G. I. Bones

7

Cort was appalled. He’d been monitoring blotter reports every day since he’d been in country and he’d never heard of any such incident. He asked a question to make sure he understood correctly what the nuns told him.

“The Korean police did nothing?”

The nuns nodded their bald heads. Yes. Nothing.

How many people died?

More than a dozen. Many others were wounded and scarred for life.

Did anyone retrieve their valuables?

No one.

Does anyone know what the Seven Dragons did with those valuables?

Shrugs all around. But the nuns did know that soon after, Itaewon began to explode in a riot of bright lights and fancy nightclubs.

Cort spent the night with the nuns because there was too much snow outside to drive home safely. In the morning he fastened chains to the back tires of his jeep, ate a warming breakfast of hot rice gruel and dried turnip, thanked the nuns, and left.

Upon his return to 8th Army, he checked with the MPs who’d been on duty during the day of the bonfire. There were only two of them. One of the MPs, a guy name Smith, told Cort that he and his partner had been aware of the fire.

“The KNPs told us they were taking care of it,” he said. “Only Korean nationals were involved and they didn’t want us there.”

“You weren’t curious?” Cort asked.

“I’ve seen fires before.”

“Did the KNPs tell you that there’d been a fight before the fire and that during the fire people were injured?”

“They said something about it. Told us it was Reds agitating.”

That would explain 8th Army’s indifference. Any action taken against Communists would have been condoned. If there had been violence, the honchos of 8th Army would just as soon not know.

Cort thanked the MP named Smith and asked him to write out a report. The young man agreed, according to Cort, but something must’ve gone wrong. A copy of Smith’s statement was never included in the SIR.

Tonight the Grand Ole Opry was jumping.

The Kimchee Kowboys, the most popular band on the G.I. circuit, was performing. Only two days had passed since the end-of-month military payday and so, by the time Ernie and I arrived that evening, the place was packed. And noisy. It was the noise I was counting on.

We entered the club at different times. I melted into the crowd for a while but instead of joining in the frivolities, as soon as I figured no one was watching, I made my way to the back steps behind the latrines. While I waited, I checked the tools I’d stuffed inside my winter coat: a wooden mallet and a chisel. All I figured I’d need. As soon as Ernie joined me, he started mumbling. “You’re nuts, Sueno. Really nuts.”

I ignored him. Together, we sneaked down the back stairs.

A faint green glow from fluorescent bulbs followed us down the cement steps. At the bottom, the door leading to the storeroom was padlocked. While I shone the beam from my flashlight on the lock, Ernie stepped forward and, using the small crowbar he had stuffed under his jacket, he popped open the lock. I picked up the broken lock and dropped it in my pocket. I closed the storeroom door behind us and switched on the overhead bulb.

Pallets of OB Beer, product of the Oriental Brewery, in brown bottles and wooden crates, Korean-made, met our eyes. The days of pilfering American beer from the PX supply lines were over. But judging from the crowd upstairs, and their general state of inebriation, the Grand Ole Opry was still selling plenty of suds. And making a hell of a profit.

The Kimchee Kowboys clanged determinedly into a new song, the heels of their boots pounding on the wooden stage. The bass player and the drummer set up a driving rhythm. They were a hell of a sight, five Korean musicians wearing sequined cowboy outfits and broad-brimmed hats. I wished I could go upstairs and drink beer and enjoy the show but no time for that now.

“Come on,” I told Ernie. “Over here.”

We took off our jackets and started heaving crates of beer away from under the delivery ramp. It was cold down here, though not refrigerated. The howling wind outside kept the temperature close to freezing. Clouds of our breath billowed in front of us yet within minutes we’d both worked up a sweat.

“How much beer do these lifers drink?” Ernie asked.

“Enough to float the Seventh Fleet,” I replied.

Finally, the brick wall of the angle-roofed room was revealed. We stood back and looked at it.

“Maybe nothing’s in there,” Ernie said.

“Maybe.”

But there was only one way to find out. I knelt in front of the wall and poked the tip of the iron chisel into the mortar between bricks. I pulled the wooden mallet out of my pocket and, keeping time with the rhythm of the Kimchee Kowboys’ latest, I started to pound. Dust flew. The chisel slid, held, and then gradually started to edge deeper into the crusted mortar.

Ernie knelt a few feet away from me, pulled out his own mallet and chisel, and began hammering to the same driving rhythm. When the song stopped, we stopped. After a few seconds, a new song- this one having something to do with mom and trains and prison- started up. Ernie and I, like two convicts making a break for freedom, resumed our rhythmic labors.

Cort did his best to convince the honchos of 8th Army that the Seven Dragons were a menace. He also promised that, given enough resources and enough search warrants, he could find Mori Di’s remains and put the Seven Dragons out of business. But 8th Army didn’t want to hear it. Already, Itaewon was the wonder of the country. Nightclubs, lit up and operating seven nights a week, offered such amenities as cold beer and cocktails and shaved ice in every drink along with gorgeous women to serve those drinks and entertainers on wooden stages and the best musicians in the country. The 8th Army G.I. s, who were Itaewon’s only customers, were happy. And if the G.I. s were happy, and there were no major incidents in the ville, and there was no hint of any Commie activity, the honchos of 8th Army were happy.

