The Iron Sickle

— 5-

Instead of continuing toward me, the man in black swiveled and disappeared into the dark mouth of an even narrower pedestrian walkway. I knew where it would lead. Back into the maze of walls and hooches that made every neighborhood in Seoul an indecipherable labyrinth. If he reached those impenetrable catacombs, I’d lose him. I shouted and started to run. It was too dark to be sure, but I thought the man had tightened his hold on the front of his coat and glanced back at me just before he stepped into the narrow walkway.

When I reached the opening, I stopped for a moment and stared into the darkness. He was already gone. Somewhere off in the distance, one pale bulb shone. The path ended about twenty yards in and then forked. I ran in, glanced to the right, and saw nothing, so I turned left and climbed uphill.

The pathway narrowed. I was forced to turn sideways in order to slide through. Spider webs at the top of the walls hung down and brushed against my ears. I swiped them away. Finally, the lane emerged onto a slightly wider passageway illuminated by a streetlamp. I walked toward the pale light, asking myself what in the hell I was doing. I wasn’t armed, I was alone, nobody knew I was up here, and the man with the iron sickle was clearly leading me into some sort of ambush. Situated the way I was, there was no way he could get at me. I’d see him before he could attack, and much of his advantage with the sickle would be nullified by the close quarters. He wouldn’t be able to swing it effectively, and he certainly didn’t have the element of surprise he had at the 8th Army Claims Office or outside of the pochang macha. Still, I had no idea what he was planning. Maybe nothing. Maybe he was just trying to get away. Maybe this wasn’t even the same man, although he fit all the descriptions. It was too late to go back; I wasn’t even sure I could find my way back to the MSR. So I plowed forward.

At last the path spilled out onto a street I knew. It was broad, two lanes, and ran parallel to the MSR over a row of hills that eventually led to a high-rent district on the edge of Namsan Mountain. I glanced up and down the dark street. Nothing. Nothing, that is, except for a three-wheeled pickup truck, locked and parked for the night, and next to that a pushcart. I knelt so I could see beneath the truck. No feet lurking. I raised myself and started to walk forward, and then I heard it: footsteps emerging from an alley to my right, an alley so narrow and so well hidden by shadow I hadn’t noticed it.

Quickly, I backed toward the pushcart. I swiveled to search for the source of the footsteps but at the same time, fifty yards downhill, a pair of headlights appeared around a curve in the road. They were moving fast. The engine roared, and within seconds the headlights shone directly into my eyes, blinding me. I backed away from the mouth of the alley where I’d heard the footsteps, covering my eyes with my hand. Then the beam of the headlights swirled, and I saw him frozen in a brilliant tableau, staring directly at me-a face with a mangled lower lip, a face contorted with hatred. Held across the long black overcoat like a scepter, the naht, the short-handled sickle with the wickedly curved blade.

And then the alley went dark and the man was gone, disappearing in an instant. The driver of the vehicle stepped on the gas, making his engine roar. The headlights swung back toward me. I ducked behind the pickup truck, but it was too late. Whoever was driving pulled up on the far side of the truck, brakes squealed, and a door opened then slammed shut.

“Hold it right there!” An American MP appeared around the rear of the truck. He held a flashlight in one hand and a pistol in the other.

I froze, averting my eyes toward the alleyway.

He stared at me for a moment. “Sueno?” he asked.

I nodded.

“What the hell you doing up here?”

I didn’t answer, considering whether or not to call for backup and try to cordon off the neighborhood and maybe trap the man with the iron sickle. But it was too late. Such an effort would take at least a half hour to set up. He had too much of a head start and the catacombs of Seoul were vast. Instead, I sighed and answered the MP’s question. “It’s a long story.”

“Better be a good one. The Staff Duty Officer has a case of the big ass.”

“So do I,” I said. “Do you mind helping me check out that alley?”

I pointed to where I’d seen the man with the iron sickle. He aimed his flashlight. It was empty now, nothing but ancient brick and string-like cobwebs.

“You spot something down there?”

“Yeah. Come on.”

He followed me into the maze. We spent a half hour chasing our tails. No sign of anything.

“What the hell are we looking for?” the MP asked.

