Slicky Boys (24 page)

“What’s the matter?”

They looked at each other but didn’t answer.

“Did he come in here often?”

“Only twice.”

Emie tried the filing cabinet but it was padlocked with a bar down the center of the drawer handles. Somewhere, he found a short metal pry bar, propped it between the hasp and the edge of the cabinet, and levered it forward with both hands. He tried twice but the drawer didn’t budge. Lowering himself and rebracing his feet, he gave it a tremendous pull. The lock popped open and clattered across the cement floor until it clanged against a printing press.

“What’s he
doing
there?” the printer hollered.

“Police business. Don’t worry about it.”

Some of the workers across the way started to come out of their shops. I heard the word
“Miguk”
floating through the air: American.

Ernie riffled through the files quickly, checking behind and under each folder. He had started on the second drawer when a man burst into the shop. Red-faced. Hollering.

“What are you doing here?”

The print shop owner was a squat, sturdy Korean man with a square, leathery face that was burning crimson. The youngest printer stood behind him nervously. It looked as if he’d had to drag the owner out of a
soju
house.

“Get away from my files!”

The red-faced man stormed back toward Ernie. I zigzagged through the presses and placed my body in front of him. When he came to a stop, I showed him my badge.

“We’re looking for an American,” I said. “You did business with him. You took him to see the Tiger Lady.”

“What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes you do, Mr. Chong. You introduced him to a
kisaeng,
Choi Yong-ran. She also calls herself Miss Ku.”

Worry crossed his scarlet features. “Who in the shit are you?”

“Eighth Army CID,” I said.

He turned his face from me, spittle exploding from his lips as he spoke.
“Sangnom sikki.
” Born of a base lout.

I ignored the insult. “The American, Mr. Chong, what’s his name?”

“I don’t know his name.”

“But he’s a GI?”

“He
was
a GI.”

“Where can I find him?”

“I don’t know.” The owner pointed a squat finger, the tip swirled with black, at my nose. “But if you do find him, tell him he owes me money.”

“How much?”

“Plenty.”

“What’d you sell to him, Chong?”

“Not your business.” Sobering slightly, he became aware of Ernie again. “Hey! What are you doing?”

Ernie was on the bottom drawer now. Before I could react, Chong shoved his way past me, took three long steps forward, and grabbed Ernie by the back of his jacket. Without thinking, Ernie turned, swung his fist in an arc, and punched the man on the side of the head.

The printers let out a howl. I ran forward and stood in front of Mr. Chong again, but now he was screeching.

“Get away from my stuff, you long-nosed foreign louts!”

The printers started jostling me. Across the street the crowd of workers swelled. They made rude comments about people of nationalities other than Korean.

I grabbed Ernie’s arm and jerked him close.

“We have to un-ass the area,” I told him. “Now!”

“I’m right behind you.”

I made my way through the machines to the front. Some of the workers walked over to block my way. I swerved away but when one shuffled in front of me, I held him gently and said
“Mianhamnida,”
I’m sorry, as loudly as I could. Ernie slipped by me and we were moving down the alley. The crowd slowly flowed toward us, still undecided as to whether or not to attack. I turned and smiled and said I was sorry and bowed repeatedly, like a big overgrown pigeon. When we reached the end of the alley, we started to run.

We strode through the busy nighttime streets of Seoul, avoiding pedestrians, stepping over soot-speckled piles of slush.

Ernie reached in his pocket and pulled out a small plastic card. It was beige on the bottom with a brown stripe on top and a red-and-white cloverleaf in the upper left. The emblem of the 8th United States Army.

I took it in my fingers and studied it front and back. A perfect facsimile of a U.S. Forces Korea ration control plate. Blank. Suitable for embossing with whatever name and serial number you chose to put on it.

The RCP is used by all GI’s in Korea when they purchase anything out of military PX’s or commissaries. The idea is to limit what they buy so they won’t violate customs law and sell American-made goods in the Korean villages.

I pulled out my own RCP and compared them. The forgery was a fine piece of work. The only difference was that the plastic on the authentic one was a little more pliable. I nestled them both back into the folds of my worn leather wallet.

“Nice work,” Ernie said. “Get a phony ID to go with that and you can black-market your ass off and clear a couple of grand a month. Easy.”

“So now we know why Mr. Chong can afford to spend time with the expensive ladies at the Tiger Lady’s
kisaeng
house. He creates and sells bogus documents. And we know that the guy who talked Miss Ku into doing a number on us the other day is into some serious black-marketing.”

“Yeah,” Ernie said, “but that still doesn’t explain why he of fed Cecil Whitcomb.”

No. Ernie was right. It sure as shit didn’t.

Our most promising lead so far had ended in a dead end.

The guy was an American. He had disappeared. The print shop owner said he didn’t know who or where he was and I believed him. A serious black marketeer wasn’t exactly likely to leave a forwarding address. Especially when he owed money to the people he’d done business with.

We wound back toward Mukyo-dong. I spotted a taxi stand and started toward it. Curfew was close, less than an hour away. Already the taxi line was long. In a few more minutes it would be hell trying to catch a cab and it was a four-mile walk back to Yongsan Compound.

When I queued up at the end of the line, Ernie grabbed my elbow.

“You go ahead,” he said. “I’ll stay down here.”

I looked at him blankly. “Why?”

“The interrogation of Miss Ku,” he said. “Got to finish it.”

I remembered her flushed face and her labored breath.

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess you do.”

He shoved his hands deep in his pockets, turned, and waded into the crowd.

It took me twenty minutes to catch a cab, and when I finally found one it was crowded with other customers heading toward the south of Seoul. The cramped sedan reeked of rice wine, fermented cabbage, and cheap tobacco. The driver refused to take me all the way to 8th Army Compound. There were only a few minutes left until the midnight curfew and he had to take his other customers to their destinations. Instead, he dropped me off in Itaewon.

