The Iron Sickle (24 page)

“Right. But the claim wasn’t filed until almost ten years after.”

“Why’d they wait so long?”

“Good question. Another good question is why did Eighth Army bury the claim?”

Ernie handed the sheet back to me. “You are so naïve. Do you think they’re going to admit to
this
?”

“They didn’t do it. It was done during the war, by an isolated unit surrounded by the enemy. All bets were off.”

“In your opinion. Try selling that back in the States.”

Ernie was right. The public back in the United States would never understand such a thing. And at a higher level, the US government would never want to hand a propaganda coup to their Communist enemies behind the Bamboo Curtain. I pulled out my notepad and copied all the facts I needed off the Report of Claim. Then I ripped out a sheet of paper and wrote a note to Captain Prevault, asking her to keep the file in a safe place until we could discuss it. I placed all the onionskins, along with my note, back into the manila folder, then walked down the hallway to her room and slid it beneath her door.

Outside the BOQ, from the slightly elevated terrain of Yongsan Compound South Post, the bright lights of downtown Seoul glittered in the distance.

“What now?” Ernie asked.

The evening was still young, not even twenty-one-hundred hours.

“After what I just read,” Ernie continued, “a drink would do me good.”

“Then let’s do some more work at the same time.”

“Like where?”

“I’m armed now,” I said, patting the .45 under my jacket. “And I have back up. Namely you.”

“Who do you want to kill?”

“I don’t want to
kill
anybody. But maybe we should pay another visit to Madame Hoh, the beauteous
gisaeng
house owner in Mia-ri.”

“Sounds good,” Ernie said. “Booze and beautiful women. Just the kind of work I like.”

And just the kind of thing, I thought, to take our minds off the report we’d just read. It was stomach churning and unbelievable. Americans wouldn’t stoop to something so low, would they? Would anyone ever be so desperate? This crime was not a part of modern warfare, or at least I hadn’t thought it was.

When we hopped in the jeep Ernie drove faster than usual, zigzagging madly through the swerving Seoul traffic, following the signs past the Seoul Train Station, beyond the Great South Gate, around the statue of Admiral Yi Sun-shin and finally through the narrow roads that led toward the bright lights of Mia-ri. We were both quiet on the drive, trying not to think of what we could not stop thinking about: a crime as old as humanity itself.

Cannibalism.

We parked the jeep near a
pochang macha
. I half expected to see Mrs. Lee, the owner from the Itaewon
pochang macha
, when I peeked through the hanging flaps. Instead, I saw a startled Korean man with a square face and a wispy beard, and I offered him a thousand
won
if he kept an eye on our jeep. He readily agreed and pocketed the money like Houdini palming a playing card.

Mia-ri seemed more lively than ever. Maybe it was the contrast to what we’d seen in the signal truck and what we’d read in the Bogus Claims File, but Ernie was about as animated as I’ve ever seen him, which was plenty animated. He kept stopping as we trudged up the narrow road, grabbing hold of the heavily made-up young women in the clinging silk gowns, wrapping his arm around their slender waists, cooing into their ears. They laughed and toyed with him, happy to see a young GI but at the same time wary; being warned off by their mama-sans in favor of large groups of businessmen in suits.

“
Tone oopshi
,” one of the old mama-sans went so far as to say. He doesn’t have money.

Still, the girls liked Ernie and his playful attitude—they weren’t much more than kids themselves—and he seemed to have an ample supply of ginseng gum, which he handed out to the red-tipped fingers
of the laughing young prostitutes. I kept him moving up the hill. Finally, we stopped at a stand that had a supply of Jinro
soju
bottles, and Ernie bought a half-liter. The vendor popped the top off and Ernie downed about a fourth of the fiery rice liquor on the first swallow. He gasped and handed the bottle to me. I wiped off the lip and took a modest sip. My throat convulsed. Rotten stuff. I handed the bottle back to Ernie. He took another large swig.

“Easy, pal,” I said. “We have a long night.”

“Maybe
you
have a long night. I’m going to have a drunk one.”

