Jade Lady burning

9

When we gave our report on Lindbaugh, Ernie did most of the talking: “We sat in the parking lot behind the Officers’ Club while he got a steam job and a blow bath. Then he bought a bunch of groceries and a cock book and went back to his hooch.”

“What time did you end the surveillance?”

“Close to nine.”

Seven-thirty is close to nine-not very close, but close.

“Our man Kurtz,” the first sergeant said, “is keeping an eye on him during the day but I want you guys to hang loose in case Lindbaugh decides to go anywhere unusual. Tonight, be at his hooch before five. Stay with him at least until curfew. It’s Friday night so he might have someplace to go.”

So did we. But my stomach was churning too violently to mouth off.

The first sergeant rubbed a speck from the gleaming surface of his immaculate desk. “I want you out at the parking lot at KPA watching his sedan during the lunch hour and then back at his hooch before he gets off work. Any questions?”

“Yeah,” I said. “What’s for chow?”

“Get out of here, Sueсo.”

We got up.

“Keep an eye on him, Bascom. He’s going to kill himself out there running the ville.”

Was I that obvious?

Ernie drove me back to the barracks. He said he’d be back at about ten-thirty to pick me up for the noon surveillance. I went to my room, took off my coat and tie, and lay down on my bunk. Carefully, so as not to wrinkle the synthetic material of my suit pants too much.

It was good to lie down. Mr. Yi, the houseboy, brought two pairs of glistening black low quarters into the room and placed one pair under my bunk and the other pair under the bunk of my roommate, Pederson.

Pederson worked rotating shifts at the communications center, had a lot of hobbies, and hung out mostly at the arts and crafts center. I didn’t see much of him. He was cagey, though. On the weekends he’d strap a camera over his shoulder, take a bus down to Ewha Women’s University on the outskirts of Seoul, and ask the best-looking young ladies he could find to take photos of him standing by a fountain. This often led to conversations in a coffee shop and occasionally much more.

Freebies.

Pederson was smart and also thrifty. He let them buy the coffee and didn’t bother to put any film in the camera.

I tried to go over the Pak Ok-suk case but it was a struggle. There were so many people involved. Something was missing but maybe whatever was, was only something that I had failed to notice. Maybe all the pieces were there but what was left out was my ability to put it all together.

I had yet to see a photograph of Miss Pak but I had acquired a picture of her in my mind. She was lovely, with soft round thighs and long black hair, and every time I thought of her she was dancing for me and smiling. I reached out to her and something shook me. My eyes popped open. Ernie.

‘Time to hat up, pal.”

I washed my face in the latrine and then we jumped in Ernie’s jeep and drove over to the KPA compound. We found a little parking spot in the shade of one of the big red-brick buildings and waited. Ernie looked me over.

“What’s happening, man?”

“Not much.”

“Did you spend the night with Kimiko?”

I turned and stared him down.

“We talked.”

‘That’s one worry off my mind,” Ernie said.

“What’d you do last night?”

“Hit a few bars. Then I went back to the compound. On the way in I checked Lindbaugh’s sedan. Cold. Hadn’t been moved.”

“And then you went back to the barracks?”

Ernie’s hands squeezed the bottom of the steering wheel. He looked straight ahead and for a moment I thought he hadn’t heard me.

“Naw. I went to see the Nurse.”

I let out a whoop. “I knew it! You can’t stay away.”

Ernie grinned a sheepish half-moon filled with well-brushed canines. “It’s the tears. They do it every time.”

We heard a door slam and a heavy rhythmic pounding as someone raced down the metal stairwell. Lindbaugh.

“Here he comes.”

Lindbaugh zigzagged his big frame through the parking lot, reached deep into his suit pocket for a wad of keys, and piled into the green Army sedan. He screeched off in a cloud of slush. Ernie started the jeep and we followed, about thirty yards behind at first. Steadily Ernie closed the gap to about ten. There were still two or three kimchi cabs between us at any given time as we threaded our way through the rushing flow of traffic.

Instead of turning right at the Camp Coiner intersection, Lindbaugh turned left, towards the sedate, leafy neighborhood of Huam-dong. About two blocks down the road he took another left into a narrow alley and parked. We continued up the main road, Ernie made a U-turn, doubled back, let me out just in front of the alley, and continued down the street, hung another U, and positioned himself across the street where he could see as far down the alley as possible.

