by Martin Limon
“The winter of 1953,” I said. “Not so ancient.”
“Ancient enough.”
Ernie waved to some of the business girls who giggled madly in response.
I thought about his question. Who had been here in Itaewon for twenty years or more? Certainly some of the club owners must’ve been here that long. And even a few of their employees: night managers, cashiers. But all the young waitresses and bartenders and pimps and whores came and went; they turned over regularly, every few months, if not every few weeks. None of them had been here that long ago. In the winter of 1953, many of them hadn’t even been born.
Had any cops been here that long? No, the KNPs rotated assignments from station to station regularly; the military government of President Pak Chung-hee didn’t want any one group staying together long enough to form a cohesive power base.
How about G.I.s? There were a few old military retirees around and most of them were veterans of the Korean War. But according to the stories I’d been told at tedious length, they hadn’t been in Itaewon at the time. They’d been assigned to combat units up north near the DMZ, or on the road to the Yalu, or fighting Joe Chink at the Chosin Reservoir. Nobody admitted to being a rear-echelon support troop. Every veteran I’d ever talked to had been only one combat operation short of forcing Hollywood to forget about Audie Murphy.
So who had been living here in Itaewon twenty years ago? There must be somebody. The only way to find out would be to start asking questions. One person would lead to another person and eventually we’d find somebody who’d been witness to the events of 1953. But that might take a while. I needed to find some way to short-circuit the operation.
We stopped in front of the King Club, staring down the main drag of Itaewon at the Seven Club and the Lucky Seven Club and the UN Club. Ernie winked at the business girls who squealed and waved, and then he said, “How about Two Bellies?”
He was right. I hadn’t thought about her. Two Bellies was plenty old enough. She’d lived and worked in Itaewon for as far back as anyone remembered, at least anyone I knew. And at this time of night we could guess, pretty reliably, where we’d be able to find her.
“We ain’t there yet?” I asked.
We turned and trudged up the hill. Beyond the neon, at the darkest alley, we turned left into the night.
According to the testimony of Auntie Mee’s spirit lover, the body of Mori Di was buried somewhere in Itaewon. Koreans believe that the remains of the dead should be buried with proper Confucian ceremony and then periodically honored so the ancestors can rest peacefully in heaven. Mori Di was not being so honored. A restless spirit can cause problems for those in the neighborhood who are still living and Auntie Mee, whether she was delusional or not, had problems. I saw it as just insomnia or nightmares brought on by stress but, in her mind, she was being haunted by a dead G.I. Finding Mori Di’s Serious Incident Report hadn’t been so difficult. Finding his burial place would be more challenging.
According to Cort, there’d been what amounted to a gang war in Itaewon in the winter of 1953. Moretti, and the Koreans who supported him, had been forced to defend themselves against organized toughs who were claiming the entire red-light district of Itaewon as their own. This gang—led by a group of hooligans with exotic names like Snake, Horsehead, and Dragon’s Claw Number One— were extorting money from the prostitutes and black-marketeers who huddled in makeshift tents and lean-tos made of scrap metal and rotted boards. They called themselves the Seven Dragons.
As Moretti constructed new buildings and turned them over to the Ministry of the Interior, the buildings were occupied by legitimate investors. However, within hours, the gang of hoodlums known as the Itaewon Chil Yong, the Seven Dragons, would become, through extortion and coercion, the true power behind these legitimate businesses.
Cort reserved bitter words for the Korean National Police who were blind to this activity. He’d not only accused them of being corrupt but, in effect, part of the gang. And this criminal activity was far from benign. Cort mentioned one young woman who had been bought by a procurer and trafficked into Itaewon about two days before the end-of-month G.I. payday. Cort wasn’t sure of her age but he estimated her to be either fourteen or fifteen. Sixteen tops. After being raped by all the gangsters, on G.I. payday they put her out for sale, cheap, to the droves of American G.I.s flooding into the ville. She suffered bleeding and internal damage and within a week she was dead. Cort wasn’t sure what happened to her body. It probably was buried in a pauper’s grave. Her family out in the countryside would’ve only known she was dead when the money stopped arriving.