I could’ve told him I saw the man with the iron sickle but I’m not sure he would’ve believed me. Every MP craves glory. If I claimed to have seen the most wanted man in 8th Army and had no evidence to back it up, I would be thought of as either hallucinating or, more likely, making up stories to make myself seem important. And I’d be asked the most embarrassing question of all: why didn’t you take him down?

“Forget it,” I said. “I thought I saw something. Guess I was mistaken.”

We returned to the compound.

“Abandoning your post,” the Staff Duty Officer said. “Absent without leave. Disobeying a general order. Need I go on?”

“No, sir,” I said.

“Well, do you have anything to say for yourself?”

“A call came in just before midnight,” I told him, “an MP under attack, bleeding, no one else was available.”

“Burrows and Slabem were on call.”

“By the time we got through to them and woke them up and they got dressed and found their vehicle and drove out to the ville, whatever was happening would’ve been all over.”

“It was all over when you got there,” he told me.

Not quite. The Korean MP was still alive and on his way to the hospital, and, as I found out later, the man with the iron sickle was still haunting the area. But instead of explaining, I kept quiet. When a military officer is angry, proving to him he’s wrong just makes matters worse.

First Lieutenant Wilson was the 8th Army Staff Duty Officer for the evening. A leather armband designating him as such was strapped around his left shoulder. He kept rubbing his forehead and pushing his garrison cap backward over his cropped hair, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“The Provost Marshal has been informed,” he told me. “Burrows and Slabem are out there right now at the Itaewon Police Station.”

“Waiting for the police report,” I said.

He studied me, suspicious of the insolence in my voice. “That’s their job,” he told me.

At their core, the Korean National Police are a political organization; their main reason for existence is to support the military dictatorship of President Park Chung-hee. Despite this fact, the honchos of 8th Army allow the KNPs to translate their own police reports into English. That’s what CID agents Jake Burrows and Felix Slabem were waiting for now, the KNP English translation of the police report concerning the attack at the pochang macha. I doubted either Burrows or Slabem could read even one word of Korean. In the past, I’d gone to the trouble of comparing the Korean version of a KNP police report to the English version. Often the English version was watered down even more than the Korean version. Important information was left out in an effort not to upset 8th Army or in any way damage the special relationship between the US and Korea.

I considered explaining all this to Lieutenant Wilson, explaining the need for first hand information, the need for American cops capable of interviewing Korean witnesses, but I was too tired to go into it. Instead, I said, “Yes, sir.”

Lieutenant Wilson pushed his cap back even further and rubbed his furrowed brow. “I’ll let the Provost Marshal decide what to do with you. For now, I want you to finish your shift as sergeant of the guard.” He checked his watch. “Two more hours until morning chow. I expect you out there, on patrol, until then. When you’re properly relieved, report back here to the desk sergeant. He’ll log you out.”

Lieutenant Wilson asked me if I understood what he’d just told me, and I said I did. He was treating me like an idiot, and maybe there was some justification. In the army an experienced NCO who risks reprimand in order to do the right thing is suspected of either not understanding the situation or, more likely, of having gone mad.

I was starving by the time I was relieved from guard duty, but instead of making a beeline to the chow hall, I went back to Itaewon to search for Ernie. When I reached Miss Ju’s hooch, I knew I must’ve found Ernie because the sliding latticework door in front of her room was hanging halfway out of its frame.

“Ernie?” I said, rapping on the edge of the wooden porch. A bleary-eyed Korean woman peered out from behind strips of shredded oil paper that had once been part of the door. She realized who I was and her eyes popped open. She raised her knee and stomped behind her at something. A man grunted. Ernie.

I reached into the hooch, sliding forward on my knees, and shook him.

“Reveille,” I said. “The Provost Marshal wants to talk to us at zero eight hundred.”

Ernie sat up and rubbed his eyes. As he got dressed, Miss Ju said, “You owe me money!”

“Money?” Ernie repeated in mock outrage. “I thought you rubba me too muchey.”

She slipped on a robe and stood leaning against the broken door as Ernie slid into his trouser and tucked in his shirt. “Not that,” she said. “Last night you come here, you punch Bobby, you break door. You gotta pay!”

“No, sweat-ida,” Ernie said. “I’ll get your money.”

Miss Ju was a slender woman with permed black hair twisted in jumbled disarray. Still, she looked cute when she frowned. “When?” she asked. “When you get money?”

“As soon as I find Bobby,” Ernie replied.

