in Korea?”
She smiled even broader. “Second. The first was when I was born.”
“You were adopted?” Ernie said.
“Bingo,” she replied. “I was a refugee of the Korean War.”
She proceeded to tell us that some twenty years ago, with virtually everyone in the country either fleeing American bombings or Communist atrocities, she had somehow ended up in an orphanage and been shipped to safety, then adopted by the Fitch family. She’d grown up in upstate New York with two older siblings who were the natural-born children of Mr. and Mrs. Fitch.
“Why Corrine?” Ernie asked.
“That was the name of one of my great-aunts.”
“Your adopted great-aunts.”
“Same to me,” she said. “I barely remember my Korean family.”
“How old were you when you were adopted?”
“According to my mom, six.”
“Which could mean five,” I said. She looked at me curiously. “Here, a child is considered one year old when they’re born.”
“Hunh,” she said. “I didn’t know that.”
The waitress brought a tray loaded with our breakfast and set the hot soup, steaming rice, and filleted mackerel in front of us. Corrine Fitch studied the fish and asked the waitress, “Is this caught fresh from the sea, or was it raised in a fish farm?”