The Wandering Ghost

by Martin Limon

  The time was just after eleven but already fancy sedans covered about half the parking lot. Must be nice to take that much time off work, to drive out in the country and be catered to by beautiful women. Maybe Ernie and I were in the wrong line of work. Ernie’s thoughts must’ve been similar to mine.

  “Assholes ought to be shot,” he said. “Making all that money, having all that fun, and not having to do any freaking work.”

  The “assholes” he was referring to were a group of suit-clad Korean businessmen piling out of three sedans that had just pulled up, in a small convoy, to the front of the Forest of the Seven Clouds. We huddled once again as outcasts at the edge of the tree line, our jeep parked out of sight some fifty yards beyond the entrance road. As the men strode through the lacquered wooden gate a bevy of beautiful young women clad in traditional silk gowns bowed and cooed. The businessmen nodded to the women and strutted like peacocks through the carefully raked garden and into the inner confines of the Forest of the Seven Clouds.

  The parking lot grew quiet again. Three uniformed chauffeurs lit up tambei, cigarettes, and stood leaning against one of the cars, smoking, and chatting with one another.

  “Jill Matthewson worked here?” Ernie asked me.

  “The women at the Princess Beauty Shop didn’t say so exactly but they said there was an American kisaeng who worked here, and she’d take a taxi into Kumchon to have her hair done.”

  “Living the high life,” Ernie said.

  “Maybe. But they also implied that something had gone wrong and she wasn’t here anymore. And none of the women who work here had been seen in three days.”

  “What could go wrong out here?”

  Ernie indicated the pine-covered forest and the fresh air and the snow-covered peaks above us.

  “Let’s find out,” I said.

  We strode out of the trees, across the parking lot. The chauffeurs stopped talking and stared at us. I nodded and said, “Anyonghaseiyo?” Are you at peace?

  Dumbfounded, they nodded back.

  Inside the main gate, Ernie and I made our way through the garden and at the entrance, I started to take off my shoes. The varnished floor was elevated, in the traditional Korean manner, about two feet off the ground. At least a dozen pairs of elegant men’s shoes sat neatly arranged beneath the platform. Ernie grabbed my elbow.

  “Let’s keep ’em on,” he said.

  Horrors! In Korean culture about the grossest thing a person can do is step onto an immaculately clean ondol floor wearing shoes that have picked up filth from the street.

  When I hesitated, Ernie said, “We might have to leave in a hurry.” To further make his point, he pulled his .45 out of his shoulder holster.

  I didn’t like it but I couldn’t argue. If there’d already been trouble here, there could be a lot more trouble when Ernie and I barged in and started asking questions. Reluctantly, I stepped onto the immaculately varnished wooden floor still wearing my highly-polished, army-issue low quarters.

  The clunk of our shoes down the long hallway sounded to me like the tolling of the bell of death.

  The Korean businessmen thought we were mad; they were just as outraged as the group we’d encountered last night at the Koryo Forest Inn. How could we possibly have the temerity to defile their expensive sanctuary? But through all the shoving and shouting and red faces blasting whiskey-soaked breath, Ernie and I held our ground. Even during the outraged shouts about our shoes and how we’d spread dirt throughout the palatial grounds and how we had no business upsetting honest customers and hard-working kisaeng, nobody threw any punches. But finally, the elderly woman who managed the place pulled us aside.

  She wore the most elaborate chima-chogori I’d ever seen. The silk of her vest and skirt was hand-embroidered with tortoises, phoenixes, and dragons—lucky creatures all. She stood on her tiptoes and hissed in my ear. “Tone,” she said. Money. She’d give us money if we’d just leave.

  I told her that we didn’t want money. We only wanted information. Then, I showed her the locket containing the photo of Kim Yong-ai. I also showed her the military personnel jacket photo of Corporal Jill Matthewson. She stared at both photos long and hard, and then nodded her head in surrender and said she’d tell me the entire story. But the quid pro quo was that Ernie and I had to return to the entranceway and take off our shoes.

  We did so.

  Immediately, silk-clad kisaeng, heavily made-up and reeking of expensive perfume, grabbed moist towels and, folding them neatly, began to scrub the floor. From the spot where Ernie and I had entered these hallowed precincts all the way to where we’d encountered the irate businessman, they cleaned as if their lives depended on it. As if this was their last chance to eradicate the influence of filthy foreigners. Somehow, I think they knew that the floor would never again be as clean as it once had been.

