G. I. Bones

16

Cort seemed unsurprised to see us. Although I couldn’t say the same about Ernie and me, I realized now what had happened. Who was it who had told me earlier in the investigation that Cort never left? Whoever it was, they’d been right. Occasionally a G.I. will terminate his time in the service but not return to the States. It takes special permission from the military and, of course, the G.I. must obtain a passport from the State Department and some sort of visa from the host government. But if he accomplishes all that, he is not required to take the “Freedom Bird” back to the good old U.S.A. He can stay right here in Korea.

Apparently, that’s what Cort had done.

And how had he made a living all these years? He’d become a monk.

Cort set his ten-foot staff aside, sat down on the wooden bench opposite us, and pulled off his straw hat. He was totally bald. And although his body looked strong, he was rail thin, probably from years of living on unhusked rice and fermented cabbage and boiled bean curd. He stared at us, a slightly amused smile on his lips, and then he said, “Tell me everything.”

I started from the beginning, leaving nothing out. Cort listened patiently without interrupting. So patiently that I wondered if he was actually concentrating on what I was saying. There was a faraway look in his eye, a relaxed posture to his body, and a steady rhythm to his breathing. He was meditating, I finally realized. Something he probably did three or four times a day here.

I told Cort about my trip to Auntie Mee’s home and her complaints about the spirit of Mori Di and her prediction about the fate of Miss Kwon if the bones weren’t found soon. And then I told him about the new SIR warehouse on Yongsan compound and finding Moretti’s Serious Incident Report and about everything that had happened since then: the murder of Two Bellies, the murder of Horsehead, the silken rope enveloping Auntie Mee’s throat, and the chopped-up corpse of Water Doggy.

When I was through, Cort became alert and started asking questions. He picked apart our entire investigation. He trusted no one and questioned every assumption.

Ernie finally became angry. “You weren’t there,” he told Cort. “Why’re you putting down everything my partner says?”

“Not putting it down,” Cort replied. “Only plunging in. Searching for the deeper meaning.”

Ernie snorted. “Snake offed Mori Di when he was first taking over Itaewon and to cover up his crime, twenty years later he murders Two Bellies and then Auntie Mee. A few of these orphans, meanwhile, take their revenge on Horsehead and Water Doggy. That’s all there is to it.”

“Maybe,” Cort replied.

“No ‘maybe’ about it.”

I knew what Ernie was doing. He was deliberately trying to throw Cort off stride and make him angry. Maybe in his anger he’d reveal something that he wouldn’t otherwise disclose. But Cort remained calm. Maybe it was his Buddhist training, or the years of patiently herding goats on the side of Yongmun. If anything, he seemed vaguely amused.

Cort asked us if we’d interviewed every orphan on the list. “They have a motive for murder,” Cort agreed. We told him that there wasn’t time. He insisted that we should. He was certain that by interviewing these people, putting pressure on them, leads would open up.

I told him again about Doc Yong and I explained that we didn’t have the time to track these people down and coax information out of them.

Cort said, “Snake could cause much harm to the people on that list.”

“Yes,” I said. “But I’ll have to deal with that later, after Doc Yong is free.”

Cort asked if I’d looked at this case from a Buddhist perspective. I said I hadn’t. Cort explained that bricking up Moretti, while he was still alive, was a very Buddhist thing to do. Not sanctioned by their religious precepts, of course. But they’re taught not to spill blood. Butchers, for example, are looked down upon, eating meat is discouraged, and a Buddhist criminal who wanted to rid himself of a G.I. named Moretti might very well leave him gagged and bound in a small room and then brick him up, alive, and leave him to die. That way, there’d be no blood on his hands to stain his karma.

Ernie and I stared at Cort as if he were nuts. Maybe he’d been here too long. But on the other hand, maybe he was right. A devout Buddhist criminal was a possibility I hadn’t considered.

“That would corroborate what you’ve already assumed,” Cort said. “That Snake or his thugs also murdered the woman you call Auntie Mee. A very Buddhist type of killing. But it wouldn’t explain the murder of Two Bellies.”

