The Wandering Ghost

7

Ernie wanted to confront the kampei. I didn’t see why. We were here to gather information about the death of Private Marvin Z. Druwood. We definitely weren’t here to start a hassle with a local gang of hoodlums. Whatever was going on downstairs, I was sure the Turkey Lady could handle it. At least I was sure until voices were raised in anger and then something smashed against a wall. Pellets pinged off hard surfaces, reminding me of only one thing: a broken abacus.

Ernie rushed downstairs. I followed, Ok-hi right behind me.

It took us a few seconds to lift the trapdoor and then clamber down the old wooden ladder. Then we ran down the hallway toward the open door of the office. As we did so, I spotted the cherry-girl room looking larger now because it was completely empty. Is that what the kampei had come for? The Thousand Crane Vase? Maybe it wasn’t a reproduction but the real thing, a genuine antique from the Koryo Dynasty. Of course it had looked real to me all along but when it comes to art, what do I know? When Ok-hi and I rushed inside the office, Ernie was already kneeling over the Turkey Lady. She was alive but the top of her skull had been partially pulped by a blunt instrument. The drawers of her desk and her file cabinets had been ripped open and the contents dumped on the floor. Not as if someone was looking for something, but as if they just wanted to destroy.

Ok-hi squealed when she entered the office but ran forward and shoved Ernie out of the way. She bent over the Turkey Lady and examined her for injuries. “Ahn chugo,” she told us. Not dead. Still breathing.

Ernie and I rushed toward the stairwell. At the top we stopped. There was a smell that we both recognized: mogas. The cheap, poorly refined gasoline that the U.S. Army uses to power most of its motor vehicles. A cloud filled the stairwell. Not like the wispy cotton clouds that led the white, painted cranes heavenward but a solid, pungent cloud, like a mechanic’s fist punching its way into the hallway.

I suppose Ernie and I both expected what was coming next but still it filled me with irrational terror. As we stood there breathing in the odor of cheap gas, a ball of reddish light burst upward from downstairs, along with the whooshing sound of oxygen being sucked into the mouth of a monster. And then a blinding rush of black smoke. We both stepped back.

Panic overwhelmed me. In a flash, I calculated how fast this old wooden building would burn as gasoline-fueled flames gnawed hungrily at dry lumber. Fire grows not gradually but exponentially. Even if Ernie and I ran straight for the exit, we still might not make it out of this old brothel alive. If we went back for Ok-hi and the Turkey Lady, our chances of survival were virtually nil. There was no time to think about it, no time to confer. No time to weigh our options.

We ran back into the office.

Ernie grabbed Ok-hi, jerked her upright, and shoved her toward the door. Then we each grabbed one of the Turkey Lady’s sandal-covered feet and dragged her into the hallway. Her body and then her head hit the molding in the corridor, but we didn’t even slow down. We ran toward the stairwell. Ok-hi understood our panic now. We took two steps at a time, not caring if the back of the Turkey Lady’s skull struck the cement steps. She probably wouldn’t live through this but neither would we.

At the second floor, the smoke had already coagulated into a thick wall. That’s usually what kills people. The poisonous fumes from plastics and asbestos and rubberized wiring and all the other exotic building materials that are used in modern high-rises. But this old building was made of the same materials that had been used in Asia since time immemorial: wood, iron, brick, and mortar. And now that we were below the floor that held the fancy electronics, we were faced with smoke that came only from those simple materials- and from the gasoline and the hemp sacks full of grain.

Still, the black cloud would choke us to death if we gave it half a chance. I hesitated. Maybe we should flee to the end of the second-floor corridor and take our chances jumping out the far window. Ernie understood my hesitancy but he had none. He plowed forward, into the smoke.

I went with him, the body of the Turkey Lady bouncing behind us, Ok-hi following.

We reached the ground floor beneath a cloud-covering of smoke. Sacks of barley stacked on pallets roared red with flame. The wooden flooring burned in erratic circles, indicating the places where the kampei had splashed gasoline. We moved toward the front door but the smoke was thickening now. Ernie stumbled. I wanted to help him up but my eyes and my nose and my throat screamed for me to keep moving, to flee. I had no idea what Ok-hi was doing. In seconds I’d pass out. I let go of the Turkey Lady’s foot. Ernie was crawling forward now but I left him and ran blindly toward where I hoped I’d find the exit. I wasn’t running so much as stumbling, head forward, trying to keep my feet beneath me so I wouldn’t fall. And I didn’t fall because I plowed headfirst into a wall.

For a second, I blacked out. When I came to I found myself face-down on the floor and this was good because there was less smoke and more oxygen down here. I slithered to my left, praying as I tried to find the door. I did.

I shoved at it. It rattled and held.

Locked.

Holding my breath, I rose to my knees and twisted the handle. It was hot but I held on anyway. I twisted and twisted again. No dice. It wouldn’t budge.

I knew what I had to do. I had to stand up and kick the door open. But knowing and doing are two different things. What I really wanted to do was to lie down and enjoy the last of the breathable air, but if I did that I’d be finished. What about Ernie? What about Ok-hi? What about the Turkey Lady? They were far from my calculations now.

I stood somehow, backed up a step, and with every molecule of strength I possessed, I flung myself at the door. It shuddered, held, and then sprang free.

I fell facedown onto the wooden platform outside, then crawled toward the far edge of the loading dock, still unable to breath. Billowing black smoke followed me outside like a dragon emerging from its den. I continued to crawl until gravity took over and I crashed to the ground below. I lay still for a few seconds. Breathing. Grateful. Enjoying the unbelievable bracing, clear air that filled my lungs.

Ernie! He was still back there.

