Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 49, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2004

The Cold Yellow Sea by Martin Limón

Freezing outside an Asian brothel in the middle of the night with a cold rain blowing in off the Yellow Sea is enough to make even the most dedicated investigator ponder the worth of a career in military law enforcement. Fabulous pay and benefits. Fun, travel, and adventure. Three hots and a cot. And if President Ford was to be believed, a raise that would bring my corporal’s pay all the way up to four hundred and fifty dollars per month by the end of this fiscal year.

Wow.

The wet pellets slapping my face suddenly didn’t sting so badly. Still, I shuffled deeper into the shadows beneath an overhanging eave.

My name is George Sueño. I’m an investigator for the Criminal Investigation Division of the 8th United States Army stationed in Seoul, Republic of Korea. Tonight my partner, Ernie Bascom, and I were after an M.P. gone bad. Last we heard, he was shacked up inside Building Number 36 in this maze of narrow alleys known as the Yellow House. Down the lane, light flickered out of large plate-glass windows. Behind those windows sat groups of Korean women in flimsy negligees, waiting for the foreign sailors who periodically invade this port known as Inchon on the western coast of Korea on the edge of the Yellow Sea. Merchant marines from all over the world — Greece, the Philippines, Japan, Holland, Sweden, and even the United States — are regular customers here.

The local U.S. military contingent is not huge. Just one transportation company that trucks supplies from the Port of Inchon to the capital city of Seoul and one platoon of Military Police to provide security for the duty-free shipments.

A door slammed. A tall, dark figure emerged from the foot of the stairwell just outside the glow of the plate-glass window. Then I saw someone behind him, a girl, bowing, telling him in a nice way, Thanks for the money but now it’s time for you to get lost. The tall man didn’t acknowledge her farewell. He turned, shoved his hands into his pockets, and strode toward the alley.

As he passed the light of the big window I caught a glimpse of his face. Dark eyes, pug nose, heavy stubble of an eight-hour beard. Our quarry. The M.P. gone bad: Buck Sergeant Lenny Dubrovnik.

Ernie was on the other side of Building 36, making sure Dubrovnik didn’t slip out the back. My .45 sat snugly in the shoulder holster beneath my armpit but I didn’t expect to have to use it. Dubrovnik knew the deal. He was a G.I. in Korea. Once you’re busted, there’s nowhere to run. The peninsula is surrounded on three sides by choppy seas. The only land route, across the Demilitarized Zone, is guarded by four hundred thousand ROK soldiers on the south and seven hundred thousand Communist soldiers on the north. And all international ports of embarkation are monitored with a degree of efficiency that only a militarized police state can provide.

As Dubrovnik approached, I stepped out of the shadows, showing my badge.

“Hold it right there, Sarge,” I said. “The game’s up. Take your hands out of your pockets and assume the position.”

Dubrovnik came to a halt on the flagstone steps, glanced at my badge and then at my face. His eyes seem baffled for a moment and then his lips began to curl.

“Alone?” he asked.

I should’ve told him I had a squad of M.P.’s lurking right around the corner. The least I should’ve told him was that Ernie would be here in a matter of seconds. But Dubrovnik was an M.P. himself and cops always claim that we can make any bust by ourselves. Backup’s not necessary. So instead of telling him what I should’ve told him, that he had nowhere to run and I could claim the entire weight of the 8th United States Army as my backup, I made my first mistake of the evening: I let pride take over.

I looked Dubrovnik straight in the eye and shrugged. As if to say, Go ahead, Charlie, try it if you’ve got the nerve.

My shoulder had barely lowered when Dubrovnik turned and darted away.

I let out a yell. Incoherent, but I knew it would be enough to alert Ernie. And then I was running down the narrow pathway. Past the three- and four-story buildings that lined either side of the lane. Past the women sitting in the well-lit rooms behind the large windows, gazing out at us, their mouths half open.

