G. I. Bones

15

When I was a kid in East L.A., schoolyard fights were a regular occurrence. But it wasn’t those fights I was afraid of. Invariably, even when we became teenagers, they would be broken up by someone in authority. A teacher or, in the case of full-fledged melees, by a group of male gym teachers wielding wooden paddles. So, in general, on school grounds, you were safe.

It was between home and school that things were dicey. Not so much on the way to school in the mornings. Mexican vatos and other gang members tend not be early risers. But by the time school let out, two or three in the afternoon, they were up, had already taken their first jolt of nicotine or uppers; they were ready to start their day’s work, tormenting people weaker than they. Nobody had any plans for protecting children on their way home. From the edge of the schoolyard to the front door of your apartment or your house or your trailer, the good kids were like a migrating herd of caribou, fair game for whatever pack of predators happened to be prowling.

We scurried forward, our heads down, hoping that the punks wouldn’t pick us out of the crowd but it was never long, it seemed, before somebody picked me. I always dealt with it somehow, by fighting, by taking my lumps, and occasionally by running. But it was the smaller kids who bothered me. The ones who cried their eyes out after they’d been punched for no reason or had their glasses stomped or whose prized slide rule had been ripped out of their book bag and snapped in two. I didn’t like seeing these things. They hurt me and I found it impossible to look away. It was, in many ways, worse than being tormented myself. Somehow, when watching one of these torture sessions, I’d find a way to screw up my courage and I’d tell the bad guys to leave the kid alone.

Leave the kid alone. That’s all I’d said. But the vatos were astounded. You would’ve thought I’d defiled the holy sepulcher. The punks in the gangs considered it their sacred right to pick on kids weaker than themselves and not to countenance interference. When I rudely interrupted, all their wrath was turned on me. It got to the point that I didn’t mind. The bumps and bruises and occasional kicks in the ribs I took were not as painful as watching a helpless kid being molested by a pack of bullies. And then a few boys started sticking close to me and then the girls. And after a while we were a pack that moved together, seeking safety as we approached the homes of our various members. And one by one each child would peel off and run pell-mell to the front door of an apartment or trailer and then wave goodbye as the rest of us continued to move toward home. I felt good about doing this. About protecting the other kids. Until one day when the vatos caught me alone.

I was hospitalized. And when the cop from juvenile hall asked me who’d done this to me, I told him I’d fallen down a flight of steps. He spat in disgust, considering me a coward. But I wasn’t a coward, only a realist. There was nothing he could do to protect me. He’d never be there for our midafternoon odysseys and we kids, like all people in the end, were on our own.

A report was made and a few days after my release from the hospital, the Supervisors of the County of Los Angeles moved me to another foster home. I don’t know what happened to my flock. Although I thought of them often, I never saw them again.

Someone had tied me to a gurney. Leather straps held my arms and legs securely against a white linen sheet. My shirt had been taken off but my pants were still on and I could feel my wallet behind my butt and my keys and loose change in my front pocket. So I hadn’t been robbed.

The light seemed too bright but I opened my eyes anyway. And then shut them, allowing my pupils to accommodate themselves to the bright bulb focused on me like the eye of a malevolent dragon. Somebody turned the bulb away. I chanced a peek. Gazing down at me, smiling, was the narrow face of the dark-complexioned Korean man known as Snake.

“You fight too much,” he said.

“Let me up,” I said.

“You need rest.”

“I need to pop you in the jaw.”

Snake turned back and said something to the men standing behind him. They laughed. Must’ve been about a half dozen of them. But what Snake said had been spoken too rapidly for me to understand.

Snake aimed the light back to my face. “Somebody kill Water Doggy,” he said.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

“And before that,” Snake continued, “somebody kill Horsehead.”

“Maybe they had it coming,” I said.

My eyes were becoming accustomed to the light.

Snake puffed on a cigarette in a black holder. “People who kill Horsehead,” Snake said, “and people who kill Water Doggy. I think same-same.”

I snorted. I wasn’t going to give him my professional opinion while I was tied to a gurney.

“Maybe you find up,” Snake said.

