Slicky Boys

33

It doesn’t snow as often down south in Pusan, but there’s more rain and it can still get awfully cold. The roads were slick, and fat clouds swept into the city off the choppy gray waters of the Straits of Korea.

When we were halfway to Texas Street the driver clicked on his radio and tried to contact Pak-si. No dice. About a mile farther on he tried again: This time the little speaker in the metal box crackled to life. The two drivers spoke so rapidly I didn’t catch most of it but I did learn that Pak-si had already dropped off his fare and was returning to Hialeah Compound. I told our driver to set up a rendezvous point. I had to talk to Pak-si.

Five minutes later, we sat at the curb of a huge circular intersection with a statue in the middle. It was a granite replica of men and women striving forward together in an heroic effort to fight back the Communist hordes who had surrounded this city in the winter of 1950.

These big round traffic circles dotted the flat topography of the city and were responsible for a lot of accidents. Whoever the genius was who had designed them should’ve been run over by a speeding kimchi cab.

“Are you sure he’s coming?” I was becoming impatient.

The driver clicked on his radio, spoke briefly to Pak-si, and turned back to me.

“Maybe five minutes.”

Ernie climbed out of the cab and trotted through the rain to a little open-front store displaying the usual soft drinks and dried cuttlefish and discs of puffed rice. He bought three bottles of Bacchus D, a concoction of fruit drink and painkiller designed to ward off headaches, and came back and offered some to me and the driver. As soon as we twisted the caps off the little brown bottles and drank them down, another bulky Ford Granada with a plastic light atop pulled up behind us.

Our driver hadn’t turned on his meter-police business-but I handed him three dollars anyway. He nodded, started his engine, and sped out of there as fast as he could.

We climbed into the cab with Pak-si. He was a younger driver with straight black hair and a brown, leathery face and one eye that seemed to have been damaged in some way.

“Kapshida!” I said. “Bali!” Let’s go! Quickly!

“Where?”

“To wherever you dropped off the man with the hat.”

He revved up the engine and started to click on the meter, but Ernie showed him his badge and held up the palm of his hand.

“Kongja,” he said. One of the few Korean words he knew, but one of his favorites: Free.

Pak-si’s face soured but he drove resolutely forward, fighting his way into the flow of circling traffic.

On the way I interrogated him.

He told me that a man had come out of the PX with two large bags and he had helped him load them in the trunk of the cab. I flashed the photo. He glanced at it, then turned his concentration back to the road. Yes, that was the man.

After leaving the PX, they’d gone to the package store and after that to the commissary.

A routine black market run. Nothing the drivers weren’t used to.

I asked him if the man had acted strange in any way. If he’d seemed nervous.

No, Pak-si said. He was very relaxed.

After loading up at the commissary the man had told him to take him to Texas Street. This was a little unusual because most of the Hialeah Compound GI’s did their black-marketing close in, at some of the joints near the compound. Still, going to Texas Street wasn’t unheard of. If a guy has a girlfriend who works one of the clubs on Texas Street, he might deliver the goods to her hooch. That’s what Pak-si expected, but that’s not what happened.

I asked him what did happen.

Pak-si’s passenger seemed to know the back alleys of the Texas Street district well. He guided Pak-si to a residential area on the hills behind the nightclubs and had him stop in a narrow alley.

“Did you help him unload?”

Yes. And he carted all the stuff into the home of an old woman who obviously wasn’t his girlfriend but must be a black market mama-san.

I asked Pak-si how long he’d been driving a PX cab. He told me eight years. If he’d never been to that joint before, it couldn’t be a usual selling spot for Hialeah GI’s. He agreed with that. It was the first time he’d ever been to the place and seen the old woman.

Pak-si pulled off the main road, zigzagged through alleys, and suddenly we were cruising down the main drag of the district known as Texas Street.

How it got its name I wasn’t sure. The street’s real name wasn’t Texas. In fact, most streets in Korea don’t have names. Only districts are named, and they are divided into smaller compartments called dong and bonji. Then ho, the actual address numbers. I had to believe that the nickname Texas Street came into existence because at night, when the place was crawling with business girls and drunken sailors, it reminded Koreans of what they thought the Wild West must’ve been like.

