Slicky Boys

by Martin Limon

  Ernie lounged against the bar, scanning the room, keeping alert for trouble.

  Lee plopped the big leather-bound ledger on the bar. The pages were of thick construction paper. Stapled to each page were black-and-white photographs of the girls who worked here. Next to each picture, handwritten in a neat Korean script, was the name and address, date of birth, home of origin, and Korean National Identity card number. Korea is a highly organized society. Even for bar girls.

  Lee stared at me with heavily lidded eyes, trying to pretend that he was extremely bored. “Why you fucking with me, Geogie?”

  Ernie shot him a warning look. Lee ignored it. Some of these bar owners in Itaewon were hard-ass little brutes. I’d seen them jump into brawls with GI’s twice their size, get knocked down, and bounce back up and slug somebody else. We weren’t going to intimidate Lee. He had gone along so far only because he didn’t want us to actually sic the Korean National Police on him. That would cost him money.

  I thumbed through the ledger but didn’t find it right away.

  “Where’s Eun-hi?” I said.

  His face didn’t move much but a veneer of knowing condescension passed over it, like a shadow crossing the moon, then disappeared. He thought I was just another horny GI trying to hit on Eun-hi. He wasn’t far from wrong so I didn’t bother to set him straight.

  He riffled through the ledger, found the proper entry, and shoved it toward me.

  “Here,” he said.

  Ernie leaned forward and looked at the photo with me. It wasn’t very flattering. Eun-hi’s face looked puffed and plain, not at all like the knockout we saw parading around the U.N. Club every night. I breathed deeply, wincing once again at the foul stench of the U.N. Club. If I hadn’t noticed that before, maybe I’d never noticed that Eun-hi wasn’t all that attractive either. It didn’t matter. I was sober now. I’d find out for sure this morning.

  “Is this address correct?”

  Lee glanced at it. “Yeah. Maybe. Unless she move.”

  I committed it to memory.

  “All right, Lee.” I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “Make sure that girl gets her card right away.”

  His face didn’t move. “You guys want a drink?”

  Ernie and I looked at each other. Lee knew we were CID agents and he was a smart businessman. Keeping the police happy was part of his job. At night, with a lot of other GI’s watching us, we never accepted gratuities. Ernie didn’t wait for me to answer.

  “Yeah. Double bourbon. And one for my pal here.”

  Lee deftly poured the drinks, set them in front of us, and folded up the ledger and put it away. Ernie and I lifted our shot glasses and tossed them back.

  On the way out, we saw the skinny waitress sitting in a rickety chair, hugging herself, bare legs crossed, glaring at us.

  “Looks like you made another friend,” Ernie said.

  We pushed through the door and stepped into a slap of cold air.

  “Yeah,” I said. “So far this morning we’re on a roll.”

  We turned up the hill and trudged past a quiet row of shuttered nightclubs. Behind them lurked a jumbled sea of upturned shingled rooftops. Hundreds of business girls and pimps and hustlers lived back there, in the maze of narrow alleys and shadowed courtyards that is the heart of the bar district known as Itaewon.

  Eun-hi was in there somewhere. She knew something. Whatever it was, we’d find out.

  6

  EUN-HI’S HOOCH WAS IN A NARROW ALLEY IN THE catacombs behind the Itaewon main bar district. We ducked through a doorway cut into a big wooden gate and entered a slender courtyard lined with sliding, paper-covered doors. Upstairs, a balcony with more rooms and hallways wound off out of sight.

  Young women squatted on the raised walkway near the kitchen. Steam billowed from the concrete room and the scent of boiling onions filled the air. Pots and pans clanged.

  When the girls saw us they let out gasps of surprise and covered their naked faces with splayed fingers.

  “Ajjima!” one of them said. “Sonnim wasso!” Aunt. We have guests.

  An elderly woman waddled out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on an apron strapped around her waist. She gawked at us. They weren’t used to seeing GI’s at this time of morning. Not on a workday.

  “Ajjima,” I said. “I spent the night with Eun-hi but I left something in her room. I came to pick it up.”

  She squinted. “You spent the night with Eun-hi?”

  “Part of it.”

  “What did you leave?”

