“Then how can we contact the King of the Slicky Boys?”
Lieutenant Roh studied me for a few seconds. When he spoke, he spoke softly.
“You must not continue in this, Agent Sueno. All Koreans respect Americans. Even the criminals do. We realize how much you’ve helped our country, and we realize how important it is for you to stay here so we won’t be conquered by the North Korean Communists. Still, if you continue to disrupt their operations, the slicky boys will kill you.”
I said nothing.
“What I’m most worried about,” Lieutenant Roh added, “is that it might already be too late.”
He stood up and walked out of the room.
15
Maybe it was because we decided to be good soldiers for once. Or maybe it was because Lieutenant Roh’s warning the previous night put the fear of God into us. Whatever the reason, we actually spent the entire day working on the black market detail.
We busted three housewives and one buck sergeant. All for buying coffee and cigarettes and liquor and other sundry items and selling them in Itaewon for about twice what they paid for them on post. Resale of duty-free goods is a violation of military regulations. Also of Korean customs law and the Status of Forces Agreement. All four suspects were taken to the MP station and booked. We figured the sum total of the take came to about $346.57.
U.S. goods black-marketed in Korea per year are estimated to run about ten million dollars. From that vast sea of contraband, we’d siphoned off at least a couple of ounces.
The problem was that we weren’t any closer to finding Cecil Whitcomb’s murderer.
From what Riley told us, Burrows and Slabem had done nothing all day other than review our reports and insist on interrupting Lieutenant Pak down in Namdaemun, demanding a conference so they could be briefed on his lack of progress. Typical bureaucrats. Laying a foundation of paperwork to cover their butts when they failed to solve the case.
I knew it. They knew it. Everybody knew it. But it would also make the CID Detachment look better, because they’d be sweeping a supposedly insoluble case under the rug without raising any more uncomfortable questions about the activities of the slicky boys.
Maybe Burrows and Slabem were right. Despite all our efforts, Ernie and I had been unable to come up with anything. Cecil Whitcomb was dead. Nothing was going to bring him back. The chances of us finding Miss Ku in Seoul, a city of eight million people, were narrow to nothing. And the chances of us finding the leader of the slicky boys, Herbalist So, much less convicting him of a murder, were probably less.
Maybe the best thing was to back off for a while. Let the universe flow on and see what happened.
After all, we’d already tweaked the nose of the King of the Slicky Boys. It was his move.
When the Honor Guard flag detail fired the cannon and lowered the colors at the close of the business day, Ernie and I hustled back to the barracks, changed, and made a beeline for the Class VI Store.
In the old brown-shoe army there were five classifications of supplies: Classes I through V. So when the army set up liquor stores, some joker decided to call them Class VI stores. That’s what they had remained ever since.
We bought a case of beer and a bottle of Jim Beam and a case of orange soda and two cans of peanuts and a jar of pickled Polish sausages.
“Supplies for a week,” Ernie said.
We flagged down a PX taxi and gave him orders to take us to Itaewon. When we pulled up in front of the Nurse’s hooch, she was already there waiting, holding the gate open for us.
A long cotton kimono showed off her curves. The Nurse had broad shoulders for a woman, but a small waist and round breasts. Roundness described her best. Strong but soft and round. Ernie was a lucky man. I doubted that he really understood that, though.
As we entered, the Nurse bowed and grabbed one of the packages out of the crook of my arm. Through powdered snow, she waddled on straw slippers across the small courtyard.
Red tile, upturned at the edges, topped the hooches that were constructed of varnished wooden beams. The smell of charcoal smoke and kimchi, pickled cabbage and turnips festering in earthen pots of brine, filled the cold air.
An old woman carrying a perforated briquette to refuel the underground ondol heating system bowed to us as she passed.
“Ajjima,” the Nurse said to me. The landlady.
Ernie and I nodded our heads in greeting.
At the front of her hooch, the Nurse stepped out of her slippers and up onto the narrow wooden landing. She slid back the paper-paneled door and motioned with her upturned palm for us to enter.
“Oso-oseiyo,” she said. Please come in.
Her unblemished face flashed a full-lipped smile. Long black hair shimmered and swooshed forward as she bowed once again.
Ernie placed his hand on her shoulder and spoke gently. “Do you have any chow?”
“Most tick I get.”
“Good. And pop a couple of wet ones while you’re at it.”
She did as she was told and soon we were sipping on cold beer and sitting on a cushion on a warm vinyl floor. The Nurse brought in a heated hand towel for each of us so we could wipe off our faces and clean the backs of our necks and scrub our hands. I felt cozy. As cozy as I had since the Whitcomb case began.
Ernie sipped on his beer. “A whole day wasted.”
“Maybe not completely,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“The word that we want to talk to the King of the Slicky Boys is out. Maybe it will shake something loose.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” Ernie didn’t sound hopeful.
The Nurse brought in a black lacquered tray, inlaid with a white mother-of-pearl crane fluttering its wings. She unfolded the short legs and placed it in front of us. Soon the small table was piled with bowls of hot bean curd soup, a pot of steaming white rice, and plates of diced turnips in hot sauce, spiced bean sprouts, and a roast mackerel staring with blind eyes into eternity.
Ernie rolled up his sleeves and dug in. So did I.
In Korean fashion, we didn’t talk while eating. The theory is that it’s barbaric to ruin the enjoyment of a good meal by talking about things that might start vile juices rumbling in your stomach.
As we packed away the grub, the Nurse hovered about us, not eating, herself, replenishing the various dishes when needed.
Most of the business girls weren’t nearly as traditional as the Nurse. She was doing it to give Ernie good face. And she was doing it to show him that she’d make a good wife. A great wife.
It was hard to believe they were the same couple I’d known a few months ago, when they were on the outs. Then the Nurse had barged into a nightclub in Itaewon sporting a warrior’s band around her forehead, brandishing a heavy cudgel, and caught Ernie flirting with another girl. She’d smashed glassware and almost cracked the table in two with the heavy blows from her club. It had taken three strong men to drag her off him.
That wasn’t their only altercation, either. Love, between Ernie and the Nurse, was a many splintered thing.
But lately they’d been more sedate. Maybe it was her threat to commit suicide if Ernie left her. Maybe it was that he’d finally come to his senses and was falling in love with a good woman.
After we finished eating, the Nurse cleared the plates and Ernie and I resumed talking about the slicky boys. As she wiped off the last of the sticky grains of rice from the small table, she glanced up and interrupted us.
“You want to talk to slicky boy?”
