The Door to Bitterness

5

Ernie guffawed. “Maybe he likes boys.”

Suk-ja eyed me more carefully. “No.” She shook her head vehemently.

“Okay, Suk-ja,” Ernie said, placing his hands on his hips. “What of it? What if we are CID?”

“I hear about girl get shot. Radio say. Good girl. Work at Olympos.”

This woman who called herself Suk-ja was no idiot. She’d not only figured out who we were, but why we had ventured into the Yellow House. I stepped back from the doorway and glanced up at the brightly lit window of House Number 59. Inside, the girls sat in various states of undress, heads hanging down or cocked to the side, staring listlessly at the parade of furtive men outside.

Suk-ja, however, missed nothing.

“I help,” she said.

“How can you help?” Ernie asked.

“I hear something today. All woman naked, they talk too much.”

“What do you mean ‘all women naked?’”

“At bathhouse, pyongsin-ah.” Retard. In mock-reproach, Suk-ja slapped Ernie on the forearm. “Woman take shower, woman talk. One woman, she work at House Number Seventeen. She complain taaksan about man come this afternoon. He no look for woman, he look for room.”

Ernie stared at her, waiting.

“He only want one room, this woman say. No like any other. Got to have window. Got to be high-up. Other things too, but she don’t know all. Mama-san ask him why he care about room so much but he get angry.”

“Is he an American?” I asked.

“Yeah. GI. But hair too long. Here and here.”

She pinched the back of her neck and her sideburns. The guy needed a trim. If he was a GI, he hadn’t stood inspection for a while.

“So why was this woman gossiping about him?” Ernie asked.

“Huh?”

“Talk. Why did she talk about him?”

“Oh. Because she get mad. He take her room, but then choose another girl to stay there with him. She no like. She want to get clean clothes take to bathhouse, but this man he busy all time with other girl. Too much boom boom. Mama-san say she no can go in, maybe he get taaksan angry.”

“Was this guy wearing a suit like us?” I asked.

“I don’t know. She no say.”

“What’s this woman’s name?”

“I don’t know. But she new. That’s why she got room top floor.” Suk-ja raised a hand above her head. “Away from customer.”

“Where’s House Number Seventeen?” Ernie asked.

“I show you.”

“No. Just tell us.”

Before Ernie could grab her, Suk-ja scurried away, back into House Number 59. She glanced over her shoulder and said, “Chom kan man.” Just a moment.

“Looks like she’s going with us,” Ernie said.

I nodded.

In a few minutes, Suk-ja emerged, wearing blue jeans and sneakers and a pullover wool sweater. Her hair was tied back in a tight ponytail. But what was most surprising was that she had slipped on a pair of black, horn-rimmed glasses that looked extremely attractive on the smooth oval of her unblemished face. Had she been carrying a book and a slide rule, I would’ve sworn she was a college girl.

“Bali,” she said. Hurry.

We trotted after her through a narrow, fog-filled alley. Ernie kept his hand on the hilt of his. 45. I kept my eyes on shadows, suspicious, waiting for one to move.

Ernie held Suk-ja back.

We stood in the mouth of an alley gazing up at House Number 17. It was a ramshackle gray building made of rotted wood planks broken out in pustules of peeled paint. The fog hovered low to the damp, flagstone-covered lane. Behind the brightly lit plate glass window on the first floor a few women shuffled about. They seemed to be older, some slightly overweight. One wore pajamas.

“Kuji,” Suk-ja said.

I’d learned the word on the streets, not in my Korean language class. Some would translate it as “dirty,” but that wasn’t quite right. “Squalid” came closer. In brothels, as in everything else in human life, there are hierarchies of quality.

Ernie caught my attention and motioned with his eyes. Most of House Number 17 was dark. But on the third floor, a dim light shone.

Ernie and I’d discussed it on the way over here. This guy Suk-ja had heard about in the bathhouse could be a GI, but maybe not. He could’ve had something to do with today’s robbery, but maybe not. Either way we wanted to talk to him. Should we call in the KNPs? No. Too early for that. This could be nothing, a false alarm. Until we had solid information, we didn’t want to bother Lieutenant Won with unnecessary requests for assistance.

