Buddha's money gsaeb-3

by Martin Limon

"The entire time she was a guest here, there were men waiting across the street. After she left, they left."

  "They were watching her?"

  "No. I don't think they were watching her."

  "Then what were they doing?"

  "They were old men. Sages. Disciples of Confucius. I think they were worshiping her."

  When we arrived back at the jeep, Ernie was cursing.

  "Goddamn Happy Hour is over already," he told us. "By the time we get back, there won't even be one deviled egg left."

  Herman checked his wristwatch. "Shit! I'm late."

  "Late for what?" I asked.

  "To change the charcoal. Nam will kill me if I let it go out."

  The pressed charcoal briquettes of the ondol heating system have to be changed every few hours or the fire sputters and dies. It's an involved process to start it up again.

  "You're pussy-whipped," Ernie said.

  Herman didn't answer.

  "We'll drop you off," I told Herman.

  The rain kept up a determined drizzle and Ernie kept up his bitching, all the way back to Itaewon. Lady Ahn had escaped. She was our only connection to the jade skull and the jade skull was our only connection to Mi-ja. We had to keep searching. Taejon, where Lady Ahn's onni lived, was our best bet.

  Ernie didn't know it yet, but he was going to miss out on a lot more than just a few chicken drumettes.

  After grabbing some chow at the Eighth Army Snack Bar, we went straight back to the barracks, packed our overnight bags, and headed to the H-101 Helipad on Yongsan Compound South Post.

  Now the rain was being whipped back and forth by wind gusts of up to eighty miles an hour. All flights other than emergency aircraft were canceled until further notice. I argued with the NCO in charge and flashed my badge and even threatened to call the Provost Marshal, but it did no good. No choppers were lifting off unless it was a life-or-death situation.

  "There is some good news," the sergeant told us. "The weather's expected to break sometime tonight."

  "And you'll put us on the first thing smoking?" I asked.

  "You got it," he promised.

  Resigned to our fate, Ernie and I grabbed a couple of cups of coffee and tried to make ourselves comfortable on the wooden benches in the tiny waiting room.

  I leafed through a magazine. Ernie bitched about missing Happy Hour. We waited.

  It was almost midnight, and I had started to doze off, when the Flight Control Sergeant shook me awake.

  "Call for you."

  Rubbing my eyes, I stumbled to the counter and grabbed the telephone. It was Herman. In the background I heard a woman shrieking. Slicky Girl Nam.

  "We received another package," Herman said.

  "From the kidnappers?"

  'Yeah."

  "What's it say?"

  "It doesn't say nothing. It's a clipping from a newspaper or something. A picture of the full moon."

  Nam was crying and gnashing her teeth so loudly in the background that I could barely hear Herman.

  "They're reminding us of the deadline," I said. "That's it? There was nothing else in the package?"

  "Something was wrapped in the paper."

  My stomach started to churn. Herman's voice seemed eerily calm.

  "What was it, Herman?"

  "A part of a finger. Mi-ja's. Two knuckles' worth."

  I heard something plop on wood. The phone line crackled. Slicky Girl Nam's wailing increased in volume. Herman came back on the line.

  "Sorry," he said. "I dropped it."

  I swallowed through a dry throat but managed to speak. "Have the KNPs come up with anything?"

  "Nada. Not a goddamn thing."

  "Keep a grip, Herman," I said. "Ernie and I are on our way to Taejon."

  I hung up the phone.

  Ernie was still stretched out on the wooden bench, his head propped up on his overnight bag, his hands laced across his stomach, snoring calmly. He slept with the clear conscience of a Catholic saint.

  Three hours later the rain slowed and the wind stopped. I shook Ernie awake and the two of us clambered aboard a roaring Huey helicopter.

  As we lifted into the sky, the stars emerged from behind drifting monsoon clouds. They sparkled brightly, as if each one had been polished by the hand of God.

  11

  Steel needles of agony shot up from Mi-ja's severed finger. The pain from her missing ear had long since settled into a pounding ache. Still, all these sensations had gradually spun into an unbreakable cocoon of misery. A cocoon Mi-ja was coming to accept.