  We sat with the aging kisaeng on a wooden bench in an inner garden. She told me that her name was Blue Orchid and she’d been sold by her parents to a kisaeng house near the outskirts of Pyongyang when she was twelve years old. Her training had been rigorous and traditional. When the Korean War broke out and General MacArthur’s United Nations Command bulled its way through Pyongyang, heading north toward the Yalu River, she and some of her fellow kisaeng had become refugees. After months of hardship, they made their way to Seoul. Since then, she’d held many positions but she’d been at the Forest of Seven Clouds for almost twelve years now.

  “Never before,” she told me in Korean, “did we have as much trouble as we did this week.”

  A young woman, just a girl really, brought a tray with folding legs and set it on the bench next to us. Ceremoniously, she poured handle-less cups full of green tea. Ernie and I sipped the warm fluid. Blue Orchid watched and cooed in approval as the young girl left.

  Blue Orchid straightened her skirt before she started to talk. “Jill was very popular here,” she said. “We called her Beik-jo.” White Swan. “She was so gracious. Friendly with all the women and charming to the customers. You should be proud of your compatriot,” she told me. “We’ve never had a woman before—not even Jade Beauty— who’s been so popular with the powerful men from Seoul.”

  I wanted to ask who Jade Beauty was but we didn’t have time. Jill Matthewson was in danger. Not to mention the time pressure on us to return to 8th Army as soon as we could. Reluctantly, I prodded Blue Orchid to return to the main story. She did.

  Jill Matthewson started working at the Forest of Seven Clouds a little more than three weeks ago. That jibed with when she’d gone AWOL. The position was procured for her, and for her friend, Kim Yong-ai, by a friend of a friend of the owner who happened to be a business associate of the entertainment agent, Pak Tong-i.

  I didn’t tell Blue Orchid that Pak Tong-i was dead.

  Jill had to be taught many things, Blue Orchid told us. She had to be taught how to kneel on a hardwood floor, how to offer everything to a guest—whether it was a warm hand towel, or a plate of quail eggs, or a shot glass full of imported Scotch—with two hands. Never use one hand; that would be insulting. She had to be taught when to bow, when to giggle politely, when to light a man’s cigarette, and when to open her eyes wide in astonishment when he explained his business triumphs—even when she didn’t understand a word he was saying. And she had to be taught how to never turn her back on a guest, to back out of the room bowing and facing the guest in a respectful manner. And she had to be taught how to dress and how to wear her hair and even how to apply her makeup. And after all these lessons were learned, she still made mistakes. But the Korean men were indulgent. They were impressed that an American was getting even a few of their customs right. And they were flattered when she turned her full radiant attention on them, what with her big, round blue eyes and her intent way of staring at a man, a boldness that a Korean woman would never be allowed.

  “Everybody like,” Blue Orchid said, switching to English. “Many men come from Seoul. Want to see Miguk kisaeng.”

  The Miguk
kisaeng. The American woman of skill.

  Ernie was becoming antsy. Still, I didn’t rush Blue Orchid. She’d stopped using Korean now and had switched almost exclusively to English. This told me that during those years of hardship during and after the Korean War, before she’d landed this gig at the Forest of Seven Clouds, she’d made her living not as a kisaeng but as a business girl—for GIs. As I hoped, Blue Orchid finally reached the point in her narrative where something went wrong.

  “Two days ago, man come.” Blue Orchid’s face crinkled in disgust. “American man. GI. He drive up in jeep, have another GI with him. They both wear uniform. Everything dirty. Clothes dirty, boots dirty, even GI teeth dirty.”

  “What did he look like?” I asked.

  “Tall. Almost like you. But skinny, like him.” She pointed at Ernie. “But more skinny than him.”

  “An MP?” Ernie asked.

  “Yes. He wear black helmet with “MP” on front.”

  Warrant Officer Fred Bufford. Had to be.

  “And the driver?”

  “Black man. Small guy. Skinny, too. He don’t say much.”

  Maybe Staff Sergeant Weatherwax.

  “So what happened?” I asked.