  I did my best to act embarrassed. “Underpants.”

  The girls laughed.

  ‘Yes, yes. Go ahead.” The elderly woman waved her hand toward the stairway behind us. I thanked her and we turned and climbed up the steps.

  The splintered wood slat floors creaked beneath our shoes. As we turned the corner we ran into the cement block outer wall on one side and a long line of doorways on the other. We walked forward slowly. Each room was quiet. Not a sound.

  “They’re all getting their beauty rest,” Ernie said.

  “But which one belongs to Eun-hi?”

  “Take your pick.”

  Ernie stopped and pounded on a door. When there was no answer he pounded on another. A little farther down the hall a door creaked open.

  “Nugu-seiyo?” Who is it?

  A sleepy-faced girl, wrapped in a flowered robe, gazed with half-closed eyes into the hallway. I walked down to her quickly.

  “I’m looking for Eun-hi.”

  Clutching her robe across her chest, she waved impatiently.

  “That door.”

  Ernie pointed at one. “This one?”

  “No. Next one.”

  Ernie walked over and pounded on the door. No answer. He tried to open it. Nothing. The girl in the doorway waited, the cold air starting to wake her up.

  “She’s not there,” I said to her. “Do you have a key?”

  She shook her head. “Ajjima have.”

  Something creaked, squealed wildly, and finally snapped. The girl and I both swiveled our heads. Eun-hi’s door was wide open. Ernie grinned at us sheepishly.

  “Cheap lumber,” he said.

  By now a couple more heads had popped out of their rooms. Still no Eun-hi. Ernie and I entered the hooch.

  It was a small room. Tiny, to be exact. Just enough space for a Western-style bed and a stereo set and a standing closet jammed with jumbled silk.

  The bed was a mess. The embroidered comforter and the stained sheets had been twisted and tossed every which way. Wads of tissue paper sprinkled the room.

  “Looks like somebody had a nose-blowing contest,” Ernie said.

  I turned back to the curious young women peering in the door and held out my hands. “Where’s Eun-hi?”

  They conferred amongst each other, chattering away in Korean, thinking I wouldn’t understand. They mentioned a name: Suk-ja. I interrupted them.

  “Eun-hi told me that she might be over at Suk-ja’s hooch.”

  They stared at me blankly.

  “Can you tell me where she lives?”

  They conferred a little more, figuring I must be okay if Eun-hi had told me about Suk-ja. One of them started talking.

  Suk-ja was an independent business girl and didn’t live here in the house with ajjima. Eun-hi often left early in the morning, after whatever GI she had policed up the night before returned to the compound, and visited Suk-ja. The girls were wide awake now and gave me good directions. Suk-ja’s hooch was just around the corner. But in these catacombs you could get lost in less than a hundred yards.

  I asked them why Eun-hi was visiting Suk-ja so early in the morning. One of the girls shrugged.

  “Jinhan chingu,” she said. Best friends.

  Suk-ja lived on the top floor of a three-story brick walk-up. Ernie whispered to me as we climbed the cement stairway.

  “We need to make a quick impression on her,” he said.

  I thought of the sliced remains of Cecil Whitcomb�
��s body.

  “I think you’re right.”

  When we reached the door I prayed the girls had given us the right information. Ernie leaned against the far wall, raised his foot, and leapt forward. The door crashed inward. I rushed past him, into the tiny room, and two startled women sat up in terror.

  Eun-hi was naked.

  Suk-ja, a tall, extremely thin woman, wore a sheer pink nightgown as if to camouflage her protruding ribs. Large brown nipples stuck out from her flat chest like bullets. Her cheeks were sunken, the planes of her face sharp and angular. She was the first to recover from the shock. Her lips tightened. Her eyes narrowed.

  “Nugu ya?” she screamed. Who are you?

  I ignored her and grabbed Eun-hi by the shoulders and stood her up. She looked up at me, frightened, still struggling to clear her mind.

  “Who told you to have us go to the Kayagum Teahouse?” I asked.

  Eun-hi shook her head, too terrified to understand. Her English was never good and under these conditions it would be lousy, but I was too angry to speak Korean. Too angry to give her any advantage. I rattled her body and watched her large breasts flop with each jolt.

