The motion was so fast and the crack of flesh on flesh so loud, that for a moment Hilliard just stood there, stunned. Then he said, “You keep your hands off me, you understand? You keep your damn hands off me!”
But he was no longer waggling his forefinger.
The morning after the Itaewon Massacre the nuns searched the ville.
“We want to prepare his body,” they told Cort. “For cremation or for return to America.”
“Why did you think he was dead?”
“Everybody say.”
They used their contacts in the ville, which were extensive, to ask questions. Most of the business girls were Buddhists and virtually all of them prayed and burned incense at the shrine atop the hill overlooking Itaewon. Many of them were there that morning, praying for the soul of Mori Di.
Rumors were flying. Most of them centered around Mori Di’s condition after his beating. Some said he was already dead when the Seven Dragons took him away, others said he was still breathing but just barely. No one had any doubt about why the Seven Dragons had absconded with the corpse. They wanted to avoid a criminal prosecution.
In addition to being concerned about Mori Di’s welfare, many of the families in Itaewon were concerned about Mori Di’s bank. Unheing is the word the nuns used. Literally, “silver storage.”
Cort was taken aback by this, suddenly on the alert for an illegal activity that Moretti might have been conducting. Was he changing money from won to U.S. currency? Possession of greenbacks was illegal both for G.I. s and Korean civilians and yet U.S. currency was highly prized and worth much more than either the G.I. Military Payment Certificates or the struggling Korean won. A healthy profit could be made on such transactions. Or was Moretti being paid by desperate Koreans to buy U.S. postal money orders on compound and mail them off to some relative living overseas? Also illegal, but profitable.
As it turned out, Mori Di’s silver storage was none of these things.
“Everybody robbed all the time in Itaewon,” was the way one of the nuns put it to Cort. There was no security. War refugees, of which there were millions, had long since taken to carrying their most precious possessions on their persons. But this was cumbersome. Especially once a family had stopped in Itaewon, set up a ramshackle home and maybe opened some sort of business. They couldn’t keep family heirlooms tied around their waist or taped to an inner thigh forever. So when people saw a trustworthy man like Mori Di, living in a solid building protected by himself and Buddhist nuns and three G.I. truck drivers, they started to ask him to store their valuables.
At first Moretti hesitated. He already had too many responsibilities: the construction operations, the orphanage, and the soup kitchen. He had more than enough to do. But people kept begging him and, finally, he set up a system whereby people could turn over family heirlooms to him, have them boxed up and numbered and a receipt would be provided. After that, Moretti stashed them somewhere, presumably in his headquarters building.
“Seven Dragons kick us out,” one of the nuns told Cort. “All orphans outside too. Winter that time. Cold. We have no money, no food. Seven Dragons no care. We take children, beg money, beg food, and ride on bus, train, whatever we can find and walk back up here in mountains to Temple of Constant Truth.”
Cort waited for what he knew would come next.
“After leave Itaewon, five children die. Two lose foot. One lose hand.”
Despite these hardships, the rest of the children, and all the nuns, arrived safely at the temple.
“The families,” Cort asked, “that left valuables with Moretti, what did they do?”
“They fight,” one of the nuns replied. “Nobody see. No American MPs, no Korean police. Only poor people of Itaewon and Seven Dragons.”
Then she raised her forefinger to her neck and sliced it across her neck.
“Chukin-da,” she said. Kill.
I explained to Ernie the options the Seven Dragons had when deciding how to dispose of Tech Sergeant Moretti’s body. Their ability to cover things up only extended to the cops the Seven Dragons had on their payroll in and around Itaewon; it didn’t extend to a mobile ROK Army surveillance patrol. Cort monitored U.S. and ROK Army blotter reports every morning but nothing had been reported. The remains of Technical Sergeant Flo Moretti had vanished. They might be interred in one of the buildings.
“Do you think there might still be old treasures there?” Ernie asked. “Family heirlooms, things like that.”
“No. I’m sure that’s all long gone. But the body is different. Nobody would want to touch that. As long as it was well hidden, they’d leave it where it was. I believe that it’s right here.”
I pointed to a spot on the building plans. Ernie studied the sketch.
Two Bellies had told us that within days of the Seven Dragons kicking out the nuns and orphans, Mori Di’s headquarters had been transformed into a bar and brothel. And since at least one of the Seven Dragons seemed to like American country-western music, they’d renamed the place The Grand Ole Opry Club.
“They slicky beer,” Two Bellies told me. Slicky, G.I. slang for steal.
Military two-and-a-half-ton trucks, laden with pallets of American-made beer, had backed down the alley behind the Grand Ole Opry Club. They unloaded case after case of beer, all of it imported at U.S. taxpayer expense and pilfered directly from the PX supply line. To streamline the delivery process, the Seven Dragons knocked a hole in the wall through which they shoved a ramp and slid the cases down from the back of the trucks into the basement for storage. The work had been expertly done. Bricks lined the delivery chute. To support the ramp, a portion of the wall had been extended out, forming a narrow room with an angled roof. There was no opening into that room. It had been walled-in using bricks. The entire construction had been the first modification made to the original building, the plans of which Ernie stared at intently.
“You think Moretti’s in there,” he said, pointing to the angled space beneath the loading ramp.
“I think it‘s possible. It would make sense for the Seven Dragons to hide him there. It would be safe, away from prying eyes, and they wouldn’t have to take the chance of transporting the corpse out of Seoul.”
“Wouldn’t it stink?”
I shrugged. “Not so much. Not sealed behind brick.”
I imagined a desiccated corpse, sitting in the darkness, fading away to bones.
Then Ernie looked up at me. “Oh, no. I know what you’re thinking.”
We had no jurisdiction in Itaewon. Officially, everything we did had to be done with the approval of the Korean government. Years ago an agreement had been signed so American MPs could police the ville but our jurisdiction extended only to our own personnel: G.I. s, the occasional American dependent, or U.S. civilian workers who happened to wander out there. But we couldn’t promulgate our own search warrant.
“You’re nuts, Sueno,” Ernie said.
“It could be done.”
One thing I’d learned here at 8th Army is that if you really want to do something, don’t ask for permission. If we presented a proposal to search the Grand Ole Opry Club to the provost marshal he would almost certainly say no. If we went ahead anyway, we’d be not only searching without a warrant but we’d also be directly violating an order. If, on the other hand, the PMO liked the idea of us searching the Grand Ole Opry Club, he would forward our request up the chain of command. There, it would be staffed to the ROK-U.S. governmental affairs committee, reports would be filed, questions answered, and great minds would cogitate. After a few weeks, if we were lucky, we’d receive an answer. Almost certainly no. But if by some chance the answer were yes, it would already be too late. By then, the rumors about a pending search of the Grand Ole Opry would have leaked out of 8th Army headquarters like rice wine from a broken soju bottle. Nobody keeps a secret for long in 8th Army headquarters. And if any hint reached Itaewon concerning a search, what we sought would either be moved or, more likely, destroyed.
Ernie kept staring at me. “You’re nuts,” he said again. “This is just a hunch. You don’t know for sure there’s anything there.”
“You’re right. But it makes sense, you have to admit that.”
“Maybe.” Ernie kept shaking his head, jiggling the copies of the building plans. And then he began to laugh. “Sueno, you never cease to amaze me. Why can‘t you just worry about getting your twenty years in like everybody else?”
“Moretti,” I told Ernie, “didn’t get the chance to retire.”
Ernie shook his head, a sardonic smile on his chops, knowing I was putting all the pressure on him I could.
