The receptionist ran out from behind her desk and grabbed the Nurse by the shoulders, but she was a frail woman. The Nurse swiveled, elbowing her in the gut, and the receptionist went down.
By now the agency owner was back up, claws bared. She charged the Nurse and grabbed a good handful of her hair. They wrestled back and forth, a match for each other, screaming and shouting curses.
Ernie stood back, arms crossed, grinning. His work done. He loved it when people went crazy. Maybe it was his two tours in Vietnam that did it to him. I don’t know.
I wanted to help the Nurse, but instead I took advantage of the situation and stepped into the back office. Behind a polished mahogany desk was a tinted plate glass window with a magnificent view of downtown Seoul. I didn’t have time to admire it. Instead, I checked through the bookshelves until I found what I was after. Four leather-bound volumes with mug shots of the talented ladies represented by the agency.
I thumbed through the pages quickly, listening to the crashes and shrieks outside. There were men’s voices now. Apparently the front door of the office was open and people from down the hallway had come to find out what was going on.
It seemed to take forever. I flipped through the faces until they became a blur and suddenly I stopped and turned back three pages.
There she was. Her hair piled up and longer than it had been when I’d seen her. Wearing a traditional Korean dress embroidered with white cranes. But it was her, all right. Miss Ku. No one could ever mistake that beautiful smile.
I checked her real name: Choi Yong-ran. Miss Ku must be her stage name. And the name she uses when duping unsuspecting CID agents in Itaewon. Many Koreans change names when they change professions. Especially when the profession is somewhat unsavory. Like being a kisaeng.
It was easier finding her folder in the steel filing cabinet because everything was in order according to the hangul alphabet. Rather than jotting anything down, I just stuck the folder under my coat next to the little snub- nosed. 38.
By now, pandemonium reigned in the front room. Some of the Korean men were arguing with one another, and the Nurse and the agency owner were still locked in a hair-pulling embrace. Ernie stood back out of the way. I nodded to him.
Stepping forward, I whipped out my CID badge. I held it high in the air.
“Nobody move!” I said. “You’re all under arrest!” I pointed at one of the men who seemed to be in the thick of things.
“What’s your name?” I demanded.
He seemed intimidated by the show of authority and pointed with his forefinger to his nose.
“Yes, you,” I said, still using English, figuring it would keep them off-balance. “What’s your name?”
“Hong,” he said.
“Good.” I stepped forward and patted him on the shoulder.
By now Ernie had somehow extricated the Nurse from the agency owner’s grasp. She charged again but Ernie straight-armed her and held her back.
“Mr. Hong, I’m putting you in charge.”
Ernie knew what to do. He thrust the writhing and screaming agency owner into Mr. Hong’s arms.
“Hold her, now,” I said.
He nodded. The enraged woman almost wriggled out of his grasp but another man stepped forward to assist.
Ernie dragged the screaming Nurse out the doorway and down the hallway. Following them, I stopped and turned to the stunned crowd.
“The police will be here any minute. No one move.”
Ernie didn’t bother with the elevator but found the doorway to the stairs and pushed through it. I was right behind him. The Nurse started to calm down, realizing now that disappearing was the wisest course of action. She moved quickly down the cement steps.
“Good thinking, pal,” Ernie said.
“Koreans respect authority,” I answered. “Someone taking charge. And when you spout it out in English, they’re confused. Backs them off for a minute.”
Boots pounded on cement. Coming up toward us. Running.
“The police,” Ernie said.
The Nurse clung to him. The KNP’s would arrest her without questions if they found out what happened.
I shoved past them. “Let me go first.”
When the footsteps were two flights below me, I shouted.
“Kyongchal!” Police.
I rushed down the stairs, holding up my badge. Two young troopers in khaki uniforms stopped when they saw me, both panting heavily.
This time I spoke Korean. “Mipalkun Honbyong,” I said. Eighth Army Military Police. “There’s a crazy woman upstairs on the twelfth floor. Already one person has been attacked. We’re escorting the victim to the hospital now.”
They nodded.
“Hurry! Up to the twelfth floor. What are you waiting for?”
The policemen shoved past me and Ernie and the Nurse.
We trotted downstairs, out the front door, and after sprinting through a couple of alleys, waved down a taxi.
21
Her silk shirt swirled like whirring jade. The beautiful young woman banged away at a circle of suspended drums as if she were trying to disturb the slumber of long-dead kings. As the rhythm increased she twirled ever faster. I thought she’d go mad with dizziness.
Ernie snapped his gum beside me.
“Does she take off her clothes?”
The Nurse elbowed him.
“No, Ernie,” I said. “This is classical Korean kisaeng. The real thing. Ancient arts. These girls are dancers and musicians and poets. Not strippers.”
“So what’s the difference?”
“Jesus. There’s no talking to you.”
We stood in a carpeted hallway. Beyond us spread a ballroom dotted with linen-draped cocktail tables. Leather-upholstered booths lined the walls. A small stage shoved into a corner supported the spinning kisaeng.
The joint was in the brightly lit downtown district of Mukyo-dong. Outside, a hand-carved sign in elegant Chinese script told it all: The House of the Tiger Lady. A kisaeng house. Reserved for the rich.
“This place sucks,” Ernie said.
He despises opulence.
You’re just suspicious of any place that doesn’t have sawdust on the floors,” I said.
No one had noticed us yet. Elegant young women, wearing the traditional Korean chima-chogori-long, billowing skirts and short, loose-sleeved tunics-paraded across the room like brightly colored flowers of pink and red and sky blue, bowing and serving the men in the audience. All the customers were Korean businessmen in expensive suits. Not a foreigner in the crowd. Not even a Japanese.
The folder I had pilfered from the Shooting Star Talent Agency confirmed my suspicion that Choi Yong-ran- alias, Miss Ku-wasn’t what she’d claimed to be. She had graduated from middle school but after that, instead of her continuing on to high school, her family had enrolled her in a music training conservatory. Forget college. Despite what she’d told us in the teahouse in Itaewon, she was no more a graduate of Ewha University than I was an Ivy Leaguer with a trust fund.