Shops lined the narrow lane: a bicycle repair shop, a small fish market, a florist. Down the road a few yards a huge red banner waved in front of a small restaurant. The banner said PO SHIN TANG, “Body Protection Soup.”. A nice way of saying dog meat.

Lindbaugh’s car was parked a few yards down from the restaurant but he was gone. I pretended to look at some of the flowers at the open-air florist. An old man, in rolled-up gray slacks and sleeveless T-shirt, shuffled over towards me. I smiled and waved him off. He seemed convinced that I was harmless and returned to his chores.

I walked a little farther down the street, until I could see through the window of the restaurant. It was dark but I could make out the big girth of Lindbaugh and the outlines of two Korean men sitting across from him at a table. I went back to the florist and waited.

Apparently, they were having lunch. I wondered if Lindbaugh could read Korean-I doubted it-and whether or not he knew what the specialty of the house was. Lunch was mercifully quick.

Lindbaugh broke through the beaded curtain and looked both ways. I faded deeper into the stall of orchids. He walked down to his car alone and got in. After he drove past, I waited until the two Koreans came out. They paused in the alleyway, as if to make sure he was gone. Then they went back inside. Maybe they had a big weekend lined up and needed some more body protection soup, since it was believed to be an aphrodisiac.

Ernie drove us back to the KPA compound. Lindbaugh’s sedan was there.

I told Ernie about the dog-meat restaurant and the two Korean men sitting with Lindbaugh while he slurped his soup. Ernie nodded, bored. Just another clerk taking bribes. He didn’t show any interest until I told him the two men were the same two guys who had jumped Kimiko in Itaewon.

We had four more hours until Lindbaugh got off work so, on the way to the CID Detachment, I had Ernie drop me off at the base library. They’ve got a few shelves there dedicated to Korean culture and history and language. I scrounged around until I found the fat Korean-English dictionary and sat down to look up Miss Pak Ok-suk’s name.

The family name, Pak, was a clan name and literally millions out of the country’s forty million were named that, the three major clans in Korea being Kim, Lee, and Pak. The Koreans say that if you climb to the top of a tall building in Seoul and throw a pebble off, chances are that it will land on the head of a Pak, Kim, or Lee.

At one time people with the same family name were not allowed to marry but that was done away with: It just wasn’t practical. There are too many unrelated people with the same last names.

Her given name was more interesting. As I had thought, ok meant jade. In the Orient, jade is the most highly prized of all precious stones, and up until only a few decades earlier it had been considered more valuable than gold. Women often wore it in rings to signify that they were married.

Ironically, the second half of her name, suk meant virtue. Feminine virtue. Purity.

I made notes on the case and tried reading the Seoul papers. After a while, I put the dictionary back on the shelf, crumpled my notes, and threw them away.

When we got to Lindbaugh’s quarters, his sedan was parked in front. After twenty minutes he appeared, nattily dressed in dark slacks, sports shirt, gray sweater, and a black windbreaker with ITCHEY FOOT BAR AND GRILL, TOLEDO, OHIO on the back. Two big fluorescent footprints framed the bar’s name and seemed to step forward rhythmically as Lindbaugh waddled to his sedan. We were out of our suits and ties, too, the things that advertised us as CID agents. I wore sneakers, blue jeans, and a nylon jacket with dragons embroidered on the back-just your typical GI.

We followed him over to the Officers’ Club, where he parked the Army sedan out of the way, up against the tree line. He walked to the entranceway to wait for a cab. He got one in less than ten minutes and went directly to Itaewon.

Ernie dropped me about twenty yards behind where Lindbaugh was paying the driver. I leaned back against a door across the street from the UN Club, hands in my pockets, trying to look bored, as if I were waiting for someone. Lindbaugh glanced around but not very carefully. He didn’t seem to notice me. I followed his waddle up the hill.

He headed towards the King Club and for a moment I thought he was going to go in, but instead he passed the big wide steps of the entranceway and continued up the hill. Little hole-in-the-wall hostess bars lined the way. Music blared. The girls were out like they always were, in front of their respective alleys. Like trapdoor spiders, they would drag you back to their hooches, for a price. Lindbaugh got propositioned a couple of times but showed admirable restraint. At the Sloe-eyed Lady Club he went in.

Great name. They’d probably looked it up in the Korean-English dictionary not realizing that most GIs would understand slant-eyed but sloe-eyed would sort of throw them. They had a good sound system, I could hear it from ten yards out, also a lot of bright neon, and some snappy-looking ladies milling around. So who cared what the name meant?

