A Corpse in the Koryo

11

"Where are you?" Pak was irritated.

"I'm calling from a street phone."

"You're supposed to be in here. People are looking for you."

"I gathered as much. Someone parked in my parking space, so I figured I'd take a ride."

Pak's voice donned the cloak it wore when he wanted me to listen closely. "A couple of muscular types were here about a guy named Chong. You know anyone named Chong?"

"Just a minute. Let me think." I let a decent interval pass. "No.

What are the odds? You go through your whole life and never meet a Chong. Isn't that an Arab name?" I glanced out onto the street to see if anyone had stopped to watch. No one.

"Who's talking about Arabs? They wanted to know where you've been the past week. I told them you were jumpy so I gave you time off to rest. You felt rested when you came back to work, didn't you?"

"Rested isn't the word for it."

"One more thing. They said your brother is joining the case. He'll be here tomorrow to get briefed by you."

"Forget it."

There was a long silence. "Inspector, we weren't asked for our opinion.

We don't get a vote. Your brother has been assigned to monitor this case. Do I make myself clear?"

"I told you. Forget it. And I meant it. I'm not working near him.

Five years ago, we reached an agreement. We're not brothers anymore.

We don't meet. We don't speak. We live on different planets. I'm sticking to the agreement. If he's on the case, you'll have to take me off."

"Family matters cannot interfere-"

"Look, Pak, it's not your business, it's not the Ministry's business, it's not the party's business. This is between me and my former brother.

He's dirtying my grandfather's name. I won't have it. Can I say it again for you? I won't have it. Let's drop it, alright?"

Pak must have thought I was crazy, talking like that on the phone.

Most of the time our line wasn't monitored-too many other targets and not enough personnel-but we both knew that this case had probably put us on the Military Security Red List, meaning the office phones were near the top of some roving team's weekly priorities. I was banking on it. What I'd said would get to my brother. I wanted him to hear it directly from me, even if it wasn't face-to-face. And I wanted the transcript to get circulated in places where it would put a question mark after his name. Not a big one, but a nagging doubt. It wouldn't destroy him, but he would be in limbo for a while. People wouldn't return his phone calls; invitations would dry up. That would make him mad, maybe ruin his appetite for a few days as he tried to figure out why people were avoiding him. He might even lose some sleep, wondering if his name was on the short, black list of those who had unknowingly said the wrong thing, made the wrong decision, had their heads up when they should have been down.

Pak was talking again, but the connection went bad and I missed the first part of what he said. "… so let's not get off track over private feuds."

"This isn't a private feud. It's moral. It's philosophical. It's about lofty ideals and people who are so eager to serve the revolution that they step on friends, family, even little children." I paused at that thought, but I didn't want to follow it through. "My brother doesn't know the first thing about murder investigations, only about murder, and he doesn't care. Someone has transferred him onto the case to get to me.

Guess what? It won't work."

I heard Pak clear his throat. "Just get in here. We'll have a cup of tea and see what the tea leaves say."

"I have a better idea. How about you push me on the swings?" I didn't have the heart to tell him what I'd learned at the morgue, that tea was unhealthy in large doses.

"Then you have to push me down the slide."

Pak was sitting under the willow tree near the swing set when I got there. "No one around at the moment. You realize, not meeting in the office is going to get the listeners annoyed. They hate dead time."

"Yeah, well, I'll make it up to them. I'll read aloud from a book of poetry some afternoon. Meantime, we've got a problem."

Pak laughed out loud. "A problem." He laughed again, a long, rolling laugh, so that pretty soon I joined in. The two of us, sitting by a rusty swing set, laughing. A few people walked by, but no one stopped.

"Good, we both feel better now." I grinned. "You want to know what the problem is?"

Pak put on his sunglasses. "Sure. I don't have enough problems. I need another one to round out my hand."

"The corpse is a Finn. He was moved to that eighth floor room from somewhere else. Someone doesn't want an autopsy. His being a Finn means something to that particular someone. Maybe that's why they messed with the labels in his clothes. And I'll bet you anything this is all connected to the kid whose throat was cut near that black Mercedes with the scanner. You know, the car that ended up in the ditch." I wasn't sure this was the time to tell Pak about my conversation with the two farmers on the side of the road.

"That's it? That's what you have?" Pak snorted. "You're just dumping stray facts on me. All beads, no string."

"Wrong image. Don't think of beads. Think of trees."

Pak groaned. "Here we go. Wood, I should have known."

"I'm not talking about wood, I'm talking about trees. You ever seen tree roots? They go everywhere. No pattern. Same thing with branches, when you think of it. But they all work together. One thing about you, Pak, you always look at facts as mechanical. Each one has to fit in a certain place."

"I do that, don't I, Inspector? Try to see how things fit. That's how we solve cases. It's standard operating procedure. Proven, tested, gets results. Or after all of these years, do you have a better idea?"

"Facts are organic. They don't have to fit, they just have to work together.

Think about it. A car doesn't go out of control at high speed, blow a tire, and then end up in that ditch without getting pretty banged up. I know that ditch. I saw it." I paused to see if Pak would react. If he did, the sunglasses hid it pretty well. "That car was planted there, same as the body in the hotel. What do you know about the eighth floor of the Koryo?"

"Meaning?"

"The hotel manager told me it was hard to rent on that floor. I'd guess that's where some of the central monitoring closets are. It may even be a floor that Military Security has taken over. Can't we check that?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. But why would they plant a body there? And whose body is it?"

I ignored the second question. "Maybe whoever did it was part of an out-of-town unit. What if it wasn't planned but was a big mistake, a screwup by someone who didn't check what he didn't know? Those rooms on the eighth floor are never rented unless the hotel is full. It hasn't been for weeks. It's slack. The manager is worried that if word gets out about a dead body in his hotel, it will ruin the Koryo's reputation and he'll lose business. That's why he told me about the eighth floor. He wanted to tell me the murder didn't happen in his hotel. Only he couldn't say it directly."

"So we need an autopsy, something that might show the victim was dead before being moved to the room."

"Kim is going to block it every way he can; the warrior woman at the morgue made that abundantly clear. But she let me go through the effects bags, on the sly. The Finn's trouser cuffs had pine needles in them. I took some. That gives us a place to begin."

"Good, you start with the pine trees on the west coast, I'll start on the east coast, and we'll work toward the center." Pak's head brushed the low-hanging willow branches as he stood up. "You done with this organic approach to crime solving? I've got paperwork up to here."

"They were short, fresh needles, not dry. Don't ask me what that means yet. I don't know. Also, I got two sets of keys from the Mercedes crash. Why two sets? The wallet of the driver had been stripped."

"So what's the connection? What does two sets of keys get us?"

"Do you want to know how those facts fit? Or how they work together?"