Nightmare Range

SEOUL STORY

The early morning Seoul traffic swept us along like a rushing river of metal. Ernie managed to pull over, and we climbed out of the jeep. The boy was still there.

“Looks like he fell from a ten-story building,” Ernie said.

This would have been plausible except that there was nothing around but a shrub-filled lot and a long sidewalk leading to the intersection between the district of Itaewon and the 8th United States Army headquarters on Yongsan Compound.

Bare feet stuck out of ragged cuffs, and the boy’s pullover sweater was as soiled and greasy as his skin. A crusty, transparent film oozed out of his tightly shut eyes, and blood bubbled and caked on his puffy, cracked lips.

Ernie knelt down and felt for a pulse.

“He’s alive,” he said.

We tossed him in the back of the jeep. He weighed nothing. Ernie revved up the engine, let out the clutch, and bulled his way into the traffic.

“Now that we got him,” he said, “what the hell are we going to do with him?”

“Feed him,” I said. “Get him cleaned up. And then find out how he ended up face down on the pavement of Seoul.”

I have a room on the compound, but in the early morning you’ll most often find me walking back from Itaewon, the nightclub district the Korean government has set aside for GIs. It’s a long walk, but usually I’m too numb to feel it. Rats scurry out of the way, stacks of drained OB beer bottles sway in the cold wind, and zombie-like Americans head for the warmth and comfort of military barracks. Normally I shower, shave, slip into the suit and tie required of all CID agents, and stumble over to the 8th Army snack bar for a cup of coffee and a copy of the daily Stars amp; Stripes. But today, on the way in, I almost stepped on something: a boy lying face down on the pavement.

Korea may not have a whole lot of excess wealth, but you don’t often see beggars. Most of the panhandlers are kids, and they’re healthy and full of spunk, put up to it by some Fagin lurking in the alleyways.

So to see a boy like this, passed out, drenched in grime, his dirty cheek scrunched up against the cold cement-it wasn’t an everyday occurrence.

I’d heard about people in New York who just walk around someone in trouble. In East LA, where I’m from, we aren’t exactly known for our neighborliness either. But I always figured that if I ran into a helpless waif I would stop, see if I could help.

Except I was on the last empty stretch of sidewalk that led to the compound, and there were no other pedestrians, and if I stopped to help the boy what would I do for him? Back in Itaewon you can catch a cab without too much problem, but no driver ventures out on this long empty stretch unless he already has a fare, and you can bet he’s not going to stop for some six-foot-four American with a filthy urchin draped over his shoulder. If I carried him to the compound, I’d get hassled at the gate. All guests have to be signed in and their Korean National ID card numbers entered on the MPs sign-in roster.

All these complications flashed through my mind in the few seconds it took to stride toward the body lying on the cold cement.

As I said, I had always thought of myself as the exception-the guy who would leap out of the crowd to assist. But when I tried to imagine myself trudging down a road on a bustling Seoul morning with a lifeless mendicant draped over my shoulder, I just stepped over him, lengthened my stride, and plowed ahead toward the compound.

By the time I changed clothes and met Ernie at the snack bar, regret had overcome me. I described the situation. He gulped the last of his coffee, stood up, and said, “Let’s go.” I followed him out to the jeep. When we reached the long empty stretch of sidewalk, the boy was still there.

I was relieved. A chance for redemption.

We took him back to the barracks, and under the pulsing warm water in the shower room, he came to. He was frightened at first but then realized that he was no longer cold and he was getting a bath, so he accepted the soap from my hands and in short order had himself pretty well cleaned up. After he dried off, Ernie gave him some of his underwear, which was very baggy on the boy but at least was clean and helped him resemble a human being more than he had all morning. Back in the room he wolfed down a can of beans and made quick work of the soda Ernie bought him out of the vending machine.

After a brief chat in Korean I told him to lie down and rest and we’d be back to see him after work. Mr. Yim, the houseboy, wasn’t too keen on the idea of having this stranger lurking about his wing of the barracks, but the boy went to sleep immediately. Anyway, he didn’t have any clothes, since we had thrown his rags away-after I had determined that he was indeed as poor as he seemed.

On the way back to the CID detachment headquarters I was filled with that warm glow a good deed can give you, but I was puzzled about what the boy had told me. About his aunt, the one who had been murdered.

We were late for work, and the first sergeant didn’t particularly want to hear that we were helping a boy passed out on the sidewalk.

