The Door to Bitterness

14

The rising sun sent a dull glow over the mountain tops. Fog clung to fallow rice paddies. The engine of Ernie’s jeep churned as we swerved around the occasional ox cart trundling down the road. I cupped my hands to capture the warmth radiating from under the dashboard.

“ASCOM City,” Ernie said. “It figures. After the asshole ran away from us at the Yellow House, he probably caught a cab and headed straight to Pupyong.”

ASCOM City. The village outside the main gate of the 8th Army logistics compound known as the Army Support Command (ASCOM). Both were located on the outskirts of the town of Pupyong, twelve miles southeast of downtown Inchon.

The asshole Ernie was referring to was Private First Class Rodney K. Boltworks, formerly assigned to Charley Battery, 2nd of the 17th Field Artillery, now absent without leave. Also, the young man we suspected of participating in the robbery of the Olympos Casino, and the man who’d run from us when we almost collared him in Mi-ja’s room in Brothel Number 17 at the Yellow House.

“He would’ve had to hide somewhere in Inchon until the curfew was over at four a.m.,” I said. “Catch a cab to Pupyong. He’s probably been holed up in ASCOM City ever since.”

“With a pocketful of stolen money and no place to go.” Ernie grinned. “I couldn’t think of a better hideout myself.”

ASCOM City was a notorious GI Village. High crime rate, high VD rate, rampant black-marketeering, and no one figured to bring the place under control any time soon. There were a couple of thousand GIs assigned to the ASCOM support complex, and plenty of soldiers on TDY who were there temporarily for various reasons. The village started at the front gate. Every bar and brothel and chop house and hooch was jammed into ten acres, cobwebbed with winding footpaths, with little or no space for motorized vehicles. The military police patrols were conducted on foot. On a payday night, the nightclubs were crowded with half-crazed GIs, and the MPs and the Korean National Police were outnumbered forty to one.

How had we figured Boltworks was there? Ration control records.

Staff Sergeant Riley, the Admin sergeant at the CID Detachment had been monitoring them for us. Boltwork’s Ration Control Plate, or RCP, was still valid: we purposely hadn’t closed it out. For whatever reason, he’d decided to go onto the ASCOM compound and make some purchases. Two quarts of Johnny Walker Black Scotch Whiskey, one case of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, one jar of non-dairy soluble creamer, a 16-ounce jar of freeze-dried coffee, one pound of sugar, two cartons of Kent cigarettes, a large container of powdered instant orange juice, hand lotion, moisturizing cream, and two packets of nylon pantyhose. All prime black market purchases. Riley had cadged the list from a contact at the 8th Army Data Processing Unit.

When he saw the items, Ernie said, “He’s shacked-up with a business girl.” I agreed.

Ernie pulled the jeep off the MSR and rolled toward the main train station in downtown Pupyong. Even at this early morning hour, long lines of commuters were waiting to catch the next train into Seoul. We turned right, and three quarters of a mile ahead, we saw the main gate of the Army Support Command.

Ernie slowed to a crawl. Across the street from the high brick fences of the military compound, stood a sea of ramshackle buildings, none of them taller than two stories, with myriad alleyways leading down into the dark. Unlit neon lined the road: the Black Cat Club, the Yobo Bar, the Red Dragon Eatery, Mama Lee’s Chop House.

“Lovely,” Ernie said.

He meant it. He’d rather spend a week in ASCOM City than bask on the sands of China Beach, at Vung Tau.

According to 8th Army regulations, we should’ve checked in with the commander of the MP detachment of the ASCOM compound, to let him know we’d be operating in his area. However, Ernie and I had complied with that rule in the past, and all we’d received for our efforts was a bunch of long-winded speeches from pompous MP officers warning us not to mess with their troops. Bullshit we could live without.

Ernie cruised out past the sleepy village until we were seeing rice paddies again. Then he hung a U and turned right down the first cramped road leading into ASCOM City. This was the only route wide enough for kimchee cabs, and already a couple were parked in front of a small granary, their engines idling, waiting for the next GI miscreant who’d spent his night immersed in sin. Ernie parked behind the two cabs.

It would’ve been interesting to sit here and see who emerged, bleary-eyed and hung over, but we didn’t have the time. The smiling woman’s brother had killed twice already: the blackjack dealer at the Olympos, and Jo Kyong-ah, the retired black marketeer. My biggest worry was that he would kill again. Ernie and I talked it over.

“The first killing was a mistake,” Ernie said. “The casino owner made a dash for the fire-escape hatch, our man pulled the trigger. Maybe Han Ok-hi stepped into the line of fire and took the bullet for her boss. So he knows he’s toast. The KNPs are going to catch him eventually. Maybe not today, but soon. Once they do, his only choices will be hanging, or a life-sentence in a Korean prison.”