“Maybe they were in a hurry,” Ernie said.

Cort looked at Ernie, who sat quiet and grim, and then back at me. He said, “Try not to kill. You’ll set yourselves back. That would delay you from finally attaining nirvana.”

Ernie rolled his eyes.

“You don’t agree?” Cort asked.

“I attain nirvana,” Ernie said, “almost every Saturday night.”

As Ernie drove the jeep back to Seoul, I kept glancing at the photograph of the handsome Korean woman standing proudly beside Moretti. The more I stared at her face-the high cheekbones, the full lips, the penetrating gaze-the more I was infatuated with her looks. Was she the reason Moretti had thrown in his lot with the impoverished refugees flooding into Itaewon? What had become of her? Maybe she was still alive somewhere, walking around, waiting for Ernie and me to find her and ask her the questions that she’d been longing to answer for twenty years.

I sat in the passenger’s seat, comparing the family names on Mori Di’s list of people who’d turned over heirlooms to the nun’s list of orphans. Except for three, all the family names were the same. Only a half dozen of the thirty-six names were accompanied by addresses. Some of the addresses were fairly old, the nun had warned us, so they might not still be valid.

Modern Korea is a highly mobile society. People move from job to job and apartment to apartment. No longer is it a kingdom of villages where farm families can trace their roots back to before the founding of the Yi Dynasty. Two of the addresses were in Seoul, the other four were scattered down in the southern end of the country. I didn’t see how we’d have time to talk to these people. Or for that matter, what good it would do? Two men and three women might be responsible for murdering Horsehead and Water Doggy, and they might be on this list. Finding them would be faster if I turned the lists over to Snake and let him and his people figure out if they were the killers. The problem was that the Seven Dragons might make a mistake. And they wouldn’t be gentle in their investigation. Innocent people could get hurt. But what choice did I have? Doc Yong was being held hostage I needed this information to get close to Snake. Once on the inside, Ernie and I would attack. Our backup? Captain Kim.

Ernie crossed a ridge and the city of Seoul lay spread before us.

Far on the other side of the valley, beyond a range of hills, a red sun set slowly into the Yellow Sea. Seoul itself was bathed in a darkening blue light. Streetlights twinkled on, as did lamps in the windows of hotels and high rises downtown. And then, more abundantly, millions of small lights in homes and storefront businesses blinked to life and spread out like a great spangled fan radiating from Namsan Mountain in the middle of the shining city.

Even Ernie seemed impressed. And excited. Going downhill, he must’ve been exceeding the speed limit by about twenty kilometers.

A front moved in from the Yellow Sea, sliding over the red-tinged hills in the distance. Clouds of billowing gray enveloped the peaks and crept toward Seoul, like a great angry beast ready to devour everything in its path. Lightning flashed. Thunder cracked. Seoul shuddered beneath the onslaught.

Ernie chuckled to himself as he drove down the narrow highway.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Just thinking about somebody.”

“Who?”

“Somebody sweet. Somebody I met last night.”

“On compound?”

Ernie twisted his head slightly and gave me a sly look, as if to say, “Are you out of your mind?”

“You went off compound last night,” I said.

Ernie shrugged and then smiled again. “Not to Itaewon,” he told me. “I knew the place would be crawling with MP patrols.”

It was.

“But I got to thinking about Jessica Tidwell.”

Oh, oh. That’s when I started holding my breath.

“I got to thinking,” Ernie continued, “about the deal that Paco Bernal had set up. He had to be working with somebody powerful to come up with a thousand dollars worth of product, no matter what the product was. And then he has Jessica steal the greenbacks from her dad and Paco takes the money out to the ville and the first thing that happens to him is he’s robbed.”

I nodded. So far we knew all this.