The Seven Dragons provided order. Maybe not law, but order. And in a country recovering from chaos, that was considered to be a good thing. And with their newfound wealth, the Seven Dragons soon made friends in high places. First within the Korean government and, before long, at 8th Army itself. Charities were contributed to, transportation and free food and free beer were provided to officers for their promotion or retirement parties. And with the money the Seven Dragons made from the girls and the booze and the debauchery of Itaewon, they expanded their operations into construction, Moretti’s old bailiwick. The only organizations with enough money to order new construction projects were, coincidentally enough, the Korean government and the 8th United State Army. The Seven Dragons became richer and more influential every day.

And Cort became a pest. People groaned when they saw him coming and rolled their eyes after he left. But for a while he convinced his superiors to keep Moretti’s SIR open. And on his own time he kept adding to it, although less often than before.

A door slammed above us.

Ernie stopped hammering. So did I.

A small pile of gray powder lay on the floor beneath me but I still had not managed to pull even one brick out of the wall.

Footsteps.

Ernie stood and switched off the overhead light. We crouched in darkness, hidden behind a wall of stacked cases of beer.

Someone entered, mumbling to himself, cursing “Miguk-nom”-loutish Americans-and switched on the overhead light. He grabbed what I believed was a case of Seven Star soda water, and carried it outside. After setting it down, he returned, switched the light off again and carried the tinkling bottles upstairs.

Without speaking, Ernie and I returned to our labors.

The reports in the SIR became fewer and Cort only bothered to write one up once or twice a month. He was using his own time to investigate because the provost marshal had long ago pulled him off the Moretti case and assigned him to new duties, mostly involving the accountability of 8th Army supply lines. Since the end of the war, these lines had been porous. They had started prosecuting G.I. s for diverting supplies and selling them on the black-market. Their Korean co-conspirators were occasionally rounded up by the Korean National Police for dealing in contraband but keeping tabs on the millions of dollars in military supplies arriving in Korea was a project that would keep the MPs busy for years. Ernie and I, on the black-market detail, were still fighting that battle, however reluctantly.

Cort wrote a personal memorandum that he left in the SIR file. He didn’t mention names but someone in his chain of command had once again ordered him to lay off the Moretti case. It was over, ancient history, don’t stir it up now! But it wasn’t over for Cort. He kept working, gathering data, trying to figure a way to assault the impregnable fortress that now surrounded the Seven Dragons.

And every day the walls of that fortress grew higher.

Ernie was the first to pull a brick free. I stuck my nose into the opening and inhaled. There was a musty odor but nothing else in particular, other than dust. I shone the flashlight and looked inside. An open space stared back at me, about the same length as my elbow to my fingertip. How high this opening went I didn’t know but probably up to the angled ramp. Whatever we were looking for, however, would probably be resting on the dirt floor beneath, a floor that I couldn’t see.

We kept hammering.

When the Kimchee Kowboys took a break, we took a break. While we sat in the darkness, listening to the conversation and drunken laughter upstairs, someone clomped down the steps. Two people this time. When they switched on the light they were cursing and laughing. They grabbed crates of beer and carried them upstairs, making two trips, and then they switched off the light and left us alone in the dark. Evidently, they weren’t concerned about the padlock and they made no effort to lock the outside door. It figured that on a busy night they’d just as soon leave the door open. When the Kimchee Kowboys started up again, Ernie and I resumed hammering.

After a few minutes, the opening wasn’t quite as large as I wanted but it was large enough. Besides, we were both tired of this bone-jarring work. Ernie switched on his flashlight and pointed it into the hole. With his open palm, he invited me to enter. I stuck my head in as far as I could, twisting my neck as I did so. My shoulders stopped my progress.

“Twist the flashlight over here,” I said.

Ernie tried but I could only make out the wall on the far end of the narrow opening. Nothing to be seen. I needed more room to maneuver.

We started hammering again. After three more songs, we’d removed four more bricks and I tried again. This time, I could just barely squeeze my shoulders in. Ernie stuck his forearm in beneath my chest and twisted his flashlight around at my command.

“Hold it there,” I said. He did. “Twist it down farther.” Ernie complied. The light swept slowly across ancient dust.

That’s when I saw him. A scream started in my throat but somehow, before it erupted, I held it back. I pulled my head out of the opening, breathing heavily.

“What’s wrong?” Ernie asked.

I just pointed my thumb at the wall. He leaned past me and stuck his head inside all the way up to his shoulders. Within seconds, he’d pulled out again too.

Not talking, we loosened a few more bricks. Then, with enough space to stick my upper torso in and my forearm, I made a more careful examination and then grabbed what I wanted. I held it in my open palm. In the light of the flashlight, Ernie squinted, reading the embossed print. Tears came to his eyes. It was the first time I’d ever seen Ernie weep-about anything. Angrily, with dirty knuckles, he rubbed the moisture out of his eyes.

It was a dog tag. The metal had rusted a reddish brown but the imprinted name was clear enough: Moretti, Florencio R. The blood type too: O-posi tive. And the religious preference: Roman Catholic.