I stopped and talked to one of the girls who had propositioned me and she dropped down to five dollars real quick since it was still early and there wasn’t much traffic yet. I thanked her anyway and walked in front of the Sloe-eyed Lady Club so I could get a good look at Lindbaugh through the plate-glass windows.

He was gone.

I tried to act unconcerned, walked up a few yards, talked briefly to another girl-this one started at five dollars-and then crossed the road to get another angle on the windows of the Sloe-eyed Lady Club. The joint was empty, except for the girls. No customers. Lindbaugh must have snuck out the back.

Maybe he had someone to meet out back-a girl?-or maybe he had spotted his escorts and decided to ditch us.

I followed the road as it swerved around Itaewon. Ernie was walking down the hill towards me.

“Watch the front of the Sloe-eyed Lady Club. Lindbaugh must have slipped out the back.” I pointed to the narrow alley running off through the high cement-block walls. “I’m going to check back here. If we get separated, meet me at the King Club at”-1 checked my watch-“ eight.”

Ernie nodded and sauntered down the road. I crept into the narrow alley.

The stone and cement-block walls were so high that they blocked most of the light. I had to stop a moment and let my eyes adjust. There were wooden gates set into the stone walls but most of them were shut tight.

I walked down to about where I figured the back of the Sloe-eyed Lady would be. The gate was open. Light shone out and I heard voices, feminine voices. I peeked in. There was a small open area, mostly cement spotted with a few wilted plants. Two rows of wooden hooches extended to the two- and three-story buildings that fronted the main road of Itaewon. There was plenty of light coming from the hooches, illuminating a central path, and a few girls shuffled back and forth, shouting to their friends and busily getting ready for the night’s work.

I ducked through. One of the girls noticed me, stopped in the center of the walkway, and shouted, “Sonnim wa!” A guest.

A couple of girls slid back their wood slat doors as I walked into the center of the hooches. Some squatted on raised vinyl platforms in front of makeup mirrors, meticulously stroking and rouging and brushing. Others, still half undressed, casually put on clothes as I watched.

I could see clearly the back of the building that housed the club. It was two stories. An old rusted stairwell rose to the second floor. Light shone in the window on the second floor and I thought I saw shadows passing across it.

Buildings in Itaewon had a club on the first floor and either apartments or professional offices on the second and third floors. The village had dentists, OB-GYN clinics, passport and visa offices, and even a travel agency-all the things the girls might need for a toothache, a pregnancy, and for when they found a Gl who wanted to marry them and take them home.

I couldn’t figure what function the second floor above the Sloeeyed Lady Club served. I hadn’t noticed any signs.

“You come early, GI.”

“Yeah, I’m early.” She was short and cute, and a few years ago, I would have said that she was too young for this business.

“You want nice girl? I have many beautiful sisters.” The girl slowly waved her arm towards the entire colony of hooches.

“How about you?” I said.

“Sure. Why not?”

“Maybe. I got to go to byonso first.”

The girl took my hand and led me towards the back wall. I could smell it before I saw it. It was nestled in the darkness between the last hooch and the wall that separated this real estate from the buildings out front.

“Is this the Sloe-eyed Lady Club here?”

“Yeah,” the girl said. “I think so.”

“You don’t know?”

“All club same same. I don’t go small clubs.”

“You only go to the big clubs?”

“Yeah.”

“Which ones?”

“King Club. Lucky Seven.”

“Why don’t you go into the small clubs?”

“Papa-san say no can do.”

The small clubs already had their own hostesses, hand-picked girls, girls they could keep tabs on, and they didn’t want the hassles of having stray business girls hustling on the premises. The big clubs, on the other hand, had a Iot of floor space and a lot of seats to fill. Sometimes on paydays, when the clubs were packed with GIs, the owners made the business girls stand up along the walls to save the seats for paying customers, and to display the flowers better.

I braced my nostrils and walked into the foul-smelling latrine. It was nothing more than a rickety old closet made of rotted wood. The floor was cement with a rectangular hole in the center that led directly down into the cesspool below. I took a leak and came back out quickly.

There didn’t seem to be any way, other than climbing the fence, to get into the opening behind the Sloe-eyed Lady Club. I was going to ask the girl, when I heard a door open high above me and the creaking of metal as someone stepped out onto the decrepit stairwell. I stepped back into the latrine and closed the door. There was a small window in the wood and I could see out without being seen.

