Slicky Boys (20 page)

Ernie tripped over my feet and crashed down on top of me. Wriggling free of him, I raised my head out of the scum-filled water, gasping for breath. At first I thought my eyes were covered with mud, but when I reached up and rubbed them I found that my face was clear. Now that both lamps had been snuffed out, we were in almost total darkness.

I stared back down toward the mouth of the tunnel. Nothing. Only the huge silhouette of the ancient mining cart, rumbling relentlessly toward us.

Flesh thudded into flesh. I reached for Ernie, felt his hands flailing wildly. He was slapping himself.-

“Rats!” he yelled. “Fucking
rats!”

“They won’t hurt you.” I stood and pulled him. forward. “Come on. We have to move! The cart.”

He came to his senses and followed me forward.

The tunnel was rising now. The pool of scum had been its low point, moisture and filth accumulated from decades of stagnation.

The darkness was maddening. Since I couldn’t see the overhanging rocks, I leaned forward as I ran, grasping the track rails with my slimy hands, pulling myself ever onward.

But no matter how fast we moved the rumbling of the mining cart kept growing nearer. And faster.

A blade slashed into my eyes. I dropped to the ground and rolled, covering my face with my arms, trying to escape the pain.

Within seconds I was moving forward again. So was Ernie. And when I uncovered my eyes I realized what had happened.

Somebody’d found the fuse box they were talking about and a long string of lightbulbs, stretching in front of and behind us, had been switched on.

Ahead about twenty yards, loomed a wall of stone. Dead end.

I willed my eyes to focus, searching for a means of escape. Two-by-fours were bolted up against the end of the tunnel. Bumpers:

I figured it out. The mining cart had been designed to be rolled down the tunnel and carried by its own momentum up the incline, where it slammed into the splintered lumber.

Not good.

The mining cart was moving so fast now that even the rising tracks wouldn’t slow it down. There were no hollowed spaces in the wall, no escape hatches.

Ernie and I were about to be crushed by two tons of rolling metal.

When we were about ten yards from the end of the tunnel, the cart splashed into the pond of scum behind us. By now, my eyes had adjusted to the harsh light and I was able to make out the outlines of a ladder against the far wall. Maybe there was some hope after all.

Reaching for the ladder, I scrambled up and saw the square outlines of a trapdoor in the roof. I shoved upward. The door groaned but wouldn’t budge.

Ernie was right below me, glancing back at the rapidly approaching cart. “Push it open!”

“Too heavy!” I yelled.

“Here,” he said. “Brace your feet on that rock.”

I did as I was told, lifting myself off the ladder. Bolted into the stone wall, it was old and rusted. Using his legs for leverage, Ernie gripped the ladder and pulled. The ancient bolts groaned but didn’t budge.

The cart was only yards away now. It was all over.

Then, without warning, the bolts gave and the metal ladder popped free. Ernie shoved it up to me and stabbed his finger at an outcropping of granite.

“Use that as a lever.”

I did. With one end of the ladder braced against the trapdoor, the stone as a fulcrum, and Ernie pulling down on the other end of the ladder with all his weight, the trapdoor started to creak open.

Ernie hung from the far end of the ladder like a monkey after coconuts.

“Push, goddamn it!” he yelled. “Push!”

I shoved up on the trapdoor with all my strength. Lumber scraped on lumber, filth fell into my eyes and mouth, and suddenly the trapdoor popped free.

The cart was a moving shadow now, only yards away from us.

I scrambled up, reached back in, grabbed Ernie’s outstretched hands, and tugged.

The rumbling was like the approach of death itself. I jerked backward with all my strength, and Ernie’s head popped through the opening. His butt and his feet cleared the ground seconds before we were both knocked back by a tremendous crash.

We lay on a dirty wood floor, dazed and winded, peering down into the darkness and the billowing dust. Beneath us, as if its lethal mission had been accomplished, the big cart started to roll back the way it came.

Apparently, someone had been inside it, because four dark figures hopped out onto the tracks.

They were quick and we were exhausted and not thinking fast enough. By the time I pulled myself together they were climbing up the wall.

I shoved the trapdoor. It clapped shut, but that wouldn’t be enough to keep them away. Frantically, I searched the space we were in.

Dust, crates, grimy windows. We were inside a warehouse.

Against one wall sat an enormous crate. I forced myself to my feet and stumbled toward it. Stenciling. In English. Pittsburgh, PA. Some sort of machinery. A lathe, I think.

“Ernie! Help me with this.”

Together we tried to shove the crate atop the trapdoor. It wouldn’t budge. I wedged myself between the crate and the wall, set my sneakers against a wooden beam, my back against the box, and pushed. Ernie and I strained with all our might. The crate started to slide.

I heard the trapdoor creak open.

Ernie told me later that fingers crept over the edges of the opening like tarantulas crawling out of a hole.

The crate scraped forward, slid over the top of the trapdoor, and slammed it shut.

When we staggered back to the Nurse’s hooch, she slid back the paper-paneled door, opened her mouth when she saw us, and screamed.

We both crashed face-first onto the warm vinyl floor. Ernie waved his paw, like a canine begging for mercy.

“We’re okay,” he said. “We’re okay.”

Ajjima
from next door rushed over, and soon she and the Nurse had us out of our filthy clothes. They washed our faces with hand towels and poured barley tea down our throats.

Gradually, the warmth and the hot water and the soap brought us back to our senses.

“What happened?” the Nurse asked.

“The slicky boys,” I said. “They kidnapped us.”

The Nurse’s face shifted from worry to panic.

“They were going to ask for a ransom,” Ernie said, “but it finally dawned on them that nobody was going to pay.”

For some reason we both found that uproariously funny and we howled with laughter.

