Nightmare Range

THE WIDOW PO

“Talking to dead people,” Ernie said, “isn’t exactly my idea of a good time.”

Stone walls loomed above us as we wound our way through narrow cobbled lanes that led up the side of Namsan Mountain in a district of Seoul known as Huam-dong. Night shadows closed in on us, pressing down. A few dark clouds. No moon yet.

“You won’t be talking to dead people,” I told Ernie. “That’s the job of the mudang.” The female shaman.

Using the dim yellow light of an occasional street lamp, I glanced at the scrap of paper in my hand, checking the address against the engraved brass placards embedded into wooden gateways: 132 bonji, 16 ho. We were close.

The request had been a simple one, from Miss Choi Yong-kuang, my Korean language teacher: to come to a kut. I’d learn something about ancient Korean religious practices and I’d be able to observe a famous Korean mudang first hand. And I’d be able to hear from an American GI who’d been disrupting this mudang’s séances for the last few months. A GI who-so the mudang claimed-had been dead for twenty years.

“Bunch of bull, if you ask me,” Ernie said.

“They’ll have soju,” I told Ernie. “And lots of women.”

“Men don’t attend these things?”

“Not unless invited.”

Ernie gazed ahead into the growing gloom. “And you’ll be able to get near your Korean language teacher. What’s her name?”

“Choi,” I told him.

Miss Choi was a tall young woman with a nice figure and a smile that could illuminate a hall. When she asked me to meet her after class, I would’ve said yes to just about anything. Even a séance. Ernie and I hadn’t made this trip official. We were off duty now, carrying our badges but not our.45s. And we hadn’t told anyone at 8th Army CID about our plans to attend a kut.

Who needed their laughter?

The lane turned sharply uphill and became so narrow that we had to proceed single file. Beneath our feet, sudsy water gurgled in a brick channel. The air reeked of waste and ammonia.

Finally, the lane opened into an open space in front of a huge red gate. Behind the gate a large house loomed. Upturned blue tile pointed toward the sky. Clay figurines of monkeys perched on the ridges of the roof, frightening away evil spirits.

At the heavy wooden door, I paused and listened. No sound. It appeared to be a huge house and there was no telling how far the grounds extended behind this gate.

Ernie admired the thick granite walls. “Not our normal hangout.”

Once again, I checked the address against the embossed plate and then pressed the buzzer. A tinny voice responded.

“Yoboseiyo?”

In my most carefully pronounced Korean, I explained who I was and why I was here. The voice told me to wait. A few seconds later, footsteps. Then, like a secret panel, a small door hidden in the big gateway creaked open. An old woman stood behind, smiling and bowing. Ernie and I ducked through into a wide courtyard.

Neatly tended ferns, shrubs, small persimmon trees. In a pond beneath a tiny waterfall, goldfish splashed.

We followed the maid to the main entrance of the home and slipped off our footwear, leaving our big clunky leather oxfords amidst a sea of feminine shoes spangled with sequins and stars and golden tassels.

The maid led us down a long wood-slat floor corridor. Oil-papered doors lined either side. Finally, we heard murmuring-the sound of prayer. Women knelt on the floor of a large hall, praying. When we entered, they turned to look at us. I couldn’t spot Miss Choi anywhere.

“They’re all mama-sans,” Ernie said.

“Hush.”

Most of the women were middle-aged and matronly. And extremely well dressed. Expensive chima-chogori, the traditional Korean attire of short vest and high-waisted skirt, rustled as they moved. The dresses were made of silk dyed in bright colors and decorated with hand-embroidered dragons and cranes and silver-threaded lotus flowers.

The far wall was covered with a huge banner: the Goddess of the Underworld, wielding a sword and vanquishing evil.

“Wasso,” one of the women said. They’ve arrived.

Then all the women rose to their feet and started rearranging their cushions into a semi-circle. Miss Choi Yong-kuang, smiling, appeared out of the milling throng. She wore a simple silk skirt and blouse of sky blue-less expensive than what most of the other women wore, but on her it looked smashing.

After bowing and shaking our hands, Miss Choi turned Ernie over to a small group of smiling women. They pulled him off to the right side of the hall. Miss Choi led me to the left side and sat me down cross-legged on a plump cushion. Low tables were brought out piled high with rice cakes and pears and sliced seaweed rolls. These were set in front of a long-eared god made of bronze who sat serenely on a raised dais in front of the banner of the Goddess of the Underworld. Incense in brass burners was lit and then an elderly woman dressed in exquisite red silk embroidered with gold danced slowly around the room, waving a small torch. Miss Choi whispered to me that she was the mistress of this home.

“Why’s she waving the torch?”

“Chasing away ghosts.” Embarrassed, Miss Choi covered her mouth with the back of her soft hand.