As I’d promised Aunite Mee and Miss Kwon and Doc Yong, I’d found Mori Di.

I was sure it was him. The tattered remains of a uniform and even combat boots lay near the skeleton. The garment Cort had bought over twenty years ago in the Itaewon Market must have been amongst Moretti’s extra clothing stuffed into his duffle bag, not the uniform he was wearing. Whoever had done this hadn’t stripped him. Circling the still intact neck bones was a stainless steel chain looped through one dog tag and a smaller chain looped through a second dog tag. There was a reason for this duplication. The dog tag on the big chain, according to army policy, would be left with the corpse. The other dog tag, the one on the smaller chain, would be collected by soldiers of the body recovery unit to make a complete accounting of casualties. That’s the one I unfastened, the small chain, the one the body recovery unit normally would collect when cleaning up after a battle.

All the while, Technical Sergeant Flo Moretti was grinning at me. At least his skull was. It sat in the dust as if it had been waiting a long time and now it was happy that someone had finally stumbled into this tiny brick ossuary. By the light of Ernie’s flashlight, I studied the bones. I even reached in and touched one of them, turning it this way and that in the harsh beam of the flashlight, making sure that I wasn’t imagining what had jumped out at me when I first saw the skeleton.

The bones had been sliced with what appeared to be a sharp-edged knife. Not everywhere. Only on the fingers and the toes, as if someone had purposely tormented Moretti while he was still alive. One of the fingers, the large middle finger, was not only sliced but it had been forced backward so far that it had finally snapped between the big middle knuckle and the joint where the finger joined the hand. Even now, gazing at the wound some twenty years after the fact, I winced.

And then I studied the tip of another finger. It appeared discolored. I lifted the bone into the beam of the flashlight. No doubt. The tip of the bone was darker than the rest of the skeleton, as if it had been singed by fire. The fingertips are the most sensitive parts of the human body. Moretti’s fingertip, at least one of them, had been burnt off.

When the Seven Dragons spirited him away from the scene of the original attack on the night of the Itaewon Massacre, they’d hidden him from the American MPs and later nursed him back to-if not health-consciousness. Then they’d begun questioning Moretti as to the whereabouts of the gold and silver and ancient family heirlooms that the residents of Itaewon had left in his safekeeping. Maybe Moretti thought the MPs would rescue him any minute. Maybe he thought that the Seven Dragons were a bunch of punks and he could bluff them. Whatever he thought, he resisted. And when the answers weren’t forthcoming, the Seven Dragons had tortured him. How long had it lasted? How long had it taken for Mori Di to break? I would estimate quite a while. Maybe even a few days. But as bad as the torture was, there was something else that bothered me even more.

Handcuffs, laying in the dirt near Moretti’s hands. G.I. issue. I recognized them because exactly the same type of metal cuffs were still in use today. And near his neck, dried wads of cotton and a narrow cloth sash. A gag.

Why would anyone gag a dead man?

The answer: they wouldn’t.

My conclusion seemed inescapable. So far, I hadn’t discussed it, even with Ernie, but all the evidence pointed toward one thing. Once the Seven Dragons tortured Moretti and he’d either told him where he’d hidden the valuables-or the Seven Dragons had discovered the hiding place on their own-they had no further use for Technical Sergeant Flo Moretti. He was a liability. They couldn’t let him go free. And it wouldn’t have been easy to transport him anywhere, not in a city swarming with military patrols. So they decided to hide him in the basement of the Grand Ole Opry Club. In this narrow opening not much larger than a coffin. And once they had him inside, handcuffed and gagged, they bricked the opening closed.

Technical Sergeant Flo Moretti, a man who’d tried to help the impoverished people of Itaewon, had watched the Seven Dragons do their work. He’d watched a gang of punk gangsters wall him up, brick by brick, until the final glimmer of light was covered by mortar.

He could scream inside his little brick tomb but no one could’ve heard those screams, except himself.

When I marched alone into the main ballroom of the Grand Ole Opry Club, I still wore my winter jacket with the tools stuck into the inner pockets, making me feel twenty pounds heavier than I actually was. I received some funny looks from the old retirees. It was the Korean employees I was most worried about. But none of them, neither bartenders nor waitresses, stopped their work to pay any attention to me.

I headed straight for the door and pushed through out into the fresh air of the cold Korean night.

A few minutes later, Ernie popped out after me. We hurried down the street.

We’d replaced all the bricks and repositioned the stacked cases of beer in the basement as best we could, to camouflage our activities. I hoped this would give us a couple of days before someone discovered what we’d done. Once someone took the time to look, it would be obvious as to what had happened. Would one of the Korean employees investigate? I was hoping that, what with the place being frantically busy, they wouldn’t notice the two guys who’d walked in, disappeared for an hour and a half or so, and then walked back out. That they’d just write off our behavior as the weirdness that they were used to in American G.I. s.

Still, we didn’t have much time until someone discovered that we’d broken through the brick wall in the storeroom. Before then, somehow, I had to convince 8th Army to wrangle us a search warrant so we could take full advantage of the evidence we’d discovered. We needed it to make our activities retrospectively legal.

