by Martin Limon
I suppose Ernie and I both expected what was coming next but still it filled me with irrational terror. As we stood there breathing in the odor of cheap gas, a ball of reddish light burst upward from downstairs, along with the whooshing sound of oxygen being sucked into the mouth of a monster. And then a blinding rush of black smoke. We both stepped back.
Panic overwhelmed me. In a flash, I calculated how fast this old wooden building would burn as gasoline-fueled flames gnawed hungrily at dry lumber. Fire grows not gradually but exponentially. Even if Ernie and I ran straight for the exit, we still might not make it out of this old brothel alive. If we went back for Ok-hi and the Turkey Lady, our chances of survival were virtually nil. There was no time to think about it, no time to confer. No time to weigh our options.
We ran back into the office.
Ernie grabbed Ok-hi, jerked her upright, and shoved her toward the door. Then we each grabbed one of the Turkey Lady’s sandal-covered feet and dragged her into the hallway. Her body and then her head hit the molding in the corridor, but we didn’t even slow down. We ran toward the stairwell. Ok-hi understood our panic now. We took two steps at a time, not caring if the back of the Turkey Lady’s skull struck the cement steps. She probably wouldn’t live through this but neither would we.
At the second floor, the smoke had already coagulated into a thick wall. That’s usually what kills people. The poisonous fumes from plastics and asbestos and rubberized wiring and all the other exotic building materials that are used in modern high-rises. But this old building was made of the same materials that had been used in Asia since time immemorial: wood, iron, brick, and mortar. And now that we were below the floor that held the fancy electronics, we were faced with smoke that came only from those simple materials- and from the gasoline and the hemp sacks full of grain.
Still, the black cloud would choke us to death if we gave it half a chance. I hesitated. Maybe we should flee to the end of the second-floor corridor and take our chances jumping out the far window. Ernie understood my hesitancy but he had none. He plowed forward, into the smoke.
I went with him, the body of the Turkey Lady bouncing behind us, Ok-hi following.
We reached the ground floor beneath a cloud-covering of smoke. Sacks of barley stacked on pallets roared red with flame. The wooden flooring burned in erratic circles, indicating the places where the kampei had splashed gasoline. We moved toward the front door but the smoke was thickening now. Ernie stumbled. I wanted to help him up but my eyes and my nose and my throat screamed for me to keep moving, to flee. I had no idea what Ok-hi was doing. In seconds I’d pass out. I let go of the Turkey Lady’s foot. Ernie was crawling forward now but I left him and ran blindly toward where I hoped I’d find the exit. I wasn’t running so much as stumbling, head forward, trying to keep my feet beneath me so I wouldn’t fall. And I didn’t fall because I plowed headfirst into a wall.
For a second, I blacked out. When I came to I found myself face-down on the floor and this was good because there was less smoke and more oxygen down here. I slithered to my left, praying as I tried to find the door. I did.
I shoved at it. It rattled and held.
Locked.
Holding my breath, I rose to my knees and twisted the handle. It was hot but I held on anyway. I twisted and twisted again. No dice. It wouldn’t budge.
I knew what I had to do. I had to stand up and kick the door open. But knowing and doing are two different things. What I really wanted to do was to lie down and enjoy the last of the breathable air, but if I did that I’d be finished. What about Ernie? What about Ok-hi? What about the Turkey Lady? They were far from my calculations now.
I stood somehow, backed up a step, and with every molecule of strength I possessed, I flung myself at the door. It shuddered, held, and then sprang free.
I fell facedown onto the wooden platform outside, then crawled toward the far edge of the loading dock, still unable to breath. Billowing black smoke followed me outside like a dragon emerging from its den. I continued to crawl until gravity took over and I crashed to the ground below. I lay still for a few seconds. Breathing. Grateful. Enjoying the unbelievable bracing, clear air that filled my lungs.
Ernie! He was still back there.
I rose unsteadily to my feet and through the smoke saw something black moving toward me. I reached out, grabbed a handful of shirt and pulled. The dark thing fell, crashing into me, and we both tumbled onto the ground.