“The KNPs will find them,” I replied. “They work for you, don’t they?”

Snake smiled his slow smile, the one that spread across his narrow lips gradually, finally lifting slightly at the corners. “Some do,” he said equitably. “Some KNP are like you. Stubborn. Anyway, they already try. No can find. Two men, three women. Seoul very big city. How they find up?”

“That’s your problem,” I said.

“No,” Snake said patiently. “Your problem too. Anyway, you have SIR.”

I was surprised that Snake knew the acronym. But I shouldn’t have been. After more than two decades of working with the United States military, there were probably not many 8th Army acronyms that Snake didn’t recognize.

“So I have the SIR,” I said. “So what?”

“Cort was good man.”

I tried to sit up but the leather straps held me firmly.

“That’s right,” Snake continued. “I knew Cort. He try very hard to find up who kill Mori Di,” Snake shook his head woefully. “Good man, stubborn too. Like you.”

Koreans have an odd national trait. They like perseverance. Even if you think or do things completely opposed to them, they will respect you if you stick to your principles. What Snake was referring to was the fact that Cort never gave up trying to find and bring to justice the men who had murdered Moretti. It was my opinion, as it was Cort’s, that the killers had been the Seven Dragons, or at least they’d been the ones who’d ordered the killing. Still, after all these years, Snake was expressing admiration for the man who kept trying to charge him with murder.

Snake said, “You know what happen Cort?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “He finished his tour in Korea, went back to the States.”

Snake shook his head. “No. He no go back.”

Now that I thought about it, there was nothing about Cort’s post-investigation activities in the SIR. He merely stopped making entries. I tried not to show much interest. It was not wise to let Snake think that he had some information that I wanted.

“So what happened to him?” I asked.

“You go Eighth Army,” Snake replied, pointing toward Yongsan Compound. “You find up there. Now, I want you find people who kill Horsehead, people who kill Water Doggy. KNPs they no can do. First, they stupid. Second, they fight now with Snake, with Jimmy Pak. They all the time want more money.”

The KNPs were not stupid. That wasn’t the reason they weren’t solving the murders of Horsehead and Water Doggy. The reason was that they didn’t, yet, have enough evidence to lead them to the killers. But the other thing that Snake said, about them wanting more money, that was a possibility. Maybe that’s why there was a rift between Lieutenant Pong, the 8th Army KNP liaison officer, and Captain Kim, the commander of the Itaewon Police Station. Factions. Infighting. These were facts of life. Itaewon, and all its rich operations, represented a ripe plum full of juice, power, and money. A plum worth fighting over. Maybe someone was making a play for that ripe piece of fruit and thereby threatening the power of the Seven Dragons. And if that was true, maybe the KNPs were the ones who’d unleashed the people who murdered Horsehead and Water Doggy. Or, if they hadn’t unleashed them, maybe they weren’t in any big hurry to bring the culprits to justice. If this were true, Snake and Jimmy Pak and the other remaining members of the original Seven Dragons, were vulnerable.

Finally, I said, “You want me to save your skinny ass.”

Snake shrugged. “You have SIR. You have good information.”

“What information?” I asked.

“You look inside, you find. Many people there, they don’t like Seven Dragons.”

I’d never heard one of them use the term Seven Dragons. But there it was, an admission that the Seven Dragons actually existed. Snake was more than just vulnerable. If somebody in the KNPs was after him, he and the other surviving Seven Dragons were desperate. I wasn’t sure what evidence the SIR contained that could lead me to the killers of Horsehead and Water Doggy but I knew that now was the time to drive a hard bargain, even though I was half naked, strapped to a gurney, and surrounded by a gaggle of Korean mobsters.

“If I do try to find out who murdered Horsehead and Water Doggy,” I said, “I’m going to want something in return. I want you to release Miss Kwon from her contract. Give her money, enough to go to school and help her parents. Let her return to her hometown.”

Snake puffed on his cigarette. “Why I do that?”

“If you want my help, you’ll have to.”

“Snake no have to do nothing.”

