by Martin Limon
The nuns had taught them not to be angry, that when you resent the actions of others, they own you; they own the most important part of you, your soul. But if you eliminate need, especially the need for revenge, then you are free. At least that’s what I think she told them. When she explained it to us over tea, Ernie and I had some trouble following her. Not only was the Buddhist philosophy itself hard to follow but she spoke English with the perfect syntax of a woman who’d been highly educated in the language but hadn’t had the opportunity to actually speak it in years, if not decades. Still, throughout the entire dissertation, Ernie and I sipped on our tea and smiled and nodded our heads.
Ernie wanted to know where those orphans were now. Did she have a list of names? he asked. She did. She had a few current addresses, those of the ones who wrote occasionally. The children had left, found jobs, married, and started families of their own.
“Did any of them stay here?” I asked.
The nun shook her head sadly. None.
Staring at the damp gray walls that surrounded us, that didn’t seem surprising.
We told the nun about the murders. She seemed shocked. It seemed to me that some of the children might have wanted to take revenge despite the nuns’ instructions. How could they stand by and watch the Seven Dragons strut around Seoul as rich men, knowing that they’d robbed and murdered their parents.
The nun had pulled out a photo and presented it to me with a flourish. It had taken me a moment to focus. It showed two adults. One a handsome Korean woman with high cheekbones and a square face, wearing a long Western-style dress. But what shocked me was the man standing next to her. I recognized the old uniform: khaki pants, short fatigue jacket, overseas cap cocked to the side, curly brown hair that would nowadays be too long for a regulation army haircut. The rank insignia on the sleeve was for technical sergeant but the lettering on the name tag was too small to read. I studied the photo for a while.
“Mori Di,” the nun said.
“This is him?” I’d handed the photo to Ernie. The nun nodded her head. “How’d you get it?” I asked.
“One of the children bring,” she said.
“Mori Di had a child?”
“No.” The nun shook her bald head vehemently. “The child was the daughter of this woman.” She pointed to the woman standing next to Technical Sergeant Flo Moretti. “Her daddy Korean, already dead in war.”
“So her mom moved in with Moretti,” I said.
The nun nodded her head. “And when Moretti was killed, this woman was probably killed also and her daughter kept this photograph and brought it here with her.”
“Yes.”
The nun showed me on the list the name of the little girl who’d brought the photo of Mori Di. Min-ju was her name. Family name Shin. She’d been about ten years old when she’d arrived and after middle school, she’d been sent to Seoul to complete her education.
“Do you have her current address?”
“No. After she leave, she never write.”
Ernie handed the photo back to the nun. “Why did she leave this photograph here?” he asked. “She couldn’t have too many photos of her mom.”
“She tough woman,” the nun told us. “She and her mom. That’s why her mom not afraid to live with American G.I. even though everybody talk, call her bad name. She did it to save her daughter. And when Min-ju leave, she say she don’t want nothing from the past. She only want future.”
I resisted, because it seemed like such a precious heirloom, but before we left, the nun forced me to take the photo of Mori Di and his yobo. “Maybe you need,” she told me.
I thanked her and slid the photo into my pocket.
We bowed to the nun and were heading back to the jeep when she stopped us and said, “You no see?”
“See?” Ernie asked.
“Him.” The nun pointed through the gray mist and at first I thought she was pointing toward heaven. But then I realized that there was a bend in the road that continued up the mountain and on a granite outcropping overlooking a precipice, about three quarters of a mile above us as the crow flies, sat another Buddhist temple.
“Why two temples?” Ernie asked.
“Monks,” the nun replied.
That’s where the boys lived.
We asked her who it was we were supposed to see but she wouldn’t answer. She just kept pointing, indicating that we should go there first before leaving Yongmun Mountain. When we finally complied and climbed in the jeep and Ernie started up the engine, the nun bowed deeply as we drove off and then stood and waved, American style.
