Mr. Kill (10 page)

“Weyworth not here,” she said.

“Weyworth?” Ernie said. “Don’t you call him Nick?”

The woman didn’t answer.

“Where’d he go?” I asked.

“He go someplace,” she said, waving her free arm. “I don’t know. All the time
big
deal, he gotta do. Business, he say. Where, I don’t know.”

“You
moolah?
” Ernie asked.
Moolah
is the Korean word for “I don’t know” or “I don’t understand.”

“Yeah,” she replied. “I moolah.”

“What time does he come back?” I asked.

“Now?” she replied. “Maybe don’t come back until morning time. After curfew.”

“He catchy girlfriend?” Ernie asked.

The woman knotted her slender fist. “He catchy girlfriend, then most tick he catchy knuckle sandwich.”

“So he’s doing business?” I said, more gently.

She nodded warily, worried now that she might have revealed too much.

Ernie knelt to the warm ondol floor; I did the same. He smiled at the woman and then he smiled at Jeannie. Both of them were still nervous. I guessed from the age of the girl—about four—that Weyworth wasn’t the father. G.I.s pull a one-year tour in Korea. There hadn’t been time for him to sire this beautiful four-year-old child.

“Who’s Jeannie’s daddy?” Ernie asked.

The woman didn’t get angry. “Long time ago,” she said, “’nother G.I.”

“Picture isso?”

I knew what Ernie was doing. He was trying, in his own way, to relax Jeannie and her mother. And showing pictures was something few Korean business girls could resist. Especially pictures of old boyfriends, and especially if those boyfriends had left them with a child.

She rummaged beneath silk-covered comforters in the bottom of the armoire and pulled out a thick photo album. She set it on the floor and flipped quickly through the pictures. Jeannie slid closer to her mother. Finally, Jeannie’s mother found a photo of Jeannie on
Beikil
, her Hundredth Day celebration. In ancient times, so many infants succumbed to childhood diseases that it was thought wise to wait a hundred days, until their chances of survival looked somewhat promising, before welcoming them into the human family.

Jeannie’s mother turned the photograph toward Ernie and then me. The infant Jeannie was dressed in a brightly colored silk suit, surrounded by ripe fruit and fat dumplings. Ernie and I oohed and aahed and told Jeannie what a beautiful baby she’d been. Jeannie buried her face beneath her mother’s armpit, embarrassed by the attention. Then Jeannie’s mother flipped the pages to a photo of herself, a few years younger, wearing a colorful
chima-chogori
, the traditional Korean dress with a high-waisted skirt and a short vest. She looked beautiful, and I told her so.

“
Ipuh-da
,” I said. She beamed with happiness.

Some Koreans are trained to hide their emotions, but not all. By now, Jeannie’s mother was delighted, and all thought of Weyworth had been banished from her mind. Ernie and I studied the photograph, paying particular attention to the G.I. standing next to her. He wore a dress green uniform with three yellow stripes sewn on a well-pressed sleeve. A buck sergeant. His nameplate said Bermann.

“Did you get married?” Ernie asked.

She shook her head. “Supposed to. But he change mind. Go back States.”

An old story.

Jeannie’s mother filled the silence by saying, “The only thing he teach me is how to smoke, how to drink … ” Then she hugged Jeannie, adding, “And how to make baby.
Tambei isso?
” she asked. Do you have a cigarette?

Ernie and I both shook our heads.

“Next time I’ll buy some,” Ernie said.

She smiled at that.

“Where is Weyworth now?” I asked.

“Somewhere,” she said, reaching for a pack of cigarettes in the armoire. “Somewhere, I don’t know. Maybe down on Texas Street.”

Texas Street was the notorious bar-and-red-light district along the Pusan waterfront. This late, there’d be no time for him to return from Texas Street before the midnight curfew hit.

“Why is he staying on Texas Street all night?” Ernie asked.

“Business,” she said.

“Business with who?”

“I don’t know. Not G.I. How you say?
Shi-la
.”

“Greek,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said, nodding vigorously. “Greek.”

“In a Greek bar?” Ernie said.

What with so many merchant marines flooding Texas Street—many of them from Greece—there were special bars set aside for them so they wouldn’t have to mingle with Americans or other English-speaking sailors.