We’d check out the guy ourselves.

“That’s her,” Suk-ja said, pointing at one of the women sitting behind the front window. “The one I talk to in bathhouse. Paran seik.” Wearing blue.

I translated for Ernie

“I go checky checky,” Suk-ja said.

Once again, Ernie held her back. “We’ll go,” he said.

I studied the lit window on the third floor. No movement. A fire escape ladder attached to the outer wall ran up to the roof. As in most Korean apartment-type buildings, this one was flat, designed to allow extra space to store earthenware kimchee jars or to hang laundry. There was no movement up there, but it would be an easy jump to the roof of the next building. And from there to the next, and so on. Then down some interior stairs, and whoever had insisted on a room on the third floor of House Number 17 would be walking the streets alone, and safe.

Ernie saw it too. If the Korean National Police stormed House Number 17, the room at the top provided at least the hope of escape.

“Are you sure there was only one GI?” Ernie asked Suk-ja.

“That’s what she say.”

If this was the right guy, we had to be prepared for the fact that he would be armed. Probably with the pistol the thieves had stolen from the security guard at the Olympos Casino. Ernie pulled out his. 45 and jacked back the charging handle. Suk-ja jumped away from the clang.

“Sorry,” Ernie said.

Someone shouted. I peeked around the corner of the alley.

Sailors. Merchant marines. Speaking some sort of gibberish. Not English. Not Spanish. Not Korean. They crowded around the front steps of another house of prostitution. Some smoking, some swigging from brown bottles of OB Beer. All were talking, playing grab-ass. One pulled out a pocket knife and waved it around. The others hooted.

Suk-ja’s hot breath warmed my elbow.

“Shila,” she said. Greek.

I looked down at her. “You understand?”

“Have to,” she replied.

“They all stay at one house?”

“Yes. Sometimes whole ship take one house. Mama-san give, how you say?”

She slashed her hand as if cutting something.

“Discount?”

“Yes. Discount. Maybe all women old and ugly. Then mama-san must give big discount.”

I studied the sailors again. They were just having fun. Still, it was a rough-looking bunch. Best to steer clear of them.

“I’ll take the front,” Ernie told me. “You enter there.” He pointed to the house on the other side of House Number 17, away from the Greek sailors. “Go up to the roof. Cut him off if he tries to escape.”

“No good. What if you run into trouble? It’ll take me too long to run back down the steps.”

Ernie sighed with exasperation. “Sueno, you aren’t armed. What the hell good are you if the guy starts shooting?”

He didn’t intend to be cutting, I knew that. Ernie was simply stating a fact.

“I go up on roof,” Suk-ja said, pointing at her nose. “If he come, I hit him with kimchee jar.”

Ernie and I looked at one another. It wasn’t a bad idea. If she could just slow the thief down, give him something to think about, we’d be across the roof and on him in no time.

“Okay,” Ernie said. “But stay low. If he has a gun, you just hide. You arra? You understand?” He swooshed his down-facing palm through the air, like a bird in flight. “You let him run away.”

Suk-ja nodded, and then, before we could change our minds, she trotted off across the alley to the building next to 17. She disappeared through the front door.

“Okay,” Ernie said. “Are those Greeks going to be any trouble?”

“I think they’re preoccupied.”

A woman’s laughter pealed through the night. As if it were a signal, Ernie and I crouched low and trotted across the fog-shrouded alleyway.

Maybe it was the wood creaking beneath our feet. Maybe it was just nerves. Whatever it was, Ernie sensed something and halted, holding me back with his arm. Listening.

We were crouched in the third floor hallway of House 17, swatting at fleas, our feet squishing into damp carpet. The place reeked of urine and garlic and sex.

A grunt. A man’s voice. And then a high female squeal of pain.

When we’d entered downstairs, through the front door of House Number 17, several overly made up women accosted us, clawing at our sleeves, cooing, promising us various sorts of sexual delights. Ernie tried to shush them as best he could, and while he was busy, I pulled the mama-san aside and spoke to her in Korean. We were here to see our chin-gu. An American man. I described him, then told her that we thought he was staying up on the third floor.