But despite all the corruption and suffering that swirled around him, Moretti managed to keep his bearings. He was no chump. He and the three truck-driver G.I.s living with him in the ville saw what was going on. Instead of turning over buildings to the Ministry of the Interior, they switched their efforts to smaller projects. They started building on land already occupied by squatters. If someone was selling warm chestnuts from a shack made of scrap lumber, Moretti laid a cement foundation, built walls, and slapped on a roof. He classified this in his records as “repairs and upkeep” rather than as new construction. Therefore, he didn’t have to turn it over to the Ministry of the Interior. As a tactic it had been worth a try but the Seven Dragons hadn’t been fooled. As soon as a business started to prosper—and in this world “prosperity” meant a shop owner was able to feed his family—the Seven Dragons demanded their cut.
It was the orphanage that brought Moretti and the Seven Dragons into direct conflict. It was the biggest building in Itaewon, four stories high. When it was finished, Moretti commandeered the first floor of the building as his own headquarters. This meant that, technically, the building was under the jurisdiction of the 8th United States Army and, therefore, Moretti didn’t have to turn it over to the corrupt ROK government. In the upper three stories, he allowed a group of Buddhist nuns to provide food and shelter for homeless children. The 8th Army Corps of Engineers backed Moretti on this and, in recompense, promised the Ministry of the Interior that the next three buildings constructed would be theirs. But the gangsters didn’t want an orphanage in their midst. The Buddhist nuns were revered by the destitute business girls and soon the nuns were counseling them and even feeding them and encouraging them to return to their families. After praying at the little temple that was set up on a hill behind the ville, some of the girls ran away, breaking their contracts with the mama-sans who were their procurers. They stopped producing income, most of which would’ve gone to the Seven Dragons of Itaewon.
Moretti hustled a deal with 8th Army’s Ration Breakdown Point, procuring a daily allotment of army chow for himself and his three troops. After the honcho at the breakdown point heard what Moretti was trying to do, he supplemented the daily ration with enough food to feed the entire orphanage. This wasn’t as much chow as one might assume since both the orphans and the nuns ate like birds, mostly grain and green vegetables. Later, the 8th Army honchos signed off on yet another 30 percent supplement to Moretti’s food allocation because he’d set up a soup kitchen that began operating out of the back door of the building. Soon he was feeding over a hundred people a day; just rice gruel and beans and sliced turnip but it was enough to keep them alive. And the people of Itaewon started to feel better about themselves, more confident about the future. And people who are well fed are less vulnerable to the demands of petty tyrants like the Seven Dragons of Itaewon.
This was too much. According to testimony Cort had gathered, Snake, Horsehead, and Dragon’s Claw Number One called a confab of the Seven Dragons and after much cursing and posturing, they did what they’d been wanting to do for quite a while.
They declared war on Mori Di.
“Wei kurei, nonun?” What is it with you?
Two Bellies looked up from the huatu, flower cards, she was slapping on the warm vinyl floor, clearly wishing that Ernie and I would go away. She sat with her legs folded beneath her, at the edge of an army b
lanket which was piled in the middle with brass coins and the hard rectangular plastic flower cards. A half dozen other women sat around the same blanket. All of them rotund, all of them wearing loose housedresses, the skin sagging beneath their cheeks. They were maids or mama-sans for the business girls.
The open oil-papered door faced a dark courtyard surrounded by more hooches, all locked and silent. They were rented by the business girls who were now at the nightclubs or walking the streets. At this hour, the old women who were the mentors to these mostly teenagers, finally were allowed a few minutes of peace and quiet that would be disrupted as soon as the midnight curfew approached and the girls started dragging half-drunk American G.I.s home with them. Then for a while, until everyone passed out, there’d be enough noise and drama to provide plots for twenty daytime soap operas.
I told Two Bellies what we wanted.
“How much you pay?” she asked.
“No pay,” Ernie said. “If you don’t help, we’ll check your hooch and bust you for black-market.”
