Communist North Korean invaders. She fell in with a young man, a fellow refugee, who was as broke as she but very generous and very kind to her. When the frontlines solidified somewhat, Kimiko was able to go back to plying her trade near the bases of the United Nations forces that had flooded into Korea. The young man stayed with her, still doing any kind of coolie labor he could find during the day, and pretended not to notice Kimiko’s nightly assignations.
After MacArthur’s landing at Inchon, and the second retaking of Seoul, the young man told Kimiko that he must return north to refurbish the monastery from which he had fled. All the monks had been killed by the northern Reds; only he had escaped. Kimiko wanted to go with him, he wouldn’t let her. He did tell her where the monastery was and how to find him if the war ever ended. Eventually it did. And Kimiko found him. He was the head of a fledgling Buddhist monastery. She came as a simple supplicant, not advertising the fact that she and the master had lived as man and wife.
The master wasn’t ashamed of her, though, and told all the monks how she had helped him and how they had been one during the disruption of wartime. Kimiko continued to visit and make contributions for years afterward. A few years after the master had died, Kimiko got in trouble up north in Yongjukol and was sent to jail.
Who had she buried, I had wanted to know, even though the answer seemed obvious.
“Miss Pak,” the monk replied.
11
Yongsan Compound on Monday morning was bursting with energy. I bundled up and walked out into the cold air, past the deep reds and browns of the old brick buildings and past the leaveless trees, shivering like skeletons in the morning breeze, past the soldiers and civilians scurrying to their posts.
First I went to the snack bar and got a warm cup of coffee. I didn’t bother with a copy of the Stripes. I had too much to think about.
I wanted to get out to the ville and talk to Ginger, but I would be lucky if the place opened by noon. Meanwhile I had to kill some time.
The Lower Four Club opened at eight on weekdays. I finished my coffee, went for the free refill, and by the time I was good and hopped up on caffeine, I walked up the hill to the club. It was 9:05.
I tried to figure why I kept pressing on this case. Everybody else was happy. The first sergeant was happy, the Eighth Army provost marshal was happy, the chief of staff was happy-so why did I keep going after it?
Part of the reason was Miss Pak. Someone had denied her the rest of her life. She wasn’t happy.
There was also Spec-4 Johnny Watkins. He was about to become a bitter young man.
Why did the damn Army make me take an oath if they weren’t serious about it?
The wind whipped in sudden gusts down the road. The Lower Four Club loomed up ahead.
My reasons for wanting to solve the case went even deeper. When I had been moving from home to home, handled as just another number by an overburdened bureaucracy, it had been the odd individual who had taken an interest in me that had saved me. They had kept me from drowning in despair.
I owed something to Miss Pak Ok-suk and Mr. Watkins. Not because they were friends or relatives but just because they had been assigned to me: my responsibility. I’d be damned if I’d take the easy route and not do my best for them.
Kimiko was another matter. I’d developed a grudging respect for her. Just a few days ago I had thought of her as the sleaziest short-time trick-turning artist in the village. Knowing something about her had made me realize how she had ended up here, how she had struggled to stay alive, and what her hopes had been. I was starting to like her.
But the problem was that Kimiko was standing between me and doing my duty for Miss Pak and Johnny Watkins. I was either going to find a way around her or I’d bust through her.
I had three days before Johnny Watkins went on trial.
The cocktail lounge of the Lower Four Club was open. The light was dim, glassware tinkled, and the place reeked of sliced lemon, disinfectant, and stale booze. Home again.
A few of the stools were already taken. Retirees. Gravelly-voiced Merle, cheerful Kenny Burke, somber old Hermann the German.
“How’s it hanging, George?”
“Straight down, Kenny. How are you guys?”
“Gradually getting rid of the shakes.” Kenny lifted his glass as if to demonstrate. Ice rattled.
I ordered a beer. Mr. Pyon, the bartender, served me and then went back to his station by the cash register. My eyes adjusted to the dim light. Across the bar, slot machines blinked on and off, waiting for the crowd of inveterate gamblers that would filter in before noon. Two pretty young Korean waitresses, in bright red dresses, chatted quietly with old Mr. Pyon: a grandfather making mild jokes with his granddaughters.
None of the business girls had made their way into the club yet. Still too early.
Two husky Korean men clad in cooks’ white uniforms wheeled a huge metal cart back to the kitchen laden with various sized cardboard boxes. Stocking up for the day’s business. One of them brought Merle and Kenny an illicit breakfast.
With the food in front of them, Merle and Kenny got busy. They buttered their rolls and then started in on the condiments. Merle must have put half the contents of the pepper shaker on the various items on his plate. Kenny, meanwhile, covered his scrambled eggs with a puddle of Louisiana hot sauce. Then they traded.
Maybe Vietnam had done it to them. I settled for a little salt.
The Lower Four Club was the hub for certain of the American expatriates: electronics technicians making extra pay for the “hardship tour,” insurance salesmen thriving in a sea of uninsured young bachelors, and the occasional representative for a distributorship zeroing in on the PX market.
Many of them were veterans, military retirees living on their pension checks, former NCOs who’d finished their twenty years and now got a check every month for fifty percent of their former pay. Most of them held part- time, horse-shit jobs on the compound. Almost to a man, the retirees had a Korean wife or mistress who they lived with down in the village. A lot of them had kids. Often it was their second set; the first kids, by an American wife, were grown and on their own.
They were a strange lot. A few of them had lived through the Korean War and couldn’t get away from it. Most of them didn’t really understand why they lived in Korea. They only understood somehow that they would never go home.
I sipped the cold hops. The beer tasted good against the film of coffee still on my palate.
Five minutes later Ernie walked in. He had the Nurse with him. We walked over to the dining room and each ordered the ninety-fivecent breakfast special: two eggs, bacon or sausage, hash browns, toast, and coffee or tea. I had two of them. With beer. Ernie had one. And then he ate half of what was on the Nurse’s plate.
She spread jam on his toast and seemed very happy.
By the time we got out to Itaewon we were all half looped. I had talked them into going with me to the American Club and I had told Ernie about the information I needed.
“Why didn’t you find that shit out before?”
“In all the excitement, I forgot about it.”
“What excitement?”
Sometimes I wondered if Ernie wasn’t suffering from brain damage.
The American Club was completely empty. All the chairs were upside down atop the tables and someone had just finished a thorough mopping of the floor. The Lower Four Club, by contrast, was jumping by the time we left. People spend their days on the compound and their nights in Itaewon.
I pulled a line of stools off the bar and we sat down. Ginger came out of the back room, her hair tied up with a heavy-duty barrette, her hands in long yellow gloves.
“Aigu! Watkutta!” You’re here.
We ordered three cold OBs from Ginger and she called back to one of her boys, who hustled out and started putting all the chairs down on the floor. She dimmed the lights and turned on the stereo system. Gordon Lightfoot.