I was filthy. So was Ernie. Brick dust salted my hair. It was still early, only half past eight, so we headed toward the far side of the nightclub district and entered an alley near the open-air Itaewon Market. The stalls were dark and shuttered at this hour, canvas flapping in the cold evening breeze. Hidden in a dark alley, lit only by a half-dozen green bulbs, lurked the last Korean bathhouse still open. At the entranceway, I plopped down a five thousand won note-about ten bucks-and the proprietress smiled a toothy grin, happy for the unexpected business.

The middle-aged woman assigned to scrub my hair clawed with the ferociousness of a lioness. Then she slipped her hand into a coarse red mitten and started in on my back. It felt as if she were systematically peeling my flesh. Oily pellets of black dirt emerged from every pore of my skin, like tiny insects searching for light. By the time she was done, I felt completely clean but my skin flamed red. She rinsed me off, dried me, and then oiled me with some sort of lotion. After slipping my clothes back on, I sat in the waiting room chatting with the bathhouse women, sipping on a can of cold guava juice. Ernie took a lot longer than I did. More than an hour longer. When he finally emerged he looked, for once in his life, subdued. And as limp as a freshly washed rag.

There was less than an hour left until the midnight curfew. We made our way back to the Grand Ole Opry Club and waited out front, watching as the band loaded their equipment onto a flatbed truck.

Kimchee Kitty, the lead singer for the Kimchee Kowboys emerged. Her lush hair was piled high atop her head and she was wrapped in a long cloth coat with a fur collar that she held tightly beneath the soft flesh of her face. Our eyes met and she smiled at me. I almost asked for her autograph but decided at the last minute not to. Too shy.

Ernie mingled with the half-looped retirees in the street who’d stayed until the end of the show. I sauntered around inside and casually listened to the conversations of the bartender and the waitresses. There was no indication that anyone had noticed the hole Ernie and I had knocked in the brick wall of the basement. This was good. It meant we’d have time to obtain our search warrant and retrieve the bones of Mori Di and any still existing evidence of who had murdered him.

The truck carrying the Kimchee Kowboys had departed and most of the customers had left when I emerged from the club. A couple of business girls were tugging on Ernie’s sleeve. They weren’t propositioning him, not this time. Instead there was terror in their eyes.

One of them said, “You CID, right?”

“Right,” he answered. No sense trying to keep it a secret. Everyone in the ville knew anyway.

“You go King Club,” she said. “Bali bali.” Quickly.

“Why?” Ernie asked.

“You look at roof. Some yoboseiyo up there.”

In Korean, yoboseiyo means “hello.” In G.I. slang, it means a person, usually a Korean person.

Ernie didn’t bother to question them further. He started to run, swerving left on Hooker Hill, heading for the King Club. I followed him.

A crowd had gathered in front of the King Club.

People were looking up, pointing, and that’s when I saw her. She wore a short skirt, its hemline above her knees and I noticed that her calves were round and sturdy. Her hair was cropped short, like a middle-school girl’s but shaggier. This was a common cut amongst the business girls of Itaewon since many of them had left school only weeks-or days-before starting work here.

Her blouse, long-sleeved and white, was made of a flimsy material that billowed in the cold wind blowing across the roof of the King Club. She had already climbed over the parapet and stood with the heels of her flat shoes dug into a ledge that was only three or four inches wide. Her arms were spread-eagled, holding onto drainpipes on either side of her.

“It’s Miss Kwon,” I said to Ernie.

“Who?” Ernie had never met her.

“The one Hilliard complained about.”

Ernie’s head swiveled. “I thought she went home.”

“Apparently,” I said, “she’s back.”

I ran through the entryway of the King Club, still clutching my winter jacket tightly around my waist, wishing like hell I didn’t have a mallet and chisel stuck inside my belt. The main ballroom was empty, no band, no G.I. s, no business girls. They were all out on the street gawking up at the suicidal Miss Kwon. Some of the G.I. s were already chanting, “Jump!” in mocking voices as if they were kidding. But I knew they weren’t kidding. That’s what they wanted her to do.

I shoved through the back door, found the steps, and climbed. Ernie was right behind me. We reached the top floor and spotted a wooden ladder at the end of the hall that had been pulled down from the roof. We climbed as fast as we could. On the roof I found Mrs. Bei, the manager of the King Club. Standing near her was a young man in black slacks, white shirt and bow tie-her bartender-and three or four waitresses. They all clutched the edge of the parapet, looking down, shouting at the person who clung to the outside of the wall. One elderly man, the janitor, stood farther away, leaning over the edge of the roof, staring at Miss Kwon with an embarrassed smile on his face.

I took off my jacket, dropped the chisel and mallet atop it, and peered over the edge of the roof.

I was only ten feet from Miss Kwon but she wasn’t looking my way. She was staring down at the street below, perspiration pouring off the soft cheeks of her sweet face. I turned and grabbed Mrs. Bei.

“She come back,” Mrs Bei said in English. “Family no want. They need money. Snake say she gotta sleep with any G.I. She no want.”

