Nightmare Range (14 page)

Ernie poured his remaining coffee out the door of the jeep and tossed the empty cup into the back seat. He started the ignition.

“I think we’ve just found our culprit,” he said.

“I think we have.”

He slammed the jeep in gear, jolting forward. Coffee splashed on the front of my shirt.

The PX cab containing the tall woman didn’t leave Yongsan Compound right away. Instead, it crossed the Main Supply Route, heading for Main Post and came to a halt in front of the Class VI Store. “Class Six” is the old army supply designation for items such as beer, wine, and hard liquor. The cab waited while the tall woman went inside. A few minutes later she reemerged with a man in a gray smock following her, pulling a flat cart laden with two cases of American beer, two cases of soda, and a large paper bag containing what appeared to be bottled liquor.

“Max purchase,” Ernie said. “Four bottles of hooch, two cases each of beer and pop.”

Under 8th Army ration control regulations, that’s all a GI was allowed to buy in one day and four bottles of liquor was all that he, or his dependent, were allowed for a month. When everything was safely stored in the trunk, the woman tipped the man with the cart and climbed back into the cab. We followed her out Gate Number Five. Ernie swerved into honking traffic. She continued east along the Main Supply Route heading toward Itaewon but before she got there, the driver hooked a quick left toward the Namsan Tunnel.

“Where the hell’s she going?” Ernie asked.

“She’s a downtown woman,” I said.

“Downtown woman with a figure like a lingerie model.”

“But not skinny.”

“No,” Ernie agreed. “Not skinny.”

The cab slowed at the booth to pay the toll for going through the tunnel and Ernie hung back, swerving toward the extreme right lane reserved for military and government vehicles. When the PX taxi entered the tunnel, we followed.

Namsan tunnel stretches about a mile through Namsan Mountain in the southern section of Seoul and, along with the Pusan-to-Seoul Expressway, it is the pride of the country. Both projects had been completed just a few months ago and high-rise
buildings were popping up throughout downtown Seoul. President Pak Chung-hee had recently proclaimed that the Seventies would be the decade when Korea would begin to take its rightful place amongst the great economic powers of the world. After the devastation of the Korean War a little more than twenty years ago, the country had gotten off its back and was now rising. On paper, things looked better. Unfortunately, this new economic prosperity hadn’t spread to everybody. In fact, in the red light district of Itaewon it had spread, as far as I could tell, to exactly nobody.

When we emerged from the tunnel, I spotted the cab. “There,” I said, “she’s taking the Myong-dong turnoff.”

Honking and bulling his way through the tightly packed traffic, Ernie stayed with her. Then we were in narrow downtown streets. Myong-dong was the area of Seoul famous for the Cosmos Department store, chic boutiques and, at night, upscale nightclubs and Scotch Corners, the fashionable term for barrooms.

The PX taxi seemed bulky down here, surrounded by all the smaller Hyundai sedans. Ernie had no trouble following. We passed through the fashionable area and entered a section of town that had not yet been selected for gentrification. Most of the buildings were the brick and cement slab three- and four-story buildings that had been slapped together haphazardly after the war. Sandwiched between them were tin-roofed shops and eateries supported by walls of rotted wood. Finally, the cab veered into a narrow lane that rose upwards at a slight incline and after about a hundred yards ended in a cul-de-sac at the top of a hill. Ernie didn’t turn into the lane but came to a stop just past it. As the cabs behind us honked, he said, “I’ll circle around the block.”

“Okay.” I hopped out.

We’d done this before, plenty of times. Once we were close, Ernie would either find a place to park or circle the area while I followed on foot. The pedestrian traffic was practically
wall-to-wall but composed mainly of working people hustling to and from small factories or hauling loads of charcoal briquettes or hemp sacks on wooden A-frames strapped to their backs. Vendors with large carts lined the walkway, shouting for passersby to stop and enjoy some fried meat dumplings or a nice warm bowl of cuttlefish soup.