“Isang han saram,” she said. A strange guy.

“How so?” I asked.

“He stay in room all day long,” she told me. “No come out. Order food from Chinese restaurant, make boy leave noodles outside door. My girl, he won’t let her come out. I think she taaksan tired.”

Robbing casinos must be good for the libido.

After a few more questions, I determined that the guy had checked in alone. He’d had no visitors, and he’d arrived on foot at about noon. Since carefully choosing room 33 on the third floor, and choosing a girl to accompany him, he hadn’t emerged. There was no phone in the room-the Yellow House doesn’t go in much for phones-and no one else had visited.

I handed the mama-san a red Military Payment Certificate note. That’s what the U.S. Army uses as currency overseas rather than greenbacks. She stuck the crisp five dollar bill into her withered decolletage. Then she winked at me and waved Ernie and me up the stairs. What was she thinking? That we were here to bust her customer? If so, she didn’t much give a damn.

In the hallway outside of room number 33, Ernie waited a few more seconds. Listening. Then we heard another squeal. Louder this time. More desperate. Whoever the girl was, and whoever this guy was, he was hurting her. I didn’t like it. Neither did Ernie.

Without warning, Ernie took three steps forward and kicked in the flimsy wooden door.

I charged in past him, unarmed, but ready to dive head first into whoever was there. Ernie crouched in the doorway, pointing his. 45 straight ahead and shouting, “Freeze!”

A blast sounded, and I dove toward the foot of the bed. The blankets were wrinkled and damp but there was nobody on the mattress.

Then I heard Ernie’s. 45 behind me. It barked once, twice.

When I raised my head, I saw that the window was open. A naked Korean woman cowered in front of it, her arms crossed over her chest, tears streaming from tightly clenched eyes. To her left, a shoe-clad foot stepped rapidly up the ladder attached to the outside wall.

Ernie fired above the girl, but his bullet hit cement, sending a cloud of dust billowing into the air. She screamed and collapsed to the floor, covering her head, kicking in panic with naked feet.

I pulled myself toward the window sill, stuck my head out, and looked up.

Again, the same shoe. A black oxford, Army-issue. It disappeared over the roof’s edge. I stretched out toward the ladder, swung around, and started to climb. Up on the roof, shoe leather pounded cement.

Somehow, the guy had known we were coming. He had been dressed and ready, and he’d waited until the last moment, until we were too close to cut him off outside, to make good his escape. Had somebody warned him?

I climbed. And when I reached the edge of the roof, I peeked over, then pulled my head back down, remembering what I had just seen. An empty roof, dark, lined with earthenware kimchee jars.

He must’ve already jumped over to the neighboring roof. Would Suk-ja be able to slow him down, or would she just get herself hurt? Suddenly, I regretted having allowed her to help. This was our job, not hers.

Ernie was scrambling up the ladder behind me.

I clambered up onto the roof, helped pull Ernie up, and then we were running toward the far wall. Just as I was about to leap off the edge, onto the neighboring roof, Ernie grabbed me.

“Hold it.” He pointed at a glimmer of light peeking around a brick chimney behind us. I shrugged him off and prepared to jump. I didn’t want to leave Suk-ja over there alone, without help.

“No,” Ernie said. “Look. He’s not there.”

I glanced across the next roof and then at the roof beyond that. No one. Not even Suk-ja.

“He’s hiding,” I said.

“He wouldn’t,” Ernie replied. “He’d keep running. Come on.”

He dragged me back over to the brick chimney. On the other side was an open wooden hatchway. I looked down. Another metal ladder led down into the hallway of the third floor.

“He probably already reconnoitered,” Ernie said. “Knew that we’d expect him to hop from roof to roof, but instead he doubled back. Come on.”

He lowered himself through the hatchway and then let go and dropped down to the creaking floor below. I followed, and we ran down the hallway until we found the stairwell. We flew down to the first floor.

The women in front of the window were up now, terror showing in their eyes, all of them pointing through the light-smeared glass. A dark figure flashed down the street, heading toward the gang of Greek sailors blocking the walkway.

