by Martin Limon
Miss Kwon was nodding now, still crying, but nodding.
Now, Doc Yong said, give me your hand and me and my friend-she meant me-will help pull you up.
Miss Kwon hesitated.
Doc Yong stood silent, holding her breath. She knew that this was the moment in which Miss Kwon had to make her decision. Should she live or should she die? And on that roof in Itaewon, staring down at this teenage girl who’d only recently left school, I watched her choose between life and death.
Without thinking, Doc Yong and I clasped each other‘s hands and squeezed.
The cold wind gusted and the moron G.I. s below continued with their mocking chants: “Jump!” Then shameful laughter. Thankfully, I don’t think Miss Kwon heard.
She stared up at us, eyes flooding. Then she smiled bravely and held out her left hand.
Doc Yong reached for it and grabbed it. I leaned over the ledge and I felt Ernie wrap his arms around my waist, leaning back, ready to brace me as I reached for Miss Kwon’s other arm.
But when Doc Yong’s hand touched Miss Kwon’s, Miss Kwon leaned back, putting too much of her weight on the doctor’s grasp. Doc Yong tried but she couldn’t hold on and Miss Kwon teetered backward, panic suffusing her moist face. I lunged forward, trying to grab a handhold, but all I touched was hair. My fingertips brushed the top of her skull and then she tilted farther back, her arms flailing, and her face showing complete panic. From behind Mrs. Bei, the bartender grabbed Doc Yong and held onto her to keep her from plunging over the ledge too. And then Miss Kwon had gone too far, too far for anyone to believe she could be saved. And then her feet left the toehold and she was floating free in space, her sweet face looking not panicked but confused.
Something had gone wrong and she wasn’t quite sure what.
And she fell. And the G.I. voices below were silent but the Korean women started to scream. So shrilly that when Ernie jerked me back over the ledge I rolled onto the dirty cement of the flat roof, pounding my fists against my ears, trying to force the screaming to stop. And then we heard a crash, a whining squeal, as if lines of metal and copper wire were being ripped out of their moorings and, finally, something much more awful.
A thud.
Doc Yong, Ernie, and I bounded down the inner stairwell of the King Club.
On the way, I remembered Auntie Mee’s curse. She said if I didn’t find the bones of Mori Di, Miss Kwon would meet an unpleasant fate. Most likely, she’d die. But now, after we’d found the bones, in complete contravention of the fortune teller’s foolish prediction, Miss Kwon had met that unpleasant fate.
Miss Kwon lay in a mangled mess of wire and neon in the street. On the way down, she’d slammed back first onto the King Club’s flashing sign. She’d done everything she could to break her fall-grabbed at support cables, flashing tubes, metal brace work to slow her downward progress. Wrapped, now, sinuously around her body, live electrical wires sputtered angrily into the cold night air.
Ernie reached her first and, with no thought to his own safety, stepped gingerly over the juice still surging through hot lines. He bent over, reached beneath Miss Kwon’s limp body, and lifted her up and away from the sparking mess. Doc Yong and I helped untangle her arms and legs. She was groaning when we carried her away and laid her on dirty cement, groaning and still breathing.
A squad of uniformed KNPs arrived. Doc Yong identified herself and tried to ward them off but, using their nightsticks, they shoved us away from Miss Kwon. Ernie shoved back. One of the cops screamed at Ernie and pulled his. 38. Before Ernie could do something truly stupid, I stepped between the two men. We stood that way for a moment, curses flying back and forth in English and Korean. The sergeant-in-charge finally shouted an order. He recognized Ernie and me from the many times we’d worked out here in Itaewon with the KNPs. He told his man that we were cops and to lay off. The officer took a step backwards and reholstered his weapon.