That’s how these women made the bulk of their income. By purchasing the American-made PX goods that the G.I.s brought out to the ville. It was a good deal all around. For the few dollars the G.I. spent on imported scotch or American cigarettes, he was able to spend the night with a beautiful young woman. The woman was reimbursed by Two Bellies in hard cash and Two Bellies kept the overage that she made on the black-market.
“What you wanna know?” she asked.
I mentioned the name Mori Di.
All of the card players stopped what they were doing and stared up at me, open mouthed.
“You know Mori Di?” Two Bellies asked.
I hesitated before answering. It wouldn’t be a good idea to tell them that, according to Auntie Mee, Mori Di’s spirit had returned to Itaewon. These women were superstitious enough to actually believe the story and then be too frightened to get involved. Instead, I shrugged and said, “I’ve heard of him. People say he was a good man. I want you to show me what the village was like back then, when Mori Di was alive.”
Two Bellies pondered our proposition, cursed beneath her breath, but finally slammed her cards on the vinyl floor. She rose to her feet, stepped out of the hooch, slipped on her sandals, and led us across the courtyard to her room.
“Yogi,” Two Bellies said. Here.
We were outside, in the street. She pointed at the big cement three-story building known as the King Club. “That first one. Only building that time.” She waved a flabby arm to indicate the entire panorama of Itaewon. “Everything mud, everything wood hooch, everything shit that time. Anybody cold. Anybody hungry. Only this building have. Mori Di build.”
“You knew him?”
Two Bellies placed a hand on her hip, canted her rotund figure, and said, “Two Bellies know anybody that time.” She pointed to the center of her chest. “But that time I no have two bellies.” She grabbed her paunch. “Two Bellies look number hana.” Number one. “Better than any girl in Itaewon.”
And it was true. Before we’d left her hooch, Two Bellies insisted we look at her photo album. It was filled with old black-and-white snapshots of a slender young woman with long legs and lovely breasts, always heavily made up, her jet black hair coiffed into expensive-looking hairdos, and wearing silk dresses that clung to her curvaceous figure.
“This me during war,” she said. “This me after war.”
While virtually everyone around her suffered, the woman we knew as Two Bellies had prospered.
“Lotta G.I.s,” she said. “Lotta officers. Not all American. Many countries. How you say? England. Ethiopia. Swiss. Some have taak-san money.” A lot of money. “Me, everybody call Miss Pak that time, not Two Bellies. Miss Pak number one girl. All man gotta be nice to Miss Pak. Miss Pak make a lot of money.”
“What’d you do with all that money?” Ernie asked.
“You know,” she said, flipping her wrist in the air. “Spend.”
And now she was pointing at the King Club, inviting us to picture it standing alone like a shining beacon amidst a sea of shanties and suffering. Back when she had been the Empress of Itaewon. All of the photos in her album were of either herself posing alone or with one or two girlfriends. Invariably, she was in the center of the photograph. They were records of her sexiness. As if she was saying,This is how I looked once. Eat your heart out.
“Before,” Two Bellies continued, “I have many picture with G.I. Many boyfriend, many different country. I takey all that kind picture, throw out.” She mimicked ripping photographs into thin shreds. “They all lie to Miss Pak. But Mori Di picture, I no have. He number one G.I. If I have picture of Mori Di, I no tear up.”
“Were you his yobo?” Ernie asked.
“No. Mori Di no have girlfriend. He all the time work.”
“With all the women around Itaewon,” Ernie persisted, “he must’ve had some girlfriend.”
“Maybe.” Two Bellies shrugged. “I busy that time, work nightclub. Mori Di, he no come inside nightclub. He all the time work.”
Two Bellies paraded down the street, her posture erect, leaning back slightly, as if to show off the paunch for which she was named. Her cotton print dress clung to a figure that now resembled a soft melon. Like a proud tour guide, she pointed out the Seven Club, built by Moretti; the Lucky Seven Club, also built by Moretti; and finally, where the Itaewon main drag meets the Main Supply Route, the UN Club, also built by Moretti. Down the MSR, about one long block away, sat the 007 Club. Up the hill behind that sat the Grand Ole Opry Club. Those clubs plus the King Club—and the Yobo Club which had since been torn down—made seven major buildings constructed by Moretti and his three assistants. Not bad work in the middle of a country ravaged by war.
