G. I. Bones

10

I was the only CID agent-or MP for that matter-in the entire Republic of Korea who could speak Korean. Not that I received any credit for having slaved in night classes. On the contrary, I was most often accused of being “too close to the Koreans.” The honchos wouldn’t admit that actually talking to the people you’re investigating can sometimes help.

Ernie, on the other hand, could move in any low-life circles. Whether the G.I. s off post were druggies or criminals or perverts on the prowl for unmentionable delights, Ernie could gain their confidence. Probably it was Vietnam that had done it to him. He spent two tours there. On the first he’d bought marijuana and hashish like most G.I. s but on his second tour all the marijuana and hash had disappeared, replaced now by vials of pure China White. A plan encouraged by the North Vietnamese to incapacitate American soldiers, he thought. Upon returning to the States, Ernie found the willpower to lay off drugs. He switched to booze, a perfectly acceptable alternative as far as the United States Army is concerned. I admired him for his strength of will and his ability to move chameleon-like from one world to the other.

But what ultimately forced the provost marshal and the other honchos at 8th Army to tolerate George Sueno and Ernie Bascom was that Ernie and I were the only investigators in country willing and able to waltz right into any G.I. village and come back with the goods. The other CID agents were tight-asses. They didn’t know how to conduct themselves in nightclubs or bars or brothels and they froze up, acting stilted and embarrassed. And, of course, none of them could speak the language. Neither the language of the people of Korea nor the language of the night.

Eighth Army needed Ernie and me. And because there was a lot more G.I. crime off compound than 8th Army liked to admit-which was the reason they kept the SIRs under lock and key-the skills of George Sueno and Ernie Bascom were, if not prized, at least tolerated. But you wouldn’t have known it by the scowling countenances of the CID first sergeant and the 8th Army Provost Marshal, Colonel Brace.

“You went over my head,” Colonel Brace told us.

Ernie and I kept quiet.

“Out of nowhere,” Colonel Brace continued, “the CG’s chief of staff calls me and says that I’m to reinstate your full investigative powers and to hell with what the Korean National Police might think. And, furthermore, I’m to let you concentrate full time on the Jessica Tidwell case.”

Ernie and I hadn’t been asked a question, so we didn’t respond.

“Don’t you have anything to say for yourselves?” Colonel Brace asked.

“The KNPs are just playing games,” Ernie replied, “embarrassed that we’re digging up old, and not-so-old, skeletons in their closets. They’re using the murder of Two Bellies to badger us into dropping the investigation.”

This seemed to make Colonel Brace even angrier.

“I don’t give a damn about this Two Bellies. But I do give a damn about unidentified G.I. bones. You keep looking for them and to hell with the ROKs.” Now Colonel Brace jabbed his forefinger at us. “And by god you’d better find Jessica Tidwell and find her fast before something happens to her. You got that?”

What he was so angrily telling us to do was exactly what the chief of staff had just ordered him to do. Pretending you’re a tough guy while slavishly following orders is an excellent way to enhance your career in the United States Army.

Ernie and I nodded.

Once Colonel Brace dismissed us, we saluted and walked back through the CID Admin Office. Both Staff Sergeant Riley and Miss Kim sat at their desks, pretending to be engrossed in their work. Neither one of them looked up at us.

Out in the parking lot, Ernie said with exasperation in his voice, “Lifer bullshit.”

Huatu, Korean flower cards, is played with twelve suits that are identified by vegetation. The suits follow the seasonal progressions. The first suit is January and features the evergreen pine; the next suit is February and is symbolized by brightly splashed paintings of purple plum flowers. The suit representing March is festooned with red cherry blossoms opening in early spring. Colorful stuff. Idyllic. But in contrast, actually gambling with huatu is a ferocious exercise.

The friends of the late Two Bellies surrounded the tattered old army blanket and took turns slapping the tough little plastic cards atop a pile of bronze coins, all the while cursing, grabbing money, and surveying every move as the next player took her turn. If a player stuck her hand into the center at the wrong time, one of the flying cards would have sliced off a finger.

When Ernie and I stepped onto the creaking wooden floorboards outside the hooch, the group of women stopped their game and gazed up at us.

“We know nothing,” one of them said.

Each of the retired business girls-women who were so aggressive only seconds ago-now seemed frozen in fear.