“I have the SIR,” I said. “It’s back on the compound, somewhere safe where you can’t get it.” In Sergeant Riley’s safe at the CID Admin Office to be exact. “And I also want the bones of Mori Di. I know you took them when you had Two Bellies murdered.”

“Bones? Why I need bones?”

“You need them because the bones prove that you murdered Mori Di.”

“How they do that?”

“Forensic evidence.”

I could tell by the puzzled look on Snake’s face that he didn’t understand the word forensic. But anyway, I was bluffing. The bones of Mori Di might prove two things: one, that he’d been tortured before his death and, possibly two, that he’d been alive when his tormentors bricked him up in the basement of the Grand Ole Opry Club.

After thinking it over, the worry vanished from Snake’s face and he laughed. For me, that cemented his guilt. He’d reviewed the crime scene mentally and decided there was no way-forensic science or not-that I could pin anything on him.

“Anyway, I got to go,” Snake said. “You find up who killed Horsehead and Water Doggy. Then everything OK.”

“Screw you, Snake,” I said. “I want Miss Kwon set free and the bones of Mori Di delivered to me immediately. That’s the deal.”

Snake turned back to the gurney and leaned down. “You stupid?”

I didn’t answer but waited.

“Why I bring you here?” Snake waved his arms around the clinic we were in. And then I realized where I was: Doc Yong’s clinic, the Itaewon branch of the Yongsan County Public Health Clinic.

Snake leaned in closer. His hot breath, laced with the stink of nicotine, covered my face like a wet glove. “You think Snake come beg you do something?” he asked. “No way. Never hachi. I have something you want, Snake already got it, so you have to give me what I want. You find up who kill Horsehead and Water Doggy. After you find up, you tell Snake, then I take care everything. You alla?” You understand?

When I didn’t reply, Snake went on. “Once Snake have what Snake want, then you get what you want.”

He pulled something black and long out of his back pocket and tossed it atop my chest. I writhed in panic. For a second, I thought it was a snake; and then I relaxed. The metal disc at the end felt cold against my chest. It was a stethoscope.

“You bali bali,” Snake said. You hurry. “She strong woman, stubborn too, like you. But if no eat, all the time have boom-boom, then pretty soon die.

The faceless men behind Snake started to laugh. Their laughter grew louder and then Snake left the room and his men followed. Even after the footsteps of Snake and his thugs faded, I could still hear them laughing.

What Snake had that I wanted was Doc Yong. “Boom-boom” is G.I. slang for having sex.

I strained at the leather straps that held me. They wouldn’t budge.

I’m not sure how long I lay tied to the gurney. Maybe a couple of hours. I was dozing off again when I woke to the sound of someone fiddling with the door to the clinic. The door opened and amber light from a streetlamp streamed in. Then, whoever had entered, shut the door again. I strained to see but I was tied too flat to be able to get a good look.

Footsteps pounded toward me in an uneven rhythm: first a clump and then a step and then another clump.

A round face peered down at me. Miss Kwon. She placed her forefinger to her lips, warning me to be quiet. Then in the dim light she studied the leather straps that held me. With the hand that wasn’t holding her crutch, she systematically released them. Finally, I could sit upright.

“How did you know I was here?” I asked.

“I watch,” she said. “I see you talk Jimmy Pak. I see Jimmy Pak become taaksan angry.” Very angry. “Then I see they follow you. I know something bad happen. When I no see you later, I come here find up.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Her English was improving. Most of the business girls, even the ones with only a middle-school education, studied English in school. Once they arrive in Itaewon, they pick up the language fast as they gain the confidence to use what they already know.

“You gonna help Doc Yong?” Miss Kwon asked.

“How’d you know about that?”

“Anybody in village know already.”

Maybe Snake hadn’t been trying to keep it a secret.

I stood and found my shirt and jacket hanging on the back of a chair. My wallet was still in my pocket and none of my money or identification had been taken. My shoulder holster was there with the . 45 untouched. Snake and his boys had wanted to communicate, not to rob me. My head pulsed with a dull ache that seemed to radiate from my skull, slice through gray mush, and finally stab into my spine.

I buttoned my shirt and asked Miss Kwon, “Where are you going now?”