“You make him pay?”

“Sure. He’s the one who broke the door, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, because you push.” She mimed a two-handed shove.

Ernie shrugged. “He shouldn’t have complained when I told him to karra chogi.”

“He don’t wanna go. Why he gotta go just because you say he gotta go?”

“You wanted him to go, didn’t you?”

“No. I want him stay. He not Cheap Charley like you.”

“Women,” Ernie said, turning to me, “who can understand them?” He finished lacing up his combat boots and stood up and grinned. “Life was simpler in Vietnam.”

“You mean you just took women when you wanted them.”

“Yeah. Later, they’d ask for money but the two things weren’t associated, you know what I mean?” He shook his head. “Koreans are so mercenary.”

As we left, Miss Ju stood with her cloth robe wrapped tightly around her slender torso, glaring at us. A few yards down the road, Ernie stopped and told me he forgot something, and he’d be right back. Before he left, he paused and said, “You wouldn’t have twenty bucks you could loan me, would you?”

I did. I pulled out two blue ten-dollar military payment certificates and handed them to him.

“Thanks.” He shoved the MPC in his pocket and returned to the hooch. He didn’t want me to see him reimburse Miss Ju for the damage to her room. When he came back, he shrugged. “Don’t want no hard feelings out here in the ville.”

I slapped him on the back. “You did the right thing.”

As we walked away, Ernie stuck his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders. “You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?”

“About what?”

“About me paying Miss Ju for the damage.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Good. Riley’d never let me hear the end of it.”

In the army, performing a good deed is considered to be a character flaw.

We stopped in the open-air Itaewon Market. Beams of early morning light filtered through canvas awnings and piles of fat fruit shone in their red and purple glory. Vendors and farmers bustled everywhere, jostling with the mostly female shoppers with their wire-handled baskets slung over chubby forearms. We found the stall where last night we’d discovered the dead rat, but the totem was gone. I asked the proprietor what he’d done with it.

“Jui-sikki?” he asked.

“Yes, a rat.” I described the wood slat foundation and the twisted rectangle of wire.

He shook his head vehemently. “An boayo.” He hadn’t seen anything.

“The guy must’ve doubled back last night,” Ernie said.

That’s when I told him about my encounter with the man in black on my way back to the compound. He didn’t say anything, just shook his head and whistled.

The Provost Marshal kept us waiting for almost an hour. Ernie and I had showered, shaved, and changed into our dress green uniforms. The mood at the 8th Army MP Station and here at the CID headquarters was somber to say the least, what with one of our own lying dead at the 8th Army Morgue. I’d only had time to jolt back one cup of strong coffee in the CID admin office, and my stomach was growling.

When we were told to enter, we marched into his office and stood in front of the Provost Marshal’s mahogany desk. Behind him, displayed on three poles, were the flags of the United States, the Republic of Korea, and the United Nations Command. We saluted. He didn’t salute back, just continued to glare at the paperwork in front of him. Without looking up, he said, “You left your posts.”

Ernie spoke up. “An MP was dying out there, sir. We had to do something.”

Instead of barking a rebuke, which is what I expected, Colonel Walter P. Brace, the Provost Marshal of the 8th United States Army said nothing. The silence grew long. Finally, he said, “The KNPs are asking for you.” For a moment I wondered if Miss Ju had filed charges against Ernie for trashing her hooch, but then Colonel Brace continued. “Inspector Gil Kwon-up. You’ve worked with him before.”

“Mr. Kill,” Ernie said.

“Yes. The first murder was committed on compound, under our jurisdiction. The murder last night was committed off compound, under Korean jurisdiction. The KNPs are giving it their highest priority and assigning their most senior homicide investigator, this Mr. Kill. He asked for you, specifically, and his request has been approved by the Chief of Staff, Eighth Army.”

“Both of us?” Ernie said.

“Yes, both of you. Apparently he was impressed with your work on that last case you worked on together.”

The Colonel shuffled through more paperwork, as if he were trying to understand why his two most unreliable CID agents had been assigned to his highest profile case. Colonel Brace preferred investigators like Jake Burrows and Felix Slabem, who would never dare follow up on information that might prove embarrassing. He was worried about losing control of the investigation. Once Ernie and I were out there with the KNPs, Mr. Kill, and all the resources of the Korean law enforcement establishment at our disposal, the investigation would go wherever it went, regardless of whether Colonel Brace wanted it to go there or not. The whole face-saving cover story of the man with the iron sickle being a North Korean agent might be blown sky high.