Dubrovnik turned a corner. I skidded after him. Dubrovnik turned another corner, winding away from Building 36. The district known as the Yellow House was actually about two city blocks square. The entire area was composed of one pedestrian alley turning into another, winding around like a maze, brothel upon brothel, no vehicles allowed.

Dubrovnik was fast and had the added incentive of knowing he was about to be locked up. Just when he was about to pull away from me, another figure leapt out of the darkness. Dubrovnik tried to dodge this new phantom but the shadow wrapped its arms around his shoulders.

Ernie.

How the hell had he gotten all the way over here? Then I remembered. Ernie knew the maze of the Yellow House probably as well as Dubrovnik did.

But Ernie’s lunge was too high. Dubrovnik shoved it off and kept moving, turning and slapping at Ernie’s grasping fingers. While they struggled I closed in, but Dubrovnik was gaining distance. And then Ernie and I were both panting down the alley, giving chase to the crooked M.P. who had now become a rabbit.

Dubrovnik darted into an open door.

As we crashed in after him I noticed the number atop the opening: 47. Each brothel in the Yellow House area was licensed and therefore numbered. We sprinted up the first flight of concrete block stairs into a foyer with varnished wood-slat flooring. Korean women stood around in various states of undress.

“Odi?” Ernie asked. Where?

One of them pointed toward a short flight of broad wooden steps that led down to the display area behind another plate-glass window. Dubrovnik must be around the corner. Trapped.

Before we could consult on the best way to take him, Ernie leapt down the flight of stairs. Sitting and squatting women screamed and scooted out of his way but before I could react, Dubrovnik exploded from behind a mother-of-pearl inlaid chest and landed a punch solidly on the back of Ernie’s head.

Ernie’s knees buckled, he reached for his neck, but he didn’t go down. Dubrovnik swiveled, realizing that the man he had just punched wasn’t the first man who’d been chasing him. When he saw me standing at the top of the flight of steps, his shoulders sagged and for a moment a look of resignation spread across his swarthy features. I smiled and reached for my handcuffs. But then Dubrovnik seemed to brighten, and before I could lunge forward he took a step backwards, stiffened his body, and leapt through the huge, gleaming, shimmering pane of glass.

Women screamed.

Amongst the hail of crystal shards which followed Dubrovnik into the alley, he somehow managed to roll upon impact. Like a circus acrobat, he bounded immediately to his feet. Once again he was off and running. By now Ernie had recovered and was already clawing his way toward the wicked-looking glass blades sticking up from the edge of the window. He was disoriented and I knew he’d hurt himself so I grabbed his shoulders and held him.

“What the hell you doing? He’s getting away.”

“Out the door,” I said, “so we don’t get cut.”

Ernie let me drag him back to the main foyer and brace him as we descended the cement stairwell. When we reached the brick-paved alleyway, Dubrovnik was nowhere to be found. A few yards past Building 47, we asked a few of the women huddling in open doorways if they’d seen him but they argued amongst themselves and pointed in four different directions.

We’d lost him.

Our next stop was the home of someone who we suspected was Dubrovnik’s accomplice. A clerk who worked at the U.S. Army’s Port of Inchon Transportation Office. His name was Lee Ok-pyong, a Korean national. Although he worked for 8th Army, Lee fell squarely under the jurisdiction of the Korean National Police. Not us.

Technically, we shouldn’t have been talking to him. Our original plan was to arrest Dubrovnik, interrogate him on compound, gather all the information we could, and then, accompanied by the Korean National Police, arrest Clerk Lee and assist in the KNP’s interrogation. The more information we could gather first, the more productive that interrogation would be. But now, with Dubrovnik on the fly, our plan had changed.

“We shouldn’t even be doing this,” I told Ernie.

“Screw it. If Dubrovnik makes it over here and him and this guy Lee compare notes, they’ll be able to get their stories straight. We’ll never bust anybody.”

The crime was diversion of U.S. Government property. PX property to be exact.

