by Martin Limon
Exciting stuff.
But hold on to your hat because next comes sports, the only part of the news that G.I.s pay attention to. It doesn’t matter how monotonously the latest sports statistics are droned out, G.I.s focus all of their attention on such things as batting averages and yardage gained and historical rates of fielding errors. This information is reported in minute detail and soldiers absorb these facts with the intense concentration of actuarial accountants.
But for the last few days the air force weatherman had been in his glory, outshining even the sports announcer. According to his map of Korea, a huge front was bubbling out of Manchuria, from deep within unclimbed mountains and uncharted forests. The front had begun rolling south down the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang, in North Korea, had already been swallowed up by every storm cloud cutout the airman had. And he kept shoving those storm clouds south, in a jumble that looked like an invasion of chubby snowmen. But the report was no joke. Barometric pressure was dropping, the temperature was dropping, precipitation was increasing, and within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours the capital city of Seoul could expect anywhere from six to fifteen inches of precipitation, in the form of thick, slushy snow.
The worst storm the republic had experienced in over ten years.
Electricity would go out, roads would be closed, tree branches would snap, power lines would be sheathed in tubes of ice, heating fuel would become difficult if not impossible to obtain, and water pipes would most likely freeze. Finally, once the storm hit full force, food shipments would stop.
The airman predicted the cold front would linger over the peninsula for three to four days before it moved slowly out to sea. And then he grinned a big toothy grin and pulled out a fur-lined cap and slipped it on over his head.
“Gonna be cold, folks,” he said into the microphone.
Off-camera, a stagehand barked a laugh.
Military humor.
What the airman hadn’t mentioned was that the last time a cold front of this size moved in from Manchuria over three hundred people, most of them elderly citizens or children not yet in school, had died within the city limits of Seoul. Despite the attempt at levity, a few score people were now marked for death—in Seoul, in Itaewon, and throughout the country.
The only question was who, when, and how painfully.
* * *
We were making good time. The engine of Ernie’s jeep purred like the well-oiled machine it was and the little heater under the metal dashboard was churning out a steady flow of warm air. I sat in the passenger seat, my nose pressed against the plastic window in the jeep’s canvas canopy, watching rice paddies roll by. Out here, most of the farmhouses were thatched in straw. President Pak Chung-hee’s New Village Movement had yet to provide tile roofs for all the families that tilled the soil.
“What if we don’t find him?” Ernie said. “We could get stuck out here.” Snow covered the countryside like a sheet of white silk.
“Not if we hurry,” I said. “The zoomie on AFKN claims that the worst of the storm won’t hit until tomorrow morning.”
Ernie snorted. AFKN weather reports were notoriously wrong. When we’d departed through the main gate of Yongsan Compound, the MP shack had already taken down the yellow placard, meaning “caution, dangerous road conditions” and replaced it with red for “emergency vehicles only.”
Luckily, our CID Dispatch qualified us as an emergency vehicle. Or maybe not so luckily, depending on how you looked at it.
“Maybe he’s not even here,” Ernie said.
I didn’t bother to reply. Ernie was becoming increasingly morose. Maybe it was the fact that the KNPs still considered us to be suspects in the murder of Two Bellies. Whatever the reason, I figured it would be best to get our business over with and return to Seoul as quickly as possible.
On the outskirts of Mapo, a policeman in a yellow rain slicker stood on a circular platform directing traffic. Ernie pulled the jeep right up next to him and I climbed out and showed him my badge. Then I asked him in Korean if he could guide us to the address Doc Yong had provided.
He crinkled his nose, giving it some thought. Then he pointed with his gloved hand and told me, “The Small Stream District is on the northern edge of town, near the Gold Mountain Temple.”
That was as close as he could come.
We drove on. I glanced back at the young cop and pitied him, standing there exposed to the elements, snowflakes drifting down on his slickly clad shoulders.