“You guys have a job to do,” he said. “There are agencies to take care of orphans. I want you to contact one of them and have him turned over today, but first you have some black market arrests you owe me.”

We hadn’t busted as many people as we should have in the last couple of weeks, and the provost marshal had been embarrassed when he’d briefed the commanding general.

“Who has their finger in the dike, colonel?” the CG asked. “Or are we allowing the whole country to be flooded with scotch whiskey and American cigarettes?”

Actually, it wasn’t the damage the black marketing did to the Korean economy that bothered him, it was the Korean wives of GIs shopping in the commissary and getting in his wife’s way. That was what bothered him. That and the hell he caught when he went home.

The first sergeant told us he wanted three arrests, minimum, before the close of business. No sweat. We had two of them before noon. Then we took the rest of the day off.

No sense spoiling him.

The St. Francis orphanage was an austere little cluster of shoebox-like buildings. It reminded me of boot camp except it was filled with smiling faces bursting with happiness. Father Art was a burly man with thick forearms, a pug nose, and a bald spot shaped like a heart atop his head.

“This must be the little fellow you called about,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” The boy was dressed in the smallest set of gym clothes we could find in the PX. “We brought him here as soon as we could get off work.”

Father Art knelt and spoke in rapid Korean. Soon the boy was nodding to Father Art and had taken his hand. They spoke for almost ten minutes, and at times I thought the boy was going to cry. I could follow most of the conversation but a little of it was beyond me. Father Art’s mastery of the Korean language, to me, seemed as good as any Korean’s.

Father Art stood up and looked at us. “Did you follow any of that?”

“A little.”

“He say that his aunt was murdered, after he’d only been living with her for about two weeks. Prior to that he had lived with his father, a tenant farmer out in the country near Anyang. When his father died, he inherited his life’s savings: two hundred thousand won and a gold watch, an heirloom from his grandfather. He wrapped it all up and tied it around his waist and then took the train to Seoul to find his aunt.”

“What happened to the boy’s mother?”

“She died in childbirth, having him. The boy’s name is Yun Chil-bok. His aunt’s name is Ahn Chong-ai.”

“And he says she was murdered?”

“Yes. She owned a pochang ma-cha, a vending cart, in downtown Seoul. In Myongdong. Do you know the area?”

Ernie and I looked at each other. “Yeah. We know it.”

It was the biggest nightclub district in Seoul. GIs mostly stayed down in their own little set-aside, Itaewon, near the 8th Army headquarters, but some of the more adventurous amongst us prowled the streets of Myongdong from time to time.

I knelt down and asked the boy to tell me where his aunt set up her pochang ma-cha each night. He said it was always in the same place, in Myongdong near the Oriental Brewery Draft Beer Hall. Myongdong is a big district. I asked him to narrow it down a little more, but the best he could do was to tell us that it was about a five-minute walk from the Cosmos department store.

The boy said that he had helped his aunt in preparing the food, serving the customers, and replacing the perforated charcoal briquette that fired the little stove. At night they slept under the draped cart, on wooden boards, or when it got particularly cold and his aunt could afford it, they stayed in the common room of a yoinsuk, a Korean inn.

“Did you have any friends or relatives in the area?”

“No relatives, but everyone who came into her pochang ma-cha was her friend.”

“How old was your aunt?”

“Very old. Maybe thirty.”

“Did she have a boyfriend?”

“Maybe. One man used to come around and bother her all the time. She would be very upset after he left. I’m not sure why.”

“What was his name?”

“Cruncher Chong.”

“Cruncher?”

“Yes.”

“Why did they call him that?”

“Because he was always chewing on something.”

“What happened to your aunt?”

“One morning I woke up, and there was only the board beneath me. The cart was gone, and so was my aunt.”

“Somebody had rolled the cart away while you slept?”

The boy hung his head. “Yes.”

“And your aunt was gone?”

“Yes. I checked with everyone in the neighborhood, but no one had seen her leave and no one knew where she had gone. I waited there five days. Finally I was just too hungry, and I wandered off.”

“How long did you roam around Seoul until we found you?”

“I’m not sure. Two or three weeks.”

“What makes you so sure that your aunt was murdered?”

“She wouldn’t have given up her cart without a fight, and I knew she wouldn’t have allowed us to be separated, for any reason, unless she was dead.”

“What happened to your two hundred thousand won?”

“She has it. I gave it to her when I arrived, as my father had told me to.”

“And the gold watch?”

“Yes. And the gold watch too.”