Gongs clanged, so loudly and with so little warning that I almost slipped off my cushion. Then sticks were beaten against thin drums. I glanced behind me and discovered that three musicians were hidden in shadows behind an embroidered screen.

The ambient light in the hallway was switched off and now the only illumination in the room was the red pinpoints of light from the smoldering incense and the flickering candles lining either side of the long-eared bronze god.

More drums and now clanging cymbals. Then silence. Breathlessly, we waited for what seemed to be a long time. Finally, the clanging resumed with renewed fervor. A woman dressed completely in white floated into the center of the kneeling and squatting spectators. A pointed hood kept her face hidden in shadows.

“Who’s she?” I asked.

“The mudang,” Miss Choi answered. “Her name is Widow Po. Very famous.”

Miss Choi Yong-kuang is an educated and modern woman. Still, there was reverence in her voice when she spoke of the Widow Po.

Across the room, Ernie reached toward one of the rice cakes on the low table in front of him. A middle-aged woman slapped his hand.

The mudang continued her dance, eyes closed as if in a trance. The musicians handled the percussion instruments expertly, keeping the rhythm. Finally, when the first beads of perspiration appeared on the mudang’s brow, other women rose to their feet and began to dance. Soon about a half dozen of them were on the floor, swirling around like slightly overweight tops.

One of the women yanked on Ernie’s wrist, trying to coax him to his feet. He hesitated, holding up his open palm, and then pointed to one of the open bottles of soju dispersed amongst the feast for the gods. She understood, grabbed the bottle, and poured a generous glug into Ernie’s open mouth. Rice wine dribbled out the side of his mouth and onto his white shirt and gray jacket. Ernie didn’t mind. He motioned for another shot and the woman obliged. Then he was on his feet, dancing as expertly as if he’d been attending ancient Korean séances all his life. Arms spread to his sides, gliding in smooth circles like some pointy-nosed, green-eyed bird of prey.

The Widow Po danced toward Ernie. When she was close enough, she grabbed his wrist and started twirling Ernie around faster. Soon the other women took their seats as my partner, Ernie Bascom, and the mudang, Widow Po, swirled around the entire floor. The rhythm of the cymbals and drums grew more frenzied. The Widow Po reached down, gracefully plucked up an open bottle of soju, and once again poured a healthy glug down Ernie’s throat. One of the women in the crowd stood and pulled off his jacket. The Widow Po’s hood fell back. She wasn’t a bad looking woman, at least ten years older than Ernie but with a strong face and high cheekbones. The blemish was the pox. The flesh of her entire face was marked by the scars of some hideous childhood disease.

Ernie didn’t seem to notice. Especially when the Widow Po started rubbing her body against his.

The matronly women in the crowd squealed with delight. Even the modest Miss Choi covered her face with both hands, attempting to hide her mirth.

Ernie motioned for more soju and the Widow Po obliged but then, after another glug had dribbled down Ernie’s cheeks, the Widow Po suddenly stopped dancing. The music stopped. Ernie kept twirling for a few seconds and then stopped dancing himself. He glanced around, confused.

The Widow Po stood in the center of the floor, her head bowed, ignoring him. Sensing that his moment in the spotlight was over, Ernie grinned, grabbed the half-full bottle of soju off the low table, and resumed his seat on the far side of the hall.

No one moved for what seemed a long time-maybe five minutes. Finally, the Widow Po screamed.

The voice was high, banshee-like. The Korean was garbled, as if from a person who was ill or in great pain, and I could understand none of it. The attention turned to one of the women in the crowd. She was plump, holding a handkerchief to her face, crying profusely. The Widow Po approached her, still using the strange, falsetto voice. Finally, the crying woman burst out.

“Hyong-ae! Wei domang kasso.”

That I understood. Why did you leave me, Hyong-ae?

The Widow Po and the crying woman went back and forth, asking questions of one another, casting accusations, arguing. I leaned toward Miss Choi with a quizzical look on my face. She explained.

“Hyong-ae was her daughter. She died in a car accident last year. Now she’s blaming her mother for buying her a car.”

“The Widow Po is playing the part of her daughter?”

“Not playing. Hyung-ae’s spirit has entered her body.”

I stared at Miss Choi for a moment, wondering if she believed that. She blushed and turned away from me. I left it alone.

The crying matron and the Widow Po screamed back and forth at one another. The mom saying now that Hyung-ae, when she was alive, wouldn’t let her rest until she bought her a car. Hyung-ae countering that a mother should know what is best for her child. They were bickering like any mother and willful young daughter and yet it was eerie. How did the Widow Po know so much about other people’s lives? I didn’t bother to ask Miss Choi about it. I knew her answer. The Widow Po was possessed by the spirit of Hyung-ae.

