by Martin Limon
Two Bellies didn’t struggle with her executioner. Or at least there was no evidence that she had. And neither had Auntie Mee, although she’d been slowly strangled. Both women had accepted their fates. There was no escape. And since both of the women lived their lives at the bottom, or very near the bottom, of a strict Confucian hierarchy, they allowed the sentence of death to be carried out.
Two types of killing, two types of victims. Unlike Auntie Mee and Two Bellies, the other two victims were men who’d grabbed life by the throat, shaken it, and demanded money, power, and prestige. Neither Horsehead nor Water Doggy had acquiesced in their deaths. Horsehead had been either drugged or extremely drunk—or both—and he’d been tied up. Water Doggy was a small man and had shouted and fought, but had been overwhelmed by the two men and three women crowded into his office.
Men like Horsehead and Water Doggy had made many enemies in their lives. Was it a coincidence that these two men and three women were seeking revenge at the same time that Ernie and I had uncovered the bones of Technical Sergeant Flo Moretti?
Something about all this bothered me but I hadn’t quite put my finger on what it was when I realized that someone was tugging on my sleeve. I set my beer mug down and turned around.
Miss Kwon stared up at me.
She still had the crutch beneath her left arm and her ankle was still enveloped by a plastic brace and a gauze patch still covered her left eye. But she seemed alert and concerned and busy.
“You come,” she said.
“How’d you find me?” I asked.
She waved her right hand in the air and twirled it slightly. “This Itaewon. Everybody see everybody. Bali bali you come.” Come quickly.
“Why?”
“Jimmy Pak. He want talk to you.”
I sipped on my beer. “Are you working for Jimmy Pak these days?”
“Yes.” Miss Kwon pulled a wadded bill out of the pocket of her skirt. Five thousand won, about ten bucks. “He pay me taaksan money find you. Now you come.”
“Maybe I don’t want to see him.”
“You have to,” she said, staring at me with her moist brown eyes as if I were an idiot to whom everything had to be carefully explained. “He know about bones.”
I sat up straighter on my stool. “He told you that?”
She nodded vehemently.
“Where are they?” I asked.
She looked disappointed. “I don’t know. You talk Jimmy Pak. He tell.”
“OK,” I said. “Did you see Doctor Yong today?”
“No time,” she said. “I have to workey.”
She’d made a remarkable recovery. I was starting to wonder if the suicide attempt had been sincere or if it had been merely a ploy to attract attention. I took her shoulders in my hands and stared directly into her eyes.
“And how are you?” I asked.
She shrugged. “OK. No more jump off King Club.” She shook her head vehemently. “No more. Now I make money.” She pointed her forefinger at the tip of her nose. “Now I take care of Miss Kwon. Make money. Pretty soon, I be happy.”
Miss Kwon said all this with a determination that seemed laughable, as if happiness were a thing she could construct. But I knew better than to smile as she said these things. Instead, I watched her. She stared back at me with an intensity that, for a moment, I found disconcerting.
“Nobody help Miss Kwon,” she said, “but I help Miss Kwon.” Then she turned and hobbled out of the OB Beer Stand.
I studied the waddling little rear of this serious young woman, glad—I think—that she’d overcome her despair. Then I chugalugged the rest of my beer and followed her out into the street.
I said goodbye to Miss Kwon, not wanting her to struggle alongside me on her single crutch. At one of the dark pedestrian lanes I told her she could return to the Seven Club now; I would go on to the UN Club to meet Jimmy Pak. But after I said goodbye to her and rounded the corner of the next dimly lit intersection I saw Jimmy Pak standing beneath a streetlamp, smiling.
Two bodyguards stood next to him. Not burly men, although the contours of muscles showed through their jackets. I saw it in their eyes and in the walnut-sized calluses on their knuckles: martial arts experts. Probably skilled in tae kwon do, the indigenous Korean form of karate, meaning “the path of kicking and punching.” Some young men had turned themselves into awesome physical machines designed to do just that: kick and punch.
Jimmy smiled even more broadly and opened his arms as if to hug me.
“Geogi,” he said. “My friend. How are you?”
“OK, Jimmy.” I didn’t step forward into his embrace.
He lowered his arms but his smile never faltered.
“We must talk,” he said.
“I thought you wanted to talk to me at the UN Club.”
“Right here is good, too.”
Jimmy Pak’s smile faded and I saw an expression I’d never seen on his face before: a frown. It made him look like a different man, a very frightening man.
“Mori Di,” he said. “You uncovered his bones. This cause much trouble in Itaewon.”
The two bodyguards were starting to step slightly away from Jimmy, as if to improve their angle of attack.
“What do you want, Jimmy?” I said.
“It’s not me,” Jimmy said. “It’s Snake. He wants to talk to you.”
“And I want to talk to him,” I said.
“Good. We go now.”