By now the KNPs had Miss Kwon completely surrounded. She had, technically, committed a crime: attempted suicide. Still, Doc Yong was doing her best to convince the sergeant-in-charge not to take Miss Kwon into custody. A Korean ambulance arrived. White-clad paramedics emerged but they didn’t bother to pull a stretcher out of the back of the ambulance. Instead, they grabbed Miss Kwon’s legs and her shoulders and, carrying her like a sack of spring rice, tossed her into the back of the small white van. Doc Yong assisted the paramedics, trying to keep Miss Kwon’s back as straight as possible. Then she hopped into the back of the emergency van, squatted next to Miss Kwon, and spoke soothing words. Just before the medics slammed the door, Doc Yong glanced up at me, gave me a half smile, and waved.
I waved back.
The next morning at the 8th Army CID office, our goal was to obtain an official search warrant and obtain it fast. If the employees of the Grand Ole Opry discovered that we’d busted a hole in the wall of Mori Di’s crypt, it wouldn’t take long for the Seven Dragons to find out. They’d destroy all the evidence fast.
Colonel Brace, the 8th Army provost marshal, stared at the rusted dog tag laying in the center of his highly polished mahogany desk.
“They buried him?” he asked.
Ernie and I nodded.
“Alive?”
We nodded again.
“After torturing him?”
This time we didn’t move.
The colonel shook his head, sighed, and continued to stare at the dog tag. He hadn’t asked us how we’d gotten it. He didn’t want to know. Finally, he looked up at the first sergeant who was standing beside his desk.
“Top, how soon can we obtain a search warrant from the KNP Liaison Office?”
The first sergeant shrugged. “This morning, if they get up off their butts.”
“Make sure they do,” the colonel replied. “Tell them the Eighth Army PMO considers it top priority.”
“They’ll want to know why, sir.”
“Tell them it’s a suspected black-market cache.”
The first sergeant saluted and left the office. The colonel turned back to us.
“I’m going to keep this,” he said, picking up the dog tag. “I’ll show it to the CG during this morning’s briefing.”
Neither Ernie nor I had any objection to that, as long as we got our hands on a search warrant.
Then Colonel Brace clutched the dog tag in his hand. And squeezed.
It was hard to tell which report was Cort’s last entry. Someone had gone through the SIR some time after his last entry and jumbled the order of the papers. Unfortunately, many of the second and third pages of the various entries weren’t properly numbered and dated. Cort might’ve been a hell of an investigator but he wasn’t a hell of a clerk. So I had to read through them all and try to figure which one went with which starting page based on content. All the reports had been knocked out on what seemed to be the same manual typewriter. Probably an old Remington, one of the army’s favorite brands at that time. I could see where the ink had faded and the ribbon had been replaced. That too, helped me place the pages in the correct order.
Cort had never given up, even after he’d been officially assigned to other duties. He’d kept trying to make a case concerning Moretti’s death until the day he left country. I stacked up the pages and was about to tie the SIR with the knotted string I’d found it in, when I noticed a clump of sheets that had slipped down into the sleeve of one of the brown folders. It was as if they’d purposely been hidden. I pulled them out and unfolded the brittle sheets until they were flat on the table. They were new to me. I hadn’t read them before. The subject title was Provisional Inventory.
I began to read.
It was an inventory of all the valuables that Moretti held for safekeeping for the refugee families of Itaewon. How Cort had obtained such an inventory I couldn’t be sure. Maybe the nuns had given it to him or maybe one of the G.I. truck drivers who’d worked with Moretti. However he’d gotten it, this list of riches explained where the Seven Dragons had found the capital to construct the glit
tering red-light district of Itaewon.
There were names in one column, first written in Korean in varying hands, and then spelled out in English. The English handwriting was consistently the same. Probably Moretti’s. And if the variability of the hangul writing was any indication, the Koreans had written their own names on the sheet as they’d turned in their valuables to him. Some had even written their names in Japanese. For much of the thirty-five-year occupation of Korea, from 1910 to 1945, the ancient Korean language had not been taught in Korean schools, only Japanese, so the Koreans would become dedicated subjects of Emperor Hirohito. It hadn’t worked. Through it all, the Koreans held steadfast to their own culture and their own national identity.
