The Door to Bitterness

15

Pak Mi-rae knew all about the retired black marketeer, Jo Kyong-ah, who’d been murdered in the city of Songtan.

“She treat somebody bad,” Miss Pak said. “Me, I never treat nobody bad.”

To her, punching out a GI who owed her money didn’t qualify.

We sat in a large hooch near the front gate. Pak Mi-rae boiled water in a brass pot and poured us cups of freeze-dried coffee. We were cops. It was best to humor us. We sat on her warm ondol floor and used a foot-high table with folding legs. The table and the four armoires surrounding us were made of polished black lacquer inlaid with expensive mother-of-pearl designs. Miss Pak’s bed was Western-style, with a hand-embroidered silk comforter hiding the wrinkled sheets. The place reeked of perfume. No sign of any man living there.

Ernie told her about the GI and his partner who’d robbed the Olympos Casino in Inchon and murdered a blackjack dealer. She knew about that too. Then he told her that we believed the GI’s partner had murdered Jo Kyong-ah.

She thought about that for a while, stirring too much non-dairy creamer into her coffee.

“The GI’s name is Boltworks,” Ernie said. “Rodney K. He made a few purchases on ASCOM compound two days ago. He’s dangerous, and we believe he’s armed, with the pistol stolen from the security guard at the Olympos Casino in Inchon.”

Ernie wasn’t holding back on his English. Pak Mi-rae understood it as well as we. Her pronunciation and grammar, and liberal use of slang, was far from perfect, but we didn’t have to talk down to her. And I didn’t have to speak Korean. She’d probably been speaking English since she was a teenager, when she’d first arrived in some GI village to start work as a business girl.

She stared at her coffee cup, then ladled more sugar into it.

She knows something, I thought. Ernie sensed it too.

“We only want him,” Ernie said. “We’re not here to bust anybody for black marketing or anything.”

She continued to stir, and then I noticed her hand was shaking. Behind us, I heard whispering. Quickly, I stood. Ernie too, instinctively going for his. 45. But the whispering wasn’t coming toward us, it was receding from the hooch, along with footsteps. I slid open the door of the hooch and, as Ernie was about to step past me with the weapon, Pak Mi-rae leapt at him. Screaming.

“Ka! Bali ka!” Go! Go quickly!

I tried to pull her off Ernie but she had dug her claws into his coat and held on like a snow leopard. We heard the front gate open, and then slam shut. With a fierce tug, I ripped Pak Mi-rae off of Ernie, and we rushed into the courtyard. We both remembered our shoes and skidded to a halt, but when we looked for them under the porch they were gone.

“Shit!” Ernie shouted. He stared at Pak Mi-rae standing in the doorway to her hooch and, without thinking, pointed his. 45 at her. She cowered.

“Where are the shoes?” he shouted.

She retreated from the doorway.

“No time,” I said. “Come on!”

In our stocking feet we ran across the courtyard, fumbled with the lock of the front gate, and burst into the alley, running full tilt, not sure which way to go.

“Did you see him?” Ernie shouted.

“No.”

“Then where?”

“We’ll never find him in this maze,” I said. We stopped, looking around at the gaping mouths of dark, empty lanes. The morning fog had started to lift, but the sky was still a dark gray. “The MSR,” I said. “That’s where he’ll go.”

“How do we get there?”

I didn’t know. Not exactly. I knew only the general direction. North, toward the long brick walls of the ASCOM compound.

We ran through the maze, past shuttered bars and quiet nightclubs, always heading north toward larger and larger alleyways. Finally, a curving pathway led sharply up an incline, past Han’s Tailor Shop and Miss Goo’s Brassware Emporium. Ernie stepped on a rock and hopped up and down, cursing. I kept going. Then we were on a sidewalk, and the walls of the ASCOM compound were across the street, and the MSR spread east and west in front of us. Two kimchee cabs sat about ten yards over. Ernie and I each chose a cab and ripped open the doors.

“Migun,” I shouted in Korean-GI.

