by James Church
“I’ve been thinking.” Ignoring the chief inspector is sometimes the wiser course, especially when he begins speaking in threes. It means he is feeling pressure from above, and provoking him only makes matters worse. I turned to the subject at hand. “You say the Ministry wants this solved. According to you, the upper levels are hell-bent on a solution. The funny thing is, no one I’ve talked to today will tell me anything. Everything they say points toward unknown figures at higher levels that want me to go away. Why is that, I wonder.”
Min laughed, though he didn’t bother putting any mirth into it. It was a very tense laugh. “You wonder. Just take my word for it, will you?” He finally turned and gave me a smile that looked like he had bought it in the state store; maybe it came from one of those cans that had sat on the shelf a long time. “I already told you, this is sensitive. The Ministry thinks it might scare the damned foreigners, and if they go, where do we get investment?” He said the last word as if even speaking it cost a lot.
“Investment? Since when is the Ministry in charge of economics?”
“You and I are frogs in the mud, Inspector, but there are those with the means all around us. We have a lot of enlightened people in this Ministry, believe it or not. They know what is going on.”
“People with means are enlightened. Frogs are not, I take it.”
“Foreign money fuels growth, there are no two ways around it. The Ministry understands that, and it understands that keeping the foreign pocketbooks happy has benefits all around.” He looked at me, and I looked at him. “Well,” he said, “almost all around.”
A small warning flag popped up. “Yes and no. I can see that it’s obviously sensitive, which is why I’m inclined to go back to my office and forget the whole thing. But this isn’t about scaring foreign money away. That’s what the woman at the bank wanted me to think, only she wasn’t very convincing. She really wasn’t even trying that hard. Nice waist, by the way.”
“Inspector, I warn you.” Min sat down, and his eyelids fluttered once or twice. “I know you have a hard time getting the central point sometimes, but please try. This . . . case . . . is . . . important. That means we have to concentrate, not go off on wild goose chases, and not stop to admire waists. You went downtown to one of those drinking clubs. Why?”
I indicated I’d be back, quickly crossed the hall to my office, and dug around in the top drawer of my file cabinet for a piece of pine. Good, dependable pine. It was the best thing to have at the beginning of an ugly case. Nothing fancy or elaborate, nothing with any quirks or special needs. Pine was uncomplaining, not proud, lazy as a summer day, and just as complacent. That’s why pine trees take so long to grow, sheer laziness. I found what I was looking for, a small oblong piece with one edge smoothed and the other still with that prickly feel where a rough saw bit the wood. As soon as it fit into my palm, I took a deep breath and stepped back into Min’s room.
“Don’t tell me you want me to stay away from that drinking place. For one thing, it’s in my sector.” Conversations with Min get picked up easily enough. We were both used to interruptions. “Between the ugly bartender and the slick owner, the two of them know something about this robbery, though I wouldn’t say they were directly involved. At least not the owner; his bartender might be a different story. For sure, even if they’re not involved, and even if they don’t know exactly who was involved, they must know someone who does. That sort of place attracts bad types.” I looked down at the piece of wood in my hand. I was supposed to tell Min to drop the case, and here I was arguing in favor of following up at the club.
“Where did you get that silk stocking?”
“If you know everything I’ve done today, why don’t you just write the report yourself?”
“I only know what I’m told, Inspector, and I got a phone call telling me to assign you to something else.”
We stared at each other. I could hear a whole line of warning flags snapping in the wind. Min shrugged, finally. “I don’t know who it was, and so I’m not giving you any orders one way or the other. As far as I’m concerned, the Ministry still wants this solved, and I’ve put you in charge. So solve it. Go away. And get rid of that damned piece of wood.”
“I’m more than liable to get someone important annoyed with us if I proceed with the investigation, you realize that.” The level gaze I was going to use to drive the stake through the heart of the investigation was out of reach.
“Inspector, you annoy me on occasion, that wood annoys me, but it doesn’t stop you. I’ll back you up, and as far as I can tell, the Minister will, too.” He paused to consider whether his note of uncertainty about how far the Minister would go to support us was clear enough. It was. “If there is a change in that, something more than an anonymous caller, I’ll be the first to let you know.”
“What about the lady with the waist?”
“What about her?”
“She’s a potential source of information. I may have to sweeten her up. Bowl of noodles, an evening at a karaoke bar. Talk doesn’t come as cheap as it used to. People don’t just jump when I tell them to.”
“The answer is nyet, to quote a Russian I once played cards with all the way from Moscow to Khabarovsk on the train. My only trip outside.” His eyes got a faraway look. “Have you taken that train, Inspector? Trees passing outside the window endlessly, even you would go crazy.” Then he shook his head. “I’m not paying for information. You’ll have to weasel it out of this lady some other way. Try turning on the charm. Dress up for her, why don’t you? Put a handkerchief in your breast pocket or something.” He pretended to study a file on his desk. It had been there for months.
