The Iron Sickle (19 page)

“How much?” I asked.

Ming widened his eyes and rolled his neck. “Who knows? Madame Hoh claimed that the actions of those GIs ruined her life and the lives of many people in the village. If true, it could’ve amounted to one of the largest claims ever paid out by Eighth Army.”

“What happened to the file?”

“That’s what caused Mr. Pak so much trouble.”

“Trouble?”

“Yes. As soon as he made an inquiry at Eighth Army Claims Office, he received a visit from the Korean National Police. They wanted to know who had told him about this incident and who had told him about the file.”

“Did he tell them?”

“No. He refused to reveal the identity of his client.”

“The KNPs didn’t like that.”

“No. Mr. Pak was forced to drop the inquiry. Everything calmed down after that.”

“How did Madame Hoh react?”

“She’s a strong woman. She said nothing, only thanked him for trying. And one other thing,” Ming told me. “One of our contacts at Eighth Army told us of a secret file. A file that contained Madame Hoh’s claim, along with others.”

“Secret? You mean it’s not kept with the other files at Eighth Army Claims?”

Ming shook his head vehemently. “No.”

“Then where is it?”

“That’s what we don’t know.”

I sat back, taking this all in, studying Ming’s smiling face. “Why are you taking the risk,” I asked him, “of telling me about this and introducing me to Madame Hoh?”

He grinned, the sickly grin of someone who’s just swallowed a medicine that upset his stomach. “We hope that because you’re from Eighth Army, you can find the file and re-open it. Then the KNPs will have no choice but to go along. Where you Americans lead, they follow.”

“But if something goes wrong?”

“Then Mr. Pak will send me out in the field somewhere far away, and he will bow deeply to the KNPs and tell them how sorry he is.”

“And maybe a little money will be handed over to ease hurt feelings.”

“A good relationship with the KNPs,” Ming said, “is very important.”

We finished our drinks.

Ming glanced back at the hallway where Madame Hoh had disappeared, then turned back and rubbed his hands nervously. Suddenly, he leapt up from his chair, bowing again, and said, “She’s angry now but I’ll fix it up. You don’t worry. I’ll fix everything.”

With that, he scurried off to the back and disappeared into the same dark hallway.

I sat alone. None of the hostesses approached me, no one asked if I wanted anything to drink. In Mia-ri a man alone was an odd sight, especially an American man alone. Not only did the hostesses ignore me, they didn’t even look at me.

I wondered why this Madame Hoh would’ve pursued a claim aggressively in the past, been denied, and then apparently changed her mind to the point of seeming aggrieved that Ming would bring the issue back to life. The more I thought about it, the more I believed there had to be a good reason and the more uncomfortable I felt.

Did this have anything to do with the man with the iron sickle?
Why did Ming, and his boss Mr. Pak, bring me out here? Just to reopen a case they thought they might make some money on? At the moment, I had no answers.

The back hallway remained dark.

The only sound out here in the main ballroom of the Inn of the Crying Rose was the tinkling of ice cubes dropping into crystal tumblers and the gurgling of scotch being poured. The only smell was the pungent tang of stale Korean tobacco. Still, no one looked at me. I might as well have been invisible. What would Ernie do in a situation like this? Probably throw something, smash a mirror. Instead, I rose and walked toward the back hallway. As I did so, the hostesses and even the customers, studiously averted their eyes.

I entered darkness.

A dark hallway stretched back toward one naked bulb. The reek of ammonia led to the co-ed
byonso
. I walked past it and found a hallway leading to the left. At the end was another doorway with no lettering on it. I tried the knob. It opened.

A single green lamp illuminated a small wooden desk in the corner. Taking up most of the room were two stiff-backed couches on either side of a short coffee table. In the center of the table sat a hexagonal box of wooden matches and two large glass ashtrays. I sniffed the air. No smell of fresh smoke.

A shadow loomed out of the darkness. I raised my fists and was about to punch the approaching figure and then I realized who it was. Ming.

“What are you doing?” I asked, lowering my fists.

“She’s gone,” he said. “When you came, I hid.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Something’s not right.”

“Is this her office?”

“Yes.”

“Why would she leave?” I asked.