“Not now,” I said. “I’m busy.” I wasn’t happy with these conditions. No one, except Miss Kwon, would know my whereabouts. And she would know that I’d talked to Jimmy Pak, but not about Snake. “Give me a time and place.”
“The time is now,” Jimmy said. “And we’ll show you the place.”
“No. Make an appointment.”
I started to walk away. The two men scurried forward. I turned and reached inside my jacket, touching the hilt of my .45, letting my jacket fall open. They stopped.
“If Snake wants to talk, all he has to do is give me a time and place,” I said.
Once again, Jimmy Pak smiled.
“You’re right, Geogi. I apologize. We’re just so anxious because so many things have been going wrong. How about tonight, at midnight?”
“Where?”
“My club.”
I thought about it. Then I said, “I’ll be there.”
And I’d notify Ernie and the desk sergeant at the Yongsan MP Station as to where I’d be and who I’d be talking to. I turned and walked down the alley. Jimmy’s two bodyguards went the other way. I heard them conferring with their boss as their voices faded.
I was about to step out of the narrow lane into the light of the Itaewon main drag when I saw Miss Kwon, standing in an alley, a worried expression on her face. I stopped, and was about to speak to her when something heavy cracked the back of my skull.
It didn’t hurt at that moment; it would later. The world started to spin, lights flashed, brightly at first, and then, as if someone was turning them off one by one, they began to fade. I felt my knees melting, and then a feeling like flying and then the world, spinning around, faded into darkness. Nothing but darkness. Complete and total.
15
When I was a kid in East L.A., schoolyard fights were a regular occurrence. But it wasn’t those fights I was afraid of. Invariably, even when we became teenagers, they would be broken up by someone in authority. A teacher or, in the case of full-fledged melees, by a group of male gym teachers wielding wooden paddles. So, in general, on school grounds, you were safe.
It was between home and school that things were dicey. Not so much on the way to school in the mornings. Mexican vatos and other gang members tend not be early risers. But by the time school let out, two or three in the afternoon, they were up, had already taken their first jolt of nicotine or uppers; they were ready to start their day’s work, tormenting people weaker than they. Nobody had any plans for protecting children on their way home. From the edge of the schoolyard to the fro
nt door of your apartment or your house or your trailer, the good kids were like a migrating herd of caribou, fair game for whatever pack of predators happened to be prowling.
We scurried forward, our heads down, hoping that the punks wouldn’t pick us out of the crowd but it was never long, it seemed, before somebody picked me. I always dealt with it somehow, by fighting, by taking my lumps, and occasionally by running. But it was the smaller kids who bothered me. The ones who cried their eyes out after they’d been punched for no reason or had their glasses stomped or whose prized slide rule had been ripped out of their book bag and snapped in two. I didn’t like seeing these things. They hurt me and I found it impossible to look away. It was, in many ways, worse than being tormented myself. Somehow, when watching one of these torture sessions, I’d find a way to screw up my courage and I’d tell the bad guys to leave the kid alone.
Leave the kid alone. That’s all I’d said. But the vatos were astounded. You would’ve thought I’d defiled the holy sepulcher. The punks in the gangs considered it their sacred right to pick on kids weaker than themselves and not to countenance interference. When I rudely interrupted, all their wrath was turned on me. It got to the point that I didn’t mind. The bumps and bruises and occasional kicks in the ribs I took were not as painful as watching a helpless kid being molested by a pack of bullies. And then a few boys started sticking close to me and then the girls. And after a while we were a pack that moved together, seeking safety as we approached the homes of our various members. And one by one each child would peel off and run pell-mell to the front door of an apartment or trailer and then wave goodbye as the rest of us continued to move toward home. I felt good about doing this. About protecting the other kids. Until one day when the vatos caught me alone.
I was hospitalized. And when the cop from juvenile hall asked me who’d done this to me, I told him I’d fallen down a flight of steps. He spat in disgust, considering me a coward. But I wasn’t a coward, only a realist. There was nothing he could do to protect me. He’d never be there for our midafternoon odysseys and we kids, like all people in the end, were on our own.
A report was made and a few days after my release from the hospital, the Supervisors of the County of Los Angeles moved me to another foster home. I don’t know what happened to my flock. Although I thought of them often, I never saw them again.
* * *
Someone had tied me to a gurney. Leather straps held my arms and legs securely against a white linen sheet. My shirt had been taken off but my pants were still on and I could feel my wallet behind my butt and my keys and loose change in my front pocket. So I hadn’t been robbed.
The light seemed too bright but I opened my eyes anyway. And then shut them, allowing my pupils to accommodate themselves to the bright bulb focused on me like the eye of a malevolent dragon. Somebody turned the bulb away. I chanced a peek. Gazing down at me, smiling, was the narrow face of the dark-complexioned Korean man known as Snake.
“You fight too much,” he said.
“Let me up,” I said.
“You need rest.”
“I need to pop you in the jaw.”
Snake turned back and said something to the men standing behind him. They laughed. Must’ve been about a half dozen of them. But what Snake said had been spoken too rapidly for me to understand.
