The Door to Bitterness (9 page)

It was autumn now. According to ancient poets, the most beautiful time of the year on the Korean Peninsula. The time when the name Chosun, the Land of the Morning Calm, seems most appropriate. When leaves turn brown and red and yellow, and farmers harvest the last dry fields of grain, and rice paddies are flooded in preparation for the winter freeze. Autumn is the time of Chusok, the harvest moon festival, on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month. When families gather and perform the seibei ceremony and then trek out into the countryside, toward grave mounds dotting round hills, to commune with the dead. To eat a family lunch with long-departed relatives and provide them with updates on the progress of the living. It’s a warm time, a family time, a time of bounty and good cheer. And a melancholy time for an American GI alone in a strange country. But I’m used to that. I grew up in foster homes in L.A., and I felt alone in a strange country there too.

Straw-thatched huts lined the two-lane road but they soon gave way to tile-roofed buildings. Behind a line of hills was the vast acreage of Osan Air Force Base, the largest American air base in Korea.

At the edge of Songtan, we passed the open parking lot of the bustling Songtan Bus Station and hung a right across a double line of railroad tracks. The one-lane road narrowed, and we slowed to a crawl. The road became even narrower, and we spotted the first pool halls and beer joints, and finally the lead jeep pulled over. The MPs parked their vehicles, leaving one MP behind as a guard, and we stepped into the maze of passageways and alleys that branched out from the main road.

Shops filled every nook and cranny: brassware emporiums, leather goods stores, sporting equipment outlets, and then, at last, the bars. One nightclub after another, each with brightly colored neon just now blinking on in the late-afternoon dusk. Business girls, most freshly made-up for their night’s work, loitered in bead-draped doorways. They waved at the MPs, inviting them in, laughing, cooing at us. A few of the MPs waved back.

The NCO in charge barked: “Knock off the bullshit!” The MPs turned away from the girls and resumed their grim-faced expressions.

There was no doubt where the crime scene was located. The entire walkway had been roped off, and two Korean National Policemen stood guard. Ernie showed them his CID badge, and I flashed my newly-minted military identification card. When they hesitated, Ernie said, “He’s with me.” He grabbed me by the arm, lifted the white police tape, and before the cops could react, the two of us ducked through.

Behind us, scantily-clad business girls flooded out of the front doorways of every bar lining the alleyway.

“Set up a perimeter,” the MP sergeant shouted. His men scurried, preparing to protect this crowded little walkway from the threat of a pack of mini-skirted Korean bargirls.

Why had General Armbrewster sent such a large contingent of MPs with us? I suppose because he wanted to show that he meant business. The murder of an innocent young woman had struck a nerve here in Korea, and the honchos of 8th Army were always wary of bad publicity. Ernie and I were to be provided with the resources we needed to conduct this investigation as we saw fit. Actually, we hoped to ditch the MP escort as soon as possible. Grabbing a lot of attention was good for advancing a military career, but it wasn’t much help in solving a murder.

Three men in khaki stood outside the mouth of a dark alley. As we approached, they watched us expectantly. Korean cops. One of the men I recognized. Captain Noh, commander of the Songtan contingent of the Korean National Police. We’d worked with him once or twice before. Results had been mixed but, fortunately, Ernie hadn’t pissed him off. Not much anyway.

We shook hands and rapid introductions were made. Without further ado, Captain Noh led us down the alleyway.

He was a grim-faced man with a lugubrious expression and a no-nonsense, by-the-book way of doing his job. Last time we’d worked with him he’d told Ernie and me that he’d been prowling the streets of Songtan for more than twenty years, since the end of the Korean War. Crime had gotten worse, according to him. After the war, people were starving, and they stole, robbed, and maimed in order to feed their families. Now, he said, they were becoming westernized. They stole, robbed, and maimed simply for kicks.

Ten-foot-high brick and cement-block walls loomed on either side of the narrow pathway. Behind the walls, pots clanged and radios blared. Families at home, hidden behind their barricades, cut off from the raucous world of the GI bar district. Every half meter or so, a brick-lined channel in the center of the cobbled lane was punctuated by three-inch-wide air vents. Sewage bubbled through subterranean passageways, reeking of ammonia and soap suds and waste. The air in the walkway was pungent not only with the smell of sewage, but with clouds of charcoal gas billowing out from beneath the warm ondol floors that heated the homes behind the walls.