“Who killed Two Bellies?” Ernie asked.

No answer.

“Was it the Seven Dragons?”

Still no answer.

Ernie stepped past the open sliding door, grabbed the edge of the army blanket, and in one deft movement swept it off the floor. Flower cards and coins and ashtrays and lit cigarettes flew everywhere. Strangely, none of the women screamed. They merely scooted back on the warm vinyl floor until their backs were protected. Some of them covered their knees with their arms and looked down. Others glared at us directly.

“She was your friend,” Ernie said.

Finally, a woman spoke. “She dead. She help you so she dead. You no protect her. You no help Two Bellies.”

What she said was true but it just made Ernie angry. He wadded up the army blanket and tossed it at them in disgust.

I crouched down so I was at eye level with the women. “The night she died, where did she go? Who was she going to see?” No answer. “Did somebody come here and meet her or did she go out on her own?”

Still no answer.

“I’m going to find the man who killed her,” I said. “Whoever that is, he will be punished. But I need your help.”

After a long silence, one of the huatu players said, “That night, Two Bellies go out, nobody know where go but she dress up like she got big business. You know, important business. She no tell us what kind business she got.”

“Do you know where she went?” I asked.

“Itaewon, somewhere. She no take handbag. If she gotta go long way, she take handbag.”

So that was something. The night of her death, Two Bellies was operating close to home. I had another question for them but I had to phrase it delicately.

“That night, when Two Bellies went out,” I said, “do you think she was going out to have fun? Or was she going out, somewhere, to make money?”

The talkative woman barked a sardonic laugh. “Two Bellies never go anywhere have fun. She only go out make money.”

“Did she go alone?” Ernie asked.

The women stared at him warily for a moment. Finally, one of them said, “She say somebody follow her all the time. She no like.”

“Who?” I asked.

The women shrugged. I studied the circle. Nothing but blank faces.

“So someone had been following her,” I said. “A man or a woman?”

They all laughed. I wasn’t sure what I’d said that was so funny. Finally, the talkative one spoke up again. “If it man,” she said, “then Two Bellies no mind. She likey.”

The women cackled with glee. I figured it was best to leave them laughing. At least we’d learned something. Not much, but something.

We retreated back across the courtyard and ducked through the small gate out into the Itaewon street.

Doc Yong helped me research the Golden Dragon Travel Agency. From her clinic she made a few phone calls for me, received a few evasive answers, and eventually we formed the same working hypothesis: The Golden Dragon Travel Agency was owned, or at least controlled, by the Seven Dragons. A few of the women who’d been treated in her clinic freelanced part time for Japanese sex tours.

She gave me their names and addresses and Ernie and I wandered around the village searching for them.

The day was overcast, the wind growing colder by the minute but still, in this late afternoon, dozens of young women were parading back and forth to the bathhouses in the Itaewon area: cleanliness was a virtue close to the Korean heart. Their straight black hair was tied up over their heads with brightly colored yarn or metal clasps and against their hips they held plastic pans filled with soap and scrubbing implements and skin lotion and shampoo. Most of them wore only shorts and T-shirts and their goose-pimpled flesh and shapely figures were on display.

The girl we finally found was called Ahn Un-ja. She was slender, probably weighing in at less than ninety-five pounds, and she was frank with us, saying that many of the Japanese businessmen liked diminutive girls like herself. We asked her about the Golden Dragon Travel Agency and she admitted that she sometimes worked for them but she was afraid to say more. Ernie kept wheedling for more information and finally she told us why she was so frightened.

“Horsehead get angry,” she said.

We thanked her, promised we wouldn’t mention her name to anyone, and left.

Sergeant First Class Quinton Hilliard, the man who liked to call himself Q, was holding court at the King Club. This time he was complaining to a few of the cocktail waitresses, who were hovering around him, that the band never played any soul music. The band was a group of teenage Korean rock musicians who probably knew five chords and six songs between them but that didn’t seem to matter to Hilliard. If they weren’t up on the latest James Brown or Marvin Gaye, he considered their lack of knowledge to be a personal affront.

We were leaning against the bar. Ernie hadn’t taken his eyes off Hilliard since we walked in.

The young cocktail waitresses were all smiling and cooing around Hilliard. For his part, he sat at his table like the godfather of Itaewon, lapping up the phony adulation.

