by Martin Limon
I was becoming angry and I stepped toward him, my. 45 still hanging at my side.
“Spit it out, Bascom. What the hell are you talking about?”
“She used you. To get at Snake. Don’t you see? Miss Kwon’s one of the orphans of the Itaewon Massacre. So are the people who hacked Horsehead and Water Doggy to death. And so is Doc Yong!”
I hit him.
It was a straight left, right to the nose and Criminal Investigation Division Agent Ernie Bascom reeled backwards like a man being pulled by a rope. He collapsed against a pile of smoldering lumber. When I smelt burning, I leaned down and rolled him away. One of the firemen doused him with water. Sputtering, Ernie rose to his knees, shook his head for a moment, took a weak swing at me, and then collapsed back to the ground.
I used a thin screwdriver to pop the front lock to Doc Yong’s medical clinic. My search was systematic, thorough, in accordance with my police training. It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for.
On a previous visit, I’d seen Korean workmen in the clinic. They had broken through one of the walls to install the new wiring for Doc Yong’s electrocardiogram equipment. At the time, I wondered why she’d needed such expensive equipment when most of her clients were young business girls whose hearts might be broken but were still beating. The older clients, like the friends of Two Bellies, could take a bus down to the Main Yongsan Clinic. Doc Yong had possessed an ulterior motive. She wanted the space opened so she could inter something valuable to her.
I kicked the flimsy wall in. Then, using the screwdriver, I scraped away plaster until the opening was large enough and I leaned in. I saw a square white box, wrapped in black ribbon, the type used in Korea to transport honored remains.
I lifted the box, placed it on Doc Yong’s desk and opened the top. After a quick survey, I closed it again. Then I left the clinic, stepped carefully down the creaking metal stairs, and marched through the early morning dawn to the Itaewon Police Station. Because of the fire at the Itaewon Market and the reports of gunfire, Captain Kim was already there. He wore his khaki uniform, neatly pressed, and his big square chin had been recently shaved. The pungent tang of aftershave battled with the fragrant remains of morning kimchee.
He stood as I walked into his office. I must’ve looked a sight: dirty, muddy, covered with soot and pig’s blood. I plopped the white box down on the center of his desk.
“Here,” I said
Captain Kim stared at the box suspiciously. “What is it?”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “The bones of Mori Di.”
His face contorted and his lips twisted in disgust. He didn’t want this box. It represented trouble. But now he had no choice. The remains of Technical Sergeant Flo Moretti had been presented to him by a representative of the United States Government.
Finally, after twenty years, Mori Di could no longer be ignored.
18
Bureaucratically, 8th Army had a spaz attack.
Back at CID headquarters, I made a complete report. Well, not exactly complete, I left out a few details. For example, I didn’t mention the kidnapping of Doctor Yong In-ja. I didn’t want to bring her into all this. I wasn’t sure exactly how deeply she was involved in the murders of Horsehead and Water Doggy but I figured Ernie was right. She must have been implicated.
What I said in my report was that Ernie and I were reconnoitering last night in Itaewon, searching for the remains of our late 8th Army comrade, Tech Sergeant Moretti, when we were accosted by person or persons unknown. That led us to take refuge in the Itaewon Market where someone committed arson and as we tried to escape the blaze we’d been fired upon, once again, by person or persons unknown. Of course, we returned fire.
According to the KNPs, we were all lousy shots because no one was reported to have been wounded.
Afterward, my report continued, I decided to search the Itaewon branch of the Yongsan District Public Health Clinic, Doc Yong’s office. After finding the front door open, I noticed a package hidden in a wall under repair. The package was presented to Captain Kim who ascertained that it contained the remains of Technical Sergeant Florencio Moretti, an American soldier who’d been carried on 8th Army’s books as missing-presumed-dead for over twenty years.