The alley curved and then curved again. Sinuous, like a dragon winding its way through a stone maze. Finally, in front of a red tile-roofed overhang in the center of a red-brick wall, Captain Noh stopped. The wall didn’t look too welcoming. It was topped with rusted barbed wire and shards of glass embedded in mortar. Captain Noh rapped on the varnished wooden gate and shouted, “Na ya!” It’s me!

Immediately, the door in the gate opened.

Inside, a uniformed KNP came to attention and saluted. Captain Noh returned the salute as he ducked through the door. The rest of our entourage followed him inside. Before entering, I paused to study the recessed gate. Embedded in the cement wall next to the door was a metal speaker for an intercom system, and below that a brass placard. I pushed the buzzer. It worked. I pulled out my notebook and jotted down the name etched in the placard: Jo Kyong-ah, written in phonetic script. Jo being the family name, Kyong-ah a given name for a female. After the name, etched into the brass, was a Chinese character. I copied that down also. A complicated character, twenty strokes, female radical on the left. As I scribbled, the pronunciation and meaning of the word came to me: yang. The Korean word for “Miss.” Whoever owned this house was announcing to the world that she was a woman, and an unmarried woman at that.

Unusual in Korea. For an unmarried woman to be successful enough to own a home and then, more unusual, to be proud of her unmarried status. Whoever lived here—or had lived here—was a person who didn’t give a damn what other people thought.

I ducked through the small doorway.

Opulence. That’s the word that jumped to my mind.

Usually—at least in Itaewon—these hooches behind big walls are not much to shout about. Wood or brick tile-roofed buildings, single story, with a dusty courtyard containing a chicken coop and an outside cement byonso, usually stenciled with the letters “W.C.”

But this place was something else.

The garden was well tended with neatly raked gravel, spotted with those stunted trees you see in Japanese travelogues, and in the center, a gurgling, stone-lined fountain. Golden fins splashed through water running blue. Arrayed along the walls, a row of three-foot-high earthenware jars stood at attention, freshly dusted, probably containing a bounty of cabbage and turnip and cucumber kimchee.

The raised floor of the hooch itself was freshly varnished and immaculately clean. To the left, a door opened into a large storeroom. The overhead bulb was switched on, splashing artificial light onto piles of cardboard boxes emblazoned with English and Japanese lettering. Each box touted the contents within: color TV sets, stereo components, electric fans, radios, tape recorders. Whoever lived here was running her own electronics shop. I stepped closer and inspected the boxes. None bore a Republic of Korea customs stamp.

Captain Noh and the other cops slipped off their shoes and stepped up onto the raised floor. As Ernie and I followed, the first thing I noticed was the odor of something burnt. Neither Captain Noh nor Ernie nor the other cops paid any attention to the smell, but I paused and inhaled deeply. The aroma was faint but unmistakable. Something cooked. Overcooked. Something natural, some sort of wood, or maybe an herb. Was it pine? I compared the odor swirling about me to the cloying sweetness of scented air freshener. This was much harsher. Sizzled sap. Nothing artificial about it.

The sliding doors leading to the main living room had been pulled open. Handle-level, the oil-paper in the latticework design was ripped open. Captain Noh pointed at the tear with his ballpoint pen.

“Somebody climb wall, break in here.”

Ernie knelt and examined the inner hasp. “Busted,” he said.

“Yes,” Captain Noh replied. “But look. No scratch.”

The metal hasp was still in pristine condition, but the wood around the hasp had been splintered inward.

“He didn’t use a tool,” Ernie said.

“Right. He just push.” Captain Noh mimicked the action of shoving the sliding door inward.

“That would’ve made a lot of noise,” Ernie said.

“Yes. Lot of noise.”

“So the people inside, they must’ve woken up.”

“Yes.” Captain Noh nodded. “Only one person inside. Woman. She wake up. She fight.”