“Don’t ask me why, but I don’t think this thing was planned by Chagang people.”
Min looked up and frowned.
2
I did some paperwork, stared at the shadows as they crept across the cracks in the ceiling for a while, then got in the office car and drove toward the Gold Star Bank the long way around, across one of the newer bridges over the Taedong, through old blocks of apartments, past the diplomatic compound, over to the university, and finally back over the river. Traffic on the street in front of the bank was sparse, no buses. There was plenty of space to park, but I didn’t want to get too close. I found a deserted cross street from which I could watch the back of the building and pulled over to wait. It was getting to be night, and it didn’t take long for night to arrive.
After fifteen minutes, the back door opened, and a man hurried down a path that cut across an empty lot. He had on a cloth cap and was hunched over. It was too dark to see his face; there was only a slice of moon and no lights this far away from the main road. A minute later, the door opened again, and the woman in the yellow dress stepped out. She looked up and down the street, started to walk in my direction, then turned and strolled the other way. It wasn’t the sort of move she would have made if she’d seen my car, nothing abrupt. It was more like she’d changed her mind, remembered she had to be somewhere else, but not urgently. I was about to get out of my car to follow her when the door opened a third time, and a man with broad shoulders appeared. He walked with a confident step you could distinguish a kilometer away. I was willing to bet the crease in his trousers was sharp. If it wasn’t my new best friend from the Club Blue, it had to be his twin brother, golden aura and all.
3
I thought for sure he would have a car and driver. Instead, he walked across the street and into the opening that led to a group of old two-story buildings. The whole block had been designated for replacement a few years ago, but as usual there was a delay between designation and implementation. As a result, the people who lived there were never sure when they would be told to move out. In fact, those with any connections had already left and been assigned new apartments on the other side of the city. The remainder sat around and fretted; a few complained to me whenever I walked by. This was part of my district, and they thought I should listen. It wasn’t the sort of place a man with cr
eases on his trousers would live. If he could talk his way into the party offices for a business permit, he could easily get himself a four-room apartment in one of the new buildings in the western section. So what brought him here? It might be home to his ugly bartender, though I’d have heard about it if someone new moved into the neighborhood. It was already too late to try to follow the trousers. Anyway, even with this little snapshot I’d seen enough. There was now a line connecting the bank to the drinking club to these old apartments. I didn’t know if it was a straight line, a dotted line, or a chorus line, but it gave me somewhere to start.
I stopped myself. Start what? This case wasn’t going anywhere, not anywhere good, anyway, no matter what Min said. And I still wasn’t convinced he believed the argument he had fed me about making foreign investors happy. Maybe for the time being he wanted me to be seen poking around in a few places, enough to keep the Ministry off our necks, though he would never admit it. In about a week they’d tell him to reel me in and forget the whole thing. That anonymous call had been a straw in the wind. It let them say they’d warned us if something went wrong, but it gave them time to say they hadn’t shut down the investigation if they discovered at the last minute that this was really a category one case after all. Even the Ministry wasn’t sure which way to jump on this one, I’d bet on it.
What it all added up to was a slow roll, everything done in order, nothing rushed. Just take out the training manual and follow recommended procedure for general investigations, page by page, paragraph by paragraph. In a day or two, the lady with the waist could be questioned more closely. The back room at the bank could wait a little longer, too. I’d even put the stockings aside for the moment. Working on the bus angle was probably a wise step, especially because it was unlikely to lead anywhere. The Traffic Bureau would have a report on the accident; they might even have impounded the bus, though fortunately they probably wouldn’t be able to keep it very long. The tour company—which was undoubtedly not run by one of Min’s frogs in the mud—would want it back in service quickly. Most likely, no one would have bothered to ask the driver why he was so far off the normal traffic route. No one wanted to know. I probably didn’t want to know, either. Luckily, the Traffic Bureau was closed for the day. If I got to their offices not too early in the morning, I might have some nonanswers by afternoon.
My cell phone rang. It was still in a glove in my coat pocket, and my coat was in the backseat of the car. I reached over to retrieve it, hoping this was anyone but Min. Not that anyone else had the number.
I pushed every button until a voice emerged. “Min here. That you, O? Why does it take you so long to answer?”
“Sorry, but I can’t figure out how to use this damned thing. Why do we need them? The radio worked fine.”
“Mobility, O. It makes us mobile and in touch.” A slight pause to complete the triad. “And modern. Three hallmarks of a successful police force. If you didn’t have that fairy music for a ring, you wouldn’t be so embarrassed when someone contacts you.”
“So pick something muscular for me next time I’m in the office with nothing to do. And program it in. I can’t. Why did you call?”
There was a silence.
“Hello? You there?” What good were these things, always fading out. At least the old radios spit and crackled when no one was talking.
“I’m here. I’m rereading a message we just got from the Ministry. There is something I needed to pass on . . . ah . . . here it is. Listen to this. ‘Under no circumstances is the investigation to proceed beyond the information-gathering stage without direct orders from the Minister.’ Got that, Inspector?”