Jeannie’s mother lit her cigarette, puffed, and snuffed out the wooden match. “Yeah,” she said. “Someplace he call some funny name. Mean ‘makey-love’ in Greek language.”

“Eros,” I said.

Jeannie’s mother’s eyes lit up. “Yeah. That’s it.”

An MP patrol gave us a ride to Texas Street. Ernie and I sat crouched in the back of the jeep, our knees almost touching our faces. The two MPs sat in the spacious seats in front. One of the MPs remembered me.

“Hard-to-pronounce name. Sueño, right?”

“You got it.”

He’d made the
ñ
sound correctly, like the
ny
in canyon. “I should’ve thought of that before.” He popped his forehead with his open palm.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

The MP’s name was Norris, and he’d been on duty when Ernie and I made an arrest on that previous trip down here about a year ago.

“A guy asked about you,” Norris said. “Or at least I think he was asking about you. He mispronounced your name.”

Rain spattered against the windshield as we rolled over the broad, deserted Pusan roads. I leaned forward as far as the cramped space would allow. “So, who was this guy who came looking for me?” I asked.

Norris turned his face toward me slightly so I could hear better over the sound of the swishing tires. Mistladen wind slapped against the canvas sides of the jeep.

“A sailor,” he told me. “Some sort of foreigner. I don’t remember his name; I have it written down in one of my old notebooks, because he went so far as to show me his passport.”

“How’d you know he was looking for me?”

“He described you. Tall. Dark hair. And an investigator. He said he had a message for you.”

“Did he tell you what the message was?”

“No. He approached us one night while we were out on patrol, just sitting in the jeep smoking and shooting the shit. Not many ships in port that night. Still, he’d lurked around in an alley, watching us, and when he thought no one was paying attention, he came up and started talking.”

“He could speak English?”

“Not very well. He wasn’t Greek, but from somewhere in Eastern Europe. I forget what country.”

Eastern Europe implied the Communist bloc. This story was getting weirder.

“Then what did he say?”

“He said he had a book he wanted to sell and you might be interested. And no, he didn’t tell me what kind of book. Only that it was old, an antique, like that.”

Ernie and I glanced at each other, neither of us having a clue as to what Sergeant Norris was talking about.

“Also, there’s one more thing,” Norris said. “He said you’d understand the book he was trying to sell.”

“I’d ‘understand’?”

“Yeah. You’d be able to read it.”

“Was it in Korean?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t tell us exactly.”

We reached Texas Street and rolled slowly through the narrow alleys lined on either side with dark neon signs. The bars and the eateries and the hot-bed yoguans were shuttered and locked. Wind swept through the lanes like lost souls howling for one more breath of life.

We climbed out of the jeep and thanked Norris and his comrade. Norris promised to dig out his old notebook tomorrow and provide me with more information.

As they drove off, Ernie snapped a two-fingered salute.

The MP patrol had dropped us off two blocks from the Greek bar known as Eros. We didn’t want them to take us right up to the front door, because we wanted to reconnoiter the joint first. The streets of the half-mile square area known—even to Koreans—as Texas Street were empty now, almost a half hour after midnight. Plastic covers rattled in metal holders as unlit neon was being battered by a cold wind blowing in off the bay. The wind carried a salty mist. I stuck out my tongue and rubbed the salt along my lips.

“She’s a cute kid,” Ernie said.

“You mean Jeannie’s mother?” I asked.

“Who else?”

“But she’s betrothed.”

Ernie guffawed.

“She
is
cute,” I agreed. “I’ll grant you that.”

“Nice figure, too.”

“Calm down, Romeo,” I said. “We have work to do.”

Specialist Four Nicholas Q. Weyworth had been on leave when the first rape occurred on the Blue Train. We had no reason to believe that he’d been on the train, but he
could’ve
been—if he’d purchased a ticket at the Korean ticket counter and if he’d sat apart from the other Americans. When the second rape occurred, we knew for sure that he’d actually been on that train, returning from Seoul.

Still, Weyworth didn’t match the description of the perpetrator that had been given by both the first victim and the front-desk clerk at the Shindae Hotel. He was shorter, smaller, not as dark. But eyewitness accounts, particularly from people under stress, are notoriously unreliable. I still didn’t know what Weyworth’s blood type was, but if it was A-positive, we’d have our suspect.