  Mi-ja was most worried about whether or not her legs would work. A couple of times she'd raised from her squat on the cold cement floor, but she managed only a few faltering steps. Yet she must find strength in her legs and she must find it now.

  Every time she moved the chain rattled. She had to be careful, because if she made too much noise one of the men would come in to check on her.

  Her face was just a few feet from the commode, the chain attached to her neck wrapped around the pipe that ran into the cement floor. The toilet hadn't been flushed since she was brought here, and Mi-ja was glad of that because she was afraid that if anyone tried to flush it, rancid filth would overflow onto the floor.

  The stench bothered her not at all. She had more important things to worry about.

  All night, as she faded in and out of consciousness, she had heard the voice of her mother. "Hardship is the lot of women like us, Mi-ja. You must be a strong girl, even if it means you have to leave us and go far away to live with someone else."

  She had promised her mother she would be strong- and now she would prove it.

  Mi-ja had a plan.

  Footsteps approached. She held her breath. Now was the time. She would be allowed only one chance.

  The door of the byonso crashed open. Mi-ja flinched. Dim light filtered in, slicing into her eyes. She covered her face with both hands.

  One of the foreign men stomped across the cement floor. Roughly, he grabbed the chain and jerked it upward, almost choking Mi-ja in the process. He reached in his pocket, pulled out a key, and unlocked the padlock that held the chain. With the side of his boot, he kicked Mi-ja back away from the commode.

  Mi-ja kept her eyes tightly shut, cowering against the cement wall. Within seconds she heard the steady stream of urine splashing into the waste-filled porcelain bowl.

  Slowly, she leaned backward on her haunches, flexing the stiff muscles of her thigh, testing their strength. Flesh quivered in protest. Still, her body must obey her commands. Her legs had to work. It was vital that everything proceed in one unbroken motion.

  The stream of urine was steady and hard. The reek of it drifted into Mi-ja's nostrils. She forced herself to take a deep breath, opened her eyes, and launched herself for- ward, twisting behind the urinating man, slamming her thin shoulders against the far cement wall.

  The chain around her neck slipped and clattered to the floor. The urinating man swiped his hand backward, but his fingers slithered off the flesh of Mi-ja's upper arm. She hit the wooden door-squirming, turning, running-pushed through, and burst out into the outside room.

  Men squatted on a large vinyl-covered floor, tossing oddly-shaped wooden sticks into a pile between them. They looked up as she ran past them, scattering dried bones in her wake.

  Men shouted. Men reached out. But none of them moved quickly enough. She was already at the front door. She slammed into it and pushed but it wouldn't open.

  Frantically, Mi-ja twisted the handle. It slid downward and she pulled the door ajar. She stepped out into the hallway, glancing both ways. A window. People on a street far below. The voices of children. Men and women selling fresh produce. The sounds of Korea. The sounds of home.

  She heard footsteps behind her and sprinted with all her strength toward the window. Too high to jump out. A stairway. She ran toward it.

  Mi-ja was naked, she knew that, but her mind had no care for modesty. Only freedom. Only real air. Like an animal escaped
from its cage, that was all she could think of.

  As she rounded a corner she saw it. A metal grillwork door blocking the stairway. She grabbed the tightly woven bars, rattled them. They wouldn't budge.

  Trapped.

  The footsteps of the men were in full pursuit now. No way to slip under the grillwork, but she could climb over it. There was enough space at the top for her to slip through. But there wasn't enough time. Her pursuers would be on her in seconds.

  In the hallway behind her she spotted a small wooden hatchway. It probably led to a storage shed for charcoal.

  She stepped back up the stairs, pushed the door. It held at first but then, just as she was about to surrender to despair, it shifted slightly. She pushed harder. The door popped open. Flat back. She was right. The dank space was filled with charcoal dust. She crawled inside and shoved the small hatch back into place, holding it with her trembling hands.

  The footsteps exploded above her. A herd of men. All shouting. All tramping down the stairs. Angry sounds. None of which she could understand. She dared not breathe; she prayed her strength would last long enough so that she wouldn't lose her hold on the wooden door.