Ordering Miss Kwon to spend the night with Hilliard was the only way for Snake, the owner of the King Club, to avoid having Hilliard press his complaint. Since the race riot out here less than two years ago-white American G.I. s fighting black American G.I. s-8th Army was phobic about even the slightest appearance of racial conflict. That riot had hit the Stateside newspapers and caused the 8th Army commander to be relieved. The current commander wanted no repeat. To keep Hilliard from raising a stink there was an even chance that the 8th Army honchos would put Snake’s nightclub off-limits. Fifty-fifty wasn’t good enough odds for Miss Kwon to maintain her personal moral standards. She had to give it up.

Ernie was ready to climb over the parapet.

“Hold it,” I told him. “Even if you grab her, she could fall and pull you over with her.”

“We gotta do something.”

That was Ernie. Without thinking, he’d already decided that somebody he didn’t know had to be saved, even at the risk of his own life. But Agent Ernie Bascom never calculated risk. He just did what seemed right at the time.

I thought of speaking to Miss Kwon in Korean, but I was worried that just the voice of an American G.I. might cause her to jump. Mrs. Bei kept up a steady, soothing, harangue and it must’ve been doing some good because Miss Kwon hadn’t jumped yet.

Finally, four stories below us, two uniformed Korean cops made their way through the crowd. They looked up, saw Miss Kwon on the edge of the roof of the King Club and spoke together rapidly. One of them took off in the direction of the KNP station. The other moved the crowd back, away from Miss Kwon’s probable point of impact.

Mrs. Bei said something about respecting one’s parents.

This made Miss Kwon look away from the street below. She stared directly at us. “My parents want me to make money,” she said in Korean. “That’s all I’m good for. No better than a cow. They hate me.”

“They don’t hate you,” Mrs. Bei replied. “They are poor. They have no choice.”

“Narul miyo!” Miss Kwon shouted. They hate me!

Instinctively, Mrs. Bei reached out to the girl and Miss Kwon flinched. One of her heels slipped off the ledge. She started to fall forward but her grip on the drainpipes held her back. Still, within seconds, the added weight made one of the pipes groan and then bend. Miss Kwon’s right hand lost its grip.

With one heel still on the ledge and her left hand still gripping one of the drainpipes, Miss Kwon’s right foot swung out into the open air in a wide arc. The movement was slow and graceful and as she rotated, the crowd below, involuntarily, let out a loud gasp. The gasp coincided with Miss Kwon’s pirouette and then stopped abruptly when Miss Kwon slammed face first into the wall to her left. Scrabbling with her right foot, she managed to gain another toehold and with her right hand she clutched an outcropping of brick. Now she clung to the wall, facing dirty mortar, looking as if she were hugging the indifferent brick edifice.

I moved to my left and stared down at her.

Her soft check was pressed up against the wall. The cheek was wet with moisture. I could see her features clearly because directly below red and blue neon flickered: the King Club sign. Beyond the glow, I spotted a familiar figure shoving her way through the gawking crowd.

“Jom kanman,” I told Miss Kwon in Korean. Wait a moment. “A friend of yours is on the way.” She seemed to be listening, so I continued. “Doctor Yong In-ja. She’ll be here any second.”

Miss Kwon hugged the building tighter.

Doc Yong reached the roof and approached me as if swimming through moonlight. Her face was contorted in rage, her white coat flailing at her side.

“Her parents sent her back,” she said in English.

I nodded.

“And now the owners here want her to sleep with that old G.I.”

I nodded again.

Doc Yong stepped up to the roof, placed her hands flat on the parapet, and looked down. She gasped, held the sudden intake of breath, and managed to calm herself.

“Kwon,” she said, leaning forward. “I am here.”

Ernie motioned for everyone else to back away from the ledge.

Doc Yong continued to speak. Miss Kwon, face still pushed up against the cold brick wall, was crying profusely. Doc Yong kept telling her that she understood, that she knew that Miss Kwon had dreams to make something of herself, of getting an education, of some day marrying a man of her own choosing, of having a family, of seeing her children grow, of watching her own sons and daughters marry, and of one day becoming-herself-an honored grandmother. All these things were understandable, Doc Yong continued. And laudable. And they were still possible. Difficult, surely, but possible. But they would only be possible if Miss Kwon decided that she wanted to live. If Miss Kwon decided that she wanted to fight against her troubles. If Miss Kwon decided that no matter how many problems were hurled at her by life that she would stand up and stare those problems in their evil eyes and she would fight back. That somehow, some way, she would make something of herself.

Miss Kwon was nodding now, still crying, but nodding.

Now, Doc Yong said, give me your hand and me and my friend-she meant me-will help pull you up.

Miss Kwon hesitated.

Doc Yong stood silent, holding her breath. She knew that this was the moment in which Miss Kwon had to make her decision. Should she live or should she die? And on that roof in Itaewon, staring down at this teenage girl who’d only recently left school, I watched her choose between life and death.

Without thinking, Doc Yong and I clasped each other‘s hands and squeezed.

The cold wind gusted and the moron G.I. s below continued with their mocking chants: “Jump!” Then shameful laughter. Thankfully, I don’t think Miss Kwon heard.

