G.I. Bones (27 page)

“Find up,” she replied. “Before I work this kind work.”

I glanced at Cort.

“During the years after the war,” he said, “the nuns were short of money, like everybody. They sent some of the kids to live with foster families. Temporarily for most of them but some of them stayed, especially if the family needed them to work. From the time she was a little girl Miss Kwon was a hard worker. She stayed with a family of butchers. Over time, they became her real family at least emotionally.”

These were the people who’d recently told Miss Kwon that they couldn’t take her back because they couldn’t afford to support her, that she must return to Itaewon and continue to earn money as a hostess in the King Club.

“They aren’t Buddhists, right?” I asked “Because they’re butchers.”

Cort shrugged. “Maybe they are. Probably they are. Not everybody can follow the teachings exactly. People have to live.”

Ernie was restless. He crawled outside through the tunnel and returned when he heard noises.

“They already searched the market,” he said, “but not thoroughly. They’ll be back.”

“Not for hours,” Cort said. “By then the sun will be up.”

We slept as best as we could, on the cold bloody slab.

Maybe an hour later, I awoke with the hot gritty odor of smoke shoving up my nostrils. I was dreaming of a barbecue in East L.A., after someone had slaughtered a goat. But then I realized that the smoke was real and it was all around me.

“Fire!” I shouted, reaching in the darkness for Doc Yong. At first my open palms slapped only flat cement. But then I hit a shoe and then a shoulder.

Doc Yong sat up.

“Fire. We have to get out of here.”

She grabbed Miss Kwon. The three of us started crawling. I wasn’t quite sure where Ernie and Cort were. A wall of smoke floated between us and the other side of the abattoir. The tunnel heading toward the back of the butcher shop, away from the counter facing the center of the Itaewon Market, was closer. On all fours, I led the way. Light was no longer a problem. Off to our left, the wooden stand next to the butcher shop was fully ablaze, casting rays of quivering brightness through cracks in the woodwork. I had almost reached the end of the tunnel when a wall of fire, like a flaming blanket, stopped us. I recoiled from the heat. Doc Yong bumped into me.

“What is it, Geogi?” she asked.

“Canvas,” I said. “It fell from the roof and it’s about to set these wooden walls on fire.”

I crawled forward as fast as I could, doing my best to ignore the heat. When I was as close to the burning canvas as I could stand, I turned over, flopped on my butt, and crawled forward feet first, kicking at the burning material. The wooden walls of the tunnel were beginning to smoke now.

“Hurry!” Doc Yong said.

I kicked at the canvas, it bounced away from the soles of my shoes, but then flopped back into place, still blocking our way. I had to have something with which to push it out of our way.

I studied the smoking walls surrounding me. One of the support struts was made of dried wood with a few rusty nails holding it loosely in place. I grabbed it and yanked. It didn’t budge. Doc Yong tried to pull at the top of the strip of wood while I worked at the center. Still it didn’t move. Miss Kwon cowered, her eyes wide. I saw no other likely loose struts of wood.

Her face streaming with perspiration, Doc Yong reached past me and frantically pulled the strut toward her. I pushed her out of the way. This time I pulled steadily, applying pressure with my foot as I heaved and then ancient metal nails groaned, started to slip, and then released violently.

I wrenched the strut away from the last nail holding it and turning my face away from the heat, I poked the canvas up from the ground a couple of feet,

“Crawl through,” I shouted.

The world around us was not only growing brighter with flame but hotter. Breathing was increasingly difficult as clouds of smoke enveloped us. They both crawled forward, Doc Yong first. Laying flat on her face, she wriggled beneath the burning canvas and beyond it and then Miss Kwon, still holding on to her crutch with her right hand, crawled about halfway through. She paused, exhausted, and just as I was about to reach for her, from the other side of the flames, someone pulled and Miss Kwon’s good foot kicked forward and then she was out.

I slid back, away from the burning canvas. I gazed behind me back down the tunnel. Just smoke. It was not possible to go back for Ernie and Cort now. They’d either escaped to the other side or they’d already been overcome by the heat and smoke. I shoved at the flaming material with the stick, and holding it up as high as I could, I crawled under. About halfway through the flaming canvas fell onto my back. I wriggled forward as fast as I could and then I was out and Doc Yong was beating my back with her hands as sparks singed and sputtered against my flesh.

“Come on!” she shouted.

We stood in the center of a wooden warehouse, large enough to hold about four trucks abreast. The walls surrounding us were completely enveloped in flame. Miss Kwon waited near the big double door where, on a normal day, delivery trucks would back in.

