by Martin Limon
“Bascom, you’re restricted to compound. No, no argument. At least until this discrimination charge blows over. Sueño, find Jessica Tidwell,” he said. “And then, once she’s safe, find the bones of that G.I. who was murdered twenty years ago. That will redeem you. That and only that. Am I understood?”
We both nodded.
Colonel Brace further told the first sergeant that he wanted extra MP patrols in Itaewon tonight, searching for Jessica Tidwell.
Colonel Brace hadn’t even mentioned the murder of Horsehead, nor the murder of Auntie Mee. And he’d only mentioned Two Bellies because Ernie and I had been falsely charged by the KNPs, thereby embarrassing the command. To the 8th Army honchos, the murder of Koreans was an abstract concept. Even the village of Itaewon itself, where the single G.I.s went, was not anything more than something to be snickered at during polite conversation at the Officers’ Club cocktail hour.
But I’d seen the blood. I’d touched it and smelled it. And my cop instincts told me that it wouldn’t be long until a G.I. was involved in some way with the mayhem that was going on in Itaewon. I didn’t know who was behind this madness or what it was all about but I believed that at it’s source, somehow, was Technical Sergeant Flo Moretti.
The fluorescent light above the provost marshal’s desk flickered and went out.
“Shit,” he said. “There goes the juice. Top, see if you can get the engineers to start up the generator.”
“Will do, sir.”
Outside, snow continued to fall in steady sheets. The first sergeant left the room. The provost marshal glanced at us. “Why are you still here?”
We didn’t reply. Instead, we saluted, performed a smart about-face, and left the room.
Jimmy Pak was looking for me. At least a half dozen business girls had relayed the message. The communications apparatus in Itaewon—word of mouth—may be ancient but it’s efficient. Once one of the Seven Dragons issues a summons, in short order the entire village knows about it.
I could’ve gone over to the UN Club to see what the hell he wanted but I was in no hurry. Maybe I didn’t feel comfortable about walking into his place of business without Ernie to back me up. But I didn’t think that was it. If Jimmy Pak, or any of the Seven Dragons, were out to get me they wouldn’t make it public knowledge that they wanted to see me. If they were out to get me, the attack would happen in a dark alley, when no one was looking and when I least expected it. As had happened to Mori Di.
I was more curious at the moment, about the Korean police reaction to the murder of Auntie Mee.
When the cannon fired on Yongsan Compound, signifying the end of 8th Army’s workday, I marched up to the mess hall, ate some chow, and then took a shower and changed into my running-the-ville outfit.
I gazed at my bunk longingly. I hadn’t been getting much sleep lately, ever since I’d first heard about Mori Di. And I’d gotten virtually no sleep with Doc Yong last night. My crotch was sore. But I couldn’t afford the luxury of letting down. Two Bellies had trusted me and she’d been killed. The remains of Tech Sergeant Flo Moretti were still missing. A harmless fortune teller had been brutally murdered and Horsehead, one of the Seven Dragons, had been hacked to death by a group of women covered in dark hoods. Ernie and I had vowed to get to Snake. Now it was all up to me.
Captain Kim was overjoyed to see me.
His cheeks sagged and his eyes took on a deathly stillness that would’ve made a mafia godfather look like a cheerleader at a high school football game. He didn’t even ask me what I wanted. He just stared.
“Anyonghaseiyo?” I said cheerfully. Are you at peace?
He didn’t answer. His head was square, his short black hair combed straight back, and the collar of his sharply pressed khaki uniform gleamed with three canted rectangles of polished gold. He didn’t smoke. Unusual for a mature Korean man, so I didn’t bother to offer him a cigarette. I didn’t smoke either but sometimes, when visiting Korean officialdom, I carried a pack of American-made cancer sticks, more as a peace offering than anything else.
I started with Horsehead.
“Important man,” I said. “Dead. Maybe the Seven Dragons are taaksan pissed off.”
Captain Kim shrugged. Not a syllable left his thick lips.
“And Two Bellies,” I continued. “She die same-same.”
The murder weapon had been similar. A knife. But instead of a thousand cuts, Two Bellies was killed by one quick slice through the throat.
“And now Auntie Mee,” I said, and mimed a hand around a throat. This seemed to pique Captain Kim’s interest.
“How you know?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Everybody say.”