I rose unsteadily to my feet and through the smoke saw something black moving toward me. I reached out, grabbed a handful of shirt and pulled. The dark thing fell, crashing into me, and we both tumbled onto the ground.

Ernie. I shoved him off me. His face was covered with soot and he gasped for air like a beached fish. But he was alive. I left him there and climbed back onto the platform. Holding my breath, keeping my eyes turned away from the smoke, I reached the doorway once again and crawled through, groping blindly with my hands.

Nothing. Ok-hi hadn’t made it this far.

I was running out of breath and about to turn back when my fingers slid across a slick surface. Hard. Leathery. The heel of a boot. Ok-hi. But I required air. No choice. I scurried back through the door and lowered my head over the edge of the loading platform to allow myself a few quick gulps of oxygen.

Ernie came to. He started to rise.

“Take a deep breath,” I croaked. “Come on.”

I took a deep breath myself, turned, and crawled back into the burning warehouse. This time I found Ok-hi’s boot easily. I pulled myself up her body and realized that she lay atop the Turkey Lady. Grabbing handfuls of material, I tugged them both toward the door. Ernie bumped into me, groped past, and soon he was helping me to drag the two women across the threshold. We slid them along the platform and, with a heave, shoved them off the edge of the loading dock to the ground. We flopped down after them and lay there for a while regaining our strength. Then we started pulling them away from the burning building.

I realized that people were shouting and running every which way. They’d organized a bucket brigade and men were running past us, splashing water ineffectually on the growing flames. A few women started to minister to Ernie and me but we directed them to Ok-hi and the Turkey Lady.

We backed off toward the edge of a hill, about thirty yards away from the warehouse and watched the flames.

They grew higher.

The women cleaned Ok-hi’s face with a washcloth and a pan of water. When she was recovered she thanked them and joined us on the side of the hill. On the far side of the warehouse, in front of the shrine to General Yu Byol-seing, jeeploads of Korean National Police had arrived. Someone spoke to them and pointed to the Turkey Lady. She was sitting up now. A KNP marched toward her.

Ernie and I didn’t have to talk about it. We had too much to do tonight; we didn’t have time to make a lengthy report to the TDC cops. Instead, Ok-hi and Ernie and I slipped away into the darkness.

The midnight to four a.m. curfew had been imposed on the entire country of South Korea when the Korean War ended in June 1953, over twenty years ago. The reason, ostensibly, was to deny the cover of darkness to North Korean communist infiltrators. Since l953 there’d been hundreds, maybe thousands, of North Korean incursions into South Korea and the midnight to four curfew hadn’t seemed to slow them down. What the curfew did do was provide a sense of order for the people who live in South Korea. More than one GI told me that he felt the midnight curfew saved his health and his sanity. Otherwise, like a lot of GIs, he’d have ended up partying all night and been unable to roll out of the rack in time to make his “oh-dark-thirty” physical fitness formation. For the general populace, the midnight curfew meant that everybody knew when to close up shop. They didn’t have to worry about their competitor next door stealing late-night business. The government itself, maybe unwittingly, was promoting a variation on the old Ben Franklin dictum: “Early to bed, early to rise, makes an entire country healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

Still, the curfew was a pain in the butt if you were caught away from home after midnight, because then you were forced to stay put wherever you happened to be. No one was allowed on the street from midnight to four and this was enforced by the white clad “curfew police” and by the South Korean armed forces. If you were sneaking around dark alleys and you ignored an order to halt, you risked being shot. This had happened more than once to otherwise innocent civilians, although the newspapers didn’t make a fuss about it. They weren’t allowed to.

Like a couple of wary moles, Ernie and I worked our way through the narrow back alleys of Tongduchon. Only the three-quarter moon lighted our way.

“What’s the time?” I asked.

Ernie checked his radium dial watch. “Twelve-oh-seven.”

After leaving the Turkey Farm we’d returned to the Silver Dragon Nightclub. Ok-hi took us upstairs to her hooch and with Jeannie’s help brought pans of hot water and towels. As the ladies administered bandages and antiseptic ointment to our cuts and bruises, I thought about the timing of what had happened. How much of a coincidence was it that the kampei had arrived only a few minutes after we’d entered the Turkey Farm? Had they known Ernie and I were on the roof? I doubted it. There was no indication that they’d paid any attention to us at all. If they’d wanted to kill us, they had us cornered and couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity. My guess was that they weren’t after us. But why burn down a money-making operation like that warehouse in the Turkey Farm? And why now?

Those were questions I decided to file away for the moment. Tonight, we were after information that I hoped would lead to Jill Matthewson.

Ernie and I changed into the outfits we’d stashed earlier that evening: sneakers, blue jeans, dark shirts, and knit watch caps. Then we pulled on our army-issue leather gloves, bid good-bye to the ladies, and slipped out the back door of the Silver Dragon.

The doors and windows near the building that housed Kimchee Entertainment were closed and shuttered. Midnight curfew had taken full effect. No one walked down the pedestrian lanes, no vehicles rolled down the narrow road. Neon lights were shut off. No sound from television sets or radios seeped out onto the street because all broadcasting stopped, by order of the government, when the midnight curfew began.

Ernie’d already appropriated a trash cart he’d found at a dead-end dump. He rolled it beneath the second-story window that belonged to the offices of Kimchee Entertainment, tilted the cart on its end, and leaned it against the wall.

I scurried to the narrow asphalt road that ran in front of Kimchee Entertainment and peeked around the corner. Empty. No one moved. I studied the roadway right and left. No delivery trucks, no white jeeps belonging to the curfew police, no vehicles of any kind. And no pedestrians. All windows and doors lining the street were closed and dark.