I could’ve hoofed it back to the main gate—in fact I started to—but when I walked past the alley that led to the main nightclub district, the sparkling neon and the laughter and the rock and roll were more than I could resist.

I stopped in the 7 Club and ordered a drink. There wasn’t much time to get drunk before curfew, but I did the best I could.

It was morning. Charcoal glowed inside a small metal stove. The tattered wallpaper and the cold, vinyl-covered floor told me where I was: the hooch of an Itaewon business girl.

I searched frantically for the .38. It hung in its holster on a nail in the wall. I put on my shirt and strapped the leather around my chest.

Other than the stove, the only piece of furniture in the room was a Western-style bed. When you’re in business, no matter how low your capital, you must invest in equipment.

Vaguely, I remembered something about two sisters. The younger sister lay under a thin blanket, curled up next to the stove. The elder had exercised her prerogative and snuggled comfortably in the big luxurious bed.

In Korea, the dictates of Confucius still live: Elders come first.

What had I done?

I couldn’t remember so I shook it off. No sense even thinking about it.

As I stepped into my trousers, both girls woke up. After they rubbed their eyes and slipped on their robes, I reached deep into my pocket and checked my money. All there. I gave them some of it. I’m not sure what service they had performed for me the previous night, but they’d let me sleep here. Besides, they were both skinny and looked as if they could use a few bucks.

Outside the hooch, I slipped on my shoes and pushed through the front gate.

It was still dark. The road that led back to the compound was deserted, all the shops still shuttered, and the dirty blacktop had been sheathed overnight by a smooth new layer of snow. Only a few curved tracks marred its beauty.

I spotted the sedan about ten yards down the road. A blue-and-white police car. Engine running. Windows steamed.

As I came closer I read the license plate. Namdaemun District, it said. The back window rolled down.

“Geogie.”

It was a strong male voice. A voice that I recognized.

“Get in,” he said.

The car door opened. A man wearing a brown trench coat slid over on the back seat to make room for me. Lieutenant Pak. He was up early.

I climbed in and slammed the door shut.

The car was warmer than outside but clogged with the smoke of pungent Korean cigarettes. Suddenly I knew I should’ve stayed outside and talked through the window. Now I was in KNP territory.

Up front, a uniformed driver and another officer stared straight ahead.

Lieutenant Pak reached deep into his coat pocket, pulled something out, and nudged it into my ribs. I glanced down.

The gleaming blade of a wickedly curved knife.

23

M
OST SUMMERS THE
C
OUNTY OF
L
OS
A
NGELES DECIDED
it would be okay for me to stay with my Tía Esmeralda. I think it was because I wasn’t attending school and therefore a strict enforcer of responsibility wasn’t so important in my life.

It was during those summers that I felt most completely alive.

My aunt enjoyed my visits, too. She worked in a textile factory on Wilshire Boulevard and although her oldest son, Flaco, had two years on me, she put her trust in me to keep an eye on the younger kids while she was at work.

During those long summer afternoons, when we were unsupervised by anyone, my cousin Flaco took it upon himself to teach me the skills of survival in East L.A.

Flaco was good with a knife. With one backhand flip he could send it twanging into the bark of the old avocado tree out back. And he could swing it loosely in his fingers and slice unripe apricots from crooked branches without nicking a leaf.

He also taught me how to fight with it. Keep it in close, not so far away that someone can grab your arm or kick it out of your hand. And jab with it to keep them at bay, pulling it back quickly when they move forward. But contrary to popular belief, he told me, you wouldn’t catch them with a long lunge, you’d catch them when they came to you. Once they did, grab them by the collar, jerk them forward, and, with a short brutal thrust, ram the knife onto the soft flesh above the belly or slash it across the unprotected throat.

Flaco talked viciously, but he wasn’t really cruel. It was the world that swirled around my cousin that caused him to react with a snarling savagery. Later, when he started taking heroin, he always claimed it had been forced on him.

I believed him.

The gangs in the barrio wanted converts. If they had to hold you down and shoot you up to convince you of the spiritual benefits of the fruit of the poppy, so be it. And then you were theirs. A junkie. A source of income for the rest of your life.

Now he was in prison. For burglary. Arts he had learned after I stopped seeing much of him. After I dropped out of high school and joined the army.

Now, as I gazed at the long, curved blade in Lieutenant Pak’s hand, I thought of Flaco. And how, in his own twisted way, my cousin had always looked out for me. I mourned for his wasted life.

“This knife killed Whitcomb,” Lieutenant Pak said.

I studied it. “A Gurkha knife,” I said.

“Yes.”

Gurkhas are the Nepalese auxiliaries to the British Army, soldiers known for their savagery and skill in combat.

The long metal blade in Pak’s hand was sharp and curved upward at its fat tip. Perfect for slicing into flesh. And prying upward until it popped into the pulsating balloon of the human heart.

Lieutenant Pak reached in his other pocket, then tossed something to me. It was a thin leather belt with a small buckle in front and a sliding pouch attached to the rear.

“This Whitcomb wear,” he said.

Twisting the blade downward he slid it deftly into the pouch. Perfect fit.

“We found the knife in gutter, maybe one hundred meters from body.”

Gutters in Korea were stone-lined trenches with vented covers on top, perfect for hiding just about anything.

“Whitcomb’s unit was last assigned to Hong Kong,” 1 said. “He probably bought the Gurkha knife there.”

Lieutenant Pak nodded.

“Any blood?” 1 asked.

“Yes. Already been to laboratory. Same type as Whit-comb.”