The Usual Santas

by Peter Lovesey

“Says you.”

  Ernie and I looked at each other. He grinned and said, “Hell, I haven’t been to Mukyo-dong in ages.”

  Garfield’s eyes lit up. “You’ll check on her for me?”

  I was of two minds. Getting between a husband and wife always spelled trouble. But we couldn’t let Garfield go down there with blood in his eye. By getting beaten up, he’d already proven that he didn’t know what he was doing. “All right,” I said, “my partner and I will go down there for you. Tonight. We’ll check on her and make sure she’s all right. But that’s it.”

  Garfield patted his pockets. “I don’t have much money. It’s expensive down there.”

  “Don’t worry,” Ernie replied. “My partner here is rolling in dough.”

  Inwardly, I groaned.

  “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “Wait until tomorrow,” I said. “Thank us then.”

  ***

  According to Specialist Four Garfield, the name of the nightclub Sooki was working in was the Golden Dragon. He didn’t know the Korean name, which is sometimes different than the English translation, but I made a guess and asked our cab driver to find a place called the Kulryong or something with a similar name. Mukyo-dong parallels a bustling main road lined with two huge department stores and smaller boutique shops catering to the upwardly mobile elite of South Korea. Down the side streets, barely wide enough for a Hyundai sedan, is where the action is. Especially at night. First, open air chop houses serving noodles and live fish in tanks and various delicacies such as octopus marinated in hot pepper sauce. Then, down even narrower lanes, stone pathways lead to bars and underground nightclubs. Some of them blare rock and roll for youngsters, others are designed for the packs of businessmen in suits wandering drunkenly from one flashing neon sign to another.

  The driver stepped on his brakes and pointed down a flight of steps. “Kulryong Lou,” he said. The Chamber of the Golden Dragon.

  Ernie spotted a shimmering golden serpent. “This must be it,” he said.

  I paid the driver and we climbed out. Just as we did so, a black sedan pulled up below in a narrow road on the far side of the Golden Dragon. A liveried doorman in white gloves opened the back door and out popped three businessmen in what appeared to be expensive suits.

  “Class joint,” Ernie said. “They’re going to be happy to see us.”

  Down here, GIs are considered to be Cheap Charlies and our presence only upsets the more free-spending Japanese and Korean clientele who don’t necessarily want crude barbarian GIs intruding on their space.

  “Front door?” Ernie asked.

  “No,” I said. “Let’s try the back.”

  The chain link fence behind the nightclub was locked. Inside, in an area about the size of a two-car garage, trashcans were lined up and stacked wooden cases held empty beer and soju bottles.

  “After you, maestro,” Ernie said.

  I grabbed a spread-fingered hold on the chain link and pulled myself up. The tricky part was at the top. I swung my leg over rusty razor wire and managed by stretching and then twisting like a ballerina to grab a toehold on the other side. Gingerly I swung my crotch and then my other leg after. Once I grabbed another handhold, I dropped to the ground. Ernie climbed over, performing the same procedure in about half the time.

  I’m a land animal. Whenever possible, I keep two feet on the ground.

  The back door to the Golden Dragon was locked.

  “Apparently they’ve had unexpected visitors before,” Ernie said.

  So we crouched on either side of the door and waited.

  ***

  “Kokchong hajimaseyo,” I told the elderly cook as we pushed him down the hallway. Don’t worry.

  He’d popped the back door open carrying a bag of garbage and Ernie’d been on him before he could pull it shut. I continued speaking to him in Korean. “Do you know who Sooki is?”

  He shook his head.

  “Tall woman,” I said. “Only started work two or three days ago.”

  He claimed ignorance, which figured, because an old man like this doing the drudge work in the kitchen would have little or nothing to do with the elegant young female hostesses.

