Buddha's money

24

The first splats of monsoon rain slapped into my forehead as we ran toward the yoguan. Children in stiff-necked school uniforms scurried out of our way and a cabbage vendor wheeled his cart frantically to evade our onslaught. But the obstacles in the road meant nothing to me. All I could see was Lady Ahn. The high contours of her cheekbones, the stony set of her eyes, the pursed lips as she gazed down upon a world that had never quite met her exquisite royal standards.

She had become an obsession with me. But it was an obsession that made me happy to be young and male and alive. An obsession that I had no desire to break.

The rust-flavored wetness of a sudden monsoon sprinkle moistened the cobbled road. I slipped, quickly regained my footing, but Ernie surged past me. Up ahead the flames shot out of windows and engorged themselves in a brighter red.

Possibilities flashed through my mind. Maybe the fire was just a freak happenstance. Maybe it had nothing to do with Lady Ahn or with the skull or with Herman the German or with the kidnapped Mi-ja.

Maybe. But I didn't think so. I'd been a cop too long. Things didn't happen by coincidence.

As I ran, I steeled the inside of my gut. Lining it with iron. The same protective covering I'd used every time life presented me with a kick in the ribs.

Nothing good could come of this.

The Itaewon Fire Department was already on the scene, their fat red tanker truck wedged into the alley leading to the yoguan. Ernie clambered over it, ignoring the shouts of the firemen, and I followed.

The top floors of the yoguan were burning pretty good. Outside, the woman who had rented us our rooms stood screeching at the top of her lungs, pointing that there were more people upstairs.

Ernie didn't even slow down. He charged into the blackness of the front door.

But I hesitated for a moment, gazing up, searching for the small window of Lady Ahn's room. The window was totally engulfed in flames, more than any other spot in the building. The conflagration had started there. Of that I was sure. If she was still in that room, we were too late. I squeezed down the side alley, heading for the back entrance.

I kicked old boxes stuffed with trash out of the way and shoved open the wood slat doorway. The smoke wasn't bad back here.

Before I reached the second floor, however, the smoke was too thick to continue. Footsteps pounded down the stairway. Something black loomed above me, then burst out of a cloud of ink.

Ernie, tugging on an old woman wrapped in a long cotton dress.

I heard the swoosh of fire hoses; water started cascading against the walls above us. Outside, as if the rusty old fire station apparatus had primed something, the heavens opened and rain pelted down with a fury. As the old woman coughed and retched I sat her down on the varnished floor near the back door and shouted at her in Korean.

"Is there anyone else upstairs? A young woman?"

She gazed up at me, her eyes blank with fright. "They took her."

"Who did?"

"Those men. Those foreigners. She fought with them. She wouldn't let them in. They broke down the door. She fought them. I think it was she who started the fire."

"And these men took her out before the flames grew?"

"Yes."

"Where did they go?"

"Out back. The alleys. She was struggling so hard that they all had to hold her."

Ernie was bent over, leaning against the wall, spitting and wiping his eyes with the back of his hands. I slapped him on the back a few times to clear his lungs.

"Ragyapa's taken Lady Ahn," I said. "Come on!"

Ernie hacked and spit up some phlegm. "Son of a bitch!"

We rushed out into the narrow maze of alleys behind the yoguan, pushing past the gawkers watching the fire. The rain fell in steady sheets.

A group of men carrying a struggling woman must've left some sort of trace. We scurried like rats in a maze, twisting and turning, having no idea which way they might've gone. Through the mist, light glowed inside the homes we passed. Rain splattered on tin roofs. The soil beneath our feet rapidly turned into a muddy quagmire.

I stopped two pedestrians and shouted questions at them. We were drenched, our faces still covered with soot, our eyes enflamed with a frantic madness. The first person could only stutter. The second insisted he knew nothing.

We ranged up the hill, getting farther and farther away from the main nightclub district of Itaewon.

Finally, beneath the canvas awning of an open-front grocery store, I spotted a Korean policeman. He wore a long raincoat and a plastic hood pulled over his cap, and he was hunched over, listening intently to a woman who gestured wildly. We ran up to them. The KNP was so absorbed in the woman's story that he didn't glance over at us. I could make out most of the woman's rapid Korean.

A group of men-foreigners, she thought-were wrestling with a woman. The woman was bruised and bloodied and kept shouting for help. But there were no men around in these rain-drenched alleys. No one who could help the poor woman. I'm only a housewife, she said. I have children. What could I do?