Our hysteria seemed to make
ajjima
nervous. She loaded up a metal pan with the towels and the barley tea she had brought over. The Nurse escorted her out and bowed politely, thanking her for her help.
Ajjima
returned to her hooch on the other side of the courtyard.

The Nurse rummaged through her cabinet, pulled out a crystalline bottle of
soju,
and poured us each a shot in small cups. We tossed them down.

After we had calmed down a little, I started to explain.

I told the Nurse about the twelve guys who had jumped us and being wrapped in canvas and the beautiful Chinese woman and Herbalist So and the escape through the tunnel and the trapdoor in the warehouse on the 8th Army compound.

She was astonished. “On the compound?”

“Yes. An old warehouse. GI’s never go in there. Koreans do all the manual labor on the compound. Besides, it’s very well hidden. Nobody ever would’ve found it unless they were looking for it. And the slicky boys haven’t used it for years. Probably figured it was too risky.”

The warehouse was on Yongsan’s south post, in an old storage area of brick buildings built by the Japanese Imperial Army. When we left it and walked up behind one of the security guards, we damn near gave him a heart attack. Once he regained control of himself, however, he knew better than to ask questions.

The Nurse was curious about Herbalist So. She’d heard rumors about him, but no one in Itaewon was sure if he really existed. I told her what I had observed and then told her about the calluses he had mentioned on Miss Ku’s hands.

The Nurse rubbed the tips of her fingers. “The
kayagum,”
she said, nodding. “Very bad for woman’s hands.”

“We have to talk to Miss Ku,” I said. “She could be the key to this entire investigation. And at least now we know how to find her.”

“How?”

“There must be places where women study the
kayagum,
where they play it for fun, or to make money entertaining.”

The Nurse nodded gravely. “Yes. Many places.”

I raised my palms in the air, resting my case. “Then all we’ve got to do is hit a few spots in Seoul, places where
kayagum
players hang out, and we’ll find Miss Ku.”

“You must be out of your gourd,” Ernie said. “There’s probably a jillion joints like that.”

“We can do it.”

The Nurse nodded agreement. “I can help.”

“See?” I told Ernie. “We even have our own native guide.”

Ernie groaned and poured himself another shot of
soju.

The Nurse squeezed my hand and smiled. I knew why. She was thanking me for including her in our investigation. She’d be happy to spend more time with Ernie, no matter what the reason.

Still, I was worried about including her. The slicky boys had a serious grudge against us. We had not only disrupted their operations, but we now knew the general whereabouts of their king and their headquarters. Maybe I should’ve kept her out of it.

She smiled again and her face took on a deep, satisfied glow.

I sighed. Too late now.

19

T
HE NEXT MORNING WE MADE AN APPEARANCE AT THE
CID office but slipped away as soon as we could. For two bottles of Johnnie Walker Black, Ernie’s jeep had been repaired and looked as good as it did before we crashed into the trash truck. It purred through the evergreen trees of Yongsan Compound’s south post toward the redbrick warehouse area.

One of the Korean supply honchos escorted us into the building. He may not have known all the particulars, but he knew this had something to do with the slicky boy operations. His hands shook as he twisted the key on the padlock.

Ernie elbowed me and nodded toward one of the windows. It was the one we had broken last night when we escaped from the warehouse. New glass. Already.

But that was nothing compared to what we found at the spot where the trapdoor had been. The heavy crate had been pushed out of the way and new flooring laid down. The trapdoor no longer existed.

The Korean manager ran his finger beneath his collar, sweating.

Ernie hollered for a crowbar and one of the warehousemen came running. It took us about twenty minutes to rip up the new wooden planks. Ernie climbed down into the crawl space and knelt. He came back up with a claylike substance smudged on his finger.

“Mortar,” he said. “The tunnel’s closed. Bricked up.”

We could’ve had the new brick broken in, but something told me that all we’d find would be caved-in rock.

I turned to the Korean manager. His entire body quivered.

“When will you talk to Herbalist So?”

He looked at me, stupefied, his throat so dry he croaked.

“Never mind,” I said. “When you see him, tell him that his secret is safe with us.”

I didn’t know if it would do any good but it was worth a try. Let the slicky boys know that our objective was to catch the killer of Cecil Whitcomb, not to expose their operation.

Of course, if Herbalist So had been lying to us and he actually was the one who’d ordered Whitcomb murdered, they wouldn’t stop trying for us until they succeeded.

The manager didn’t nod. He just gaped at me, beads of perspiration clinging to his forehead.

Ernie tossed the crowbar back to the workman. We climbed into the jeep and roared off.

Ernie pounded on the steering wheel. “Can you believe those guys? They somehow managed to move supplies and a work crew in here in the middle of the night and close up that damn tunnel.”

“I can believe it.”

“Jesus H. Christ. Is there anything the slicky boys
can’t
do on this compound?”

“A few things,” I said.

“Like what?”

“Like gain access to classified information.”

“Classified information?” Ernie looked at me. A two-and-a-half-ton truck barreled toward us. We slid past it by inches. “What’s classified information got to do with the price of kimchi in Itaewon?”

“I’m not sure, but it’s something maybe we should check out. Just in case Herbalist So really wasn’t involved in Cecil Whitcomb’s murder.”

“I thought we decided that Whitcomb couldn’t be a spy?”

“We did. But maybe we cut off that avenue of investigation too early. We ought to check it out.”

“Okay,” Ernie said. “We check it out. What with the slicky boys after our butts and the First Sergeant thinking we might’ve had something to do with the murder and us no longer assigned to the case, no problem!”

I ignored his bellyaching. “Let’s go see Strange.”

“That pervert? He turns my stomach.”

“You always tell him dirty stories.”

“The only language he understands.”

“No matter how objectionable his personal habits might be,” I said, “every classified document at Eighth Army Headquarters passes through his hands.”