Now the district was quiet, and the unlit neon signs dripped with rain. Almost all the doors of the dozens of nightclubs were bolted. Only a few were open, beaded curtains rustling in the wet breeze from the sea.

Pak-si turned up another alley and then down another and another. I put my hand on his shoulder and told him to pull over before he reached our final destination, so we could walk up. He turned down one more street and found a spot to park against a high stone wall.

“Go up there,” he said. “And turn right. Second door on the left.”

We thanked him.

Did he have to wait, he asked.

No. All I had left were twenties and a ten and two bucks. I handed him the two bucks. He shrugged. Easy money.

As soon as we climbed out of the cab, he released the brake, shifted into neutral, and rolled back down the hill.

We walked up the road and peered around the corner. Nothing moved.

“You think he’s still here?” Ernie asked.

“Probably not. He seems to have a habit of moving fast. But let’s not take any chances.”

I pulled the. 38 out of the holster. “You go in first. I’ll come in behind you.”

“Right.”

The walls were too high to see anything. When we reached the doorway in the metal gate, Ernie kicked it in, which was sort of unnecessary since it was unlocked anyway. It crashed back on itself with a great bang. Ernie ducked through the door. I was right behind him.

A tiny old woman in a sweater and a long gray dress emerged from the hooch and stood on the narrow wooden porch.

“Migun isso?” I asked. Is there a GI here?

“Oopso,” she said. “Imi kasso.” Not here. He already left.

We searched the little room anyway and checked out back. No sign of a six-foot-two Navy Seal. Plenty of PX goodies, though.

“How much did you pay him?” I asked the old woman.

“Not your business.”

I showed her my badge. “We could have you arrested.”

“Go ahead.”

She was a pugnacious little crone.

“Where’d the American go?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know.”

“How did he find you?”

She raised and lowered her narrow shoulders. “Girls on Texas Street. They know me.”

“Which club?”

“Any club.”

“When’s the American coming back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Has he been here before?”

“First time.”

“What’d he look like?”

“Big. Like you. But light skin. Like him.” She pointed at Ernie.

I pulled out the photo. “Is this him?”

She looked at Shipton’s picture and then up at me.

“Yes.” For the first time concern edged her wrinkled face. “What did he do?”

“He killed three people.”

Her eyes widened. She sat down on the porch without bothering to wipe off the droplets of rain.

“Three people?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Koreans or Americans?”

“One Englishman. Two Koreans.”

“English?”

I nodded. The old woman shook her head. Her voice became less strident. Soft. Almost as if she were in awe.

“I never see this man before. He come this morning. First time. I paid him two hundred and thirty thousand won.” She waved at the black market goods piled in the back of her hooch. “Not bad price. I wanted to pay less, but he said he would put them back in the cab and go somewhere else. So I give him a little more. Anyway, I make money. He was very quiet. Very serious. Didn’t seem like GI. Most GI just give black market stuff to girls. Girls bring to me, sell. I always get good price from the girls because they not smart. Think only of today. Of new hairdo. Of new makeup they want to buy. This man, he very patient. Wait until finally we settle on price. He count money, put in his pocket, and go.”

She looked up at me and then at Ernie, as if she were puzzled. The mistlike rain splattered on her face and dress. “I never see before. It’s true.”

She crossed her arms over her withered chest and shivered.

“I never want to see again.”

The thought of murder had somewhat chastened the old woman, and before we left she told us the names of the clubs from which she received referrals. They were clubs nearby on the strip.

As we walked down the hill toward the sea I breathed deeply of the salt air, fighting off the disappointment at having been so close to Shipton and yet missing him again. But we weren’t back to square one. Shipton was in the neighborhood somewhere. Maybe just a few hundred yards from where we stood right now. We had his photograph and we had plenty of shoe leather.

“Is it possible that he’ll make another black market run today?” Ernie said.

“I don’t think so. He maxed out his monthly ration on that card, so now he’d have to use a different card and a different ID. Too risky. Somebody on the compound might remember him, call the MP’s.”