I took a deep breath. The night air was already beginning to cleanse itself. Less odor of burnt diesel. More of the sharp, clean aroma of rich earth and vegetation, the smell that had originally lured mankind to this lush peninsula.

Ernie hissed. “Come steady the cart.”

I ran back and held the sides of the six-foot-long cart while Ernie climbed atop it, stretched to his full height, and grabbed the sill of the window leading into Kimchee Entertainment. I placed my palms beneath the soles of his sneakers and on the count of three, shoved upwards with all my might. Ernie’s body rose and simultaneously his fist broke glass. One of the small window panes. The noise was jarring but brief. We’d already decided that it would be too dangerous to linger in the alley outside of Kimchee Entertainment. No time for jimmying the window. I was still shoving upwards on the bottoms of his feet as Ernie reached in and finally found the latch that unlocked the window. He pried it open and wriggled inside. Now he leaned out the window, stretching his open right hand out to me.

As we’d planned, I lowered the cart to its normal traveling position. Then I climbed into the bed of the cart, reached up and tried to grab Ernie’s hand, but I couldn’t quite reach.

“Jump,” he said.

There were still no signs of life up and down the walkway. The minimal noise we’d made hadn’t disturbed anyone. I took a deep breath, reached out my hand, and jumped. Ernie grabbed my right wrist and then, with his free hand, my forearm. As I kicked my sneakers against the wall and tried to climb, he leaned back with all his might, pulling, until I had a handhold on the sill. I scrambled up the wall as Ernie tugged. Within seconds, I was inside the offices of Kimchee Entertainment.

Ernie stepped past me and closed the window. I searched for something to cover the broken pane of glass. I found a magazine with a beautiful Korean actress on the cover and managed to stuff that into the opening.

Now, anyone walking below would see a trash cart left in an alley and above that a broken window that had been temporarily repaired. Ernie located a low lamp on a desk. I closed the curtain over the window and Ernie switched on the lamp. A soft green glow suffused the room.

“We’re in,” I said.

Ernie motioned for me to keep my voice down. We already knew that at least one nosy old woman lived in this building. If she’d heard us climbing in the window, she would’ve already called the Korean National Police and since they had police boxes all over the city of Tongduchon, someone would be here in minutes. Ernie and I stood stock-still. Listening. If we heard someone banging on the front door, or the heavy tread of boots on cement, we’d have to un-ass the area. Quick. Exactly how that would work, I didn’t know. Hopping out the window wouldn’t be good because the KNPs would station someone at the sides and rear of the building. One thing the KNPs never lack is manpower.

Ernie and I made a plan of sorts. The best thing to do if the KNPs were alerted would be to go deeper into the building, find the stairs or the ladder that led to the roof and from there hop onto the roof of the neighboring building and try to make good our escape.

We waited. Listening. Barely breathing.

The room looked lived-in. Used. The office of an actively functioning business. Three gray metal file cabinets stood against the wall. Probably army-issue, bought on the black market. The desk was made of unimpressive lumber, thinly varnished, and pocked with cigarette burns. In front of the desk stood a low coffee table and hard-cushioned sofa with two matching wooden chairs. In the center of the coffee table sat an enormous glass ashtray filled with butts and next to that an octagonal cardboard box stuffed with wooden matches.

I checked the butts. Korean-made. Not a single Miguk or imported cigarette in the bunch. Mr. Pak Tong-i was a thrifty man. So, apparently, were his clients.

On the wall hung numerous framed snapshots, some of them expensive publicity photos of Korean stars I vaguely recognized. Not his clients, I didn’t think. These were faces that belonged on grand stages in Seoul or in front of television cameras. You could bet that none of them had ever performed up here in the hinterlands of TDC. And then there were the lower-quality photos. Photos of bands performing on rickety wooden stages, the backs of short GI haircuts in the audience. Clearly taken in some dive either in TDC or in one of the dozens of other GI villages blemishing the land just south of the Demilitarized Zone. Photos of sequin-spangled strippers stretching insincere smiles, striking awkward poses. Was one of them Miss Kim Yong-ai? I had no way of knowing. More photos of groups of GIs in civvies standing in front of bars or outdoors in picnic areas, always with Pak Tong-i standing in the middle, beaming, his arms around his friends. And a photo of Pak indoors, in front of the flags of the U.S. and South Korea, receiving an engraved plaque from a United States Army colonel in full uniform. The name and the face of the colonel meant nothing to me and it figured they wouldn’t because the Pak Tong-i in the picture looked years younger.

So Mr. Pak Tong-i did more than just book entertainment for the nightclubs that stuck like barnacles to the outside of U.S. Army compounds. He also maintained contact with army officers on base. “Community relations,” 8th Army calls it. Exactly what services Pak Tong-i performed, I didn’t know but whatever it was, he’d received awards for it.

Ernie wandered into a side room. When he returned he thrust his thumb over his shoulder. “Nice setup,” he said. “Byonso.” Bathroom. “And a little bedroom with a cot and next to that a stand with a hot plate and a brass teapot.”

So far, no alarm had sounded. We were starting to breath easier. Finally, I noticed the odor in the room. Thick. As if somebody’d left food out.

“Any refrigerator in there?” I asked.

“No. No sign of food.”

Maybe Pak Tong-i ordered out. Hot food delivery-both Chinese and Korean-is cheap in Korea and always readily available. But I didn’t see any sign of empty bowls or used chopsticks.

“You check the desk,” I told Ernie. “I’ll take the files.”

Both of us carried small, army-issue flashlights and Ernie kneeled down under the desk, determined to be meticulous and start his search from the ground up. I opened the top drawer of the first file cabinet.