Colonel Brace shifted in his seat. Here it comes, I thought, as he began to speak in a deeper, more authoritative voice. “Now that one of our MPs has been killed, we’re pulling all our agents off other cases. We’re going to find this guy, and we’re going to find him immediately. Is that understood?”

Ernie and I nodded.

Blood had rushed up from beneath Colonel Brace’s tight collar and reddened his ears. “You might be working with the Korean National Police, temporarily, but you are first and foremost soldiers in the Eighth United States Army. Is that understood?”

Ernie and I nodded again.

“You’ll turn in progress reports to Staff Sergeant Riley by close of business each and every day. Is that understood?”

We nodded again.

“All right, now get out there, and get me some results.”

I would’ve been happy to get out of there, but Ernie knew the Provost Marshal was over a barrel. The decision to assign us temporarily to the Korean National Police had been made above his pay grade and now was our chance.

“How about our expense account?” Ernie said.

“What about it?” Colonel Brace asked.

When working an investigation, we were allowed to turn in receipts to reclaim expenses of up to fifty dollars a month.

“How about upping it to a hundred a month?” Ernie asked. “Each.”

Colonel Brace frowned.

“We’ll be in downtown Seoul,” Ernie continued, “working with Mr. Kill. Things are expensive down there.”

“You’ll be wherever the killer is,” Colonel Brace said.

“Yes, sir,” Ernie replied, “but if we let the KNPs pay for everything, Eighth Army loses face.”

Colonel Brace continued frowning and shuffling through paperwork until finally he said, “Okay, approved. Tell Riley.”

“Yes, sir.”

We saluted and turned toward the door. Before we reached it, Colonel Brace said, “One more thing. Don’t think that because you’ve received sponsorship from someone high up in the Korean government that you can go around me. All reports come through me and me alone. No contact with anyone outside the chain of command.”

“Yes, sir,” we said in unison. As quickly as we could, we escaped from his office.

Out in the hallway, Ernie asked, “What in the hell did you do to us, Sueno? Pissing off the Provost Marshal like that?”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“This Mr. Kill thinks highly of you. That’s why he asked for you.”

“He asked for you, too.”

“Only because he knows you’re no good without me.”

I barked a laugh.

“You know it’s true,” Ernie said.

No one else could watch my back like Ernie. And I watched his. It was the way we worked.

In the admin office, Ernie told Staff Sergeant Riley about the increase in our monthly expense account.

“Getting over again, eh Bascom?”

“We’ll be hobnobbing with the elite,” Ernie said. “Got to keep up appearances.”

“You? The elite? This I’ve got to see.”

“Just keep the money flowing, Riley. Me and Sueno, we’ll take care of the inter-governmental diplomacy.”

“You better watch your ass, Bascom,” Riley said, “or one of those big dogs will bite it off.”

The KNP headquarters in downtown Seoul was a seven-story monolith with a horseshoe-shaped driveway. Ernie and I pulled up in his jeep. Two young cops, their blue uniforms sharply pressed, blew their whistles and snapped a white-gloved salute. They would’ve opened the doors for us but the jeep didn’t have any doors, just an open-sided canvas roof. One of the cops promised to watch over the jeep, but Ernie waited as he parked it a few yards away from the entrance. Satisfied, we pushed through the big glass double doors.

Fan-driven air whooshed through the foyer. I inhaled deeply, catching the familiar odor that seemed to permeate every Korean office building: cheap burnt tobacco and fermented cabbage kimchi. The soles of our shoes clattered on a tiled floor. Behind a circular counter another cop sat along side a young female officer, her jet black hair cut in bangs. A sign above them said Annei, information.

Off guard duty now, I hoped permanently, Ernie and I were wearing civilian clothes: namely the coat and tie that are required garb for all 8th Army CID agents. The idea was a cockeyed one. The honchos at 8th Army wanted us to wear civilian clothes so we could blend in, but they didn’t want us looking like slobs, so they required us to wear a coat and tie and have our slacks pressed and our shoes shined. In the early 1970s nobody wore a coat and tie-not unless they were either getting married or on their way to a funeral. That plus our short GI haircuts and our youthful demeanor meant we didn’t blend in with anybody. We might as well have had flashing neon signs attached to our foreheads saying “8th Army CID Agents. Make way!”

