leather wallet.
“Nice work,” Ernie said. “Get a phony ID to go with that and you can black-market your ass off and clear a couple of grand a month. Easy.”
“So now we know why Mr. Chong can afford to spend time with the expensive ladies at the Tiger Lady’s kisaeng house. He creates and sells bogus documents. And we know that the guy who talked Miss Ku into doing a number on us the other day is into some serious black-marketing.”
“Yeah,” Ernie said, “but that still doesn’t explain why he of fed Cecil Whitcomb.”
No. Ernie was right. It sure as shit didn’t.
Our most promising lead so far had ended in a dead end.
The guy was an American. He had disappeared. The print shop owner said he didn’t know who or where he was and I believed him. A serious black marketeer wasn’t exactly likely to leave a forwarding address. Especially when he owed money to the people he’d done business with.
We wound back toward Mukyo-dong. I spotted a taxi stand and started toward it. Curfew was close, less than an hour away. Already the taxi line was long. In a few more minutes it would be hell trying to catch a cab and it was a four-mile walk back to Yongsan Compound.
When I queued up at the end of the line, Ernie grabbed my elbow.
“You go ahead,” he said. “I’ll stay down here.”
I looked at him blankly. “Why?”
“The interrogation of Miss Ku,” he said. “Got to finish it.”
I remembered her flushed face and her labored breath.
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess you do.”
He shoved his hands deep in his pockets, turned, and waded into the crowd.
It took me twenty minutes to catch a cab, and when I finally found one it was crowded with other customers heading toward the south of Seoul. The cramped sedan reeked of rice wine, fermented cabbage, and cheap tobacco. The driver refused to take me all the way to 8th Army Compound. There were only a few minutes left until the midnight curfew and he had to take his other customers to their destinations. Instead, he dropped me off in Itaewon.
I could’ve hoofed it back to the main gate-in fact I started to-but when I walked past the alley that led to the main nightclub district, the sparkling neon and the laughter and the rock and roll were more than I could resist.
I stopped in the 7 Club and ordered a drink. There wasn’t much time to get drunk before curfew, but I did the best I could.
It was morning. Charcoal glowed inside a small metal stove. The tattered wallpaper and the cold, vinyl- covered floor told me where I was: the hooch of an Itaewon business girl.
I searched frantically for the. 38. It hung in its holster on a nail in the wall. I put on my shirt and strapped the leather around my chest.
Other than the stove, the only piece of furniture in the room was a Western-style bed. When you’re in business, no matter how low your capital, you must invest in equipment.
Vaguely, I remembered something about two sisters. The younger sister lay under a thin blanket, curled up next to the stove. The elder had exercised her prerogative and snuggled comfortably in the big luxurious bed.
In Korea, the dictates of Confucius still live: Elders come first.
What had I done?
I couldn’t remember so I shook it off. No sense even thinking about it.
As I stepped into my trousers, both girls woke up. After they rubbed their eyes and slipped on their robes, I reached deep into my pocket and checked my money. All there. I gave them some of it. I’m not sure what service they had performed for me the previous night, but they’d let me sleep here. Besides, they were both skinny and looked as if they could use a few bucks.
Outside the hooch, I slipped on my shoes and pushed through the front gate.
It was still dark. The road that led back to the compound was deserted, all the shops still shuttered, and the dirty blacktop had been sheathed overnight by a smooth new layer of snow. Only a few curved tracks marred its beauty.
I spotted the sedan about ten yards down the road. A blue-and-white police car. Engine running. Windows steamed.
As I came closer I read the license plate. Namdaemun District, it said. The back window rolled down.
“Geogie.”
It was a strong male voice. A voice that I recognized.
“Get in,” he said.
The car door opened. A man wearing a brown trench coat slid over on the back seat to make room for me. Lieutenant Pak. He was up early.
I climbed in and slammed the door shut.
The car was warmer than outside but clogged with the smoke of pungent Korean cigarettes. Suddenly I knew I should’ve stayed outside and talked through the window. Now I was in KNP territory.
Up front, a uniformed driver and another officer stared straight ahead.
Lieutenant Pak reached deep into his coat pocket, pulled something out, and nudged it into my ribs. I glanced down.
The gleaming blade of a wickedly curved knife.
23
Most summers the county of Los Angeles decideD it would be okay for me to stay with my Tia Esmeralda. I think it was because I wasn’t attending school and therefore a strict enforcer of responsibility wasn’t so important in my life.
It was during those summers that I felt most completely alive.
My aunt enjoyed my visits, too. She worked in a textile factory on Wilshire Boulevard and although her oldest son, Flaco, had two years on me, she put her trust in me to keep an eye on the younger kids while she was at work.
During those long summer afternoons, when we were unsupervised by anyone, my cousin Flaco took it upon himself to teach me the skills of survival in East L.A.
Flaco was good with a knife. With one backhand flip he could send it twanging into the bark of the old avocado tree out back. And he could swing it loosely in his fingers and slice unripe apricots from crooked branches without nicking a leaf.
He also taught me how to fight with it. Keep it in close, not so far away that someone can grab your arm or kick it out of your hand. And jab with it to keep them at bay, pulling it back quickly when they move forward. But contrary to popular belief, he told me, you wouldn’t catch them with a long lunge, you’d catch them when they came to you. Once they did, grab them by the collar, jerk them forward, and, with a short brutal thrust, ram the knife onto the soft flesh above the belly or slash it across the unprotected throat.
Flaco talked viciously, but he wasn’t really cruel. It was the world that swirled around my cousin that caused him to react with a snarling savagery. Later, when he started taking heroin, he always claimed it had been forced on him.
I believed him.
The gangs in the barrio wanted converts. If they had to hold you down and shoot you up to convince you of the spiritual benefits of the fruit of the poppy, so be it. And then you were theirs. A junkie. A source of income for the rest of your life.
Now he was in prison. For burglary. Arts he had learned after I stopped seeing much of him. After I dropped out of high school and joined the army.
Now, as I gazed at the long, curved blade in Lieutenant Pak’s hand, I thought of Flaco. And how, in his own twisted way, my cousin had always looked out for me. I mourned for his wasted life.