Captain Kim glared at me.
We often spoke this pigeon English to one another. He didn’t like it when I spoke Korean. It made him uncomfortable to hear Korean sounds coming out of a foreign face. No matter what I said to him in Korean, he insisted on answering me in English. A lot of Koreans did this. The younger ones because they didn’t want to pass up an opportunity to practice their English. The older ones because they didn’t want a foreigner mangling their ancient language—a language that to them was sacred.
“You know a lot,” Captain Kim said.
“Because I’m a cop,” I said.
He studied me. The unspoken statement being, “Is that the only reason?”
Captain Kim knew as well as I did that I hadn’t murdered anyone. Still, if the higher-ups told him to charge me, he’d do it and watch me go to prison for that matter. Life is cheap here in Korea and had been since, at least, the Korean War. Nobody knows exactly how many civilians were killed in the war. Estimates vary from two to three million. After something like that happens to a society, death doesn’t seem so unusual. And hardship and injustice become merely routine. Even to a cop. Especially to a cop.
“So, who killed Auntie Mee?” I asked.
Captain Kim shrugged and glanced at the paperwork in front of him. I answered my own question.
“Maybe someone who had power over her,” I said.
He glanced up at me. “Everybody have power over her.”
“The Seven Dragons,” I said.
He glanced back down at the paperwork. It was a stack of handwritten notes on cheap brown pulp paper. The Korean police can’t afford the expensive white vellum that the U.S. Army uses. Nor could they afford typewriters, except for a handful at police headquarters. But one thing I’ll say for the Korean police force, there’s no shortage of excellent typists to choose from. Each and every typewriter at KNP headquarters was staffed by a gorgeous young female police officer.
“Are you going to do anything about it?” I asked.
“What you mean?”
“About Auntie Mee’s death? About finding out who killed her?”
He shrugged again, more elaborately this time. “If we find up.”
He meant, if we discover who murdered her.
“Any evidence so far?”
“No. Same-same Two Bellies. They no leave nothing. Except for one thing.” He stared straight at me. “Somebody light candles, burn incense, perform ceremony of the dead.”
That would’ve been me and Doc Yong but I wasn’t about to tell him. I changed the subject.
“How about the bones of Mori Di?” I asked.
“That G.I. business. Not my business.”
And finding the remains of Tech Sergeant Flo Moretti wouldn’t become his business unless Korean officialdom ordered him to make it his business. Evidently, the higher-ups in the ROK government, despite 8th Army’s messages of concern, had not ordered the KNPs to find Moretti’s bones. Maybe because they didn’t want them found. Or somebody who had influence had decided that they didn’t want them found.
A young Korean patrolman ran into the office so fast that he practically skidded to a halt in front of Captain Kim’s desk. His face was flushed red and when he saw me it became even redder.
“Officer Jiang reporting,” he said in Korean and saluted.
Captain Kim stared at him with a look of resigned expectation. “What is it?”
The patrolman glanced at me again, hesitating to speak.
Gruffly, Captain Kim said, “Iyaggi hei!” Speak!
The patrolman chattered away, speaking so quickly that I had trouble following the convoluted Korean sentences but I caught a few of them and some words and phrases. He was talking about the Lucky Lady Club and blood and women who were hysterical and Captain Kim was on his feet, reaching behind his desk for his cap. I stood, and although Captain Kim stared at me morosely, I followed. We ran out the front door of the Itaewon Police Station, turned the corner, and sprinted up the ice-covered road. A road that despite mounds of drifted snow, glittered with sparkling neon overhead and fancy women hidden in recessed doorways.
14
This time it happened more publicly.
Two Korean men had been in the office of Mr. Sung, also known as Mulkei. Mulkei, literally translated, means “water dog.” Its dictionary meaning though is “fur seal” or “otter.” Sung was a small man, full of pep, and years ago some G.I. had mistranslated his Korean nickname and started calling him “Water Doggy.” The name stuck and that’s what Sung had been called ever since, by both Koreans and Americans. The two visitors had come to see him supposedly about a rewiring project they were going to undertake on the building adjacent to the Lucky Lady Club. They told some of the other employees that they wanted Water Doggy to be aware that construction would be going on and they were hoping to make arrangements that would not be disruptive to the operations of the Lucky Lady Club. The club was one of the biggest money-makers in Itaewon. While the two men discussed the construction project with Water Doggy, three women entered the club. They weren’t your regular Lucky Lady customers. They were not young prostitutes because they were dressed in thick-soled shoes and trousers and heavy jackets as protection from the frigid winter weather outside. When one of the waitresses asked politely what she could do for them, the lead woman merely pointed to the back office and kept walking, averting her face and keeping her hood pulled over her head.