She stared up at us, eyes flooding. Then she smiled bravely and held out her left hand.

Doc Yong reached for it and grabbed it. I leaned over the ledge and I felt Ernie wrap his arms around my waist, leaning back, ready to brace me as I reached for Miss Kwon’s other arm.

But when Doc Yong’s hand touched Miss Kwon’s, Miss Kwon leaned back, putting too much of her weight on the doctor’s grasp. Doc Yong tried but she couldn’t hold on and Miss Kwon teetered backward, panic suffusing her moist face. I lunged forward, trying to grab a handhold, but all I touched was hair. My fingertips brushed the top of her skull and then she tilted farther back, her arms flailing, and her face showing complete panic. From behind Mrs. Bei, the bartender grabbed Doc Yong and held onto her to keep her from plunging over the ledge too. And then Miss Kwon had gone too far, too far for anyone to believe she could be saved. And then her feet left the toehold and she was floating free in space, her sweet face looking not panicked but confused.

Something had gone wrong and she wasn’t quite sure what.

And she fell. And the G.I. voices below were silent but the Korean women started to scream. So shrilly that when Ernie jerked me back over the ledge I rolled onto the dirty cement of the flat roof, pounding my fists against my ears, trying to force the screaming to stop. And then we heard a crash, a whining squeal, as if lines of metal and copper wire were being ripped out of their moorings and, finally, something much more awful.

A thud.

Doc Yong, Ernie, and I bounded down the inner stairwell of the King Club.

On the way, I remembered Auntie Mee’s curse. She said if I didn’t find the bones of Mori Di, Miss Kwon would meet an unpleasant fate. Most likely, she’d die. But now, after we’d found the bones, in complete contravention of the fortune teller’s foolish prediction, Miss Kwon had met that unpleasant fate.

Miss Kwon lay in a mangled mess of wire and neon in the street. On the way down, she’d slammed back first onto the King Club’s flashing sign. She’d done everything she could to break her fall- grabbed at support cables, flashing tubes, metal brace work to slow her downward progress. Wrapped, now, sinuously around her body, live electrical wires sputtered angrily into the cold night air.

Ernie reached her first and, with no thought to his own safety, stepped gingerly over the juice still surging through hot lines. He bent over, reached beneath Miss Kwon’s limp body, and lifted her up and away from the sparking mess. Doc Yong and I helped untangle her arms and legs. She was groaning when we carried her away and laid her on dirty cement, groaning and still breathing.

A squad of uniformed KNPs arrived. Doc Yong identified herself and tried to ward them off but, using their nightsticks, they shoved us away from Miss Kwon. Ernie shoved back. One of the cops screamed at Ernie and pulled his. 38. Before Ernie could do something truly stupid, I stepped between the two men. We stood that way for a moment, curses flying back and forth in English and Korean. The sergeant-in-charge finally shouted an order. He recognized Ernie and me from the many times we’d worked out here in Itaewon with the KNPs. He told his man that we were cops and to lay off. The officer took a step backwards and reholstered his weapon.

By now the KNPs had Miss Kwon completely surrounded. She had, technically, committed a crime: attempted suicide. Still, Doc Yong was doing her best to convince the sergeant-in-charge not to take Miss Kwon into custody. A Korean ambulance arrived. White-clad paramedics emerged but they didn’t bother to pull a stretcher out of the back of the ambulance. Instead, they grabbed Miss Kwon’s legs and her shoulders and, carrying her like a sack of spring rice, tossed her into the back of the small white van. Doc Yong assisted the paramedics, trying to keep Miss Kwon’s back as straight as possible. Then she hopped into the back of the emergency van, squatted next to Miss Kwon, and spoke soothing words. Just before the medics slammed the door, Doc Yong glanced up at me, gave me a half smile, and waved.

I waved back.

The next morning at the 8th Army CID office, our goal was to obtain an official search warrant and obtain it fast. If the employees of the Grand Ole Opry discovered that we’d busted a hole in the wall of Mori Di’s crypt, it wouldn’t take long for the Seven Dragons to find out. They’d destroy all the evidence fast.

Colonel Brace, the 8th Army provost marshal, stared at the rusted dog tag laying in the center of his highly polished mahogany desk.

“They buried him?” he asked.

Ernie and I nodded.

“Alive?”

We nodded again.

“After torturing him?”

This time we didn’t move.

The colonel shook his head, sighed, and continued to stare at the dog tag. He hadn’t asked us how we’d gotten it. He didn’t want to know. Finally, he looked up at the first sergeant who was standing beside his desk.

“Top, how soon can we obtain a search warrant from the KNP Liaison Office?”

The first sergeant shrugged. “This morning, if they get up off their butts.”

“Make sure they do,” the colonel replied. “Tell them the Eighth Army PMO considers it top priority.”

“They’ll want to know why, sir.”

“Tell them it’s a suspected black-market cache.”

The first sergeant saluted and left the office. The colonel turned back to us.

“I’m going to keep this,” he said, picking up the dog tag. “I’ll show it to the CG during this morning’s briefing.”

Neither Ernie nor I had any objection to that, as long as we got our hands on a search warrant.