“Kumbang.” Just a moment ago.

“Odi kasso?” Where did he go?

Both drivers pointed straight ahead. East, toward the Pupyong Train Station.

Ernie and I jumped into the lead taxi. “Bali ka!” I shouted. Go quickly.

The driver glanced down at my stocking feet, but didn’t comment. He started the engine and slammed it in gear. We lurched forward, shouting to go faster. He did. In a few seconds we were past the village, speeding into the still quiet edge of Pupyong proper.

And then, up ahead, we saw a kimchee cab. Ernie spotted it first.

“There!” He pointed, and the driver saw it and stepped on the gas. As we closed in, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a rumpled five-dollar MPC note. Too much. Way too much. And cops in Korea-at least Korean ones- have the right to commandeer any vehicle they want any time, as long as it’s used for police business. I shoved the fiver back in my pocket. The driver would have to derive his satisfaction from doing his civic duty.

Ernie was shouting and pounding the back seat. “Faster! Faster!”

The driver understood, but the cab in front of us had realized it was being followed. It lurched right, toward the front of the Pupyong Train Station. Before it had rolled to a complete stop, the back door popped open and someone was out and running. Blond hair, short crew cut, stocky build. Civilian clothes that were a blur. Dark pants. Darker jacket.

“Boltworks!” Ernie shouted.

Our driver screeched up behind the other kimchee cab, and for a terrifying second, I thought he was going to smash into the rear bumper, but somehow he stopped in time, and Ernie and I were out of the cab, dashing flatfooted across cement, startling men in suits carrying briefcases. Ernie bounded up, trying to see over the growing crowd of morning commuters. I spotted it first. Not the blond head of Boltworks, but the dark-haired heads of Koreans being jostled out of the way.

“Over there,” I shouted. “Heading for the trains.”

The sign overhead had a fist with a finger pointing east.

Beneath that, in hangul and English, the sign said: Seoul. If he hopped on a train, I knew we’d never find him in that teeming city of eight million.

We had just rounded the corner, running flat out, heading for the tracks lined with passenger cars, when a shot rang out.

Ernie and I flung ourselves to the ground. Ernie’s. 45 was out now, pointing ahead. All around us people screamed. Some threw themselves to the ground. Others ran back toward the front of the station.

Ernie was waving and shouting, “Get down! Get down!”

The train to our right, crammed with passengers, started to roll forward. Two cars ahead, we saw him. Private First Class Rodney K. Boltworks, pistol out, right arm wrapped around the neck of a struggling woman.

All I could think was how nicely she was dressed. Polished black shoes, naked legs, expensive knit wool skirt and matching jacket, and a beige overcoat that fell to her ankles. Her leather briefcase lay partially open on the cement platform, and her polished nails were clutching Boltworks’ forearm, as if she were trying to loosen his grip so she could breathe. Thick-rimmed glasses were tilted at an angle across her flat nose. Her silky black hair swung as she struggled.

The train was barely creeping forward, but gathering speed.

Boltworks glanced between us and the metal steps in front of the next car that was rolling slowly toward him.

“When the steps get close,” Ernie said, “he’s going to let her go. When he does, you charge.”

There was no time to think this over, no time for me to agree or disagree. What Ernie had said would be our plan. I raised myself to a crouch and edged forward. Boltworks was maybe twenty yards ahead of me now. How long would it take for me to cover that distance? Pro football players cover it in three seconds. I thought I could make it in four.

Still lying flat on the cement, Ernie raised his. 45.

Boltworks glanced again at the steps leading up to the train, and I broke and ran. He turned back to look at me. As he did so, Ernie fired. The bullet ricocheted off the edge of the train. The Korean woman bucked and struggled, and Boltworks tried to point his gun at me and then at Ernie but he knew his shot would be wild, and the steps of the moving train were only a few feet away from him now.

He let go of the woman and raced toward the platform.