We thanked Father Art and left a package of goodies from the PX that we hoped the kids could use: soap, powdered milk, cookies. Then we said goodbye to Yun Chil-bok. I told him to listen to Father Art and we’d return to visit him this weekend. He thrust his shoulders back and looked me straight in the eye.

“You are policemen,” he said. “Will you find out who killed my aunt?”

“We will talk to the Korean police about it,” I said.

“But I don’t know them. I only know you.”

Ernie shuffled his feet. He often surprised me with how much Korean he could understand.

“We’ll look into it for you,” I said.

“I will be waiting.”

As we climbed into Ernie’s jeep, I looked back at the boy. Father Art held his hand, but Yun Chil-bok stared straight at us, as if he were trying to evaluate our trustworthiness.

He didn’t seem grateful for what we had done. But maybe he felt that at the age of eight years he had a right to be picked up off the pavement and fed and taken care of.

I agreed with him.

Lieutenant Pei, liaison officer for the Korean National Police at the 8th Army provost marshal’s office, didn’t hold out much hope.

“I spoke to the captain of the Myongdong Police Station. He said that the woman who ran the pochang ma-cha in the area you describe has indeed disappeared, and her cart along with her. But there’s no reason to believe that she was murdered. If she had an unwanted nephew on her hands, maybe she decided that just packing up and leaving would be the best of all concerned. After all, he did end up in an orphanage.”

“But the boy says she was murdered.”

“We have no reports of any killings in the Myongdong area in many months. The captain was insistent on that.”

We thanked him and walked out of his office. Ernie surprised me by bringing up the subject first.

“We haven’t been to Myongdong in a while. Wouldn’t hurt to stop by the OB Beer Hall tonight and have a few wet ones.”

I looked at him. “You’re right about that. It couldn’t hurt nothing. Nothing but our livers.”

The OB Beer Hall hummed with customers, most of them Korean businessmen just off work, standing at the counters chatting with friends. Blue-suited girls with jet black hair tied snugly under white bandanas ran back and forth to the tap, refilling huge mugs of beer. The hefty young woman behind the stick wore a red and white nameplate with the OB Beer logo pinned above her breasts.

After our second refill I spoke to her in Korean.

“Miss Kim, do you ever get a customer in here known as Cruncher Chong?”

“Cruncher? Oh, yes. He comes in here often.”

“Is he here now?”

The young lady scanned the room. “No. I haven’t seen him. You know him?”

“No. Not yet. But we’re looking for him on behalf of a boy named Yun Chil-bok.”

The girls looked at us blankly. “Well, if Cruncher Chong is not here, he is usually at the Black Dragon nightclub.”

“Where’s that?”

She pointed. “Two blocks down and turn right past the Teahouse of the Seven Virgins.”

Two more uniformed young women popped through swinging doors carrying freshly washed mugs and more snacks to put on display. Ernie stared at them, and for a moment I thought he was going to drool. Over the mugs or the girls, I wasn’t sure which. I said thank you to Miss Kim and pulled Ernie out of there.

The Black Dragon nightclub had a long bar with upholstered bar stools and cocktail tables peeking out from behind planters and aquariums full of tropical fish. When our eyes adjusted, I saw that the joint was only about half full. The crowd was younger than at the OB Beer Hall. And full of hustle.

A tall, slender man with a heavily greased pompadour stood at the bar. He was talking, and the bow-tied bartender kept smiling and nodding. He stared at us when we walked in, as most of the people in the place did, and then he reached in his pocket and pulled out something long and gnarled. He stuck the tip of it into his mouth. At first I thought it was a carrot, but as my eyes refocused I realized it was a piece of ginseng root.

They say that true ginseng grows only in the soil of the Korean peninsula. It has been known since ancient time for its medicinal powers, but most men saw it as an aphrodisiac.

As I passed him, I could almost see my reflection in his big white teeth. I fought off the urge to say, “What’s up, doc?”

Only Ernie would have gotten away with it.

We took a seat at a table, and after a while a heavily made-up waitress in a tightly wrapped dress came over to serve us. We ordered two beers and a plate of dried cuttlefish. When she delivered the wets, Ernie smiled and made her promise to come back and talk after taking care of a few more orders.

The tall man at the bar continued to drink, but I didn’t see him forking over any money. Four more sleazy types paraded into the Black Dragon and joined him. They laughed at his jokes and backed off when he playfully poked them with his ginseng root.

When the waitress came back, we discovered that her name was Miss Min and that she had been working there for six months. When we asked her if she had a boyfriend, she laughed.