“Ignore him,” I said. “We have more important things to do.”

Ernie grunted before saying, “How’s Miss Kwon doing?”

“Doc Yong says better.”

“That son of a bitch likes to throw his weight around.” Ernie glared at Hilliard. “Everybody knows the club owners have to kiss his ass. Otherwise he’ll sic Eighth Army EEO on them. That’s why the waitresses are treating him like that. If he accepts one free drink,” Ernie said, “I’m busting him.”

Accepting gratuities for performing-or not performing-your military duties is against the Uniform Code of Military Justice. However, it’s a difficult charge to prove. If I could prove it, I’d be able to bring half the honchos at 8th Army up on charges.

“Forget it, Ernie.” I dragged him out of the King Club.

Once we were out on the street, Ernie said, “All right,” and shrugged my grip off his elbow. “Where to now?”

“Mrs. Bei told me that Jimmy Pak was in his office tonight.” Mrs. Bei was the manager behind the bar at the King Club and was tuned into the scuttlebutt that pulsed through Itaewon. Also, she was grateful to Ernie and me for having tried to save Miss Kwon. The attempted suicide had caused the local KNPs to blame Mrs. Bei for Miss Kwon’s ill-considered act; they were threatening her with charges and fines for not properly counseling the “hostesses” who plied their trade in the King Club. So far, Mrs. Bei confided in me, she’d had to shell out over 30,000 won, more than sixty bucks. If the girl had died, the King Club would’ve been closed by the Korean authorities and it would’ve cost her ten times that much to re-open.

I would’ve preferred to talk to Horsehead but I had no idea where to find him. We settled for another charter member of the Seven Dragons. Jimmy Pak was the long time owner of the UN Club, probably the classiest club in Itaewon. It sat right on the corner of the Itaewon main drag and the MSR and was always busy, filled with some of the most gorgeous women Itaewon had to offer. Civilian tourists, diplomats, and foreign businessmen who occasionally found their way to Itaewon, usually ended up partying in the UN Club.

Neon glittered brightly in the dark night. Korean business girls and American G.I. s jostled one another in the busy pedestrian thoroughfare. The wind had picked up and flakes of snow swirled haphazardly through the crowds, landing on brick walls and cement steps and cobbled lanes and beginning to stick, to form drifts in the midwinter cold. If the Armed Forces Korea Network weather report was accurate, we could expect more precipitation moving south down the peninsula, out of Manchuria, closing in on Seoul.

As we shoved through the double doors of the UN Club, a boy in black slacks, white shirt, and bow tie bowed to us and said, “Oso-oseiyo.” Please come in.

The place was packed and there were no empty tables but we didn’t muscle our way to the bar as we usually did. Instead, we walked up narrow varnished steps that led to a chophouse upstairs. The joint served hamburgers with oddly flavored meat patties and fat french fries and sliced cucumbers instead of pickles. The menu also featured other delicacies such as ohmu rice-steamed rice wrapped in an omelet-which the G.I. s considered to be Korean food but which was actually viewed by the Koreans as a form of yang sik, foreign food.

Western influence, Japanese influence, Chinese influence and the Korean ability to adapt in order to survive; all these factors made it difficult for me to look back in time and discern which parts of the culture that swirled around me were authentic Korean and which parts had been tacked on recently. I worked at it, constantly. But the Koreans were a puzzle to me. Who they were. What they wanted. And although I discovered and snapped into place a new piece of the puzzle every day, I felt sometimes that the picture was becoming more blurry. Maybe I was doomed to be confused. Maybe a foreigner can never understand Asia or the Asian mind. But I’d keep trying. Especially now. For Moretti’s sake, so we could find his bones and return them to his family. And for Ernie’s sake and my own sake. So we’d have a shot at not having to return to a Korean jail. Which would be good.

Ernie and I didn’t enter the chophouse. Instead, we turned left and walked down a short hallway that led to a door marked sammusil. Office. I started to knock but Ernie stepped past me, twisted the handle, and shoved.

It was locked.

There was a lot of banging behind the door to Jimmy Pak’s office. It sounded like furniture being moved around and there was whispering, of the urgent type. Finally, the handle of the door turned and the door began to open. A beautiful pagoda of black hair peeked out.