At the mouth of the alley, I peered at the PX cab parked on a slant in front of a double iron gate in a stone wall. There was a small courtyard and beyond that a brick building that loomed above the others in the area, three stories high. A huge sign, faded now, had once been painted in bright red letters on the highest floor on all four sides. I could still make it out: Tiger Kang’s.

No wonder this woman looked so elegant. She was a
kisaeng
. I’d heard of the place before. Tiger Kang’s had once been the most famous
kisaeng
house in Seoul, a playground for the rich and powerful.

Kisaeng
are female entertainers and their tradition is at least as old, and probably older, than the ancient geisha tradition in Japan. But the polished skills of plucking the twelve-stringed
kayagum
or performing the swirling drum dance or composing
sijo
poetry are reserved now for specially trained students. The so-called
kisaeng
of Tiger Kang’s—and of the other joints that were popping up all over the city—were reduced to pouring scotch and lighting cigarettes and laughing at rich men’s jokes. Still, it was work. Maybe not the most honest work, but it paid well.

Ernie came running up behind me.

“Where the hell’d you park the jeep?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I pushed one of the carts out of the way.”

“That will make friends and influence people.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” he said. “An international ambassador for peace.”

The iron gate was open and apparently the tall woman had gone inside. The white-gloved PX cab driver was busy hauling the grocery bags out of the trunk and handing them inside.

“Tiger Kang’s?” Ernie asked.

“That’s right.”

He whistled softly. “An upscale bust for once.”

“We haven’t made the arrest yet,” I said. “We have to sneak inside somehow and witness the money exchange.”

“Don’t sweat the small stuff, Sueño. You worry too much. She brought the stuff here, that’s enough. The sale is implied.”

“What if she lives here?”

Ernie paused. “You mean maybe she’s a
kisaeng
herself?”

“Right. She could claim that she brought the stuff here for her personal use. Not to sell.”

“Hell with that. If she knocked back all that beer and liquor, she’d be as fat as the kitchen god. We bust her anyway. Let the JAG office figure it out.”

He was right. We’d come this far, might as well get credit for the arrest. If JAG dropped the charges, that was on them. Mrs. Wrypointe could fuss at the Judge Advocate General and leave us alone. Still, it would be better if we waited awhile, to give them a chance to unpack and start exchanging money.

The last of the grocery bags were passed through and the iron door clanged shut. Ernie went back to check on the jeep.

At the bottom of the incline, I waved the PX cab driver to a halt. He blanched. Actually, it wasn’t his fault. All he did was transport a passenger to her destination. Still, in a society totally controlled by the military and the police, any run-in with a cop was enough to worry a Korean. Especially when he held one of the few unionized jobs in the country—working for the American PX—and a compensation package with decent benefits. I wrote down the driver’s name and cab number and chatted with him a while. No, he didn’t know the passenger, he’d never seen her before. And no, he’d never driven a fare to Tiger Kang’s before either. In fact, she’d had to direct him here or he would’ve had trouble finding it. I asked him how much his tip was. He reached in his pocket and showed me. A crisp, US five dollar bill. Exorbitant. He thought so too. I thanked him for his cooperation and told him he could leave.

Five minutes later, Ernie returned.

“Everything all right?” I asked.

“I gave the cart lady a thousand won.” Two bucks US. “She was all smiles.”

“Everybody’s a big spender,” I said.

“Except you,” Ernie said.

He always accused me of being cheap but I didn’t think I was. Thrifty, yes. But that was because I knew what it was like to be poor, and hungry.

We climbed up the hill and approached the iron gate of Tiger Kang’s. Ernie stood with his back against it. “Ready?” he asked. I shoved my notebook into my jacket pocket and said, “Ready.”

At first there was no answer but Ernie kept pounding. Finally, we heard footsteps on the other side of the wall and the door creaked open. The chubby face of a Korean man peered out. Without asking permission, Ernie shoved his way in.