“Back to hooch.”

“To Hilliard?”

Her eyes crinkled in confusion.

“To Q?”

“Yeah,” she said. “To Q.”

She turned and hobbled out of the clinic.

I sat with my head on the front edge of the Admin sergeant’s desk, snoozing a little, mostly suffering from nightmares. I must’ve dozed off into an even deeper sleep when suddenly a doorknob rattled, the overhead fluorescent lights blazed to life, and a voice barked out, “What the hell you doing here, Sueno?”

Staff Sergeant Riley strode toward me, his polished low quarters clattering on the wood-slat floor. I sat upright, rubbing my eyes.

“You’re late,” I said.

“The hell I’m late. I’m an hour early. What’d you do? Sleep here last night?”

“No sleep,” I said. “I was reading this.”

I pointed to the stacked files of the Moretti Serious Incident Report.

“You opened my safe?”

“Why not?”

“Because I have classified documents in there. That’s why not.”

“I’m not interested in those.”

Besides, I’d relocked the safe. But I didn’t bother to explain that to Riley. He was just being his usual self. He stepped past me to the service counter and busied himself making a four-gallon urn of over-strengthed java to jump-start the staff of the 8th Army Criminal Investigation Division at the beginning of their workday.

When he was finished and the coffee was perking, I said, “I need something from you, Riley.”

He sat down behind his desk. “Will it get Mrs. Tidwell off our backs?”

“Not hardly.”

“Then don’t bother telling me. You ain’t getting it.”

I told him anyway. He listened, frowned, and the flesh of his narrow forehead wrinkled.

“How the hell am I going to find something like that?” he asked.

“You know everybody in the headquarters. Tell them to search their records.”

“Christ, Sueno, what do you need this for?”

“To save a life.”

I told him about Doc Yong. I told him about Snake.

“You mean Mr. Lim?” he asked. “The big construction honcho?”

“That’s the one.”

“You’re out of your gourd, Sueno. The 8th Army commander thinks Lim walks on water.”

“Well, he doesn’t and I’m going to prove it.”

Riley shook his head. “Is Bascom going to help you with this nonsense?”

“Of course,” I said. “And so are you.”

“What’s this gal’s name again?”

“Doctor Yong In-ja.”

“And Mr. Lim’s holding her?”

“That’s right. But in the ville they call him Snake.”

“‘Snake,’” Riley repeated. “And the guy you want me to find out about is called Cort?”

I nodded.

“Didn’t he put his full name in the SIR?”

“No,” I replied. “Just Cort.”

Riley shook his head. “Sloppy work.” Then he picked up the big black telephone on his desk. “Maybe Smitty’s in early.”

While Riley called, I continued to study the SIR. Snake said that in the SIR I’d find some clue as to who had murdered Horsehead and Water Doggy. How he knew that, I had no idea. Maybe he was just making it up, trying to get me to try all angles to solve the case. Or maybe there was something here. I went over the notes I’d made during the hours that I’d pored through the multiple folders and stacks of papers that constituted the Moretti SIR.

After helping myself to a cup of Riley’s coffee, I concluded that there was only one item in the SIR that might have a bearing on the murders of Horsehead and Water Doggy: the list of valuables that had been turned over by the refugee families to Mori Di for safekeeping. The names on the list were the names of aggrieved people who’d been robbed and-in some cases- killed in the Itaewon Massacre. People who had every reason to seek revenge on Horsehead and Water Doggy and on the Seven Dragons in general. But many of these people had either been slain in the massacre or had passed away from natural causes in the intervening two decades.

And then it dawned on me. Most likely, few of these people were still alive. But what of their children? They had been taken to an orphanage in the mountains. According to Cort, he’d traveled to the Buddhist temple there to interview the nuns who’d saved them. Maybe, if I compared the list of orphans with the list of people whose valuables had been stolen, I’d come up with a lead. Even if I didn’t, it would be something to show to Snake. Something that, just maybe, I could use to run a bluff. But I had to work fast. As soon as Ernie walked in, I told him what we had to do.

“But I’m restricted to compound,” Ernie said.