I recognized her right away. Miss Liu, a waitress here at the UN Club. She had long legs and a gorgeous smile and beautiful black hair that she piled atop her head into a structure like a temple from a Chinese fairy tale. She peered out at us from behind the door, smiled and bowed and then, holding her silver cocktail tray under her arm, minced her way out into the hallway. She was wearing the high-heeled shoes she usually wore and her legs were smooth and unsheathed. Something about her short blue dress seemed slightly askew, as if it had been twisted over her torso too quickly. Miss Liu kept her head down as she left the office and slouched past us. Ernie and I both watched as she sashayed down the hallway and tiptoed down the steps.

Inside the office, a green fluorescent light flickered to life.

Behind his desk, Jimmy Pak was on his feet, smiling, slipping on his neatly pressed white shirt, tucking the starched tails into his trousers.

“Agent Ernie,” he said. “And Geogi. Welcome. Come in. Have a seat.”

He motioned with his open palm to the chairs on the far side of his desk. Then he lifted his telephone. “Would either of you gentlemen care for a drink?”

I shook my head.

Ernie said, “I’ll take a scotch and soda.”

When someone answered, Jimmy said in English, “Two scotch and sodas for my important friends. Allaso, Mr. Jin?” Do you understand, Mr. Jin?

The response must have been positive because Jimmy Pak smiled more broadly and hung up the phone.

“Sit, sit,” he said. Then he retied his tie and slipped on his jacket and placed himself behind his desk in his comfortable leather swivel chair. He folded his pudgy hands on the blotter in front of him and said, “Now, gentlemen, how can I help you?”

Before we could answer, someone knocked discreetly on the office door.

“Entrez-vous,” Jimmy shouted.

Another waitress, this one less statuesque than Miss Liu, entered with two drinks on her tray and plopped one each in front of Ernie and me. She asked if Jimmy wanted anything but he waved her away. After she left, he reached inside his desk drawer, pulled out a crystal tumbler and a small bottle of ginseng liqueur. He poured himself a thimbleful and said, “For my tummy.” He patted his ample paunch. Then he raised the glass, and said, “Bottoms up!”

We all drank. Ernie downed his entire drink. I sipped mine.

“Now,” Jimmy said. “To what do I owe this pleasant surprise?”

“That Miss Liu,” Ernie said, “she’s not bad.”

“No. Not bad at all,” Jimmy replied. Gold lined the edge of one of his front teeth but on him it looked good, accentuating his constant smile.

Ernie rattled the ice in his glass. “How long have you owned this club, Jimmy?”

“Oh. Many, many years. Why do you ask?”

“You’re the coolest owner. The only bar owner in Itaewon who speaks English really well and who mingles with the G.I. s. Why? Why don’t you pull away from the day-to-day operations like the other owners?”

Jimmy spread his arms. “Because I love people. Especially my American friends.”

He was smiling as broadly as an evangelist in a pulpit, welcoming new souls into the kingdom of heaven.

“You love people,” Ernie said, “but you’re also one of the gangsters who used to be called the Seven Dragons.”

Jimmy looked surprised. “The who?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know. You were here in Itaewon right after the war. You helped build this place and the entire village of Itaewon.”

Jimmy kept smiling. “You flatter me.”

“And you did it,” Ernie continued, “by stealing money from the poor refugees who flooded down here from North Korea.”

“Steal? Me?” Jimmy Pak’s face was suffused with mirth. “My friend, you have such a vivid imagination. These ‘Seven Dragons’ as you call them. Such an exotic name. No doubt some mysterious Oriental organization designed to do evil in the world. But don’t you see, I’m nothing but a harmless businessman.”

“Not so harmless,” Ernie said. “At least Two Bellies doesn’t think so.”

The smile disappeared from Jimmy Pak’s face. “Such a terrible thing.”

Ernie’s fist tightened around his empty glass. I was worried he might throw it at Jimmy. I spoke up.

“Don’t give us your shit, Jimmy,” I told him. “Just listen to the facts. We know what you did to Mori Di, Sergeant Flo Moretti, and we know where you hid his body. And we know that you stole a lot of money from people and sent a passel of Buddhist nuns and orphans out into the snow to die. But they didn’t die. They lived, most of them, and reached a nunnery and most of those kids are alive now and well, although probably not living in Korea. So you’re a legitimate businessman these days. You don’t want people poking into your past. And when Ernie and I went looking for Moretti’s remains, you removed the remains from their resting place and replaced them with the corpse of Two Bellies, to warn off anybody else who tries to help us.”