Ming shrugged. He didn’t have a reply to that. We walked back toward the
byonso
but now a double door just beyond it was open. I stepped toward it and discovered it was the loading area that led to a storeroom. It was piled high with wooden crates filled with brown OB Beer bottles and the smaller crystalline containers of
soju
.

But there was no truck backed up to the door. One of the doors swung open on its hinges, creaking, as if someone had just departed. I stepped outside. A dark alley stretched before us, lined with walls of brick and cement block.

“She’s running,” I said. “Come on.”

“Better we wait here,” Ming replied. “I think maybe I shouldn’t have brought you.”

I had no time for him. I was already trotting down the alley.

There was only one reason Madame Hoh would’ve decided to drop her claim—if she had already begun to pursue the resolution of that claim in a different way; a way that she wanted to keep secret. A way that wouldn’t stand scrutiny from an agent of the 8th United States Army Criminal Investigation Command.

I had already reached the end of the alley when I saw them, emerging from a cross street. Four men, until a fifth stepped from a shadow behind me. Two of them held clubs. The others had unusually large fists. Brass knuckles, I thought. They were all slender young Korean men. In the dim yellow light from the bulb in back of the Inn of the Crying Rose, I could see their grim expressions, their square faces and high cheekbones.

I was toast, I thought. Unarmed. Alone. But I also knew the worst thing I could do was hesitate. I didn’t slow my stride. Instead, I marched straight at them, tossing back the edge of my coat as if reaching for a weapon. I shouted, “Freeze! Eighth Army CID!”

Somehow, I don’t think they were impressed.

I plowed into them like I knew what I was doing. The guy directly in front of me with a cigarette dangling from his lips stared up at me wide-eyed and leapt out of my way. The two on either side of him didn’t back up but closed in. I landed a straight left to the jaw of one, pushed the other down, and started running. My goal was to make it back to the well-lit main drag of Mia-ri. The problem was this road didn’t lead back to it but veered off farther away. Still, I figured there’d be a cross street up ahead where I could hang a quick left, if I ever made it that far. Their feet pounded behind me.

As I passed trash cans I knocked them into the middle of the road. Unfortunately for me, Koreans have been recycling for centuries, and there wasn’t much detritus to slow down my pursuers, just fish bones and apple peels and wilted cabbage leaves. I concentrated on speed. But running was for the little guys, never my forte. Instead, I usually chose to stand and fight but this time the odds were much too long. I spotted an intersection up ahead and churned forward, hearing the maddening clatter of footsteps behind me. Sweat poured into my eyes.

I was a few steps from the road when one of the thugs landed on my back like a ravenous predator and wrapped his forearm around
the front of my neck. Struggling to breathe with his weight bearing down on me, I bent forward as fast as I could, tossing him in the air. He flew straight over and then down, smashing on the cement with a crack that, even in my panicked state, I hoped wasn’t his neck. Two more thugs hit me, and I lost my footing and went down. I rolled on the filthy road, coming to a halt spread-eagled on the pavement. When the first one came at me, I lifted myself up and butted my head into his stomach. Clutching his arms, I was able to regain my feet, and then I pushed him into the other guy and started punching until another guy appeared at my side, and something poked into my left arm. I decided to punch him too. Both men went down but that’s when things got bad.

The rest of the herd was on me now. Kicks rammed into the back of my thighs, but covering my head with my forearms, I moved blindly, punching as I twirled toward the cross street, fighting my way to the safety of a soot-smeared brick wall. Just a few yards ahead, I spotted the bright lights of Mia-ri, which gave me hope. I lunged at one of the attackers, hitting him and knocking his head so hard he reeled backward, and I pushed past him and through their line and started to sprint once again for civilization. The bright lights were no more than ten yards away when it seemed as if two one-hundred-pound sacks of rice landed on my back. I collapsed to the ground, rolling from the kicks, and I managed to wedge myself between crates of empty liquor bottles that had been stacked against a wall in the alley. I grabbed splintered wood, yanked the top crate free from its stack, and threw it as hard as I could at the thugs. The crate swirled through the air, and crystalline bottles flew out and crashed to the dirty blacktop. The hoods backed off enough for me to push myself up against the wall and stand, then I was running through them again, only a few yards now from the main drag. They took more shots at me, but I stumbled into the glare of flashing neon.
Through sweat-smeared eyes I saw people were staring at me, their mouths open in horror. Half-crawling, I dragged my body fully into the light.