I ran as fast as I could, low to the ground, legs churning, hoping I wouldn’t step on a rock. Another shot rang out from Ernie’s. 45, and Boltworks stopped, just for a second, only six feet from the onrushing metal steps.

Praying Ernie wouldn’t fire again, I plowed into Private Rodney K. Boltworks. We slammed into the metal steps, falling forward onto them. The train rolled on, shoving us to the side. I twisted, holding onto Boltwork’s neck. He twisted with me and the metal railing struck my back. I grunted and we were twirling through the air and falling backwards. The front wall of the passenger cab slapped into me once again. Boltworks and I twirled with the force of the blow, spinning like a top and rebounding once, twice against the side of the moving train. Startled Korean faces inside flashed by. Men, women, a few children. Mouths open. Eyes wide. And then the windows were gone and something metal slammed into us once again-into Boltworks this time-and we spun madly across the cement platform and crashed onto the ground in a heap.

Boltworks flailed, trying to rise and push me away but I held tightly. And then Ernie leaned over us, telling me to let go, grabbing Boltworks by the wrists and, finally, sweet sound of relief, metal handcuffs clinked. Boltworks let out a sigh of exasperation, and all the strength seemed to rush out of his thick body. I relaxed my arms.

I looked up at Ernie. He grinned. I passed out.

“I don’t know where she is,” Boltworks said.

We were in the Pupyong Police Station. One of their officers had patched up the slice in my side and once again stopped the bleeding. He also slapped a few poultices here and there over the bruised portions of my body and, most importantly, fed me a handful of unnamed painkillers, which helped some. Also, the KNPs had been kind enough to send a patrolman over to the home of Pak Mi-rae to reclaim our footwear.

Ernie and I wanted to escort Boltworks back to the ASCOM Provost Marshal’s Office, but the local KNPs would have none of it. Bolt, as we were calling him now, had terrorized a Korean woman and half the morning commuters on their way to Seoul, amongst them many important and influential people. The KNPs weren’t about to give him up. Not yet anyway. Not without orders from headquarters.

Bolt looked a lot less intimidating now. Of course, the KNPs had confiscated his stolen pistol, and they’d taken his jacket and his shirt and trousers. Bolt sat on a chair, wearing only boxer shorts and a sleeveless white T-shirt, his arms handcuffed behind him. His face was dirty and sweating, and I’m sure he fully expected to be beat up-maybe even tortured-by the Korean National Police. I doubted that, but I wasn’t about to disabuse him of the notion. As I patiently explained to the morose Mr. Boltworks, his only chance of being returned to U.S. custody was by cooperating fully with me and Ernie.

“It’s up to you, Bolt,” Ernie said. “Me, I wouldn’t want to spend no time in a Korean jail. Un-huh. Not after killing an innocent young Korean girl. No way.”

“I didn’t kill her,” Bolt said for what must’ve been the umpteenth time.

“So your partner did. Same difference. You think those Korean convicts are going to give a rat’s ass?”

Bolt didn’t answer. He let his sweaty head hang. A hot bulb filled the cement-box interrogation room with light. Ernie and I stood, as did the five Korean cops.

The woman Bolt had taken hostage had been rushed to Pupyong Municipal Hospital. She appeared uninjured, but was suffering from shock.

“You know who your hostage was, Bolt?” Ernie asked.

Sullenly, he shook his head.

“The wife of the third son of the brother of the Mayor of Pupyong. You know how to pick ’em. Smooth move. Smoother than Exlax.”

Private Boltworks’ head hung even lower.

“Me and my partner have to go now,” Ernie said. “We have things to do. Don’t have time to sit here all morning chatting with you, no matter how much we’d like to.”

Boltworks raised his head. “Don’t leave.”

“How can we stay? You haven’t told us a goddamn thing. We want to get back to the compound, have breakfast. A cup of coffee. Because of you, we missed our bacon and eggs.”

“Don’t leave me.”

“Sorry, Bolt,” Ernie said, shaking his head. “You don’t talk, we go.”