I wondered why she didn’t open the door and then I realized that it was held shut by a rusty hasp secured by a heavy duty padlock.

Doc Yong grabbed the padlock and pulled, accomplishing nothing, except making the heavy wooden door bounce up and down on its hinges, as if laughing at her. Within seconds, those doors too would be on fire and we’d be trapped. The roof above us was burning now and if it fell we’d never live long enough to see the exit door burn.

“Stand back!” I shouted.

I grabbed the women and roughly shoved them out of the way.

I stepped back a few feet and slammed my heel into the padlock. It shuddered but held. Doc Yong’s eyes grew wider. More smoke enveloped us; the roof sizzled. I figured I had one more try.

I backed up a few more feet and tried to remember what I’d been taught in marital arts class. Think through the problem, envision only the solution. I stood with my side facing the padlock. A sidekick is the most powerful kick in the tae kwon do arsenal and I was good at it. Trying to make my mind blank, I hopped toward the door, bringing my foot up and using the momentum of my body and the strength of my muscles to slam into the padlock. The rusty hasp screeched in complaint and then the door burst outwards.

Doc Yong plowed into my back, and she and Miss Kwon and I stumbled into air that was cool and fresh and clean. Then we were on the ground, crawling forward, rolling on the cold frosty earth, laughing, hugging one another, wiping soot and perspiration from one another’s faces.

Doc Yong kissed me. I kissed her back.

But my joy was short-lived. Behind us, about twenty yards away in the center of the Itaewon Market, a gun fired.

“Hide!” I told Doc Yong and Miss Kwon. “I’ll be back.”

Doc Yong tried to hold me but I wrenched myself loose and ran toward the sound of the gunfire.

Ernie fired. And then fired again. He was squatting behind the rim of the old brick well that marked the center of the Itaewon Market. One or two rounds whizzed past us but the light was moving crazily now.

We kept up a steady fusillade of bullets at Snake’s men. The fire behind us raged, all the dried canvas and rotted wood that composed the Itaewon Market had gone up faster than even Snake could have imagined. That’s what saved us. The abundance of fuel for the flames and therefore the intensity of the heat. Snake’s thugs had been forced to retreat in order to save themselves.

I reloaded my .45 and kept firing. I knew Ernie was still on the other side of the well because I heard the steady bark of his pistol as he took aim and popped off rounds. I didn’t know where Doc Yong, Miss Kwon, or Cort were. I could only hope they’d sought safety.

Ernie and I dragged ourselves farther from the flames. Sirens wailed in the distance. Strange voices were shouting—people who lived in the area. Then we heard the voices of Korean cops trying to take charge of the situation.

I crawled over to Ernie. His face was black with soot. I grabbed his right arm and held his pistol down.

“Enough,” I said. “They’re gone.”

Ernie glanced around. “What about the others?”

“Not in the fire. Doc Yong and Miss Kwon escaped. They crawled out right behind me. How about Cort?”

“I’m not sure.”

As the firemen started dousing the flames and the policemen held back the gathering crowd of neighbors, Ernie and I rose to our feet. I trotted out back behind the burning remains of the butcher shop. I searched for a few minutes but found no sign of Cort. I returned to the well. Ernie was waiting for me.

“They’re gone,” I said. “Miss Kwon, Doc Yong, Cort. I can’t find them.”

Ernie spit on the ground. “They have a reason to run.”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, Sueño. Come off it. You’re not so blind with love for Doctor Yong In-ja that you can’t see what’s right in front of you.”

“What do you
mean?”

“I mean the reason she took you to see that fortune teller. The reason she convinced you to look for Mori Di’s bones. The reason she sicced Miss Kwon on us through every minute of this investigation.”

I was becoming angry and I stepped toward him, my .45 still hanging at my side.

“Spit it out, Bascom. What the hell are you talking about?”

“She
used
you. To get at Snake. Don’t you see? Miss Kwon’s one of the orphans of the Itaewon Massacre. So are the people who hacked Horsehead and Water Doggy to death. And so is Doc Yong!”

I hit him.

It was a straight left, right to the nose and Criminal Investigation Division Agent Ernie Bascom reeled backwards like a man being pulled by a rope. He collapsed against a pile of smoldering lumber. When I smelt burning, I leaned down and rolled him away. One of the firemen doused him with water. Sputtering, Ernie rose to his knees, shook his head for a moment, took a weak swing at me, and then collapsed back to the ground.

