G.I. Bones (17 page)

Western influence, Japanese influence, Chinese influence and the Korean ability to adapt in order to survive; all these factors made it difficult for me to look back in time and discern which parts of the culture that swirled around me were authentic Korean and which parts had been tacked on recently. I worked at it, constantly. But the Koreans were a puzzle to me. Who they were. What they wanted. And although I discovered and snapped into place a new piece of the puzzle every day, I felt sometimes that the picture was becoming more blurry. Maybe I was doomed to be confused. Maybe a foreigner can never understand Asia or the Asian mind. But I’d keep trying. Especially now. For Moretti’s sake, so we could find his bones and return them to his family. And for Ernie’s sake and my own sake. So we’d have a shot at not having to return to a Korean jail. Which would be good.

Ernie and I didn’t enter the chophouse. Instead, we turned left and walked down a short hallway that led to a door marked
sammusil
. Office. I started to knock but Ernie stepped past me, twisted the handle, and shoved.

It was locked.

There was a lot of banging behind the door to Jimmy Pak’s office. It sounded like furniture being moved around and there was whispering, of the urgent type. Finally, the handle of the door turned and the door began to open. A beautiful pagoda of black hair peeked out.

I recognized her right away. Miss Liu, a waitress here at the UN Club. She had long legs and a gorgeous smile and beautiful black hair that she piled atop her head into a structure like a temple from a Chinese fairy tale. She peered out at us from behind the door, smiled and bowed and then, holding her silver cocktail tray under her arm, minced her way out into the hallway. She was wearing the high-heeled shoes she usually wore and her legs were smooth and unsheathed. Something about her short blue dress seemed slightly askew, as if it had been twisted over her torso too quickly. Miss Liu kept her head down as she left the office and slouched past us. Ernie and I both watched as she sashayed down the hallway and tiptoed down the steps.

Inside the office, a green fluorescent light flickered to life.

Behind his desk, Jimmy Pak was on his feet, smiling, slipping on his neatly pressed white shirt, tucking the starched tails into his trousers.

“Agent Ernie,” he said. “And Geogi. Welcome. Come in. Have a seat.”

He motioned with his open palm to the chairs on the far side of his desk. Then he lifted his telephone. “Would either of you gentlemen care for a drink?”

I shook my head.

Ernie said, “I’ll take a scotch and soda.”

When someone answered, Jimmy said in English, “Two scotch and sodas for my important friends
. Allaso,
Mr. Jin?” Do you understand, Mr. Jin?

The response must have been positive because Jimmy Pak smiled more broadly and hung up the phone.

“Sit, sit,” he said. Then he retied his tie and slipped on his jacket and placed himself behind his desk in his comfortable leather swivel chair. He folded his pudgy hands on the blotter in front of him and said, “Now, gentlemen, how can I help you?”

Before we could answer, someone knocked discreetly on the office door.

“Entrez-vous,”
Jimmy shouted.

Another waitress, this one less statuesque than Miss Liu, entered with two drinks on her tray and plopped one each in front of Ernie and me. She asked if Jimmy wanted anything but he waved her away. After she left, he reached inside his desk drawer, pulled out a crystal tumbler and a small bottle of ginseng liqueur. He poured himself a thimbleful and said, “For my tummy.” He patted his ample paunch. Then he raised the glass, and said, “Bottoms up!”

We all drank. Ernie downed his entire drink. I sipped mine.

“Now,” Jimmy said. “To what do I owe this pleasant surprise?”

“That Miss Liu,” Ernie said, “she’s not bad.”

“No. Not bad at all,” Jimmy replied. Gold lined the edge of one of his front teeth but on him it looked good, accentuating his constant smile.

Ernie rattled the ice in his glass. “How long have you owned this club, Jimmy?”

“Oh. Many, many years. Why do you ask?”

“You’re the coolest owner. The only bar owner in Itaewon who speaks English really well and who mingles with the G.I.s. Why? Why don’t you pull away from the day-to-day operations like the other owners?”

Jimmy spread his arms. “Because I love people. Especially my American friends.”

He was smiling as broadly as an evangelist in a pulpit, welcoming new souls into the kingdom of heaven.

“You love people,” Ernie said, “but you’re also one of the gangsters who used to be called the Seven Dragons.”

Jimmy looked surprised. “The who?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know. You were here in Itaewon right after the war. You helped build this place and the entire village of Itaewon.”

Jimmy kept smiling. “You flatter me.”