  “He walk in wearing boots. Same like you.” The cardinal sin. “Then he find Beik-jo.”

  “She sit in room with customers. Important customers. They drink much whiskey. Buy taaksan anju.”

  Anju means “snacks.” Taaksan is Japanese for “much.” English, Japanese, and Korean all in one sentence: Buy taaksan anju. Blue Orchid was slipping back into GI slang.

  “Tall GI find Jill, he pull his gun.” Blue Orchid mimicked a man pointing a .45 automatic pistol. “He tell Jill she gotta go back compound. She say, hell no! He try to grab her. Then Jill knuckle-sandwich with him.” Blue Orchid waved a small fist through the air. “Tall, skinny GI go down, drop gun, Jill pick it up. Point it at GI, take him back outside, make him and black GI karra chogi.” Go away.

  “And she kept the pistol?” Ernie asked.

  Blue Orchid nodded vigorously.

  “Bold,” Ernie said, once again impressed with the exploits of Corporal Jill Matthewson.

  “What’d she do next?” I asked.

  “She . . . how you say?”

  Blue Orchid mimicked grabbing things and placing them in a container.

  “She packed her bags?” I said.

  “Right. Pack bags. She and Kim Yong-ai. Right away, they go.”

  “Kim Yong-ai was working here, too?”

  Blue Orchid nodded. “Not taaksan popular like Jill. But she good woman.”

  “Where’d they go?”

  Blue Orchid shrugged her narrow shoulders. “Moolah me.” I don’t know. “They cry, they thank everybody for helping them, they so sorry they gotta go but, anyway, they gotta go.”

  “They left that same night?”

  “Yes. They leave same night. After they go, maybe one hour, GI come back. This time he have many jeeps and many MPs. They search every room, make our customer taaksan angry. They ask anybody where Jill go but nobody tell them nothing because nobody know.”

  “Were there any KNPs with them?”

  Blue Orchid shook her head. “None.”

  “But they searched your premises. Did you report them to the KNPs?”

  “No. We no call. Later, when KNP honcho come drinkey, I tell him. He taaksan kullasso.” Very angry. Blue Orchid was using English, Japanese, and Korean again.

  “Did he do anything about it?”

  Blue Orchid shrugged again. “I don’t know.”

  Probably not. For the local boss of the Korean National Police to admit that 2nd Infantry Division MPs had taken it upon themselves to search a legitimate business enterprise without a warrant, an enterprise over which they had no jurisdiction, would be a tremendous loss of face. The KNP boss would never report the breach of legal procedure officially but, you can bet, he’d be waiting for his chance to take revenge.

  We asked if we could see Jill Matthewson’s room. Blue Orchid not only agreed but escorted us there herself. I was disappointed. It was just a little cubbyhole with a vinyl-covered ondol floor and cherry tree wall paper furnished with a down-filled sleeping mat and a plastic armoire. It had been totally cleaned out. Nothing was left to indicate Jill Matthewson’s brief residence. Kim Yong-ai’s room was the same.

  I grabbed Blue Orchid by her silk-covered shoulders and swore to her that Ernie and I weren’t here to harm Jill Matthewson. I told her of the letter from Jill’s mother and I even showed it to her. After she’d read it—or pretended to read it—I asked her to tell me anything she knew that could help me find Jill, and find her before she was located by her enemies.

  Blue Orchid shook her head. “Jill Matthewson smart woman. She know that if she tell us anything, someday we tell somebody else. So she no tell us nothing. I swear.” Blue Orchid raised her right hand. “Beik-jo didn’t tell us where she go.”

  I believed her.

  As a group, the kisaeng of the Forest of the Seven Clouds followed us out to the exit. I thanked them for their cooperation. As one body, they bowed as we left.

  “Zippo,” Ernie said. “Nada. Not a goddamn thing. That’s what we have to show for all these days of work. She’s gone. She’s in the wind and we don’t have a clue as to where she might’ve gone.”

  Ernie was right. I didn’t want to admit it, but he was right.

  We were in the jeep, driving back toward Kumchon.

  “And furthermore,” he continued, “we now have one day of AWOL on our record. One day of bad time.”

  By “bad time” Ernie meant that any days of absence without leave do not count toward earning a twenty-year military retirement.