Ernie always acted like the things we saw didn’t faze him. He would hold everything at bay for a while but finally, as if a dam broke, he’d go on a bender. If he was going to get drunk tonight there was nothing I could do to stop him. Besides, now that I’d managed to hold down the shot of
soju
I’d taken, it was starting to warm my stomach and feel pretty good. I took the bottle from Ernie and held it a little longer this time.

We rounded the corner to the Inn of the Crying Rose, the bar Mr. Ming had brought me to before. It was dark, the neon sign turned off, looking sad and forlorn amongst all the blinking neon surrounding it. I tried the wooden door.

“Locked,” I said.

“Try knocking.” Ernie pounded on it. While we waited for an answer, he drank down the last of his
soju
. Then he pounded again, and we gave up and walked to a dark crack between the buildings.

“Can you fit through that?” Ernie asked.

“Sideways,” I said.

Ernie motioned with his open palm. “After you.”

I slid into the narrow passage first. The ground below was muddy and pocked with rocks and broken glass and other types of filth I didn’t want to think about. Finally, I popped out in back of the building. Ernie appeared right after me, brandishing his empty bottle of
soju
.

“Let me at ’em,” he said.

The alcohol was already doing its work.

The back door of the Inn of the Crying Rose was locked just as tightly as the front. “Looks like she closed up shop,” Ernie said.

“Apparently.”

We went back around to the front but this time took the long way, walking down to the end of the block, turning toward the main drag, and then doubling back.

“This is where they caught you?” Ernie asked.

“Back a few blocks,” I said. “I had to run up here and then with all these people walking around, they left me alone.”

“We could go back there and try to find ’em,” Ernie said.

“Maybe later,” I said.

He whooshed a left hook into the air. “I’m ’bout to knock me somebody the hell
out
.” The booze was hitting him hard because we were tired. After returning to the barracks this afternoon and cleaning up, we’d gone right back to work.

I stopped in a noodle shop near the Inn of the Crying Rose. When I started asking questions, the owner waved his hand in front of my face and refused to answer. I tried a ladies’ boutique a couple of doors down that was just closing up for the night. This time, the well-dressed owner was more willing to talk.

“She sell everything,” she told me in heavily accented English. “Go away. Say her brother come back. Want her leave Mia-ri.”

“Her brother came back from where?” I asked.

She shook her head. She didn’t know. She also didn’t know where the woman known as Madame Hoh had gone.

“Maybe you ask owner.”

“The building owner?”

She nodded.

“Who is it?”

She pointed across the street. The man who owned the noodle shop.

Ernie and I sat down and ordered a bowl of noodles. We were famished. When Ernie was about to order a bottle of
soju
to go with it, I told him to wait.

“Wait for what?”

“Let’s get this job done first,” I said. “Then we can kick out some jams.”

“I’m ready to kick out the jams right now,” he replied.

But he went along with my program. A rotund teenage girl, probably the owner’s daughter, served us two bowls of
kuksu
, steamed noodles with scallions and some sort of sea life floating around. We ate quickly. After slurping down the last of the broth, I told Ernie the plan.

He nodded enthusiastically. “And then we can drink, right?”

“Right.”

When it was time to pay up, I flashed the girl my CID badge and demanded to see the owner. Her eyes widened but without a word she turned and fled to the kitchen. In less than a minute, the owner, the man who had waved his hand negatively before when I asked about the Inn of the Crying Rose, strode up to the counter.

“Over here,” I said in English, pointing at the area beside our table.

The man hesitated.

“
Bali
,” I said. Quickly.

He scurried over. Apparently the waitress had told him about our badges. He stood narrow-eyed, staring down at us.

“How long had they been selling it out of the bar across the street?” I said in Korean.

“Selling?”

“Don’t act dumb. You know what they were selling. I asked you how long?”

He shook his head.

I sighed elaborately. “You must’ve known.”

“I knew nothing.” He was getting worried.

“Everybody knew,” I said, “The whole neighborhood knew. How is it possible you didn’t know?”

“I didn’t know,” he said stubbornly.

Ernie slammed his fist on the table, the empty bowls rattled, and he leapt to his feet. “What kinda bullshit is this?” he said, glaring at the smaller man. I stood also, sticking out my arm as if to hold Ernie back.