The way the scam worked was that Clerk Lee Ok-pyong filled out two bills of lading. One with the actual amount of imported scotch and cigarettes and stereo equipment to be delivered, and the other with a larger amount that would actually be loaded onto the truck. For security reasons, each truck was escorted by an armed American military policeman. But since both Dubrovnik and the Korean driver were in on the scam with Lee, there was nobody to complain about the phony paperwork.

Near the outskirts of Inchon, they would pull the truck into a secluded warehouse and unload the excess PX property. Then they’d continue on their merry way to the main PX in Seoul. Before leaving the Port of Inchon, each truckload was padlocked and sealed with a numbered aluminum tag. If the tag was tampered with, the receiving clerk on the other end of the line could tell. Supposedly. I wasn’t sure if the receiving clerk was in on the scam or whether Dubrovnik had somehow managed to figure a way to reseal the load. That was one of the things we’d hoped to discover during his interrogation.

However they were doing it, the scam was working well and might have gone on forever if an audit in the States hadn’t identified the discrepancy between what was being shipped to the Port of Inchon and what was actually arriving in the Main PX inventory. Once 8th Army CID was notified of the leakage, Ernie and I were given the assignment. A couple of days later we had figured out which M.P. and which driver were in on it. Finding the clerk who supplied the phony paperwork took a little longer but now we had him. Everything would’ve gone smoothly if Dubrovnik hadn’t eluded us at the Yellow House.

The lane leading to the home of Lee Ok-pyong was not as well paved as the one leading to the Yellow House. A stone-lined gutter ran down the center of a muddy walkway. Brick and cement walls loomed over us on either side, most of them topped by barbed wire or shards of glass stuck into cement. If you don’t protect yourself against thievery, the Koreans believe, you deserve to be robbed.

Using our flashlight, I found Lee’s address etched into a wooden doorway: 175 bonji, 58 ho, in the Yonghyon District of the city of Inchon. A light glimmered behind the wall, flickering because of the still-falling rain. Ernie rang the doorbell. Two minutes later a door creaked open behind the wall and someone padded out in plastic slippers across the small courtyard.

When the gate opened a face stared out at us. Ernie tilted the beam of the flashlight. I could see that the face was beautiful.

She was a Korean woman in what must have been her late twenties. Her features were even and her skin was so smooth that I had to swallow before stammering out the lines I’d mentally rehearsed in Korean.

“Is Mr. Lee Ok-pyong in? We’re here on official business.”

“Who are you?” she asked.

As I answered I noticed that her hair was black and thickly luxurious and tied back by a red ribbon behind her oval-shaped face.

“We work on the American compound,” I said. “It’s important.”

She opened the door a little wider. Ernie pushed past her, sloshed over flagstone steps, and slid back the oil-papered door that led into the sarang-bang, the front room of the home. A thin man with thick-lensed glasses looked up at us. He wore only a T-shirt and pajama bottoms and had been studying a ledger. A lit cigarette dangled from his lips.

“Mr. Lee Ok-pyong?” Ernie asked.

“Yes.”

“With all the money you made ripping off foreign hooch, seems you could afford a better place than this dump.”

I’m not sure if Clerk Lee understood, but without being invited in, Ernie slipped off his shoes and stepped up onto the warm vinyl floor. I followed. The beautiful woman stood by the open doorway, not sure if she should run and notify the police or if she should stand here by her husband.

“Your wife is very beautiful,” Ernie said.

Clerk Lee was fully alert now. He sat upright and stubbed out his cigarette. “What do you want?”

“We want you to tell us about Dubrovnik,” Ernie said. “Have you seen him tonight?”

“Who?”

“Sergeant Two,” I said. That’s what the other M.P.’s and the Koreans in the transportation unit called Dubrovnik rather than trying to pronounce his full name.

Clerk Lee’s glasses started to cloud and the color drained from his face. His wife stepped into the room, knelt, and wrapped both arms around her husband’s shoulders. She turned to us.

“Get out,” she said in Korean. “No one wants you here. Get out!”

Ernie understood that.

“Fine,” he said. “We’ll get out. Just make sure you don’t let any other G.I.’s in here tonight.”