It was quiet up here. Darker, too, because we were now on the shadowy side of Yongmun Mountain. The crows didn’t flutter between ramparts but sat perched on brick ledges, staring down at us, wondering just as much as we were what the hell we were doing here. There was no movement inside the compound of wooden buildings; no gongs sounding; no chanting of ancient prayers; no susurrant sweeping of gravel courtyards, none of the noises that one would associate with a Buddhist monastery. But when I thought about it, maybe silence was the correct sound for a Buddhist monastery. The sound of people keeping quiet while they waited patiently, forever if necessary, to hear—just once—the lonely voice of god.
Ernie shifted his weight in the driver’s seat of the jeep, crossed his arms, and frowned. He didn’t like waiting any more than I did but we both figured that someone would come out to talk to us sooner or later.
It was sooner.
A thin monk hustled toward us, his blue robe flapping in the mountain breeze, leather sandals slapping on dirt.
“Irriwa,” he said. Come.
We both hopped out of the jeep and followed him up a path that led toward a ridge on the northern side of the temple. Once we topped the ridge the monk stopped and pointed. There, in the distance, was a work shed and a storage area for grain and agricultural equipment. Men in broad straw hats worked amongst fields, not harvesting anything now in the middle of winter but puttering about near cylindrical greenhouses made of bamboo and plastic.
The monk, who I could see now was a very young man, pointed toward the shed and said, “Chogi. Kidarriyo.” There. Wait.
He left us. Ernie and I glanced at one another, shrugged, and walked down the frozen pathway toward the shed. The accommodations weren’t much. Just a couple of rough hewn benches. We sat, pulled our jackets tighter around our torsos and waited. For what I wasn’t sure. The bald-headed nun had said we would want to talk to “him.” A man. Who the man was I couldn’t be sure. Probably the patriarch of this temple complex. Maybe he had more information for us. More likely, he just wanted to check us out and make sure we weren’t going to cause him any headaches. Either way, Ernie and I resigned ourselves to waiting.
Of course, Ernie shouldn’t have been here at all. Colonel Brace had ordered him restricted to compound. Staff Sergeant Riley wouldn’t rat us out unless he was asked a direct question. And it was at least possible that Ernie and I could make it back to Seoul, and Ernie could resume his normal duties, before either the first sergeant or Colonel Brace noticed he was missing. Unlikely, but possible.
Still, if the provost marshal did find out that Ernie had violated his orders, I would say that for safety reasons I’d needed Ernie’s backup. It’s against 8th Army policy to come so far away from Seoul, so far from American MP protection, without backup. And I would say that due to the immediacy of the requirement I didn’t have time to request someone else. Ernie was available, I used him. The ploy wouldn’t work, of course. The provost marshal wouldn’t buy it and we’d both be in hot water but at least it was some sort of excuse we could hang on to. But Ernie wasn’t complaining. He knew that finding Moretti’s remains and solving this twenty-year-old mystery was more important than any temporary discomfort we might suffer. And anyway we were used to being in hot water. We’d bathed in that tub before, so often our skin was wrinkled.
Dozens of tiny feet beat on dirt. Reedy voices bleated. Over a low ridge, furry creatures st
ampeded our way. Goats. Tiny ones. Cute, with little horns, like the small porcelain bulls they used to sell at curio shops in East L.A. But these hoofed animals were alive and covered with shaggy black fur. They floated toward us like a moving blanket. We stood and then a straw hat appeared over the ridge and beneath the hat, a man. He was tall, long-legged, gawky. His face was still in shadow but as he came toward us he waved a ten-foot-long staff back and forth in the air, gently tapping the tiny goats on their sides and hindquarters, keeping them moving forward in a loose formation. He reached a low fenced area twenty yards from the shed where we were waiting, opened the gate, and herded his charges inside. Once the last reluctant kid was induced to enter the pen, he latched it shut, and stood for a moment staring down at the ground, as if in prayer. Then he roused himself from his reverie and started toward us.
