Slicky Boys

10

Ernie and I sat in the jeep, shivering, sipping on hot coffee from a thermos, stomping our feet to keep warm. In the gray distance, the first glimmers of sunlight peeked over white-capped mountains. During the last couple of hours the temperature had plummeted-maybe five or six degrees. Still, an occasional flurry of snow fluttered to the ground.

“Whoever thought of this shit detail?” Ernie asked.

“You did.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s right. You shouldn’t have listened to me.”

“You finally said something that makes sense.”

We were parked beneath an overhang behind a cement-walled warehouse on a small army supply depot known as Camp Market, situated about fifteen miles east of Seoul. Riley gave us the tip. Electrical equipment had been disappearing from this compound at a steady clip for as far back as anyone could remember.

The pilferage had to be organized and it had to be the slicky boys. We were here to catch them in the act.

Last night, we’d run the ville in Itaewon and called in every favor we’d ever done for anyone, asking about the slicky boys.

The answer was always the same: “Moolah.” I don’t know.

After applying a little pressure, a few of our Korean contacts opened up with one more thing: Don’t mess with the slicky boys, it’s not good for your health.

Maybe it was because we’d been drinking soju. Maybe it was because we were tired from the long day and pissed off that no one would give us any information and frightened by all the warnings we’d received about the slicky boys. But whatever the reason, last night Ernie and I had come to a conclusion. The only way to contact the slicky boys was to flush them out. Start making arrests, disrupt their operations, force them to talk to us.

Of course, it was risky. How risky I wasn’t quite sure.

If nothing else, we’d get their attention.

We didn’t know how the electrical equipment here on Camp Market was disappearing, but we did know that there had to be inside contacts involved. The perimeter of the compound was secure: chain-link fence, barbed wire barricade, floodlights, guard shacks every hundred yards.

It looked more like a Nazi concentration camp than a transhipment point for lightbulbs and toilet paper.

The only way to move stolen property off-compound was through the front gate. But in addition to the Korean perimeter guards and the GI warehouse men, there was also a contingent of MP’s stationed here. An American MP checked everything that passed out of the gate.

American MP’s, like anyone else, can be corrupted. The small village of Pupyong-ni is right outside the gate and it’s chock-full of nightclubs and business girls and cheap booze. A little extra money can make life a lot more pleasant for a hardworking MP.

Still, we couldn’t be sure exactly how stolen goods were transported off the compound until we witnessed something being moved. That’s why we’d been here since before dawn. To catch the slicky boys in the act and stop them.

By the time we had slugged down the last dregs of our coffee, we heard the steady churn of an approaching diesel engine. A truck rolled between us and the next warehouse over, stopping near a cluster of metal drums.

“Trash pickup,” Ernie said.

“Let’s take a look.”

We climbed out of the jeep and slipped through the shadows until we could see the rear of the trash truck.

Four workers, dressed in heavy down coats and pullover caps and gloves, dropped four empty metal drums to the ground, next to the full ones. With deft precision, each of the empty drums was turned upside down. For no apparent reason, two men shuffled off to a nearby coal bin. We followed them. Grabbing broom handles, they poked through a small mountain of coal, raising black dust as they did so.

“This is it,” Ernie said.

After rummaging around for less than a minute, both men returned, a coil of copper wire held in each hand.

Copper wire. Not manufactured in Korea. Imported at a big premium. But here it was, on an American army compound. Easy to sell at a good profit margin. Prime pickings for an experienced thief.

My guess was that someone inside the warehouse had slipped the four coils of wire out the back door during working hours yesterday. Not being able to transport the coils off-post through the heavily guarded gate, the crook had stashed his loot beneath the pile of coal.

The trash collectors, armed with this information, had been sent back to collect more than just trash.

Maybe the slicky boys did this every day. Four coils of wire at thirty or forty dollars each-every day-could soon produce a tidy sum.

The two men back at the truck had turned the empty metal drums back to the upright position.

“What the hell are those?” Ernie asked.

On the ground, where the empty drums had been, lay four metal discs.