“Me?” Jimmy asked.

“Yes, you,” Ernie growled. “Maybe you didn’t do the dirty work yourself, you didn’t actually slice Two Bellies’s throat, but you know who did because you’re the one who paid for the job.”

Jimmy Pak smiled indulgently.

“So I’m willing to make a deal,” I said. “I want the remains of Moretti. Somebody’s got to return those remains to his family in the States. They’ve been waiting over twenty years. You give us that- his dog tags, his uniform, his bones, everything-and then we lay off. No more prying into the people who were hurt in the past or the antiques and family heirlooms and the gold bullion that was stolen.”

Jimmy looked suddenly serious. “And Two Bellies?” he asked.

Ernie and I glanced at one another. I spoke. “The Korean cops are responsible for her.”

Jimmy leaned back in his chair, his fingers steepled in front of him. “You want another drink?” he asked.

Ernie shook his head.

“Your proposal is interesting,” he said. “It has nothing to do with me, of course, but I’ll pass it along. Maybe someone, somewhere, will be interested in what you have to say.”

“We want the remains,” Ernie said. “And we want them now.”

Jimmy Pak smiled.

We were halfway down the narrow stairwell when a big man bumped into me. He was Korean but hefty. Over six feet tall with broad shoulders and thick forearms and fists like mallets.

“Weikurei?” he said. What’s wrong with you?

I knew who he was. Maldeigari, the Koreans called him. Horsehead. What a coincidence.

I considered asking Horsehead right there and then about the whereabouts of Jessica Tidwell. If the information I’d been gathering the last few days was correct, Horsehead and his minions at the Golden Dragon Travel Agency had made it possible for Jessica Tidwell to set up a thousand-dollar deal with a Japanese gangster. Certainly, Horsehead was taking a cut from this transaction. And maybe Horsehead was even more deeply involved in the drama of Paco Bernal and Jessica Tidwell than I yet knew.

I thought of laying my cards on the table, seeing what he had to say, but decided against it. Tomorrow morning, Jessica Tidwell was scheduled to meet up with the Japanese gangster, Ondo Fukushima, somewhere many miles south of here. And after spending the day with him, she would be returning to Seoul to the White Crane Hotel. I didn’t want Horsehead to know that I’d be there, ready to pounce, or the venue would be changed and then it would be much more difficult to find Jessica.

But there was another reason I decided not to discuss things with Horsehead: I was angry.

Being pushed around was becoming a little old. I didn’t like the Seven Dragons. And I particularly didn’t like this tough guy Horsehead, with his three or four henchmen standing behind him and his too-expensive suit and his gaudy jewelry and his ill-gotten money and his attitude that he could bump into me and intimidate me into standing out of his way.

I bumped him back.

He reached out and shoved me and actually I was glad he did. I was released from the restraint of being a good cop. Now I could say I was defending myself. Maybe Horsehead saw the look in my eyes and maybe he realized that, if he was going to go up against me, he needed solid footing. He retreated down the steps.

When I reached the ground floor he popped a right at my nose. I dodged it, hooked him in the ribcage, and then we were wrestling back the few feet toward the bar. A waitress was in the way and we bumped into her tray of drinks and the glassware and ice flew straight up in the air and then crashed to the floor; women screamed. Ernie jumped past me and started pummeling Horsehead’s pals because Horsehead didn’t travel alone. They, in turn, started pummeling Ernie. Other G.I. s jumped in. Waitresses, swearing their allegiance to Korea, bonged stainless steel cocktail trays on the heads of the G.I. s, trying to get them off of Horsehead. Horsehead, for his part, seemed to be having a wonderful time, punching and wrestling and kicking and spitting.

And then the boy at the door started screaming.

“MP!” he shouted. “MP coming!”

I had backed up to the safety of the bar and Ernie was still jostling with Horsehead but most of the customers pushed past us like a horde of panicked cattle, everybody heading for the front door. Horsehead staggered backward, cursing.

By now his men had surrounded him. He pointed a thick finger at me.

“You, Sueno!” he said. “Chukiyo ra!”