It was a mess. There didn’t seem to be any particular order to the files, either in the English alphabet-a, b, c-or the Korean hangul alphabet-ka, na, da. Papers were shoved in willy-nilly. Contracts, payment vouchers, receipts-all of it in a huge hodgepodge stuffed into random folders. The Korean names on the folders, apparently the names of entertainers, did not correspond to the paperwork they contained. I worked quickly through the drawers, from file cabinet to file cabinet, trying to grasp the method of organization, quickly coming to the realization that there was none.

What I did notice was that there was no folder with the name Kim Yong-ai, the stripper who’d become Jill Matthewson’s friend. I went back and checked more carefully, even peeking beneath the rows of folders in case the file had slipped down. Finally, I was sure. There was no folder for Kim Yong-ai despite the fact that Pak Tong-i himself had told us that she had been one of his most productive clients. There was no sense delaying my conclusion any longer. Someone-almost certainly not Pak Tong-i-had gone through these files. The mystery person had searched everything, taken everything out, and then thrown the documents back into any old folder and stuffed the entire mess back into the cabinets, totally unconcerned about keeping the records straight for future use or, for that matter, hiding the fact that he’d been here.

Also, whoever had been here before us had stolen Kim Yong-ai’s file. Had they stolen anything else? Only Pak Tong-i would know.

Ernie stood up from behind Pak Tong-i’s desk. He had reached the same conclusion. “Somebody’s been here before us,” he said.

Shining both our flashlights in the open drawers, we found the usual accumulation of pencils, paperclips, pens. In the top drawer an accounting ledger. I pulled it out and set it on the blotter. Then we checked the side drawers. An address book. Since all the entries were written in hangul, Ernie handed it to me. I thumbed through it. Pages torn out. All Korean names, no American names that I could see. But the kiyok section-the Korean k sound-was missing. Therefore, no entry for Miss Kim Yong-ai. The accounting ledger held the names of what were probably nightclubs and other entertainment companies. Figures listed in Korean won, none in dollars. Again, no American names. The ledger was neat. Like something prepared for display-or for the tax collector.

The rest of the drawers held nothing of interest. A pair of rubber pullover boots, an expensive Korean straight razor with shaving gear, and a half-used bottle of American-made mouthwash.

Who had preceded us? The Korean National Police? The 2nd Division MPI? Some gangster trying to collect money? Or could it have been Corporal Jill Matthewson herself? She’d been a cop after all. Maybe she’d come to retrieve Kim Yong-ai’s files for some reason.

I didn’t have enough information. The logical thing to do-the only thing to do-was to keep gathering facts.

Ernie held the beam of his flashlight pointing upward beneath his chin. His eyes were dark hollows. “One place we haven’t searched,” he said.

“Where?”

The office was tiny. Only two rooms and a byonso. I thought we’d already covered everything. But Ernie shined his flashlight on the wall directly behind Pak Tong-i’s desk. In the darkness, I hadn’t noticed. A door made of some sort of gray synthetic material, not wood, was set flush into the wall.

“What is it?”

“A soundproof room,” Ernie answered. “For listening to music without bothering the neighbors.”

I stared at the door, at the almost invisible hinges.

Ernie placed his flashlight in my free hand and I aimed both beams at the door. Then he grabbed the metal handle.

“On the count of three,” Ernie said. “One, two, three.”

He pulled. It wouldn’t budge. Then Ernie placed both hands on the handle, propped the bottom of his right shoe against the wall, leaned back, and tugged with all his might. The door groaned, held, and then popped open.

It was dark inside, a space not much bigger than a closet. Something moved and at the same time the odor of rotted meat hit my nostrils. As I recoiled, something heavy and flesh-filled plopped sickeningly, with a massive thud, onto the floor. I jumped back, wanting to scream, and gazed down at the thing that lay at my feet.

When I was growing up in East L.A., I knew all kinds of kids- Anglo, black, Mexican-but one thing I realized early on was that Mexican kids are brave. Ridiculously brave. Accepting any sort of ill-considered dare-either to fight someone bigger than them or climb the highest tree or swing by a rope from a power line-was a point of honor. Backing down in front of the other kids was unthinkable. They’d either complete their mission or die trying.

Only two things frightened the tough little vatos of East L.A.: la migra y las brujas. Immigration and witches. Immigration because, for the most part, their parents were in the United States illegally and they’d been taught to shy away from anyone wearing a uniform. And las brujas, the witches, because they represented the power of the ancient world. The world from which their families had fled.

The word witches is misleading. Actually, las brujas are female shamans, like the Korean mudang. Their power arose from the ancient religions of the Aztecs and the other tribes that populated the Valley of Mexico and its environs since before the beginning of time. Las brujas were experts at healing and herbal remedies and mystic spells, and they were rumored to be able to transport themselves into realms denied to normal mortals. And denied for good reason. For one glimpse of these parallel universes-and at the faces of the entities that live there-would drive most men mad.

Did the Mexican brujas and the Korean mudang evolve from the same traditions, hoary with age? From somewhere in Siberia or along the Bering Strait? No one knew. Probably no one would ever know. But I was aware that both groups of women held positions that were similar. Positions within society of awe and respect, positions of power.

So when Madame Chon told me that her daughter’s spirit was hungry and wandering and needed a ritual performed to help it find its way home, that made sense to me. I’d heard such things before. The Catholic Church performs exorcisms to cast out demons but the rites performed by las brujas are designed to communicate with the dead, to find out what they want, to share jokes with them, even to make deals with them. I knew how profoundly people believed in such things. So I had no doubt that Madame Chon would never rest until-as the mudang ordered-Jill Matthewson was brought to her to participate in a ceremony to communicate with the dead.