  When we reached the kitchen, I let him go and thanked him for his patience. He stared at me, completely befuddled. Some Koreans have had little or no contact with foreigners and when they hear one of us speak their language, to them it’s like hearing a chimpanzee recite Shakespeare. Through a double door, the floor turned from tile to carpet and knew we were close. Finally, we entered a sizeable hall with an elevated ceiling. On the right stretched a long bar; the wall on the left side of the room arced in a graceful curve lined with high-backed plush leather booths. In the center of the room were a half-dozen tables draped in white linen.

  Ernie and I held back, peering over a paneled room divider. He scanned the left, I scanned the right.

  “There she is,” I said.

  “Where?”

  I pointed. “In that booth. You can barely see her. She’s against the wall, behind those two businessmen.”

  “We could wait until she goes to the ladies room.”

  “No way. We’re lucky the bouncers haven’t spotted us already.”

  “Then there’s no time like the present.”

  Ernie stepped out from behind the divider and started walking across the room. A few people looked up from their drinks, and then more. The mouths of some of the elegantly dressed hostesses fell open. Apparently, the elderly kitchen worker had dropped a dime on us because hurried steps approached from the hallway behind me. Near the front entrance, two men peered in to see what was causing the commotion.

  Ernie stood in front of the booth that contained Sooki, also known as Mrs. Roland R. Garfield, and started speaking to her in English. She didn’t look up at him but instead peered straight down at the table. Ashamed.

  One of the businessmen seated next to her said, “Igon dodechei muoya?” What the hell is this?

  The bouncers approached Ernie and one of them grabbed his elbow. He swung his fist back fiercely and shouted at them to keep their hands off of him. I hurried across the room, holding my badge up and shouting “Kyongchal!” Police.

  Apparently they weren’t impressed. Another bouncer approached me from behind and as I was explaining to him that we were here on police business, Ernie punched somebody. And then they were wrestling, two men on Ernie, and I tried to pull one of them off him and then somebody was on me and in a big sweating mass we knocked over first one table and then another. Women screamed and men cursed and soon I was on the floor.

  Ernie managed to keep his feet and was winging big roundhouse rights when the front door burst open and a shrill whistle sounded. Cops. The next thing I knew I was in handcuffs and heading toward the rear door of a Korean National Police paddy wagon.

  A crowd of upset customers gathered in front. Some of the hostesses were wide-eyed and clinging to one another. One of them was crying. But Sooki Garfield was nowhere to be seen.

  Ernie was shoved into the back door of the wagon and after cussing out his assailants he slid over on the bench next to me.

  “Assholes,” he said. When they shut the door, he reached in his pocket and pulled out a liter bottle of soju. I stared at him with a puzzled look. “Grabbed it on the way out,” he said. Then he pried off the cap with his teeth, took a swig, wiped the lip clean, and offered the bottle of rice liquor to me. Grasping it with two hands, I tossed back a glug and then coughed, feeling it burn all the way down.

  “At least we know Sooki’s all right,” Ernie said.

  “Maybe,” I replied.

  “Why? What are you worried about?”

  “They’re pissed now. And they know she’s a yang kalbo.” A GI whore.

  “She’s not a yang kalbo,” Ernie
said. “She’s a wife.”

  “Same difference to them.”

  Ernie raised the soju bottle and sipped thoughtfully. “Maybe you’re right,” he said.

  ***

  Captain Gil Kwon-up of the Korean National Police allowed me to use the telephone on his desk. It took twenty minutes to get through to the Yongsan Compound exchange and two minutes after that I was talking to Staff Sergeant Riley.

  “We’re going to be late,” I told him.

  “Late? You’re supposed to be in this office standing tall at zero eight hundred hours.” I imagined him checking his watch. “You have fifteen minutes.”

  “Like I told you,” I said. “We’re going to be late. We’re tracking down a lead.”

  He sputtered and before he could form words, I hung up the phone.

  “Everything all right?” Mr. Kill asked me.

  “Just fine,” I told him. “They’re very understanding.”

  We called him Mr. Kill, a GI corruption of his real name, Gil. It made a certain kind of sense, since he was the Chief Homicide Inspector for the Korean National Police. Ernie and I knew him well after working a number of cases with him.