  “Who talked to you about me? Who told you about the Kayagum Teahouse?”

  I heard footsteps behind me, then a sharp high cry of pain. I swiveled my head.

  Ernie held Suk-ja by the wrist. Her small white knuckles were wrapped around a straight razor. Not an expensive one, just the type with a regular men’s shaving blade screwed into a metal holder. She was a strong woman and struggled fiercely but silently. Ernie twisted her arm behind her back until, slowly, she bent forward. Her cordlike body writhed beneath the swishing pink silk. Saliva sputtered over full lips.

  “Fuck you, GI!” she said.

  Ernie pushed a little harder on her wrist. She grimaced.

  “Nice talk,” he said.

  I turned back to Eun-hi. There wasn’t much time. I couldn’t wait for her to come out of shock. Someone might call the Korean National Police and they could be here any minute. I slapped her.

  Her soft cheeks rippled with the force of my blow. When she recovered she opened her eyes, stared at me, pursed her lips, and spat in my face.

  I slapped her again and turned her around and twisted her arm behind her back and lowered her slowly to her knees on the sleeping mat. Once my knee was propped securely on her big round butt, I wiped my face with the back of my hand and pushed a little harder on her wrist.

  “I’ll break it,” I said.

  She started to whimper.

  Suk-ja growled something to her but I didn’t catch it. Ernie twisted her around and slammed her face up against the wall.

  I leaned harder on Eun-hi. “Who told you about the Kayagum Teahouse?”

  “I told you before,” Eun-hi said. “A woman. A Korean woman.”

  “How did you know her?”

  “I didn’t know her. She came in the U.N. Club, in the afternoon. Told me to talk to you. She gave me money, so I talked to you.”

  “How much did she give you?”

  “Ten thousand won.” She said it without hesitation. Twenty bucks.

  “Have you seen her again?”

  “No. Never again.”

  “She told us she was a student at Ewha.”

  “Humph. No way.”

  “She’s not a student?”

  “Only stupid GI think so.”

  I shoved a little harder on her wrist. “How do you know?”

  “The way she talk. Her eyes. She business girl just like me.”

  I’d totally fallen for the elegant lady routine. But it wasn’t the first time I’d been fooled.

  “When is she coming back?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe never.”

  “Do you know anybody who knows her?”

  “No.”

  I didn’t know what other questions to ask. What more could I do?

  Doors slammed downstairs. Loud, urgent voices. I looked at Ernie. He nodded. I bent toward Eun-hi.

  “If you see her, you’d better tell me. You understand?”

  She didn’t answer.

  We let go of the girls and stepped back. I expected them to embrace, to comfort one another, but instead Suk-ja grabbed her razor and Eun-hi reached behind a small dresser and pulled out a leather strap.

  Apparently we weren’t the first GI’s to give them a hard time. We backed out of the room.

  Outside, Emie and I trotted down the hallway, stepped onto a balcony, and climbed down the rusty fire escape. It squeaked and groaned under our weight but held. The last ten feet we dropped to the cobbled roadway. We rushed through another alley, barely wide enough for our shoulders, emerged between a row of nightclubs, and slid down the ice-covered hill to the Main Supply Route.

  Once we arrived back at the jeep, Ernie unchained it and started it up and we both breathed a little easier.

  “You think she was telling the truth?”

  “I think so. She hit the money she was paid right on the button. Without hesitation.”

  “Maybe that’s how much she charges for a short time.”

  “Might be. Awfully expensive, though.”

  Ernie jammed the jeep in gear.

  “Worth it,” he said. “Especially if you get that skinny-ass Suk-ja thrown in as a bonus.”

  He swerved into the onrushing traffic, forcing a three-wheeled truck piled high with about half a ton of garlic to slam on its brakes. The driver cursed.

  We sped toward the compound and didn’t even look back.

  7

  AFTER STOPPING AT MY ROOM SO I COULD CHANGE into my coat and tie, we went straight to the Honor Guard barracks. It took about two minutes for someone to call the British Sergeant Major. He stomped down the hallway, fists swinging at his sides, square jaw thrust out.