Gold Mountain Temple was easy enough to find, an old stone edifice dedicated to Buddha. Once there, I stopped a couple of housewives on their way back from the open-air Mapo Market and showed them the address I’d written in hangul. They conferred for a moment and pointed me toward an alley that led up a hill behind the temple. Ernie locked the jeep and together we trudged up the steep lane.
At the top of the hill, I asked a man working inside a bicycle repair shop if he could direct me to the address and this time he was even more specific.
“The next alley,” he told me. “Turn left. About twenty paces beyond.”
The bicycle shop guy stared after us, as did everyone we met here in the Small Steam District of Mapo. There were no American military compounds within thirty miles and this was a working-class agrarian area. No reason for foreigners to come out here. Judging by the stares directed our way, you would’ve thought Ernie and I were two men from Mars. And at the moment, that was exactly how we felt.
I knocked on the front gate. The wood was rotted and old. The brick wall also appeared to be ancient but it had been built solidly. No answer to my knock. I pounded again. Finally, from the other side of the wall, plastic sandals slapped against cement. The small door in the wooden gate creaked open. A face peeked out. The face of an elderly woman. Her eyes widened so much that the creases on her forehead scrunched up like an accordion.
I said the bartenders name. “Noh Bang-ok isso-yo?” Is he here?
The old woman screamed.
Ernie figured that must mean we had the right address so he barged through the open door. The courtyard was small and barren except for a row of earthenware kimchee pots lining the inside of the brick wall. Footsteps pounded from within the darkened hooch.
“Nugu siyo?” a man’s voice said. Who is it? Then, wearing a sleeveless T-shirt and pajama bottoms, he appeared at the open sliding door of the hooch. Ernie and I both recognized him immediately, the bartender from the Grand Ole Opry, sans white shirt and bow tie. At first, he flinched, as if preparing to run. But Ernie was across the courtyard in three steps and Noh must’ve realized the futility of trying to flee. Instead, his shoulders slumped and then he squatted on his haunches, staring at us thoughtfully, wondering what he was in for.
When the bartender realized who we were and why we were there, it was as if he’d resigned himself to some horrible fate. He didn’t invite us in and so I started questioning him on the low porch that ran along the front edge of the hooch. What had he seen on the night Ernie and I sneaked into the basement of the Grand Ole Opry? Had he discovered the hole we’d made in the wall? Did he look inside and see the bones of Mori Di? Who’d come in that night and taken those bones and then replaced them with the corpse of Two Bellies? Had she been alive when she’d been brought in? Who, exactly, had done the killing?
He didn’t answer any of my questions, not at first, but he promised that he would, just as soon as he changed clothes. As Noh Bang-ok rose to his feet, I asked him why he’d left Itaewon. His eyes widened, making his forehead wrinkle much as the old woman’s forehead had.
“Because,” he replied, as if talking to a child, “I was afraid.”
He turned and walked back into the hooch. Ernie and I stood in the courtyard. With my eyes, I motioned for Ernie to go around back to make sure that the bartender didn’t try to slip away from us.
Then the old woman, still looking worried, slipped off her shoes, climbed up on the wooden platform and entered the hooch. She waddled back into the darkness
and seconds later she screamed again.
Ernie and I were inside the hooch before the sound faded. He entered through the back door, me through the front. In a small bedroom we saw the bartender kneeling on the vinyl-covered floor. The old woman was clutching him, still screaming. Blood poured from the young man’s wrist. He held his arm up for us to see. A huge gash leered at us.
I applied first aid as best I could and soon a neighbor who owned a cab was helping us bundle the young bartender into the back seat and telling me in Korean that he was taking him to the big hospital downtown. Ernie and I ran back to the jeep parked in front of the Gold Mountain Temple and managed to follow the cab across slippery, snow-covered roads to the hospital.
By the time the bartender had been checked in and attended to by a physician, Ernie and I were surrounded by angry relatives. Apparently, he was part of a large clan here in Mapo. The snow outside was falling faster and we weren’t about to obtain any useful information from him now.