After the names were written, a description of the item and quantity or approximate size was provided. First in Korean in the varying hands, and then again in English in the script that I could only assume belonged to Moretti. Finally, a date of receipt and then two signatures: first the Korean’s and then a set of initials, FRM. Florencio R. Moretti.
All very official looking. Probably Moretti had given the depositor a scrap of paper with the same information written on it. But I was only guessing because I searched and no receipts were to be found in the pockets of the various folders that comprised the Mori Di Serious Incident Report.
The inventory read like a museum catalog. There were tiaras from the Yi Dynasty; porcelain from an earlier Korean dynasty known as Koryo; gold necklaces imported from Burma; jade pendants shipped in from the Chinese province of Fujian; antler horn from Manchuria; a Buddhist codex from Tibet; and a number of paintings and calligraphy scrolls from all over the Far East. Of course there were the more mundane items, like small bricks of silver bullion, gold coins minted in Mexico, and even a few spirit tablets recorded with the names written in Chinese characters, of revered ancestors.
These treasures must have been sold on the black-market by the Seven Dragons. Of course, they might have retained some of the precious objects. Yes, I decided it was possible. That might be important evidence in building a case against them. Yes. That is why, instead of returning the Serious Incident Report and the inventory to the SIR warehouse, I locked the entire sheaf of folders in the safe in the Administration Office of the 8th Army Criminal Investigation Detachment.
Staff Sergeant Riley helped me make an inventory, for the record, on an 8th Army hand receipt. Just to be thorough, he kept one onionskin copy, I kept the other. Folding it neatly, I stuffed it in my wallet, just in case I encountered any of these precious objects on my sojourns through the ville. I’d seldom seen anything as valuable as these artifacts-not, at least, outside of museums-but soon I’d be entering the offices and dens of the inner sanctum of the Seven Dragons and who knew what riches I’d find there?
Maybe gold bullion. Maybe ancient tiaras. And maybe more evidence leading to the death of the man who the Koreans called Mori Di.
Ernie and I didn’t make it out to the Grand Ole Opry Club until late afternoon.
The KNP liaison officer had been dragging his feet all day, seeking clearance for the search warrant from his superiors who were supposedly indisposed or locked in high-level governmental meetings or on distant journeys that made it impossible to contact them. Finally, the 8th Army commanding general stepped in. His adjutant called the assistant to the KNP commander in Seoul and, within ten minutes, we had our search warrant.
Moretti’s dog tag was working its magic.
This time Ernie and I didn’t have to disguise our intentions. Neither did the four uniformed 8th Army MPs who tagged along with us. The owner of the Grand Ole Opry was a tall, slender Korean woman who the G.I. customers called Olive. Perspiration showed on Olive’s forehead and her straight black hair was in disarray. She accepted our warrant without complaint and seemed completely relaxed, claiming that she knew she didn’t have any black-market activities going on in her club. In fact she was chatty, in English, and told us that her father, who was now deceased, bought the Grand Ole Opry from the original owner, a Mr. Ju, who was also now deceased. Mr. Ju, I’d been led to understand by Two Bellies, was one of the original Seven Dragons. Six of them were still alive and, supposedly, still pulling the strings here in Itaewon-and elsewhere.
Olive led us downstairs. Had she been down here at all today? I asked. No, she always had her employees restock at night, after closing, so the club would be ready to open at four in the afternoon, just before the 8th Army G.I. s got off work and started to make their way out to Itaewon.
“You don’t unlock the storeroom before that?” I asked.
“No. I opened the front door about two this afternoon and let my janitor in. We’ve been cleaning in the main bar ever since.”
The time was now fifteen hundred hours so that meant that she’d opened about an hour ago. Olive switched on the overhead fluorescent light in the hallway and stopped at the entrance to the storeroom. She stared at the broken padlock dangling from the hasp.
“Isang hei,” Olive said. Strange.
Olive frowned. She entered the storeroom first and switched on the overhead bulb. Trash was piled by the rear door, ready to be taken out.