I stepped forward but Horsehead’s men grabbed him and pulled him through the front door of the UN Club.

By now, the police whistles were shrill and we could hear their boots pounding on the pavement outside. Ernie dragged me through the back storage room and out into the street. Neither Horsehead nor his boys followed.

“Asshole,” Ernie said. “What did he say?”

“He said he’s going to kill me.” By now we had emerged through an alley onto the main drag. “But never mind about that. Look up the street, at the King Club.”

There was a much larger fight going on up there and that’s where a half dozen MPs were headed, nightsticks drawn.

“Riot.”

He was right. Even from this distance we could tell that the men fighting one another were American G.I. s-about half of them white, half of them black.

“That damn Hilliard,” Ernie said.

And then we were running toward the center of the fray.

Less than ten minutes remained until the midnight curfew and Ernie and I were becoming more nervous by the second. Maybe the bartender had slipped out the front door. But that seemed unlikely because I knew from previously casing the Grand Ole Opry Club that they barred the front door from inside at night. It made sense for the employees, after cleaning up, to leave via the back door and emerge into this dark alley lined with trash cans and wooden crates of empty brown beer bottles. But if the bartender had gone out the front door, Ernie and I were wasting our time. I shivered in the cold night air. A few more wisps of snow swirled in front of my nose, falling to the ground and mostly melting away, except for clumps that collected in corners and on the edges of brick walls.

I wanted to talk to the Grand Ole Opry Club bartender because on the night Ernie and I found Moretti‘s remains, he would’ve been the man in charge. Someone in Itaewon-maybe the Seven Dragons-had been aware of what Ernie and I were up to. After we left that night they sent someone down there to see what we’d discovered. Sometime during the night they cleared out Mori Di’s remains, brought Two Bellies down there, and executed her. The bartender, the man on the scene, must have some knowledge of what happened. Probably he’d been paid, or more likely intimidated, into keeping his mouth shut. The statement he made to the KNPs was innocuous: he claimed he locked up that night, went home, and saw nothing. The strange part is that the KNPs let him get away with that statement. They didn’t arrest him, they didn’t lock him up in a cell, they didn’t sweat information from him with hours of brutal interrogation. Instead, they took his statement and thanked him and sent him on his way.

They were happy to let the suspicion linger that Ernie and I had taken Two Bellies down there and executed her. Of course they knew it was ridiculous but it served the vital purpose of deflecting attention away from the “person or persons unknown” who’d gone to all the trouble of removing Mori Di’s remains. The person who’d been vindictive enough to murder Two Bellies for having talked to us.

The KNPs seemed satisfied to let this case drift. Why were they completely unconcerned about finding the people who’d really murdered Two Bellies? The answer that seemed most likely was not an answer I was happy with. The local KNPs were under the thumb, and probably in the employ, of the syndicate known as the Seven Dragons.

While we shivered, waiting in the cold night for the bartender to appear, I thought about the fight we’d just witnessed outside the King Club. It had been predictable enough. As more black soldiers arrived at the King Club, Sergeant First Class Hilliard’s harangue took effect. Some of the black G.I. s demanded that the Korean rock band play soul music: Curtis Mayfield, Jackie Wilson, the Temptations. But the little band’s repertoire included only a handful of songs and all of them were either rock or country-western. When they launched into them, Hilliard complained bitterly and the black G.I. s started hooting at the hapless band and some of the white G.I. s told them to lay off and then the insults started being hurled. Before long everyone was out in the street hurling knuckles.

The MPs broke up the fight and ferried a couple of the guys who needed stitches back to the compound, but they didn’t arrest anybody. They shooed everyone off the street and it was pretty close to the midnight curfew by the time the situation returned to normal.

The MPs didn’t arrest anybody because the desk sergeant who was communicating with the MP patrols by radio from the station back on Yongsan Compound didn’t want to have to write up a racial incident. All hell would break loose-bureaucratically anyway-and everyone involved would have to be interviewed formally, under oath, and the reports would have to be filed in triplicate and be staffed up the chain of command and those reports would be personally reviewed by the 8th Army judge advocate general and eventually by the commanding general himself.

In other words, 8th Army was making it so cumbersome to report a racial incident that it was unlikely anyone would actually go to the trouble of doing so. Good for the stats. Then the honchos could claim that there were no racial incidents in their command.

