by Martin Limon
Doc Yong smiled at the question but kept staring at the tattered wallpaper of the little room. From the faraway look on her face, the dingy furnishings might as well have been the stars of the Milky Way. Finally, she spoke.
“I did well in school,” she replied. “The nuns saw that I had the ability to learn so they scraped together the money to send me to middle school. Still, high school would’ve been out of reach. But someone stepped in to help.”
“Who? Certainly not the Seven Dragons?”
“No. Not them. Of course not. I doubt that they even knew we existed. It was someone else, someone who knew my mother.”
“A friend of Moretti’s?”
“No. From before that time. From when my father was alive. From when we lived in North Korea.”
After that, she didn’t want to talk anymore. I let her be.
As we lay there, I wondered what I was going to do. So far, nobody in law enforcement had put all this together except me and Ernie, and Ernie would go along with whatever I decided. Finally, I asked Doc Yong.
“Why did you start?”
“Start what?”
“Start killing the Seven Dragons. First Horsehead and then Water Doggy.”
“I didn’t want to,” she replied. “They wanted to, the other orphans. But I told them no, there was a better way. We’d arrange for the bones of Mori Di to be shown to the world and then the Seven Dragons would be punished. Punished properly in a court of law. Not by, how you say? Vigilante justice?”
“That’s correct.”
“Right, vigilante justice. I didn’t want that. That’s how our parents were killed, trying to take the law into their own hands.”
“But you changed your mind.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because of you.”
“Me?”
“Yes. Because of you. Remember? You told me that you fought with Horsehead. Horsehead was mad at you for interfering with his plans with that American girl and everybody in Itaewon said that maybe he would kill you.”
“That was just Horsehead blowing off steam. He didn’t mean it.”
“How do you know?” When I didn’t answer, Doc Yong gazed back at the wallpaper. “Anyway, I didn’t want to take a chance.”
I paused at that statement, overwhelmed for a moment. I felt gratitude that someone-after all my years of being an orphan, all my years of being alone-had felt so strongly about me.
I waited until I regained my self-control. It took a couple of minutes. Then I said, “So that’s what started it?”
She nodded her head slowly.
“And Two Bellies?”
“Miss Kwon. She try very much to help us. To protect us.”
We sat in silence. I thought about all that had happened: tragedy, revenge, miscalculation. The usual.
Finally, I turned to Doc Yong and said, “What should we do?”
She shook her head. “You don’t have to do nothing. I do everything.”
The honchos of 8th Army were still pissed about Jessica Tidwell. And the fact that we had yet to find her and bring her in was still making Colonel Brace’s life miserable at the 8th Army Officers’ Club.
“Whatever happens to her,” Colonel Brace said, pointing his forefinger at us, “is on you two.”
“How do you figure that?” Ernie asked. He didn’t say “sir.”
The pressure we were living under had made him even more reckless than he usually was. Fortunately, Colonel Brace chose to ignore the lack of military courtesy.
“That’s what her father, Colonel Tidwell, is saying,” Colonel Brace replied, “as well as the Eighth Army commanding general. You two left her out there. You didn’t pick her up when you should have, when you shot that corporal at the White Crane Hotel, when you had the chance, and now whatever happens to her, whatever she does, whatever trouble she might stumble into, is on you two. And nobody else.”
“Maybe the blame,” Ernie said, “should be on her parents.”
“Don’t get smart with me, Bascom.”
Before Ernie could say anything more, I jumped in. “We’ll find her, sir.”
“You’d better. Immediately if not sooner. Because whatever crimes she might commit or, worse yet, whatever crimes might be committed with respect to her, are going to be your responsibility.”
He pointed his forefinger at us once again, the finger of blame.
This was nonsense. Ernie knew it and I knew it. Even Colonel Brace secretly knew it. But the military mind has a tremendous capacity for passing on blame. And the collective wisdom of the officer corps of 8th Army actually had a genius for diverting blame and sliding it on down the line toward the lower ranks. And the better an officer is at that particular skill, the higher his rank.
