hopped down the stone steps outside to the jeep.
I told Ernie about what Lieutenant Pak had told me and about the guy who’d been following us. He didn’t like it any better than I did.
At the snack bar we bought two cups of coffee and sat down against the wall.
I thought about the Tiger Lady’s kisaeng house and the deep caverns beneath the streets of Itaewon and the phoney ration control plate we had found at the Hyundai Print Shop. None of it did any good. I didn’t know what we had. I didn’t know how big it was. Or if any of what we’d learned had any importance at all. The case was wrapping itself around me like the tentacles of a giant squid, and I knew that if I didn’t swim up for air soon it would drag me down into the slime and devour me bit by slowly chewed bit.
As if he were reading my thoughts, Ernie began to speak.
“Miss Ku didn’t say much,” he said. “Just that the guy was American and that he gave her real detailed instructions on what he wanted her to do. Go to Itaewon, find us, pretend she was a jilted girlfriend, and give us the note. She only saw him twice. The first night he came in with Print Shop Chong. Three or four nights later, he came back and made the deal with her. She doesn’t even know his name.”
Ernie glanced at me nervously. I knew what was happening. He was feeling guilty for having cheated on the Nurse. But that was his business. I had no opinion about it one way or the other, but he kept on chattering-unusual for him-as if he wanted to justify himself.
“I tried to pry more information out of her. But I believe that’s all she knows. After all, it was a straight money proposition. She does a job for him, he pays her.”
“But she saw him one more time,” I said.
Ernie ladled more sugar into his coffee. “What do you mean?”
“In Itaewon. After she talked to us. To receive the second half of the money.”
“Yeah. Then, too.”
It bothered me. It was bothering both of us.
“Eun-hi saw him in the U.N. Club. Miss Ku saw him outside the Kayagum Teahouse. The guy was watching us.”
Ernie nodded. “He sure was.”
We sat in silence. I looked at him. No wiseass remark. No cynical sneer.
He felt worse about cheating on the Nurse than I had thought.
“We have to find out his name,” Ernie said. “But how?”
I stirred my coffee and gazed into the black swirl. “There must be a way.”
“How?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “I have to think about it.”
Ernie respected that. He was never one to push. Still, he was worried.
“I think we might be getting close. And if we get close enough, this guy’s liable to know it.”
“And come after us, you mean?”
“It could happen.”
Ernie shuffled in his seat and glanced around the crowded cafeteria. “Sure would be nice to know what he looks like.”
“Sure would.”
When we returned to the office, there seemed to be a lot of barking into phones and pacing back and forth.
Riley pulled us aside. “A call just came in from the KNP Liaison. You ever heard of a place called the Tiger Lady’s?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We’ve heard of it.”
“Lieutenant Pak of the Namdaemun Precinct wants you two guys down there ASAP.”
“What happened?”
“There’s been a killing. Some gal. Something he called a kisaeng.”
As we reached the doorway, the First Sergeant’s voice bellowed down the hallway.
“Bascom! Sueno!”
I looked at Ernie.
“I didn’t hear anything,” I said. “Did you?”
“No. Not me.”
We ran to the jeep.
24
Thekiller squatted next to the body, keeping his feet out of the blood, trying to fight back the rage that pumped into his brain-blinding him.
It was still dark out and bitterly cold. Snowflakes swirled in the gusting wind, like spirits endlessly tormented by the night.
With the back of his hand the killer cleared his vision, forcing himself to concentrate.
She’d been dumped here, an arm and a leg cruelly twisted beneath her limp body. She wore a nightgown and a robe. No slippers. Red welts stood out angrily on the soft flesh of her neck. Her fingernails had been shredded and, before her death, oozed crimson, which was now clotted and dark.
Tortured.
How much information had she given them? Probably everything. But it wouldn’t do them any good. They still wouldn’t find him. No one would.
Not, at least, until he took his revenge.
Cuts had been sliced along her arms. Not fatal. At the top of her flat belly gaped a long gash. Probably the final death-dealing wound.
The killer almost laughed.
So that was their game. Put the blame on someone else. An old trick.
She’d written a note and left it, as he’d instructed, at the message drop: Contact. Two Americans.
He was miles away when he received the transmission. Still, he’d dropped everything and returned immediately. As fast as he could, but not fast enough. He gazed down at the corpse.
She’d done her best. In her note she said that she would try to delay one of them. Apparently, she succeeded. Her only reward had been death.
He touched the dead woman’s cold flesh. Just meat. Like so many he’d seen before.
When he first brought her into the operation, he’d used terror to train her. He showed her the photographs he’d taken of her younger brother and sister on their way to school, of her mother beating laundry with a stick at a stream near the family home. He’d demonstrated to her how he would kill them-running the edge of his blade lightly across her neck-if she didn’t do exactly as he instructed. Or if she tried to run away.
At first she’d trembled with fright, but she was stronger than most. She accepted the situation. She even seemed to enjoy the work, especially after he paid her for the first completed missions.
He remembered the long nights they’d spent together. And her lust for pain. Ever more pain.
And now she was gone. Stolen from him.
A pot clanged against stone.
He swiveled in a crouch, ready to fight, and surveyed the darkness.
No movement.
Inside the big building, people were starting to stir. The sun would rise soon. He glanced back down at the body.
His fists clenched. They’d pay for taking this from him. This that was his.
Like a shadow blown by the wind, he floated into the gloom.
