“Where in Taegu?” I asked.
At that, they shrugged their slender shoulders. We’d finished our coffee and exhausted the totality of their knowledge concerning Corporal Robert R. Pruchert. I slipped them a thousand-won note, thanked them, and left.
Kwok, the cab driver, made me bargain for his information.
“Business is not good,” he told me in Korean. “Nobody takes a cab anymore. Rich man has his own car now. Not like before. G.I. no come no more. Maybe sometimes I carry pigs or chickens from one village to next. That’s it.”
“What about Pruchert?” I asked him. “Bobby Pruchert.”
“The monk?”
I nodded.
“He all the time go same place.”
That’s when we haggled over a price, settling on four thousand won. I handed him the money.
“He go to Taegu.”
“The train station?”
Kwok’s eyes widened. “No. Never go train station.”
“Then where?”
“Mekju house,” he said. “G.I. mekju house.” Mekju is beer.
“Where is this mekju house?” I asked.
“Outside G.I. compound.”
There was more than one American compound in Taegu: Camp Henry, Camp Walker, and, equidistant between them, an aviation compound.
“Which one?” I asked.
Kwok scratched his head. “I don’t know. I forget how you say.”
“What district of Taegu is it in?”
That he knew. “Namgu,” he said.
Namgu means the southern ward. With a map, I should be able to figure out which compound it was. But outside of both Camps Henry and Walker there were dozens of joints catering to G.I. s.
“What was the name of the mekju house?” I asked.
Again Kwok scratched his head, and when he was done with that he rubbed his chin. I handed him another thousand-won note. He grinned and stuffed it in his shirt pocket.
“Migun Chonguk,” he said.
“Did it have an American name?”
“Maybe. But I couldn’t read it.”
It is common for nightclubs or chophouses catering to G.I. s to have two names; one in English, the other in Korean. Often, the two names have no relationship to one another. I didn’t bother to thank Mr. Kwok. He’d been well compensated for his trouble. In fact, he’d been paid too much. Five thousand won was the equivalent of ten US dollars.
As we walked away, Ernie said, “He held you up.”
“At least we know where Pruchert went.”
“Maybe. Unless he’s lying to us.”
“He’d better not be.”
“Why? What could you do to him?”
I didn’t answer.
“You’re not the type,” Ernie said, “to come back and punch him in the nose.”
We climbed in the sedan and Ernie started the engine. He’d been intrigued by his own question and wouldn’t let it go. We pulled out on the two-lane highway and Ernie peeled off down the road, anxious to reach Taegu before we caught the brunt of the late-afternoon traffic.
“So if it turns out that this cab driver, Kwok, is lying to us, what are you going to do?”
“I’ll tell Kill.”
Ernie turned his attention back to the road, satisfied with my answer. “Right,” he said. “That would do it.”
What we both knew, without talking about it, was that if we told Inspector Kill that someone had information that might lead to the Blue Train rapist, and that person had lied to us, they’d be spending quite a few uncomfortable hours sweating it out in a Korean National Police interrogation room. Ernie and I wouldn’t have to lift a finger.
Ernie was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “Who do you suppose is on this ‘checklist’?”
We both knew that whoever it was might not have much time left to keep on breathing.
“So far,” I said, “the only people who’ve been on the list have been two Korean women with children.”
“On trains,” Ernie added.
“Yes. Passengers on the Blue Train.”
“So you think he’ll stick with that?”
“Maybe not. The KNPs have increased their presence not only on the Blue Train but also on local lines with both uniformed officers and plainclothes. Whoever this guy is, he’ll probably figure that out.”
“So he’ll branch out?”
“Maybe.”
“To what?”
“Don’t know,” I replied. “It depends on what his obsessions are.”
“Obsessions?”
“Yeah. Obsessions.”
“That could be anything,” he said.
“You’re right. That’s why the best bet is to catch him. Then he can tell us himself what his obsessions are.”
“That should be fun listening to.”
Ernie slowed at a railroad crossing but after checking that no train was coming, stepped on the gas again. We bounced across the tracks. On the far side, he said, “So, what was the name again of that mekju house?”
“Migun Chonguk.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You don’t know? Here, break it down. The first word is migun. What does that mean?”
Ernie thought about it a moment. “G.I.,” he said.
“Right. Literally, ‘American soldier.’ And what does chonguk mean?”
Ernie thought about this one a little longer. Finally he gave up. “I’ve heard the word. It’s just not coming to me right now.”
“It means ‘heaven,’” I told him. “Literally, ‘heavenly country.’”
Ernie slammed the sedan in low gear, slowed for a truck ahead of us, and when the road was clear, he slid the automatic shift back into drive and sped around the slow-moving truck.
“I get it now,” he said. “This signal site refugee, pretending to be a Buddhist monk, sneaks away from the monastery, stops in the Chonhuang Teahouse for a little refreshment and female companionship, and then he takes a cab ride all the way to G.I. heaven.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Why did he go to all that trouble?” Ernie asked. “Why not just check out on leave from the Horang-ni signal site, catch a ride to Hialeah Compound, and then take the bus to Taegu?”
“Alibi,” I said. “He was trying to establish one that might hold up.”
Ernie nodded, thinking it over. “As if we’re going to believe that he was meditating for ten days.” Then he chuckled. “G.I. Heaven. This place, I’ve got to see.”
It turned out that the district of Taegu that the cab driver, Kwok, told me about was the same district in