Suddenly, the Widow Po let out a screech of pain. She knelt to the floor, hugging herself, and remained perfectly still for a few minutes. Without a cue, the musicians started again and then the Widow Po was up and dancing and a few minutes later she yelled again. This time an old grandfather took possession of her body. Another woman in the crowd spoke to this ghostly presence, giving him a report on the welfare of the family. When she was finished, the old man scolded her for not forcing his grandchildren to study hard enough.

Then this grandfather was gone and a few minutes later another spirit took possession of the perspiring body of the Widow Po.

The kut continued like this for over an hour. Ernie was growing restless but the women surrounding him read him like a book and kept pouring him small glassfuls of soju and stuffing sweet pink rice cakes down his throat.

Ernie must’ve already polished off a liter and a half of soju by the time the Widow Po growled.

Her eyes were like a she-wolf. She stalked toward Ernie. He stared up at her, half a rice cake in his mouth, dumfounded.

“Choryo!” she shouted. Attention!

Ernie didn’t understand but the women around him shoved him to his feet.

“Apuroi ka!” the Widow Po commanded. Forward march!

Again the women pushed Ernie forward and he marched to the center of the floor.

“Chongji!” the Widow Po told Ernie. Halt!

Ernie understood that one. “Halt” was the one Korean word that 8th Army GI’s were taught, so they wouldn’t be shot by nervous Korean sentries. Ernie stopped, standing almost at the position of attention, a half-empty bottle of soju loose in his hand.

Miss Choi leaned toward me. “The soldier,” she said. “The one I told you about.”

Ernie reached for the Widow Po, thinking she was going to start rubbing her body against his again, but she would have none of it. She slapped his hand away and stepped forward, her hands on her hips, screaming into Ernie’s face. The words were coming out so fast and so furious-in a deep, garbled voice-that I could understand little of it. Miss Choi translated.

“He’s angry. ‘Why have you kept me waiting so long?’ he says.”

“Who’s kept him waiting?”

“You,” she said. “Mi Pal Kun.” The 8th United States Army.

“Waiting for what?”

“To talk to him. To let him explain.”

“Who is he?”

Miss Choi listened to the rant for a few more seconds and then said, “I’m not sure. The name sounds like mori di.”

Mori means “hair” or “head” in the Korean language. Di meant nothing, unless the spirit was referring to the letter “d” as in the English alphabet.

Ernie was becoming impatient with being screamed at. He lifted the soju bottle and took a drink. The Widow Po slapped the bottle from his lips and it crashed against the belly of the bronze god. Then the Widow Po leapt at Ernie, throwing left hooks and then rights, punching like a man.

The matronly women bounded to their feet and grabbed the Widow Po and held her on the floor, writhing and spitting. Ernie wasn’t damaged badly, just a bruise beneath his left eye.

The Widow Po kept shouting invective in garbled Korean, her burning eyes focused fiercely on Ernie.

“What’s she saying?” I asked Miss Choi.

“He,” she corrected. “Mori Di, the spirit who possesses her. He says that you must start your work immediately. There must be no further delay.”

“What work?”

“I thought you understood.”

“No. The Widow Po is speaking much too fast for me to follow.”

“Mori Di was an American soldier,” Miss Choi explained. “He died more than twenty years ago. He wants you to start an investigation and find the person who did this.”

“Find the person who did what?”

“Find the person who murdered him.”

The Widow Po let out one more guttural screech and her eyes rolled up into her head until only the whites showed. Then she let out a huge blast of rancid air and passed out cold.

Ernie slapped dust mites away from his nose.

“This is bull,” he said.

I tried to ignore him. Instead I continued down the row in the dimly lit warehouse, shining my flashlights on walls of stacked cardboard. We were looking for the box marked SIRs, FY54. Serious Incident Reports. Fiscal Year 1954.

Exactly twenty years ago.

The NCO in charge of 8th Army Records Storage hadn’t been happy to see two CID agents barge in unannounced. He pulled his boots off his desk, hid his comic book, and had to pretend that he’d been working. When I told him what I wanted, he was incredulous.

“Nobody looks at that stuff.”

But when we flashed our badges he complied and escorted us into the warehouse. After he showed us where to look, the phone rang in his office. He used that as an excuse to hand me the flashlight and return to the coziness of his cramped little empire.

When we were alone, I turned to Ernie. “You sort of liked that Widow Po, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Ernie responded. “Nice body.”

“So we do her a favor. That’s all. See if any GIs were murdered twenty years ago. Any GIs named Mori Di.”

I stopped at a row of boxes. There, up at the top, Fiscal Year 1954. Grabbing a handhold, I started to climb on the boxes below. Ernie helped hoist me up.

“You don’t believe any of that stuff, do you?” he asked. “Good show, but it’s all an act.”

I grabbed the box, blew dust off the top, and studied it. Bound with wire, no chance to check the contents up here.

“Pretty convincing act,” I replied.

“But still nothing more than an act.”

I slid the box down to Ernie. He broke its fall but it was still heavy enough to land on the cement floor with a thump.