“Okay,” Boltworks said. “What do you want to know?”

Ernie smirked. I pulled out my notebook. In less than a half hour, we had the whole story.

We typed up our report at the ASCOM MP Station. It was past noon. We’d missed chow again, and Ernie and I were famished.

“Too bad you couldn’t keep your promise to Bolt,” I said.

“Screw my promise,” Ernie said. “A maggot like that deserves more than lies.”

“He’ll get what’s coming to him. That’s for sure.”

We’d left Private Rodney Boltworks in the custody of the Korean National Police. Since he’d committed crimes on their soil, and since he’d been apprehended off a U.S. military compound, by treaty, they had jurisdiction. Probably, in a few days, the ROK government would see fit to turn him over to U.S. military authorities. But that decision would come from on high. It wasn’t for two lowly CID agents like Ernie and me to decide. If Boltworks hadn’t been such a bonehead, he’d have realized that we really had nothing to offer him. But he’d been terrified of the stone-faced Korean cops who glared at him with such hatred. So he’d spilled his guts.

When we left him at the Pupyong Police Station, he’d squealed like a pig being left for slaughter.

A little betrayal didn’t bother me, not at all. As we walked out of the station, I thought about the cigarette burns on Mi-ja’s soft flesh. And I thought about the looks on the faces of Han Ok-hi’s parents. A young woman struck down in her prime. PFC Bolt could go straight to hell as far as I was concerned.

I asked the MP Desk Sergeant if the PX snack bar was open, and he said it was open all day and gave us directions.

We were about to leave the ASCOM MP Station, when the phone rang. The Desk Sergeant answered.

“It’s for you,” he called to us, holding out the receiver. “Seoul.”

It was Staff Sergeant Riley.

“Top wants you back here,” he said. “Immediately, if not sooner.”

“We’re gonna eat chow first.”

“Chow can wait. You got bigger problems.”

“I’ve got problems?” I said.

“Yeah, you. You’re the one who had his forty-five stolen, aren’t you?”

I didn’t answer. The humiliation of having my weapon taken from me still burned deep.

“You there, Sueno?” Riley asked.

“I’m here.”

“Back to Seoul-now. Both of you. Don’t bother to stop at the compound, just head straight for Itaewon.”

I stood straighter, suddenly alert. “Why? What’s happened?”

“Nothin’ good. You heard of a Spec. Five Arthur Q.

Fairbanks?”

“Fairbanks? No.”

“Yes, you have. You just don’t know his name. He’s the VD Honcho.”

I knew who he meant. The medic at the 121st Evacuation Hospital who was in charge of the daily venereal disease sick call. Forty or fifty GIs every morning. The clap, herpes, nonspecific urethritis, chancroid, even an occasional case of syphilis. Fairbanks and his staff took the complaints, conducted the tests, and turned the results over to an overworked medical doctor who reviewed the paperwork, then allowed Fairbanks to administer drugs to the routine cases. Only the most severely afflicted GIs saw a doctor. Fairbanks took care of the rest.

Naturally, GIs called him the VD Honcho.

“What happened to him?” I asked.

“Dead,” Riley said. “Shot sometime early this morning. With a forty-five. We haven’t done the ballistics yet, but we’re betting it’s yours.”

“Why?” I whispered. “Why mine?”

Riley didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice came out softer, less gruff. “The way your luck’s been running, Sueno.”

I hung up the phone.

Ernie started to say something, but one look at my face, and he bit off whatever comment he’d been about to make.

“Another one,” I said. “Itaewon, this time.”

He didn’t ask me to elaborate. Silently, we walked outside to the jeep. Ernie fired up the engine.

We sped back to Seoul, breaking the speed limit all the way.

During the interrogation at the Pupyong Police Station, Private First Class Rodney K. Boltworks had told us what he liked about the brother of Yun Ai-ja, the smiling woman.