“So I asked myself,” Ernie said, “‘how often are G.I. s robbed in Itaewon?’ Not often. G.I. s might end up with no money but it’s usually through trickery, or more often seduction. Not out-and-out robbery. The Koreans don’t work that way. Not usually. Of course somebody must’ve known that Paco had that much money. We’ve been sort of assuming that he’d flashed the wad to a business girl or he’d bragged about the money to the wrong person but we don’t know for sure that’s what happened. And I got to thinking that whoever helped Paco set up the deal in the first place was the most likely candidate for knowing he had the cash and then sending some thugs over to take it from him.”

Ernie glanced over at me. I nodded and turned my eyes back to an ox-drawn cart on the side of the highway. At the last moment, Ernie swerved around it.

“So I thought,” Ernie said, “ ‘who’s powerful enough to set all this up?’ Obviously, one of the Seven Dragons could pull it off. Which one? Any of them, but do circumstances point to any one in particular? And then I remembered that it was Horsehead who’d shown up Johnny-on-the-spot and whisked Jessica Tidwell away from the White Crane Hotel.”

I remembered, all too well.

“So,” Ernie said, “I decided to do a little investigating. You remember Jenny over at the 007 Club?”

I nodded. Ernie was referring to a cocktail waitresses he’d once spent some time with.

“She works over at the Salon Bar in Myong-dong now so I jumped in a cab and rode downtown to talk to her,” Ernie told me. “I remembered her telling me once about Horsehead’s second wife.”

His mistress.

“So I asked her how the second wife was doing now that Horsehead was dead and Jenny told me that she was still working over at the Tower Hotel nightclub. So I waved down another cab and went over there.”

During all this travel, Ernie would not have had to worry about American MPs. They only patrol Itaewon and he was miles from there.

“Her name is Hei-myong,” Ernie said, “and she was all teary-eyed over Horsehead and asked me a lot of details about his death that she claimed the Korean National Police were withholding information from her. So I made a lot of stuff up, hoping I’d make her feel better.”

I knew that over the next ridge of hills, we’d start to encounter the heavier traffic leading into Seoul; I hoped Ernie would hurry up with his story.

“Anyway,” Ernie said, “she told me where I could find Jessica Tidwell.”

My jaw dropped. I stared at him.

“You talked to her?”

Ernie grinned and nodded his head.

He kept smiling and I said, “You son of a bitch.”

He shrugged, still grinning.

“You didn’t do anything you shouldn’t, did you?”

Ernie looked offended. “Me?”

“Yeah, you.”

“Of course not.”

“So what did you do?”

“She had a room in one of those Western-style hotels in Hannam-dong that aren’t fancy enough to be called ‘tourist hotels’ but are a step up from a yoguan.” I knew the ones he meant; they were used mostly for sexual encounters. “Horsehead had set her up in a room but she was bored and tired of sitting there, and tired of smoking Turtleboat cigarettes.” A Korean brand.

“So she was happy to see you?”

“Not hardly. She took the bayonet to me.”

The same one Paco had almost killed Ernie with.

“Yeah. After I took it away from her and slapped her a couple of times, she settled down. We talked. She asked if I had any word on Paco and I told her that, as far as I knew, his condition hadn’t changed since she’d made her visit to the 121.” I waited while Ernie savored the memory. “So after letting her rant for a while, about you not having to shoot him and all, I told her she was under arrest.”

“How’d she take it?”

“I reached around to lock a handcuff on one of her wrists but she stood up and turned toward me and leaned into me and then she started crying.” Ernie shrugged. “You know, I sort of felt sorry for the kid and she was leaning into me and pressing her face against my chest and then she started breathing on my neck and…”

“You got a hard-on.”

Ernie shrugged.

“She’s just a kid,” I told him. “Seventeen years old. Didn’t your conscience bother you?”

“Seventeen years old but built like she’s twenty-five. Even Jiminy Cricket would’ve had a woody.”

“Oh, shit, Ernie,” I said. “Statutory rape. Are you out of your mind?”

“I was at the time,” he said, “until she was kind enough to bring me back to my senses.”

“How’d she do that?”

