G.I. Bones (6 page)

They declared war on Mori Di.

“Wei kurei, nonun?”
What is it with you?

Two Bellies looked up from the
huatu,
flower cards, she was slapping on the warm vinyl floor, clearly wishing that Ernie and I would go away. She sat with her legs folded beneath her, at the edge of an army blanket which was piled in the middle with brass coins and the hard rectangular plastic flower cards. A half dozen other women sat around the same blanket. All of them rotund, all of them wearing loose housedresses, the skin sagging beneath their cheeks. They were maids or mama-sans for the business girls.

The open oil-papered door faced a dark courtyard surrounded by more hooches, all locked and silent. They were rented by the business girls who were now at the nightclubs or walking the streets. At this hour, the old women who were the mentors to these mostly teenagers, finally were allowed a few minutes of peace and quiet that would be disrupted as soon as the midnight curfew approached and the girls started dragging half-drunk American G.I.s home with them. Then for a while, until everyone passed out, there’d be enough noise and drama to provide plots for twenty daytime soap operas.

I told Two Bellies what we wanted.

“How much you pay?” she asked.

“No pay,” Ernie said. “If you don’t help, we’ll check your hooch and bust you for black-market.”

That’s how these women made the bulk of their income. By purchasing the American-made PX goods that the G.I.s brought out to the ville. It was a good deal all around. For the few dollars the G.I. spent on imported scotch or American cigarettes, he was able to spend the night with a beautiful young woman. The woman was reimbursed by Two Bellies in hard cash and Two Bellies kept the overage that she made on the black-market.

“What you wanna know?” she asked.

I mentioned the name Mori Di.

All of the card players stopped what they were doing and stared up at me, open mouthed.

“You know Mori Di?” Two Bellies asked.

I hesitated before answering. It wouldn’t be a good idea to tell them that, according to Auntie Mee, Mori Di’s spirit had returned to Itaewon. These women were superstitious enough to actually believe the story and then be too frightened to get involved. Instead, I shrugged and said, “I’ve heard of him. People say he was a good man. I want you to show me what the village was like back then, when Mori Di was alive.”

Two Bellies pondered our proposition, cursed beneath her breath, but finally slammed her cards on the vinyl floor. She rose to her feet, stepped out of the hooch, slipped on her sandals, and led us across the courtyard to her room.

“Yogi,”
Two Bellies said. Here.

We were outside, in the street. She pointed at the big cement three-story building known as the King Club. “That first one. Only building that time.” She waved a flabby arm to indicate the entire panorama of Itaewon. “Everything mud, everything wood hooch, everything shit that time. Anybody cold. Anybody hungry. Only this building have. Mori Di build.”

“You knew him?”

Two Bellies placed a hand on her hip, canted her rotund figure, and said, “Two Bellies know
anybody
that time.” She pointed to the center of her chest. “But that time I no have two bellies.” She grabbed her paunch. “Two Bellies look number
hana.”
Number one. “Better than any girl in Itaewon.”

And it was true. Before we’d left her hooch, Two Bellies insisted we look at her photo album. It was filled with old black-and-white snapshots of a slender young woman with long legs and lovely breasts, always heavily made up, her jet black hair coiffed into expensive-looking hairdos, and wearing silk dresses that clung to her curvaceous figure.

“This me during war,” she said. “This me after war.”

While virtually everyone around her suffered, the woman we knew as Two Bellies had prospered.

“Lotta G.I.s,” she said. “Lotta officers. Not all American. Many countries. How you say? England. Ethiopia. Swiss. Some have
taak-san
money.” A lot of money. “Me, everybody call Miss Pak that time, not Two Bellies. Miss Pak number one girl. All man gotta be nice to Miss Pak. Miss Pak make a lot of money.”

“What’d you do with all that money?” Ernie asked.

“You know,” she said, flipping her wrist in the air. “Spend.”

And now she was pointing at the King Club, inviting us to picture it standing alone like a shining beacon amidst a sea of shanties and suffering. Back when she had been the Empress of Itaewon. All of the photos in her album were of either herself posing alone or with one or two girlfriends. Invariably, she was in the center of the photograph. They were records of her sexiness. As if she was saying,
This is how I looked once. Eat your heart out.