The find was the talk of the 8th Army Officers’ Club and the story was even reported in the Pacific Stars and Stripes. The fact that the item appeared in that official rag, albeit on page eight, was proof positive that the 8th Army honchos approved. So Ernie threw himself at the mercy of the provost marshal. Ernie had been in Itaewon, assisting me, despite being restricted to compound. Conveniently, Colonel Brace decided to set aside the previous restriction and, although we weren’t commended in any official way, just the fact that we weren’t punished told us both that we were no longer on the provost marshal’s shit list.
Ernie forgave me for punching him but said he’d return the favor one day, at a place and time of his choosing. Some forgiveness.
But the biggest brouhaha was with the Koreans.
Captain Kim had no choice but to reopen the investigation into the death of Technical Sergeant Flo Moretti. At the KNP medical facility in Seoul, a complete forensic examination of the bones was conducted. The conclusions were much the same as I’d drawn when I’d first seen the bones in the basement of the Grand Ole Opry Club. Flo Moretti had been tortured and then he’d been bricked up behind those cold walls while still alive. He’d been bound and gagged and within days he died of hunger and dehydration.
A tough way to go.
The Korean newspapers made much of it, and recapped the good that had been done in the postwar era by 8th Army’s reconstruction projects throughout the country.
Another thing that the Korean investigation pointed out was the Buddhist overtones of the way Moretti had been killed. In ancient times, people were executed by strangulation or by having heavy weights piled atop them or even by having foul things shoved down their throats so they couldn’t breathe, but blood was not shed. Whoever murdered Moretti probably had that in mind. They’d left him there to die on his own, not having the nerve to end his suffering and do him the favor of cutting his throat as somebody had done for Two Bellies.
Snake was charged with the murder of Mori Di. So were Jimmy Pak and the two other surviving charter members of the Seven Dragons. They did what all good gangsters do: they said nothing and hired good lawyers. As a result, their interrogation by the Korean National Police was brief and they were released on their own recognizance. The investigation into Moretti’s death promised to drag on for months.
Meanwhile, I started thinking of how different the follow-up murders were. The throat of Two Bellies had been expertly sliced, while Horsehead and Water Doggy had been hacked wildly by at least three blades. Auntie Mee, meanwhile, like Mori Di had been killed without bloodshed.
I wanted to talk to Doc Yong but she’d disappeared. According to the Yongsan Health Clinic, she’d resigned her job and moved with no forwarding address. Ernie and I checked her apartment. Empty. We talked to the landlady and she was just as surprised as we were. Without giving notice, Doc Yong had moved out all her stuff and left without so much as a goodbye.
I talked once again to the friends of Two Bellies. They’d told us previously that just prior to her death, someone had been following Two Bellies. I thought now I knew who that someone was. I confronted them with my suspicion.
The women looked away from me. “Maybe,” one of them said.
“Two Bellies caught her following?”
“No.” The huatu-playing women all shook their heads. “Daytime, Miss Kwon come look for Two Bellies. Together they talk. Whisper, we no can hear. Argue about something. Later that night, Two Bellies go out alone, never come back.”
I asked them why they hadn’t told me this before.
One of them set down her still-burning cigarette and in her whiskey-shredded voice said, “You no ask.”
I was walking through a dark Itaewon alley, ponder
ing that information, when a short figure stepped out of the darkness.
“Geogi,” she said.
The amber light of a streetlamp shone on her unblemished face. Doc Yong.
We embraced.
“She’s using you again,” Ernie said.
We were sitting at the 8th Army snack bar. It was lunch hour and the place was packed with G.I. s in uniform and a smattering of 8th Army civilians. I sipped hot coffee while a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich grew cold in front of me.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean you’re doing everything you can to keep her out of the Mori Di murder investigation.”
“It’s not my investigation,” I said. “It belongs to the KNPs. Besides, she was just a kid when Mori Di was murdered.” Ernie sighed with exasperation. “You know what I mean. The murders of Two Bellies and Horsehead and Water Doggy. It’s obvious.”
“It’s not obvious.”
“It is.”
Ernie went on to explain what he meant.