“Wire cutters,” I said.

Ernie returned to the office and brought back a pair.

“The Sarge says we’ll have to rebind it ourselves.”

“Screw him.”

“That’s exactly what I told him.”

Ernie snipped the thick wire, pulled the top off, and then held the flashlight while I crouched down and thumbed through the manila folders.

I pulled a few out.

Fascinating stories. About GIs assaulting, robbing, and maiming other GIs. About GIs assaulting, robbing, and maiming Koreans. Very few about Koreans assaulting, robbing, or maiming GIs. The Korean War had ended only a few months before. The Koreans were flat on their back economically. GIs, comparatively, were as rich as Midas. Still, Confucian values dictated that the Koreans use their wiles, not their brawn, to obtain a share of US Army riches. I could’ve spent hours here studying these cases but we didn’t have time. We were on the black market detail and this was our lunch break. The CID First Sergeant would be checking on us soon.

Then I spotted a thick manila folder.

“What is it?” Ernie asked.

I pointed.

There, typed neatly across the white label affixed to the folder was a name and a rank: Moretti, Charles A., Private First Class (Deceased).

We’d found Mori Di.

That evening, Ernie and I repaired to Itaewon, the red light district in southern Seoul that caters to GIs and other foreigners. But this time we didn’t hit the nightclubs. Instead, we walked into the Itaewon Police Station. Captain Kim, the officer in charge of the Itaewon Police district, was waiting for us. I’d called him earlier that afternoon. Sitting behind his desk, he stared at us from beneath thick eyebrows. The square features of his face revealed nothing.

“No one remembers Mori Di,” he told us. “Too long ago.”

“Surely you have records.”

“Most burn. Before Pak Chung-hee become President.”

There were serious civil riots in Seoul and other major cities of South Korea when the corrupt Syngman Rhee government was overthrown in the early Sixties.

“Still,” I said, “the murder happened only twenty years ago. There must be some cop somewhere who remembers the case.” I glanced at the notes I’d taken while reading Moretti’s case folder. “An officer named Kwang. A lieutenant. The given name Bung-lee. Most of the Korean National Police reports were attributed to him.”

Captain Kim nodded. He already knew this. For him, keeping cards close to his vest was a lifetime habit.

“Why,” he asked, “is the American army so interested in an old case?”

Ernie glanced at me but held his tongue. I hadn’t told Captain Kim that our interest was unofficial. If I had, he wouldn’t have cooperated at all.

“Long story,” I said. “Are you going to tell us how to find Lieutenant Kwang or not?”

Captain Kim sighed, reached into his top drawer, and pulled out a slip of brown pulp paper folded neatly in half. He slid it toward us, his fingers still pressing it into the desk. “Before you make your report, will you talk to me?”

“Yes,” I promised.

He handed me the slip of paper.

“You must be nuts,” Ernie said.

He was driving the jeep and we were wearing civvies, faded blue jeans and sports shirts. It was Saturday.

“On our day off,” Ernie continued, “chasing around the Korean countryside after some murder case that happened twenty years ago all because you’ve got the hots for your Korean teacher.”

“It’s not just that,” I said.

Ernie swerved around a wooden cart pulled by an ox. Rice paddies spread into the distance, fallow now after the autumn harvest.

“Then what is it?”

“You read Moretti’s folder.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well, I told you what was in it. His murder was never solved.”

“He’s been dead twenty years. What difference does it make now?”

“He was a GI, Ernie. One of us.”

That shut him up for a while. After a few minutes, he resumed cursing softly beneath his breath.

The village of Three White Cranes sat in a bowl-shaped valley about halfway between Seoul and the Eastern Sea. Most of the world refers to the Eastern Sea as the Sea of Japan but the Koreans aren’t particularly fond of that nomenclature.

After two hours of winding roads and narrow country highways, Ernie slowed the jeep and rolled past clapboard hovels that lined the main street of downtown Three White Cranes. The largest building was made of whitewashed cement and the flag of the Republic of Korea waved proudly from a thirty-foot-high pole out front. The Three White Cranes Police Station. Two cops inside had already been alerted by Captain Kim in Itaewon and they drew us a map to a pig farm about two clicks outside of town.

An old man stood in front of a straw-thatched hut. He wore a tattered khaki uniform of the Korean National Police that hung on him like a loose sack. When I climbed out of the jeep and approached him, he waved his bamboo cane in the air.

“Kara,” he said. “Bali kara!” Get lost!

Ignoring rudeness is an important skill for any investigator. I approached the old man and started shooting questions at him in Korean about his involvement in the Moretti case.

Ernie stood by the jeep, staring over at a pen full of hogs. The fence was so rickety that he was worried some of them might break out.

“You go,” the old man told me, using broken English now. “Long time ago. No use now. You go.”

“Who murdered Moretti?” I asked the former Lieutenant Kwang.