“And you did it,” Ernie continued, “by stealing money from the poor refugees who flooded down here from North Korea.”

“Steal? Me?” Jimmy Pak’s face was suffused with mirth. “My friend, you have such a vivid imagination. These ‘Seven Dragons’ as you call them. Such an exotic name. No doubt some mysterious Oriental organization designed to do evil in the world. But don’t you see, I’m nothing but a harmless businessman.”

“Not so harmless,” Ernie said. “At least Two Bellies doesn’t think so.”

The smile disappeared from Jimmy Pak’s face. “Such a terrible thing.”

Ernie’s fist tightened around his empty glass. I was worried he might throw it at Jimmy. I spoke up.

“Don’t give us your shit, Jimmy,” I told him. “Just listen to the facts. We know what you did to Mori Di, Sergeant Flo Moretti, and we know where you hid his body. And we know that you stole a lot of money from people and sent a passel of Buddhist nuns and orphans out into the snow to die. But they didn’t die. They lived, most of them, and reached a nunnery and most of those kids are alive now and well, although probably not living in Korea. So you’re a legitimate businessman these days. You don’t want people poking into your past. And when Ernie and I went looking for Moretti’s remains, you removed the remains from their resting place and replaced them with the corpse of Two Bellies, to warn off anybody else who tries to help us.”

“Me?” Jimmy asked.

“Yes, you,” Ernie growled. “Maybe you didn’t do the dirty work yourself, you didn’t actually slice Two Bellies’s throat, but you know who did because you’re the one who paid for the job.”

Jimmy Pak smiled indulgently.

“So I’m willing to make a deal,” I said. “I want the remains of Moretti. Somebody’s got to return those remains to his family in the States. They’ve been waiting over twenty years. You give us that— his dog tags, his uniform, his bones, everything—and then we lay off. No more prying into the people who were hurt in the past or the antiques and family heirlooms and the gold bullion that was stolen.”

Jimmy looked suddenly serious. “And Two Bellies?” he asked.

Ernie and I glanced at one another. I spoke. “The Korean cops are responsible for her.”

Jimmy leaned back in his chair, his fingers steepled in front of him. “You want another drink?” he asked.

Ernie shook his head.

“Your proposal is interesting,” he said. “It has nothing to do with me, of course, but I’ll pass it along. Maybe someone, somewhere, will be interested in what you have to say.”

“We want the remains,” Ernie said. “And we want them now.”

Jimmy Pak smiled.

We were halfway down the narrow stairwell when a big man bumped into me. He was Korean but hefty. Over six feet tall with broad shoulders and thick forearms and fists like mallets.

“Weikurei?”
he said. What’s wrong with you?

I knew who he was.
Maldeigari,
the Koreans called him. Horsehead. What a coincidence.

I considered asking Horsehead right there and then about the whereabouts of Jessica Tidwell. If the information I’d been gathering the last few days was correct, Horsehead and his minions at the Golden Dragon Travel Agency had made it possible for Jessica Tidwell to set up a thousand-dollar deal with a Japanese gangster. Certainly, Horsehead was taking a cut from this transaction. And maybe Horsehead was even more deeply involved in the drama of Paco Bernal and Jessica Tidwell than I yet knew.

I thought of laying my cards on the table, seeing what he had to say, but decided against it. Tomorrow morning, Jessica Tidwell was scheduled to meet up with the Japanese gangster, Ondo Fukushima, somewhere many miles south of here. And after spending the day with him, she would be returning to Seoul to the White Crane Hotel. I didn’t want Horsehead to know that I’d be there, ready to pounce, or the venue would be changed and then it would be much more difficult to find Jessica.

But there was another reason I decided not to discuss things with Horsehead: I was angry.

Being pushed around was becoming a little old. I didn’t like the Seven Dragons. And I particularly didn’t like this tough guy Horsehead, with his three or four henchmen standing behind him and his too-expensive suit and his gaudy jewelry and his ill-gotten money and his attitude that he could bump into me and intimidate me into standing out of his way.

I bumped him back.

He reached out and shoved me and actually I was glad he did. I was released from the restraint of being a good cop. Now I could say I was defending myself. Maybe Horsehead saw the look in my eyes and maybe he realized that, if he was going to go up against me, he needed solid footing. He retreated down the steps.