  After taking in a GI, normal procedure is for the KNPs to call the US Army Military Police. Last night, I headed that off by speaking to the desk sergeant in Korean and explaining to him that I knew Mr. Kill, and stretched the truth by claiming that we were currently working with him on a case. He was suspicious, but didn’t want to risk irritating a superior officer, so he said he’d wait until the next morning to confirm my statement with Kill. Ernie and I spent the night in our own cell, segregated from the raving lunatics in the drunk tank. Special treatment for foreigners. True to his word, the desk sergeant contacted Gil Kwon-up first thing in the morning, and he’d immediately ordered that we be brought up to his office.

  “What’s her name?” Mr. Kill asked me. I didn’t know Sooki’s full Korean name. Sooki was a nickname, probably short for Sook-ja or Sook-ai, or something close to that. Her legal name now was Mrs. Roland R. Garfield. He jotted the information down and I gave him her general description.

  Then he looked up at me. He’d been educated in the States and his English was excellent. “Why didn’t you contact me,” he asked, “before almost starting a riot in the Golden Dragon?”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  The truth was, I didn’t like to bother him unless I had to. He was too valuable a resource.

  He pressed the intercom button on his desk and spoke to another officer. I didn’t understand everything that was said but the gist of it was that he ordered two men to go over to the Golden Dragon and pick up the woman called Sooki and bring her in. It was going to take some time. While we waited, Ernie and I sat outside on two hard chairs in the hallway. Ernie was already snoring and I’d started to doze when Mr. Kill appeared in front of us. My eyes popped open.

  “She’s disappeared,” he said.

  Once he realized I was fully alert, he continued. “The thugs who own the Golden Dragon are well known to us. We took one of them in and we had Mr. Bam have a little talk with him.”

  Bam was the lead KNP interrogator.

  “According to what he told us, orders came down to pull Mrs. Garfield out of the Golden Dragon and send her to one of their subsidiary operations.”

  Ernie was awake now. “Subsidiary operations?” he said.

  “Yes. A brothel.” He handed me a folded sheet of paper. “I won’t be able to help you further.”

  “Why not?” Ernie asked.

  Mr. Kill just stared at him, saying nothing. He looked at me, seeing if I understood. I did.

  “How high does it go?” I asked.

  “Within the police hierarchy,” Mr. Kill answered. “Not higher. Which leaves you a certain latitude.”

  I nodded. “Thank you, sir, for this information.”

  Then he said, “One more thing. The man in charge of the operation is known as Huk. A Manchurian name. You are aware that Manchuria invaded us a few centuries ago?”

  “Yes, sir. I know.”

  “Be very careful when dealing with him. You’ll be on your own. My colleagues and I need to keep our hands off this operation for as long as we are able.”

  Mr. Kill held eye contact with me until he was sure I understood, then swiveled on the cement floor and strode briskly away.

  Ernie glanced at me. Confused.

  “What just happened?”

  I took a deep breath. “Mr. Kill can’t do anything officially,” I said, keeping my voice down.

  “Why not?”

  “Think about it,” I told him. “This guy Huk, whoever he is, not only runs the Golden Dragon but also has ‘subsidiary’ brothels. He makes a lot of money and couldn’t be doing that unless he had protection.”

  Ernie nodded, getting it now. “Somebody high up in the police hierarchy is protecting him.”

  “Yes,” I said, standing up. “Mr. Kill doesn’t like it, but that’s the world he lives in.”

  “So Huk’s protected,” Ernie said.

  “Yes. He’s protected from the Korean National Police.” I paused, thinking it over. “But he’s not protected from us.”

  Relations with the US military are considered to be so important that they are reserved for the very highest levels of government; for President Pak Chung-hee and his most trusted advisors. Whoever was protecting Huk wouldn’t have that much pull and therefore wouldn’t have a chance in hell of calling off American law enforcement. Mr. Kill was making it clear to me that although his hands were tied, Ernie and I had an open field for action.