I used a thin screwdriver to pop the front lock to Doc Yong’s medical clinic. My search was systematic, thorough, in accordance with my police training. It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for.

On a previous visit, I’d seen Korean workmen in the clinic. They had broken through one of the walls to install the new wiring for Doc Yong’s electrocardiogram equipment. At the time, I wondered why she’d needed such expensive equipment when most of her clients were young business girls whose hearts might be broken but were still beating. The older clients, like the friends of Two Bellies, could take a bus down to the Main Yongsan Clinic. Doc Yong had possessed an ulterior motive. She wanted the space opened so she could inter something valuable to her.

I kicked the flimsy wall in. Then, using the screwdriver, I scraped away plaster until the opening was large enough and I leaned in. I saw a square white box, wrapped in black ribbon, the type used in Korea to transport honored remains.

I lifted the box, placed it on Doc Yong’s desk and opened the top. After a quick survey, I closed it again. Then I left the clinic, stepped carefully down the creaking metal stairs, and marched through the early morning dawn to the Itaewon Police Station. Because of the fire at the Itaewon Market and the reports of gunfire, Captain Kim was already there. He wore his khaki uniform, neatly pressed, and his big square chin had been recently shaved. The pungent tang of aftershave battled with the fragrant remains of morning kimchee.

He stood as I walked into his office. I must’ve looked a sight: dirty, muddy, covered with soot and pig’s blood. I plopped the white box down on the center of his desk.

“Here,” I said

Captain Kim stared at the box suspiciously. “What is it?”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “The bones of Mori Di.”

His face contorted and his lips twisted in disgust. He didn’t want this box. It represented trouble. But now he had no choice. The remains of Technical Sergeant Flo Moretti had been presented to him by a representative of the United States Government.

Finally, after twenty years, Mori Di could no longer be ignored.

18

B
ureaucratically, 8th Army had a spaz attack.

Back at CID headquarters, I made a complete report. Well, not exactly complete, I left out a few details. For example, I didn’t mention the kidnapping of Doctor Yong In-ja. I didn’t want to bring her into all this. I wasn’t sure exactly how deeply she was involved in the murders of Horsehead and Water Doggy but I figured Ernie was right. She must have been implicated.

What I said in my report was that Ernie and I were reconnoitering last night in Itaewon, searching for the remains of our late 8th Army comrade, Tech Sergeant Moretti, when we were accosted by person or persons unknown. That led us to take refuge in the Itaewon Market where someone committed arson and as we tried to escape the blaze we’d been fired upon, once again, by person or persons unknown. Of course, we returned fire.

According to the KNPs, we were all lousy shots because no one was reported to have been wounded.

Afterward, my report continued, I decided to search the Itaewon branch of the Yongsan District Public Health Clinic, Doc Yong’s office. After finding the front door open, I noticed a package hidden in a wall under repair. The package was presented to Captain Kim who ascertained that it contained the remains of Technical Sergeant Florencio Moretti, an American soldier who’d been carried on 8th Army’s books as missing-presumed-dead for over twenty years.

The find was the talk of the 8th Army Officers’ Club and the story was even reported in the
Pacific Stars and Stripes.
The fact that the item appeared in that official rag, albeit on page eight, was proof positive that the 8th Army honchos approved. So Ernie threw himself at the mercy of the provost marshal. Ernie had been in Itaewon, assisting me, despite being restricted to compound. Conveniently, Colonel Brace decided to set aside the previous restriction and, although we weren’t commended in any official way, just the fact that we weren’t punished told us both that we were no longer on the provost marshal’s shit list.

Ernie forgave me for punching him but said he’d return the favor one day, at a place and time of his choosing. Some forgiveness.

But the biggest brouhaha was with the Koreans.

Captain Kim had no choice but to reopen the investigation into the death of Technical Sergeant Flo Moretti. At the KNP medical facility in Seoul, a complete forensic examination of the bones was conducted. The conclusions were much the same as I’d drawn when I’d first seen the bones in the basement of the Grand Ole Opry Club. Flo Moretti had been tortured and then he’d been bricked up behind those cold walls while still alive. He’d been bound and gagged and within days he died of hunger and dehydration.

A tough way to go.

The Korean newspapers made much of it, and recapped the good that had been done in the postwar era by 8th Army’s reconstruction projects throughout the country.

