Hidden Moon

2

The place was small, with round tables lining the walls. It was filled with people, cigarette smoke, and the smell of beef cooking on gas grills. The customers were foreign, and they all looked at me carefully, on edge. A woman in a short silk dress walked over. “We don’t have any room. Everything’s booked.”

“There’s a table right behind you.” I knew she wanted me out, but she didn’t want any raised voices. Raised voices might be bad for foreign investment. Keeping the frogs out of sight and in the mud had to be done discreetly, with dulcet tones.

“It’s taken,” she said. “The party will be here in a moment.”

“Pretty busy place.”

The woman flushed slightly. “I’m sorry, but this is our busiest time.” She looked around. “Most of the customers will stay for another hour or so. People come and they sit. We make it friendly.”

“But not for Koreans.”

“Of course”-she flushed more deeply-“you are always welcome. Maybe another night.”

“Sure,” I said.

The woman looked past me, and relief suddenly filled her face. “Madam, how nice to see you again.”

I turned. The bank manager looked even taller in a smoky room.

“Inspector, I see you arrived first. You should have sat down and ordered a drink. Come, over there is my table. It has the best view.” She laughed, which was a surprise to me. I hadn’t realized she was capable of laughter. It was a beautiful sound. I knew I wanted to hear it again.

Miss Chon was given the chair with the view. I sat with my back to the door-so no one who walked in late would know a local was in the room, I supposed. When we were settled and had given our drink orders, she leaned across the table. “You’ve never been here, have you?”

“I don’t go out to restaurants very much.”

“Perhaps you should. You’ll meet people, a lot of people. Isn’t that what you do in your job? Meet people? I always thought police detectives were supposed to be social animals. Otherwise, how can they catch criminals?”

“No, criminals are antisocial. So that’s what we have to be to catch them. I’m quite antisocial myself.”

“I take it that is why you are such a good detective.”

“Who told you that?”

“No one had to, Inspector. I’m a good judge of people; in my job I have to be. Everyone wants loans. I can’t afford to be fooled.”

“You called me, you sounded upset. I’m here.” I looked at the table closest to ours. Two businessmen, drinking whiskey, bored. They spoke German, but neither had much to say.

The bank manager glanced at them. “They are louts. Jurgen and Dieter, inseparable. Some people think they are homosexuals, but I doubt it. Jurgen pawed me during a reception last month. The next morning he called to apologize, but he didn’t mean it. I told him I’d kick him in the balls if he did it again.” Jurgen winced; even if he didn’t understand the whole sentence in Korean, he must have had enough vocabulary to get the general drift.

I craned my head around, aware of a rolling wave of nasty glances coming our way. “You don’t mind being here with me?”

“No, not at all, Inspector. It will help my reputation if people see us together. Gives me some extra menace.”

“That isn’t why we’re here, though. You wanted to meet me somewhere in the dark.”

“Is your apartment dark?”

“I told you, no chairs.” Either she really wanted to come to my apartment, or she was playing a crazy game. Or she was just crazy. Whoever heard of a foreign woman coming to a local’s apartment? Maybe some big shot could get away with it, whisk her in while the guards looked the other way. I thought about it for a moment, then shook my head. Impossible. Anyway, we didn’t know each other. She didn’t even have a file. “I’m still investigating the robbery at your bank. You are still a witness. And I am still asking questions.”

“Fine.”

“Who are you?”

“My, my, that’s pretty broad. Can’t we start with something more specific?”

“You have a Scottish passport.”

“No, I do not.”

“I know you do.”

“Scotland doesn’t issue passports, Inspector. Scotland isn’t even a country, not anymore.”

I considered this for a moment. “Is that so? I met a Scotsman once, at the bar in the Koryo Hotel. Very firm in his beliefs, if I remember correctly. Very proud of his ‘country,’ and by that he was quite clear he meant Scotland.”

“He’d probably been drinking.” She cupped her chin in her hands and leaned slightly toward me, it gave her a deceptive air of submissiveness. “I carry a British passport,” she said. “I went to school in Scotland.”

The worst of all possible worlds. I was in a restaurant that was her territory, at a table that she claimed as her usual place, and she was lecturing me on geography. I knew Scotland didn’t issue passports, didn’t I? I kicked myself. “You went to school there. It doesn’t explain how a Kazakh woman gets a UK passport.” When in doubt, growl. Hell, it works for dogs.

“I married a British citizen, God love them all. He was a Scot, actually, a fair-skinned man with lovely shoulders and no brains.” She pursed her lips. “He’s dead, car accident on a slippery road in the Highlands.” I was momentarily lost; it was hard to believe she was a widow. She looked into my eyes. “That’s the wild part of Scotland, more or less.”

Her voice brought me back. “Thank you for the geography lesson.” We weren’t going to get anywhere at this rate. Maybe I needed to keep it simple. “Why did you go to school in Scotland?”