“You go. No use now.”

I kept at him, badgering him with questions, sometimes in English, sometimes in Korean.

“Why you cause trouble?” he asked me finally. A watery film covered the old man’s eyes. “He dead now. Life hard in Korea that time. You no ask question.”

“You know who killed Moretti,” I said.

“No. I don’t know. I don’t want to know. Just like before. I don’t want to know.”

I started to ask more questions but the old man hobbled quickly toward the pigpen. Using his bamboo cane, he knocked loose two supporting beams and the rickety wooden fence collapsed. A herd of hogs charged out. I ran toward the jeep and jumped in. The huge animals swarmed around us, snorting and pawing and trying to climb into the vehicle.

Ernie started the jeep and backed down the dirt road. The hogs followed.

“If I had my forty-five,” Ernie said, “I’d land us some pork chops.”

Instead, he turned around, slammed the gear shift into first, and sped away.

When I looked back, the old man was still waving his bamboo cane.

An oil lamp guttered in the small office adjacent to Haggler Lee’s warehouse.

Although he might’ve been the richest man in Itaewon, Haggler Lee had a habit of keeping expenses to a minimum. Electricity was seldom used in his place of business. He wore traditional Korean clothing, a green silk vest and white cotton pantaloons, and didn’t believe in wasting money on haircuts. Instead he kept his black hair tied above his head and knotted with a short length of blue rope. We sat on the oil-papered floor in his office.

“Moretti,” Haggler Lee said. “Nineteen fifty-four. Only one person I know of was in business back in those days.”

“Who?” I asked.

Ernie sipped on the barley tea that Haggler Lee’s servant had served shortly after we arrived. The entire room smelled of incense. A stick glowed softly in a bronze burner.

Haggler Lee rubbed his smooth chin. “Why would two famous CID agents be interested in a case so old?”

“What do you care?” Ernie said. “Your operation is safe. We’re not after you.”

“Thanks to my ancestors watching in Heaven,” Lee replied. “Still, nineteen fifty-four. Unusual, is it not?”

“Unusual,” I said. “Who was in operation then?”

“The black market was small in nineteen fifty-four. Koreans were so poor they could afford few of your imported American goods.”

“Who is it, Lee?” Ernie asked.

“Whiskey Mary.”

“Whiskey Mary? What’s her Korean name?” I asked.

“I don’t know. She’s been called Whiskey Mary so long even we Koreans call her that.”

“Where can we find her?”

“Last I heard she worked at a yoguan in Munsan-ni. An unsavory place.”

Haggler Lee gave us the name of the inn, the Kaesong Yoguan. Ernie finished his tea and we left.

Munsan is a small city about thirty kilometers north of Seoul, near the DMZ. Ernie and I cruised through the narrow main road. This was Sunday morning so Korean soldiers were everywhere, elbowing their way past farmers pushing carts full of turnips and grandmothers balancing pans full of laundry atop their heads.

The Dragon Eye Yoguan sat in an alley just off the main drag. It was a ramshackle building, two stories high, made of old varnished slats of wood. When Ernie and I slipped off our shoes and stepped up into the musty foyer, a woman wearing a long wool skirt and wool sweater emerged from a sliding, oil-papered door.

“Andei,” she said. No good. “Migun yogi ei, andei.” American soldiers aren’t allowed here.

Ernie didn’t understand and I didn’t bother to translate. It was understandable that the woman wouldn’t want American GIs staying here. If her main clientele were Korean soldiers, that would be asking for trouble.

I ignored her remark, showed her my badge, and spoke to her in Korean. When I mentioned the name Whiskey Mary, her eyes widened.

“No trouble,” I said quickly. “We just want to ask her some questions.”

Shaking her head, the woman led us down a long narrow hallway. Sliding doors were spaced along the walls every few feet, some of them open, showing rumpled blankets and porcelain pots inside. The aroma of charcoal gas and urine filled the hallway. Occasionally Ernie and I had to duck to avoid bumping our heads on overhanging support beams.

Out back was a muddy courtyard with a few skinny chickens behind wire and two neatly spaced outdoor latrines made of cement blocks. The woman motioned with her open palm, turned, and left.

Ernie and I crossed the courtyard.

Whiskey Mary was bent over with her back to us, kneeling in one of the latrines, scrubbing with hot soapy water and a wire brush.

“Whiskey Mary,” I said.

She froze in mid-stroke.

When she turned around, I could see two teeth missing up front, the others blackened around the edges. Wiry gray hair, face full of wrinkles and a suspicious squint to her eyes.

“Why?” she asked.

“Moretti,” I said.

She squeezed the wire brush, leaned on it, and began to cry.

In wine is truth, the Romans used to say, and maybe that’s what happened to Ernie and me. When we returned to Itaewon that night we sat at the bar in the Seven Club and rehashed what we knew about the Moretti case.