Even if I didn’t believe that Chon Un-suk’s spirit was hungry- and I didn’t-I knew that her mother’s spirit was. Hungry for rest. Hungry for reassurance that her daughter was well taken care of. And I understood that hunger. Since the day my mother died and left me alone, I’d been hungry myself. Hungry for someone who would love me without reservation. Hungry for someone I could love in the same way.

I saw her from the back bedroom, down the hallway, sitting on the couch in the front room, dressed in a beautiful black silk dress, her hair covered with a black lace mantilla. At that moment, as always, I was hungry for her embrace. Hungry for her kiss. Of course, she’d already been dead for five years. I was growing up, tall for my age, about to start middle school. My foster parents told me it was a dream, that I’d been taking a nap and I’d been disoriented. Others said it must’ve been someone else, not my mother. Maybe one of the older girls who was staying with the same foster parents. But none of those orphan girls owned black silk dresses or anything as old-fashioned as a lace mantilla.

A priest was summoned to the house. He started to perform an exorcism but I screamed so loudly that he had to stop. The neighborhood women tried to calm me, to explain to me that this ceremony was for the best and that I should listen to the wise words of the priest. I would have none of it. Every time the priest sprinkled holy water around the room, I started to scream again. Finally, he lost patience, picked up his vestments and his chalice, and left. I didn’t want him to chase my mother away. She’d come back, for the first time since she’d died, and I didn’t want anyone to force her to leave.

Later, the bruja arrived. She burnt some bones of a crow and added smelly herbs to the small fire but this time I didn’t complain. She promised not to chase my mother away but just to talk to her. The trance lasted hours and I fell asleep. But when the old crone shook me awake, she grabbed my hand in her cold fist and told me that my mother would always be with me.

Ever since then, she has.

As the corpse rolled toward his feet, Ernie leaped backwards.

“What the-” After the body stopped rolling and Ernie managed to gather his courage, I handed his flashlight back to him and he kneeled and studied the pile of clothing beneath us. I held the beam of my flashlight on a face mostly covered by a broad-brimmed hat. Then I leaned forward and touched my fingers to a fleshy neck. No pulse. I pushed deeper. Was I sensing warmth? No. None. How long had this man been dead? Hours, I thought. Involuntarily, my hand recoiled. Ernie slipped the hat back to reveal a face.

Pak Tong-i. Fat tongue hanging lewdly to the side of purple lips. Face flushed red. Not red like a beet but a red so bright that it looked like a clot of blood held together by a transparent membrane of flesh.

We stood silent, trying to gather our wits. Trying to be professional. But in the middle of the night in this cold, cement office building with only the soft green glow of a lamp to comfort us, it wasn’t easy. Death never is.

Taking a deep breath, I checked for wounds. I took my time about it, loosening his clothes, making sure I didn’t miss anything. No physical trauma, not even bruises, except for chafing around his wrists. He’d been bound. And there were burns around his neck. Rope burns. The lines ran up his pudgy neck in a steady progression.

“They interrogated him,” Ernie said finally. “Tightening the rope each time he refused to answer.”

I checked the bone beneath the flesh of the neck. It didn’t seem to be damaged and his air passage seemed clear. The rope burns on his neck were superficial. Strangulation was not the cause of death. The vermilion hue of his face told its own story.

“Heart attack,” I said. “While he was being questioned and systematically strangled, he popped a valve.”

“Heart attack, strangulation, either way it’s murder,” Ernie said.

We searched Pak’s pockets and his wallet. Keys, coins, a few wrinkled won notes. Ernie was the one who noticed it first. A bracelet tied above his elbow, hidden by the long sleeves of his shirt and jacket.

“Look at this,” Ernie said, holding it up in the dim light.

I took the item from his hand and shined my flashlight on shimmering silver. An amulet. Silver chain, silver heart-shaped setting. Inside, a tiny color photograph of a woman. Overly made-up, bright smile, cheekbones carved from granite, dark curly hair. Korean. On the back of the amulet an engraving in hanmun, Chinese characters: JINAIJOK YONG-AI. My darling Yong-ai.

“At least we know what she looks like,” I said.

“Who?”

“Kim Yong-ai. This is her.”

“So Pak Tong-i,” Ernie said, “was getting it on with Kim Yong-ai who was the stripper who was the friend of Corporal Jill Matthewson.”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“And Pak didn’t tell us anything because he was covering up for his girlfriend and Corporal Jill.”

“Sounds likely.”

“But covering up what?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe they never owed two thousand dollars. Maybe they still owe two thousand dollars. Maybe Pak paid it for them. Maybe not.”

“What you’re saying,” Ernie said, “is we still don’t know squat.”

“That’s about it. Except we do know that they ran away and someone is still after them. Someone who is willing to kill.”

“And that someone has Kim Yong-ai’s file and a big head start on us.”

Downstairs a door slammed.

We froze. Then Ernie tiptoed to the office door, opened it slightly, and listened. Footsteps tromped up cement stairs. A pack of them. KNPs? Most likely.

If we stayed we could tell them the truth: We are two 8th Army Criminal Investigation Division agents investigating a case. Except we’d have to explain to the KNPs why we’d broken into Pak Tong-i’s office illegally. And we’d have to explain that we had nothing to do with his death. Korean forensic techniques are not the best. Neither are the 2nd Division MPI’s. Still, once the time of death was established, they’d see that Pak must’ve died before we arrived on the scene. That is presupposing that we’d be able to prove that we arrived on the scene only a few minutes ago. The assumption of both the Korean National Police and the 2nd Infantry Division would be that we were guilty until proven innocent. Ernie and I would be stuck in a jail cell for days, hoping to prove our innocence, while whoever actually committed the crime stalked Kim Yong-ai and Jill Matthewson at leisure.

