condoned. If there had been violence, the honchos of 8th Army would just as soon not know.
Cort thanked the MP named Smith and asked him to write out a report. The young man agreed, according to Cort, but something must’ve gone wrong. A copy of Smith’s statement was never included in the SIR.
Tonight the Grand Ole Opry was jumping.
The Kimchee Kowboys, the most popular band on the G.I. circuit, was performing. Only two days had passed since the end-of-month military payday and so, by the time Ernie and I arrived that evening, the place was packed. And noisy. It was the noise I was counting on.
We entered the club at different times. I melted into the crowd for a while but instead of joining in the frivolities, as soon as I figured no one was watching, I made my way to the back steps behind the latrines. While I waited, I checked the tools I’d stuffed inside my winter coat: a wooden mallet and a chisel. All I figured I’d need. As soon as Ernie joined me, he started mumbling. “You’re nuts, Sueno. Really nuts.”
I ignored him. Together, we sneaked down the back stairs.
A faint green glow from fluorescent bulbs followed us down the cement steps. At the bottom, the door leading to the storeroom was padlocked. While I shone the beam from my flashlight on the lock, Ernie stepped forward and, using the small crowbar he had stuffed under his jacket, he popped open the lock. I picked up the broken lock and dropped it in my pocket. I closed the storeroom door behind us and switched on the overhead bulb.
Pallets of OB Beer, product of the Oriental Brewery, in brown bottles and wooden crates, Korean-made, met our eyes. The days of pilfering American beer from the PX supply lines were over. But judging from the crowd upstairs, and their general state of inebriation, the Grand Ole Opry was still selling plenty of suds. And making a hell of a profit.
The Kimchee Kowboys clanged determinedly into a new song, the heels of their boots pounding on the wooden stage. The bass player and the drummer set up a driving rhythm. They were a hell of a sight, five Korean musicians wearing sequined cowboy outfits and broad-brimmed hats. I wished I could go upstairs and drink beer and enjoy the show but no time for that now.
“Come on,” I told Ernie. “Over here.”
We took off our jackets and started heaving crates of beer away from under the delivery ramp. It was cold down here, though not refrigerated. The howling wind outside kept the temperature close to freezing. Clouds of our breath billowed in front of us yet within minutes we’d both worked up a sweat.
“How much beer do these lifers drink?” Ernie asked.
“Enough to float the Seventh Fleet,” I replied.
Finally, the brick wall of the angle-roofed room was revealed. We stood back and looked at it.
“Maybe nothing’s in there,” Ernie said.
“Maybe.”
But there was only one way to find out. I knelt in front of the wall and poked the tip of the iron chisel into the mortar between bricks. I pulled the wooden mallet out of my pocket and, keeping time with the rhythm of the Kimchee Kowboys’ latest, I started to pound. Dust flew. The chisel slid, held, and then gradually started to edge deeper into the crusted mortar.
Ernie knelt a few feet away from me, pulled out his own mallet and chisel, and began hammering to the same driving rhythm. When the song stopped, we stopped. After a few seconds, a new song- this one having something to do with mom and trains and prison- started up. Ernie and I, like two convicts making a break for freedom, resumed our rhythmic labors.
Cort did his best to convince the honchos of 8th Army that the Seven Dragons were a menace. He also promised that, given enough resources and enough search warrants, he could find Mori Di’s remains and put the Seven Dragons out of business. But 8th Army didn’t want to hear it. Already, Itaewon was the wonder of the country. Nightclubs, lit up and operating seven nights a week, offered such amenities as cold beer and cocktails and shaved ice in every drink along with gorgeous women to serve those drinks and entertainers on wooden stages and the best musicians in the country. The 8th Army G.I. s, who were Itaewon’s only customers, were happy. And if the G.I. s were happy, and there were no major incidents in the ville, and there was no hint of any Commie activity, the honchos of 8th Army were happy.
The Seven Dragons provided order. Maybe not law, but order. And in a country recovering from chaos, that was considered to be a good thing. And with their newfound wealth, the Seven Dragons soon made friends in high places. First within the Korean government and, before long, at 8th Army itself. Charities were contributed to, transportation and free food and free beer were provided to officers for their promotion or retirement parties. And with the money the Seven Dragons made from the girls and the booze and the debauchery of Itaewon, they expanded their operations into construction, Moretti’s old bailiwick. The only organizations with enough money to order new construction projects were, coincidentally enough, the Korean government and the 8th United State Army. The Seven Dragons became richer and more influential every day.
And Cort became a pest. People groaned when they saw him coming and rolled their eyes after he left. But for a while he convinced his superiors to keep Moretti’s SIR open. And on his own time he kept adding to it, although less often than before.
A door slammed above us.
Ernie stopped hammering. So did I.
A small pile of gray powder lay on the floor beneath me but I still had not managed to pull even one brick out of the wall.
Footsteps.
Ernie stood and switched off the overhead light. We crouched in darkness, hidden behind a wall of stacked cases of beer.
Someone entered, mumbling to himself, cursing “Miguk-nom”-loutish Americans-and switched on the overhead light. He grabbed what I believed was a case of Seven Star soda water, and carried it outside. After setting it down, he returned, switched the light off again and carried the tinkling bottles upstairs.
Without speaking, Ernie and I returned to our labors.
The reports in the SIR became fewer and Cort only bothered to write one up once or twice a month. He was using his own time to investigate because the provost marshal had long ago pulled him off the Moretti case and assigned him to new duties, mostly involving the accountability of 8th Army supply lines. Since the end of the war, these lines had been porous. They had started prosecuting G.I. s for diverting supplies and selling them on the black-market. Their Korean co-conspirators were occasionally rounded up by the Korean National Police for dealing in contraband but keeping tabs on the millions of dollars in military supplies arriving in Korea was a project that would keep the MPs busy for years. Ernie and I, on the black-market detail, were still fighting that battle, however reluctantly.
Cort wrote a personal memorandum that he left in the SIR file. He didn’t mention names but someone in his chain of command had once again ordered him to lay off the Moretti case. It was over, ancient history, don’t stir it up now! But it wasn’t over for Cort. He kept working, gathering data, trying to figure a way to assault the impregnable fortress that now surrounded the Seven Dragons.
And every day the walls of that fortress grew higher.
Ernie was the first to pull a brick free. I stuck my nose into the opening and inhaled. There was a musty odor but nothing else in particular, other than dust. I shone the flashlight and looked inside. An open space stared back at me, about the same length as my elbow to my fingertip. How high this opening went I didn’t know but probably up to the angled ramp. Whatever we were looking for, however, would probably be resting on the dirt floor beneath, a floor that I couldn’t see.
We kept hammering.
When the Kimchee Kowboys took a break, we took a break. While we sat in the darkness, listening to the conversation and drunken laughter upstairs, someone clomped down the steps. Two people this time. When they