“You say you didn’t know about it,” I said. “Then show us. Give us the keys.”

I held out my open palm. The man looked confused. “Do you want us to call the Korean National Police?” I said.

That seemed to make the decision for him. He whipped off his apron. “
Jom kanman
,” he said. Just a minute.

Within seconds he returned with a set of keys clutched in his fist. We followed him outside and down the two doors to the Inn of the Crying Rose. I held a penlight for him as he shuffled through the keys. Finally, he located the right one and stuck it in the lock. He turned, and the door popped open. Together, we entered.

It was quiet in there, and musty.

“Where are the lights?” I asked in Korean.

“In the back,” he replied.

We made our way past empty booths and cocktail tables with chairs upturned on top of them. Finally, we reached the bar.

“What were they selling?” he asked.

“It’s better you don’t know,” I said. “Why did she leave in such a hurry?”

“Something to do with her brother,” he told me.

“Where did she go?”

“I don’t know. Her hometown. She didn’t tell me where it was.”

Koreans, through accent and mannerisms, can always tell what part of the country another Korean is from. “What part of the country?” I asked.

“The east coast, I think. Kangwon-do.”

Ernie slid open the beer cooler. “Shine that light over here,” he said.

I did. Empty.

“Nothing but tin,” he said. The shelves behind the bar were similarly bereft of any liquor.

The owner found the lights and switched them on. They weren’t bright, just a low red glow suffusing the main ballroom. I groped my way toward the back, past the empty storeroom, and finally to the door that opened onto the office. I stepped inside, to a small wooden desk, and searched the drawers. Empty, except for a few wooden matches, some awkwardly-sized Korean paper clips, and two broken pencils.

I returned to the bar.

“She cleaned out totally,” I told Ernie.

“Yeah. Not so much as a tumbler of
mokkolli
.”

At the mention of the Korean word for rice beer, the owner glanced at Ernie curiously.

“There’s one spot we haven’t searched,” Ernie said.

“Where?”

“The cloak room.”

He pointed toward the Dutch door next to the entrance. It had been dark when we walked past it.

“Come on.”

The owner followed.

I shoved the top part of the door open and groped inside for a wall switch. There wasn’t one. I fumbled with an inner latch and pushed open the lower part of the door.

“Above,” the owner said.

I reached up and waved my hand around until I found a string. Gently, I pulled down. A bulb ignited the room. There were no coats on racks, not even any coat hangers, but sitting in the center of the room, perched on a wooden stool was something Ernie and I had seen before.

The totem. The same one we’d seen in the Itaewon Market on the day when Corporal Collingsworth had been murdered. The same wooden stand, the same wire rectangle rising above, but this time there was no dead rat dangling by it’s feet. This time there was something else tied to the wire. Something that took a while for my eyes to bring into focus. Something slathered in blood, blood that had dripped down the rectangular wire and further along the wooden base of the contraption and puddled in a yard-wide lake of gore at the bottom of the stool.

It was a head.

The head of Mr. Ming, the man who had once been the top-earning field agent for the Sam-Il Claims Office.

We didn’t return to 8th Army until noon the next day.

By that time, the compound was alive with trucks and jeeps and vans, all ferrying personnel and equipment back from the field, away from 8th Army Headquarters South and back to the civilization of the Yongsan district of southern Seoul. The field exercise had been called off. Ernie and I were more exhausted than we thought possible. We drove straight to the 8th Army snack bar and parked the jeep.

The place was packed. A lot of people were after some hot chow. Ernie and I stood in line at the grill, and he ordered a hamburger and fries, and I ordered two bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches. When we finally paid for our lunch, it took us ten minutes of waiting to squeeze into a vacated table up against the wall. We were only a few feet from the jukebox and somebody had put on “Break It to Me Gently,” which was one of my favorite songs.

Ernie said, “You like that?”

I nodded.

“You would,” he said.

I wasn’t sure what he meant by that but I didn’t really care because I was too busy eating to pay him much attention. I’d just chomped into my second sandwich when a pair of combat boots appeared next to our table. Small combat boots. I looked up.