For a young Amerasian man in a Korean prison, life would be unendurable hell.

“He’d choose hanging,” I said.

“Right. So now, before we catch him, he decides to have a little fun. And, who knows, maybe he’ll decide to have a little more.”

“But why kill Jo Kyong-ah?”

“That part,” Ernie said, “I haven’t figured out yet.”

I thought about the way Jo Kyong-ah’s body had been left. Face down, the back of her neck bruised, spread out in front of a short-legged table. Despite the information I’d received from the Uichon mama-san and from Haggler Lee- and from the man Haggler Lee had introduced us to last night-I still had no lead that might help us find the younger brother. There were only possibilities. Find the smiling woman. Or find PFC Rodney K. Boltworks, his partner in crime.

Thanks to Sergeant Riley, we at last had a lead on Boltworks. So we sat in the jeep in the heart of ASCOM City, contemplating our moves.

“The KNPs?” Ernie asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “See if there’s been any incidents.”

You’d think someone who’d just committed a serious crime like armed robbery, narrowly escaping the law, would need to hide. Keep a low profile, stay out of trouble. But every cop knows that when a criminal is hot, on the run and being pursued, he often does something to draw attention to himself. Maybe from stress, maybe from stupidity. No matter- it happens.

Ernie and I climbed out of the jeep and walked twenty yards to the modest, white-washed building flying the flag of Korea out front. The sign said: PUPYONG CITY POLICE STATION, WESTERN BRANCH.

The KNPs weren’t happy to see us. They had enough trouble in this little corner of the world. When we asked about incidents, the desk sergeant rolled his eyes. Then he shoved a cloth-bound ledger across the counter and opened it to the most recent entries. I started studying it, and he went back to his paperwork.

There were no civilians in the station, just three cops and the desk sergeant. They were all bleary-eyed and half asleep and didn’t seem too impressed to see a couple of 8th Army CID agents.

Ernie stuck his nose over the ledger. “It’s all written in Korean.”

I pulled out my notebook.

Ernie elbowed my left arm. “What you got?”

“A fight between a business girl and a GI. At a joint called the Asian Eyes Bar. Not last night, but the night before.”

“Names?”

“Only one. The woman’s name is Pak Mi-rae. The GI disappeared before the KNPs arrived.”

“Descriptions?”

“A Korean business girl and an American GI. The KNP didn’t bother.”

ASCOM City was swarming with people of roughly the same description: American soldier, average height, average weight, light brown or dark brown hair, no identifying marks. Korean prostitute, dark brown or black hair, dark brown or black eyes, approximately five-foot-three inches tall, one hundred and fifteen pounds. Name: Miss Pak, Miss Kim, or Miss Lee. And-as the GIs would say-cute foreign accent.

So there was nothing to tie this incident to PFC Boltworks except for one thing. Ernie said it.

“Same night our man Bolt bought all that shit out of the PX.”

We thanked the desk sergeant and found our own way out.

Two eyes were painted on a sign over the bar. Female eyes. Asian. Below the eyes, the sign said-predictably enough-Asian Eyes Bar.

The joint was located in the middle of the nightclub and brothel district known as ASCOM City. The walkways were paved with rough cobblestones. The buildings were packed tight. There was no room for a delivery truck to back in. All the supplies, like crates of beer and huge blocks of ice, must’ve been hauled in the old fashioned way: strapped to someone’s back.

The bar district of ASCOM City sat in a depression half a mile long and a quarter mile wide, probably on top of what had once been ancient rice paddies. To reach either the road to the west, where the police station stood, or the MSR to the north, where the long walls of the Army Support Command Compound were located, you had to climb a gradual incline of a good twenty feet. Since we were in the well of a depression, the morning fog sat thick and sluggish. The overcast sky launched a splat of rain that hit the cobbled roads, an explosion of rust-flavored dirt. More splats followed. And more puffs of dirt.

“I expect a wolf to howl,” Ernie said.

But none did. No one else howled either. The GIs were either snug in their hooches with their Korean yobos or already back on the compound.

I tried the front door of the Asian Eyes Bar.

It was barred tightly from the inside. I was careful not to rattle the door too loudly. We didn’t want to wake anyone.

Not yet. Ernie and I reconnoitered.

One side of the building was flush up against the next bar, a joint called the Playboy Club-the establishments in ASCOM City don’t worry much about trademark infringement. I squeezed through a brick-lined passage. In the rear of the building, the sign also read ASIAN EYES BAR. Up and down the alley were the backdoors of other saloons. GIs could enter one place in the front, and if they didn’t find sufficient titillation, they could exit out the back, cross the alley, and immediately enter through the back door of another, equally raunchy dive. I imagined this alleyway at night, neon-lit, teeming with business girls and drunk Americans. Cigarette smoke, laughter, blaring rock music erupting out of the back doors. Not an area that an MP patrol would want to spend a lot of time in. At the moment, however, it was deserted, except for a rat who scurried into a subterranean drainage ditch.