In the excitement, I’d forgotten about that. “This is an emergency,” I replied. “Staff Sergeant Riley will authorize it.”

Riley, mumbling to himself and cursing, was still working the telephone and waved us away, not hearing a word we’d said. We ran outside to the jeep. I noticed a bandage on Ernie’s hand. “What the hell happened to you?”

“I’ve taken up competitive needlepoint.”

After we pulled out the main gate and turned east on the MSR, another thought struck me. Even if I obtained the information I needed, once I went up against Snake and his thugs, I was going to need backup. But 8th Army wasn’t going to deploy a squad of MPs to go after their top civilian contractor. He didn’t even fall under 8th Army jurisdiction. I was going to need help from someone. I told Ernie to pull over and let me out in front of the Itaewon Police Station. He waited outside, engine running.

When I marched into his office and sat down and told him what I wanted, Captain Kim looked at me as if I were mad.

“I need a search warrant,” he replied.

“So get one.”

“From who?”

“From a judge.”

His eyes narrowed. “You gonna tell judge, say Snake slicky Korean woman?”

“Yes.”

“Say Snake slicky Korean woman doctor and you think he gonna believe you after Snake already told judge he didn’t slicky Korean woman doctor?”

“Snake already told him?”

“He will. Who you think work for Snake?”

I knew the business girls did, and the bartenders and the waitresses. The owners of the small record shops and sports equipment outlets and food stands in the environs of Itaewon had to cough up a tribute to the honcho of the Seven Dragons. But judges, too? Clearly, Snake’s influence was more pervasive than I thought.

“How about you?” I asked.

It was a risky thing to say but I was desperate. Captain Kim’s entire body tensed. I was sure he was going to spring at me from across his desk and I prepared to pop him with a left while he was still on the fly.

Instead of attacking, he took a deep breath. Slowly, he relaxed.

“You don’t know,” he said finally. “Americans don’t know. Here, everybody gotta make money. Extra money. If don’t make extra money then can’t buy house, can’t send children to school, after too old to work, no have nothing. Everybody gotta do. So, I make money too.”

Captain Kim stared at me defiantly. I knew that the salaries of Korean cops-and the salaries of most civil servants-were miserably low. And the ROK government, and even the Korean taxpayer, winked at the fact that the cops and other people in government were expected to supplement their income by doing favors for people, like busting them for some small infraction and then collecting the fine on the spot or expediting paperwork that had mysteriously become stuck in bureaucratic channels. They were expected to do those things-everyone was allowed to make a living-but they were also expected to act in a humane way, a way that wouldn’t cause innocent people to suffer unduly. But the rich received their due. In Korea, as everywhere else, money talked. But loud enough to suppress a kidnapping accusation?

“If I go talk to Snake now,” Captain Kim said, “he hide woman, we never find. But, if you do what he tell you to do, bow low to him, do everything he say, then he relax.”

Captain Kim stared into my eyes, wondering if I understood. I did. No official action could be taken. Not without a judge’s order and since Snake was involved, a judge’s order was unobtainable.

“Then I’ll do what he says,” I told Captain Kim. “Quickly. And then I’ll present him with what I’ve found. Then I’ll make my move.”

“When people fighting,” Captain Kim said, “I don’t need judge.”

He meant that if there was an altercation at Snake’s mansion, or anywhere else in Itaewon, he could order his cops to move in without a search warrant.

A great boxer works best in close. He can lean in on his opponent and hammer him with hooks and methodically batter his ribs and his torso. But in order to get in close, I had to offer Snake something he wanted, the identity of the people who’d murdered Horsehead and Water Doggy, or at least some sort of credible evidence pointing in that direction.

And Captain Kim, in his own oblique way, was offering to help. Or at least I hoped he was.

Ernie’s jeep purred down the two-lane highway lined on either side with frost-covered rice paddies. Kids in black school uniforms skated on patches of water frozen between ancient mud berms. In the distance, straw-thatched farmhouses, smoke rising from narrow chimneys, stood in cozy clumps. Behind them rows of hills rose blue in the distance, capped with white, everything shrouded in a shawl of gray mist.