Grumbling and cursing, the thugs backed away, leaving me to collapse face down in front of a growing crowd of scantily clad cocktail hostesses and red-faced Korean businessmen. Some of the men pointed and laughed, figuring this was part of the adventure of their night on the town. Still, no one was punching me or kicking me anymore, for which I felt inordinately grateful. Briefly, I wondered where Ming was and then I passed out.

“What the hell happened to you?” Ernie asked.

“What do you think happened?” I said.

“You head-butted a rhinoceros?”

“No. I finally decided to have a little plastic surgery. Alter my nose; tighten the wrinkles around my eyes.”

“You look divine,
dahling
,” Ernie said.

I lay in an elevated bed at the 121st Evacuation Hospital. Earlier this morning when I roused myself from a pain-killer-induced haze, I took inventory of my body parts. Everything seemed to be working, although everything hurt. The nurse told me I’d been shot full of antibiotics, and I’d received almost a dozen stitches in various parts of my body. They’d been monitoring for internal bleeding, but so far there didn’t appear to be any.

“Can I leave now?” I asked.

“Not until the doctor says it’s okay.”

“When will that be?”

“Morning rounds,” she said primly and walked out.

I returned my attention to Ernie. “Where’s Ming?”

“Who?” Ernie said.

“The Chinese guy I went to Mia-ri with. What happened to him?”

Ernie looked puzzled. “According to the KNP report, they found you alone, face down on the main drag of Mia-ri, passed out. At first they thought you were just drunk and then they saw the blood.”

“Nice of them to be so observant.”

“They called the MPs, who called an ambulance, and they carted you back here.”

I sat up. “What time is it?”

“Zero nine hundred,” Ernie said.

“How long have I been here?”

“Since just after curfew.”

“That long? And what took you so long to get here?”

“Nobody told me about it until I walked into the office this morning.”

Normally, the MPs would’ve found Ernie whether he was in the barracks or out in the ville to tell him his partner was in the hospital. Apparently they were still pissed about Dexter being locked up.

I tossed the sheet back and started to slide out of bed.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“We gotta talk to Strange.”

“Strange? What’d they knock your pervert screw loose?”

“No. Last night, I learned about a file, a secret file containing claims against Eighth Army that have been suppressed, claims that were never processed.”

“Wait a minute.” Ernie placed his hand on my shoulder. “You better stay put. Let me talk to the doctor.”

“To hell with the doctor.”

The morning rounds in a big over-crowded military hospital could take hours. I stood up, the soles of my feet cold on the tile floor. I stepped toward the open closet where I saw my clothes hanging, and when I was about halfway to my destination, an earthquake must’ve hit. The floor rolled, and I remember thinking
this was strange because Korea doesn’t have many earthquakes and then the room grew dim, and the lights popped out, and the next thing I knew I was diving through the eternal ether. Everything was dark. Very dark.

Strange sat with both elbows on a Formica covered table in the 8th Army snack bar. A black plastic holder with an unlit cigarette dangled between his thin lips. Cruelly bloodshot red orbs bulged behind his green-tinted shades.

“Had any strange lately?” he asked.

“Can it, Strange,” Ernie told him. “We’re here on important business.”

“The name’s Harvey.”

“Okay, Harvey. You heard my partner’s question. Now answer it.”

The doctor at the 121 had held me a couple more hours for observation, but in the end he decided I had not received a serious concussion and had probably only been dizzy because of blood loss. He told me to take it easy for the next few days, to drink a lot of fluids, and to refrain from heavy lifting. If I experienced any pain aspirin couldn’t help, I was to report immediately to sick call.

“They need the bed,” Ernie told me as we walked out of the hospital.

Military doctors aren’t worried about being sued, and they figure most of us healthy young GIs are about as rugged as plastic soldiers anyway. We take a beating and keep on ticking. I was stiff and sore but otherwise functioning.