I showed my badge to the two officers behind the counter and told them we were there to see Inspector Gil Kwon-up. The young woman’s eyes widened slightly, and without answering she lifted a phone, pressed a couple of buttons, and then whispered into it urgently, swiveling away from us and covering her mouth with her small hand.

“Cute,” Ernie said.

The male cop’s eyes crinkled.

“Easy, Ernie,” I said. “Don’t start making passes before we’ve even gotten through the door.”

Ernie reached in his pocket, pulled out a stick of ginseng gum, unwrapped it, and stuck it in his mouth. “You worry too much, Sueno.”

Finally, the young woman hung up the phone, turned, and gave me directions in broken English on how to reach the office of Inspector Gil Kwon-up, better known as Mr. Kill. I smiled and thanked her, and she stood and placed clasped hands in front of her blue skirt and bowed her head until her bangs hung straight down. Before we left, Ernie offered her a stick of ginseng gum, but she waved her flat palm negatively and backed away, her face turning red. The male cop glared at Ernie. Ernie shrugged and stuck the gum back in his pocket.

On the way up the elevator, I said, “You embarrassed that girl.”

“Bull. She loved every minute of it.”

When we reached the sixth floor, we stepped into a tiled hallway. Typewriters clattered and uniformed officers scurried back and forth on what appeared to be extremely important missions. I was about to stop one of them to ask where I could find Inspector Gil Kwon-up when a gaggle of men in suits emerged from one of the doors and hurtled down the hallway toward us. The man in front I recognized: Inspector Gil himself.

“You’re late,” he said. “Come on.”

As he rushed past us, he used the American gesture of crooking his forefinger, indicating we should follow. We did. He didn’t take the elevator but rather headed for a door marked Pisang-ku, emergency exit. We trotted down six flights of stairs. At the bottom we emerged out of the back door of the building into a parking lot crammed with small blue Hyundai sedans. One of them rolled to a stop in front of us and the doors popped open. Mr. Kill gestured for Ernie and me to climb into the back seat. He sat up front, next to the driver. The driver was a female officer with a curly shag hairdo that just reached the collar of her blue blouse. Her flat upturned-brim cap sat snugly atop the cascade of black hair. Ernie was craning his neck to get a better look at her but she kept her eyes strictly on the road as we zoomed out of the parking lot and into the midst of the swirling Seoul traffic.

“This is Officer Oh,” Inspector Gil said, without further explanation.

She nodded but did not turn back to look at us.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Where else?” Gil said. “To the scene of the crime. The game, as your British cousins so aptly put it, is afoot. We have no time to lose.”

“You believe he’ll strike again?” Ernie asked.

“Undoubtedly. He has everyone on the run now, doesn’t he? He’ll want to press that advantage and press it hard.”

Even though we’d worked with him before, it always took me a while to adjust to Inspector Gil’s fluency with the English language. He’d studied in the States, not only at an international police academy set up to train allied police officers in anti-Communist operations, but also at one of the Ivy League universities. I forget which one. And he read a lot, both in Korean and English and sometimes in classical Chinese.

“Why did you choose us for this assignment?” Ernie asked.

“You chose yourselves.”

When he didn’t elaborate, Ernie took the bait. “Okay, Inspector, how exactly did we choose ourselves?”

“This morning, when I took control of the crime scene from the Itaewon KNP station, the first thing I did was send my men out to canvas the neighborhood. At the open-air market, they found a vendor who told them that two Americans had been up at dawn, asking him if he’d seen something that had been left at his stall last night. He didn’t know who you were or why you were asking, but he told my man he’d been startled.”

“Startled by what?”

“Working in Itaewon, this man sees many Americans walking back and forth on their way to the military compound. Occasionally one of them even stops at his stall and purchases some vegetables or fruit. But the communication is always accomplished by pointing and hand gestures. This American, the one who asked him questions this morning, could speak the language of our illustrious forebears. And speak it well.”

“So you knew it was my partner, Sueno, here.”

“Do any other Americans in Eighth Army law enforcement speak Korean?”

“Hell no. Why bother? On compound everybody speaks English.”

“Exactly. So I knew it was you two, already investigating, already on the case.”