When I dragged him outside, Ernie was still sputtering with rage, looking to punch somebody. I stayed just over an arm’s length away from him.
Mrs. Tidwell was waiting for us in the parking lot.
She wore a neatly pressed dress and she was fully made up but she still looked like hell. No amount of makeup could hide the bags beneath her eyes.
“What are they doing to my Jessica?” she asked.
“What is who doing?” I asked.
“Those Korean gangsters.”
“I don’t think any gangsters are around her now, ma’am,” I replied.
Ernie sidled over to the jeep. He knew better than to try to face an irate mother in his current emotional state. I was glad he did.
Mrs. Tidwell looked confused. “If she’s not being held by gangsters,” she asked, “then why doesn’t she come home?”
“She’s young, Mrs. Tidwell. Young people like their freedom.”
“Freedom? Freedom to live amongst animals?”
I didn’t bother to answer. Mrs. Tidwell turned her head away. “No,” she said. “I didn’t mean that. I’m just so worried about her. Doesn’t she understand that I can’t sleep at night and that I sit by the phone all day waiting to hear from her?”
“She probably doesn’t think about that. She’s young and she’s just enjoying her freedom, ma’am.”
“What is she doing out there?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Why haven’t you found her?”
“We will.”
“When?”
“We’re going right now, to see what we can find out.”
Mrs. Tidwell grabbed my arm. “Hurry, won’t you?”
“We’ll try.”
“This is causing a great emotional strain on her father.”
A great emotional strain trying to point the finger of blame over at the 8th Army Officers’ Club, I thought. But I didn’t say anything.
Instead, I patted Mrs. Tidwell on the shoulder and said, “We’ll do our best.”
Walking the streets of Itaewon, Ernie grinned at me. “Mrs. Tidwell really gave you the business, huh?”
“She’s worried.”
“Can you believe that asshole, Brace? Saying we’re responsible for anything that happens to Jessica Tidwell.”
“That’s the way the military mind works. If something goes wrong, it’s the fault of the lowest-ranking man.”
“Which in this case is us.”
Two kids holding wooden boxes accosted Ernie, asking if he wanted to buy chewing gum. Ernie rummaged through their wares, found some stale ginseng gum, and tossed the kids a quarter. They took one look at me, spotted a cheapskate when they saw one, and ran off for greener pastures.
“So after you rousted Jessica out of that hotel,” I asked, “where would she have gone?”
“You mean the time she kneed me in the balls?”
“There was another time?”
“No, that was it. She had money, left over from that pile of yen she had in her purse at the White Crane Hotel, so she could’ve gone anywhere.”
An MP had been assigned to guard Paco Bernal’s ward at the 121 Evac and, so far, Jessica hadn’t turned up there again. She had, however,
made a couple of phone calls. Paco wasn’t well enough to talk to her yet, although his condition was improving, but one of the medics had taken pity on Jessica and told her that Paco would be flown out next week to Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu. They had a large rehab center and the doctors thought he’d make faster progress there. Of course, if I were him I wouldn’t be in any hurry. Once he was well enough, the judge advocate general already had plans to press charges against him for the theft of the $1,000 from Colonel Tidwell and for the statutory rape of Jessica Tidwell. On those charges, he could easily do five years at the federal penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
“So Jessica has money,” I said, “but she also knows that Paco will be transferred soon to Hawaii. And her money must be running low.”
“So maybe she wants more money,” Ernie said.
“Maybe. And if she wanted more money, how would she get it?”
“Contact one of the Seven Dragons. Have them get her a job.”
“Doing what?”
Ernie shrugged. “Who knows? There’s plenty of Japanese gangsters available.”
“But Paco didn’t like that,” I said. “He called her a very bad name in Spanish.”
“Oh, yeah. What was it?”
“Never mind. But maybe Jessica will want to try another line of work.”
“A pretty girl, redhead, nice figure. Shouldn’t be difficult.”