I knew the wound was superficial, inflicted to avoid being taken to the KNP station. Noh Bang-ok would live. But Ernie and I didn’t contact the local Korean cops and have him arrested because they would contact the Itaewon cops and something told me that the Itaewon cops weren’t too interested in investigating the murder of Two Bellies. KNPs have a habit of sticking together. If we talked to the local cops, they might end up arresting us instead of the Grand Ole Opry bartender, on trumped-up charges like hounding him and forcing him to become distressed and attempting to commit suicide. Best for us to say goodbye to Mapo.
Ernie and I fought our way outside. Ernie fired up the jeep and we wound through the narrow streets of the city of Mapo until we reached the main highway. A wooden sign pointed toward Seoul.
Ernie bulled his way into the flow of traffic and stepped on the gas.
The lobby of the White Crane Hotel was almost as big as an airplane hangar. The floor was carpeted in a red design that spread from the long sleek front desk toward a mock waterfall and a circular stairway leading up to chic restaurants and boutiques with French names. A European pianist wearing a tuxedo with tails tinkled out soft tunes on an enormous grand piano.
“This joint stinks,” Ernie said.
He was referring to the scent of roses permeating the air.
G.I.s weren’t welcome. I felt as out of place as a gorilla shuffling through a fashion show.
All the customers were Asian: a few Chinese from Hong Kong but mostly whole regiments of Japanese tourists. The not-so-rich Japanese tended to migrate in herds, arriving in heated buses. The rich ones traveled in sleek black sedans with white upholstery driven by white-gloved chauffeurs.
“I thought America ruled the world,” Ernie said.
“Americans only think they rule the world,” I answered.
We sat on frail metal chairs in a tea shop with a clear view of the entrance to the hotel. Flurries of snow drifted by sporadically—not enough to clog traffic. Not yet. When we first arrived from Mapo, we cased the joint, tipping a bellhop to find out if Mr. Ondo Fukushima had checked in. The bellhop said his suite was ready but he had not yet arrived. Then we ate chow in a workingman’s chophouse across the street and returned to wait.
“Where do you think she met him?” Ernie asked. He was referring to Jessica Tidwell.
“Probably somewhere south of Seoul,” I answered, “in Suwon or Taejon. The driver takes her down there, hooks her up with Fukushima and together they attend a few afternoon meetings, maybe a formal dinner, and then they drive up to Seoul.”
“Or check into a hotel down there and don’t bother to come out for a couple of days.”
I shrugged. “Anyway, this is the only lead we have. We wait here until they arrive.”
“Terrific,” Ernie said. He shifted his butt on the tiny chair and sipped unhappily on scented oolong tea.
It was almost midnight now. If Ondo Fukushima and Jessica Tidwell didn’t show up soon, they wouldn’t at all.
Ernie elbowed me. “Check out the armored battalion.”
A line of five black sedans pulled up outside the plate glass entranceway of the hotel. The liveried doormen scurried up and down the row, swinging doors open. Burly Japanese men in expensive suits and highly polished shoes emerged first. Their hair was slicked back, and if communication devices had been plugged into their ears, I would’ve thought they were Secret Service. One of them barked an all clear, and from the central sedan a diminutive Japanese man emerged wearing a pin-striped suit in a shade of green so dark that it glowed.
“The head honcho,” Ernie said.
As he strode through the door, his immaculately coiffed bodyguards arrayed themselves around him like a phalanx of ancient Greek warriors protecting their king.
Behind them, high heels clicked on marble.
Jessica Tidwell wore the same skimpy blue dress that had been crumpled on the floor of Paco Bernal’s room, but it was cleaned and pressed now. The freckled flesh of her décolletage peeked over the silk material like the prow of a sailing ship. Jessica scurried behind the formation of men, keeping her head down, ignored but nevertheless making it clear that she was a woman following her master.
Ernie snorted in derision.
“Come on,” he said. “Enough of this freaking tea. It’s showtime.”