Then Colonel Brace clutched the dog tag in his hand. And squeezed.

It was hard to tell which report was Cort’s last entry. Someone had gone through the SIR some time after his last entry and jumbled the order of the papers. Unfortunately, many of the second and third pages of the various entries weren’t properly numbered and dated. Cort might’ve been a hell of an investigator but he wasn’t a hell of a clerk. So I had to read through them all and try to figure which one went with which starting page based on content. All the reports had been knocked out on what seemed to be the same manual typewriter. Probably an old Remington, one of the army’s favorite brands at that time. I could see where the ink had faded and the ribbon had been replaced. That too, helped me place the pages in the correct order.

Cort had never given up, even after he’d been officially assigned to other duties. He’d kept trying to make a case concerning Moretti’s death until the day he left country. I stacked up the pages and was about to tie the SIR with the knotted string I’d found it in, when I noticed a clump of sheets that had slipped down into the sleeve of one of the brown folders. It was as if they’d purposely been hidden. I pulled them out and unfolded the brittle sheets until they were flat on the table. They were new to me. I hadn’t read them before. The subject title was Provisional Inventory.

I began to read.

It was an inventory of all the valuables that Moretti held for safekeeping for the refugee families of Itaewon. How Cort had obtained such an inventory I couldn’t be sure. Maybe the nuns had given it to him or maybe one of the G.I. truck drivers who’d worked with Moretti. However he’d gotten it, this list of riches explained where the Seven Dragons had found the capital to construct the glittering red-light district of Itaewon.

There were names in one column, first written in Korean in varying hands, and then spelled out in English. The English handwriting was consistently the same. Probably Moretti’s. And if the variability of the hangul writing was any indication, the Koreans had written their own names on the sheet as they’d turned in their valuables to him. Some had even written their names in Japanese. For much of the thirty-five-year occupation of Korea, from 1910 to 1945, the ancient Korean language had not been taught in Korean schools, only Japanese, so the Koreans would become dedicated subjects of Emperor Hirohito. It hadn’t worked. Through it all, the Koreans held steadfast to their own culture and their own national identity.

After the names were written, a description of the item and quantity or approximate size was provided. First in Korean in the varying hands, and then again in English in the script that I could only assume belonged to Moretti. Finally, a date of receipt and then two signatures: first the Korean’s and then a set of initials, FRM. Florencio R. Moretti.

All very official looking. Probably Moretti had given the depositor a scrap of paper with the same information written on it. But I was only guessing because I searched and no receipts were to be found in the pockets of the various folders that comprised the Mori Di Serious Incident Report.

The inventory read like a museum catalog. There were tiaras from the Yi Dynasty; porcelain from an earlier Korean dynasty known as Koryo; gold necklaces imported from Burma; jade pendants shipped in from the Chinese province of Fujian; antler horn from Manchuria; a Buddhist codex from Tibet; and a number of paintings and calligraphy scrolls from all over the Far East. Of course there were the more mundane items, like small bricks of silver bullion, gold coins minted in Mexico, and even a few spirit tablets recorded with the names written in Chinese characters, of revered ancestors.

These treasures must have been sold on the black-market by the Seven Dragons. Of course, they might have retained some of the precious objects. Yes, I decided it was possible. That might be important evidence in building a case against them. Yes. That is why, instead of returning the Serious Incident Report and the inventory to the SIR warehouse, I locked the entire sheaf of folders in the safe in the Administration Office of the 8th Army Criminal Investigation Detachment.

Staff Sergeant Riley helped me make an inventory, for the record, on an 8th Army hand receipt. Just to be thorough, he kept one onionskin copy, I kept the other. Folding it neatly, I stuffed it in my wallet, just in case I encountered any of these precious objects on my sojourns through the ville. I’d seldom seen anything as valuable as these artifacts-not, at least, outside of museums-but soon I’d be entering the offices and dens of the inner sanctum of the Seven Dragons and who knew what riches I’d find there?

Maybe gold bullion. Maybe ancient tiaras. And maybe more evidence leading to the death of the man who the Koreans called Mori Di.

Ernie and I didn’t make it out to the Grand Ole Opry Club until late afternoon.

The KNP liaison officer had been dragging his feet all day, seeking clearance for the search warrant from his superiors who were supposedly indisposed or locked in high-level governmental meetings or on distant journeys that made it impossible to contact them. Finally, the 8th Army commanding general stepped in. His adjutant called the assistant to the KNP commander in Seoul and, within ten minutes, we had our search warrant.

Moretti’s dog tag was working its magic.

This time Ernie and I didn’t have to disguise our intentions. Neither did the four uniformed 8th Army MPs who tagged along with us. The owner of the Grand Ole Opry was a tall, slender Korean woman who the G.I. customers called Olive. Perspiration showed on Olive’s forehead and her straight black hair was in disarray. She accepted our warrant without complaint and seemed completely relaxed, claiming that she knew she didn’t have any black-market activities going on in her club. In fact she was chatty, in English, and told us that her father, who was now deceased, bought the Grand Ole Opry from the original owner, a Mr. Ju, who was also now deceased. Mr. Ju, I’d been led to understand by Two Bellies, was one of the original Seven Dragons. Six of them were still alive and, supposedly, still pulling the strings here in Itaewon-and elsewhere.