Another thing that the Korean investigation pointed out was the Buddhist overtones of the way Moretti had been killed. In ancient times, people were executed by strangulation or by having heavy weights piled atop them or even by having foul things shoved down their throats so they couldn’t breathe, but blood was not shed. Whoever murdered Moretti probably had that in mind. They’d left him there to die on his own, not having the nerve to end his suffering and do him the favor of cutting his throat as somebody had done for Two Bellies.

Snake was charged with the murder of Mori Di. So were Jimmy Pak and the two other surviving charter members of the Seven Dragons. They did what all good gangsters do: they said nothing and hired good lawyers. As a result, their interrogation by the Korean National Police was brief and they were released on their own recognizance. The investigation into Moretti’s death promised to drag on for months.

Meanwhile, I started thinking of how different the follow-up murders were. The throat of Two Bellies had been expertly sliced, while Horsehead and Water Doggy had been hacked wildly by at least three blades. Auntie Mee, meanwhile, like Mori Di had been killed without bloodshed.

I wanted to talk to Doc Yong but she’d disappeared. According to the Yongsan Health Clinic, she’d resigned her job and moved with no forwarding address. Ernie and I checked her apartment. Empty. We talked to the landlady and she was just as surprised as we were. Without giving notice, Doc Yong had moved out all her stuff and left without so much as a goodbye.

I talked once again to the friends of Two Bellies. They’d told us previously that just prior to her death, someone had been following Two Bellies. I thought now I knew who that someone was. I confronted them with my suspicion.

The women looked away from me. “Maybe,” one of them said.

“Two Bellies caught her following?”

“No.” The
huatu
-playing women all shook their heads. “Daytime, Miss Kwon come look for Two Bellies. Together they talk. Whisper, we no can hear. Argue about something. Later that night, Two Bellies go out alone, never come back.”

I asked them why they hadn’t told me this before.

One of them set down her still-burning cigarette and in her whiskey-shredded voice said, “You no ask.”

I was walking through a dark Itaewon alley, pondering that information, when a short figure stepped out of the darkness.

“Geogi,” she said.

The amber light of a streetlamp shone on her unblemished face. Doc Yong.

We embraced.

“She’s using you again,” Ernie said.

We were sitting at the 8th Army snack bar. It was lunch hour and the place was packed with G.I.s in uniform and a smattering of 8th Army civilians. I sipped hot coffee while a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich grew cold in front of me.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean you’re doing everything you can to keep her out of the Mori Di murder investigation.”

“It’s not my investigation,” I said. “It belongs to the KNPs. Besides, she was just a kid when Mori Di was murdered.” Ernie sighed with exasperation. “You know what I mean. The murders of Two Bellies and Horsehead and Water Doggy. It’s obvious.”

“It’s not obvious.”

“It is.”

Ernie went on to explain what he meant.

When Doc Yong took me to see the fortune teller, Auntie Mee, she hoped to give me a reason to search for the bones of Mori Di. She did. And when I found them she hoped that turning them over to the Korean National Police would cause the Seven Dragons to be investigated for murder. Why had she involved me rather than looking for the bones herself? Because if a Korean found them, the KNPs could easily hush up the entire affair. But if an official of the 8th United States Army presented them with the remains of an American G.I., official action would be compulsory.

Ernie was convinced that the two men and three women who’d murdered Horsehead and Water Doggy were orphans of the Itaewon Massacre. Probably in league with Doc Yong. Reluctantly, I conceded that he was probably right.

“And about Auntie Mee,” Ernie said. “She was killed in a Buddhist manner, probably ordered by Snake.”

“Why?”

“Revenge for Two Bellies. And a warning to whoever had the bones not to let them see the light of day.”

Still, that didn’t explain why someone had murdered Two Bellies. Ernie set down his coffee cup and took a deep breath.

“No hitting,” he said.

I promised I wouldn’t.

“The slice across the throat was expertly done,” Ernie said. “Like a doctor with a scalpel.”

I surprised him; I remained calm. In fact, I picked up my BLT and took a huge bite. He waited patiently while I chewed and finally swallowed.

“I thought of that,” I said.

“And?”

“It doesn’t make sense. If she wanted the bones of Mori Di revealed, why would she kill Two Bellies and then hide the bones again?”

Ernie crinkled his brow. “I don’t know.” Then he looked up at me. I sat calmly, waiting. “You son of a bitch.”

“What?”

“You know, don’t you?”

“Know what?”

“You know who murdered Two Bellies and why they did it.” I shrugged.

“You’re holding out on me.”

I shrugged again. “I have theories.”

“But you’re not sharing them with Captain Kim.”

“No reason to share them with him.”

“But you’re going to share them with Doc Yong.”