Whiskey Mary had owned her own bar and run a successful black market operation out back. She wasn’t worried about arrest because the US Army authorities had no jurisdiction over her and the Korean National Police were being paid off. She even showed us photographs of herself in those days. Sitting with the girls who were hostesses in Whiskey Mary’s, all of them with new hairdos and makeup and wearing expensive silk chima-chogori. GIs brought in the PX-bought whiskey and cigarettes and instant coffee and Whiskey Mary turned it into cash and other favors from her hostesses. A sweet deal.

Until Moretti was killed.

He was one of her best customers. And went so far as to hustle other GIs, especially those new in-country, to use their ration cards to make a little money. And if they were worried about being caught by the MPs, Moretti would handle all transactions for them, taking half the profit for his efforts.

He was a good boy, Whiskey Mary told us. Most of the money he made, he mailed home by US Postal money order to his mother in Newark, New Jersey.

Then someone stabbed him to death.

Neither the KNPs nor the MPs had a clue as to who had murdered Moretti. But his body had been found in the middle of the street in Itaewon, apparently attacked just after curfew at four in the morning, stabbed in the solar plexus and left to bleed to death on a muddy road.

A senator from New Jersey raised hell and the Syngman Rhee government was under pressure to do something to insure the safety of American GIs. If the GIs left Korea, they’d take military and foreign aid money with them. The Rhee government couldn’t tolerate anything like that so the pressure to charge someone with Moretti’s murder was enormous.

Whiskey Mary was chosen.

“They wanted to take over my operation,” she said. Her English was heavily accented but still understandable after all these years. “Somebody up high.” She pointed toward Heaven. “In the government. The Americans were happy and the Korean big shots stole my business at the same time.”

The charge was murder. She was arrested, tried, and sentenced to five years.

“Why only five years?” Ernie asked.

Whiskey Mary answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Because I wasn’t guilty.”

“But Eighth Army kept the case open,” I said.

She waved her hand in the air. “They never happy with what Korean police do. American CID man, he know I no kill Moretti.”

“How would he know that?”

She smiled her toothless smile. “Because he sleep with me that night.”

When I asked her who did kill Moretti, she didn’t know.

“Mori Di, he knew everybody,” she said. “He have many friends and many girlfriends. I don’t know why anybody want kill him.”

When we finished our questions, I handed Whiskey Mary a few dollars. She stuffed them in her brassiere.

Probably an old habit.

The Seven Club’s new all-Korean Country Western band clanged to life. Ernie and I sat through the yodeling and the twanging guitars patiently, both of us thinking about what we’d learned. When the Korean cowboys finished their first set, Ernie swiveled on his barstool and faced me.

“We both know who we have to talk to.”

“We do?”

“Sure. We’ve been looking at this case in the wrong way from the beginning. All that kut mumbo jumbo bent our heads the wrong way.”

I thought about that for a moment. Finally, I said, “I see what you mean.”

“Tomorrow,” Ernie said. “We wrap this damn case up.”

We ordered two more draft OBs and drank to that proposition.

It was Monday now so we had to wait until after work. During the day, I called Miss Choi and tried to convince her to give me an address. When she figured out what I had in mind, she refused but promised to show us the way. Reluctantly, I agreed.

That night, driving through the crowded Seoul streets, Ernie and I didn’t talk much. Miss Choi sat silently in the back of the jeep. At a park on the northeast side of downtown Seoul, she told us to pull over. A huge wooden gate painted bright red was slashed with Chinese Characters: Kuksadang. Altar for National Rites.

“We have to walk from here,” Miss Choi said.

On the other side of the gate, stone steps led up a steep hill.

Miss Choi wasn’t wearing her usual Western clothing. Instead, she wore a long white skirt and white blouse, very similar to what the Widow Po had worn during the kut. Also a large canvas bag was strapped over her shoulder.

“Why no blue jeans?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I must protect you.”

“Protect us?” Ernie asked. “From what?”

“From the Widow Po.”

When I asked her to explain she shook her head. We climbed the long flights of steps in silence. Slowly, we wound our way toward the top of a line of steep hills-small mountains actually-guarding the northwestern flank of the capital city of Seoul. Square stone parapets lined the summit, built during the Yi Dynasty as protection against Manchurian raiders and Japanese pirates. Below, the glowing lights of the city sparkled in the darkening sky. To the east, a red moon started to rise.

While tossing back wets at the Seven Club, it had occurred to Ernie that the one person who knew more about the Moretti case than anyone in the world was the Widow Po. If you believed in ghosts, that would be because the spirit of Moretti took possession of her during a kut. If you don’t believe in ghosts, that would mean that she had specific knowledge of the case.

Neither Ernie nor I believed in ghosts.

Behind the ancient battlements, a dirt pathway led through a small grove of quivering elms. Miss Choi marched in the lead, staring straight ahead. Ernie and I glanced at one another. She looked exactly as if she were going into battle.

