I pretended to wash my hands in the sink. Ernie combed his hair in front of the mirror. Strange shoved the list back into his pocket and jumped into one of the stalls. The officer finished his business at the urinal and then frowned at us as he splashed a little water on his hands. When he left I knocked on the door of the stall that Strange was in.
“All clear.”
No answer. I opened the door. He was sitting on the commode, pants still up, studying the list. His cigarette holder was waggling furiously. He pointed to one of the entries.
“This one’s got be Ida up at Protocol. That old bitch likes to get into everybody’s business. No reason for her to be signing out marriage packets. And this is Major Hardy from the G-2 office.”
“Security?”
“Yeah. Some of these guys must have clearances.”
I stepped further into the stall, almost completely blocking the light.
“What about these entries here?” I pointed to the letters behind Pak Ok-suk and Li Jin-ai. “Do you know whose initials these are?”
“KMH. It doesn’t jerk my chain.”
“Maybe if you looked at some of the signatures back at your office you’d be able to find it.”
Reluctantly Strange got up from the commode and waddled out of the latrine and down the hallway. We waited outside the barred window as he shuffled through various ledgers and logs and piles of paperwork. He came back to the window shaking his head.
“KMH. I can’t find anyone in the headshed here with the initials KMH. Nobody who picks up distribution anyway.”
“Do you have a complete list of employees?”
“No. No reason to break it down that way. The Civilian Personnel Office would have a complete list but that would be of all the employees at the Eighth Army Headquarters. The whole complex. Not just this building.”
“People from other buildings sign stuff out here?”
“Sure. A lot of them.”
“Will you keep looking for this KMH for us?”
“Yeah. But don’t expect me to stay here late. I got to go out tonight and find some strange.”
Ernie gave Strange his card and told him to call if he figured out who this KMH was. We left the building. The brisk air outside seemed life-giving after the claustrophobic tension that pervaded the Eighth Army Headquarters.
“He seemed awfully helpful,” I said.
“He’ll do anything for me.”
“Why?”
“Because I tell him about the strange that I get.”
“What strange?”
“I just make it up. He lives in a fantasy world anyway.”
We strode back to our own little dreamland at the Eighth Army CID Detachment.
Investigators Burrows and Slabem were in the first sergeant’s office. Slabem had his shirt off and Burrows was taping wire to the soft flesh of his pink body.
“I know,” Ernie said. “Don’t tell me. You’re going to pop out of a cake at an electronics convention.”
The first sergeant growled. “Knock off the bullshit, Bascom. Slabem here’s going to get the goods on this guy Lindbaugh so we can bust him for taking kickbacks from this Mr. Kwok out in the village.”
Burrows finished the taping job and Slabem put on his shirt. The first sergeant told them to leave and then he glared at us.
“If you guys got something against Burrows and Slabem I want you to just keep it to yourselves.”
“All they care about is statistics, Top,” Ernie said. “So they’ll look good at the briefing and have a better shot at getting their next promotion.”
“Which you two guys probably won’t get.”
“I didn’t join the Army to get rich,” I said. Actually, I joined to eat regular, but I didn’t tell him that.
“Well, you’re off the Lindbaugh case now. Burrows and Slabem will wrap it up.”
“You mean, make sure it doesn’t explode and involve too many people.”
The first sergeant’s face twisted, as if something rotten had suddenly decided to take possession of his intestines. He held his breath for a while and then slowly exhaled, getting it under control.
His voice was calm and precise: “I’m putting you guys back on the black-market detail. Eight to five. Get out there and get me some arrests.”
“Mayonnaise and instant coffee,” Ernie said and shrugged. “Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.”
Beneath the dingy, unlit neon, a beaded curtain drawn across the open door, stood Mama Lee’s.
It was a nightclub, but there were a series of rooms in the back. The girls who worked here lived here, on display in the front but making their real living out back.
I clattered through the beads into the large main room. The bar was against the far wall and there were about twenty cocktail tables arranged neatly around the room. I went through the back door toward the hooches and heard some murmuring. Mama Lee was in the first room.
Sitting on the floor, she was ensconced comfortably next to a twelve-inch-high table heaped with PX goods. The inventory was typical: freeze-dried coffee, Carnation creamer, Nestlй’s hot chocolate, Tang, Jergen’s lotion, almond butter facial cream, maraschino cherries, olive oil, honey, strawberry jam, peanut butter, four bottles of Jim Beam, two cases of Falstaff, and eight cartons of Kent cigarettes.
Two old ladies sat across the table from her, puffing madly on American-made cigarettes, bargaining and waving their hands.
They stopped talking and looked around when I appeared.
“Oh, Geogi,” Mama Lee said, looking relieved. “It’s you.”
The women were well-known black marketeers and old enough to be my mother. I had occasionally been involved in raids in which they had been arrested by the Korean National Police. The raids were just a face-saving gesture for the police. The old women would open up shop in a new location the next day-after splitting some of their profits with the KNPs. Only the GIs caught doing business with them would be shafted: court-martialed, fined, kicked out of the service.
“She back room isso,” Mama Lee said, waving her thumb towards the rear of the hooches. “You try new girl? Taaksan number one.” She beamed at me with a gold-toothed grin and held her thumb straight up in the air.
“No,” I said, looking at the pile of goods.
The old woman cackled and stared at me. Smoke rushed through their craggy teeth.
“Number ten no sweat,” I said. “All GI taaksan number ten.”
“Yeah,” Mama Lee said, leaning back in mirth and slapping both her knees. “You right, Geogi. You right.”
I winked at the old women and walked down the hallway to the last room, where Kimiko waited. As Mama Lee had promised when I called, she was there.
We sat on the woven mats, a small table between us.
“You must have spent all your money on the funeral,” I said.
“It was important.”
“Yes,” I said. “It was very important.”
There was an awkward silence. I nodded.
“Miss Pak have no family. Like me. When little, other children make fun sometimes, because we didn’t have…” Kimiko looked at me and groped for the word. “Old people?”
“Ancestors,” I said.
“Yes, ancestors,” she said. “We didn’t have graves of ancestors to visit on holidays. My mother made me promise that someday I would return to the graves of our ancestors in North Korea. When everyone else is with their ancestors, I will visit with Miss Pak.”
“That will be good,” I said in Korean.
Kimiko smiled.
“Are you married, Kimiko?”
She pulled back her eyelids until I could see the white above her pupils. “Why would I be working in Itaewon