The four coils of copper wire were dropped, one each, into the four empty metal drums. Then the four metal discs were tossed in after them.

“False bottoms,” I said. “The copper’s hidden beneath perfectly fitted sheets of metal.”

One by one, the workmen dragged the empty drums over next to the full ones. They lifted the full ones and dumped the contents into the drums containing the false bottoms and the copper wire.

“Ingenious,” Ernie said.

“Also a hell of a lot of work.”

He shrugged. “Hard work, they’re used to.”

Once the four drums with the copper coils and the false bottoms and the trash were loaded onto the bed of the truck, the workmen climbed back aboard and one of them- the smallest-hoisted himself into the cab, started the engine, and drove off.

Ernie looked at me. “We follow?”

“No. They’ve got nowhere else to go. We wait for them at the main gate.”

“Right.”

The trash truck must’ve had other stops because it took about twenty minutes for it to reach the main gate. The back of the truck was fully loaded now with overflowing drums of garbage. How many of them contained false bottoms and copper wire, I couldn’t be sure.

We had parked the jeep in the parking lot of the Battalion Headquarters, engine running, pointed toward the gate.

Ernie said, “Now we see if any of the MP’s are in on it with them.”

We waited. The trash truck rolled up to the gate and stopped. A bored-looking MP emerged from the guard shack and, carrying a long wooden pole, pulled himself up onto the bed of the truck. The Korean workers shuffled out of his way as he methodically ran the pole down through the trash to the bottom of every drum.

After he’d checked them all, the MP hopped off the truck and waved them forward. A Korean guard started to roll back the big chain-link gate.

“Now!” I told Ernie.

He gunned the engine, shoved it into gear, and we shot forward. As he did so, I opened the canvas door of the jeep, stood up, held on to the metal roll bar with one hand, clutching my badge aloft with the other, and shouted at the MP at the gate.

“CID! Don’t let that truck pass!”

The gate was almost completely open now. Ernie had taken off so fast that the wheels missed their traction on the slick road and the jeep’s back end swerved a little. I held on. Ernie regained control in a matter of seconds.

The driver of the truck swiveled around to see what was causing all the commotion.

The MP stepped back from the guard shack, turned, and shouted at the Korean gate guard to close the damn gate.

The truck’s diesel engine roared. The big vehicle lurched forward and started to roll through the open gate.

The Korean gate guard stood motionless, not trying to close the gate, pretending he was confused. The tail of the trash truck cleared the gate and sped out onto the main road that runs in front of the compound.

Suddenly, the Korean guard came alive and leaned into it, shoving the gate closed.

Ernie shouted, “Son of a bitch!” and stepped on the gas.

The gate was closing, we were heading straight toward the narrowing gap, and I was standing outside the jeep, the door open, about to have my head smashed against the MP guard shack. I ducked back inside the jeep.

As I did so, Ernie hit the gate, something smashed into our left side, and we bounced against the wall of the MP guard shack but kept moving forward, squeezing through the rolling gate that clanged shut behind us.

“Which way’d they go?” Ernie screamed.

“Right.”

He took the corner sliding, forcing oncoming traffic to slam on their brakes. The trash truck was up ahead, only a few yards from us. Ernie shifted and gunned the engine like a maniac, and within a few seconds we were gaining on them.

“Take it easy, Ernie!” I shouted. “They’re outside the compound now. No longer in our jurisdiction.”

“Fuck our jurisdiction!”

Ernie was just about to swerve to the side of the trash truck and try to force them over, when their red brakelights flashed and they careened left in front of oncoming traffic.

Tires skidded. Horns honked. I screamed.

Ernie didn’t slow down. He followed the truck across a short bridge that led into the little village of Pupyong-ni.

The big truck took up the whole road. The traffic here was composed strictly of pedestrians and people on bicycles. They leapt out of the way of the barreling trash truck, screaming and cursing in several languages.

“The son of a bitch is going to wipe out the whole village!” Ernie shouted. But he stayed right on his ass.

