part of every Mexican’s soul. I raised two fingers to my mouth, kissed them, and pressed the moist flesh against the Nurse’s cold, soft lips.
Then I grabbed Ernie, turned, and helped him down the echoing hallway. We climbed the endless steps together.
The army didn’t matter much to me anymore. Not the CID. Not my future. Not promotions. Not courts- martial. None of the things that most lifers put first. Only one thing mattered now. The only thing worth thinking about: Getting the guy who did this to the Nurse.
Outside, I hailed a taxi. I tucked Ernie inside. He didn’t protest. Just went along with it. His body so limp, I wondered if the life was draining out of him too.
The driver shifted the cab into gear and we lurched forward into the sparse morning traffic.
Ernie leaned back in the seat and rolled his eyes. “She was a good chick, wasn’t she?”
“The best.”
“And nobody’s ever seen anything like her. Not in Itaewon, not in Korea, not in the whole world.”
“Damn right,” I said.
“And we’re gonna find the bastard who offed her.”
“You better believe we are.”
“And I’m going to personally rack his ass up and hang it out to dry.”
“No doubt.”
Ernie nodded his head vigorously, turned, and gazed out at a passing bus. Then he stared at his hands hanging limply in his lap.
Before we made it back to the compound, he was crying.
29
A tall, busty girl, her black hair tied back in a white bandana, brought me another frosty mug of beer.
“Dasi hanbon?” she asked. One more time?
“Yes,” I said. “Dasi hanbon.”
She laughed, still amused by the fact that a foreigner could actually speak an intelligible sentence. As she turned away the skirt of her long blue dress swirled around her thick calves.
I was in the OB Bear House, on the outskirts of Itaewon, a spot where GI’s don’t often go. Plenty of Korean working men stood around at the small shelves against the walls or perched on tall stools surrounding high tables that were just large enough for three or four mugs of beer and a small plate of snacks.
This morning, Ernie had refused to return to the hospital. When I nagged him about it, he took a swing at me. I dodged it and later he apologized, but I knew the murder of the Nurse was about to drive him nuts. He just sat in his room, drinking beer, telling even the houseboy to get the fuck away from him.
There was only one way to pull him out of it: action.
I had to get a line on this killer and I had to get it fast. Eighth Army CID was too inefficient and relied too much on what they were told by the Korean National Police. There were just too many leaks in Lieutenant Pak’s organization. Herbalist So was my last chance.
I needed direct action. I needed expertise in operating clandestinely in the city of Seoul. And I needed it now. Only So and his slicky boys could provide it.
The biggest stumbling block was, of course, that Slicky King So and the slicky boys had tried to murder us a couple of days ago.
But I’m a forgiving type of guy. I had to keep in mind that Ernie had pissed him off by slapping herbal tea into his face. And Herbalist So probably figured that if we escaped, we would betray his operation.
Since then, he’d had time to cool off. He must’ve come to realize that we weren’t after the slicky boys, we were after the murderer of Cecil Whitcomb-and the murderer of Miss Ku and now the Nurse.
At least I hoped he’d come to realize that.
After all, he hadn’t made any further attempts on our lives. This I took as a sign of goodwill.
The way I figured it there were two possibilities. If the slicky boys had nothing to do with the murder of Cecil Whitcomb, then Slicky Boy So would be happy to cooperate in tracking down the real killer. More murders could further excite the honchos of 8th Army, disrupting the slicky boy king’s operation and costing him money.
That was the way I figured it. He’d want my help. Sure. No problem.
It was the second possibility that had me worried: Maybe the slicky boys had knifed Cecil Whitcomb.
Then, if we had drunk the potion that Herbalist So offered us in the dungeon, it probably would’ve proved fatal. And if I walked back into his clutches again, I’d probably never walk out.
Still, what choice did I have? I had to take the chance. I wasn’t going to catch this killer, whoever he was, without help.
This afternoon, I’d gone to visit the retired slicky boy, Mr. Ma. I told him I wanted to meet with Herbalist So because I was sure that we could work out our differences and that we needed one another’s help. He was noncommittal, but listened to me.
Finally, he sent his son Kuang-sok scampering away with a whispered message. When he came back, Mr. Ma told me to be here, at the OB Bear House, at eight P.M. Alone.
When I tried to drink the first beer at the OB Bear House, my hand shook so badly that I was forced to prop my elbow against the wall to raise the mug.
That had been two hours ago. I was still cooling my heels. No word yet. My stomach twisted like an undisciplined beast. This was my fourth liter of beer but I felt more sober than a chaplain at Sunday services.
A neat young man wearing thick, round-lensed glasses sat next to me, sipping on his beer and studying a textbook with a number of mathematical notations on its pages. He shifted his umbrella in his lap, recrossed his legs, and spoke to me in English.
“You shouldn’t drink so much.”
I looked at him. Amused. Good thing Ernie wasn’t here. He was liable to pop him one for a remark like that. Me, I was just curious. Koreans don’t usually interfere with other people’s business, especially foreigners.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Herbalist So doesn’t like it.”
I set my beer down. “Why didn’t you talk to me earlier?”
“We had to check you out.”
I glanced out in the street. No sign of So’s sentries, but they were out there somewhere.
“I’m alone,” I told the neat young man.
“I know.”
He picked up his umbrella, rose, and said, “Follow me. About ten paces behind.”
Sadistic little bastard, I thought. He had waited until I ordered a fresh beer. I glugged down as much of it as I could and hurried after him. Pellets of frozen rain spat against my face. Still, I managed to keep the swiftly moving young man in sight. He crossed the MSR, away from the main nightclub district, heading up a winding road that led into a somewhat higher class residential district. We turned down a number of narrow lanes. They were clean, well kept. Upturned shingle roofs rose behind high brick walls. Ernie and I never came up here because the debauchery of Itaewon didn’t reach this high.
After we walked for about ten minutes, the young man snapped his umbrella shut and stepped into a small tearoom. I followed him in. The joint wasn’t much bigger than a four-man room in the barracks.
We walked past a half dozen empty tables, pushed through a beaded curtain, and through another door into an outdoor garden with metal tables sheltered beneath a large canvas awning.
Herbalist So sat at one of the tables, an elegantly designed glass lamp in front of him. He wore a three-piece business suit and a huge wristwatch. A brand the PX never carried.
The neat young man with the umbrella disappeared. Shadows hovered beneath grinning demons carved into the stone-walled enclosure. Bodyguards.
I sat down in front of Herbalist So.
“You look good in that outfit,” I told him. “On Wall Street you’d fit right in.”