“
Weikurei
?” the man said. Why this way?

Ernie ignored him and crossed the small courtyard. A rusty bicycle leaned against a cement brick wall. No outhouse, I noticed, so they had indoor plumbing. And no garden. This area was strictly used for storage. Two to three dozen wooden crates were piled against the back wall filled with empty brown OB Beer bottles. Next to that were smaller crates of crystalline Jinro Soju bottles, bereft now of their fiery rice liquor. A metal pail held a few empty bottles of imported scotch.

Ernie scampered up cement steps that led into the back door of the building.

The little man ran after Ernie, his face reddening now. “
Weikurei
!” he shouted again, clenching and unclenching his fingers. I stayed close behind him.

We entered another storage area, this one filled with more crates of beer and
soju
, these bottles unopened, and then into a large tile-floored kitchen.

It looked like something out of a historical magazine. Heavy iron pans hung from thick metal hooks, an ancient gas stove
was covered with a gleaming metal canopy, and two geriatric refrigerators were hooked to rusted transformers, buzzing and wheezing like old men on life support.

“The place is clean, anyway,” Ernie said.

It was that. Old but clean.

A dozen oddly shaped appliances lined a wooden counter, the functions of which I couldn’t fathom, and beyond that, like stout soldiers, a short row of rice cookers. In the next room a huge mahogany dining table was covered with lace doilies. Slanting sunlight revealed swirling mites from a recent dusting. The tall, elegant woman was nowhere in sight.

The enraged man was still sputtering so Ernie stopped and pulled out his badge. This halted him. As he studied the shiny brass in the open leather folder, I spoke to him in Korean.

“
Kiga ko-nun yoja
,” I said. The tall woman. “Where’d she go?”

He seemed to have trouble speaking, and at the same time he was struggling to swallow. Without answering, he glanced at the doorway leading out of the dining room. I showed him my badge and, speaking softly, I pointed back toward the kitchen.

“
Chogi kiddariyo.
” Wait there.

When he didn’t move, Ernie shoved him back into the kitchen and slid shut the wooden door.

We headed deeper into the plush environs of Tiger Kang’s.

The place smelled of must and cigarette smoke and spilled liquor. Ernie inhaled deeply, a smile suffusing his lips. He felt exactly the way I did; an old dive, dark, quiet, comfortable and filled with expensive liquor and cheap women. Exactly the type of place we both loved.

I stepped into the entrance foyer. The front door was locked from the inside. A cloak room was filled with thick wooden hangers but otherwise empty. Down the hallway, we ran into a dividing wall of fish tanks bubbling with blue water. Elaborate coral reefs and sunken pirate ships loomed beyond the murk and exotic sea creatures gaped at us in goggle-eyed amazement. On the far side of the tanks, a cocktail lounge opened before
us, lit by soft red light and lined on one side with plush leather booths and on the other by a polished mahogany bar. The odor of cigarette smoke was overpowering now and seemed to emanate from every padded barstool and from every brass fixture lining the wall. A few tables in the middle were covered with white linen.

“Have we gone back in time?” Ernie asked.

I didn’t answer. The murmur of soft voices drifted downward from upstairs. We climbed thickly carpeted steps.

“Up here must be where the action is,” Ernie said.

A wrought-iron railing circled the entire second floor and opposite it, every few yards, dim sunlight projected through double sliding doors covered with embroidered silk. The elaborate designs depicted silver dragons and flaming orange tigers and pale blue flowers and bubbling green waterfalls; all elegant scenes of ancient Asia. One of the doors was slid open. That’s where the talking was coming from. We padded down the carpet.

Ernie stood at the edge of the door and nodded to me. I’d go in first. I entered the room, pulling my badge out as I did so, and stuck it forward like a shield.

“Eighth Army CID,” I said. “Black market violation. Nobody move.”