“Before,” Two Bellies continued, “I have many picture with G.I. Many boyfriend, many different country. I takey all that kind picture, throw out.” She mimicked ripping photographs into thin shreds. “They all lie to Miss Pak. But Mori Di picture, I no have. He number one G.I. If I have picture of Mori Di, I no tear up.”

“Were you his
yobo?”
Ernie asked.

“No. Mori Di no have girlfriend. He all the time work.”

“With all the women around Itaewon,” Ernie persisted, “he must’ve had some girlfriend.”

“Maybe.” Two Bellies shrugged. “I busy that time, work nightclub. Mori Di, he no come inside nightclub. He all the time work.”

Two Bellies paraded down the street, her posture erect, leaning back slightly, as if to show off the paunch for which she was named. Her cotton print dress clung to a figure that now resembled a soft melon. Like a proud tour guide, she pointed out the Seven Club, built by Moretti; the Lucky Seven Club, also built by Moretti; and finally, where the Itaewon main drag meets the Main Supply Route, the UN Club, also built by Moretti. Down the MSR, about one long block away, sat the 007 Club. Up the hill behind that sat the Grand Ole Opry Club. Those clubs plus the King Club—and the Yobo Club which had since been torn down—made seven major buildings constructed by Moretti and his three assistants. Not bad work in the middle of a country ravaged by war.

“Which one was the orphanage?” I asked.

Two Bellies eyes widened. “How you know?”

I shook my head. I wasn’t going to tell her. “I know,” I said.

“Come on,” she said. “I show.”

The Grand Ole Opry Club sat halfway up Hooker Hill. The narrow road was darker than most of the pedestrian pathways in Itaewon, the only neon to be found flashed right in front of the Grand Ole Opry Club. The gaggles of business girls who stared at us from shadowed doorways didn’t bother to come out and clutch at our sleeves and coo and cajole as they usually did. Having Two Bellies with us was like a free pass. They knew we were up to something and, whatever it was, we weren’t looking for women, so we weren’t accosted. For an American G.I., walking up Hooker Hill could be a trial. The girls poured out at you like spiders from a trapdoor. Then, once you were surrounded, you had to gently unfold the pincerlike grips on your forearm, keep shaking your head no, and keep apologizing for not being more interested in the young woman’s charms, making excuses, telling the girls you had to meet someone in one of the cubbyhole barrooms up the hill. It was a relief not to have to go through all that. I’m not sure Ernie felt the same way.

The Grand Ole Opry Club was a country-western bar, and one of the less frequented haunts in Itaewon. Still, the building was impressive. Four stories. The lowest housed the nightclub. In the three stories above it were small cubicles occupied by business girls. At least they had previously been occupied by business girls. In recent months, because of the burgeoning population in Seoul and the resulting housing shortage, families had started to move into even these quarters. I saw them in the morning: fresh-faced children wearing their tattered school uniforms—the girls with hair bobbed short, the boys with dark caps pulled down low on their foreheads— hoisting their backpacks on the way to catch the bus to school. Luckily, at that hour, the business girls were fast asleep and the G.I.s had scurried back to compound for morning formation. But when the kids came home at night, after extracurricular activities that most of the hardworking Korean students participated in, they had to wend their way through groups of rowdy G.I.s playing grab-ass with the now wide awake business girls of Itaewon. I never felt good about that. I wondered, once they grew up, what memories these kids would have of Americans.

Desultory crooning drifted out of the front door of the Grand Ole Opry Club. I recognized the voice: Buck Owens, in stereo.

“How about the Grand Ole Opry Club owner?” I asked Two Bellies. “Did he know Mori Di?’

Two Bellies shook her head vehemently. “No. Woman own now. Her daddy long time ago own bar. Long time ago, he die. Now she run place.”

“How about the other owners of the other nightclubs?” Ernie said. “Did they know Mori Di?”

“Of course they know. They all know.”

The nightclub owners Ernie was referring to were stalwarts of the local community. Whenever they were seen inside their own nightclubs—which was seldom—they were close shaved, slickly coifed, and clad in a suit and tie. They had formed an important organization with much influence here in the southern Yongsan District of Seoul: the Itaewon Club Owners’ Association. And they had influence at 8th Army. More than once I’d seen one owner or another glad-handing with the brass at the 8th Army Officers’ Club or shooting a round of golf at the 8th Army golf course.