I interrupted the tirade.

"Where did they go?"

Both the policeman and the housewife stared at me. I pulled out my badge.

"Odi kasso?" I shouted. Where did they go?

The woman pointed. "Down there. Toward the car park behind the Unchon Siktang." The Driver's Eatery.

"I tried to stop them," she said. "But what could I do? I am-"

But Ernie and I were already sloshing away in the rain, heading downhill toward the road that wound through the nightclub district and back to the main road. Once Ragyapa and his boys reached that, they'd have access to all the major thoroughfares in Seoul. And once they reached the main road, catching them would be impossible.

"They must've stashed a car behind the Driver's Eatery," Ernie said. "And then they walked through the back alleys to the yoguan."

"Looks like it."

"But how did they know where Lady Ahn was?"

"No clue," I said. "We'll have to worry about that later."

"And why would they kidnap her?"

"They figured she had the jade skull," I said. "When they realized she didn't, they decided to take her as a bargaining chip."

Ernie swore. "Isn't one kidnap victim enough for these guys?"

"I don't think anything's enough for them," I said. "Not until they hold in their hands the jade skull of Kublai Khan."

The muddy parking lot behind the Driver's Eatery must've held about twenty small taxis. There were also a few three-wheeled flatbed pickup trucks. Ernie took one side of the lot and I took the other. We checked each vehicle closely. When we finished, we met behind the eatery. Tired drivers sat behind steamed windows, slurping on bowls of wet noodles, sipping on barley tea.

"Zilch," Ernie reported.

"Me, too. Nothing." I looked inside the eatery. "Somebody in there must've seen something."

Ernie pushed through the door.

The little restaurant was cramped, and reeked of human sweat and boiled cabbage and charcoal gas. A couple of the drivers stared up at us, unevenly burning cigarettes hanging from brown lips.

I pointed back to the parking lot and spoke in loud Korean.

"Some men brought a woman down here," I said. "She might've been struggling. They put her in a car and drove away with her. How many of you saw it?"

There was silence. I repeated what I had said, careful of my pronunciation, trying to make sure that everyone understood me. No answer.

Ernie strode over to the heating stove in the center of the room. He hoisted a large brass pot of barley tea and held it at chest level, and when he had everyone's attention he tossed hot tea out of the spout and let it splash on the floor. Then he turned slowly in the center of the rickety tables.

"Who saw it?" I asked.

Still no answer. Ernie sloshed steaming water onto the Formica-covered table in front of him. Three astonished drivers sprang to their feet, slapping the steam rising from their trousers. As one, they all started cursing.

Ernie sloshed more water at the drivers. They kicked their chairs back and leapt out of the way.

"Who saw the men who took the woman?" I shouted.

A burly young driver stepped toward the kitchen and grabbed a butcher knife from a wooden chopping block. An older, gray-haired man noticed him, turned back to me, and started to speak.

"It wasn't a car," he said.

I turned to him, waiting. Ernie stopped sloshing tea.

"It was a truck," the man said. "Three wheels. The back seemed to be loaded, but they shoved the woman in there."

"Was she struggling?"

"No. I thought she was asleep. Or drunk."

"Where did the truck go?"

"Down the hill." He jerked his thumb toward the nightclub district. "It was a blue truck."

That didn't narrow it down much. Almost every truck in Korea was either blue or green or gray.

"Did you see the license plate number?"

"No reason to look."

"What was the truck loaded with?"

"Garlic." The driver with the butcher knife pushed himself past some of his irate comrades, edging closer to Ernie. The gray-haired man noticed him and spoke again. "If you had arrived two minutes earlier, you might have caught them."

The guy with the knife lunged at Ernie. I shouted. Ernie swiveled and tossed the brass pot at him. Steaming water exploded into the air, splashing into the driver's face. He screamed.

I grabbed Ernie, shoved him forward, and kicked open the front door. We dashed out into the pelting rain. Behind us, a gaggle of drivers stood in the doorway, staring. But none of them looked too anxious to follow. They had lives to lead. Money to make. Families to support.

I hoped that the guy who received a faceful of tea wasn't hurt too badly.

Ernie turned back and flashed the drivers the finger.

"Dickheads," he said.

We searched the roads of Itaewon but there was no sign of a blue truck loaded with garlic.

And no sign of Lady Ahn.