When Doc Yong took me to see the fortune teller, Auntie Mee, she hoped to give me a reason to search for the bones of Mori Di. She did. And when I found them she hoped that turning them over to the Korean National Police would cause the Seven Dragons to be investigated for murder. Why had she involved me rather than looking for the bones herself? Because if a Korean found them, the KNPs could easily hush up the entire affair. But if an official of the 8th United States Army presented them with the remains of an American G.I., official action would be compulsory.
Ernie was convinced that the two men and three women who’d murdered Horsehead and Water Doggy were orphans of the Itaewon Massacre. Probably in league with Doc Yong. Reluctantly, I conceded that he was probably right.
“And about Auntie Mee,” Ernie said. “She was killed in a Buddhist manner, probably ordered by Snake.”
“Why?”
“Revenge for Two Bellies. And a warning to whoever had the bones not to let them see the light of day.”
Still, that didn’t explain why someone had murdered Two Bellies. Ernie set down his coffee cup and took a deep breath.
“No hitting,” he said.
I promised I wouldn’t.
“The slice across the throat was expertly done,” Ernie said. “Like a doctor with a scalpel.”
I surprised him; I remained calm. In fact, I picked up my BLT and took a huge bite. He waited patiently while I chewed and finally swallowed.
“I thought of that,” I said.
“And?”
“It doesn’t make sense. If she wanted the bones of Mori Di revealed, why would she kill Two Bellies and then hide the bones again?”
Ernie crinkled his brow. “I don’t know.” Then he looked up at me. I sat calmly, waiting. “You son of a bitch.”
“What?”
“You know, don’t you?”
“Know what?”
“You know who murdered Two Bellies and why they did it.” I shrugged.
“You’re holding out on me.”
I shrugged again. “I have theories.”
“But you’re not sharing them with Captain Kim.”
“No reason to share them with him.”
“But you’re going to share them with Doc Yong.”
I shook my head negatively. “Actually,” I said, “I’m waiting for her to share them with me.”
Hilliard was incensed.
“What the hell you mean, coming over here at oh-dark-thirty in the morning and rousting me out of my crib?”
Actually, it wasn’t his crib. It was the room rented in a brothel behind the King Club by our favorite peg-legged business girl, Miss Kwon.
Ernie told Hilliard to go back into the hooch and keep quiet, which he did, grumbling to himself all the while. Wearing a cotton robe, Miss Kwon stepped into sandals and shuffled out onto the cement balcony where we could talk beneath the light of the moon. I pointed at her name on the nunnery’s list of orphans.
“Who are the others?” I said. “The women and the men.”
She started to cry. But after a few minutes, she started talking
It all made sense. Doc Yong was trying to keep Miss Kwon out of harm’s way so the actual killing of Horsehead and Water Doggy had been done by people, now grown, who had once been orphans on the Buddhist nun’s list. One man was a cab driver, the other a house painter. They were accompanied by a female chestnut vendor and two other women. Auntie Mee’s real name was also on the list of orphans. She had been one of the oldest of the children brought to the nunnery after the Itaewon Massacre and she’d been one of the first to leave. When Auntie Mee saw Doc Yong and the others return to Itaewon and take up jobs around town, she knew that something was up.
I finished questioning Miss Kwon. Then I told her what I suspected. She became hysterical. Hilliard rushed out of the room. Ernie held him back. I put my arm around Miss Kwon and whispered Korean in her ear. “Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s our secret.” Then I told her to return to her room.
“Please,” she said, grabbing my arm. “Think about them. When they were little children, they walk so far through snow. Mama and daddy dead. Think about that.”
“I will.”
Miss Kwon trudged slowly back into her hooch.
It was easy to see why the grown-up orphans of the Itaewon Massacre would want to take revenge on Horsehead and Water Doggy, and all of the Seven Dragons. Snake tried to send a warning to those unknown killers by murdering Auntie Mee. He ordered Aunite Mee’s murder be without bloodshed so she was strangled with a silk rope.
Who had murdered Two Bellies? At first I’d thought it was the remaining Seven Dragons. But that idea troubled me. Snake and his brethren could have frightened Two Bellies into leaving town. That would have been much safer than inviting a murder investigation.
