Ernie pointed at one. “This one?”
“No. Next one.”
Ernie walked over and pounded on the door. No answer. He tried to open it. Nothing. The girl in the doorway waited, the cold air starting to wake her up.
“She’s not there,” I said to her. “Do you have a key?”
She shook her head. “Ajjima have.”
Something creaked, squealed wildly, and finally snapped. The girl and I both swiveled our heads. Eun-hi’s door was wide open. Ernie grinned at us sheepishly.
“Cheap lumber,” he said.
By now a couple more heads had popped out of their rooms. Still no Eun-hi. Ernie and I entered the hooch.
It was a small room. Tiny, to be exact. Just enough space for a Western-style bed and a stereo set and a standing closet jammed with jumbled silk.
The bed was a mess. The embroidered comforter and the stained sheets had been twisted and tossed every which way. Wads of tissue paper sprinkled the room.
“Looks like somebody had a nose-blowing contest,” Ernie said.
I turned back to the curious young women peering in the door and held out my hands. “Where’s Eun- hi?”
They conferred amongst each other, chattering away in Korean, thinking I wouldn’t understand. They mentioned a name: Suk-ja. I interrupted them.
“Eun-hi told me that she might be over at Suk-ja’s hooch.”
They stared at me blankly.
“Can you tell me where she lives?”
They conferred a little more, figuring I must be okay if Eun-hi had told me about Suk-ja. One of them started talking.
Suk-ja was an independent business girl and didn’t live here in the house with ajjima. Eun-hi often left early in the morning, after whatever GI she had policed up the night before returned to the compound, and visited Suk-ja. The girls were wide awake now and gave me good directions. Suk-ja’s hooch was just around the corner. But in these catacombs you could get lost in less than a hundred yards.
I asked them why Eun-hi was visiting Suk-ja so early in the morning. One of the girls shrugged.
“Jinhan chingu,” she said. Best friends.
Suk-ja lived on the top floor of a three-story brick walk-up. Ernie whispered to me as we climbed the cement stairway.
“We need to make a quick impression on her,” he said.
I thought of the sliced remains of Cecil Whitcomb’s body.
“I think you’re right.”
When we reached the door I prayed the girls had given us the right information. Ernie leaned against the far wall, raised his foot, and leapt forward. The door crashed inward. I rushed past him, into the tiny room, and two startled women sat up in terror.
Eun-hi was naked.
Suk-ja, a tall, extremely thin woman, wore a sheer pink nightgown as if to camouflage her protruding ribs. Large brown nipples stuck out from her flat chest like bullets. Her cheeks were sunken, the planes of her face sharp and angular. She was the first to recover from the shock. Her lips tightened. Her eyes narrowed.
“Nugu ya?” she screamed. Who are you?
I ignored her and grabbed Eun-hi by the shoulders and stood her up. She looked up at me, frightened, still struggling to clear her mind.
“Who told you to have us go to the Kayagum Teahouse?” I asked.
Eun-hi shook her head, too terrified to understand. Her English was never good and under these conditions it would be lousy, but I was too angry to speak Korean. Too angry to give her any advantage. I rattled her body and watched her large breasts flop with each jolt.
“Who talked to you about me? Who told you about the Kayagum Teahouse?”
I heard footsteps behind me, then a sharp high cry of pain. I swiveled my head.
Ernie held Suk-ja by the wrist. Her small white knuckles were wrapped around a straight razor. Not an expensive one, just the type with a regular men’s shaving blade screwed into a metal holder. She was a strong woman and struggled fiercely but silently. Ernie twisted her arm behind her back until, slowly, she bent forward. Her cordlike body writhed beneath the swishing pink silk. Saliva sputtered over full lips.
“Fuck you, GI!” she said.
Ernie pushed a little harder on her wrist. She grimaced.
“Nice talk,” he said.
I turned back to Eun-hi. There wasn’t much time. I couldn’t wait for her to come out of shock. Someone might call the Korean National Police and they could be here any minute. I slapped her.
Her soft cheeks rippled with the force of my blow. When she recovered she opened her eyes, stared at me, pursed her lips, and spat in my face.
I slapped her again and turned her around and twisted her arm behind her back and lowered her slowly to her knees on the sleeping mat. Once my knee was propped securely on her big round butt, I wiped my face with the back of my hand and pushed a little harder on her wrist.
“I’ll break it,” I said.
She started to whimper.
Suk-ja growled something to her but I didn’t catch it. Ernie twisted her around and slammed her face up against the wall.
I leaned harder on Eun-hi. “Who told you about the Kayagum Teahouse?”
“I told you before,” Eun-hi said. “A woman. A Korean woman.”
“How did you know her?”
“I didn’t know her. She came in the U.N. Club, in the afternoon. Told me to talk to you. She gave me money, so I talked to you.”
“How much did she give you?”
“Ten thousand won.” She said it without hesitation. Twenty bucks.
“Have you seen her again?”
“No. Never again.”
“She told us she was a student at Ewha.”
“Humph. No way.”
“She’s not a student?”
“Only stupid GI think so.”
I shoved a little harder on her wrist. “How do you know?”
“The way she talk. Her eyes. She business girl just like me.”
I’d totally fallen for the elegant lady routine. But it wasn’t the first time I’d been fooled.
“When is she coming back?”
“I don’t know. Maybe never.”
“Do you know anybody who knows her?”
“No.”
I didn’t know what other questions to ask. What more could I do?
Doors slammed downstairs. Loud, urgent voices. I looked at Ernie. He nodded. I bent toward Eun-hi.
“If you see her, you’d better tell me. You understand?”
She didn’t answer.
We let go of the girls and stepped back. I expected them to embrace, to comfort one another, but instead Suk-ja grabbed her razor and Eun-hi reached behind a small dresser and pulled out a leather strap.
Apparently we weren’t the first GI’s to give them a hard time. We backed out of the room.
Outside, Emie and I trotted down the hallway, stepped onto a balcony, and climbed down the rusty fire escape. It squeaked and groaned under our weight but held. The last ten feet we dropped to the cobbled roadway.