As we left, Mrs. Lee stared at us with the face of an ice goddess. Her husband looked as if he were about to vomit.

At this time of night, the local police station was a madhouse. The Korean National Police had arrested three prostitutes and two Greek sailors for drunk and disorderly. A fight at Whiskey Mary’s we were told. They also had taken into custody one pickpocket and two fellows who’d tried to break into an old brick warehouse near the port.

“Busy?” I asked the Korean cop.

He looked at me as if I were nuts. Ernie and I both flashed our badges. In a few minutes we were talking to the night shift desk officer. We explained that we wanted Clerk Lee Ok-pyong taken into custody immediately, so he wouldn’t be able to talk to his cohort and thereby ruin our case against him. The khaki-clad officer listened patiently and when I was done he lifted his open palms off the top of his desk.

“Nobody,” he said in English. “No cops.”

Sure, he was short staffed but the real reason he didn’t want to help us was that he didn’t want to bust a fellow Korean without orders from on high. Who knew who the man was connected to?

Ernie argued with the desk officer for a while but finally gave up. When the Korean National Police don’t want to do something, they don’t do it. I pulled him out of there.

Outside, the night was completely dark. And the rain drifting in off the Yellow Sea was colder than ever.

The next morning, Ernie and I rose early from the warm ondol floor in the room we’d rented in the Yong Param Yoguan, the Dragon Wind Inn. After we washed and dressed and pushed through the double wooden exitway, Ernie said, “The place even smells like dragon wind.”

“It was cheap,” I said.

“So’s pneumonia.”

Without stopping anywhere for chow, we headed straight to the police station. This time the commander was in, and he introduced himself as Captain Peik Du-han. We shook hands.

“I understand you were in last night requesting an arrest,” he said in English.

Briefly, I explained the situation to him. He nodded his head. His expression was calm, but I noticed that his fists were beginning to knot.

“Kei-sikki,” he said finally. Born of a dog.

Ernie came alert at that. I speak Korean, at least conversationally. Ernie’s vocabulary is limited mostly to cuss words. Captain Peik caught our alarmed expressions and said, “Not you. My duty officer last night. He should’ve listened to you. Or at least called me at home.”

“Why?”

Captain Peik sighed heavily. Then he stood up and grabbed his cap off the top of his coat rack.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

General Douglas MacArthur, floppy hat atop his head, corncob pipe gripped in his teeth, hands on his hips, stared out across an expanse of lawn and over a cliff that fell off into the misty expanse of the churning Yellow Sea.

“Doug, baby.” Ernie slapped the back of MacArthur’s shin.

South Korea is one of the few countries in the world, outside of the United States, to have located about the landscape statues of famous Americans. Up north at Freedom Bridge just south of the DMZ stands a statue of White Horse Harry Truman. In June of 1950, if he hadn’t made the decision to fight to save South Korea, this country wouldn’t exist today. MacArthur’s contribution was the invasion of Inchon, cutting North Korean supply lines so U.S. forces could manage to break out of the Pusan Perimeter, retake Seoul, and push the North Korean Communists all the way north to the Yalu River, bordering China.

But Captain Peik hadn’t brought us here to this place known as Jayu Gongyuan, Freedom Park, for a history lesson. While MacArthur stared thoughtfully at the Yellow Sea, Peik led us into the heavy brush beneath a line of elm trees.

“Chosim,” he said.

I understood and managed to avoid the two mud-covered stone steps that led downward into the brush. Ernie hadn’t understood and he stumbled over the hidden masonry. I caught him before he fell.

“Chosim means ‘be careful,’ ” I told Ernie. “When are you going to start taking those Korean language classes on post?”

“When you stop bugging me about it.”

Ernie pushed away my hand and straightened his jacket.

Some of the bushes in front of us had already been cleared and strips of white linen surrounded the area, the Korean indication of a place of death.

The body of Lee Ok-pyong lay in a muddy ditch.

“Shit,” Ernie said.