Somehow, we’d wandered toward the UN Club. Ernie and I checked our . 45s, making sure they were loaded, and pushed through the big double doors.
Two goons stood in front of the entrance to Jimmy Pak’s office. I told them in Korean, gruffly, that I wanted to see Jimmy. Words were whispered and relayed through the door and, within a few seconds, we were told to enter.
The dapper entrepreneur sat behind his desk, a low green lamp illuminating paperwork spread out before him. Jimmy Pak smiled and bade us sit and generally acted as if it wasn’t our fault that he had been formally charged with the murder of Technical Sergeant Flo Moretti. Civil of him. But maybe that’s how Jimmy Pak had survived all these years, by never burning bridges. Instead of becoming angry, he offered us a drink. This time, both Ernie and I refused.
“Where is she, Jimmy?” Ernie asked.
“Who?”
“The redhead Horsehead was trying to pimp. Jessica Tidwell.”
Jimmy Pak frowned as if acid were pumping out of his stomach.
“That’s all you want?” he said.
“That’s it.”
“After all the trouble you cause, you only worry about her?”
“We don’t give a shit about you,” Ernie told him.
“Why I help you?” Jimmy asked. “You do nothing but cause me trouble.”
I leaned forward on the leather seat.
“You’re going to help us,” I told him, “because if you don’t, we’re going to return to Eighth Army and tell the honchos there that Jimmy Pak has Jessica Tidwell. We’re going to tell the honchos that Jimmy Pak is pimping one of their daughters and we’re going to tell them that if they’re smart, Eighth Army will never do business again with Jimmy Pak or with his asshole buddy, Snake.”
Jimmy’s round paunch seemed to convulse and even more acid rumbled up his throat, causing him to swallow with a sour frown on his usually jolly face. He sat still for a moment, considering what I’d said. Then, without saying another word, he reached across his desk and grabbed a pen and scribbled an address on a piece of paper. He handed it to me.
“You go find,” he said. “She small potatoes. Horsehead dead. Water Doggy dead. Nobody care about her now. You go find up.”
I stuffed the address in my pocket.
With manicured fingers, Jimmy Pak waved us away.
When I stood up, I said, “You gonna beat the charges, Jimmy?”
I was referring to the murder charge for the death of Mori Di.
“Of course I beat,” he said.
“Too bad,” I replied. “If Korea was still under Eighth Army martial law, I’d pull out my. 45 and shoot you right now.”
Jimmy Pak stared at us, calculating how serious I was, calculating how far away his bodyguards were and how close we were.
Before his calculations were finished, Ernie and I walked out.
The joint was called Myong Lim Won, the Garden of the Shining Forest, a kisaeng house in the downtown Mugyo-dong district of Seoul. Kisaeng are fancy hostesses, similar to Japanese geisha but in modern Korea they seldom wear the traditional gowns or pluck the strings of the kayagum or perform the traditional drum dances that they once performed during the Yi Dynasty. Pouring scotch, lighting cigarettes and laughing at businessmen’s jokes, in these modern days, are enough skills to entitle a woman to be called a kisaeng.
We flashed our badges and pushed past a doorman into a room lit by low red lights and filled with about ten large booths encased in leather upholstery. In the largest booth, a half-dozen Korean businessmen, all wearing suits, and three kisaeng, celebrating whatever in the hell it was they were celebrating. Just being rich, I suppose. One of the kisaeng had a long nose, red hair and fair skin: Jessica Tidwell. As we approached, she stood, reaching as she did so into a leather purse at her side. The red blouse she wore was low cut and the skirt barely reached halfway down her thigh. She bowed to the Korean gentlemen and excused herself and stepped out on the carpeted flooring.
An old woman wearing a floor-length dress and heavily made up, scurried out from the back room. She waved her open palm from side to side and said, “G.I. no! No can do! Bali kara!” Go away.
Ernie stepped in front of her and turned his side to the old woman to block her way. She plowed into him, grabbed his coat, and kept shouting, “G.I. no! G.I. no!”