We stepped gingerly on the wet cobbled streets, which sloped down to the sea. Gulls soared in graceful circles above us.

“So what would you do,” I asked, “if you’d just cleared over a hundred thousand won on the black market and you didn’t have to go to work and you were right smack dab in the middle of Texas Street?”

“I’d get laid,” Ernie said promptly.

“So would I. Which sets out an interesting course for this investigation.”

Ernie rubbed his hands together. “Time to get cracking, pal. What we gotta do, we gotta do.”

“That’s what I like about you, Ernie. Dedicated to your tasks.”

“You got that right.”

We checked the open bars on Texas Street first, hoping Shipton would be spending some of his hard-earned money. No luck.

We wandered around, trying to look like horny sailors-which wasn’t hard except for the sailor part-and, as we expected, we received a few propositions. All of which we accepted. Every hooch we went into, though, was full of willing girls but no Shipton. We showed his photograph around, but all we received in return were blank stares. And disappointed scowls when the business women realized they weren’t going to make any money.

It was noontime now and the district was starting to come alive. A few merchant marines prowled the streets: Filipinos, Greeks, Dutchmen. They were off watch now-or whatever their work shifts were called-and it was time for a little fun. Neon crackled and sparked to life under the drizzling rain. Jukeboxes started up. Girls in miniskirts appeared in dark doorways.

Ernie and I never had gotten that breakfast we wanted on the compound so we decided to break for some chow at a noodle shop with big steamed windows. We sat up front where, after rubbing a couple of portholes on the plate glass, we had a pretty good view of the street.

A girl of about thirteen took our order. She looked like she should’ve been in school. Two bowls of meiun-tang. Colas. No beer.

“He could be anywhere,” Ernie said.

“Yeah. He might’ve gone to the train station and caught the Blue Line heading north or he might’ve hopped on a bus or he could be next door taking a nap. The only thing we got going for us is that he doesn’t know how close we are.”

“At least we don’t think he knows.”

“Sure. But it doesn’t seem likely. And if he doesn’t know, he’ll do what he wants to do.”

“Which is stay here on Texas Street for a few days?”

“Wouldn’t you? He doesn’t know we have the stolen ration control numbers. If I were him, I’d use the four plates to the max, then head north.”

“So maybe we can stake out the PX tomorrow and catch him when he comes through the door.”

“Yeah. Maybe. But since we can’t count on it we have to stake out Texas Street for now.”

“Tough duty.”

The girl brought our steaming bowls of red broth. A glassy-eyed mackerel stared up at me, surrounded by three clam shells atop a pile of onion shoots. The girl set down the bowls of rice and the plates of fermented cabbage and diced turnip while Ernie and I unwrapped our wooden chopsticks and pried them apart. After pouring our colas, she left us and we dug in; all the while keeping an eye on the people parading through the lively drizzle of Texas Street.

After we finished eating, we paid the girl, left her a little tip which sort of surprised her, and went back to work.

The Texas Street district was composed of one main drag stretching about three blocks, with side streets shooting off from it. We decided to start on the northernmost end, near the black market mama-san’s hooch, and work our way south.

As more and more joints opened, we had more and more opportunities to ask questions and flash Shipton’s photograph. Apparently he hadn’t made a big splash in townbecause every bartender and business girl and boy mopping floors swore they’d never seen him before.

We also checked yoguans. Climbing up creaking staircases that smelled of urine and charcoal smoke, flashing the black-and-white photograph to old men and women who looked as weathered as the wooden buildings they lived in, always receiving the same unknowing stare.

I was beginning to understand why even the ROK Navy investigative services hadn’t been able to collar Shipton.

At midafternoon, a truck with workmen came by and made a big to-do about climbing up power poles and unraveling a cloth banner across the roadway. The wind and rain fought them but they finally unfurled the long canvas, and it rippled out its message: Welcome, U.S.S. Kitty Hawk!

We asked some of the girls in the bars about it and they bubbled with excitement. The Kitty Hawk had already entered the harbor. Tonight the liberty launches would be pulling into the port loaded with American sailors, all wearing tight pants bursting at the seams with three months’ pay.