  “Been waiting,” he said. ‘Took your own bloody time.”

  “Sorry, Sergeant Major,” I said. “We had a couple of other people who had to be questioned.”

  He crossed his arms. Khaki sleeves were rolled up tightly around bulging biceps. Red hairs stuck out beneath his elbows like copper wires.

  “Been asking a few questions myself,” he said. ‘Two blokes matching your descriptions were seen near the arms room yesterday, at the same time as Whitcomb. The armorer tells me that you three had a jolly marvelous conversation.”

  Ernie and I put on our most somber expressions; two guys who had seen it all, so bored with life that we were about to go to sleep. Our professional cop look.

  The Sergeant Major seemed vaguely troubled by our reaction but continued to stare at us with eyes as piercing as sniper rounds.

  “Sergeant Major,” I said, putting as much sloth into my voice as I could, “why don’t you let us do the investigating?”

  Ernie rolled his neck and looked up at the ceiling. I did my best to pin the Sergeant Major with my gaze.

  “These are things that don’t concern you,” I said. “You don’t have a need-to-know. I’m afraid we’ll have to ask you to keep what you’ve learned strictly confidential.”

  He shuffled his brown combat boots, slightly embarrassed now.

  “Yes. Of course.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out. As if I were glad to have all the foolishness over with.

  Sometimes I thought Ernie and I ought to audition for a play at the music/theater center. We were better actors than any of the clowns who climbed up on stage.

  “Can you show us to his quarters?”

  He nodded and held out his arm. “This way.”

  The Honor Guard barracks was one of the old brick buildings built by the Japanese Imperial Army before World War II. Houseboys hustled back and forth carrying piles of laundry and boots shined to a mirrorlike finish. Steam billowed out of the latrine. One Korean man stood in the huge cast-iron sink, pant legs rolled up to his knees, churning his feet as if he were stomping grapes. Another fed laundry and soap into the tub.

  Ernie chomped on his gum. Luckily, all the Honor
Guard units were out on the parade field, working on their drill and ceremonies. Off duty, they’d been known to get in a lot of fights with the clerks who worked at 8th Army Headquarters. It’s natural for infantrymen to think of desk jockeys as not being real soldiers. Emie’d had a couple of run-ins with them. I hoped it wouldn’t flare up here. We didn’t need any ill will, and the Sergeant Major already knew too much about our dealings with Whitcomb. I wasn’t sure how effective our little act had been. All I could do was pray that the Sergeant Major would keep quiet.

  The British section of the building was a long open bay lined with bunks and wall lockers. Equipment of canvas and leather was stored neatly above the lockers or under the bunks. A couple of houseboys worked on boots in the far corner. An old radiator clanged and complained, spewing out sporadic wisps of heat.

  The Sergeant Major stopped at one of the bunks. “Here we are.”

  The bed was neatly made and the equipment display looked exactly like all the others. Still, we went through it carefully. We were looking for anything. Notes, items hidden away, drugs. We found nothing. The last thing left to check was the padlocked double wall locker. I pointed to it.

  “Can you open this?”

  The Sergeant Major pulled a big ring of keys out of his pocket. The metal doors squeaked open. Unlike the rest of the room, the inside of Whitcomb’s locker was splashed with color. The white and red tunics of his dress uniforms. A few civilian shirts and pants. Everything was meticulously neat. We checked it all. The razor blades, the soap, the aftershave. Ernie even sniffed the tooth powder. He was the expert on drugs and if any of it was any good he’d pocket it. He put the tooth powder back.

  The big thing that we were all ignoring, saving until last, was the thing that had shocked us initially when we opened the locker. On the bottom, atop some neatly folded winter fatigue blouses, sat a brand-new electric typewriter.

  None of us said anything. We knew it couldn’t belong to Whitcomb. It was the big heavy-duty type bought by the U.S. Government. Even if Whitcomb wanted a typewriter of his own he would’ve bought one of the compact, lightweight models out of the PX. This was a monster.

  When we’d checked everything else and come up with nothing, I pulled the typewriter out of the locker and looked it over carefully. In indelible ink was a supply number: 49-103. Whatever that meant. I jotted it down in my notebook, along with the serial number.