“Do you know Cruncher Chong?” I asked.

Her head turned involuntarily toward the bar. “Oh, yes. Everyone knows him.”

“Is he a gangster?”

She dropped her head slightly and shook it so her short, curly black hair bounced and shimmered. “I don’t know.”

“Did you know Ahn Chong-ai, the woman who owned the pochang ma-cha on the street here?”

“No. I don’t know her.” Her smile had disappeared. She picked up her cocktail tray. “I must go now.”

Ernie grabbed her by the wrist. “Don’t speak to anyone about our conversation,” he said. I translated what he said to Korean. She glared at us and left.

I took a sip of my beer. “We’re not making many friends.”

“Not yet,” Ernie said.

We ate the dried cuttlefish and nursed our beers until they were just suds. Cruncher Chong and his cronies, waving and making much noise, said their goodbyes and paraded out the door.

We paid our bill. It was about twice as expensive as in Itaewon.

The tail was easy. They weren’t expecting to be followed, especially by a couple of foreigners.

Seven or eight customers sat around the cart on wooden stools. Steam billowed from a vat of soup, and the reddened faces of the revelers glistened in the glare of the naked bulb overhead.

Cruncher Chong and his buddies monopolized the attention of both the customers and the rotund woman who poured shots of soju into small cups. The men toasted the company and drank heartily of the potent rice liquor.

The crowds of Myongdong streamed past the little pochang ma-cha. Blue and white canvas flaps were draped over iron ribs, protecting the customers from the elements and the curious stares of passersby.

“If this is the cart that belonged to the boy’s aunt,” Ernie said, “they only moved it about ten blocks.”

“Enough to confuse an eight-year-old who’d never been in the city before.”

We waited around the corner until Cruncher Chong and his buddies got up and left. Then we joined the revelers at the open-air cart. There were three Korean men and two women, all middle-aged working-class people who were surprised to see us. We ordered a couple of shots of soju, and the proprietress threw in some unhusked peanuts, gratis, in honor of our being the first foreigners to be seen in these parts.

On the pole next to me I noticed a red document. A license of some sort, or a health inspection certificate. I stood up halfway to take a better look. I couldn’t read all the officialese, but I could make out that the current owner’s last name was Chong. The beginning date of the certificate was two weeks ago. The certificate was in a plastic holder, and there was something else behind it. I flipped it forward and saw the name Ahn Chong-ai.

The revelers called to me. Everyone had raised their cups. To friendship between Korea and America. I joined in.

A thick-bladed hatchet sat on the cutting board next to the kettle of soup. I asked the round smiling woman if I could take a good look at her cart, since I was an Amerian and we didn’t have such things where I came from. Her face crinkled into a huge round smile, and she nodded. Behind where she stood was a double panel in the side of the cart. The interior was hollow for carrying the big kettle and the cooking utensils and the canvas cover when the cart was wheeled away on its oversized bicycle wheels. I rubbed the bottom of the wood. It was splintery, not smooth, and a reddish-brown stain spread across more than half of the flat board.

I figured I could climb inside the cart and no one would know I was there.

I stood up and flamboyantly told the crowd how cleverly the cart was arranged and how resourceful were the Korean people. They cheered, and we all drank a little more soju.

I sat back down and watched the woman hack a helpless turnip to smithereens and dump it in the boiling cauldron.

The Myongdong night was in full swing now, and the streets were bustling with people on their way to restaurants or bars or just gawking at the sights. We headed back to the Black Dragon.

“You don’t just dispose of the body of a grown woman in this part of Seoul,” Ernie said, “without somebody’s noticing.”

“The boy said Cruncher Chong had spent some nights with his aunt,” I said. “Maybe he took care of her while they were alone and then got rid of the body.”

“How?”

“The cart. It’s the perfect hearse for transporting a stiff through town.”

“And then he had the nerve to reopen the car for business under his own name?”

“Maybe he forced her to sign a bill of sale or something.”

“Or bribed the government inspector into not checking too close.”

“Maybe.”

“And maybe we’ve been drinking too much soju,” Ernie said.

I couldn’t argue with that.

We had just turned down an alley, to cut from one main street to another, when I heard the footsteps behind us. I swiveled on the balls of my feet.

Cruncher Chong and two of his boys.

The light from the other end of the alley faded. I glanced backward. Three more guys were behind us. We took a couple of steps toward Chong.

“You have been following us,” he said. “And asking questions.”