I shook my head negatively. “Actually,” I said, “I’m waiting for her to share them with me.”

Hilliard was incensed.

“What the hell you mean, coming over here at oh-dark-thirty in the morning and rousting me out of my crib?”

Actually, it wasn’t his crib. It was the room rented in a brothel behind the King Club by our favorite peg-legged business girl, Miss Kwon.

Ernie told Hilliard to go back into the hooch and keep quiet, which he did, grumbling to himself all the while. Wearing a cotton robe, Miss Kwon stepped into sandals and shuffled out onto the cement balcony where we could talk beneath the light of the moon. I pointed at her name on the nunnery’s list of orphans.

“Who are the others?” I said. “The women and the men.”

She started to cry. But after a few minutes, she started talking

It all made sense. Doc Yong was trying to keep Miss Kwon out of harm’s way so the actual killing of Horsehead and Water Doggy had been done by people, now grown, who had once been orphans on the Buddhist nun’s list. One man was a cab driver, the other a house painter. They were accompanied by a female chestnut vendor and two other women. Auntie Mee’s real name was also on the list of orphans. She had been one of the oldest of the children brought to the nunnery after the Itaewon Massacre and she’d been one of the first to leave. When Auntie Mee saw Doc Yong and the others return to Itaewon and take up jobs around town, she knew that something was up.

I finished questioning Miss Kwon. Then I told her what I suspected. She became hysterical. Hilliard rushed out of the room. Ernie held him back. I put my arm around Miss Kwon and whispered Korean in her ear. “Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s our secret.” Then I told her to return to her room.

“Please,” she said, grabbing my arm. “Think about them. When they were little children, they walk so far through snow. Mama and daddy dead. Think about that.”

“I will.”

Miss Kwon trudged slowly back into her hooch.

It was easy to see why the grown-up orphans of the Itaewon Massacre would want to take revenge on Horsehead and Water Doggy, and all of the Seven Dragons. Snake tried to send a warning to those unknown killers by murdering Auntie Mee. He ordered Aunite Mee’s murder be without bloodshed so she was strangled with a silk rope.

Who had murdered Two Bellies? At first I’d thought it was the remaining Seven Dragons. But that idea troubled me. Snake and his brethren could have frightened Two Bellies into leaving town. That would have been much safer than inviting a murder investigation.

The Seven Dragons were hoping Ernie and I wouldn’t find the bones, that they’d remain undisturbed for many decades to come. I concluded that Two Bellies had been made an offer she couldn’t refuse, as insurance. She was to follow us, and if we actually found the bones, steal them and turn them over to Snake. Miss Kwon suspected Two Bellies so she’d stayed close to her; pretended to help Two Bellies in return for a 10 percent cut of the reward the Seven Dragons were offering for the bones.

When, against all odds, Ernie and I did find the bones, Two Bellies was right behind us. And so was the resourceful Miss Kwon. When Two Bellies climbed inside the makeshift ossuarium and piled all the bones into a cardboard box, Miss Kwon knew that Two Bellies would turn the bones over to the Seven Dragons. She knew that when Ernie and I returned we would find an empty crypt and she also knew that the truth about the murder of Mori Di, and therefore the truth about the murder of her parents in the Itaewon Massacre, would never be revealed. This was more than she could bear. While Two Bellies was preoccupied with gathering the bones, Miss Kwon reached in, grabbed a clump of Two Bellies’ hair, and cleanly sliced her throat.

The move was one she’d learned when she was sent to work for the butcher family in the valley beneath the Temple of Constant Truth. She had used a hooked blade attached to a wooden handle, almost as sharp as a scalpel, the one she’d pilfered from her friends at the butcher shop counter in the Itaewon Market, the same type of blade that is used to slaughter hogs.

Conveniently, Two Bellies had already packed the bones into a square white box so Miss Kwon picked it up, tied it with the black ribbon Two Bellies had provided, and transported the remains to Doc Yong’s clinic for safekeeping. Doc Yong couldn’t turn the bones over to me because if she did, then I would have suspected her, or possibly her little friend Miss Kwon, of having murdered Two Bellies. Doc Yong was holding onto the bones, waiting for a more opportune time to allow them, somehow, to be brought to light.

Later that evening, filled with remorse for what she’d done, Miss Kwon leapt off the roof of the King Club. But, her survival instinct kept her alive and, for the most part, whole.

Then Horsehead and Water Doggy had been killed. Shortly thereafter, Doc Yong was kidnapped by Snake.