All this ran through my mind in less than a second.

Ernie, apparently, had already made his decision. “Come on!”

I slipped the silver amulet in my pocket, stepped away from the body of Pak Tong-i, and followed Ernie into the hallway. We climbed the staircase swiftly and silently.

Footsteps pounded after us, then someone shouted.

The muscles on my back knotted, anticipating the searing impact of a bullet. We kept climbing. Then we ran, flat out. Panicked.

Kimchee jars were arrayed along a short cement wall that lined the edge of the building’s roof. Ernie didn’t slow down. He charged the precipice and when he hit the short cement wall he leaped into the air. I expected him to plummet to the dark depths below but he cleared the ten-foot span and landed safely on the roof of the opposite building.

I hesitated and looked down.

KNPs. Swarms of them. Shouting and pointing but no one looking up.

“Move it!” Ernie hollered.

Footsteps clattered behind me and two KNPs emerged from the door at the top of the stairwell. I turned back to Ernie. Across the divide, he was motioning for me to jump. I looked back at the cops. One of them reached for his pistol. That made up my mind for me. From a standing start, I jumped. It seemed as if I hovered over the dark void forever. Finally, my front foot hit cement. Ernie grabbed my waist and pulled me over the ledge onto the roof.

The two KNPs charged straight at us. When they reached the low cement wall, they hesitated. I can’t blame them. Ernie had made the leap look easy but he was over a half a foot taller than either one of these policemen, his legs were longer and, more importantly, Ernie was crazy. I could almost hear the question in their minds: “Are we paid enough to do this?”

The answer, apparently, was no.

Instead the two men pulled their pistols, aimed them at us, and shouted, “Chongji!” Halt!

Ernie and I crouched and low-crawled until we found cover behind metal vents.

“What now?” I asked.

“Easy,” Ernie replied. “We hop to the next building.”

“They’ll shoot us.”

“From that distance? Come on.”

Without further discussion, Ernie was on his feet and charging toward the far edge of the roof. When he leaped, a couple of rounds were fired but they missed him by a mile. I knelt like a runner at the starting blocks, taking deep breaths, trying to encourage myself, when from deep in the bowels of the building, boots pounded on cement. A herd of them. That was all the encouragement I needed.

I dashed toward the wall and this time I cleared the gap easily, landed on my feet, rolled, and kept moving. Ernie had already reached the next roof but from the light of the half moon I could tell there was no building after that. Not one, anyway, that was three stories tall.

When I arrived on the roof of the fourth building, Ernie was kicking at a door. He looked at me, his face lathered in sweat, exasperated.

“Can you kick this thing in?”

“Stand back,” I said.

I stood with my side facing the wooden door, flexing my knees and half squatting, feeling the spring in my thighs. Since arriving in Korea I’d been training in the Korean art of Taekwondo, which literally means “the path of kicking and punching.” At six foot four, with long legs, I believed that my side kick was one of the best in the business. I inhaled and let the air out slowly. From below, the shouts of Korean National Policemen wafted on the cold night air.

“Would you kick the goddamn thing in, for chrissakes!” Ernie shouted.

I ignored him, fully in a trance now. The air drifted effortlessly from my lungs and, without thinking, I hopped forward and my foot slammed into lumber.

The door burst inward.

Ernie ran past me and his footsteps pounded on squeaking wood. I followed him down a dark staircase. It was narrow and wound back on itself. Finally, when I figured we had descended to the second floor, Ernie turned off the stairwell and down a narrow hallway. Moonlight shined through a far window. Shoes and slippers and an occasional metal pee pot sat in front of closed wooden doors. The ceiling was so low that I had to duck. Ernie reached the end of the hallway and zipped to his right. When I rounded the corner he had opened a window and was climbing out.

Ernie lowered himself and then he let go. I heard a thud, looked out, and saw Ernie dusting himself off in a brick alleyway just wide enough for one person. I climbed through the window. Ernie braced me when I hit so I didn’t fall backward. Then he pulled me toward the alley that ran behind the building. He squatted, peeked around the corner, and abruptly jerked his head back.

“KNPs,” he whispered. “Off to the left about twenty meters. But there’s an alley to our right less than ten meters away. We’ll be exposed for a few yards but once we jog behind the brick wall, we’ll be out of their line of sight. If we move quickly, they might not spot us. Even if they do, we’ll have a head start and a clear run into downtown TDC.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

“That alley could be a dead end.”

“You’re too negative, Sueno.”

Maybe I was. But Ernie didn’t give me time to think about it. He peeked around the corner again, waved for me to follow, and trotted out onto the dark path. The KNPs didn’t seem to notice. They were probably watching the roofs or checking the narrow walkways in front of them. But as soon as I emerged, someone shouted and then a whistle blew and it was as if the entire police force of TDC had zeroed in on my back. We ran. Ernie jogged to his left at the next alley and I followed. It was narrow, maybe six feet wide, lined by brick and wood and cement block walls on either side, protecting small courtyards and homes. The only illumination was from moonlight. The homes on either side were dark and there were no street lamps. I couldn’t tell where I was stepping.

Korean sewers run underground, covered by stone blocks with fist-sized vents, lowered into place, not cemented. These blocks are sometimes lifted out for one reason or another or, more often, crushed by something heavy rolling over them. So you never know when a gaping hole may appear in an otherwise level flagstone walkway. These thoughts surged through my mind as I peered into the darkness, moving cautiously, hoping not to crash into a hole and break my leg.