Olive led us downstairs. Had she been down here at all today? I asked. No, she always had her employees restock at night, after closing, so the club would be ready to open at four in the afternoon, just before the 8th Army G.I. s got off work and started to make their way out to Itaewon.

“You don’t unlock the storeroom before that?” I asked.

“No. I opened the front door about two this afternoon and let my janitor in. We’ve been cleaning in the main bar ever since.”

The time was now fifteen hundred hours so that meant that she’d opened about an hour ago. Olive switched on the overhead fluorescent light in the hallway and stopped at the entrance to the storeroom. She stared at the broken padlock dangling from the hasp.

“Isang hei,” Olive said. Strange.

Olive frowned. She entered the storeroom first and switched on the overhead bulb. Trash was piled by the rear door, ready to be taken out.

The 8th Army KNP liaison officer, Lieutenant Pong, had also tagged along. Since the commanding general of the 8th United States Army had shown such an interest in this case, KNP headquarters in downtown Seoul wanted a full report. He stood back, out of the way, and crossed his arms.

At Ernie’s instruction, the four burly MPs started hoisting crates of beer. Soon the brick wall was exposed. So were the piles of dried mortar on the floor and the loose bricks that Ernie and I had stuck back into the wall.

Olive gasped. “Who do?” she asked, pointing.

I shook my head and didn’t answer. Then Ernie and I knelt on the floor and started pulling the bricks out. Even before we were finished, I could smell it. A fleshy smell, as if someone had been sitting in a sauna bath too long.

What the hell was this all about? I hadn’t noticed any such odor last night. Or had I just been too nervous?

When the opening in the brick wall was large enough, I switched on my flashlight and poked my nose in. This time I couldn’t hold back.

I screamed.

While waiting for the KNP Liaison Office to come up with our search warrant, Ernie and I drove downtown to the Beikhua Hospital. Doc Yong was there, in a room with Miss Kwon. The little chipmunk-looking erstwhile business girl was snoring heavily. Doc Yong gave us a wan smile and bade us to sit down next to her on wooden stools.

I figured she’d paid for Miss Kwon’s medical care, in advance, which is the way Korean hospitals usually want it. And, judging by her disheveled appearance, the good doctor had probably been here all night. I sat down next to her and took her hand. To my surprise, she squeezed my palm.

“Thank you,” she said, to both Ernie and me, “for helping last night.”

“We weren’t much help,” Ernie said, nodding toward Miss Kwon.

“You tried,” Doc Yong answered, “and we’re lucky she’s not dead.”

She described the prognosis. Not bad, considering. The doctors speculated that Miss Kwon’s wild flailing, grabbing instinctively onto anything that would break her fall, had, in fact, saved her life. Miss Kwon had no internal injuries. That was the important thing. Her left ankle had been sprained badly but not broken and the only other injuries were a pomegranate-sized lump on her noggin and scratches and bruises both on her legs and on her hands, fingers, and forearms, where she’d tried so desperately to slow her plunge to the dirty pavement. After internal injuries, what the doctors were most worried about was concussion but she seemed to be in the clear. Now, after being heavily sedated, all she’d need was rest and recuperation. Not something Itaewon business girls were usually allowed.

“You need rest too,” I told Doc Yong.

She nodded her head slowly. “And the clinic-”

“The clinic can wait,” I said.

I pulled her to her feet, guided her out to the jeep, and Ernie and I drove her home.

It was the first time I’d seen where she lived. It was a small room, she told us, on the third floor of a rundown apartment building, shoved into a crowded slot in a tightly packed neighborhood known as Oksu-dong. She left me at the first floor and, although I offered to help her to her door, she shook her head negatively and trudged alone up the squeaking wooden stairs.

When I poked my head through the hole in the brick wall of the basement of the Grand Ole Opry Club, I normally would’ve been embarrassed about screaming except that all the MPs-and Ernie too-were as scared shitless as I was. Especially when they took their turns peering inside. Even Lieutenant Pong, who normally had a ferocious expression on his face, appeared a little green around the gills.

We had to pull the body out from behind the wall because it was no longer a skeleton. It was a big, fleshy corpse, full of blood and mucous and other bodily fluids, and it was wrapped in a flowery pink dress and its dyed black hair was damp and strung around its ears and neck like snakes uncoiling from the skull of Medusa.

Once we dragged her through the hole and plopped her on the floor and searched back inside the opening, we discovered that the bones of Mori Di, every last one, were now gone. Along with the tattered uniform and the combat boots and the rusty old pair of handcuffs and the cotton swabs and the woolen gag. Mori Di had once again been spirited away-to points unknown, by person or persons unknown. And in his place had been left the rotund, no longer breathing body of Two Bellies.

Her mouth was open in horror. Her throat cut. Blood covered everything.

One of the MPs vomited. Then the rest of us did. Olive ran for a mop. Lieutenant Pong disappeared into the back alley.

Martin Limon

G.I. Bones