The back door of the Asian Eyes Bar looked flimsy, easier to bust through, but no sense getting rough. After all, we had no reason to think Boltworks might be here. This was just a place to start our investigation, because we had to start somewhere. We wanted to talk to these people about the disturbance between a Korean woman and an American GI that had occurred the night before last. We had no reason to believe that the GI was Boltworks. Nevertheless, Ernie backed up, preparing to kick the door in.

“Why don’t we just knock?” I said.

His eyes widened: the thought had never occurred to him.

I pushed past him and pounded my fist on the back door. One thing about Korean businesses is that they’re virtually never deserted. Either the family that owns the enterprise lives on the premises, or they leave someone behind to protect it against burglars. I pounded for almost five minutes, until chains rattled inside and the door popped open. Ernie pushed it aside, and we strode into darkness.

“Kyongchal. Bul kyo, bali!” I said, announcing ourselves as police and ordering the lights turned on immediately.

Somebody did.

One of the benefits of operating in a police state is that civilians do what you tell them to do. Usually.

To the left of the hallway were byonsos, toilets, both men’s and women’s. Toward the front, a bar ran along the wall. A passageway opened into a larger area, red vinyl booths surrounding round cocktail tables covered by upturned chairs. In the middle of this main ballroom was a tiny dance floor. There was no stage, but refrigerator-sized stereo speakers were mounted along the wall every few feet. Near the dance floor stood an aquarium. Orange and white and purple fish swam serenely through green water. A blue glow filled the room. Behind us, harsh white bulbs lined the top of the bar.

“Kids,” Ernie said.

There must’ve been a half dozen of them, both boys and girls. Not children exactly. Probably middle-school age, or just old enough to start high school. But these kids weren’t students. They were staff here at the Asian Eyes Bar, responsible for the cleaning and bartending and serving and whatever else had to be done around the place. Possibly distant relatives of the owner, maybe just extra mouths to feed, from large rural families forced to sell them into indentured servitude. I wasn’t going to bother to ask, because one thing’s for sure: on personal matters-matters that cause shame-a foreigner never received a straight answer.

The oldest was a skinny boy. Straight black hair hung over his sleep-crusted eyes. He glared at us with a full-lipped sullen stare.

“Wei kurei?” he asked. Why are you doing this?

The other kids had been sleeping in the vinyl booths. Some were up now, searching through a jumble of clothing on the red-carpeted floor. One girl lay still in her booth, a thin comforter pulled up over her nose, her black eyes sparkling with fear.

In Korean, I asked the oldest boy if the owner was here. He shook his head.

“What time does he come in?”

Again, a negative shake of the head.

Ernie took two quick steps and shoved the kid’s back up against the wooden bar.

I walked over to Ernie. He knew I didn’t like him getting rough with youngsters. He held his grip on the kid’s collar and glared fiercely. I knew it was an act, the kid didn’t. This gangly boy and the other children in the bar were frightened half to death. Who knew how many drunken GIs had come in here, terrorizing anyone they thought wouldn’t fight back?

Still, if we were going to find Boltworks we needed information and quickly. ASCOM City is a small village and word of our arrival would spread fast. Once Bolt heard, he’d be gone. So we had to find out what this kid knew, and now. Every interrogator knows that there’s only one effective tool to extract answers from people who don’t want to talk: fear.

The kid tried to shove Ernie’s fist away, but he wasn’t strong enough.

I spoke in rapid Korean: “There was a fight here the night before last, between a Korean woman named Pak Mi-rae and an American GI. Tell me about it. Now!”

The kid started with the same disclaimer every witness uses. “I don’t know. I didn’t see anything.”

Ernie tightened his grip and leaned into the kid’s face. And the boy proceeded to tell us what he’d seen. I asked a few follow-up questions and was answered immediately. Ernie let him go.

The incident at the Asian Eyes Bar had been routine. A Korean woman claimed a GI had cheated her out of money she’d fronted him in a black-market deal. He claimed he didn’t owe her anything, and she attacked. The GI, smart enough to know that he’d be in big trouble if he hit back, held her off. After about ten minutes of wrestling, he managed to escape the enraged woman’s grip. Then he ran. Another smart move. No, they didn’t know the soldier’s name, but he’d been coming in for months. Therefore, the guy couldn’t be our quarry.

Private Boltworks, before he went AWOL, was assigned to a field artillery base thirty miles north of here.

The other youngsters were up now, in various stages of undress. They lined up in front of the glowing aquarium. I pulled the three sketches out and held them to the light. One by one, I asked the children if they’d ever seen these three people. The eyes of two of the girls lingered on the sketch of the smiling woman. But in the end they shook their heads.