“See?” I pushed a warning flag out of my face. “It’s exactly what I said. They told you they wanted the case solved, now they don’t want us to do anything to solve it. Okay, I’m sitting here gathering information. Maybe I’ll gather information at home after dinner.”
“Negative.”
“Speak in full sentences, Min, this isn’t the army. Am I not to go home, or am I not to have dinner?”
“Go home, get an hour’s sleep, then go out. Go drinking at that club if it suits you. Get a bowl of noodles somewhere. Keep your eyes open. But don’t call me. In fact, turn off your phone and keep it off.”
“Good.” I searched for anything that might be an off switch.
“In fact, leave it in your room. I don’t want it ringing and giving you away. Leave your ID in your room, too, for that matter. Don’t make it obvious we are on this case.”
“On what case? They want us to close it down.”
“It’s messy, I admit, Inspector. We have a complicating factor I didn’t tell you about before. There is a rumor that the State Security Department wants to grab this away from us. You think the Ministry wants us to close it down, but I think they are just trying to keep their balance until they figure out our next move. If we take one wrong step, SSD will grab it, and that would look bad, very bad. The last time they took over one of our investigations, I had to stand up and explain things at three Saturday sessions in a row. The Minister attended all of them, and he took notes. Believe me, it was painful. A lot of talk about how this was another blow to the Ministry’s pride, and a lot of nasty glances my way.”
“Budget.”
“Of course it’s budget, you think I don’t know it’s budget?” Min’s voice faded, and I knew he was looking out in the hall to see if anyone was standing there. “If we let SSD take this case, this sector will be cut to the bone, past the bone. The Minister will personally tear up every request for supplies. He’ll make sure I attend every Saturday meeting for the next year, no exceptions. You know I hate those sessions.”
“I thought you liked meetings.”
“Not Saturday meetings. All of this picking at ideological scabs; I find it unseemly, belittling.”
I waited. There was nothing. It was clear things couldn’t proceed merely on a duo. “Tasteless.” I threw it in the pot just to keep the conversation bubbling.
It was quiet, Min probably pulling thoughtfully at his ear. “I was thinking more along the lines of indecorous,” he said finally.
A little soft, but I wasn’t going to argue. “How late do I stay out, all night? Do I come into the office tomorrow morning without shaving? Or do I get to sleep until lunch?”
“I’ll be at work at 7:00 A.M., Inspector, and you’ll be here to greet me.”
Not likely, I thought. “Static on the line, talk to you soon.” I pushed what looked like the off button on the phone and threw it in the backseat. “Mobility my ass.”
When I arrived at my apartment, there was a block committee meeting going on in the downstairs hall right at the entrance. They were discussing people who hadn’t done their fair share of work in the apartment’s vegetable garden. I backed out the front door and went around to the one on the side, quickstepped to the stairs, and went up four dark flights to my room.
4
There was a knock on the door. One of the old women from downstairs stuck her head into my apartment. “A phone call for you, Inspector.” She grinned. “It’s a woman. Sounds like she needs you. Sort of breathless.”
“You want to listen in on the other line, or can I just file a report when I’m done, Mrs. Chang?” I was lying down, thinking about dinner.
The old woman laughed and opened the door wider. “You better hurry along, she might hang up and call someone else.”
The phone sits on a wooden box in the hall just inside the front entrance to the apartment house. It was off the hook when I got there, and a young man was pacing impatiently nearby. “Can you speed it up? Someone is going to call me any minute.”
“They might be calling right now, for all you know. Relax, they’ll call back.” I picked up the phone. “O here.”
“Inspector, this is Miss Pyon, remember me?”
“Yes, the delightful Miss Pyon, of the beautiful golden noodles. Or perhaps it should be the other way around. What can I do for you?” I didn’t kno
w Miss Pyon well, but I owed her money. Salary was episodic, expenses were uninterrupted. Some restaurants were getting very strict about being paid. Miss Pyon had agreed I could have a bowl of noodles whenever I showed up if, in turn, I would establish a protective bubble around her place. There were only seven or eight tables, so it didn’t have to be much of a bubble. She said she’d been having troubles—of a sort she wouldn’t specify—and thought regular presence on my part would help. Exactly how, she wouldn’t say and I didn’t inquire. Probably she was prone to hysteria. As far as I could see, it was a quiet place, and the noodles were alright, dependable. How she got my number was a question I might want to have answered. I had never told her where I lived. Maybe some customer had recognized me, or maybe she had made some inquiries.
“Could you come over and sit in my shop for a while? Just have some noodles and radiate your calming presence.” She didn’t sound hysterical, but there was a note of unease in her voice.
“Problems again?” I smiled at the impatient young man.
“Maybe we can avoid that if you are here.” In an instant she was past unease, edging toward anxiety. “A couple of drunks.”
“Surely not.” I tried to sound reassuring.