“Who was Snake?” I asked.

Two Bellies eyes widened. “How you know?”

“Never mind. Who was he?”

“I no talk.”

“Why? What are you afraid of?”

Two Bellies took a step backwards. Ernie positioned himself to grab her but I waved him off.

“How about Horsehead?” I asked. “Or Dragon’s Claw Number One?”

Two Bellies’s eyes glistened in the neon glow. She began stepping backward, stumbled, and then righted herself, waggling her forefinger at us.

“You no talk Two Bellies. You no tell nobody Two Bellies talk to you.”

As if realizing suddenly that she stood in a public alleyway, Two Bellies glanced at the wary eyes lining the road. None of the business girls made a move. Two Bellies hugged herself over her ample paunch, turned, and started click-clacking her way down the cobbled road.

I shouted a question. “What about the night Mori Di was murdered? Were you there?”

She kept walking, waving her hand in the air. “Two Bellies no know nothing.”

“Should I stop her?” Ernie asked.

I thought about it. We could stop her halfway down Hooker Hill. Embarrass her. Maybe get a little more information but we’d probably get even more information if we waited until we could catch her alone.

“No,” I said finally. “Let her go. She told me plenty.”

We turned and gazed up at the Grand Ole Opry Club.

“So what’s next?” Ernie asked. “We roust the Club Owners’ Association?”

Ernie was always in favor of direct action.

“Maybe. But not yet. First, let’s take a look inside the Grand Ole Opry.”

“You’ve seen it before.”

“Only the bar. I want to inspect the entire building, from top to bottom.”

Ernie rolled his eyes. “All you’re going to find is business girls and booze.”

We climbed the cement steps of the Grand Ole Opry Club.

As I pulled open one of the double doors and turned to let Ernie enter first, one of the shadows across the street shifted suddenly. The shadow had been tall, like a G.I. I looked again. Three business girls who’d been standing there were now gone.

Many American G.I.s are ashamed to let people know that they frequent Hooker Hill, so they lurk in the back alleys, bashful about emerging into the neon-spangled light of the nightclub district. Sometimes they’re ashamed because they’re in a position of authority, officers or senior NCOs. Other times its because they’re married and have a photograph of their wife and children hanging in their wall locker or displayed prominently on their desk at work.

But this shadow had moved fast. Too fast.

I skipped down the cement steps and sprinted across the road.

A wooden gate started to swing shut. I shoved it open. A business girl fell backwards on her butt. I didn’t wait to ask her questions. I ran across the courtyard and sidled down a narrow slit between the hooch and a cement-block wall. For a moment I was blind. But finally, moonlight revealed that another gate, in the wall behind the hooch, was open. I went through it.

Behind me, footsteps pounded. Ernie. He almost plowed into me.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Movement,” I replied. “Too quick to be just somebody worried about being embarrassed.”

We stared down the dark cobbled lane. Liquid trickled through an open drain, reeking of ammonia. Ernie ran one way, I ran the other. More intersections, more narrow pathways. Lights peeped out from homes behind high walls. Pots and pans clanged; radios blared; children laughed. Charcoal smoke wafted out of underground flues, irritating me like smelling salts up the nose. Periodically, I stopped and listened. No sound. No footsteps.

Finally, I returned to the hooch across from the Grand Ole Opry. Ernie was waiting. Moonlight glistened off the perspiration on his forehead.

“Paco?” he asked.

“Maybe.”

The frightened business girls didn’t know the G.I.’s name but said he was dark, like me, except darker. We showed them the photo. Curled fingers rose to trembling lips. They were afraid they’d be in big trouble. I told them to relax.

Did they know where he was now?

They shook their heads negatively.

Did they know his name?

No.

Had they ever seen him before?

Again they shook their heads.

How long had he been watching us?

Since we’d arrived with Two Bellies.

Ernie and I weren’t new to Itaewon. We knew a lot of people and were aware of the obvious hiding places. G.I.s had tried to hide from us before and hadn’t been able to pull it off. Yet, after three hours of searching, we hadn’t found Paco Bernal. Most likely, someone was helping him. Someone who had the means and connections to keep him hidden from us and that someone, almost certainly, was a Korean.