I believed them. They were too frightened and in too much awe of our supposed authority to lie. The oldest boy didn’t recognize the sketched faces either.

Ernie sighed, frustrated at this waste of time and effort. He reached into his pocket and slapped a ten-dollar MPC note on the bar, not looking at any of the kids. He was ashamed of what he’d done, but he had to be certain that information would be surrendered quickly and accurately. With a killer on the loose, we had no time for niceties.

He was about to leave when I stopped him.

“Maybe these kids can help us another way,” I said.

“How’s that?”

“The woman involved in the altercation, she’s a black marketeer.. just a minute.”

In Korean, I asked the kids if they knew where the woman who had been in the fight lived. All stood dumb except for one chubby girl. Almost imperceptibly, she nodded her head.

I asked again. “You know where she lives?”

“We all do,” she answered.

The oldest boy frowned. I crossed the carpeted floor and slipped my arm around his narrow shoulders.

“Bali kaja,” I said. “Let’s go.”

Sullenly, he nodded. He slipped on a wool sweater to ward off the cold, and then Ernie and I and the boy left out the back door of the bar.

The sky had taken on a slightly lighter hue. As we wound through fog-shrouded alleys, Ernie leaned into me. “Why do you want to talk to this black-market woman? What’s she got to do with all this?”

“Boltworks is on tilt. He’s making purchases out of the PX. He knows eventually we’ll cancel his Ration Control Plate. The time to buy is now. And if he buys, he has to sell. And quickly. Probably at bargain rates. The black market mama-sans in ASCOM City will be on him like vultures. The woman who started the fight at the Asian Eyes Bar is a black mar-keteer and a feisty one. And she has enough pull in the village to be released by the KNPs with nothing more than a warning. She’ll probably know about a new GI in the village making beaucoup black-market buys. I’m willing to bet on it.”

Ernie thought it over. “Maybe,” he said.

The boy turned down a crack between two buildings. We angled in, emerging onto another alley. The boy stopped. He pointed at a wooden gate in a granite wall.

“Yogi,” he said. Here.

Nimbly, he hopped back, and then he disappeared. Ernie almost went after him, but I grabbed his elbow.

“Don’t,” I said. “The kid’s not lying. He knows we can find him.”

Ernie shrugged and stared at the gate. There was a black button with a wire running back into the hooch. Ernie reached to press it. Again, I stopped him.

I said, “Let’s not knock.”

Ernie’s eyes widened, then narrowed. He nodded.

I checked for a brass nameplate embedded in the wall; there was none. Only two numbers on the door in black paint: “201 bonji, 36 ku.” The address, but no name.

We searched around until we found a wooden trash crate. We set it on its end against the wall. Ernie was armed, his. 45 snug in his shoulder holster, so he climbed up first and went over the top. He leapt, and I heard him grunt when he hit the ground. Then I was on the crate and atop the fence. I leapt down into a cleanly swept courtyard. The hooch was silent, its oil-paper sliding doors shut.

At the lip of the raised wooden floor, Ernie and I slipped off our shoes and stepped up onto the immaculate surface. A gleaming hallway led through an opening between the first few hooches. It emptied onto a courtyard, a well-tended garden paved with flagstone. The surrounding hooches faced inwards. All were silent. Sliding doors closed.

From behind, footsteps. I swiveled.

She wore a flower-print robe. Her feet were bare, her black hair ratted up in a sweaty disarray.

“What’s the matta you?” she snarled.

Ernie and I stared. She must’ve been fifty, at least, with a wrinkled face and a round button nose that would’ve been cute when she was young. “Pak Mi-rae?” I asked.

“How you know?”

“You were in a fight at the Asian Eyes Bar the other night.”

“Yeah. So what? GI owe me money. I knuckle sandwich with him.”

A few of the doors around the courtyard slid open. Women lying on down-filled mats peeked out with sleep-filled faces. All were young, as Pak Mi-rae had once been.

Ernie grinned, looking around. He placed his hands on his hips. We were in a brothel, and he felt right at home.

I turned back to Pak Mi-rae. “Can we talk? You have coffee?”

She snickered. “You come my hooch, climb fence, wake up me, wake up all girls. Now you want kopi?”

“Yes,” Ernie said, grinning broadly. “That’s what we want. Part of what we want anyway.”

He approached Miss Pak and pulled out his CID badge.

She stared up at him. “CID. Don’t mean shit.”

“Good. Then you won’t mind fixing us some coffee.”

She snorted, stared at Ernie for a moment, then swiveled and walked back toward her hooch. We followed. Ernie smiled and waved at the sleepy young women gawking at us.

A few, timidly, waved back.