In Korea, the custom was that if a burglar broke into a home, and the home was empty, he had every right to take whatever he wanted. After all, if the owner valued those possessions, he would’ve left someone home to guard them. If, however, someone inside the home made their presence known—by coughing or banging on doors, or otherwise preparing to confront the burglar—the burglar was obliged, by tradition, to withdraw. If the burglar was in the process of withdrawing and the homeowner chased and beat him, the homeowner could be charged with assault. On the other hand, if the burglar refused to withdraw when he discovered that someone was in the home, he was compounding his crime, and the punishment he could expect would increase by an order of magnitude.

This burglar was one of those Westernized criminals Captain Noh found so repugnant. The homeowner had risen, confronted him, and he had refused to withdraw. To say the least.

We followed Captain Noh deeper into the hooch.

The next room was immaculate. Delicate celadon vases on shelves, low mother-of-pearl cabinets displaying books and handcrafted artifacts that looked like antiques. Clocks, dolls in glass cases, brass incense burners, hand-painted porcelain dishware. Fragile works of art that wouldn’t last five minutes in the barracks I lived in. But nothing had been disturbed.

We walked down a short hallway.

The odor of burnt pine faded slightly. The source was behind me now, on the far side of the house. Possibly in the kitchen.

When we reached the end of the hallway, Captain Noh paused at a closed sliding door. He reached into his coat pocket, and the other two Korean cops did the same. They pulled out gauze face masks and slipped them over their noses and mouths. Captain Noh pulled out two more masks and handed one each to Ernie and me. Without comment, Ernie slipped his on. So did I.

Then Captain Noh passed out sets of white cotton gloves. When all our hands and fingers were properly attired, he slid back the oil-papered door.

The stench hit me first. Blood. I knew what it was because I’d smelled it before. There must’ve been a lot of it to put out such a powerful odor.

Why hadn’t I smelled it in the hallway? Because the woodwork in this home was handcrafted and everything, including the runners on the sliding doors, were shaped and planed and sealed with meticulous care.

Who was this woman who lived in such finery? Who owned so many precious things? And what did she have to do with the woman who stole my .45 and my badge and the men who robbed the Olympos Casino in Inchon? Was she just a random victim, or was there some method to this madness?

No sense thinking about those things now. Time to observe, gather facts. There’d be time to sort them out later.

Captain Noh switched on a tinted glass lamp, suffusing the room in a purple glow.

Opulence again. An armoire, of the same expensive mother-of-pearl design. A low dressing table. No bed, just another varnished wood slat floor: ondol, heated by steam running through stone ducts below. A thick down-filled mat had been bunched up and skewed away from the center of the floor. A silk-covered comforter, hand-embroidered with white cranes rising from green reeds, was wadded in a corner, smeared with blood.

Here, in this room, there was no neatness. Dozens of vases and bottles and vials of lotion and unguents and creams had been stepped on and smashed against walls and smeared on the floor, mingling with the jellylike coagulated blood.

“She fought,” Captain Noh said. “Before they took her body away, I look.” He held up his own hand and picked at the space beneath his fingernails. “How you say? Skin?”

“Flesh,” Ernie corrected. “Beneath her fingernails. She scratched him?”

Ernie clawed the air like a tomcat.

“Yes. She scratch. She punch too. And bite. Knuckles bruised. Very dark. Two tooth broken.” He opened his mouth and pointed at his incisors.

“She did a number on the guy,” Ernie said.

Captain Noh stared blankly.

“She hurt him,” Ernie said.

Captain Noh nodded. “Yes. She hurt him. And he hurt her.”

Meanwhile, the other two cops were kneeling and studying the broken bric-a-brac around the room.

Everything was still dusted with fingerprint powder, and Captain Noh went on to explain that in the hours they had been waiting for us, not only had the body been taken away, but his technicians had already collected bits of flesh and broken fingernails and body hair. All evidence had been rushed to Seoul for evaluation in the main KNP lab. Results would start trickling in tomorrow.

A representative from the Songtan coroner’s office had measured liver temperature and rigor mortis, and the other things that coroners measure, and estimated the time of death at sometime early this morning. Probably before dawn.

There was a bullet hole in the floor. The wood surrounding it had been singed upon entry. Already, the KNP technicians had pried out the bullet and it would be evaluated in the lab in Seoul along with the other evidence. The initial indication was that it had come from a .45 automatic pistol.