Girls were pouring in from all over the country, they told us, from as far north as Seoul and Inchon, to get in on the easy money.

“Just what we need,” Ernie said. “Three thousand horny sailors getting in our way. And half of them who look just like Shipton. Or close enough so a bunch of busy Koreans won’t be able to tell the difference.”

I thought about it for a minute. “He planned it this way,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean what better time to make a bunch of runs on the PX than when there’s an aircraft carrier in town? The squids’ll go right over to the compound, load up on cigarettes and scotch, and sell it here on Texas Street to pay for their three days of liberty. The clerks on the compound won’t have time to notice a guy going in and out three or four times a day, each time using a different name.”

“Yeah,” Ernie said. “He’ll just be another sailor.”

“And maybe he plans to run Texas Street, too. The MP’s and Shore Patrol will be too preoccupied with breaking up fights and keeping sailors from tearing down the town to notice what one quiet guy might be up to.”

“So he heard that the Kitty Hawk was on the way in and decided to take a working vacation?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“But he’s not expecting us to be searching for him.”

“I hope not.”

“So we’ll find him in the crowd.” Ernie thought about it for a minute. “Have to wade through a lot of squids, though. Up to our assholes in squids.”

By the time the sun went down we’d checked out every bar or flophouse or brothel that ever existed on Texas Street. I’d come to the conclusion that Shipton wasn’t here; he was hiding out somewhere else. Still, I believed there was a good chance he’d show that night.

We found a cozy bar where the girls wore their hair up, held in place by jade pins, and floated around the room in the rustling silk of their full-skirted Hanbok gowns. Texas Street catered to just about every taste. Even if you were strange enough to prefer your women elegant and well-dressed.

The girls spoiled the effect of their appearance, however, when I listened to their conversations in Korean. They talked about how to get the most money out of a sailor and how to avoid VD and what to do if you got pregnant.

They were just as foulmouthed as any of the other girls on the street. But I liked the joint. The music was soft and the bar stools comfortable and fish floated in blue aquariums. The gentle notes of a Korean love song warbled out of the sound system. The women here probably serviced over-the-hill bosun’s mates who could hardly get it up anymore.

Another reason I liked this place was that they had draft OB Beer served in frosted mugs. It had been a hard day. Ernie and I were putting them down pretty good. We were both hungry but didn’t feel like leaving the tap, so we gave one of the girls some money and sent her out for “cut bait.”

That’s what we called it because it attracted business girls like schools of fish.

What she brought back was actually small bundles of grease-stained newspaper. She set the bundles down on the bar, unwrapped them, and the aroma of hot onion rings and batter-fried tempura billowed upward. The girls swarmed around us, picking away greedily at the hot slices. Somebody poured soy sauce onto a plate and we all dipped and munched and talked.

We ate as much as we could and enjoyed the girls rubbing their silk-covered bodies against us. After the chow was gone, however, Ernie seemed a little morose., I wondered if it was the fatigue of traveling. After the fourth beer, he started talking.

“She was pregnant,” he said.

“The girl who bought the onion rings?”

“No. The Nurse.”

I set my beer down. Looked at him. Waited.

“She said she wanted to ‘present’ the baby to me, but I didn’t answer her right away.” He sipped on his beer and looked over at me. “That’s why the Nurse said she’d kill herself if my extension didn’t go through.”

“Because the marriage paperwork takes six months?”

“Yeah.” Ernie looked at me, studying my face. “You think we’ll catch this guy?”

I nodded. “We’ll get him.”

He studied my face for a while longer. “Okay,” he said, “I believe you.”

A pack of American sailors burst into the room like Irish banshees on New Year’s Eve. Their black uniforms were neatly pressed and their spotless white hats sat at jaunty angles on their heads. I saw the patch on their left shoulders: U.S.S. Kitty Hawk.

The girls beamed as if a host from heaven had just floated down from the sky. Soon the place was crammed with sailors and every girl was on somebody’s lap, being pulled and tugged and handed around.

The bartender was too busy to even refill our beer mugs. We tossed down the last of the suds and left.

