“What you mean?”
“About Auntie Mee’s death? About finding out who killed her?”
He shrugged again, more elaborately this time. “If we find up.”
He meant, if we discover who murdered her.
“Any evidence so far?”
“No. Same-same Two Bellies. They no leave nothing. Except for one thing.” He stared straight at me. “Somebody light candles, burn incense, perform ceremony of the dead.”
That would’ve been me and Doc Yong but I wasn’t about to tell him. I changed the subject.
“How about the bones of Mori Di?” I asked.
“That G.I. business. Not my business.”
And finding the remains of Tech Sergeant Flo Moretti wouldn’t become his business unless Korean officialdom ordered him to make it his business. Evidently, the higher-ups in the ROK government, despite 8th Army’s messages of concern, had not ordered the KNPs to find Moretti’s bones. Maybe because they didn’t want them found. Or somebody who had influence had decided that they didn’t want them found.
A young Korean patrolman ran into the office so fast that he practically skidded to a halt in front of Captain Kim’s desk. His face was flushed red and when he saw me it became even redder.
“Officer Jiang reporting,” he said in Korean and saluted.
Captain Kim stared at him with a look of resigned expectation. “What is it?”
The patrolman glanced at me again, hesitating to speak.
Gruffly, Captain Kim said, “Iyaggi hei!” Speak!
The patrolman chattered away, speaking so quickly that I had trouble following the convoluted Korean sentences but I caught a few of them and some words and phrases. He was talking about the Lucky Lady Club and blood and women who were hysterical and Captain Kim was on his feet, reaching behind his desk for his cap. I stood, and although Captain Kim stared at me morosely, I followed. We ran out the front door of the Itaewon Police Station, turned the corner, and sprinted up the ice-covered road. A road that despite mounds of drifted snow, glittered with sparkling neon overhead and fancy women hidden in recessed doorways.
14
This time it happened more publicly.
Two Korean men had been in the office of Mr. Sung, also known as Mulkei. Mulkei, literally translated, means “water dog.” Its dictionary meaning though is “fur seal” or “otter.” Sung was a small man, full of pep, and years ago some G.I. had mistranslated his Korean nickname and started calling him “Water Doggy.” The name stuck and that’s what Sung had been called ever since, by both Koreans and Americans. The two visitors had come to see him supposedly about a rewiring project they were going to undertake on the building adjacent to the Lucky Lady Club. They told some of the other employees that they wanted Water Doggy to be aware that construction would be going on and they were hoping to make arrangements that would not be disruptive to the operations of the Lucky Lady Club. The club was one of the biggest money-makers in Itaewon. While the two men discussed the construction project with Water Doggy, three women entered the club. They weren’t your regular Lucky Lady customers. They were not young prostitutes because they were dressed in thick-soled shoes and trousers and heavy jackets as protection from the frigid winter weather outside. When one of the waitresses asked politely what she could do for them, the lead woman merely pointed to the back office and kept walking, averting her face and keeping her hood pulled over her head.
The waitresses hadn’t seen the faces of any of the women. They had purposely kept their features concealed.
Seconds later, voices were raised in the office. The cocktail waitresses weren’t unduly alarmed. Water Doggy argued with any number of people. Besides, they were paid to look nice and wait tables, not interfere with business dealings. Just as quickly as the voices had been raised, the office went quiet. Minutes later the two impostor electrical contractors and the three hooded women emerged. No one thought anything about it.
G.I. s were off duty now and even though they had to brave snowdrifts and icy roads, they were gradually beginning to arrive in Itaewon. Groups of them, mostly regulars, were entering the Lucky Lady Club, doffing their hats and coats, dusting off snowflakes, taking their seats and ordering the Korean-made Oscar sparkling wine or brown bottles of OB Beer. The cocktail waitresses were flirting with them, the band was mangling some monotonous rock tune, and the business girls were lurking in the shadows waiting for the alcohol to take effect on their G.I. prey.
Everything was normal at the Lucky Lady Club. And elsewhere in Itaewon. The power outages had been fixed, the snow had stopped falling-at least for the moment-and, as yet, word of the murder of Auntie Mee had not spread to the general population.
Everything was normal, that is, except for in the office of the Lucky Lady Club.
On her way to the women’s latrine, one of the waitresses noticed something in the dim light of the hallway: a dark liquid seeping from beneath Water Doggy’s closed office. She walked past it at first, finished her business in the bathroom and then, upon returning, knelt to take a closer look at the liquid. At first, she thought Water Doggy had spilled coffee or broken a bottle of liquor. But as she leaned closer, the meaty odor of the fluid filled the air and she realized that it was thick and not flowing quickly and when the rotating glass bulb hanging above the dance floor finally cast a beam of pure white light on the floor in front of her, she realized the true color of the liquid. Red.
She screamed. At first, no one heard her scream above the din of the rock and roll so she kept screaming and soon the cashier and the bartender shoved her aside and kicked in the office door and found, crumpled atop his desk, the mangled and slashed body of Mulkei, the man G.I. s called Water Doggy.
Captain Kim surveyed the murder scene with all the grim concentration of a demon evaluating an invoice from Beelzebub.
“Same-same Horsehead,” I said.
Captain Kim grunted but did not answer.
There were numerous stab wounds on the body of Water Doggy. Three different implements had been employed was my guess but I couldn’t be sure without actually touching the wounds and measuring their width and depth. But that wasn’t my job. As usual, I was here simply as an observer for 8th Army, at the tolerance of Captain Kim. Just the fact that he allowed me to observe the murder scene told me that he didn’t believe for a minute the charges that Lieutenant Pong from the 8th Army KNP liaison officer had leveled against Ernie and me. There were factions within the Korean National Police, many of them, and my experience with Captain Kim was that he was so stubborn and opinionated and protective of his Itaewon turf that he formed a major faction of the KNPs all by himself.
Lights were brought in to illuminate the scene for the evidence gathering team. They weren’t an independent group because Captain Kim hovered over them, barking orders. After a couple of hours he left one of his lieutenants in charge of the crime scene and made the trip that no cop anywhere in the world wants to make: to the home of the victim, in order to officially notify Water Doggy’s wife and his family of what had happened. He didn’t ask me to go along and I certainly didn’t volunteer. Regardless of what type of dissolute life Water Doggy had led, regardless of what crimes he’d committed, and regardless of what his wife might’ve put up with while living with him, telling her that he was dead was not going to be easy.
Water Doggy’s office didn’t tell us much. There didn’t seem to be anything missing. A cashbox in the bottom drawer of his desk was unmolested. The furnishings in his office weren’t nearly as elaborate as in the office of Snake, or even Jimmy Pak. What Water Doggy had that his fellow Seven Dragons did not have was a long leather couch across from his desk. Plenty long enough for the diminutive Water Doggy to lie down on and still have enough room for one of the leggy cocktail waitresses to join him. Or at least that’s what I imagined but that’s the way my thoughts were going since I’d spent the night with Doctor Yong In-ja.
The effect of Water Doggy’s demise on the waitresses and bartenders and the cashier of the Lucky Lady Club was devastating. They stopped working and huddled in front of the bar, hugging one another, whispering and staring at the cops and medical personnel entering and exiting Water Doggy’s office. The band packed up its