The 8th Army KNP liaison officer, Lieutenant Pong, had also tagged along. Since the commanding general of the 8th United States Army had shown such an interest in this case, KNP headquarters in downtown Seoul wanted a full report. He stood back, out of the way, and crossed his arms.
At Ernie’s instruction, the four burly MPs started hoisting crates of beer. Soon the brick wall was exposed. So were the piles of dried mortar on the floor and the loose bricks that Ernie and I had stuck back into the wall.
Olive gasped. “Who do?” she asked, pointing.
I shook my head and didn’t answer. Then Ernie and I knelt on the floor and started pulling the bricks out. Even before we were finished, I could smell it. A fleshy smell, as if someone had been sitting in a sauna bath too long.
What the hell was this all about? I hadn’t noticed any such odor last night. Or had I just been too nervous?
When the opening in the brick wall was large enough, I switched on my flashlight and poked my nose in. This time I couldn’t hold back.
I screamed.
While waiting for the KNP Liaison Office to come up with our search warrant, Ernie and I drove downtown to the Beikhua Hospital. Doc Yong was there, in a room with Miss Kwon. The little chipmunk-looking erstwhile business girl was snoring heavily. Doc Yong gave us a wan smile and bade us to sit down next to her on wooden stools.
I figured she’d paid for Miss Kwon’s medical care, in advance, which is the way Korean hospitals usually want it. And, judging by her disheveled appearance, the good doctor had probably been here all night. I sat down next to her and took her hand. To my surprise, she squeezed my palm.
“Thank you,” she said, to both Ernie and me, “for helping last night.”
“We weren’t much help,” Ernie said, nodding toward Miss Kwon.
“You tried,” Doc Yong answered, “and we’re lucky she’s not dead.”
She described the prognosis. Not bad, considering. The doctors speculated that Miss Kwon’s wild flailing, grabbing instinctively onto anything that would break her fall, had, in fact, saved her life. Miss Kwon had no internal injuries. That was the important thing. Her left ankle had been sprained badly but not broken and the only other injuries were a pomegranate-sized lump on her noggin and scratches and bruises both on her legs and on her hands, fingers, and forearms, where she’d tried so desperately to slow her plunge to the dirty pavement. After internal injuries, what the doctors were most worried about was concussion but she seemed to be in the clear. Now, after being heavily sedated, all she’d need was rest and recuperation. Not something Itaewon business girls were usually allowed.
“You need rest too,” I told Doc Yong.
She nodded her head slowly. “And the clinic-”
“The clinic can wait,” I said.
I pulled her to her feet, guided her out to the jeep, a
nd Ernie and I drove her home.
It was the first time I’d seen where she lived. It was a small room, she told us, on the third floor of a rundown apartment building, shoved into a crowded slot in a tightly packed neighborhood known as Oksu-dong. She left me at the first floor and, although I offered to help her to her door, she shook her head negatively and trudged alone up the squeaking wooden stairs.
When I poked my head through the hole in the brick wall of the basement of the Grand Ole Opry Club, I normally would’ve been embarrassed about screaming except that all the MPs-and Ernie too-were as scared shitless as I was. Especially when they took their turns peering inside. Even Lieutenant Pong, who normally had a ferocious expression on his face, appeared a little green around the gills.
We had to pull the body out from behind the wall because it was no longer a skeleton. It was a big, fleshy corpse, full of blood and mucous and other bodily fluids, and it was wrapped in a flowery pink dress and its dyed black hair was damp and strung around its ears and neck like snakes uncoiling from the skull of Medusa.
Once we dragged her through the hole and plopped her on the floor and searched back inside the opening, we discovered that the bones of Mori Di, every last one, were now gone. Along with the tattered uniform and the combat boots and the rusty old pair of handcuffs and the cotton swabs and the woolen gag. Mori Di had once again been spirited away-to points unknown, by person or persons unknown. And in his place had been left the rotund, no longer breathing body of Two Bellies.