Ernie. I shoved him off me. His face was covered with soot and he gasped for air like a beached fish. But he was alive. I left him there and climbed back onto the platform. Holding my breath, keeping my eyes turned away from the smoke, I reached the doorway once again and crawled through, groping blindly with my hands.
Nothing. Ok-hi hadn’t made it this far.
I was running out of breath and about to turn back when my fingers slid across a slick surface. Hard. Leathery. The heel of a boot. Ok-hi. But I required air. No choice. I scurried back through the door and lowered my head over the edge of the loading platform to allow myself a few quick gulps of oxygen.
Ernie came to. He started to rise.
“Take a deep breath,” I croaked. “Come on.”
I took a deep breath myself, turned, and crawled back into the burning warehouse. This time I found Ok-hi’s boot easily. I pulled myself up her body and realized that she lay atop the Turkey Lady. Grabbing handfuls of material, I tugged them both toward the door. Ernie bumped into me, groped past, and soon he was helping me to drag the two women across the threshold. We slid them along the platform and, with a heave, shoved them off the edge of the loading dock to the ground. We flopped down after them and lay there for a while regaining our strength. Then we started pulling them away from the burning building.
I realized that people were shouting and running every which way. They’d organized a bucket brigade and men were running past us, splashing water ineffectually on the growing flames. A few women started to minister to Ernie and me but we directed them to Ok-hi and the Turkey Lady.
We backed off toward the edge of a hill, about thirty yards away from the warehouse and watched the flames.
They grew higher.
The women cleaned Ok-hi’s face with a washcloth and a pan of water. When she was recovered she thanked them and joined us on the side of the hill. On the far side of the warehouse, in front of the shrine to General Yu Byol-seing, jeeploads of Korean National Police had arrived. Someone spoke to them and pointed to the Turkey Lady. She was sitting up now. A KNP marched toward her.
Ernie and I didn’t have to talk about it. We had too much to do tonight; we didn’t have time to make a lengthy report to the TDC cops. Instead, Ok-hi and Ernie and I slipped away into the darkness.
The midnight to four a.m. curfew had been imposed on the entire country of South Korea when the Korean War ended in June 1953, over twenty years ago. The reason, ostensibly, was to deny the cover of darkness to North Korean communist infiltrators. Since l953 there’d been hundreds, maybe thousands, of North Korean incursions into South Korea and the midnight to four curfew hadn’t seemed to slow them down. What the curfew did do was provide a sense of order for the people who live in South Korea. More than one GI told me that he felt the midnight curfew saved his health and his sanity. Otherwise, like a lot of GIs, he’d have ended up partying all night and been unable to roll out of the rack in time to make his “oh-dark-thirty” physical fitness formation. For the general populace, the midnight curfew meant that everybody knew when to close up shop. They didn’t have to worry about their competitor next door stealing late-night business. The government itself, maybe unwittingly, was promoting a variation on the old Ben Franklin dictum: “Early to bed, early to rise, makes an entire country healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
Still, the curfew was a pain in the butt if you were caught away from home after midnight, because then you were forced to stay put wherever you happened to be. No one was allowed on the street from midnight to four and this was enfo
rced by the white clad “curfew police” and by the South Korean armed forces. If you were sneaking around dark alleys and you ignored an order to halt, you risked being shot. This had happened more than once to otherwise innocent civilians, although the newspapers didn’t make a fuss about it. They weren’t allowed to.
Like a couple of wary moles, Ernie and I worked our way through the narrow back alleys of Tongduchon. Only the three-quarter moon lighted our way.
“What’s the time?” I asked.
Ernie checked his radium dial watch. “Twelve-oh-seven.”
After leaving the Turkey Farm we’d returned to the Silver Dragon Nightclub. Ok-hi took us upstairs to her hooch and with Jeannie’s help brought pans of hot water and towels. As the ladies administered bandages and antiseptic ointment to our cuts and bruises, I thought about the timing of what had happened. How much of a coincidence was it that the kampei had arrived only a few minutes after we’d entered the Turkey Farm? Had they known Ernie and I were on the roof? I doubted it. There was no indication that they’d paid any attention to us at all. If they’d wanted to kill us, they had us cornered and couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity. My guess was that they weren’t after us. But why burn down a money-making operation like that warehouse in the Turkey Farm? And why now?