Lee had changed out of his T-shirt and pajama bottoms. Now he wore slacks and an open-collar white shirt that had been spattered with dirt. His head had been bashed in with something long and heavy. All I could think of was an M.P.’s nightstick.

Blue-smocked technicians milled around the body. Ernie and I tried to think of something to say to one another, or something to say to Captain Peik, but there was nothing to be said. We’d screwed up royally this time. If only we’d collared Dubrovnik last night when we’d had our chance.

A KNP sedan pulled up to the edge of the park. Two officers climbed out and one of them held the back door open. A woman dressed in black emerged. Holding both her elbows, the two officers escorted the woman across the damp lawn. She kept her head bowed; a veil of black lace covered her face.

As they approached she glanced up at me, and even through the flimsy shroud I recognized the beautiful face of the wife of Clerk Lee. The look she gave me would have cooled hell by about twenty degrees.

Keeping her eyes on me, she navigated the stone steps with ease and then paused in front of the body and turned her attention to what lay before her. The escorting officers backed up and Captain Peik approached. He stood silently next to her for a few moments and then began to whisper soft words. When he finished, she nodded slowly. Captain Peik thanked her and the two officers escorted her back to the waiting sedan.

When she was gone, Captain Peik turned to us. “That’s her husband, all right. She says he left the house shortly after midnight. Had to meet someone, she doesn’t know who. Now, you fellows want to tell me what you know about this?”

We nodded and walked back to General MacArthur. As Ernie explained about Sergeant Dubrovnik and our screwup last night, I studied the granite statue and noticed that it even had shoelaces. Doug seemed to be listening to Ernie and Captain Peik. I strode across the expanse of lawn to the cliff and gazed down at foamy breakers crashing against rocks a hundred feet below. From here, I guessed I could throw something a quarter mile out into the Yellow Sea.

When I turned around, General MacArthur was staring at me, reading my thoughts.

Ernie and I caught hell back at 8th Army.

The Foreign Organization Employees Union had lodged a formal protest about our conduct. Harassing one of their employees at his home and later not protecting him when he went to his rendezvous with death. Of course, everyone assumed that Sergeant Dubrovnik was the man who had summoned Clerk Lee to the park overlooking the Yellow Sea and there proceeded to bludgeon him to death. Why had he done it? Maybe because Sergeant Two wanted to keep Clerk Lee quiet about the nefarious activities they had engaged in together. Maybe. More likely they had an argument. Maybe Clerk Lee threatened to rat Dubrovnik out. Right now we could only speculate. What we needed to do was catch Sergeant Dubrovnik.

Ernie and I checked with his M.P. company. The man hadn’t shown up for morning formation, and according to the commanding officer, no one in the unit knew where he had disappeared to.

That remained to be seen. Ernie and I were about to start searching for Dubrovnik when the CID first sergeant pulled us aside.

“You’re off the case,” he told us. When Ernie started to protest, the first sergeant held up his palm. “Your first suspect escapes right from under your noses. And then your second suspect, a Korean national whom you shouldn’t even have been messing with, turns up dead.”

Ernie’s face flushed red and he started to sputter.

“Keep your trap shut, Bascom,” the first sergeant barked. “The provost marshal is still deciding whether or not to bring you two up on charges. A Status of Forces violation. Harassing a Korean civilian and misuse of your military police powers. Not to mention gross incompetence.”

With that, we were assigned to the black market detail.

Two weeks passed by. Two weeks of watching Korean dependent housewives to make sure they didn’t sell duty-free liquor or cigarettes down in the ville. Clerk Lee was buried, Sergeant Dubrovnik was still at large, and the provost marshal was still holding the threat of charges over our heads. Then we got the call.

Stiff found in the village of Songtan-up.

The corpse belonged to Sergeant Ivan Dubrovnik. He’d been shot once through the heart at close range, apparently with his own military police-issued .45 which was found beside him. He lay in a cobbled alleyway lined with nightclubs and beer halls and cheap room-rent-by-the-hour yoguans of Songtan-up, which served the five thousand or so U.S. airmen stationed at Osan Air Force Base. The sun was just rising above the rooftops of the two- and three-story buildings that surrounded us.