  Someone shouted again and metal clanged on metal. A key. And then the creaking of the grillwork gate as it swung open. Footsteps pelted down the stairway.

  They'd been fooled! They thought she'd climbed over.

  Mi-ja listened. All was quiet.

  She dared not believe it at first but now she must. The men were gone. Now was her chance to escape. They would be back soon, once they discovered that she wasn't out on the street.

  Scraping her shaking fingers against the splintery wood, she pulled back the small hatchway and crawled out. Silently, she crept back up the steps, back toward the room where she had been held hostage. Cautiously, she peered inside the open door. No one was left inside.

  She scurried down the hallway until it turned and turned again. The doors in the long corridor were shut tight and all was silent. Then she saw it. A back stairway.

  She crept down, taking one step at a time. Listening. No sound.

  At another window she could see below. This stairway led to a back alley lined with large crates of refuse. She must hurry before the men searched back here. She sprinted down the stairway but before running outside she stopped, squatted low, and glanced both ways. The alleyway was perfectly still.

  Freedom at last, she thought.

  With a great burst of breath, Mi-ja leapt out into the alleyway and ran as fast as her shaky legs would carry her, past the line of crates. Only a few more steps and then she would be on the main street. Others would be there. Street vendors, shop owners, maybe-if she was lucky-even a policeman.

  Only a few more steps.

  She was about to reach the last crate when a demon emerged from the shadows.

  Even as Mi-ja's mind flooded with terror, her small body kept moving.

  A turbaned man-not a demon-leaned toward her and, with a great paw, swiped out at her naked body. Fingers like iron spikes bit into the soft flesh of Mi-ja's arm, pinching bone.

  The fingers softened and wriggled and slithered around her like curling pythons.

  Mi-ja howled.

  Not in pain but in anguish. Anguish for the freedom that had been so near.

  The man in the turban slapped her hard across the side of her head. He slid his enormous hand across her mouth, covering her nose. Choking, Mi-ja kicked and struggled, but it did no good.

  The turbaned man's lips slid back, revealing blocks of yellowed teeth.

  He hoisted Mi-ja into the air, tucked her beneath his arm, and sauntered nonchalantly down the alleyway. He kicked open the creaking back door and reentered the endless darkness of the ancient wooden building.

  12

  Ernie squinted through a tinted visor, "Prepare for heavy swells."

  "What?"

  I couldn't hear him above the roar of the helicopter engine. We were in the back compartment, behind the pilot and the copilot, wearing helmets and loose flight crew overalls.

  Ernie leaned toward me. "I say it looks like a world of shit is about to roll down on top of us!"

  I gazed out at the gray overcast of the Taejon city skyline, a jumble of brick and cement-block buildings-nothing over three stories tall-in a sea of traditional Korean homes with blue and red tile roofs. Off toward the Yellow Sea, a solid wall of black clouds rolled steadily inland. Occasionally, a spark of lightning flashed out of the roiling mass.

  Looked like we were arriving just in time. The monsoon was about to hit hard, and all military flights were sure to be canceled.

  The chopper dove through the mist, bounced a couple of times, and came to rest on a cement helipad. We were on Camp Ames, an American compound on the outskirts of Taejon. We took off our gear, folded the overalls neatly, and thanked the crew chief for the ride.

  After flashing our identification to the MPs at the front gate, Ernie and I stepped out into the streets of the city. As we walked down the brick sidewalk, I felt as if we'd stepped back into a different era.

  The city of Taejon had been leveled during the Korean War. What had been rebuilt was done, for the most part, in a traditional Korean style. Each hooch was surrounded by bushes sprinkled with purple mukunghua, the Korean national flower. Long-faced men on three-wheeled pedicabs rolled solemnly through the narrow lanes.

  There wasn't even much hustle outside the GI compound, a spot which had to be a major source of income for this slow-moving city. No bars. Only a couple of tailor shops and souvenir emporiums. A short row of pedicab drivers waited patiently outside them for passengers, and didn't run up offering "special deals" for Americans.

  One driver looked surprised when I spoke Korean to him.

  "Yes, you want to go downtown," he said, "but where downtown?"