“Why don’t we just check out a couple of shotguns from the arms room?” Ernie asked. “Then we kick Snake’s door in, shove both barrels up his nose, and let him know we mean business instead of going to all this trouble.”

I’d already thought of that option and I’d rejected it. First, it would be a pretty difficult door to kick in. His home was situated atop a row of hills between Itaewon and the gently flowing Han River. There were mansions up there, all of them surrounded by ten-foot-high granite walls topped with shards of broken glass embedded in mortar. In addition to those routine security precautions, Snake also had a small army protecting his household. So kicking his door in, as Ernie suggested, would require the backup of your average-sized infantry battalion. I didn’t even bother to float the idea past the provost marshal. I knew what he’d say: The alleged kidnapping of one Korean national by another Korean national was clearly a problem for the Korean National Police. Who would he refer the information to? Lieutenant Pong, the KNP liaison officer at 8th Army, one of the men who, I suspected, was involved in the power struggle now playing itself out in the barrooms and back alleys of Itaewon. And the man who still hoped to charge Ernie and me with the murder of Two Bellies.

We were some twenty-five miles due east of Seoul now, heading for a mountain called Yongmun-san. Ernie downshifted through a patch of black ice. Either side of the road was lined with country folk waiting at the first bus stop we’d seen in over a mile. Some of the women balanced bundles of laundry atop their heads, others carried packages wrapped in red bandannas. The men wore sports coats without ties or, if they were older, the traditional silk vest and pantaloons of a retired Korean scholar, although I doubted there were many scholars out here. Everyone worked on the land.

I pulled an old map out of one of the folders in the SIR. It was dated September 24, 1952, issued by the Army Corps of Engineers, and stamped For Offi cia l Use Only. An inverted swastika, the symbol for a Buddhist temple, was stenciled in blue ink on the side of Yongmun Mountain. In the past twenty years, the mountain hadn’t changed, neither had the location of the Temple of Constant Truth, but the roads had altered considerably. Where there had been none, two-lane highways ran; where there had been only a dashed line on the map twenty years ago, indicating a gravel-topped path, there was now a modern four-lane paved thoroughfare. U.S. tax dollars at work so men and equipment could be quickly transported where needed in case of a resumed attack on the Republic of Korea by the forces of the Communist North.

It took a few wrong turns and a lot of questions shouted at startled farmers before Ernie and I found the narrow road that wound up the side of Yongmun Mountain to the nunnery. About halfway up to the craggy peak, we came to a halt in front of a walled fortress that seemed to have been transported here from out of the middle ages. Crows fluttered amongst stone ramparts. A wooden-slat bridge crossed a gully through which a half-frozen stream trickled and beyond that loomed a gate hewn from oak. Both massive doors stood wide open.

“A castle with a moat,” Ernie said, climbing out of the jeep.

I imagined that twenty years ago, to a band of frightened and half-starved orphans, this nunnery must’ve looked like a fairy castle. We waited out front, at the edge of the bridge, until finally someone came out to greet us. She was a shriveled Buddhist nun, bald, wrapped in gray robes. She bowed to us and I bowed back and then I told her in Korean about the orphans who’d come here twenty years ago and about Cort and about the reason we’d come.

When I finished my long speech in my rudimentary Korean, the wrinkled woman stared at me calmly and said in English, “Why don’t you come in and have a cup of tea?”

Ernie and I glanced at one another, grinned, and accepted gladly.

During and after the Korean War, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of Korean orphans were adopted by families overseas. Even years after the war the practice was still going on. Unwanted children were left at the doorsteps of churches or temples, transferred to adoption agencies, and sent overseas to grow up speaking English or Dutch or German or French. But the old nun told us that they had kept the children who’d been dumped on their doorstep after the Itaewon Massacre and raised them right here at the Temple of the Constant Truth, raised them as Koreans and sent them to the public school in the village in the valley below Yongmun Mountain. And when they’d come of age, they’d been told the full story of how they’d been brought to the nunnery. Of course, some of them had been old enough at the time to remember but some had to be schooled as to what had happened to their parents.