The Seven Dragons were hoping Ernie and I wouldn’t find the bones, that they’d remain undisturbed for many decades to come. I concluded that Two Bellies had been made an offer she couldn’t refuse, as insurance. She was to follow us, and if we actually found the bones, steal them and turn them over to Snake. Miss Kwon suspected Two Bellies so she’d stayed close to her; pretended to help Two Bellies in return for a 10 percent cut of the reward the Seven Dragons were offering for the bones.
When, against all odds, Ernie and I did find the bones, Two Bellies was right behind us. And so was the resourceful Miss Kwon. When Two Bellies climbed inside the makeshift ossuarium and piled all the bones into a cardboard box, Miss Kwon knew that Two Bellies would turn the bones over to the Seven Dragons. She knew that when Ernie and I returned we would find an empty crypt and she also knew that the truth about the murder of Mori Di, and therefore the truth about the murder of her parents in the Itaewon Massacre, would never be revealed. This was more than she could bear. While Two Bellies was preoccupied with gathering the bones, Miss Kwon reached in, grabbed a clump of Two Bellies’ hair, and cleanly sliced her throat.
The move was one she’d learned when she was sent to work for the butcher family in the valley beneath the Temple of Constant Truth. She had used a hooked blade attached to a wooden handle, almost as sharp as a scalpel, the one she’d pilfered from her friends at the butcher shop counter in the Itaewon Market, the same type of blade that is used to slaughter hogs.
Conveniently, Two Bellies had already packed the bones into a square white box so Miss Kwon picked it up, tied it with the black ribbon Two Bellies had provided, and transported the remains to Doc Yong’s clinic for safekeeping. Doc Yong couldn’t turn the bones over to me because if she did, then I would have suspected her, or possibly her little friend Miss Kwon, of having murdered Two Bellies. Doc Yong was holding onto the bones, waiting for a more opportune time to allow them, somehow, to be brought to light.
Later that evening, filled with remorse for what she’d done, Miss Kwon leapt off the roof of the King Club. But, her survival instinct kept her alive and, for the most part, whole.
Then Horsehead and Water Doggy
had been killed. Shortly thereafter, Doc Yong was kidnapped by Snake.
Doc Yong lay still.
Awake, but unwilling to talk to me. She was smart enough to know that I thought I’d figured it all out. We were holed up in a small room in a rundown tourist hotel on the eastern outskirts of Seoul in a district known as Kui-dong. In order to get her to talk, drastic measures were in order. I switched on the small lamp on the nightstand. Then I pulled out the photograph the nun at the Temple of Constant Truth had given to me and placed it beneath the glow of the green lamp.
“Is that her?”
“Yes.”
“She was beautiful.”
“Yes.”
The photo showed Moretti, in full uniform, standing with his arm around the tall, handsome Korean woman.
“My mom,” Doc Yong said. “She always told me, Mori Di, he good man. He come visit us, always bring nice things. Food, cooking oil, money for charcoal. He played with me, even helped me study English. When he was alive, everything good.”
We lay like that for a long time, both of us staring at the photograph. She didn’t cry, neither did I.
“It must’ve been rough for you when you went to the orphanage,” I said.
She nodded slowly. and then started to speak. “When she was old enough, Miss Kwon was sent to a butcher family to learn a trade. When there wasn’t enough work to do, the family would send her back. They didn’t want to feed her unless she could earn money for them. The nuns always took her back and fed her. Often, I watched over her. She was so little, so helpless, so lost. She wanted so much for the butcher family to accept her but they were poor and I suppose, they were cold-hearted. They never accepted Miss Kwon.”
I waited for Doc Yong to compose herself. Then I said, “When Auntie Mee left the nunnery, she relied on skills she’d learned from her mother and she became a fortune teller, famous and rich. But Miss Kwon didn’t have any such skill so she did what she had to do.” I paused for a moment, letting my words sink in. “But what about you? How did you become a doctor?”