The waitresses hadn’t seen the faces of any of the women. They had purposely kept their features concealed.
Seconds later, voices were raised in the office. The cocktail waitresses weren’t unduly alarmed. Water Doggy argued with any number of people. Besides, they were paid to look nice and wait tables, not interfere with business dealings. Just as quickly as the voices had been raised, the office went quiet. Minutes later the two impostor electrical contractors and the three hooded women emerged. No one thought anything about it.
G.I.s were off duty now and even though they had to brave snowdrifts and icy roads, they were gradually beginning to arrive in Itaewon. Groups of them, mostly regulars, were entering the Lucky Lady Club, doffing their hats and coats, dusting off snowflakes, taking their seats and ordering the Korean-made Oscar sparkling wine or brown bottles of OB Beer. The cocktail waitresses were flirting with them, the band was mangling some monotonous rock tune, and the business girls were lurking in the shadows waiting for the alcohol to take effect on their G.I. prey.
Everything was normal at the Lucky Lady Club. And elsewhere in Itaewon. The power outages had been fixed, the snow had stopped falling—at least for the moment—and, as yet, word of the murder of Auntie Mee had not spread to the general population.
Everything was normal, that is, except for in the office of the Lucky Lady Club.
On her way to the women’s latrine, one of the waitresses noticed something in the dim light of the hallway: a dark liquid seeping from beneath Water Doggy’s closed office. She walked past it at first, finished her business in the bathroom and then, upon returning, knelt to take a closer look at the liquid. At first, she thought Water Doggy had spilled coffee or broken a bottle of liquor. But as she leaned closer, the meaty odor of the fluid filled the air and she realized that it was thick and not flowing quickly and when the rotating glass bulb hanging above the dance floor finally cast a beam of pure white light on the floor in front of her, she realized the true color of the liquid. Red.
She screamed. At first, no one heard her scream above the din of the rock and roll so she kept screaming and soon the cashier and the bartender shoved her aside and kicked in the office door and found, crumpled atop his desk, the mangled and slashed body of Mulkei, the man G.I.s called Water Doggy.
Captain Kim surveyed the murder scene with all the grim concentration of a demon evaluating an invoice from Beelzebub.
“Same-same Horsehead,” I said.
Captain Kim grunted but did not answer.
There were numerous stab wounds on the body of Water Doggy. Three different implements had been employed was my guess but I couldn’t be sure without actually touching the wounds and measuring their width and depth. But that wasn’t my job. As usual, I was here simply as an observer for 8th Army, at the tolerance of Captain Kim. Just the fact that he allowed me to observe the murder scene told me that he didn’t believe for a minute the charges that Lieutenant Pong from the 8th Army KNP liaison officer had leveled against Ernie and me. There were factions within the Korean National Police, many of them, and my experience with Captain Kim was that he was so stubborn and opinionated and protective of his Itaewon turf that he formed a major faction of the KNPs all by himself.
Lights were brought in to illuminate the scene for the evidence gathering team. They weren’t an independent group because Captain Kim hovered over them, barking orders. After a couple of hours he left one of his lieutenants in charge of the crime scene and made the trip that no cop anywhere in the world wants to make: to the home of the victim, in order to officially notify Water Doggy’s wife and his family of what had happened. He didn’t ask me to go along and I certainly didn’t volunteer. Regardless of what type of dissolute life Water Doggy had led, regardless of what crimes he’d committed, and regardless of what his wife might’ve put up with while living with him, telling her that he was dead was not going to be easy.
Water Doggy’s office didn’t tell us much. There didn’t seem to be anything missing. A cashbox in the bottom drawer of his desk was unmolested. The furnishings in his office weren’t nearly as elaborate as in the office of Snake, or even Jimmy Pak. What Water Doggy had that his fellow Seven Dragons did not have was a long leather couch across from his desk. Plenty long enough for the diminutive Water Doggy to lie down on and still have enough room for one of the leggy cocktail waitresses to join him. Or at least that’s what I imagined but that’s the way my thoughts were going since I’d spent the night with Doctor Yong In-ja.