Ernie and I had discussed how we’d approach Jessica. Our fondest hope was that the yakuza chief would treat her like a worthless woman and make her follow far behind. He hadn’t let us down. If we could, we’d move her away quietly, out the door, and into the army-issue jeep waiting around the corner.
At least that’s how I hoped things would turn out.
Instead, as soon as I moved forward and put my hand on Jessica’s elbow, two of Ondo Fukushima’s thugs stopped in their tracks and turned on us. Ernie slipped his hand beneath his coat, not pulling his .45 but making it clear to the men he was armed. I tugged on Jessica’s elbow.
“Let me go,” she said.
“Don’t make trouble,” I told her. “We’re taking you home.”
“Like hell.” With her free hand she reached inside the purse strapped to her shoulder. She pulled out a wad of blue bills, ten-thousand yen notes. “This is what he paid me,” she said. “More than a thousand bucks.” In a falsetto voice, she said, “You change money, G.I.?” Then she reverted to her regular voice. “But I have to stay with him for the whole weekend.”
“Is it worth it?”
“If it saves Paco, yes.”
“Why don’t you just ask your father to drop the charges?”
The smooth flesh of her face crinkled. “I wouldn’t ask him for anything! Especially something that would embarrass the great J-2. When he gets his money back, he’ll have to drop the charges.”
That wasn’t strictly true, but this was no time to argue the intricacies of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I tugged on her arm again. The two thugs closed in. Ernie stepped closer and pulled the .45 from his holster.
The Japanese gangsters froze.
The yakuza have influence in Korea but gun control is absolute here, only military and law-enforcement personnel are allowed to carry weapons. The yakuza can’t bring weapons into the country. Still, the well-muscled men spaced themselves around the lobby, ready to pounce. I had no doubt that each one of them was an expert in one of the martial arts.
Ondo Fukushima turned. He approached slowly, surveying the situation. Gradually, his face achieved an expression as fierce as a carved mask. I worked at not letting it effect me, but it did. My gut froze into a fist-sized chunk of dry ice.
Jessica took advantage of my hesitation. She twisted quickly and kicked my knee, at the same time ripping her elbow out of my grasp. But instead of running toward her Japanese benefactor, she staggered backward toward the waterfall.
By now the tuxedoed pianist had stopped playing and around the lounge everyone had stopped moving. Behind the front desk, fingers tapped out a phone number.
If Ernie and I were ever going to be able t
o keep Jessica’s indiscretion quiet, we had to drag her out of here before the Korean cops arrived.
Two more of the Japanese thugs glided toward me. I pulled out my .45. They stopped. But a half dozen of them had surrounded us now, waiting for a single mistake.
“Steady, Ernie,” I said. “Don’t fire unless you have to.”
“What are you doing?”
The voice roared out from the center of the Japanese thugs. And then I realized that the enormous sound had erupted from the small man in the glowing green suit: Ondo Fukushima.
I kept my voice steady. “She’s coming with us,” I said.
“She’s mine,” he bellowed. “I paid for her.” He jammed his thumb into his puffed-out chest. “Me. Ondo Fukushima. A boy who used to steal from your American compounds. I bought and paid for the daughter of one of your 8th Army generals. You’re not going to take her away from me now.”
His English was almost perfect; he had only a slight accent. Jessica Tidwell’s father was a colonel, not a general, but I didn’t bother to correct him. Ondo Fukushima was the right age to have picked up the language—and his familiarity with military ranks—as a hustler outside the American bases during the occupation at the end of World War II.
“We’re taking her,” Ernie shot back.
“You have no right,” Fukushima said.
Ernie waved the barrel of his .45. “This says we have the right.”
The Japanese thugs inched closer. Ernie and I couldn’t possibly take all of them on hand-to-hand. Our only chance was to fire. But killing men here in the middle of Seoul?
Ondo Fukushima could smell our indecision. Before he could make his move, flesh slapped on flesh, ringing through the silent lobby like the sharp peeling of a bell.
“Cabrona!” I understood the Spanish curse word.
I turned to look, still keeping my pistol pointed at the Japanese mobsters.