“That vendor,” I said, “did he give you any information that he didn’t give us?”

“He said he felt startled, as if he was staring into the face of a great ape who could talk.”

Ernie guffawed. “Damn, Sueno, I told you to shave before you went out to the ville.”

While Ernie enjoyed his laugh, Mr. Kill sat silently. Officer Oh’s narrow shoulders rose as she swerved through traffic. She said, “I don’t think he looks like an ape.”

Ernie stopped laughing and stared at the back of her head, surprised she could speak English.

Mr. Kill had made a number of changes at the murder site.

First, the pochang macha had been roped off, as had the area up the walkway where Corporal Collingsworth had been murdered. Technicians in blue smocks with the word kyongchal-police-stenciled on their backs were working both crime scenes: dusting for fingerprints, scraping samples of blood, searching under strobe lights for hair or loose strands of material. The KNP sergeant who’d been on duty last night stood off to the side, explaining to the technicians why he hadn’t secured the area earlier and called in forensics: the victim was an American, and therefore he didn’t fall under the jurisdiction of the Itaewon Police station. The KNP was red-faced and embarrassed, knowing it was a flimsy excuse and an inaccurate one, technically. Anything that happened off compound did in fact fall under the jurisdiction of the KNPs as the Provost Marshal had previously informed us. However, out here in Itaewon, the local KNPs often let the American MP patrols handle issues involving American GIs. Less paperwork.

Mrs. Lee, the owner of the pochang macha, sat forlornly on a wooden crate. I walked over to her.

“Did he come back last night?” I asked.

She looked up at me. “What? The killer?”

I nodded.

She hugged herself and shivered. “No.”

“Did you sleep in the cart?”

“Where else? But I couldn’t sleep much.”

I already knew many of the pochang macha owners were virtual mendicants. Their cart was their livelihood and their home. Without it, they had nothing.

She looked up at me, her eyes crinkled. “Will they be done before the evening rush starts?”

“We’ll see,” I said. I returned to Mr. Kill.

“We’ll send what we have to the lab,” he said, “and it will be given top priority.”

“I don’t expect much,” I said.

“Why not?”

“This man seems very cautious. Everything is well thought out and he spends as little time as possible at the crime scene.”

“Like a trained agent.”

“Maybe,” I said.

Ernie was wandering around on the far side of the cart. Behind him, an American MP jeep rolled up. I recognized the driver, Staff Sergeant Moe Dexter. Moe leaned out of the window, the usual broad smile on his face. He was one of the shift leaders and he and his men rotated between day, swing, and midnight shifts. Ernie and Moe traded barbs. Laughter echoed across the roadway.

“At the fruit stand in the Itaewon Market,” Mr. Kill said, “what was it you were looking for?”

I told him about the totem with the grill of twisted wire and the dead rat.

“You think this might’ve had something to do with the crime?”

“The dark passageway through the Itaewon Market was the logical escape route. This contraption was set up directly in our path. Anyone walking that way with a flashlight was intended to see it. Then, before dawn, it was taken away.”

“What do you think it means?”

“I think there was a message in it. Possibly from the killer.”

Mr. Kill asked me to describe it to him in more detail. I did. He listened intently, not taking notes.

The forensic technicians were about done with their work, and Mr. Kill left to have a final chat with them. The MP jeep zoomed off. Ernie walked toward me.

“They find anything?”

“Nothing yet. What did Dexter want?”

“You know him. Just wants to poke his pug nose into everything.”

“How are the MPs taking the death of Corporal Collingsworth?”

“They want us to catch the guy.”

“Is that what Dexter just said?”

“Not exactly.” Ernie stared after the now disappeared jeep.

“Well, what did he say?”

“He said the gooks better not screw this up.”

“Does he know Mr. Kill is on the case?”

“Sure he does. Word spread fast.”

“And he’s the best the KNPs have.”

“That cuts no ice with Dexter. He knows what the KNPs are like. If it’s not convenient for them, they’ll cover it up.”

“Not with us around.”

“You know that, I know that, but Dexter and most of the MPs don’t know that. They believe when push comes to shove, we’ll do whatever Eighth Army tells us to do.”

“Just like them.”

“Just like most of them.”