“Which one was the orphanage?” I asked.
Two Bellies eyes widened. “How you know?”
I shook my head. I wasn’t going to tell her. “I know,” I said.
“Come on,” she said. “I show.”
The Grand Ole Opry Club sat halfway up Hooker Hill. The narrow road was darker than most of the pedestrian pathways in Itaewon, the only neon to be found flashed right in front of the Grand Ole Opry Club. The gaggles of business girls who stared at us from shadowed doorways didn’t bother to come out and clutch at our sleeves and coo and cajole as they usually did. Having Two Bellies with us was like a free pass. They knew we were up to something and, whatever it was, we weren’t looking for women, so we weren’t accosted. For an American G.I., walking up Hooker Hill could be a trial. The girls poured out at you like spiders from a trapdoor. Then, once you were surrounded, you had to gently unfold the pincerlike grips on your forearm, keep shaking your head no, and keep apologizing for not being more interested in the young woman’s charms, making excuses, telling the girls you had to meet someone in one of the cubbyhole barrooms up the hill. It was a relief not to have to go through all that. I’m not sure Ernie felt the same way.
The Grand Ole Opry Club was a country-western bar, and one of the less frequented haunts in Itaewon. Still, the building was impressive. Four stories. The lowest housed the nightclub. In the three stories above it were small cubicles occupied by business girls. At least they had previously been occupied by business girls. In recent months, because of the burgeoning population in Seoul and the resulting housing shortage, families had started to move into even these quarters. I saw them in the morning: fresh-faced children wearing their tattered school uniforms—the girls with hair bobbed short, the boys with dark caps pulled down low on their foreheads— hoisting their backpacks on the way to catch the bus to school. Luckily, at that hour, the business girls were fast asleep and the G.I.s had scurried back to compound for morning formation. But when the kids came home at night, after extracurricular activities that most of the hardworking Korean students participated in, they had to wend their way through groups of rowdy G.I.s playing grab-ass with the now wide awake business girls of Itaewon. I never felt good about that. I wondered, once they grew up, what memor
ies these kids would have of Americans.
Desultory crooning drifted out of the front door of the Grand Ole Opry Club. I recognized the voice: Buck Owens, in stereo.
“How about the Grand Ole Opry Club owner?” I asked Two Bellies. “Did he know Mori Di?’
Two Bellies shook her head vehemently. “No. Woman own now. Her daddy long time ago own bar. Long time ago, he die. Now she run place.”
“How about the other owners of the other nightclubs?” Ernie said. “Did they know Mori Di?”
“Of course they know. They all know.”
The nightclub owners Ernie was referring to were stalwarts of the local community. Whenever they were seen inside their own nightclubs—which was seldom—they were close shaved, slickly coifed, and clad in a suit and tie. They had formed an important organization with much influence here in the southern Yongsan District of Seoul: the Itaewon Club Owners’ Association. And they had influence at 8th Army. More than once I’d seen one owner or another glad-handing with the brass at the 8th Army Officers’ Club or shooting a round of golf at the 8th Army golf course.
“Who was Snake?” I asked.
Two Bellies eyes widened. “How you know?”
“Never mind. Who was he?”
“I no talk.”
“Why? What are you afraid of?”
Two Bellies took a step backwards. Ernie positioned himself to grab her but I waved him off.
“How about Horsehead?” I asked. “Or Dragon’s Claw Number One?”
Two Bellies’s eyes glistened in the neon glow. She began stepping backward, stumbled, and then righted herself, waggling her forefinger at us.
“You no talk Two Bellies. You no tell nobody Two Bellies talk to you.”
As if realizing suddenly that she stood in a public alleyway, Two Bellies glanced at the wary eyes lining the road. None of the business girls made a move. Two Bellies hugged herself over her ample paunch, turned, and started click-clacking her way down the cobbled road.