Gently, I tried the front door of the Eros Nightclub and Bar. Locked. I’d expected it to be. But through the thickly glazed transom above the door, a dim light glowed—and when I pressed my ear against the wood, there were murmuring voices. Maybe it was the rumbling of the sea behind me, but I didn’t think so.

“Let’s try the back,” I told Ernie.

He nodded and led the way.

Greek sailors are notorious in Asian ports. First, there are plenty of them. The world’s merchant marine is largely dominated by their country, and they greatly outnumber sailors from more-affluent countries such as Japan or the Western European nations or the United States. Lately, however, the Filipinos had been giving them a run for their money. Second, Greeks like to party. In their own way. In their own nightclubs, where the bartenders and the waitresses and, most importantly, the business girls all speak Greek; and where Greek music is played and where they can dance their famous Greek dances and break as many plates as they see fit. Americans aren’t welcome in these places and seldom go in; for one thing, they can’t even read the signs. The word “Eros” in the sign above the front door was written in what I assumed to be Greek letters. At least, they were shaped weird.

I’d been in Greek bars once or twice, alone, and gotten along well enough with the sailors. On one occasion, a Korean business girl had approached me, speaking Greek. I spoke to her in Korean, and soon I was speaking, through her, to some of the sailors at the bar. They spoke Greek, she translated it into Korean to me, and we went back and forth like that; not a word of English spoken during the entire conversation. Nice fellows, actually, as long as they didn’t feel I was showing them a lack of respect.

Another thing Greek sailors are notorious for is fighting. Down here on Texas Street, the Korean National Police never travel alone. They travel in squads, with helmets and padded vests and lead-reinforced nightsticks. When an altercation breaks out among the Greeks, knives are usually pulled—another Mediterranean tradition—and the Korean cops don’t like to take chances. They come at the problem with overwhelming force.

Usually, since international trade is so important to the Korean government, the offending sailors are treated leniently. They are locked up overnight, they’re made to reimburse Korean citizens for any damages or medical bills, and they’re released. That is, unless someone’s murdered. Then the shipping company might have to cough up some serious reparations money.

All these things were running through my mind as I followed Ernie into the dark alley behind the Eros Nightclub and Bar. Once again, I regretted not having checked out a weapon from the armory at the Hialeah Compound MP station.

Ernie shoved me against a wall. I was startled at first but quickly realized he’d done it to hide us both in the shadows. I held my breath.

The back door of the club burst open. Two men stumbled out. Drunk. They shouted words to one another that were incomprehensible. Just as one was about to shut the door, I shoved past Ernie, saying “Wait here,” and trotted the few yards to the back door. I stepped past the surprised men and grabbed the edge of the door before it closed.

“
Dikanis
,” I said, waving my hand at them and keeping my head bowed. It was the only word I knew in Greek. A greeting.

“
Kala
,” they replied, somewhat surprised, but by then I was already past them and inside the bar. I shut the door behind me, making sure it was locked.

I stood in a narrow hallway. The first thing I saw, and smelled, was the men’s room. I used it. Then I went back to the door, opened it, peeked out, and saw that the two drunken sailors were gone. Ernie scurried up. I shut the door behind him.

“I didn’t know you spoke Greek,” he said.

“There’s a lot of things about me you don’t know.”

He snorted.

We turned and walked through a dark corridor. Steps led downward to a ballroom at a split-level a few feet below us. There were two pool tables, not in use, and a long bar opposite, about a dozen cocktail tables, and a small stage. Sitting at the bar was a blond man wearing blue jeans and a cowboy shirt. Three men who looked like Greeks were huddled around him. A half-covered neon light sat low behind the bar. No bartender or waitresses or business girls in sight. All the cabinets had been locked. Small tumblers filled with a dark fluid sat in front of the men.

One of them noticed us and looked up. The rest stopped talking and stared.

Weyworth—or the man I assumed to be Weyworth—turned on his stool, gaping.

The Greek sailors reached in their back pockets. I knew, from previous experience, that that’s where they kept their knives. I reached deep into my leather coat, as if reaching for a weapon—a weapon I didn’t have. Ernie scurried down the steps and grabbed a pool cue.