As he did so, the shadows lifted from his face. Gross features emerged. A long nose, full lips, bronze-fleshed cheeks that had to be shaved every day. Finally, Ernie and I were staring into a pair of deep-set blue eyes surrounded by a map of wrinkles. They were intelligent eyes, knowing, watchful.
I knew who he was.
“Cort,” I said, stepping forward and holding out my hand.
16
Cort seemed unsurprised to see us. Although I couldn’t say the same about Ernie and me, I realized now what had happened. Who was it who had told me earlier in the investigation that Cort never left? Whoever it was, they’d been right. Occasionally a G.I. will terminate his time in the service but not return to the States. It takes special permission from the military and, of course, the G.I. must obtain a passport from the State Department and some sort of visa from the host government. But if he accomplishes all that, he is not required to take the “Freedom Bird” back to the good old U.S.A. He can stay right here in Korea.
Apparently, that’s what Cort had done.
And how had he made a living all these years? He’d become a monk.
Cort set his ten-foot staff aside, sat down on the wooden bench opposite us, and pulled off his straw hat. He was totally bald. And although his body looked strong, he was rail thin, probably from years of living on unhusked rice and fermented cabbage and boiled bean curd. He stared at us, a slightly amused smile on his lips, and then he said, “Tell me everything.”
I started from the beginning, leaving nothing out. Cort listened patiently without interrupting. So patiently that I wondered if he was actually concentrating on what I was saying. There was a faraway look in his eye, a relaxed posture to his body, and a steady rhythm to his breathing. He was meditating, I finally realized. Something he probably did three or four times a day here.
I told Cort about my trip to Auntie Mee’s home and her complaints about the spirit of Mori Di and her prediction about the fate of Miss Kwon if the bones weren’t found soon. And then I told him about the new SIR warehouse on Yongsan compound and finding Moretti’s Serious Incident Report and about everything that had happened since then: the murder of Two Bellies, the murder of Horsehead, the silken rope enveloping Auntie Mee’s throat, and the chopped-up corpse of Water Doggy.
When I was through, Cort became alert and started asking questions. He picked apart our entire investigation. He trusted no one and questioned every assumption.
Ernie finally became angry. “You weren’t there,” he told Cort. “Why’re you putting down everything my partner says?”
“Not putting it down,” Cort replied. “Only plunging in. Searching for the deeper meaning.”
Ernie snorted. “Snake offed Mori Di when he was first taking over Itaewon and to cover up his crime, twenty years later he murders Two Bellies and then Auntie Mee. A few of these orphans, meanwhile, take their revenge on Horsehead and Water Doggy. That’s all there is to it.”
“Maybe,” Cort replied.
“No ‘maybe’ about it.”
I knew what Ernie was doing. He was deliberately trying to throw Cort off stride and make him angry. Maybe in his anger he’d reveal something that he wouldn’t otherwise disclose. But Cort remained calm. Maybe it was his Buddhist training, or the years of patiently herding goats on the side of Yongmun. If anything, he seemed vaguely amused.
Cort asked us if we’d interviewed every orphan on the list. “They have a motive for murder,” Cort agreed. We told him that there wasn’t time. He insisted that we should. He was certain that by interviewing these people, putting pressure on them, leads would open up.
I told him again about Doc Yong and I explained that we didn’t have the time to track these people down and coax information out of them.
Cort said, “Snake could cause much harm to the people on that list.”
“Yes,” I said. “But I’ll have to deal with that later, after Doc Yong is free.”
Cort asked if I’d looked at this case from a Buddhist perspective. I said I hadn’t. Cort explained that bricking up Moretti, while he was still alive, was a very Buddhist thing to do. Not sanctioned by their religious precepts, of course. But they’re taught not to spill blood. Butchers, for example, are looked down upon, eating meat is discouraged, and a Buddhist criminal who wanted to rid himself of a G.I. named Moretti might very well leave him gagged and bound in a small room and then brick him up, alive, and leave him to die. That way, there’d be no blood on his hands to stain his karma.