Lindbaugh was walking down the steps, his chubby face pinched with anxiety. Following slowly behind him was a swarthy Korean man, solidly built, with a square head, and my first impression of him was that he had a lot of hair for a Korean. It was hard to tell for sure, though, because of the dim light. Not that his hair was bristling out, it was short-cropped, but he was one of those guys whose beards and growth of hair are so thick that they make their complexions look darker than they actually are.

They reached the bottom floor and I popped out of the latrine, gratefully.

The little girl held onto my wrist and I almost had to drag her down between the hooches to the front gate.

“Where you go?” she said.

“Maybe I’ll see you some other time,” I said.

“When?”

“Soon.”

I shook her loose. She was cursing and I could hear the stomping of her small feet on the pavement as I went through the gate and sprinted back to the main road. Ernie trotted up the hill and slowed when he saw me.

“I think they’re waiting for a cab,” he said. “Keep an eye on them while I get the jeep.”

I crossed the main road of Itaewon and took a few steps into a dirt-floored alley that led off into the gradually deepening dark. A girl followed me and I talked to her, pretending to be interested, while I kept an eye on Lindbaugh and the Korean man with him.

They stood away from the main entrance of the Sloe-eyed Lady, but there was still enough light to confirm my first impression of the Korean. His black hair was short and brittle, almost kinky. His clothes were casual: a windbreaker, sports shirt, slacks. Expensive, the kind of stuff that was made in the Korean textile mills for export only. He was calm but his eyes surveyed the area carefully. They looked at me, then, seeing the girl, moved on.

Lindbaugh, on the other hand, seemed exceedingly nervous. His pinball eyes bounced everywhere, and he kept talking, and gesturing with his hands, but the Korean didn’t seem to hear.

A cab chugged up the hill, made a U, and stopped in front of them. A young Korean bounced out of the passenger seat and held the back door open as the two clambered into the back. Then they were off, the young man bowing.

Ernie squealed around the corner, spotted me in the alley, and screeched the jeep to a halt. I jumped into the passenger seat and the open-mouthed business girl didn’t have time to move before we were off in a cloud of shit.

“Orange cab,” I said. ‘The Kei In Company. It just hung a left at the MSR.”

The traffic on the big road was bumper to bumper but Ernie didn’t slow down. Breaks squealed, horns honked, and savage cursing marked Ernie’s plunge through the traffic. He swerved, downshifted, and cut around cars and pedestrians.

I spotted the cab. It hadn’t gone far because it was waiting to turn about a block further down the road. The cabbie found an opening and punched through the traffic. Another guy was waiting to make a left but Ernie swerved around his flank and edged out into the oncoming flow, making people stop. More screeching tires and curses, but we were through. Their taillights were at the top of the incline ahead. Ernie floored it and put some serious gas to the old jeep. It sputtered and responded and pretty soon we were doing about fifty. If I hadn’t been watching the sides of the road we would have missed them.

“Hold it! We passed them!”

Ernie slowed, pulled over to the curb, and this time waited for the traffic to clear before making a complete turn.

We cruised on by again. They were getting out of the cab in front of a big modern two-story house with a cement-block fence around it.

Greeting them and bowing were two beautiful Korean women in full-length traditional cbima-cbogori dresses. The entranceway was bathed in yellow light from the sign above the gateway.

“Chinese characters,” I said. “Ok Lim Gong. The Palace of the Jade Forest.”

“A gisaeng house?”

“Got to be.”

‘They’re giving old Lindbaugh first-class treatment.”

Ernie turned into a dirt alley and found a place to park. I toyed with the translation: The Palace Amidst an Orchard of Precious Gems. Any way you sliced it, it sounded like a fun place.

Ernie stayed in the jeep while I got out and walked to the mouth of the alley. The cab was gone but now there were two more vehicles, short black limousines, and businessmen types in dark blue suits were getting out. More girls appeared, also dressed like something out of the sixteenth century. They smiled, bowed, and escorted the men inside.

I went back to the jeep. “Looks like it’s going to be a big party. I’m going to try to get a better look.”

Ernie started the engine. “I’ll turn around.”

