irritating me like smelling salts up the nose. Periodically, I stopped and listened. No sound. No footsteps.
Finally, I returned to the hooch across from the Grand Ole Opry. Ernie was waiting. Moonlight glistened off the perspiration on his forehead.
“Paco?” he asked.
“Maybe.”
The frightened business girls didn’t know the G.I.’s name but said he was dark, like me, except darker. We showed them the photo. Curled fingers rose to trembling lips. They were afraid they’d be in big trouble. I told them to relax.
Did they know where he was now?
They shook their heads negatively.
Did they know his name?
No.
Had they ever seen him before?
Again they shook their heads.
How long had he been watching us?
Since we’d arrived with Two Bellies.
Ernie and I weren’t new to Itaewon. We knew a lot of people and were aware of the obvious hiding places. G.I. s had tried to hide from us before and hadn’t been able to pull it off. Yet, after three hours of searching, we hadn’t found Paco Bernal. Most likely, someone was helping him. Someone who had the means and connections to keep him hidden from us and that someone, almost certainly, was a Korean.
Ernie and I returned to the Grand Ole Opry to check it out.
It was like most of the nightclubs in Itaewon except not quite so rowdy. Most of the customers were older G.I. s, career noncommissioned officers: lifers. When Ernie and I were sitting at the bar, I heard a lot of words dragged out in slow country drawls.
“This place is dead,” Ernie said. He swiveled on his barstool, stared at the half-empty ballroom in disgust, and tossed back some more suds from his brown beer bottle.
The business girls who occupied the rooms upstairs worked in the more lively nightclubs along the strip-the nightclubs that specialized in live bands and rock and roll and go-go girls. None of which could be found here at the Grand Ole Opry Club.
Surreptitiously, Ernie and I slipped into the back hallway, past the latrines, and climbed the cement stairs. Although we received some surprised looks from the occasional startled resident, we searched the building from top to bottom. Afterward, we examined the other clubs: The King Club, the Seven Club, the Lucky Seven, the UN, and the 007. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for exactly; I was just looking.
Two hours before the midnight curfew, we climbed the highest hill overlooking Itaewon. A full moon rose red into a black sky. According to the lunar calendar, this was the time of year the Koreans call Sohan, the small cold. A storm cloud crossed the moon. A few splats of snow fell on the ground and then a few more on my forehead. At the top of the hill, we reached a small Buddhist shrine that had been here as long as anyone remembered, since before the Korean War, since the ancient days when the village of Itaewon had been nothing more than cultivated fields of rice and cabbage and turnip. A tile roof, upturned at the eaves, sheltered a bronze bell. I switched on my flashlight and examined the shrine, the stone foundation, and even the raked gravel surrounding it. With bent knuckles, Ernie bonged the bell.
“What the hell we doing up here, Sueno?”
“Looking for likely burial spots,” I said.
“Like a needle in a freaking haystack?”
“Maybe not.”
“I don’t have time for this. I have people to see and things to do.”
Ernie started walking down the hill, away from the temple.
I watched him go. It wasn’t like him to leave while we were in the middle of an investigation but this wasn’t an official investigation- not yet-so I couldn’t really blame him.
“Stay out of trouble,” I shouted after him.
Without looking back, Ernie waved his hand in the air. As if on cue, snowflakes began to pelt the roof above me; I turned back to my work.
After searching the temple and finding nothing, I started back down the hill toward the bright lights of Itaewon proper. The snow was falling a little thicker now and started to stick in the mud beneath my feet, creating a sheet of white lace. In two weeks we’d experience Daehan, the big cold; traditionally, the coldest day of the winter. So far this year, the weather had been unseasonably warm. It looked like that was about to change.
4
I sat in front of Doc Yong’s desk, a warm earthenware cup of barley tea in my hands. She stared at me with a black-eyed intensity that I found so enticing.
“What have you found?” she asked.
She wore a white lab coat and a stethoscope hung from her neck. Outside in the waiting room a few pregnant women and a half-dozen business girls waited patiently for her attention. Each month, the business girls of Itaewon invaded Doc Yong’s clinic to be inspected for venereal disease and, if they passed, their “VD card” was stamped with red ink and they were good for another month. The clinic was mostly funded by American dollars, which was why Doc Yong cooperated so closely with 8th Army health officials.
“Why is it so important to you, Doc,” I asked, “this business about Mori Di? Sure, Auntie Mee helps you with the girls. Helps them keep a positive outlook on life. I understand that. But you know and I know that Auntie Mee hasn’t been visited by the ghost of Mori Di nor by the ghost of anybody. She wants me to find his bones because she’s nuts. But you’re not. So why are you backing her up?”
Doctor Yong In-ja studied me as if I were a patient with curious symptoms. I loved the square shape of her face, the high cheekbones, the unblemished skin. But mostly I loved the full richness of her lips. Unrouged. No slime slathered on her face. Just flesh. Just woman.
She must’ve read my thoughts for her eyes shifted. She took her elbows off her desk and sat back in her wooden chair.
“I understand your concern,” she said. She thought for a moment, composing herself, and then started once again. “The women I work with, especially the business girls, are mostly uneducated and mostly from rural areas. If Auntie Mee says she’s being bothered by the ghost of a dead American, the word spreads quickly and, in no time, they believe it. And they all believe that this ghost will cause trouble in Itaewon. Bad luck. That adds to their depression. Depression leads to despair. Despair leads to illness or, worse, suicide. As a physician, I must try to prevent that.”
Suicide was a fairly common event amongst the business girls of Itaewon. The Korean government didn’t allow Doc Yong, or anybody, to keep statistics-not officially. But those of us who worked out here knew that at least three or four girls per year died by their own hands.
“But even if I locate the bones of Mori Di,” I said, “and have them shipped back to the States, the business girls and Auntie Mee will just find something more to be depressed about.”
“Yes. Of course. It’s always something.” She leaned toward me. “Someone’s been complaining about Miss Kwon,” Doc Yong continued. “An American G.I.”
“A G.I. complaining about Miss Kwon?”
“Yes.”
I was flabbergasted. Even before Doc Yong introduced me to Miss Kwon, I’d taken note of her while Ernie and I worked our regular rounds. She was a hostess at the King Club: a small, cute, country girl with chubby cheeks who kept to herself. Why would any G.I. complain about her?
“What sort of complaint?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. But the owner is concerned and there’s even talk that Miss Kwon might lose her job. Not that losing that kind of work would be bad for her but I know the pressure these girls are under. She needs the money.