The Korean cop who’d found the corpse at two in the morning told us that no one in the neighborhood had heard or seen anything. Five hours more of canvassing the neighborhood didn’t change that story. The security police at Osan classified Dubrovnik’s death as a suicide.

Ernie didn’t like it. Neither did I. The only other person who’d been involved in the plot was the driver who’d been long since locked up. He couldn’t have been the killer. That left suicide.

And that also closed the case neatly. Now that justice had been done, the Foreign Organization Employees Union dropped their formal protest against Ernie and me. Everyone had suffered enough, they figured. The provost marshal put us back on regular duty status and signed off on the finding that no charges would be brought against us. Still, he kept us on the black market detail.

Dubrovnik’s body was shipped back to the States. It was over. All killings had been accounted for. Nothing left but to burn incense at their graves.

The blue silk of her dress hugged the curves of her body like wet paper clinging to a baby’s cheek. Her face was a smooth oval with shining black eyes and full lips and I recognized her immediately. The wife of the late Lee Ok-pyong.

We stood at Gate 4 on the edge of 8th Army’s Yongsan Compound near the district of Seoul known as Samgak-ji. She had asked the security guards at the gate to phone me at the CID headquarters. When I received the mysterious call I hurried out here.

Holding a black patent leather handbag in front of her waist, she nodded to me, sort of a half bow. Then she spoke in Korean, telling me that she wanted to talk.

Signing her on compound would be a hassle; she’d have to give up her Korean National Identification Card, and it would be a long walk back to the CID office. Instead, I gestured toward Samgak-ji. She nodded again and we strode about a half block down the road until we found a tea shop that was open. Once we were seated, she ordered boli cha, tea made from barley, and I ordered the more expensive ginseng version. The pigtailed teenage waitress brought us our drinks. When she left, I sipped my tea and waited for Mrs. Lee to begin.

She kept her head bowed for what seemed a long time. I spent the time admiring her. She was a goodlooking woman, a widow now, no children. Her perfume smelled of orchids. Probably, she’d be remarried in no time. But why had she come to visit me? Finally she spoke, using a measured and simple Korean that I could follow.

“I am sorry for having been angry with you. At the time, I blamed you and your friend for my husband’s death. For having destroyed our tranquility. Now I realize that the fault was with this man Sergeant Two.”

“Sergeant Dubrovnik,” I said.

She nodded. “Yes. And also my husband was much to blame. He hoped to make enough money so we could go into business for ourselves. Maybe buy a little tea shop like this one.” She looked around at the sturdy wooden furnishings, then turned her moist eyes back to mine. “But he wasn’t a criminal. This was the first time he’d ever done anything like that.”

I nodded. Waiting for her to tell me why she had come. Was it just to apologize for being rude to a cop? If I wasn’t used to that, I’d have to get out of the business.

She lowered her head once again, thinking over what she would say next. “I have a job, on the American compound where my husband used to work. In the same office.”

The Port of Inchon Transportation Office. That wasn’t unusual. The Foreign Organization Employees Union is the most powerful union in the country. When one of their members dies an untimely death, they take steps to provide as best they can for the surviving family members. There’s no welfare in Korea. No food stamps and no social security. The only thing the union can do is use its influence to land a job for an able-bodied member of the surviving family. In this case, Mrs. Lee herself.

A handkerchief emerged from her handbag and Mrs. Lee dabbed her eyes.

I knew it was coming now, the reason she’d gone to all the trouble to find me. I was prepared for a surprise, but this one took me completely off guard.

“I want you to meet with me,” she said. “I want you to tell me everything about the case, about what happened to my husband.”

“We can talk about that right here,” I said.

“No. You have to get back to work and there are too many people around.”