“He kicked my ass,” Bolt said. “I thought I was good, but he knows all kinds of karate moves and shit. You know, like Bruce Lee, except this guy doesn’t whistle or flex his muscles, he just comes at you. He doesn’t stop. His face is covered with little scars, and you should see his body. Knife wounds, the works. And man, don’t look at his sister. He goes off.”

“How does that work?” Ernie asked. “His sister’s a prostitute.”

“When he’s not around. When he’s around, she bows and serves tea and does all that kind of shit.”

“What kind of shit?” I asked.

“You know. Lights incense. Bows to those statues they got.”

“She’s religious?”

Bolt shrugged muscular shoulders. “I never saw her go to church.”

To him, religion was church. Anything else, he wasn’t sure of.

“What made you decide to go AWOL?” Ernie asked. “And rob a casino?”

“Kong, that’s what he calls himself.”

“’Kong?’” I asked. “That’s it?”

“Yeah. His sister said Kong is part of his full name. She told me the whole thing, but I forget.”

Given names are almost sacred in Korean society. Not shared lightly. The fact that the smiling woman’s brother only allowed PFC Boltworks to use part of his name said something about how much he trusted him.

“I was tired of Charley Battery,” Bolt continued. “Tired of taking crap from lifers, and tired of getting up early in the morning. Kong told me that with an American to help him, we could make a lot of money.”

“Help him do what?”

“You know, fool people. Make GIs relax when they saw me, and then Kong would bop ‘em over the head.”

“Did you do that?”

“A few times. But sometimes the GI fought back, and there were always too many people around.”

“So you decided to switch to robbing casinos.”

“Yeah. More money.”

“Did you know that Kong and his sister are half-American?”

“I figured.”

“You ever talk about it?”

“Never. Kong hates Americans.”

“Did he hate you?”

Boltworks grinned. “Yeah. He and I were always about to fight, you know. But after a while, I learned a lot of his tricks, so he started to lay off me.”

“Why would you hook up with somebody who hates you?” Ernie asked.

“We were making money. Besides, his sister didn’t hate me.”

“You were still boffing her?”

“When Kong wasn’t around.”

“Wasn’t that sort of dangerous?”

“Yeah.” Boltworks smiled. “Real dangerous.”

There were certain lines of questioning that I didn’t want to follow. Instead, I stuck to the more pragmatic questions. Bolt told us that after the casino robbery, he had split from Kong and, as planned, Kong kept the money and met up with his sister. Kong took off his sunglasses, changed clothes and put on a hat, and that made him look more Korean. She tied a shawl over her blonde hair. Together, carrying the money, they walked to the Inchon Train Station, merged with other commuters, and caught a ride to Seoul. Bolt holed up at the Yellow House at Brothel Number 17, and the idea was that after a few days, they would rendezvous in Itaewon and divide the money.

“You didn’t keep any money?” Ernie asked.

“I was supposed to meet with them.”

“Did you?”

“You guys screwed me up. Ai-ja was going to contact me at the Yellow House, but you guys chased me away.”

“Didn’t you have an alternative plan?”

Boltworks looked confused, and then remorseful, and then he shook his head.

“Did it ever occur to you,” Ernie said, “that they never intended to give you any money?”

“No way.” He sat up and pulled his hands against the cuffs behind him. “Ai-ja liked me. She told me she did.”

“So what were you going to do?” Ernie said. “Wait in ASCOM City forever?”

“No. When the heat died down, I was going to go to Itaewon. To the coffee shop at the Hamilton Hotel. They like it there.”

The Hamilton Hotel sat right on the MSR, across the street from the main nightclub district of Itaewon. The hotel featured a hundred or more rooms, and they were usually full of Japanese tourists and American GIs. The coffee shop was comfortable and well-appointed and probably the most popular meeting place in Itaewon.

“They go there often, do they?” Ernie asked.

“All the time.”

“So all you’d have to do is sit there a few days, sipping on overpriced coffee, and eventually they’d show up.”

“Two hundred and fifty won per cup,” Bolt said.

“That’s not so much.”