  "Chungang," I replied. The center.

  The driver smiled at that and I asked him how much and he told me. Ernie and I piled into the back of his pedicab. We paraded through the quiet lanes toward downtown Taejon.

  Unlike Seoul, where everything is cement and exhaust fumes, the streets of Taejon were lined with elm trees rustling in the morning breeze. Shop owners splashed buckets of water on brick sidewalks and scrubbed away filth with long-bristled brushes. A few cars wound through the traffic, but mostly the thoroughfares were filled with women on foot, carrying bundles over their heads, and men on bicycles, clanging out warnings of their whereabouts with the ringing of tinkling bells.

  The leather sandals of a bevy of robed Buddhist monks slapped past us. The monks strode up ancient stone steps toward an intricately carved and brightly painted wooden pagoda. Schoolchildren in yellow caps crossed the street and bumped into each other every time the teacher brought their centipedelike procession to a halt.

  The pedicab driver dropped us off in front of the August Moon Yoguan. When I paid him he said "Komowo-yu," ending the verb with a "yu" instead of a "yo" as they would've said in Seoul. It was an accent that I was to hear often in these southern realms.

  Ernie stood on the sidewalk with his bag draped over his shoulder, glancing around, chomping on gum.

  "Nice place they got here," he said.

  I wasn't sure if he meant the city of Taejon or the August Moon Yoguan, but whatever it was I had to agree.

  The August Moon Yoguan was a ramshackle two-story building made of darkly aged lumber. Through the red-lacquered gate of the inn was a small garden filled with roses and tulips camouflaging rows of earthen jars pushed against the outer brick wall. A woman in a long blue cotton dress and rubber slippers with upturned pointed toes stepped out to greet us. She bowed.

  "Oso-oseiyo." Please come in.

  The rooms were cheap, and larger than what we were used to. Each had a sleeping mat with a bead pillow, a two-foot-high writing desk, a black-and-white TV, and a bathroom. Hot water in the early morning and in the evening from eight to ten.

  We ordered chow.

  A boy from a Chinese restaurant brought
in a tin box and Ernie and I stared at it suspiciously. But when the boy slid up the side panel and pulled out a plate of chap chae-fried noodles laced with beef-and two steaming bowls of shrimp fried rice, we relaxed, paid him, and commenced to wolf down the food.

  We didn't speak as we ate. We were both thinking the same thing. How in the hell were we going to find this Lady Ahn in a city we didn't know? How in the hell were we going to keep little Mi-ja from having her throat cut by the scar-headed Ragyapa and his Mongol horde? And what the hell was this all about?

  I glanced out the window. The first plump droplets of monsoon rain hit the sidewalk so hard that they bounced like Ping-Pong balls. A steady patter tapped against the wooden roof. I wondered about the moon. It would be more than three-quarters full tonight.

  We finished our chow, went downstairs, told the yoguan owner we'd be out, and pulled our jackets over our heads. Splashing through puddles, we trotted into the bustling center of downtown Taejon.

  A wise man once said that the way to get rich is to ask a bunch of tomfool questions and listen well to the answers.

  Apparently, this wise man had never been an American CID agent in the Korean city of Taejon. Most of the people we talked to didn't have answers. They were just frightened.

  There isn't a very large American military presence in Taejon, and tourism in these parts is unknown. We might've been the first long-nosed foreigners many of these people had ever encountered.

  Ernie wasn't helping matters much. He was impatient and surly, and the more people acted as if we'd just landed in a spaceship from Mars, the more Ernie felt compelled to feed into their neuroses and act weird.

  At one shop that specialized in porcelain, he grabbed a teacup and sipped on it, slurping loudly. Of course there was no liquid inside. Ernie wiped the dust out with his tongue. At an antique furniture shop, he rummaged through an ancient hand-carved cabinet as if he'd stashed something there and forgotten where he'd left it.

  It hadn't been a big problem finding the antique shops themselves. Most were clustered in the upscale shopping area downtown. At each place, I described the type of jade-carved skull we were after but every time I did, I received puzzled looks. No one had heard of such a thing.