Once past the grove of trees, we descended into a dry gully. On the other side a clearing held maybe a dozen hooches, all thatched with straw. Candles flickered in one of the windows. No street lamps or cars or electricity up here. Down below, the modern city of Seoul hummed vibrantly.

Miss Choi stopped and waited until we were close.

“Only I talk,” she said. “Not you.”

“We have to question her,” Ernie said. “About Moretti.”

“I do that. You listen.”

Without waiting for further comment, Miss Choi Yong-kuang turned and strode toward the one home with a light in the window. As she walked, she reached in her canvas bag and pulled out a small drum made of wood and leather. Using a short stick she banged the drum lightly, only once, and then in a steady rhythm. In front of the hooch, we waited.

Ernie grew impatient. “Why don’t I just knock on the damn door?”

Miss Choi shushed him.

In the other hooches there didn’t seem to be any life whatsoever. But someone must live here. Wash fluttered on lines behind the houses. A skinny rooster flapped its wings and scratched into soil. Were they all gone? Or were they sitting silently behind dark windows, watching us?

This afternoon on the phone, Miss Choi had told me that the entire village was reserved for mediums. Wealthy people from the city below climbed up here to have their fortunes told or to talk to dear departed loved ones. But there were no customers tonight.

The front door of the hooch creaked open. Miss Choi drummed a little faster. A figure in white stepped out onto the porch. Then she stepped off the porch, slipping into her plastic sandals, and followed a flagstone walkway until she stood just a few feet from us. Moonlight reflected off a pock-marked face: the Widow Po.

I expected her to smile at Ernie. After all, they’d practically been intimate during the kut. Instead, she ignored us and frowned at Miss Choi.

“You insult me,” the Widow Po said in Korean.

“These are good men,” Miss Choi retorted. “And you asked me to bring them to the kut. This is your doing.”

“You expect I will hurt them?”

Miss Choi stopped drumming, slipped the instrument back into her bag, and pulled out a long red scarf embroidered with gold thread. I couldn’t make out what it said but the embroidery was clearly stylized Chinese characters. She draped the scarf over her head.

The Widow Po took a step backward.

“You are insolent,” she said. “Do you think I can’t ward off evil spirits on my own?”

“Not evil spirits,” Miss Choi said. “I want to ward off you. You must have some plan. It is not me who brought these men here tonight. It is you.”

The Widow Po turned to me and then slowly turned to Ernie. She smiled.

“I should offer you tea,” she said in English.

“Not necessary,” Ernie replied. “We just want to ask you some questions.”

“Will you be able to appease the troublesome spirit who has been haunting me?”

“That’s up to you,” I said. “How old are you?”

Her eyes widened. “A woman should never answer such a question.”

“American women shouldn’t,” I said. “Korean women are proud of their age.”

She smiled again. “I am older than you think.”

“Old enough to have known Moretti?”

Miss Choi pulled a small prayer wheel out of her bag, started spinning it, closed her eyes, and chanted softly beneath her breath.

We waited.

Far below in Seoul, neon sparkled and an occasional horn honked. The orange moon was completely above the horizon now. Miss Choi’s gentle chanting seemed to encourage its glow. Finally, the Widow Po spoke.

“I knew him,” she said. “I was young then. And beautiful. Yes, beautiful,” she repeated, as if I had challenged her. “Despite the marks on my face I was beautiful. We were never married in your Yankee way, what with all your military paperwork. It was only there to discourage American GIs from marrying Korean women. But we were married in the proper way, taking vows before the Goddess of the Underworld, swearing that our devotion would be eternal. That we would never part. Not like you Americans who change husbands and wives so often.”

She was speaking Korean now. Ernie couldn’t understand but he was following the intensity in her voice. I struggled to understand every word.

“But Moretti was like all you Americans, consorting with evil. With that woman called Whiskey Mary …”

Ernie understood that.

“… and with the girls who worked for her. And who knows who else? He wouldn’t come home. He wouldn’t perform the filial rights during the autumn harvest or visit the graves of my ancestors and introduce himself to them. He laughed at such things. Laughed!”

Now she was crying, her lips quivering in rage.

“When he was gone, I had to make a living. Not by finding another GI like so many women did but by honoring my ancestors. By doing this.”

She waved her arms to indicate the totality of the little village of shamans and mediums.

“When he was gone,” I said. “He was gone because you killed him.”

The Widow Po stared into my eyes a long time. Miss Choi’s chanting grew more rapid.

“Yes,” the Widow Po said. “I killed him. I had no choice. He was dishonoring me. He was dishonoring the Goddess of the Underworld.”

“And the Korean police left you alone.”

The Widow Po smiled through her tears and thrust out her chest. “They were afraid of me.”

“You allowed Whiskey Mary to go to prison.”