  I stuck the sheet of paper in my breast pocket and Ernie and I hurried out of the police station.

  ***

  Back at the CID office, I found the address Mr. Kill had given me on our wall-sized map of Seoul.

  “Here,” I told Ernie.

  “Why’d they send her there?”

  “They’re pissed. She caused a disruption. Embarrassed them.”

  “We caused the disruption,” Ernie said.

  “Because of her. And she has a Ration Control Plate. They’ll probably work her two ways. Not only in the brothel but probably by forcing her to buy beyond her ration at the PX and Commissary.”

  “She’ll be caught.”

  “But not for a month or two. It takes that long for the reports to be collated. Only then will the Rational Control violations make their way to Garfield’s unit commander.”

  “And he might not act right away.”

  “That’s what they’re hoping for.”

  “How can they do this?” Ernie asked. “Okay, I get it. The KNPs won’t touch this guy, Huk, but why doesn’t she look for her own chance and then run away?”

  “Because now they know her situation and they know the jam she’s in. You can bet that they already have a bead on her mother and her brother and her sister and are using them to threaten her.”

  “What kind of country is this?” Ernie asked.

  I shrugged. “It’s like most countries. Big money talks. Women are expendable.”

  “So are GIs,” Ernie replied.

  ***

  Riley volunteered to be the first in.

  “About time we kicked some ass,” he said.

  “Easy, Tiger,” I told him. “We have a plan, remember? You need to follow it.”

  “Sure. A Commando raid. I get it.”

  “No. We’re faking an MP bust. That’s it.”

  The midnight curfew would hit in a little more than an hour, and the entire city of Seoul would shut down. We sat in the shadows in a neighborhood near the Han River known as Ichon-dong. Ernie’s jeep was parked about a half-block from a dilapidated three-story wooden building that looked as if it had been built on the cheap and would fal
l down during the next strong wind. So far we’d seen working-class Korean men go in, linger and come out about a half-hour later, and we’d seen women’s silhouettes in the upstairs windows. Light from a dirty yellow bulb flooded down a short flight of steps at the entranceway.

  Ernie sat behind the steering wheel, I sat in the passenger seat, and Staff Sergeant Riley and the fourth member of our “commando team,” Sergeant First Class Harvey, better known as Strange, sat in back. He had a reputation for being a pervert, but on this mission all I required was that he be dressed in fatigues and one of the MP helmets I’d borrowed—and that he be armed with an M-16 rifle. Riley was similarly outfitted. Their job was not to shoot anyone, but to back us up as we ran our bluff.

  Ernie and I had come up with the plan this afternoon. We couldn’t go to the Provost Marshal and ask for a detachment of real MPs to help us because what we were planning to do wasn’t only outside of our jurisdiction, it was illegal. Plenty illegal. So we had to enlist the only two guys we knew who were crazy enough to help: Riley and Strange.

  “How about this guy Huk?” Strange asked. “He must be a pretty cool customer.”

  “Not cool,” I replied. “According to Mr. Kill he started as a petty thief after the war and worked his way up to becoming a pimp, and after he landed a few well-placed connections he graduated to becoming a nightclub owner.”

  “How are we going to recognize him?”

  “He has a disfigured nose. ‘Mangled’ is the word Mr. Kill used.”

  “Lost it in a knife fight?”

  “No. Nothing so glamorous. Not all of Huk’s girls knuckle under to him. Apparently, somewhere along the line, one of them fought back. According to Mr. Kill she not only bit into his nose but almost chewed his face off.”

  “Korean women are bold,” Riley said, almost in awe.

  “What happened to her?” Strange asked.

  I glanced toward the Han River. It was only two blocks downhill and glistened in the wavering moonlight. “What do you think?”

  After a moment of silence, Riley spoke up. “You sure his office is here?”

  “Yes. He never goes to the Golden Dragon or his other properties. Frightens the customers. He stays here in the slums, pulling the strings.”