Those were questions I decided to file away for the moment. Tonight, we were after information that I hoped would lead to Jill Matthewson.
Ernie and I changed into the outfits we’d stashed earlier that evening: sneakers, blue jeans, dark shirts, and knit watch caps. Then we pulled on our army-issue leather gloves, bid good-bye to the ladies, and slipped out the back door of the Silver Dragon.
The doors and windows near the building that housed Kimchee Entertainment were closed and shuttered. Midnight curfew had taken full effect. No one walked down the pedestrian lanes, no vehicles rolled down the narrow road. Neon lights were shut off. No sound from television sets or radios seeped out onto the street because all broadcasting stopped, by order of the government, when the midnight curfew began.
Ernie’d already appropriated a trash cart he’d found at a dead-end dump. He rolled it beneath the second-story window that belonged to the offices of Kimchee Entertainment, tilted the cart on its end, and leaned it against the wall.
I scurried to the narrow asphalt road that ran in front of Kimchee Entertainment and peeked around the corner. Empty. No one moved. I studied the roadway right and left. No delivery trucks, no white jeeps belonging to the curfew police, no vehicles of any kind. And no pedestrians. All windows and doors lining the street were closed and dark.
I took a deep breath. The night air was already beginning to cleanse itself. Less odor of burnt diesel. More of the sharp, clean aroma of rich earth and vegetation, the smell that had originally lured mankind to this lush peninsula.
Ernie hissed. “Come steady the cart.”
I ran back and held the sides of the six-foot-long cart while Ernie climbed atop it, stretched to his full height, and grabbed the sill of the window leading into Kimchee Entertainment. I placed my palms beneath the soles of his sneakers and on the count of three, shoved upwards with all my might. Ernie’s body rose and simultaneously his fist broke glass. One of the small window panes. The noise was jarring but brief. We’d already decided that it would be too dangerous to linger in the alley outside of Kimchee Entertainment. No time for jimmying the window. I was still shoving upwards on the bottoms of his feet as Ernie reached in and finally found the latch that unlocked the window. He pried it open and wriggled inside. Now he leaned out the window, stretching his open right hand out to me.
As we’d planned, I lowered the cart to its normal traveling position. Then I climbed into the bed of the cart, reached up and tried to grab Ernie’s hand, but I couldn’t quite reach.
“Jump,” he said.
There were still no signs of life up and down the walkway. The minimal noise we’d made hadn’t disturbed anyone. I took a deep breath, reached out my hand, and jumped. Ernie grabbed my right wrist and then, with his free hand, my forearm. As I kicked my sneakers against the wall and tried to climb, he leaned back with all his might, pulling, until I had a handhold on the sill. I scrambled up the wall as Ernie tugged. Within seconds, I was inside the offices of Kimchee Entertainment.
Ernie stepped past me and closed the window. I searched for something to cover the broken pane of glass. I found a magazine with a beautiful Korean actress on the cover and managed to stuff that into the opening.
Now, anyone walking below would see a trash cart left in an alley and above that a broken window that had been temporarily repaired. Ernie located a low lamp on a desk. I closed the curtain over the window and Ernie switched on the lamp. A soft green glow suffused the room.
“We’re in,” I said.
Ernie motioned for me to keep my voice down. We already knew that at least one nosy old woman lived in this building. If she’d heard us climbing in the window, she would’ve already called the Korean National Police and since they had police boxes all over the city of Tongduchon, someone would be here in minutes. Ernie and I stood stock-still. Listening. If we heard someone banging on the front door, or the heavy tread of boots on cement, we’d have to un-ass the area. Quick. Exactly how that would work, I didn’t know. Hopping out the window wouldn’t be good because the KNPs would station someone at the sides and rear of the building. One thing the KNPs never lack is manpower.
Ernie and I made a plan of sorts. The best thing to do if the KNPs were alerted would be to go deeper into the building, find the stairs or the ladder that led to the roof and from there hop onto the roof of the neighboring building and try to make good our escape.