“You’re not going to tell anybody, are you?” Ernie was more embarrassed about whatever he was preparing to tell me than he was about admitting that he was fully prepared to have sexual relations with a minor.

“I won’t tell anybody,” I told him.

Ernie turned away, took a deep breath, and said, “She kneed me in the balls.”

I groaned. “And while you were bent over, holding onto yourself, she ran.”

“And a lot faster than I would’ve expected.”

“She took the bayonet with her?”

“That and her purse. I think she had it all planned from the minute I walked in the door.”

Back in Itaewon, Ernie and I didn’t seek out Jimmy Pak right away. And we didn’t leave word with the manager of the Seven Club or do any of the things that one would normally do when requesting an audience with Snake. At the Itaewon Police Station, Captain Kim was out but I wrote a short note in English, folded it over two times and left it with the desk sergeant. All I wrote was the day, the time, my name and Going to see Snake.

The desk sergeant took the note but he was distracted, ordering his cops to pull candles and flashlights and batteries out of the storage bin, expecting the usual power outage that strikes so often in Seoul during a sudden storm. I hoped he’d remember to give the note to Captain Kim. I had to believe he would. Then, we drove directly to Snake’s home.

Snow was falling steadily now and Ernie had to bulldoze a three-foot-high drift out of the way to make a parking space next to the big stone walls in front of Snake’s mansion. He waited in the jeep, alert.

I stood beneath the stone arch in the recessed entranceway, out of the way of the ice-laced wind, and buzzed the bell of the intercom repeatedly. No answer. Finally, I started kicking the bottom of the wooden gate. Ernie climbed out of the jeep and walked over.

“Nobody’s home,” he said.

Just then the intercom buzzed. A voice said. “Nugu syo?” Who is it.

“Sueno,” I said. “Here to see Snake. Important. You alla? I have to see him now!”

The intercom buzzed off.

Ernie studied me, a little shocked by my impatience but I was thinking of Doc Yong. I hoped that Snake’s taunts about her being subject to a lot of “boom-boom” were just that-taunts and nothing more. It was even possible that they didn’t have her. Maybe she had left town for some reason of her own or they had frightened her away. I had to assume the worst until I knew for sure that she was OK.

Snake wouldn’t risk hurting Ernie and me ordinarily. The 8th United States Army was his bread and butter. He wouldn’t do anything to piss them off. Not unless he thought he could get away with it, that is. But at the moment no one at 8th Army knew we were here. In fact, we weren’t supposed to be here. Snake might risk taking us out. After all, he had offed Moretti. But that had been a long time ago, before Snake became rich and controlled a myriad of business interests. Corruption had imposed certain rules, the purpose of which was to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. I was still hoping Snake would honor our deal. If he didn’t, Ernie and I were armed and ready to fight.

As for the murder of Two Bellies and Auntie Mee, and locating the bones of Moretti, first things first. After I’d freed Doc Yong, I’d think about the next problem.

The door creaked open.

Ernie and I walked in.

Snake was wearing a papa-san outfit: turquoise blue silk vest, billowing white pantaloons tapered at the ankle, white socks, and slippers. He held a long-stemmed pipe to his mouth.

“Welcome,” he said, smiling. “Sit, sit.”

Snake pointed to a hand-carved mahogany divan with embroidered cushions. We were in a large traditional room whose floor was covered with tatami mats. In the corner a bronze Buddha was enshrined in front of paintings of silk-robed goddesses floating through billowing clouds and star-filled skies. Everything in the room-celadon vases, porcelain jars, bronze incense burners- appeared to be an antique and signified Snake’s Buddhist faith. Ernie slapped snow off the shoulders of his jacket and stomped his feet. He didn’t like the place. We both ignored Snake’s invitation to sit.

“Where is she?” I asked.

Snake puffed on his pipe, still smiling, and a cloud of tobacco smoke floated in front of him. “First,” he said. “What you got?”

“A list,” I said, “right out of Cort’s Serious Incident Report, of the families that left valuables with Moretti for safekeeping. And I’ve compared it with another list of every orphan that was taken from Itaewon after Moretti’s murder.”