I studied the layout of the tea shop again to make sure I hadn’t missed something. There were about a half dozen customers, two waitresses, and one young man behind the serving counter; none of them within earshot of our conversation.

She looked boldly into my eyes. “I want to meet you,” she said. “So you and I can be alone.”

I’m dumb but not that dumb. As coolly as I could, I agreed.

For the next two weeks, all my off-duty time was spent with the Widow Lee. She had to work in Inchon and I had to work about thirty miles away in Seoul. Some nights we met in between at a Korean-style inn with a warm ondol floor in the city of Kimpo right near the airport that services the capital city. We’d lie together and hear the big jets fly over us and listen to Korean music, and when we found time, eat Korean food. She seemed desperately in need of someone to be near her.

For me it was as if someone had lifted a weight off my shoulders. The weight of living in a world in which no one cared about me. Not personally. I was a soldier. Only that. A number on a military clerk’s morning report. But now I was a person. A person who was close to someone who laughed when I was happy and shed tears when I was sad.

She taught me more Korean. Together we translated an ancient poem. It told of two lovers who were “as happy as two goldfish in a pond.”

That was us.

She told me about her job. She filled out the bills of lading for the imported American goods that were transported from the Port of Inchon to the Main PX in Seoul. The same thing her husband had done. Gradually, she started to tell me of the mistakes her husband had made. Before she could go on, I changed the subject. I wanted to talk about the goldfish. The next time we met, she brought up her job again.

Ernie clicked his fingernail against my coffee cup.

“Wake up,” he told me. “We have to go to work here in a minute and you’re still sleeping.”

We sat in the 8th Army snack bar on Yongsan Compound, wearing clean white shirts and ties and jackets, having one last cup of java before heading up the hill to the CID office to begin our regular workday.

“And you’re developing bags under your eyes,” Ernie continued. “The Widow Lee is putting you through one serious workout.”

“Can it, Ernie.”

“Oh. That much in love, are we?”

I pushed my coffee aside, placed both my hands on the small Formica covered table, and stared him straight in the eye. “So what if I am?”

Ernie’s eyes widened and he leaned back. “Easy, pal. I didn’t know you were taking this so seriously.”

“Yeah. I’ve been taking it seriously. I’ve been taking her seriously. The last couple of weeks have been about the best couple of weeks of my life.”

“Okay. Fine. So what’s bothering you?”

“What’s bothering me is that I don’t know what to do.”

“Hey, relax and enjoy it. Just don’t get married.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

Ernie’s eyes crinkled in puzzlement, something that doesn’t happen to him much. He has the world figured out. Or at least he thinks he does.

“Then what are you talking about?” he asked.

“I’m meeting her tonight at the same yoguan in Kimpo. Drive me out there in the jeep. Hang around. You’ll see what I’m talking about.”

Before he could ask more questions, I rose from the table, strode out of the big, fogged-glass double doors of the snack bar, and marched up the hill to the CID office.

That night the Widow Lee and I went to the best restaurant in Kimpo. I ordered kalbi, marinated short ribs braised over an open charcoal fire. When we were finished, we walked arm in arm back to the yoguan. After we hung up our coats and relaxed, she pulled a wad of paperwork out of her purse. She sat next to me on the warm floor and held my hand and spoke earnestly to me for what must’ve been almost an hour. Most of what she said, I didn’t listen to. The bills of lading she handed to me, those I did pay attention to. Duplicates. With differing amounts of product listed on each.

I guess I knew from the day out at Freedom Park overlooking the Yellow Sea. Maybe General MacArthur had made me aware of it. Or maybe it had been the hidden stone steps that Ernie and I had stumbled on, as had almost every Korean cop who approached the scene: She had breezed past as if they were an item of furniture in her front room. She’d been there before, and recently, to the murder site of her husband.

Sergeant Dubrovnik, an experienced M.P. and a man on the run for his life, had either shot himself in the ribs with his own .45 or he’d allowed someone he trusted to stand very close to him. Who else but a woman? And a woman he knew well?