The nuns had taught them not to be angry, that when you resent the actions of others, they own you; they own the most important part of you, your soul. But if you eliminate need, especially the need for revenge, then you are free. At least that’s what I think she told them. When she explained it to us over tea, Ernie and I had some trouble following her. Not only was the Buddhist philosophy itself hard to follow but she spoke English with the perfect syntax of a woman who’d been highly educated in the language but hadn’t had the opportunity to actually speak it in years, if not decades. Still, throughout the entire dissertation, Ernie and I sipped on our tea and smiled and nodded our heads.

Ernie wanted to know where those orphans were now. Did she have a list of names? he asked. She did. She had a few current addresses, those of the ones who wrote occasionally. The children had left, found jobs, married, and started families of their own.

“Did any of them stay here?” I asked.

The nun shook her head sadly. None.

Staring at the damp gray walls that surrounded us, that didn’t seem surprising.

We told the nun about the murders. She seemed shocked. It seemed to me that some of the children might have wanted to take revenge despite the nuns’ instructions. How could they stand by and watch the Seven Dragons strut around Seoul as rich men, knowing that they’d robbed and murdered their parents.

The nun had pulled out a photo and presented it to me with a flourish. It had taken me a moment to focus. It showed two adults. One a handsome Korean woman with high cheekbones and a square face, wearing a long Western-style dress. But what shocked me was the man standing next to her. I recognized the old uniform: khaki pants, short fatigue jacket, overseas cap cocked to the side, curly brown hair that would nowadays be too long for a regulation army haircut. The rank insignia on the sleeve was for technical sergeant but the lettering on the name tag was too small to read. I studied the photo for a while.

“Mori Di,” the nun said.

“This is him?” I’d handed the photo to Ernie. The nun nodded her head. “How’d you get it?” I asked.

“One of the children bring,” she said.

“Mori Di had a child?”

“No.” The nun shook her bald head vehemently. “The child was the daughter of this woman.” She pointed to the woman standing next to Technical Sergeant Flo Moretti. “Her daddy Korean, already dead in war.”

“So her mom moved in with Moretti,” I said.

The nun nodded her head. “And when Moretti was killed, this woman was probably killed also and her daughter kept this photograph and brought it here with her.”

“Yes.”

The nun showed me on the list the name of the little girl who’d brought the photo of Mori Di. Min-ju was her name. Family name Shin. She’d been about ten years old when she’d arrived and after middle school, she’d been sent to Seoul to complete her education.

“Do you have her current address?”

“No. After she leave, she never write.”

Ernie handed the photo back to the nun. “Why did she leave this photograph here?” he asked. “She couldn’t have too many photos of her mom.”

“She tough woman,” the nun told us. “She and her mom. That’s why her mom not afraid to live with American G.I. even though everybody talk, call her bad name. She did it to save her daughter. And when Min-ju leave, she say she don’t want nothing from the past. She only want future.”

I resisted, because it seemed like such a precious heirloom, but before we left, the nun forced me to take the photo of Mori Di and his yobo. “Maybe you need,” she told me.

I thanked her and slid the photo into my pocket.

We bowed to the nun and were heading back to the jeep when she stopped us and said, “You no see?”

“See?” Ernie asked.

“Him.” The nun pointed through the gray mist and at first I thought she was pointing toward heaven. But then I realized that there was a bend in the road that continued up the mountain and on a granite outcropping overlooking a precipice, about three quarters of a mile above us as the crow flies, sat another Buddhist temple.

“Why two temples?” Ernie asked.

“Monks,” the nun replied.

That’s where the boys lived.

We asked her who it was we were supposed to see but she wouldn’t answer. She just kept pointing, indicating that we should go there first before leaving Yongmun Mountain. When we finally complied and climbed in the jeep and Ernie started up the engine, the nun bowed deeply as we drove off and then stood and waved, American style.