“No,” Ernie said. “I suppose not. Not when you’re a big-time gangster.”

Bolt grinned. And he kept grinning until we started to leave. Which is when he started to squeal.

At the main drag of Itaewon, the jeep’s engine churned up the incline. We passed the U.N. Club and the Seven Club and the King Club, and then hung a left about a block past the clump of nightclubs. A bunch of U.S. military vehicles- sedans, vans, MP jeeps-blocked all vehicular traffic. Ernie parked the jeep, chained and padlocked the steering wheel, and we climbed out.

We entered an alley leading into the bowels of Itaewon. Ahead, a gateway was open in a stone and brick wall.

As we approached, the hum of murmuring American voices grew louder. I ducked through the gate, and all talking stopped.

Eyes were on me. Gawking. Technicians and MPs and astonished Korean National Policemen turned their heads and stared. As if they couldn’t believe I’d have the temerity to show up at this crime scene.

Ernie tried to stuff a fried dumpling into my mouth. I slapped it away.

“Come on,” he said. “Yakimandu. I paid two thousand won for this stuff.”

He motioned at the plate on the bar between us. A dozen meat-filled dumplings, fried in peanut oil, fanned out in a circle with a bowl of soy sauce in the middle. We were sitting at the bar of the Seven Club on the main drag of Itaewon. Night had fallen, and I’d already polished off four beers and two shots of bourbon.

Ernie lifted another dumpling, dipped it in the soy sauce, and offered it to me. “You haven’t eaten all day, for chrissake. You need something.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“It ain’t your fault,” he said. “How many times do I have to tell you? They could’ve stolen anybody’s gun and done what they did. You can’t blame yourself.”

Ernie was right, of course, but the crowd of MPs and other 8th Army officials who’d been milling around in the courtyard where the VD Honcho had been killed left no doubt as to who they thought was responsible: Me.

It was a brothel. Not surprising. Spec 5 Five Arthur Q. Fairbanks, the VD overseer, had been out in Itaewon early in the morning, trying to track down a woman who had reportedly infected five American GIs with gonorrhea. All he wanted to do was take her into the local health clinic. The U.S. government would pay for the antibiotics and the medical bills, a worthy investment if it helped keep our servicemen in fighting trim.

Why early in the morning? Because at night, these girls were almost impossible to find, and Spec 5 Fairbanks, by all accounts, was dedicated to his job. The Korean women present told the KNPs that Specialist Fairbanks had been talking to the infected business girl, explaining to her that the U.S. government would pay for everything, when a man in a ski mask entered the hooch. He stood just under six feet and wore a raincoat, nondescript slacks, and rubber-soled shoes. Some girls said the skin of his hands was white, some said brown, but they all agreed that there were tufts of black hair on his wrists. The man motioned with his pistol for Fairbanks to step into the courtyard, while all the business girls, most still in their pajamas or nightgowns, crouched on the edges of the horseshoe-shaped raised floor, with the open doors of their hooches behind them.

Fairbanks was terrified, the girls said. He began to cry and plead for his life. The man motioned with his weapon for Fairbanks to kneel. He did. The girls were ordered into their hooches. Some peeked through rips in the oil-paper doors.

The masked man reached into his raincoat and pulled out a stiff sheet of paper. Maybe cardboard. He set it on the ground and leaned it against the iron pump. Then he stepped back and ordered Fairbanks to bow to the paper. They weren’t sure what language he spoke, they couldn’t hear, but Fairbanks understood and did what he was told. He prostrated himself in front of the paper three times. While this was going on, someone joined them. Whoever it was slipped in through the front gate and stood next to the masked man in the raincoat. No one could see because of the angle from the hooches to the front gate, but they heard footsteps and a whispered, urgent conversation. They were too far away to make out what was said.

When the seibei ceremony was over, the masked man ordered Fairbanks to remain kneeling. Then he walked around behind Fair-banks and aimed the. 45 at the back of Fairbanks’ head and pulled the trigger.