The streets of LA had taught me that there is only one real advantage in a fight-the first strike. I kept walking toward Chong, casually, as if I were going to join in the conversation. When I was a few steps from him, I hopped forward and snapped a kick into his groin. He doubled over and I slammed his partner in the face and kept moving, past them, down the alley. Ernie was right behind me, but one of the guys grabbed him. I turned and kicked him in the side and he let go long enough for Ernie to break free and then we were running.

Once we reached the main street it was a breathless three blocks until we found a policeman. He pointed us toward the Myongdong Police Station.

Lieutenant Lee, night commander of the Myongdong Police Station, was somewhat skeptical of our explanation of a murder that had taken place in the middle of his precinct. But we were Americans, and CID agents, so he brought a couple of uniformed patrolmen with him and followed us to Cruncher Chong’s pochang ma-cha.

We showed him the recent change of certificate, and he nodded and lifted out the old certificate behind it. He showed me that the deed had been legally transferred, with both a beginning and ending date for the ownership of Miss Ahn Chong-ai.

As I was about to take him around behind the cart, the rotund woman pulled a bloody, newspaper-wrapped piece of meat, which must have just been delivered, from beneath her cart. She sliced off a piece, pulverized it, and dropped it into the cauldron. Pork. She re-wrapped the large chunk and put it back down inside the cart. When Lieutenant Lee and I looked into the base of the cart, fresh blood had been added to the stain I had seen before.

Lieutenant Lee’s jaw bulged as he stared at me, trying to figure what to do with us. Finally he spoke.

“What you say about Cruncher Chong carting this Miss Ahn’s body off in the cart is, of course, possible. The evidence, however, is slim as yet. We will locate Cruncher Chong and have a talk with him.”

I nodded and thanked him.

Ernie’s lips were clamped tight and his head rotated slightly on his neck, as if it sat atop a greased ball bearing.

A couple of dumb Americans, meddling where we shouldn’t. I was starting to worry that Cruncher Chong might bring up assault charges.

After about thirty minutes Lieutenant Lee walked out of the back room, tugging off his fingerless leather glove.

“Cruncher Chong has confessed to everything,” he said.

He shrugged, loosening his shoulders. A sheen of perspiration glistened atop his high brown forehead.

“And we know where to find Miss Ahn Chong-ai. Tomorrow morning I will take you there.”

We met him at the compound and followed his police sedan in our army jeep. It was a crisp, bright blue morning. After we left the outskirts of Seoul I breathed deeply of the clean air and had no doubt about why the ancients called Korea the Land of the Morning Calm.

Suwon is a small town in the country, surrounded by green rice paddies and groves of apple trees. It has little of the hustle and bustle of Seoul. Lieutenant Lee’s driver asked directions one time and after a couple of turns parked in front of the Paris Beauty Shop.

There wasn’t much family resemblance, but of the three beauticians on duty it was easy to figure out who was Miss Ahn Chong-ai. When she saw two Americans and the uniformed Korean police lieutenant, her eyes grew as big as two hairdryers.

A couple of days later I called Father Art, and Ernie and I drove out to the orphanage.

Miss Ahn had sold her cart and Chil-bok’s gold watch to her boyfriend, Cruncher Chong. That, along with the two hundred thousand won she stole from the boy, had allowed her to invest in the business of her dreams, a little beauty shop in Suwon. She was single, and maybe she thought an eight-year-old boy tagging along would hurt her chances for marriage, or maybe she just didn’t deem family ties to be as sacred as did most Koreans.

I thought of Father Art’s words when I explained the situation. “The greatest shame,” he said, “that could scar a Korean’s soul is not honoring their family.”

Lieutenant Lee’s treatment of her had not been gentle. If she’d robbed a bank instead of abandoning her only nephew, he probably wouldn’t have been so offended.

When Miss Ahn sold the shop and refunded the money, Lieutenant Lee turned the proceeds over to the KNP Liaison Office at the 8th Army provost marshal’s office. It was all in one Korean bank note totaling four hundred and sixty-five thousand won, made out to Yun Chil-bok. I signed the receipt and we went to the orphanage.

Father Art and Chil-bok were waiting for us. I knelt down and gave him the envelope.

“What of my aunt?” he asked.

I patted him on the shoulder. “Keep her memory well,” I said.

“And the man who killed her?”

I thought of the hardness in Lieutenant Lee’s eyes as he glowered at the petty criminal, Cruncher Chong.

“He will be punished,” I said, “many times over before his life is through.”

“Thank you,” the little boy said. Then he bowed.