I went back out to the alley. The buildings lining the street were brick, two and three stories high. A teahouse was advertised on the second story of the building next to the gisaeng house and I figured that was my best shot. I climbed the narrow cement stairwell to the teahouse and pushed through the beaded curtain. A young woman in slacks and blouse bowed as I came in, her eyes wide with surprise. Not too many GIs came into these kinds of joints. She waited for me to do something. Korean men were scattered around the room in pairs, smoking, drinking coffee, and receiving attentive care from the hostesses seated next to them. I found an open table next to the windows facing the gisaeng house and sat down. My hostess stood at attention in front of the table, her hands clasped across her stomach, and her head cocked, waiting for my order.

She wasn’t a bad-looking girl but was too thin and had on too much makeup and anyway I really didn’t have the time. I asked her how much a cup of coffee was. She seemed relieved that I spoke Korean. Two hundred and fifty won. Fifty cents for a little porcelain thimbleful of espresso. I could buy a twelve-ounce bottle of OB for three hundred won. I asked her about ginseng tea. That was three hundred and fifty won. What the hell. At least it would kick my metabolism into high gear. I told her to bring me one.

While the hostess was gone I fumbled with the metal screw that latched the two sliding windows together. The windows were opaque, made of some sort of heavy plastic. I got the screw undone and slid the window open a crack. Bitterly cold air rushed into the warm room. People turned around and looked at me, stared for a moment, and then turned back to their coffee.

My hostess returned with a porcelain cup on a metal tray. I slid the window shut. Using two hands, she placed the tinkling cup and saucer in front of me. I pulled out a thousand-won bill and she left to get the change.

I sipped the tea. The production of ginseng root has been a Korean monopoly since ancient times. Proper ginseng grew nowhere else on earth except this mountainous peninsula. The tea was light brown and tasted bitter. There was no caffeine in it, but I knew from past experience (when Ernie used to carry a raw root in his pocket and would break off a chunk for me every now and then) that it would get your body churning until you actually developed a slight fever.

The waitress brought me my change. I smiled, thanked her, and pocketed it all. She stood there for a moment, waiting to be asked to join me. I played the stupid Gl until she bowed and walked away. I took another sip of the biting herb-it grows on you-and cracked the window open.

There was an outside stairway on the gisamg house. Guys in suits walked up it, escorted by women in brightly colored formal dresses. When the double doors were slid back and everyone bent over to take off their shoes, I could see inside. Lindbaugh and the Korean who brought him were seated cross-legged on the floor in front of a large table filled with plates of food and bottles of clear rice wine. Two girls sat next to them, smiling while another, off to the side, fiddled with some musical instrument that I didn’t recognize.

More men came up the stairs. All bowed and shook hands with Lindbaugh first and then bowed more deeply and shook hands with his Korean comrade.

I felt a soft hand on my shoulder.

“Yoboseiyo. Nomu cbuwo.” My hostess hugged her arms around herself, chilled, and looked at me pleadingly.

I glanced back at the gisaeng house. The big sliding doors had been closed. I smiled at the girl, slid the window shut, and finished my tea. When I got up and walked out, the patrons of the tearoom were no doubt relieved to see the dragons on my back.

Snow began falling, making the pathways through the hovels appear clean and untouched. Patches of white fluff gathered on the slender branches of a little tree like epaulets.

I heard the steady crunch of feet moving up the narrow alleyway. I leaned back farther into the shadows protecting me. When the footsteps passed I poked my head out. It was Kimiko. She was bundled up in a warm coat but her hair and finely shaped buttocks gave her away.

She followed the alley and was quickly out of sight. I followed. Her footsteps were outlined clearly in the fresh dusting of snow. She had gone into the gisaeng house.

All the gates lining the back were shut tight and no lights shone in the houses behind them except the one.

I had to get closer. The cement and the brick walls blocked the sound of her steps. The ground was unpredictable. Not the flat, hard pavement on the roadway but bricks and stones placed haphazardly in the frozen earth like cobblestones.

I held my breath and stood perfectly still. She was just a few yards away from me. I knelt down carefully and lowered myself so my chest was just above the ground and, like a huge, cloth-covered salamander, I slowly inched forward until I could see. It was a double wooden door. Kimiko was rapping on it and calling out softly, “Ajima. Ajima.”

Finally a piece of wood slid aside and the back door opened. An old woman held it for her, she entered, and then the door was shut again. I heard the wooden crossbar slide into place. I stood up and waited a moment, then went to the gate and tried to find any openings in the wooden slats that I could see through. There were none. It was well built and heavy and sat flush up against the brick wall. The wall was about eight feet high and shards of jagged glass, imbedded in the mortar, stuck up along the top. Coiled and rusted barbed wire wound through the glass, completing the compound’s defenses.