“Banking, Inspector. Kazakhstan wants to become the banking hub of Central Asia. Those with ambition go abroad to study, and Scottish banking practices are deemed to be just what Kazakhstan needs, tight, well managed, solid. The Bank of Scotland has a glorious history, centuries old. After eight years in Scotland, the idea of returning home made me restless, I didn’t think I could do it, so I tried to get a job with a bank in South Korea. Impossible, they are so sexist it makes you laugh. Does sexism make you laugh, Inspector?”

Up went a warning flag. I frowned. She smiled.

“A careful man.” She smiled again. “I heard about an opening for a foreigner to manage Gold Star. In London I went to your embassy for an interview. Do you know how hard it is to find your embassy in London, Inspector? No, I suppose you don’t. But I finally found it, and here I am.”

“You don’t have to be ashamed of being Korean, you know.”

“I’m not Korean. I’m Kazakh, you said so yourself.”

“That’s your nationality. But you’re Korean. Your blood is Korean. Your body is Korean.” I was speaking symbolically, but it wasn’t easy.

She pursed her lips and thought a moment. “No, Inspector, you don’t know the first thing about my body, do you?” Her foot brushed against mine.

Some questions you don’t touch. If we’d had our drinks, I would have taken a big swallow.

“I’m Kazakh from the tip of my toes to the top of my head.” That included her waist, I thought, and saw the little warning flag again. When were they going to serve drinks? “My father, and my father’s father before him, as they say in our village. All Kazakh.”

“You look Korean, because that’s what you are. There are plenty of Koreans in Kazakhstan.” Her face was Korean, but why were her eyes from somewhere else?

“Don’t be a fool, Inspector. I wouldn’t be ashamed to be Korean.” She cocked her head slightly. “Certainly not a South Korean.” She let the blade stay in for a moment. I waited for her to twist it, but she knew enough not to. I never take these things personally. I don’t forget them, either.

“Let’s get to the point,” I said. “You asked to meet, and you sounded upset. If you have something to say, say it. Otherwise, I have things to do.”

She laughed, only this time there was no tinkle to it. “I was upset, just something personal. I needed a little company. Do you mind?”

“That’s not why you called.”

“Yes, yes it is, actually. I was scared, I don’t know why. This robbery thing has put me on edge. And then I started thinking about what you asked me. The point is, I don’t know what happened to that desk.”

“Meaning?”

“I didn’t ask for it to be removed.”

“You told me it was part of a redecorating scheme.”

“I just said that because I didn’t like your partner. Why is SSD part of this, anyway?”

“That would be none of your business, Miss Chon. None of your business. What was in the desk?”

“Nothing was in the desk. It was empty.”

“I don’t think so. It was too heavy to be empty.”

“Maybe it was just a heavy piece of furniture.”

“It was made out of pine. It was cheap, light wood stained to make it look like something else. I may not know much, Miss Chon, but I know about wood. If it was your desk, you must have some idea what was in the drawers.”

“I only used it when I had a client. It was more convenient than mine. But I never went into the drawers. It was already in the bank when I arrived. I tried to move it once, but it was too heavy.”

“The janitor wouldn’t help?”

“He said it was covering a switch plate in the floor and I should leave it be.”

“The janitor said that? I assume he was already at the bank, too, like the furniture. You didn’t hire him?”

“No, I hired a few staff, a couple of girls as tellers and an accountant part-time, but the janitor and the cleaners were assigned by some other office.”

“They probably work for SSD. The Ministry used to have control of locals working for foreign businessmen, but we don’t have the budget for that anymore. The only office with that sort of money is SSD. They are especially keen on watching the banks and hotels. Their off-book funds probably make up ten percent of your assets.”

“You think they have the desk.”

I shrugged. “Don’t know. It may have had equipment in it, maybe recorders. They’d want to know who was coming in for loans, how much you offered, whether you were cutting any deals that weren’t reported. If you were, they could use it for-”

“I’m not worried, Inspector, nothing of the sort went on.”

“That’s good, because someone robbed the bank. Maybe SSD figures the robbers came in earlier and looked around, sat with you for a bit, asked a few questions. Maybe they figure you are part of the robbery; you knew how much foreign currency was in the safe. Tell me, just for the hell of it, why did you sound so upset when you called tonight? I still don’t know. It wasn’t anything to do with the desk.”

“What do you think?”

“Have you ever been to the Club Blue?”

“No, that’s the sort of place the German hogs wallow in.”

“So, you know where it is?”

“Of course I do. The owner had an account at the bank.”

“Did he borrow some money?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss bank business.”

“I think you are, but we’ll let it pass for now. Do all your customers have access to that back room after hours?”

She leaned close to me. “You seem like a nice man, Inspector. A little lonely, maybe. You don’t have anything in your apartment you want to show me?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Etchings, maybe.”

I stared at her. I was about to fall into her eyes. “Etchings? I don’t know what you mean.”

She sat back. “Will there be anything else?”

“I think I haven’t eaten in a while.”

“Then maybe you should order.” She stood up and said something to the two Germans. This time they both winced. Then, without giving me a second glance, she walked out of the room. Several tables of foreign businessmen raised their glasses and smirked; whether it was for Jurgen or for me, I wasn’t sure.