No similar doubts plagued Ernie. He ran flat-out down the middle of the alley as if he were sprinting on a groomed track at the U.S. Olympic trials.

Ernie twisted and turned like a jackrabbit evading hounds. The warren of homes we passed stretched from the western edge of Tongduchon toward the east. Where we were exactly, I didn’t know. Neither, apparently, did the KNPs. At intersections I slowed, glanced backward, and saw nothing coming at us through the darkness.

Finally, after a sharp turn, I almost plowed into Ernie.

Breathing heavily, he gazed down a slope at the shuttered environs of the TDC bar district. The lanes were a little wider here, with shops and bars and coffeehouses, their neon signs switched off.

“Anybody following?” he asked.

“I think we lost ’em.”

I bent forward and placed my hands on my knees, trying to regain my breath.

Ernie pointed. “There’s an alley off to the left, behind that line of bars. It leads to the railroad tracks and beyond that the main gate.”

“We can’t go there,” I said.

GIs passing through the main gate of Camp Casey this late would be arrested by the MPs for curfew violation and turned over to their unit commanders in the morning. With our 8th Army CID badges, Ernie and I were amongst the elite few in Korea who were exempt from the midnight to four curfew. The MPs wouldn’t arrest us but they would note the time of our arrival in the duty log. Under the circumstances not an entry we wanted made.

And the KNPs would almost certainly be waiting for us in front of the main gate. Even though they hadn’t been able to identify us specifically, the Korean cops knew-by our height and by our clothing-that we were foreigners. And only one type of foreigner lived in Tongduchon: American GIs.

“So where to?” Ernie asked.

In the Seoul bar district of Itaewon, our home turf, there were plenty of business girls and nightclub owners who would take us in. At least until curfew was over. But up here we were strangers. Mostly. Ok-hi and Jeannie knew us. But the Silver Dragon was on the far side of the bar district.

I was about to respond to Ernie’s question when he shoved me against the wall.

“White mice,” he whispered.

A few yards in front of us an American-made jeep, painted white, cruised by slowly. We stepped back farther into the shadows of a recessed gateway. Crossed beams from the jeep’s headlights caressed the brick in front of us. We held our breath. The lights never faltered. They continued illuminating the brick wall, skipped over us in our dark enclave, and moved on.

When the sound of the jeep’s engine faded, we started to breathe again. It figured that the curfew police would patrol the bar district more diligently than they patrolled other parts of town. Trying to make it all the way to the Silver Dragon was too risky. So where could we go? There was only one other person in town that we knew.

“The Black Cat Club,” I said. “It’s closer. And some of the girls have hooches out back.”

“Maybe they’re busy.”

“Maybe. But maybe Brandy lives there.”

Brandy, the buxom bartender at the Black Cat Club.

“You asked for her address earlier,” Ernie said. “They wouldn’t give it to you.”

“Maybe it’s because she lives right there. On the premises.”

Ernie snorted, unconvinced. “Well, the Black Cat Club is safer than standing out here all night,” he said. “Which way?”

I pointed right. Together we slouched through the shadows.

The back of the Black Cat Club was as dark and as silent as a Yi Dynasty tomb. The double-doored wooden gate was barred from within and the stone wall protecting the back courtyard was topped with shards of broken glass embedded in cement.

“Looks like they don’t welcome visitors,” Ernie said.

“At least Koreans don’t keep a big dog behind the wall,” I said. “Our choice is to pound on the gate and make a racket until someone wakes up and comes out to talk to us, or else climb the fence.”

“Raising a racket doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

The curfew police could pass by at any time. And if we made too much noise, a neighbor with a phone-although phones were rare in Tongduchon-might call and turn us in. Better to climb the fence. I cupped my hands in front of me. Ernie didn’t hesitate. He stepped into my cupped hands and I hoisted him over the wall. Once inside, Ernie opened the small door in the large metal gate. I ducked through and he shut the door behind me.

It was your typical Korean courtyard lined with maybe eight hooches, sliding oil-papered doors facing inward, earthenware kimchee jars against the walls, and a rusty water spigot in the center of the courtyard with a plastic pail hanging from the valve. More hooches on the other side and then, I supposed, the back door of the Black Cat Club. We were about to slip past the hooches when the sound of human voices-harsh whispers-floated across tile roofs. Ernie waved his hand to signal danger and we crouched.

“Somebody’s awake.”

That didn’t seem too surprising to me what with the noise we’d made climbing the wall and opening the front gate.

“I have to convince them not to call the police,” I said.

Ernie nodded. I edged through a passageway between the line of hooches and the stone wall, then emerged into another open area that led to a door with a brightly painted wooden sign bearing a picture of a black cat. I was about to reach for the handle when the back door of the Black Cat Club burst open. Ten men emerged, all of them in various stages of undress, some with silver picks wedged in their hair, others with silk stockings knotted tightly over their skulls. Moonlight glistened off black flesh. Lips twisted into scowls. Cudgels were raised: a baseball bat, a pump handle, an army-issue entrenching tool.

“Hold it!” Ernie shouted.

He stood behind me, his. 45 out, pointing at the group of men.

“What you doing here?” one of the men asked. “T-shirts ain’t allowed.”

A few of the men guffawed. None of them seemed concerned about Ernie’s. 45.

“Looking for Brandy,” I said. “We need to talk to her.”

“People need a lot of shit,” the same man said. “Don’t mean they get it.”