I carefully placed my hands atop the wall, between pieces of glass, and pulled myself up until I could just see into the courtyard. It was set up like a typical Korean house. Four hooches were arranged in a U shape against the back wall facing out toward the front gate. In the center of the courtyard was an old hand pump with a lot of plastic pans and two rickety-looking wooden benches nearby. A small circular planter held the stems of what was left of a few sturdy bushes. Earthen kimchi pots lined the walls on either side of the house, most of them covered with a small inverted cone of snow. Directly below me and to the left was a small solitary building. The odor left no doubt as to its function.

The old woman puttered around on the wooden porch running the length of the four hooches. Finishing her chore, she padded along in her stocking feet and entered the small hooch off to the right.

There were lights on in the two central hooches and I could see a shadowy figure moving back and forth behind the paper windows of the wooden panel doors. From the height and general size there was no doubt in my mind. It was Kimiko and she seemed to be very busy.

I looked beneath the porch to see how many pairs of shoes were down there, and what type, There were outlines of shoes in the darkness. I couldn’t make them out.

I stayed there hanging from the wall as long as I could, but my muscles were beginning to give out. I was just starting to lower myself when I saw a shadow walk toward the open door. It was Kimiko. She stood there for a minute directly in front of the opening and I could see her face clearly. She was looking up at the sky, at the stars, or maybe something even farther away. She was beautiful and wistful and I felt a longing for her and maybe for all of us. She turned suddenly, as if she had been startled out of her reverie by a sound and, without looking back, she slammed the door shut.

My arms were cramping up and I wasn’t even sure I could unfold them. I just let go of my grip on the cold brick and dropped back down to the slippery pavement. I lost my footing, gyrated for a moment, arms flailing, and then fell flat on my ass.

I hit flush and wasn’t hurt but I just sat there for a moment, taking inventory of my chilled limbs and slowly unfolding the knotted muscles of my forearms and biceps. When the cold moisture began to seep through the seat of my pants I jumped back up and swatted the snow off my rear end.

I walked back to the recessed doorway across the street and stood in the shadows to think for a while. To warm my hands, I placed them over the bulge in my Levi’s and rubbed my snug genitals.

Kimiko had been wearing black silk stockings with a black garter belt and a black brassiere with openings to show her nipples. When she looked up at the sky, I had been staring at her jet black pubic hair. Further back in the room was sprawled Mr. Lindbaugh in equally scanty attire.

Two hours later she came out and hailed a taxi on the main road. We followed it back to ltaewon and the Lucky Seven Club.

Kimiko wore a bright blue low-cut dress and sat by herself at a table near the stage. She ordered a big liter bottle of OB and a bottle of Suntory whiskey with a small bucket of ice. A young boy arrived carrying a square metal box. The boy squatted next to Kimiko’s table and slid back the walls of the box, revealing two steaming plates of food. One was mul mandu, boiled meat dumplings, and the other was cbapcbae, rice noodles mixed with beef and vegetables. The boy placed the plates on Kimiko’s table, along with a few small side dishes and a short bottle of soy sauce. He closed the box up, bowed, and trotted through the half-full tables and out of the club.

Kimiko split apart her wooden chopsticks, rubbed them together to get off all the splinters, and dug in. She didn’t notice Ernie and me standing in the back of the room.

“She’s rich,” Ernie said. “A catered feast.”

“Didn’t take long.”

“And she couldn’t have made it entirely on her charm. What’s she celebrating?”

We backed out of the club and I almost jumped when I saw him but managed to keep my eyes straight ahead. At the bottom of the hill, we turned towards the King Club.

“Did you see him?”

“Who?”

‘The guy in the alley.”

“No.”

“One of the pair who jumped Kimiko. Smoking a tambei, in the alley next to the Lucky Seven.”

“What a coincidence,” Ernie said.

“Yeah.”

The King Club was packed: wall to wall with GIs, business girls, and a few American civilians. Ernie and I shooed a couple of business girls away and took a small table back in the darkest corner. A couple of waitresses came by to serve us but I waved them off until Miss Oh came close and then I grabbed her wrist and pulled her over and ordered two OBs.

She was still pissed but, after all, we were two customers in desperate need of beer and, as a cocktail waitress, it was her sworn duty to provide.

When she brought the beers back I made her wait for the money. ‘The only reason I walked out of here with Kimiko last night,” I said, ”is because of my job.”