Businessmen from various booths around the room were standing up now, murmuring curse words that had something to do with “base foreign louts.”
The old woman jerked on Ernie’s coat and he jerked back and then shoved her. He miscalculated a tad. The heavily painted old crone reeled back and crashed into a cart that held a bucket full of ice and a half-full bottle of Johnny Walker Black. The woman and the cart and the ice and the booze all crashed to the carpeted floor.
Kisaeng screamed. The Korean men were up now, surrounding Ernie and me, some of them pointing and shouting, others being held back by their brethren.
Ernie held his palm out and said, “Back off!”
Jessica Tidwell pushed through the crowd. Some of the Korean men made way for her. She stepped in front of me, reached into her purse, and whipped out a bayonet. As one, the crowd gasped at the gleaming metal blade and everyone took a half step back.
Koreans argue in public often-they aren’t called the Irish of the Orient for nothing-but they seldom get violent. Everyone shoves and pushes and grabs coats but only occasionally does the altercation devolve into fisticuffs, and virtually never into assaults involving a weapon as deadly as a sharpened bayonet.
Still a half-an-arm’s length away, Jessica Tidwell pointed the tip of the blade at my throat.
“I ought to cut you,” she said.
She might try but she wouldn’t make it. Not only was I ready to deflect her lunge but Ernie had turned his back on the stunned Koreans and stood less than a step away. The Korean customers and female hostesses sat immobile, barely breathing, watching a tableau involving the exotic rituals of three long-nosed foreign barbarians.
“You shot Paco!” Jessica shouted.
I stared at her, not bothering to offer a defense. She’d been there. She’d seen what happened. She knew that Paco Bernal had attacked Ernie with the very bayonet she now held in her hand. She knew that I had no choice but to shoot. We stood like that for what seemed like a long while but was, in reality, probably only a few seconds; she staring directly into my eyes, me staring back.
Finally, she twisted the bayonet with her narrow fingers until the handle was pointing toward me. “Here,” she said. Ernie snatched it out of her hand.
The Koreans sur
rounding us let out a sigh of relief. The stepped back even further-not so far that they couldn’t observe, but far enough so they wouldn’t be hurt by the crazy foreigners.
Jessica swept red bangs from her forehead. “So now you have the bayonet,” she said. “The ‘assault weapon’ I guess you’d call it. So why don’t you get out of here and leave me alone?”
“No way,” Ernie said.
Jessica screamed. “What do you want from me?”
“You’re coming with us,” Ernie said.
“The hell I am.” Jessica’s green eyes flashed in the dim light and she rummaged back in her leather purse. I almost expected her to pull out a pistol this time but instead a laminated card emerged. She flipped it at Ernie. He grabbed it in midair.
He twisted the card toward the light, read it, and then handed it to me.
“What of it,” Ernie said. “We’ve seen it before. Your dependent ID card.”
I studied the card. The same military dependent identification we’d seen when we first found the sleeping Jessica Tidwell in Corporal Paco Bernal’s room in the barracks at 21 T Car.
“Check the date of birth,” she told me.
I did. Then I did the math.
“That’s right, Einstein,” she said. “I’m eighteen years old now. No longer a minor.” She grinned a lascivious grin. “You can’t touch me.”
She was right. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, once a military dependent turned eighteen years old we could no longer take her into custody and turn her over to her parents. Not legally.
“Eighth Army doesn’t give a shit about that legal crap,” Ernie said.
“My ass,” Jessica replied. “I’ll hire a civilian lawyer and burn both of you and sue the freaking fatigues off the provost marshal and the commanding general of Eighth Army if I have to.”
Jessica Tidwell grew up as an army brat. She knew all the ins and outs of how to strike terror into the heart of a military bureaucrat. And she was right. She was no longer a minor. Ernie and I couldn’t take her into custody.
I handed the ID card back to her.
“So what do you plan to do, Jessica?” I asked. “Work here, lighting cigarettes and pouring scotch, for the rest of your life?”