The effect of Water Doggy’s demise on the waitresses and bartenders and the cashier of the Lucky Lady Club was devastating. They stopped working and huddled in front of the bar, hugging one another, whispering and staring at the cops and medical personnel entering and exiting Water Doggy’s office. The band packed up its instruments and left. The G.I. customers hung around for a while until the novelty of being near a crime scene wore off. And then the word of Water Doggy’s brutal murder began to spread throughout Itaewon.
When I walked outside, I paused on the cement porch of the Lucky Lady Club and surveyed the street. The snow had stopped falling but still lay in drifts against brick walls topped with rusty barbed wire. Neon still flashed up the strip but in the dark environs of Hooker Hill the women stood in front of their little wooden gates, concerned faces lit by dim streetlamps. In front of the nightclubs, G.I.s and business girls huddled in groups, talking and occasionally glancing in the direction of the Lucky Lady Club. Beneath the floodlamps at the entrances to the Seven Club and the King Club, groups of uniformed waitresses, canting round cocktail trays against their hips, gossiped and nodded their heads and twitched their necks spasmodically in the direction of the Lucky Lady Club.
When I stepped off the porch and started walking forward, people backed away as if I were contaminated with some hideous communicable disease.
“Water Doggy,” they whispered. Or �
��Horsehead” or “Two Bellies.” And now, finally, I was hearing them whisper the name “Auntie Mee.” Some of them cried, their eyes riveted on me as if searching for an answer. I didn’t have one. The only thing I knew for sure was that the village of Itaewon was cursed. Not by the supernatural, as the late Auntie Mee had claimed, but by people who were filled with a murderous rage. And by gauging the looks of the business girls and G.I.s and cocktail waitresses all around me, the village of Itaewon was about to reach the stage of full-fledged panic.
I stood at a wooden counter alone, slurping down a cold mug of beer at a new joint on the edge of Itaewon called the OB Stand Bar. I wanted to be alone, away from G.I.s, away for a while even from the English language. I wanted time to think. The OB Stand Bar stood near a major bus terminal and, as such, commuters came in here for a quick drink. There were no chairs, just tall tables for standing and a long counter that ran around the edge of the rectangular shaped room. Most of the customers were either reading Korean newspapers or staring into space. A few talked quietly with friends but there were no Americans here. Only Koreans. And as I was the only American, I was left alone. Nobody interrupted me and I had, at last, some time to ponder the madness I‘d seen in the last few days.
I wanted to think about the evidence I’d seen, about the crime scenes, about who would have the motive to murder four people. Instead, what I thought about was Doc Yong. About the night we’d spent together. About the subtle, soft curves of her body. About her smooth fresh skin. About the moonlight illuminating her face as she leaned back, eyes closed, concentrating on ecstasy. I had to get her out of my mind, at least long enough to think about what was going on here in Itaewon.
With an effort of will, I did.
Four murders. All of them had started when Ernie and I uncovered the bones of Technical Sergeant Flo Moretti. It was as if by pulling out those bricks and making a hole in that wall, I’d not only unleashed twenty-year-old air, I’d also unleashed the spirit of Mori Di himself. A spirit that was insisting on revenge. Of course that was silly but the fact was undeniable that exposing the bones of Moretti to this new era had set off a chain of events that resulted in multiple deaths: Two Bellies, Horsehead, Auntie Mee, Water Doggy. And a trio of hooded women assisted by two men had committed at least two of the murders. Were both murders committed by the same two men and the same three women? I had to assume so. The method of operation in both instances was the same: brutal, efficient, and full of rage. The two men, Horsehead and Water Doggy, had been hacked to death and if their bodies had been chopped up any more they would’ve fallen apart like so many chunks of pulverized meat. But what of Two Bellies? No chopping there, just a single slice through the throat and gradual exsanguination as the victim gasped unsuccessfully for air. An ugly way to go. Maybe worse than being hacked to death. The victim is aware, probably, that there’s no hope but can look around, wishing that he could breathe, wishing that there wasn’t a huge gash in his neck. Staring, probably, at the person who’d just slashed him. It was those few seconds while he was still alive that frightened me.