Unlit neon and shuttered barrooms flashed past us. Suddenly the road widened. We were heading into rice paddies. But rather than continue toward the open countryside, the driver of the trash truck swerved back toward the cement block walls of a residential district.

Ernie wasn’t fooled; he stayed right with him, and now, with the road wider, he made his move, gunning the engine, speeding forward, racing alongside the trash truck.

He started to edge toward the nose of the truck, veering to the right to pull him over, when I saw it.

“Stop!” I shouted.

Ahead was a “honey truck.” Workmen stood around it, their faces covered with gauze masks, and a thick rubber hose draped over a brick wall, sucking the filth out of a septic tank.

Ernie slammed on his brakes. The driver of the trash truck wasn’t so fast. He sped forward, slammed into the rear end of the honey truck, spun it around, and the rubber hose busted loose. Liquid waste sprayed the air in an exploding brown swirl.

Ernie cut to his right but not fast enough. A stream of shit splattered against our windshield.

“Fuck!”

Ernie switched on the windshield wipers, leaned forward so he could peek through the waste, and kept moving forward.

The stench groped its way into my throat and tried to rip out my stomach.

The trash truck was still floundering in the mud, grinding its way past the smashed rear of the honey truck. When we pulled up alongside, Ernie cut the jeep in front of the truck, bumping it until the trash truck was wedged against a cement-block wall. We shuddered to a halt.

I leapt out of the jeep, holding up my badge.

“Don’t move!” I shouted, trying not to gag at the stink. “CID!”

The three workers in the back hopped off the bed of the truck and took off running, splattering shit and mud in their wake.

Ernie ran after them.

People emerged from the gateways lining the street, gaping in awe at the mess, covering their mouths and noses with their hands.

The driver of the honey truck was ranting, shaking his fist at Ernie and the trash truck driver and anyone else who would listen.

Each time I took a breath I felt like throwing up, but I held it.

Instead, I jumped up onto the running board of the trash truck and jerked open the door.

The driver clutched the top of the steering wheel, face buried against two gloved hands.

“CID!” I said. “Climb out of the cab.”

When he didn’t move I jabbed him in the ribs.

“You’re in a world of shit. Don’t make it worse.”

I grabbed the driver by the shoulder and jerked. With surprising force the body pulled back and the head shot up.

“Manji-jima sikkya!” Don’t touch me, you bastard!

The face was wrinkled, but the skin appeared soft and there was no stubble of a beard. Climbing out of the cab, a clawlike hand ripped back the wool cap and a flood of gray hair tumbled out.

“Keep hands to yourself, Charley,” she said in perfect GI English. “You don’t know how treat lady?”

Ernie splashed back through the mud, breathing heavily.

“They got away,” he said and glanced at the driver. “Who the hell is this?”

“Nice talk, GI,” she said.

Ernie looked at me. “I’ll be damned. A broad.”

“A lady,” the driver said. She glanced at the mess. “Smell so bad around here maybe gag maggot.”

The snow had stopped. As if it too didn’t want to drop into the filth spewed by the honey truck.

I grabbed the lady by the elbow and we sloshed through the sucking muck.

Her name was Nam Byong-suk. We booked her at the Camp Market MP Station, then escorted her to one of the interrogation rooms. Apparently the aroma of the honey truck still lingered in the air around us because the office pukes backed away from us, crinkling their noses, as the three of us paraded down the hallway.

Once we were alone, Ernie offered Nam Byong-suk a stick of gum and I fetched her a cup of coffee. From somewhere within the folds of her filthy jacket she produced a cigarette and I struck a match for her. She took a long drag and blew smoke into the air.

I was right in my evaluation of her. All she really wanted was for us to treat her like a lady. Once we did that, she started to talk.

“I used to be a business girl,” she said. “The best-looking girl in Itaewon.”

“How’d you get into this line of work?” Ernie asked.

“I can’t tell you.” She sipped on her coffee.

“This is serious business,” I said. “You’re about to lose your job.”

“No sweat. I get another one.”

“It’s not so easy to find a job in Korea.”

“It is for me.”

“Because you work for the slicky boys?”