It was quiet up here. Darker, too, because we were now on the shadowy side of Yongmun Mountain. The crows didn’t flutter between ramparts but sat perched on brick ledges, staring down at us, wondering just as much as we were what the hell we were doing here. There was no movement inside the compound of wooden buildings; no gongs sounding; no chanting of ancient prayers; no susurrant sweeping of gravel courtyards, none of the noises that one would associate with a Buddhist monastery. But when I thought about it, maybe silence was the correct sound for a Buddhist monastery. The sound of people keeping quiet while they waited patiently, forever if necessary, to hear-just once-the lonely voice of god.

Ernie shifted his weight in the driver’s seat of the jeep, crossed his arms, and frowned. He didn’t like waiting any more than I did but we both figured that someone would come out to talk to us sooner or later.

It was sooner.

A thin monk hustled toward us, his blue robe flapping in the mountain breeze, leather sandals slapping on dirt.

“Irriwa,” he said. Come.

We both hopped out of the jeep and followed him up a path that led toward a ridge on the northern side of the temple. Once we topped the ridge the monk stopped and pointed. There, in the distance, was a work shed and a storage area for grain and agricultural equipment. Men in broad straw hats worked amongst fields, not harvesting anything now in the middle of winter but puttering about near cylindrical greenhouses made of bamboo and plastic.

The monk, who I could see now was a very young man, pointed toward the shed and said, “Chogi. Kidarriyo.” There. Wait.

He left us. Ernie and I glanced at one another, shrugged, and walked down the frozen pathway toward the shed. The accommodations weren’t much. Just a couple of rough hewn benches. We sat, pulled our jackets tighter around our torsos and waited. For what I wasn’t sure. The bald-headed nun had said we would want to talk to “him.” A man. Who the man was I couldn’t be sure. Probably the patriarch of this temple complex. Maybe he had more information for us. More likely, he just wanted to check us out and make sure we weren’t going to cause him any headaches. Either way, Ernie and I resigned ourselves to waiting.

Of course, Ernie shouldn’t have been here at all. Colonel Brace had ordered him restricted to compound. Staff Sergeant Riley wouldn’t rat us out unless he was asked a direct question. And it was at least possible that Ernie and I could make it back to Seoul, and Ernie could resume his normal duties, before either the first sergeant or Colonel Brace noticed he was missing. Unlikely, but possible.

Still, if the provost marshal did find out that Ernie had violated his orders, I would say that for safety reasons I’d needed Ernie’s backup. It’s against 8th Army policy to come so far away from Seoul, so far from American MP protection, without backup. And I would say that due to the immediacy of the requirement I didn’t have time to request someone else. Ernie was available, I used him. The ploy wouldn’t work, of course. The provost marshal wouldn’t buy it and we’d both be in hot water but at least it was some sort of excuse we could hang on to. But Ernie wasn’t complaining. He knew that finding Moretti’s remains and solving this twenty-year-old mystery was more important than any temporary discomfort we might suffer. And anyway we were used to being in hot water. We’d bathed in that tub before, so often our skin was wrinkled.

Dozens of tiny feet beat on dirt. Reedy voices bleated. Over a low ridge, furry creatures stampeded our way. Goats. Tiny ones. Cute, with little horns, like the small porcelain bulls they used to sell at curio shops in East L.A. But these hoofed animals were alive and covered with shaggy black fur. They floated toward us like a moving blanket. We stood and then a straw hat appeared over the ridge and beneath the hat, a man. He was tall, long-legged, gawky. His face was still in shadow but as he came toward us he waved a ten-foot-long staff back and forth in the air, gently tapping the tiny goats on their sides and hindquarters, keeping them moving forward in a loose formation. He reached a low fenced area twenty yards from the shed where we were waiting, opened the gate, and herded his charges inside. Once the last reluctant kid was induced to enter the pen, he latched it shut, and stood for a moment staring down at the ground, as if in prayer. Then he roused himself from his reverie and started toward us.

As he did so, the shadows lifted from his face. Gross features emerged. A long nose, full lips, bronze-fleshed cheeks that had to be shaved every day. Finally, Ernie and I were staring into a pair of deep-set blue eyes surrounded by a map of wrinkles. They were intelligent eyes, knowing, watchful.

I knew who he was.

“Cort,” I said, stepping forward and holding out my hand.