After we finished at the crime scene, Mr. Kill hustled us back into his sedan and Officer Oh drove west on the MSR, past 8th Army Compound and past the ROK Army headquarters. At the Samgak-ji circle, she turned north.

“Where are we going?” Ernie asked.

“I have a lead,” Mr. Kill said. “My colleagues have been questioning Korean Eighth Army employees who have recently applied for replacement identification badges. Most of them were innocuous.” I started at the word, remembering again that Mr. Kill had polished his English at an Ivy League school. He continued. “The badges were worn or damaged in some way. One man, however, applied for a replacement badge only one day before the murder of Mr. Barretsford.”

“You talked to him?”

“Not me, but one of my investigators talked with him at length, and with his wife. It appears that when he came home from a bout of drinking, not only had the badge disappeared from the clip on his lapel but also long blonde hairs were clinging to the material and the jacket reeked of perfume.”

“Uh oh.”

“The employee admitted that he’d stopped for drinks at an establishment called Yo Chonsa Gong.”

“What’s that mean?” Ernie asked.

I answered. “The Palace of Angels.”

“Very good,” Mr. Kill said, nodding. “We interviewed the man and his wife last night, so this will be our first visit to the Palace of Angels.”

“Do you think he’s clean?”

“Yes. He’s just a befuddled office worker who drank too much soju.”

“His wife must be pissed,” Ernie said.

“Very,” Mr. Kill answered. When the Korean National Police showed up at a respectable person’s home, everyone in the neighborhood learns about it. Much face is lost.

Officer Oh wound her way through the heavy Seoul traffic. Near the district of Namyong-dong she pulled right off the main road into a narrow lane. She cruised slowly past bicycle repair shops and cheap eateries and open-fronted warehouses containing electrical parts and used hardware. At a small circle with a huge elm tree in the middle, she pulled the sedan over to the side of the road. Next to a store selling discs of puffed rice sat an establishment with green double doors shut tightly and windows barred with iron grates. A hand-painted sign above said Yo Chonsa Gong. The Palace of Angels.

Mr. Kill motioned for Ernie not to try the front door. Officer Oh stayed with the sedan while we slipped down a crack between buildings that led to a filthy alleyway out back. Empty soju bottles in wooden crates leaned against dirty brick.

Mr. Kill pounded on the back door. No answer. He pounded again. Finally, we heard a door slam and then a voice from within. “Nomu iljiki!” Too early! Apparently, they thought we were making a delivery.

Mr. Kill leaned close to the door. “Bali!” he said. Hurry.

The door creaked open. Mr. Kill slid his foot in and gently shoved the door open with his left hand. A woman wearing a cloth robe, grey-streaked hair sticking madly skyward, stared up at him open-mouthed. He flashed his badge at her.

“Kyongchal,” he said. Police.

We pushed through the door.

The woman stumbled in front of us down a narrow hallway until we reached a carpeted lounge that reeked of spilled liquor and ancient layers of fossilized tobacco fumes.

“Bul kyo,” Mr. Kill said. Turn on the light.

The woman wandered over to a bar about six stools long, slid behind it, and switched on overhead neon. The light flickered and then shone red, softly but bright enough to see through gloom. The far wall was lined with vinyl-covered booths with small rectangular tables. Mr. Kill, his hands in the pockets of his overcoat, paced around the room. Finally, he turned to the woman and spoke in Korean. “How many hostesses work here?”

“Three, most nights,” the woman replied, “more on the weekends.”

“Does one of them have blonde hair?”

The woman, still holding her robe shut tight in front of her, thought about this. “You mean now?”

“I mean three nights ago. A Mr. Choi who works for Eighth Army was here. Apparently, he had contact with a woman with blonde hair.”

“Mr. Choi. Yes, I know him.” The woman bowed slightly, which meant that Mr. Choi must be a good customer. As a clerk at 8th Army headquarters he wasn’t getting rich, so if he was spending freely at the Palace of Angels, that would go a long way toward explaining why his wife was so pissed.

“Who served him?” Mr. Kill asked.

“Na,” the woman replied.

“She’s a blonde?”

“Yes. She dyed her hair blonde a couple of weeks ago.”

Mr. Kill glanced up the carpeted stairs. “Is she up there?”

“Yes, but still asleep.”