She glanced at me slyly. “Slicky boys?” She sipped on her coffee.

“That’s who you work for, don’t you?” “Ernie asked.

“Not your business.”

“Sure it is,” I said. “Between us only. You must cooperate with us. If not, the slicky boys’ business here will be shut down. Your boss will lose a lot of money and he’ll be very angry.”

“We want to talk to your boss,” Ernie said.

“Not boss,” Nam Byong-suk said. “King.”

“King?”

“Yes.”

I watched as her puckered lips worked away on the cigarette. The room filled with the reek of cheap tobacco laced with the memory of the honey truck.

I asked, “You mean there’s a king of the slicky boys?”

“Of course. How else you think he can control all slicky boys? Without king, without strong man, everybody slicky anything. Pretty soon GI honcho get mad, pretty soon no can slicky anything, pretty soon no more money.”

“The King of the Slicky Boys,” I said. There was reverence in my voice. She liked that. “Tell us about this king.”

“His name is So Boncho-ga.”

I nodded. At the time I didn’t know what boncho-ga meant but I looked it up later: herbalist. She wanted us to call him Herbalist So.

“Where can we find him?” I asked.

“No can find. His place is in…” Slicky Girl Nam turned to Ernie, loosely cupping her fist and poking her forefinger into the hole. “What you call this one?”

“Asshole,” Ernie said.

“No. Place where bakchui live.”

Ernie looked at her blankly. I rummaged in my memory for the word and found it. Bakchui. Bats.

“A place where bats live,” I said. “A cave.”

“Yes,” she said. “Cave.”

“The king lives in a cave?”

Slicky Girl Nam nodded triumphantly. “Yes. A cave. He still does. In Itaewon.”

“A cave in Itaewon?” I couldn’t believe it. The entire district was packed with hooches and nightclubs and chop-houses. And every inch of it had been crawled over by GI’s at least a million times. “Where is it?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Nobody know. It’s big secret.”

Ernie and I looked at each other and then back at her. She waved her cigarette in the air.

“No bullshit. King live in big cave. Have-what you call? — rats and bats and everything. Beneath Itaewon.”

The slicky boys lived underground, she said, like moles. And they came up at night to steal whatever they wanted.

“How can I get in touch with him?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Many years I don’t see.”

“But you work for him.”

“Many people work for him. Still we don’t see him. Somebody tell us what to do, we do.”

Layers of command, insulating the top boss. It made sense. I thought of trying to work my way back, one slicky boy manager at a time. It wouldn’t work. They’d never talk to us. Not unless we found leverage to force them to spill their guts, and that would take too much time.

“Who would know how to contact this Mr. So?”

“You no can talk to him.”

“Why not?”

“You foreigner, right?”

“Right.”

“No foreign bastard ever talk to King of the Slicky Boys.”

“Why not?”

“He don’t like. If you ever talk to him, if you ever see his face, then you die.”

She sliced her forefinger across her throat.

Ernie chomped on his gum furiously. “Knock off the bullshit, Nam. We’re CID agents. This Slicky Boy So is nothing but a thief. We’ll talk to him whenever the hell we want to talk to him.”

“No, you won’t. Only one way you talk to king.”

“What’s that?”

“You keep messing with slicky boys…” She waved her hand toward the village, maybe indicating the wrecked trash truck. “… then king find you. When king find you, he talk to you, but you no talk to anybody after that.”

Ernie leaned forward, nose to nose with the old hag. She didn’t back off.

“After I talk to Slicky Boy So,” Ernie said, “I’ll come back to Camp Market and tell you about it.”

“No, you won’t. You be beneath Han River. Only talk to fish.”

She started to laugh and she kept laughing and she didn’t stop until she was hacking away with a smoker’s cough. Finally, she spit up phlegm. We had all we were going to get from her.

Maybe she was just looking for attention. Maybe all her years of walking the streets and catching GI’s had driven her bonkers. Maybe both.

An hour later we turned her over to the KNP’s. Ernie and I handed them our written statements and drove back to Seoul.