As I said the word murder I stared into Snake’s eyes, searching for a reaction. What I found was an amused smile. I continued.

“According to the Buddhist nuns at the Temple of Constant Truth, all of the children stayed here in Korea. None of them were adopted overseas. The list the nuns gave me is almost identical to Cort’s. Only a few names differ.”

I handed the copies to Snake. He shuffled through them.

“A lot of people here,” he said. “So which one kill Horsehead? Which one kill Water Doggy?”

“There were two men,” I said, “and three women. It figures that their names are on that list.”

“But which ones? And where are they now? How I find up?”

I shrugged. “Send your boys out.” There were about a dozen of them standing in the foyer behind us. “Put them to work instead of letting them stand around with their thumbs up their ass.”

Ernie pulled a stick of ginseng gum out of his pocket, unwrapped it, and stuck it in his mouth. He chewed slowly and steadily. A sure sign that he was nervous but ready to fight.

“No way,” Snake said. “You find up which ones on this list kill Horsehead. Then we talk.” He handed the list back to me. Ernie tensed. Slowly, I folded the paperwork and stuck it in my pocket. When my hand came back out of my jacket, I was holding my. 45.

Ernie’s had appeared in his hand as if by magic. He stepped quickly toward the foyer and trained his pistol on the thugs that were lurking about.

“Umjiki-jima,” Ernie growled. Don’t move.

Sometimes, when he has to, Ernie speaks enough Korean to surprise me.

“Where you think you go?” Snake said. “You think you can get away from Snake?

I stood next to him and pressed the business end of the. 45 against his temple.

“Now!” I shouted. “Doc Yong. Bali bali!” Quickly.

Snake glanced at his men and nodded. One of them stepped forward, holding his hands at his side, palms out.

“He show you,” Snake said.

“No. Not him. He stays here with Ernie and the rest of them. You show me.”

Snake was starting to sweat. Maybe he knew that love can make an American G.I. act irrationally. Maybe he thought I really would shoot him.

I thought so too.

“Move!” I said.

Snake started moving.

Ernie motioned for the thugs to kneel on the floor. They did, still keeping their hands up.

Gun control is absolute in Korea. Only the police and the military are allowed to carry firearms. You could bet that Snake had a few weapons squirreled away somewhere but they were for emergency use only. To be seen carrying one or, worse yet, to use a gun in the commission of a crime would bring the wrath of Korean officialdom down on him. Connections or no, Snake was too smart to risk it. Therefore, for the moment, Ernie and I were holding all the firepower.

Snake and I waltzed down a long corridor lined with oil-papered sliding doors. At the end we turned down a varnished wooden stairwell that creaked beneath our feet. I held his frail left arm firmly in my grip, keeping the. 45 pointed at his head. He was sweating profusely now, and breathing rapidly.

We reached an underground stone-walled corridor that was lined with barred wooden doors.

“Which one?” I asked.

Snake pointed to the third one down.

We moved down the damp corridor quickly and, still holding the. 45 to his head, I ordered Snake to open the door. He slid back a metal rod and then pulled on a flat handle. The door creaked open.

Inside, a single naked bulb hung from a wire. There was a small diesel space heater in the middle of the room and, on either side, broad wooden benches. On one of them a woman sat. Her hands were clasped over her knees. She wore blue jeans and sneakers and a warm woolen jacket. She wore spectacles. Turning her head slowly, as if disoriented, she gazed at me. And then she struggled to focus, as if straining to see what stood there in front of her. She didn’t smile, she just stared.

Doc Yong.

“It’s me,” I said. “Geogi. Come to get you.”

She continued to stare.

“Come on,” I said. “No time.”

Still, she stared. She didn’t move. I started talking to her, jabbering simply to try to coax her back to reality. She continued to stare at us with a blank look on her face.

I shoved Snake against the stone wall. “What the hell did you do to her?”