Ernie and I stared at Cort as if he were nuts. Maybe he’d been here too long. But on the other hand, maybe he was right. A devout Buddhist criminal was a possibility I hadn’t considered.
“That would corroborate what you’ve already assumed,” Cort said. “That Snake or his thugs also murdered the woman you call Auntie Mee. A very Buddhist type of killing. But it wouldn’t explain the murder of Two Bellies.”
“Maybe they were in a hurry,” Ernie said.
Cort looked at Ernie, who sat quiet and grim, and then back at me. He said, “Try not to kill. You’ll set yourselves back. That would delay you from finally attaining nirvana.”
Ernie rolled his eyes.
“You don’t agree?” Cort asked.
“I attain nirvana,” Ernie said, “almost every Saturday night.”
As Ernie drove the jeep back to Seoul, I kept glancing at the photograph of the handsome Korean woman standing proudly beside Moretti. The more I stared at her face—the high cheekbones, the full lips, the penetrating gaze—the more I was infatuated with her looks. Was she the reason Moretti had thrown in his lot with the impoverished refugees flooding into Itaewon? What had become of her? Maybe she was still alive somewhere, walking around, waiting for Ernie and me to find her and ask her the questions that she’d been longing to answer for twenty years.
I sat in the passenger’s seat, comparing the family names on Mori Di’s list of people who’d turned over heirlooms to the nun’s list of orphans. Except for three, all the family names were the same. Only a half dozen of the thirty-six names were accompanied by addresses. Some of the addresses were fairly old, the nun had warned us, so they might not still be valid.
Modern Korea is a highly mobile society. People move from job to job and apartment to apartment. No longer is it a kingdom of villages where farm families can trace their roots back to before the founding of the Yi Dynasty. Two of the addresses were in Seoul, the other four were scattered down in the southern end of the country. I didn’t see how we’d have time to talk to these people. Or for that matter, what good it would do? Two men and three women might be responsible for murdering Horsehead and Water Doggy, and they might be on this list. Finding them would be faster if I turned the lists over to Snake and let him and his people figure out if they were the killers. The problem was that the Seven Dragons might make a mistake. And they wouldn’t be gentle in their investigation. Innocent people could get hurt. But what choice did I have? Doc Yong was being held hostage I needed this information to get close to Snake. Once on the inside, Ernie and I would attack. Our backup? Captain Kim.
Ernie crossed a ridge and the city of Seoul lay spread before us.
/> Far on the other side of the valley, beyond a range of hills, a red sun set slowly into the Yellow Sea. Seoul itself was bathed in a darkening blue light. Streetlights twinkled on, as did lamps in the windows of hotels and high rises downtown. And then, more abundantly, millions of small lights in homes and storefront businesses blinked to life and spread out like a great spangled fan radiating from Namsan Mountain in the middle of the shining city.
Even Ernie seemed impressed. And excited. Going downhill, he must’ve been exceeding the speed limit by about twenty kilometers.
A front moved in from the Yellow Sea, sliding over the red-tinged hills in the distance. Clouds of billowing gray enveloped the peaks and crept toward Seoul, like a great angry beast ready to devour everything in its path. Lightning flashed. Thunder cracked. Seoul shuddered beneath the onslaught.
Ernie chuckled to himself as he drove down the narrow highway.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“Just thinking about somebody.”
“Who?”
“Somebody sweet. Somebody I met last night.”
“On compound?”
Ernie twisted his head slightly and gave me a sly look, as if to say, “Are you out of your mind?”
“You went off compound last night,” I said.
Ernie shrugged and then smiled again. “Not to Itaewon,” he told me. “I knew the place would be crawling with MP patrols.”
It was.
“But I got to thinking about Jessica Tidwell.”