Texas Street was like what I imagined Rio de Janeiro must be like during the Carnival season. Except nobody was half naked because it was too cold, and almost all the men wore the uniforms of the U.S. Navy. They traveled in packs. The doors to the clubs were wide open and music and screaming roiled out onto the street and every seat inside was taken and so was every girl.

There weren’t any Hialeah Compound GI’s around. They had a tendency to stay away when a big ship was in port, resenting the squids for running up the prices.

Since we weren’t in uniform and wore only our blue jeans and nylon jackets, we were a little conspicuous ourselves. We stayed in the shadows. Scanning the road for anyone who looked like Shipton.

A couple of times we thought we spotted him, but when we got close we realized it was someone else. We bought bottles of beer from street vendors and drank under awnings, protected from the sporadic rain, keeping an eye on the street scene.

As curfew approached, things didn’t seem to be slowing down, but a phalanx of a dozen burly guys with batons and Shore Patrol arm bands plowed through Texas Street, warning everybody to get off the streets or back to the ship by midnight.

We were going to have to find shelter, too. There weren’t any girls available so we faded back a few blocks from Texas Street until we stumbled into a little place that advertised sleeping accommodations. The Koreans call it a yoin-suk, not as high-class as a yoguan and not nearly as luxurious as a hotel.

The woman who owned it said she had one private room left and Ernie and I could have it for only seven thousand won. About ten bucks. I thought it was a little steep for this kind of joint, but the Kitty Hawk was in, so what the hell. We paid her and told her we had to go back out for a few minutes, and she promised to keep the front gate open for us as long as we weren’t out too late after curfew. I told her we wouldn’t be.

Back on Texas Street the crowds were beginning to thin. Sailors wandered down to the pier and caught launches that were lined up to take them back to the ship.

Back in the bar district there was nothing new. No sign of anybody who looked like Shipton.

Korean National Police had now joined the Shore Patrol and were helping to shoo everyone off the street in the last ten minutes before the world shut down. Bars closed their doors and shuttered their windows.

When the Shore Patrol reached us, I showed my badge to the guy in charge and asked if he’d seen anyone who looked like the mug in the photograph. He shook his head, but showed it to the other Shore Patrol guys. Nobody remembered Shipton.

The Korean policemen I asked hardly glanced at the photograph. With a city teeming with foreigners they weren’t likely to be able to tell one from the other-unless he had three arms and horns.

But they were curious as to why we were looking for him. I told them that he was a deserter, which seemed to satisfy them. Koreans take desertion a lot more seriously than we do. In fact, you can be executed for it.

When the streets were almost empty, we wound our way through the dark alleys back to our little yoin-suk. Anywhere from six to ten workingmen and poor women lay on the floor of each room sleeping, their possessions jumbled nearby.

Being rich foreigners, we were ushered into our private accommodations in the back. The old woman even handed us our own porcelain pee pot.

We rolled out the sleeping mats. After folding my clothes and setting my wallet and badge and pistol under the bead-filled pillow, I turned off the bulb. The room was stuffy but warm, and we were both too exhausted to do anything but go straight to sleep.

I awoke with a start.

“Ernie.” I nudged his shoulder. “Wake up.”

“Huh?”

He tried to pull the cotton comforter over his head.

“Wake up. We have to go.”

He propped himself up on his elbow. “Go? What’re you talking about? It’s still dark.”

I looked at the fluorescent dots on my wristwatch. “It’s almost four-thirty. A lot of sailors will be up and on their way back to the Kitty Hawk.”

“So what?”

“So I finally realized what Shipton’s doing here in Pusan.”

“I’m glad you figured it out, because apparently he wasn’t getting laid.”

“No. He has bigger plans in mind.”

“George, I wish I knew what in the hell you were talking about.”

“No time now.” I turned on the bulb. “Come on. Get dressed. We have to get down to the waterfront.”

“Oh, Jesus. You really are nuts.”

“No arguments.”

In less than five minutes we were up and out into the hallway. The mama-san heard us and emerged from her room and unbolted the front door for us.

She bowed as we left but I didn’t have time for formalities. I just plowed into the shadows, Ernie close on my heels.