He was one of the tallest of the men and, clearly, their leader. I was trying to think of a way to talk my way out of this confrontation but there were a lot of hard feelings between black GIs and white GIs. In the early seventies, the good fellowship of the civil rights movement had long been forgotten. Black GIs no longer waited patiently for the white power structure of the U.S. Army to reform. They were fighting back. Demanding equal promotions, an equal shot at choice assignments. Actually, I agreed with them. But there was a whole other element of the black experience-aside from the legitimate aspirations-that I, as a cop, had to deal with. The draft had been stopped a couple of years ago. To fill the ranks the army had lowered enlistment standards and young men with juvenile records a mile long-and even adult felony convictions-were being allowed to join up. The thinking was that the strict discipline of military life would straighten them out. Any MP could have told the geniuses at the Pentagon that they were wrong. Instead of going straight, career criminals continued their nefarious ways inside the ranks of the U.S. Army. That didn’t mean that all the GIs standing in front of me were criminals. But you could bet that some of them were. And those few were the ones who would urge on their fellow soldiers to do things they wouldn’t normally do. Like, for instance, beat the crap out of two 8th Army CID agents.

More black GIs appeared in the courtyard behind us. Ernie swiveled, arms extended, his. 45 rotating as if on a gun turret.

“Look,” I said, “we just want to talk to Brandy for a few minutes. That’s all. Then we’ll be on our way.”

A few of the doors of the hooches slid open. Women appeared, Korean women. Some with Afro hairdos, most wearing silk see-through robes. All of them skinny. None voluptuous enough to be Brandy.

A propeller twirled through the air. I tried to dodge it but it clipped my shoulder and clattered to the flagstone steps below. A mongdungi, a wooden stick used to beat dirt out of wet clothing.

The women jeered.

The guy in front of me raised his baseball bat. Ernie swiveled, fired the. 45, and the bat splintered into a thousand shards. Women screamed. Ernie shouted, “Get down!”

The men standing in the doorway of the Black Cat Club cursed and took cover in the courtyard.

“Come on!” Ernie said. “Enough of this bullshit!”

We ran past the splintered baseball bat, through the back door of the Black Cat Club, past the byonso, until we reached the main ballroom. A fluorescent bulb beneath the bar provided the only light. Keeping the. 45 rotating, Ernie made his way to the door. He grabbed the iron handle and pulled. Locked. Barred from the inside.

“Hurry,” he said.

I stepped past him, fiddled with the latches, and finally lifted a long metal rod. The door creaked open. A cold breeze drifted through the open crack.

Black men stood at the back exit, glaring.

“Tell Brandy,” Ernie said, “that we’re sorry we missed her.”

With that, he fired the. 45 into the rafters above the men’s heads. They scattered. We pushed through the front door of the Black Cat Club and scampered out into the deserted streets of the Tongduchon bar district.

The gunfire had alerted the Korean National Police. Whistles shrilled and jeep engines roared, all zeroing in on the Black Cat Club. Ernie and I raced through back alleys.

“Why’d you have to shoot?” I asked.

Ernie answered as if I were nuts. “We have to maintain respect.”

“I was talking to them,” I said. “We could’ve worked something out.”

“Bull. We’d broken into their hooch. The law was on the brothers’ side for once. They were going to do what they do best. Kick the crap out of a couple of T-shirts.”

Ernie had a dim view of human nature. Maybe he was right. There was a reason that 8th Army CID issued us. 45s and it wasn’t because people were reasonable. We rounded a corner and off to our left, from another alley, came the sound of a herd of footsteps stampeding toward the Black Cat Club. We hid in the shadows and watched.

On the main drag of the bar district, Korean cops, holding billy clubs at port arms, trotted in military formation.

“Dozens of ’em,” Ernie whispered.

Going to the Black Cat Club hadn’t done us any good. Instead of finding either Brandy or refuge, we’d called down the fury of Korean officialdom. We crouched in the dark alley, sweating, breathing hard, trying to calm down.

When the footsteps passed, Ernie said, “Where to now?”

“There are some brothels next to the bars. Maybe we can sneak into one and find some business girl who’ll take us in.”

Ernie didn’t have a better idea.

We reached the main street of the Tongduchon bar district, about a long block east of where we’d seen the platoon of cops. A joint called the Seven Star Club loomed across the street from us. If the back doors were open, we might be able to gain access to the building and climb the stairs to the hooches above. No lights shined in any of the windows but it was the only plan I had. If we could hide until morning, we’d be able to reenter the compound amid the mass of GIs returning to Camp Casey. No one would be able to connect us with either the break-in at Kimchee Entertainment or the disturbance at the Black Cat Club.

I stared at the empty street, calculating our odds of avoiding the KNPs until dawn.

“Maybe we should stay here,” I said.

“The patrols will be by eventually,” Ernie replied, “as soon as they figure out what happened at the Black Cat Club. Besides, there’re warm hooches in the Seven Star Club and pee pots and business girls. All the comforts of civilization.”

Ernie was right. We had to chance it. I looked both ways. All quiet. I waved for Ernie and together we slouched across the road.

Looking back, I should’ve realized that the Korean National Police would figure out where we’d go next. The bar district. Where else would American GIs be welcomed in the middle of the night? Where else would a couple of miscreants like Ernie and me seek refuge? So when we stood behind the Seven Star Club, pleased with ourselves for having sneaked across the main drag, trying to decide whether to open the back door or climb through a window, suddenly, as if materializing out of the dark mist, KNPs converged on us from both ends of the alley.

Ernie elbowed me. “Don’t look now.”

I looked anyway. They wore riot-gear helmets and held three-foot-long wooden batons. About a dozen of them plugged each end of the alley.

Ernie reached for his. 45.

I grabbed him, wrapped him in a bear hug, and held on. He realized the wisdom of what I was doing and didn’t struggle. Without further incident, the Korean National Police took us into custody.