And the job she’d received on compound. Sure, the union would work very hard to make sure that as a widow of one of their deceased members she found employment, but starting as a billing clerk? That was a relatively high-paying job that required extensive experience. The union usually gets people jobs at the lowest entry level, and the person who lands it is happy to get it. The work is steady, the benefits better than most jobs in Korea, and advancement will depend on how hard they work.

The Widow Lee had started near the top. Somebody, probably a man, had cleared the way for her.

And now me. I was next on her list. She’d learned from her husband’s mistakes; Sergeant Dubrovnik, an M.P., was no longer in the picture, so a CID agent was her next step up.

I held the duplicated bills of lading in my hand. The proof I needed. Ernie was waiting in a nearby teahouse, the jeep outside.

But could I do it?

Her eyes widened when I told her.

“A drive? Why should we go for a drive?”

“Because I say so.” I ripped her coat off the peg in the wall and tossed it to her. “Kapshida,” I said. Let’s go.

She refused, so I slapped her once. Something I never do to a woman. But she was no longer a woman to me. She was a criminal.

At the police station in Inchon, Captain Rhee studied the bills of lading and listened patiently to my explanation. She wanted me to go into the scam with her. She had taken her husband’s job and now I would take Sergeant Dubrovnik’s place. And working in the CID headquarters, I’d be in even a better position to cover things up. Captain Rhee nodded, understanding what I said.

He held the Widow Lee overnight for questioning.

In a way I was proud of her. Captain Rhee told me later that she denied everything.

The Korean National Police went over the ground they’d covered before but this time they were asking different questions. Between the home of Lee Ok-pyong and the park overlooking the Yellow Sea, they canvassed residents who’d been out on the night Clerk Lee was murdered. Previously they’d said they hadn’t seen two men walking together, one of them a Korean, the other an American. This time the police asked if they’d seen a Korean man walking with a woman. A few of them had. One of them, a sweet potato vendor, even mentioned that she’d seen the couple, deep in conversation, pass the statue of General MacArthur and disappear into the brush. Later, the woman had come out alone, stood by the sea for a moment and had then thrown something over the cliff. A stick maybe. Maybe a mong-dungi, a heavy club that women in Korea use to beat dirt out of wet clothing. Then the woman had hurried out of the park.

In Songtan-up, bar girls and local shop owners who had not noticed an American matching Sergeant Dubrovnik’s description remembered a robust American G.I. walking arm in arm with a beautiful Korean woman. Both of them were strangers in these parts. They’d entered a narrow back alley and one of the bar girls assumed it was for a late night tryst. After only a minute or two, the woman had left alone, in a hurry, and the bar girl assumed that she’d changed her mind about her affection for the big G.I.

Had the bar girl heard a gunshot? No. The rock music blaring from the outside speakers that lined the narrow lane was much too loud.

Captain Rhee personally interviewed the local union leader. As an experienced cop, he knew enough to be circumspect in his questioning and didn’t press the union overly hard. There was too much power involved. Too much chance for the union and therefore all Korean employees to lose face. And, after all, how could you prove such an allegation? That a union leader had allowed a beautiful young widow to influence him and land her a better-than-average job. The union leader, however, was smart enough not to stonewall the Korean National Police completely. He confirmed to Captain Rhee that what he suspected, that the Widow Lee had received extraordinary assistance, was within the realm of possibility.

“You knew it was coming, didn’t you?” Ernie asked me.

Once again we were sitting in the 8th Army snack bar on the morning after the Widow Lee was convicted of the murder of her husband and Sergeant Dubrovnik.

“I guess I knew. Somewhere. But I didn’t want to know.”

“I don’t blame you.” Ernie nibbled on his bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. “She was a goodlooking woman.”

I sighed.

“Unlucky in love,” Ernie said.

“You got that right.”

“You could’ve gone along with the plan,” Ernie told me. “Made some money for yourself. And you’d still have her.”

I set my coffee down and looked into his green eyes. “I never thought of that.”

“Sure you didn’t,” he said.