Mr. Kill glared at her. The Korean National Police have the power to make any bar owner’s life more than miserable. All they have to do is claim that their establishment is a threat to national morals and then they have the legal authority to shut them down. The hard lines on Mr. Kill’s face showed that he was in no mood to wait for Miss Na to get her beauty rest.

The woman clutched her silk robe more closely. “I’ll fetch her,” she said.

“Never mind,” Mr. Kill told her, holding his hand out to stop her. “I’ll do it.”

He crossed the soggy carpet of the barroom and trotted upstairs. Ernie and I followed.

The accommodations up here weren’t nearly as luxurious as downstairs. There was a tiny bathroom with mold-smeared tile and cracked metal plumbing. At the opposite end of the hallway, Mr. Kill slid open an oil-paper covered door.

Thick vinyl flooring lay hidden beneath sweat-stained sleeping mats and thick cotton comforters. The room reeked of perfume and flatulence. One of the tufts of curled hair sticking out of the comforters was blonde. Mr. Kill pulled back the blanket. The woman beneath wore brown wool long johns. She pulled her legs up and hugged herself. Then her eyes popped open. Instantly, she sat up, her cute figure showing itself even through the thick material.

“Wei kurei?” she said in a childlike, whining voice, rubbing her eyes. Why this way?

Mr. Kill spoke to her in soothing Korean. “Miss Na, I’m sorry to bother you.” He showed her his badge. “I just have a few questions.” The girl continued to rub her eyes and started to rise. “No need to get up,” Kill said, holding out his palm. “Two nights ago, you sat with Mr. Choi. I think he drank quite a bit.”

“Yes,” she said. “Can I go to the bathroom?” Miss Na didn’t seem at all surprised to see Mr. Kill in her boudoir. Probably other men barged their way in here at odd hours. The other girls were starting to rouse themselves.

“Of course you can go to the bathroom,” Mr. Kill said, “in a moment. Did Mr. Choi take off his jacket or did he wear it?”

“He wore it,” she said. “It’s cold down there. Ajjima won’t pay for heat.” She hugged herself again and started to rise. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

Mr. Kill held her shoulder. “In a moment,” he said, “after you’ve answered my questions.”

She hammered a small fist against the wall and spoke once again in her small, whining voice. “But I have to go.”

“What happened to Mr. Choi’s badge, the one that was clipped to his lapel?”

Miss Choi closed her eyes and stomped her foot. “I have to go.”

“As soon as you answer my question.”

She shook her head in frustration. Silky blonde strands swayed beneath brown roots. “I didn’t want to do that,” she said.

“Do what?”

“I didn’t want to take the badge.” She stared up at him as if he were stupid. “But ajjima said I had to.”

“Why?”

“Why? Some man, a strange man, was offering her money. She took it.”

“This man asked her to steal Mr. Choi’s badge?”

“That’s what she said.”

“Did you see this man?”

“No-oo. Can I go to the bathroom now?”

She pushed past Mr. Kill. He let her go. After poking her feet into plastic sandals, she stomped down the hallway. The door to the bathroom only closed partially so we all stood there and listened to her tinkle. As we did so, the other women scooted away from us, various expressions of suspicion and alarm on their faces. Mr. Kill slid the door shut.

When Miss Na returned, he said, “So while this Mr. Choi was drinking, you slipped the badge off his lapel?”

Miss Na stomped her foot again. “I didn’t want to tell you.”

“You had no choice,” Mr. Kill said soothingly. “You had to go to the bathroom.”

The girl pouted.

“How did you get the badge?” Mr. Kill asked.

“It was easy,” Miss Na told. “Choi ajjosi gets so drunk.” Her button nose crinkled.

We left the bedroom and hurried downstairs. The older woman had changed into a long velvet house dress, combed her hair back and sat at the bar smoking. When Mr. Kill walked up to her she said, “He didn’t tell me his name.” Kill stood next to her, his hands in his pockets, glaring at her. As if discussing the weather, she continued. “He offered me twenty thousand won if I would get Mr. Choi’s badge for him.”

“How did he know Choi would be here?”

“He followed him. But we didn’t steal it.”

“How did you get it then?”

“We waited until Choi Sonseingnim was very drunk and then I had Miss Na ask him if he would give it to us. He did.”

“And you sold the badge for twenty thousand won?”

“You think I’m a fool?” She puffed her cigarette, blew out the smoke and said, “I sold it to him for forty thousand.”