When I reached the ground floor he popped a right at my nose. I dodged it, hooked him in the ribcage, and then we were wrestling back the few feet toward the bar. A waitress was in the way and we bumped into her tray of drinks and the glassware and ice flew straight up in the air and then crashed to the floor; women screamed. Ernie jumped past me and started pummeling Horsehead’s pals because Horsehead didn’t travel alone. They, in turn, started pummeling Ernie. Other G.I.s jumped in. Waitresses, swearing their allegiance to Korea, bonged stainless steel cocktail trays on the heads of the G.I.s, trying to get them off of Horsehead. Horsehead, for his part, seemed to be having a wonderful time, punching and wrestling and kicking and spitting.

And then the boy at the door started screaming.

“MP!” he shouted. “MP coming!”

I had backed up to the safety of the bar and Ernie was still jostling with Horsehead but most of the customers pushed past us like a horde of panicked cattle, everybody heading for the front door. Horsehead staggered backward, cursing.

By now his men had surrounded him. He pointed a thick finger at me.

“You, Sueño!” he said.
“Chukiyo ra!”

I stepped forward but Horsehead’s men grabbed him and pulled him through the front door of the UN Club.

By now, the police whistles were shrill and we could hear their boots pounding on the pavement outside. Ernie dragged me through the back storage room and out into the street. Neither Horsehead nor his boys followed.

“Asshole,” Ernie said. “What did he say?”

“He said he’s going to kill me.” By now we had emerged through an alley onto the main drag. “But never mind about that. Look up the street, at the King Club.”

There was a much larger fight going on up there and that’s where a half dozen MPs were headed, nightsticks drawn.

“Riot.”

He was right. Even from this distance we could tell that the men fighting one another were American G.I.s—about half of them white, half of them black.

“That damn Hilliard,” Ernie said.

And then we were running toward the center of the fray.

Less than ten minutes remained until the midnight curfew and Ernie and I were becoming more nervous by the second. Maybe the bartender had slipped out the front door. But that seemed unlikely because I knew from previously casing the Grand Ole Opry Club that they barred the front door from inside at night. It made sense for the employees, after cleaning up, to leave via the back door and emerge into this dark alley lined with trash cans and wooden crates of empty brown beer bottles. But if the bartender had gone out the front door, Ernie and I were wasting our time. I shivered in the cold night air. A few more wisps of snow swirled in front of my nose, falling to the ground and mostly melting away, except for clumps that collected in corners and on the edges of brick walls.

I wanted to talk to the Grand Ole Opry Club bartender because on the night Ernie and I found Moretti‘s remains, he would’ve been the man in charge. Someone in Itaewon—maybe the Seven Dragons—had been aware of what Ernie and I were up to. After we left that night they sent someone down there to see what we’d discovered. Sometime during the night they cleared out Mori Di’s remains, brought Two Bellies down there, and executed her. The bartender, the man on the scene, must have some knowledge of what happened. Probably he’d been paid, or more likely intimidated, into keeping his mouth shut. The statement he made to the KNPs was innocuous: he claimed he locked up that night, went home, and saw nothing. The strange part is that the KNPs let him get away with that statement. They didn’t arrest him, they didn’t lock him up in a cell, they didn’t sweat information from him with hours of brutal interrogation. Instead, they took his statement and thanked him and sent him on his way.

They were happy to let the suspicion linger that Ernie and I had taken Two Bellies down there and executed her. Of course they knew it was ridiculous but it served the vital purpose of deflecting attention away from the “person or persons unknown” who’d gone to all the trouble of removing Mori Di’s remains. The person who’d been vindictive enough to murder Two Bellies for having talked to us.

The KNPs seemed satisfied to let this case drift. Why were they completely unconcerned about finding the people who’d really murdered Two Bellies? The answer that seemed most likely was not an answer I was happy with. The local KNPs were under the thumb, and probably in the employ, of the syndicate known as the Seven Dragons.

While we shivered, waiting in the cold night for the bartender to appear, I thought about the fight we’d just witnessed outside the King Club. It had been predictable enough. As more black soldiers arrived at the King Club, Sergeant First Class Hilliard’s harangue took effect. Some of the black G.I.s demanded that the Korean rock band play soul music: Curtis Mayfield, Jackie Wilson, the Temptations. But the little band’s repertoire included only a handful of songs and all of them were either rock or country-western. When they launched into them, Hilliard complained bitterly and the black G.I.s started hooting at the hapless band and some of the white G.I.s told them to lay off and then the insults started being hurled. Before long everyone was out in the street hurling knuckles.