Sergeant Hilliard was the joker in the deck. While fists had been flying, he’d been nowhere to be found. I know because I looked. And he’s lucky Ernie didn’t find him. But the big question was, would Hilliard raise hell tomorrow morning at 8th Army? Would he file a complaint and accuse the MPs of a cover-up?

I didn’t believe that there were no racial problems in 8th Army. I’d been in the service long enough to know that black soldiers were discriminated against. I’d seen it happen with my own eyes; racist sergeants whispering about who would get the shit detail or miscreant officers scratching out the names of black soldiers when it came time for promotion. As a Mexican-American myself, I knew that sometimes those whisperings were directed at me. So the problems were real, the solutions elusive. But what I disliked about Sergeant First Class Hilliard was that he wasn’t really searching for solutions. Rather he was using racial tensions to elevate himself above the crowd and stroke his own ego. And, not incidentally, to wriggle his way into the panties of a certain teenage business girl by the name of Miss Kwon.

The back door of the Grand Ole Opry Club creaked open and a sliver of light bit into the dirty darkness of the narrow alleyway. A figure emerged. A young Korean man, wrapped in a heavy coat, a white shirt and a bow tie barely visible beneath it. He stepped out into the alley and slammed the door behind him. Ernie and I hid in the shadows-he on one side of the alley, me on the other-holding our breath. Without looking to either side, the bartender marched past us, hands shoved deep into his pockets. At the end of the alleyway, he turned a corner and Ernie and I emerged from the shadows.

Following.

Itaewon is an endless maze.

Narrow pedestrian lanes zigzag every which way because the homes and hooches and stores and brothels were plopped down every which way. So now, with frigid moonlight shining down and the midnight curfew finally upon us, Ernie and I were having trouble keeping up with the young bartender. We couldn’t run or he’d hear our footsteps. Periodically, we had to stop and listen for his. But he kept turning this way and that, like a very intelligent rat winding his way through a maze. Finally, headlights flashed against a wall. Ernie and I ducked into darkness- a recessed wooden gate in a cement brick wall.

“White mice,” Ernie said. The curfew cops. Their jeeps were painted white and their uniforms were white, supposedly so they wouldn’t be mistaken, after curfew, for North Korean intruders and be shot by their fellow cops. Ernie and I were not dressed in white and therefore were subject to being shot. Few people were actually gunned down for a curfew violation. Usually, what happened was that the white mice took the violator into custody, locked him or her up overnight at the local police station, and in the morning a relative came by to vouch for them and profusely apologize to the cops for having caused them any inconvenience. Of course, they also had to pay a fine. G.I. s would be similarly detained, but the MPs would be called and their transgressions would end up on the 8th Army blotter report.

Ernie and I were protected by our CID badges which allowed us to be out after curfew. Still, we didn’t want to talk to the white mice because we didn’t particularly want anyone taking note of our stalking the Grand Ole Opry bartender. Another reason we hid from the white mice was because it was always possible that the curfew cops would make a mistake-or be having a bad day-and we would be shot on sight. Perfectly permissible in a country trying to protect itself from 700,000 half-crazed Communist soldiers stationed just thirty miles north of their capital city.

We stayed hidden and when the beam of the headlights passed on, we breathed a sigh of relief. We resumed following the young bartender. Ernie ran to the intersection where we had last spotted him and stopped; we both listened. Pots and pans clanged. A stray voice shouted in the distance. Far away, a dog barked.

No footsteps.

We stood listening for a long time. Perspiration ran down my forehead. I wiped it out of my eyes.

Nothing. No sound.

I checked one intersection, Ernie checked another. Then we returned to where we had started.

“Shit,” Ernie said finally.

My sentiments exactly. We’d lost him.

Ernie snorted.

Using back alleys, we made our way the mile or so to Yongsan Compound. At the main gate, I talked to the MP and, citing law enforcement solidarity, I asked him not to write us up for having returned to compound after curfew. Even though CID agents were allowed to be out after curfew, the gate guards were supposed to make a record of our return, but I didn’t need grief from the first sergeant.

The MP listened-at this late hour no honchos were around anyway-and he finally agreed. Ernie promised to buy him a drink at the NCO Club. But since the MP didn’t drink, Ernie was at a loss as to how to reward him.

I just said thank you.