In seconds, Ernie was out on the street, running after him, me right behind.

Twenty yards ahead, I saw the dark figure smash into the unsuspecting Greeks. Men cursed and spun out of the way. A beer bottle crashed to the ground. Someone shouted and threw his hands up. I couldn’t understand a word, but the guttural sounds of cursing were unmistakable. And then our quarry was through the Greeks and past them and already disappearing into the mist.

Ernie didn’t slow down.

One of the Greeks shouted. They all spun, staring at Ernie, who was plowing toward them. The men stepped together and formed a phalanx, as if responding to an ancient instinct left over from Alexander’s army. Before Ernie could dodge them, they walked forward and reached out for him. Momentum rammed his body into the men, who grunted and gave and then held. They began to push back.

I could’ve run around them. Even through the dark and the fog I could still see the figure about thirty yards ahead, gaining speed, turning around a mist-shrouded corner. But the Greek sailors were pummeling Ernie. A knife glimmered in the yellow light of the street lamp.

I veered and rammed into them.

Men screamed and cursed, and I punched and kicked, happy, at last, to be set free. For the past few days, I had been holding everything inside: pining over a lost weapon and a stolen badge; putting up with the sneers of cops who play it safe, who stay on the compound near headquarters, afraid to put themselves at risk in the dark shrouded alleys of Asia. But now I was able to fight, to feel the satisfying crunch of fist on skull. Moving as fast as I could. Acting on instinct alone. Punching, kicking, screaming.

And then there was more shouting and Ernie was pulling me away, even while I still jabbed and cursed, and then my eardrum shuddered with the blast of his. 45.

As if encountering a thunderbolt, the Greeks retreated.

Ernie pointed the. 45 at them and cursed and kept jerking on the back of my coat and we backed off, until finally we were enveloped by the glow of the street lamp in front of House Number 17. Suk-ja was there, reaching for us, pleading with us to follow. The next thing I knew, we were running once again through the endless dark. I was enjoying the trip, feeling light-headed, flushed with the giddy rush of having released so much tension, until suddenly the world became smaller. Pinpoints of light spangled a blanket of fog. The lights faded. The fog closed in on me. A lonely foghorn moaned far out at sea.

And then I was leaning on Ernie and my feet grew numb. Suk-ja was helping. I’m not sure exactly when, but I must’ve collapsed.

Damp cobbles pressed against my cheek. People jerked on my arms, but I couldn’t get up.

I’d been stabbed.

The cut wasn’t deep, and the blade hadn’t hit any vital organs but it hurt like hell nevertheless. The doctor told me it was a slice more than a stab wound. She actually used those words.

“Slice your rib,” she said, pointing at her own rib cage. “Not stab into you lung.”

Her name was Dr. Lim. A bespectacled woman, middle-aged, about the size of your typical twelve-year-old American boy. But the girls at House Number 59, including Suk-ja, bowed whenever she looked at one and backed up in the hallway to make way for her as she passed. They treated her like a visiting potentate. Why? The doc was a savior to the girls in the Yellow House area. Suk-ja told me that she was in charge of the city VD clinic, a clinic that years ago set up business only a few blocks away.

Dr. Lim swabbed my wound with rubbing alcohol, then gave me a tetanus booster and a shot of antibiotic. When I asked her what kind of antibiotic it was, she grew impatient and said, “You be quiet.”

I did. In the Third World doctors are gods. Not to be questioned.

Then she sewed me up. Three stitches. Without anesthetic.

All the while, I lay on the warm vinyl floor of Suk-ja’s room in House Number 59, on a rolled out cotton sleeping mat. Suk-ja, the mama-san, Ernie, and about a half-dozen of the House Number 59 girls looked on, the girls still wearing their flimsy lingerie.

Life is a communal activity in Korea. Everyone believes they have a right to know what’s going on.

Ernie paid Dr. Lim out of his own pocket. After she left, Suk-ja fetched a bottle of Kumbokju brand soju, and she and Ernie and I sat in her room toasting one another, tossing back thimble-sized shots of the fierce rice liquor, talking about the fight, laughing, speculating on who the guy was who got away.

I passed out first.