She glowered at me.

“We all have to do things we don’t want to do sometimes. And I’m sorry if I made you feel bad. Let me buy you a drink, any kind you want.”

The sullen expression of her beautiful face didn’t change but her eyebrows lifted just slightly. She flounced away.

“You’re in for it now,” Ernie said.

A couple of minutes later she brought back something big and red and full of tropical growth.

‘Two thousand, two hundred won,” she said. Over four bucks.

GIs at other tables and business girls gazed at us. Smirking. Imagine me, Itaewon’s number-one Cheap Charlie, buying something ridiculous like this. But it was the price I had to pay to restore Miss Oh’s face. I forked over the money.

She bounded away happily. In a few moments she came back, put her metal cocktail tray down on our table, lifted the big tumbler, and sipped her drink. I was certain there wasn’t an ounce of hooch in it. She put the drink back down, smiled at us, and then went back to her appointed rounds.

“Looks like you’re back on the sleeping mat, pal.”

“At what a price.”

Ernie shrugged. “A few bucks.”

“It’s not the money. It’s the self-respect. Nobody but a dildo spends money on those sweetheart drinks.”

“Maybe you can join Dildos Anonymous.”

“You’re a world of help, you are.”

Later, when Miss Oh had returned, I asked her about the man I had seen with Lindbaugh.

‘The man at the Sloe-eyed Lady Club,” I said. ”He has an office upstairs or maybe he lives upstairs. I think he’s the honcho.”

She ran her fingers over my cheeks. “A lot of hair? Black?”

“Yes.”

“Kwok,” she whispered, her voice soft, as if she were in church.

Before Miss Oh told me about Kwok, she made me promise not to repeat the story to anyone. “If anyone talks about his daddy,” she said, “he gets taaksan angry.”

She held her forefingers to her head, as if she had grown horns.

Although Kwok didn’t like the subject discussed in his presence, apparently the demimonde of Itaewon was well aware of his mixed ancestry. His mother was a farm woman, seeking refuge with the rest of the country during the Korean War, when she and her family had run into a small, bedraggled contingent of Turkish soldiers. They were part of the United Nations forces sent over to protect the South Koreans from the attacking Northern Communists and their Chinese comrades. Kwok’s mother was raped. The result was the man who was now trying to take control of all the rackets in Itaewon.

After the war, when things had settled back to some sort of normalcy, the young woman with the half-Turkish baby didn’t have a chance of finding a husband. War had left young men in short supply and the Koreans can be sticklers on little items like racial purity. But the family of the young mother loved her, and they pooled all their money for a dowry. A charcoal carrier, whose tuberculosis and gimpy leg had kept him out of the war, was finally persuaded to accept the dowry-and the young woman and her half-Turkish baby who came with it.

His name was Kwok and he turned out to be a drunk. A vicious one. He squandered the dowry on rice liquor, gambling, and fancy women, and began to vent his rage on the young boy who had taken his name. He beat the boy for imagined offenses and made him do most of the work at the yontan yard and carry the charcoal briquettes to customers throughout the rural village. The boy carried them on a wooden A-frame strapped to his little back. His mother tried to protect him as much as she could but it was of little use.

Young Kwok grew up tough and immensely strong. He worked and cursed and drank like a man before he was ten years old. His mother contracted tuberculosis from his stepfather and by the time her son was thirteen, she had succumbed.

By now the young man was approaching his full growth and the gimpy elder Kwok had begun to fear him. Fear made him drink more and made him more vicious until, it was said, the young Kwok simply strangled him.

The official police report said that the elder Kwok had drowned in his own vomit. The police figured the young man had suffered enough, but he had brought shame on the village so they forced him to leave. Young Kwok hopped on a train and went off to Seoul, to receive his higher education on the streets. He was sixteen.

His strong-arm exploits, unorthodox in Korea, were terrifying and soon brought him to the attention of racketeers. They considered having him killed. He was affecting their operations. Instead, they decided to discipline him, and keep him on a leash, like an attack dog awaiting his master’s bidding. He acquiesced but ended up turning on a few of his immediate masters, gradually working his way up to the top of the syndicate until he was in a position to make a grab for control of Itaewon.

I said, “Do you think he will eat all of Itaewon?”

Purple light caressed Miss Oh’s body. “Yes,” she said. “He will win.” She stared off into the din of the bar. “You should see his eyes.”