We waited. Listening. Barely breathing.
The room looked lived-in. Used. The office of an actively functioning business. Three gray metal file cabinets stood against the wall. Probably army-issue, bought on the black market. The desk was made of unimpressive lumber, thinly varnished, and pocked with cigarette burns. In front of the desk stood a low coffee table and hard-cushioned sofa with two matching wooden chairs. In the center of the coffee table sat an enormous glass ashtray filled with butts and next to that an octagonal cardboard box stuffed with wooden matches.
I checked the butts. Korean-made. Not a single Miguk or imported cigarette in the bunch. Mr. Pak Tong-i was a thrifty man. So, apparently, were his clients.
On the wall hung numerous framed snapshots, some of them expensive publicity photos of Korean stars I vaguely recognized. Not his clients, I didn’t think. These were faces that belonged on grand stages in Seoul or in front of television cameras. You could bet that none of them had ever performed up here in the hinterlands of TDC. And then there were the lower-quality photos. Photos of bands performing on rickety wooden stages, the backs of short GI haircuts in the audience. Clearly taken in some dive either in TDC or in one of the dozens of other GI villages blemishing the land just south of the Demilitarized Zone. Photos of sequin-spangled strippers stretching insincere smiles, striking awkward poses. Was one of them Miss Kim Yong-ai? I had no way of knowing. More photos of groups of GIs in civvies standing in front of bars or outdoors in picnic areas, always with Pak Tong-i standing in the middle, beaming, his arms around his friends. And a photo of Pak indoors, in front of the flags of the U.S. and South Korea, receiving an engraved plaque from a United States Army colonel in full uniform. The name and the face of the colonel meant nothing to me and it figured they wouldn’t because the Pak Tong-i in the picture looked years younger.
So Mr. Pak Tong-i did more than just book entertainment for the nightclubs that stuck like barnacles to the outside of U.S. Army compounds. He also maintained contact with army officers on base. “Community relations,” 8th Army calls it. Exactly what services Pak Tong-i performed, I didn’t know but whatever it was, he’d received awards for it.
Ernie wandered into a side room. When he returned he thrust his thumb over his shoulder. “Nice setup,” he said. “Byonso.” Bathroom. “And
a little bedroom with a cot and next to that a stand with a hot plate and a brass teapot.”
So far, no alarm had sounded. We were starting to breath easier. Finally, I noticed the odor in the room. Thick. As if somebody’d left food out.
“Any refrigerator in there?” I asked.
“No. No sign of food.”
Maybe Pak Tong-i ordered out. Hot food delivery-both Chinese and Korean-is cheap in Korea and always readily available. But I didn’t see any sign of empty bowls or used chopsticks.
“You check the desk,” I told Ernie. “I’ll take the files.”
Both of us carried small, army-issue flashlights and Ernie kneeled down under the desk, determined to be meticulous and start his search from the ground up. I opened the top drawer of the first file cabinet.
It was a mess. There didn’t seem to be any particular order to the files, either in the English alphabet-a, b, c-or the Korean hangul alphabet-ka, na, da. Papers were shoved in willy-nilly. Contracts, payment vouchers, receipts-all of it in a huge hodgepodge stuffed into random folders. The Korean names on the folders, apparently the names of entertainers, did not correspond to the paperwork they contained. I worked quickly through the drawers, from file cabinet to file cabinet, trying to grasp the method of organization, quickly coming to the realization that there was none.
What I did notice was that there was no folder with the name Kim Yong-ai, the stripper who’d become Jill Matthewson’s friend. I went back and checked more carefully, even peeking beneath the rows of folders in case the file had slipped down. Finally, I was sure. There was no folder for Kim Yong-ai despite the fact that Pak Tong-i himself had told us that she had been one of his most productive clients. There was no sense delaying my conclusion any longer. Someone-almost certainly not Pak Tong-i-had gone through these files. The mystery person had searched everything, taken everything out, and then thrown the documents back into any old folder and stuffed the entire mess back into the cabinets, totally unconcerned about keeping the records straight for future use or, for that matter, hiding the fact that he’d been here.