  He was right again. Our gamble hadn’t paid off. Bufford had reached Jill Matthewson before us. But how? Then I remembered the body of Pak Tong-i; I remembered how he’d been tortured, systematically strangled. He’d probably revealed information before he’d been stricken down by a heart attack. The timing was right. Bufford had learned the whereabouts of Jill Matthewson and Kim Yong-ai and then he and Staff Sergeant Weatherwax had hot-footed it over to the Forest of Seven Clouds.

  What had he planned to do with Jill? Was he just going to arrest her and return her to 2nd Division custody? Somehow, I thought not. Pak Tong-i was dead; Druwood was dead. If Warrant Officer Fred Bufford was in any way responsible for their deaths, bringing Jill Matthewson back to Camp Casey would be too dangerous. My guess was—and judging by Jill’s reaction it was probably her guess, too—that Bufford intended to kill her. That’s why she’d threatened his life with his own .45. And that’s why she’d left no word with the women of the Forest of the Seven Clouds as to where she was going.

  “For all we know,” Ernie said, “she went to Seoul and we’ll never find her.”

  He was becoming gloomier by the minute. I was fighting the feeling but gloom was overwhelming me, too. No matter how I turned it over, all the things we’d learned since arriving in Division gave us no clue as to where Jill might’ve gone.

  Additionally, it now looked as if our work concerning the black-market activities of the 2nd Division honchos and the suspicious circumstances of Private Marvin Druwood’s death might come to naught. Once we were back in Seoul, even if Staff Sergeant Riley managed to come up with those classified ration control records, any anomaly they showed would be handled through regular channels. That is, the Division provost marshal himself, Colonel Alcott, would be notified immediately. Any covering up he had to do he could handle at his leisure. The same with the death of Private Marvin Druwood. Alcott would be asked to investigate his own MPs. The worst that could happen is that there would be some embarrassment on the 2nd Division commander’s part and Alcott would be relieved and transferred back to the States.

  One thing you could be sure of is that Ernie and I would be kept strictly away from the investigation. When the integrity of honchos in positions of power is threatened, investigations are handled with the utm
ost delicacy. And delicacy isn’t what Ernie and I are known for.

  Would Jill Matthewson eventually be hunted down and murdered? Possibly. Along with her friend, Kim Yong-ai. If their bodies were dumped in a ditch, or tossed into the fast-flowing Imjin River, they’d never be heard from again. And Ernie and I would still be working the black-market detail down in Seoul, busting the Korean wives of enlisted men for selling maraschino cherries and dehydrated orange drink. Standing around with our thumbs up our butts while a good soldier was stalked and murdered.

  Ernie’s thoughts must’ve been running parallel to mine. His face was twisted in anger and his knuckles on the steering wheel were white. He raced faster than he should have through the city of Kumchon, passed the Princess Beauty Shop without slowing down, and when we reached Reunification Road, without a word to me, he turned south toward Seoul.

  I sat with my arms crossed, brooding. It was late afternoon now; the sun was lowering, cold and damp, behind enormous banks of gray clouds.

  At Bongil-chon Ernie threw the jeep into low gear. He turned off the main road and drove under the overpass toward the compound that sat on the craggy peaks. Before reaching the road that led up to the compound, he turned into the narrow lanes of the village and gunned the engine, letting it whine. Like a crazed road-race driver, he roared through the narrow lanes, splashing mud everywhere. People jumped out of his way. He zigzagged back and forth, up and down, until he located the central road of the village. It was lined with nightclubs.

  Along the main drag, he found a place to park the jeep. He chained and padlocked the steering wheel, turned to me, and said, “Let’s go get drunk.”

  As if to help me with my decision, one of the neon signs blinked to brilliant life. YOBO CLUB, it said. I pondered my decision for about three seconds, finding no flaw in Ernie’s plan.

  “We ain’t there yet?” I asked.

  The time was about an hour and a half before midnight. Ernie and I were so drunk that we were starting to hold on to the edge of the bar to steady ourselves. We must’ve hit every dive in Bongil-chon and of all of them, this one was probably the worst. The Bunny Club, they called it. It was full of half-dressed business girls and half-crazed GIs with pockets full of spending money and access to more cheap booze and rock and roll and women than they’d ever seen in their lives.