“You smell like a sewer,” Ernie said.

“You’re not much better.”

The time was oh-dark-thirty. The sun still hadn’t come up, and Ernie and I were winding our way through the walkways of the Yellow House, heading back to House Number 17. Both of us were feeling pretty gamey, what with all the activity of the last twenty-four hours. Now, early in the Inchon morning, unable to perform our morning GI rituals- a shower, shave, and change into clean clothes-we were each becoming more uncomfortable by the minute.

Before we left House Number 59, Suk-ja had done her best to wash me up, bringing a pan of heated water for what Koreans call seisu, scrubbing of the hands and face. But it wasn’t the same as being in the barracks and standing under a luxuriantly hot shower for twenty minutes.

The Koreans consider Americans to be unclean. Most Koreans don’t have much more than one faucet or well outside to provide water for their home, therefore they don’t shower every day. But when they do shower, it’s with a vengeance. At a public bathhouse, they might spend two or three hours, rubbing and grinding and pelting their raw skins until every pore in their bodies is free of grease and grime.

We stood in the dark street in front of House Number 17.

The Greeks were gone. The narrow alley, where one of them had sliced me, was empty and silent. Ernie stepped up to House Number 17 and pounded on the locked door until the mama-san opened up. I explained that we wanted to talk to the girl who’d spent time yesterday with the criminal who’d escaped last night. She agreed but asked for ten more dollars. I turned her down flat. When she complained, I told her that if she preferred, I would call Lieutenant Won of the Korean National Police and she and the girl could both talk to him downtown. That was enough to make the frowning mama-san open the door and let us in. She told us to wait and went upstairs to fetch the girl.

Five minutes later, the frightened young woman knelt on the warm vinyl floor in the front room, dressed in lumpy blue jeans and three layers of upper garments, topped off with a thick wool sweater that she clutched across her chest.

When we’d seen her last night, she’d been naked and screaming, while bullets whizzed past her head.

Her name was Mi-ja, she told me. Beautiful Child. I held out the sketch of the Caucasian man who’d robbed the Olympos Casino.

When she reached for it, her hand shook, as it had last night when she’d attempted to cover her nakedness. Before she grabbed hold of the flimsy construction paper, she closed her eyes and pushed it away.

“Come on, Mi-ja,” Ernie said. “You have to look at it sometime.”

Apparently, Mi-ja didn’t understand. So far, she hadn’t done anything other than kneel before us and bow her head. I spoke soothingly in Korean, asking her to just take a look at the sketch. She kept her face down, and then I realized that she was crying.

I explained that more people would be hurt if she didn’t help us capture this guy.

Without looking up, Mi-ja raised the left sleeve of her sweater. There, in a straight row, red and angry, were half a dozen holes in her flesh. All about the size of the tip of a burning cigarette. She continued to hold out her arm. Nobody spoke. Nobody breathed.

Slowly, I reached out my hand, feeling the ache of the slice in my side, and, as gently as I could, I touched the fingertips of her hand with mine. We lingered like that for a few seconds, flesh on flesh, and then Mi-ja pulled her arm back and rolled down her sleeve.

I held out the sketch again. This time she took it, sat it in her lap. While she studied it, fat tears splashed against the deft pencil lines. Finally, she handed the sketch back to me. Then she nodded.

It was him.

When she finally started to talk, she told me everything.

Hundreds of commuters, maybe thousands, stood in orderly lines along the cement passenger platform next to the tracks of the Inchon Main Train Station. They were silent, barely shuffling their feet. Occasionally someone coughed.

The cut in my side didn’t hurt much. Actually, my head hurt more, and my stomach still roiled from last night’s soju.

Another blast of cold, salted mist rolled in from the Yellow Sea. Then a buzzer sounded, and the tracks rumbled, and a few seconds later a train rolled up, brightly lit inside. It stopped, two dozen doors slid open, and the people standing on the platform rushed in, spreading themselves quickly over the seats and benches.

“Seems like the whole damn city works in Seoul,” Ernie said.

I braced myself against a metal railing, supporting about half my weight with my arm, trying to keep the pressure off the slice below my armpit.