Snake aimed the light back to my face. “Somebody kill Water Doggy,” he said.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
“And before that,” Snake continued, “somebody kill Horsehead.”
“Maybe they had it coming,” I said.
My eyes were becoming accustomed to the light.
Snake puffed on a cigarette in a black holder. “People who kill Horsehead,” Snake said, “and people who kill Water Doggy. I think same-same.”
I snorted. I wasn’t going to give him my professional opinion while I was tied to a gurney.
“Maybe you find up,” Snake said.
“The KNPs will find them,” I replied. “They work for you, don’t they?”
Snake smiled his slow smile, the one that spread across his narrow lips gradually, finally lifting slightly at the corners. “Some do,” he said equitably. “Some KNP are like you. Stubborn. Anyway, they already try. No can find. Two men, three women. Seoul very big city. How they find up?”
“That’s your problem,” I said.
“No,” Snake said patiently. “Your problem too. Anyway, you have SIR.”
I was surprised that Snake knew the acronym. But I shouldn’t have been. After more than two decades of working with the United States military, there were probably not many 8th Army acronyms that Snake didn’t recognize.
“So I have the SIR,” I said. “So what?”
“Cort was good man.”
I tried to sit up but the leather straps held me firmly.
“That’s right,” Snake continued. “I knew Cort. He try very hard to find up who kill Mori Di,” Snake shook his head woefully. “Good man, stubborn too. Like you.”
Koreans have an odd national trait. They like perseverance. Even if you think or do things completely opposed to them, they will respect you if you stick to your principles. What Snake was referring to was the fact that Cort never gave up trying to find and bring to justice the men who had murdered Moretti. It was my opinion, as it was Cort’s, that the killers had been the Seven Dragons, or at least they’d been the ones who’d ordered the killing. Still, after all these years, Snake was expressing admiration for the man who kept trying to charge him with murder.
Snake said, “You know what happen Cort?”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “He finished his tour in Korea, went back to the States.”
Snake shook his head. “No. He no go back.”
Now that I thought about it, there was nothing about Cort’s post-investigation activities in the SIR. He merely stopped making entries. I tried not to show much interest. It was not wise to let Snake think that he had some information that I wanted.
“So what happened to him?” I asked.
“You go Eighth Army,” Snake replied, pointing toward Yongsan Compound. “You find up there. Now, I want you find people who kill Horsehead, people who kill Water Doggy. KNPs they no can do. First, they stupid. Second, they fight now with Snake, with Jimmy Pak. They all the time want more money.”
The KNPs were not stupid. That wasn’t the reason they weren’t solving the murders of Horsehead and Water Doggy. The reason was that they didn’t, yet, have enough evidence to lead them to the killers. But the other thing that Snake said, about them wanting more money, that was a possibility. Maybe that’s why there was a rift between Lieutenant Pong, the 8th Army KNP liaison officer, and Captain Kim, the commander of the Itaewon Police Station. Factions. Infighting. These were facts of life. Itaewon, and all its rich operations, represented a ripe plum full of juice, power, and money. A plum worth fighting over. Maybe someone was making a play for that ripe piece of fruit and thereby threatening the power of the Seven Dragons. And if that was true, maybe the KNPs were the ones who’d unleashed the people who murdered Horsehead and Water Doggy. Or, if they hadn’t unleashed them, maybe they weren’t in any big hurry to bring the culprits to justice. If this were true, Snake and Jimmy Pak and the other remaining members of the original Seven Dragons, were vulnerable.
Finally, I said, “You want me to save your skinny ass.”
Snake shrugged. “You have SIR. You have good information.”
“What information?” I asked.
“You look inside, you find. Many people there, they don’t like Seven Dragons.”
I’d never heard one of them use the term Seven Dragons. But there it was, an admission that the Seven Dragons actually existed. Snake was more than just vulnerable. If somebody in the KNPs was after him, he and the other surviving Seven Dragons were desperate. I wasn’t sure what evidence the SIR contained that could lead me to the killers of Horsehead and Water Doggy but I knew that now was the time to drive a hard bargain, even t
hough I was half naked, strapped to a gurney, and surrounded by a gaggle of Korean mobsters.
“If I do try to find out who murdered Horsehead and Water Doggy,” I said, “I’m going to want something in return. I want you to release Miss Kwon from her contract. Give her money, enough to go to school and help her parents. Let her return to her hometown.”
Snake puffed on his cigarette. “Why I do that?”
“If you want my help, you’ll have to.”
“Snake no have to do nothing.”
“I have the SIR,” I said. “It’s back on the compound, somewhere safe where you can’t get it.” In Sergeant Riley’s safe at the CID Admin Office to be exact. “And I also want the bones of Mori Di. I know you took them when you had Two Bellies murdered.”
“Bones? Why I need bones?”
“You need them because the bones prove that you murdered Mori Di.”