He didn’t answer. I knew I didn’t have much time. More of Snake’s thugs might arrive any minute, more than Ernie could handle. Or one of the thugs downstairs might try something foolish. We had to start moving but Doc Yong was immobile.

I pressed the. 45 harder up against Snake’s skull.

“You walk over to her,” I said. “Slowly. You grab her by the arms and pull her up and out into the corridor. You got that?”

Snake nodded.

“If you try anything, I’ll blow that stupid smile off your face. You alla?”

Snake nodded again.

I let go of his arm. He stepped forward, speaking soothingly to Doc Yong. When he stood next to her he patted her gently on the shoulder and continued to speak to her as if speaking to a child. Finally, he coaxed her to stand up. He patted her on the back as if she’d accomplished something momentous. Then, slipping his arm behind her, he turned her body and started to guide her toward the door.

Maybe I was studying her face too closely. Staring at the smooth complexion and the soft lips and the round tip of her nose. For however long my concentration wandered, it was long enough for Snake to slip his hand inside his blue silk vest and, faster than I could react, the hand was back out and a glimmering steel blade appeared at Doc Yong’s throat.

“Freeze!” he said.

I did. But my. 45 was still pointed at his head. Unfortunately, his head was mostly hidden behind hers.

“Drop it!” he said.

“Hell no.”

“I’ll slice her throat.”

I gulped. “If you do, I’ll blow your freaking head off!”

“Drop it.”

“I ain’t going to drop it. But I will blow your head off. You can count on it, Snake.”

He shoved Doc Yong forward and followed her closely. Involuntarily, I stepped back. Shuffling like that, inch by inch-me still holding the. 45 pointed at his narrow face and he still pressing the sharp edge of the daggerlike blade up against Doc Yong’s throat-the three of us backed out of the small cell. In the hallway, Snake maneuvered himself closest to the stairwell and started inching backwards.

I knew I should shoot him now. If the bullet slammed into his eyeball it would penetrate his brain so fast that he would have no time to react. He wouldn’t be able to harm Doc Yong. But if I missed-and. 45s were notoriously inaccurate even at close range-he’d fall back and, even if he didn’t intend to, he’d slice open Doc Yong’s throat. Or worse, what if I missed Snake and hit Doc Yong? These thoughts flashed through my mind as we neared the stairwell. If I didn’t stop him now Snake would start backing up the steps. He might cut Doc Yong and run. It was here I had to take him down. Now!

The. 45 quivered in my grip. The barrel was aimed right at Snake but, involuntarily, the barrel bounced and pointed at Doc Yong.

She had become alert, and terrified, realizing now that her life was in danger.

I aimed the. 45 and started to squeeze.

A huge bang lit up the world, so bright that I was blinded. Doc Yong screamed. So did I, I think. The electrical wires in the corridor sparked and then, as quickly as it had come, the bright light disappeared. I was still blinded. Seconds passed, no one moving, but then I heard thunder and when I opened my eyes again, everything was pitch black.

Upstairs, footsteps pounded and then I heard more screams and shots being fired. Ernie. At the same time, the stairwell creaked as someone ran up the ancient wooden steps.

I realized what must have happened. The eye of the Manchurian storm now hovered over Itaewon. Lightning had struck and the electricity in Snake’s mansion had gone out.

I crouched and, with my free hand, touched the brick floor beneath me, orienting myself. Snake had fled. That meant that Doc Yong was still here.

“Yong-a,” I said, calling her name. “Na yo.” It’s me.

No reply. The footsteps upstairs were treading every which way. Men were shouting. Glass, or porcelain was shattered. Men cursed in Korean. Someone shouted for lights.

I crawled forward, sweeping in front of me with my free hand, searching for her.

I touched something. A foot I think. Someone screeched and then a fist hit me on the side of my head. It was a small fist and it didn’t hurt much. It told me where she was. I lunged forward, felt her arms, and then we were grappling with one another in the dark. I enveloped her in my arms. She struggled until she realized who I was. I lay atop her. Her arms found the back of my neck and hugged tightly.

She was safe. For the moment anyway.