Widow Po shook her head rapidly. “For a while. There was no choice. But I sent spirits to protect her.”

I briefly translated everything that had been said to Ernie. He took a step toward the Widow Po. Miss Choi stopped chanting, alarmed.

“Why did you ask Miss Choi to bring us to the kut?”

“Because Moretti kept interrupting me,” the Widow Po answered, looking surprised, as if it should be obvious. “Sometimes he took over the whole ceremony, upsetting everyone. Making my clients unhappy. How can they talk to their dead parents if some GI is always in the way?”

Miss Choi translated the answer for Ernie.

Ernie grabbed the Widow Po’s elbow. Miss Choi gasped.

“Moretti won’t be interrupting any more kuts,” Ernie said. “Because you’ll be in the monkey house. No kuts allowed.”

The Widow Po understood the GI slang. Monkey house meant prison.

I was watching intently and as best I could tell, the Widow Po made no move. But maybe the light was bad, or maybe the glow from the orange moon and the candlelight in the hooch and the neon flashing from the city below caused me to miss something. But suddenly a rush of air escaped from Ernie’s mouth and he doubled over as if punched by a two-by-four.

Miss Choi resumed her chanting, frantic now, garbling her words.

Ernie knelt in the dust. The Widow Po spoke once again in broken English.

“No monkey house. The Widow Po no go there. I show Moretti he can’t beat me. That’s why I called you. No one will ever know what I did to him. No one alive.”

A glimmering butcher knife slipped out of the Widow Po’s long sleeve.

Before I could move, Miss Choi shouted and leapt toward the Widow Po.

The knife was in the air but Miss Choi rammed head first into the body of the Widow Po. Amazingly, the mudang maintained her balance and hopped back a few steps, still holding the knife. I ran toward Ernie but he was in so much pain that he couldn’t rise to his feet.

The Widow Po bounced nimbly on the balls of her feet, holding the butcher knife aloft, her long hair swaying loose in the mountain breeze, daring us to come at her.

I grabbed Miss Choi and held her. She bowed her head once again and started her chant. A different one this time, more guttural. Not Korean, I didn’t think. As if she were speaking some ancient language of the dead.

The Widow Po stopped bouncing. The knife dropped from her hand. She took a huge intake of breath, held it, and then a roar emitted from her frail frame. A roar of pain. Deep voiced. Thundering. The voice of a wounded man.

The Widow Po staggered, clutching her chest. She twisted, turned, knelt to the ground. She roared again in her deep-throated voice and then spat blood straight out into the air.

I rushed toward her but before I could reach her she crumpled to the ground. I turned her over. Still breathing. A pulse in her neck but she was out cold.

I rushed back to Ernie. He was on his feet, staring at me. “What happened?”

“She sucker punched you.”

“How the hell did she manage that?”

I looked back at the Widow Po. She still hadn’t moved. “I don’t know.”

Miss Choi was on her feet now, no longer chanting. She pulled off her white skirt and blouse, revealing blue jeans and a red T-shirt below. Carefully, she stuffed the white clothing in her canvas bag.

Lights flickered on throughout the village. Electric bulbs. A television chattered to life. The announcer spoke in rapid Korean: Ilki yeibo. The weather report.

People emerged from their hooches, completely ignoring Miss Choi and Ernie and me, except for three neighbor woman who approached and tried to help the moaning Widow Po to her feet. The exhausted mudang collapsed, the muscles in her legs like straw. I stepped forward to help but the women waved me back. Unbidden, two men emerged from a nearby home. Together the five of them carried the Widow Po back into her hooch.

Ernie and I looked at each other.

Miss Choi grabbed our hands and led us back down the dark pathway to the bottom of Kuksadang.

The next time I attended the classroom of Miss Choi Yong-kuang, I sat up a little straighter and paid a little more attention to her instruction. After the lesson, I waited behind until the other students had left. I didn’t have to say anything. Miss Choi read my mind.

“The Widow Po is crippled,” Miss Choi told me. “She hasn’t moved from her hooch since the night we were up there.”

“How will she live?”

“Rich people make offerings to her.”

“They’re still afraid of her.”

Miss Choi nodded. I watched as she packed her lesson notes and her textbook into her leather briefcase.

“You knew what was going to happen,” I said.

She shrugged.

“The Widow Po brought all this upon herself,” I continued. “Because of a guilty conscience.”

Miss Choi clicked the hasps on her briefcase and looked me in the eye. “The Widow Po is a brave woman.”

I nodded in agreement.

“What about Moretti?” I asked.

“No need to do anything further. Mori Di’s taken his revenge.”

I studied Miss Choi for a long moment. “You really believe that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she said. “I do.”

I helped her lock up the classroom and then walked her out the main gate of 8th Army Compound and escorted her to the bus stop. No muggers jumped out at us.

Neither did any evil spirits.