Suddenly I caught myself. If Shipton was in a PX cab right now, he might’ve had the driver turn his radio up. He could be listening to this conversation.
I switched to Korean, hoping Shipton didn’t speak it well enough to follow me, and told the dispatcher that I’d made a mistake. I told him I wanted him to inquire on a general broadcast if anybody had a passenger who fit that description but I wanted him to use only Korean (which he normally would have anyway) because I didn’t want the man to know we were after him.
He told me he understood. I heard conversation in the background, chatter amongst the other dispatchers, then he came back on the line.
“We can speak English,” he said. “Man no can hear.”
My heart sank. “He’s already out of the cab?” Once Shipton hit the streets, we could lose him again.
“No. He’s in the cab, but cab too far away to pick up signal.”
“Where in the hell is he going?”
“To Texas Street.”
Texas Street. The nightclub and red light district that ran along the strip right in front of the Port of Pusan, catering to sailors of every nationality. Less than a half mile from the train station district, near the little yoguan we’d stayed in.
“Do you have an address?”
“No. Driver just say he go Texas Street.”
“I want to talk to that driver. Now!”
“No can do. Too far away.”
“If we take another cab down there, when we get in range, we’ll be able to talk to this driver, won’t we?”
“Yes,” the dispatcher answered. “That’s fastest way. It’s cab number one-four-five. Pak-si is the driver.”
“Good. We’re leaving now.”
I glanced at our driver. He was about forty, heavy lines in his face, and he looked worried. I spoke back into the mike. “Explain the situation to our driver. Tell him we want to find Pak-si and find him fast.”
I handed the mike to the driver. He and the dispatcher chatted away for a few seconds. Ernie sat in the front seat. I climbed in back.
After his conversation with the dispatcher, the driver didn’t seem any less worried than he had been but he backed the cab up and put it in gear. We slid past the line of shoppers loading bagfuls of groceries into the trunks of the waiting cabs.
Once we passed through the main gate of the compound and were out on the broad roadways heading into downtown Pusan, Ernie patted the driver on the shoulder.
“Don’t worry, ajjosi. My partner and me, we’re taak-san number-one policemen. We catch bad guy, no sweat.”
The worried man nodded, flashed a wan smile, and turned back to the road.
I patted the 38 under my coat and wished I felt as confident as Ernie.
Chasing a murderous Navy Seal. On Texas Street in the red light district. Not the best way to round out your morning.
33
It doesn’t snow as often down south in Pusan, but there’s more rain and it can still get awfully cold. The roads were slick, and fat clouds swept into the city off the choppy gray waters of the Straits of Korea.
When we were halfway to Texas Street the driver clicked on his radio and tried to contact Pak-si. No dice. About a mile farther on he tried again: This time the little speaker in the metal box crackled to life. The two drivers spoke so rapidly I didn’t catch most of it but I did learn that Pak-si had already dropped off his fare and was returning to Hialeah Compound. I told our driver to set up a rendezvous point. I had to talk to Pak-si.
Five minutes later, we sat at the curb of a huge circular intersection with a statue in the middle. It was a granite replica of men and women striving forward together in an heroic effort to fight back the Communist hordes who had surrounded this city in the winter of 1950.
These big round traffic circles dotted the flat topography of the city and were responsible for a lot of accidents. Whoever the genius was who had designed them should’ve been run over by a speeding kimchi cab.
“Are you sure he’s coming?” I was becoming impatient.
The driver clicked on his radio, spoke briefly to Pak-si, and turned back to me.
“Maybe five minutes.”
Ernie climbed out of the cab and trotted through the rain to a little open-front store displaying the usual soft drinks and dried cuttlefish and discs of puffed rice. He bought three bottles of Bacchus D, a concoction of fruit drink and painkiller designed to ward off headaches, and came back and offered some to me and the driver. As soon as we twisted the caps off the little brown bottles and drank them down, another bulky Ford Granada with a plastic light atop pulled up behind us.
Our driver hadn’t turned on his meter-police business-but I handed him three dollars anyway. He nodded, started his engine, and sped out of there as fast as he could.
We climbed into the cab with Pak-si. He was a younger driver with straight black hair and a brown, leathery face and one eye that seemed to have been damaged in some way.
“Kapshida!” I said. “Bali!” Let’s go! Quickly!
“Where?”
“To wherever you dropped off the man with the hat.”
He revved up the engine and started to click on the meter, but Ernie showed him his badge and held up the palm of his hand.
“Kongja,” he said. One of the few Korean words he knew, but one of his favorites: Free.
Pak-si’s face soured but he drove resolutely forward, fighting his way into the flow of circling traffic.
On the way I interrogated him.
He told me that a man had come out of the PX with two large bags and he had helped him load them in the trunk of the cab. I flashed the photo. He glanced at it, then turned his concentration back to the road. Yes, that was the man.
After leaving the PX, they’d gone to the package store and after that to the commissary.
A routine black market run. Nothing the drivers weren’t used to.
I asked him if the man had acted strange in any way. If he’d seemed nervous.
No, Pak-si said. He was very relaxed.
After loading up at the commissary the man had told him to take him to Texas Street. This was a little unusual because most of the Hialeah Compound GI’s did their black-marketing close in, at some of the joints near the compound. Still, going to Texas Street wasn’t unheard of. If a guy has a girlfriend who works one of the clubs on Texas Street, he might deliver the goods to her hooch. That’s what Pak-si expected, but that’s not what happened.
I asked him what did happen.
Pak-si’s passenger seemed to know the back alleys of the Texas Street district well. He guided Pak-si to a residential area on the hills behind the nightclubs and had him stop in a narrow alley.
“Did you help him unload?”
Yes. And he carted all the stuff into the home of an old woman who obviously wasn’t his girlfriend but must be a black market mama-san.
I asked Pak-si how long he’d been driving a PX cab. He told me eight years. If he’d never been to that joint before, it couldn’t be a usual selling spot for Hialeah GI’s. He agreed with that. It was the first time he’d ever been to the place and seen the old woman.
Pak-si pulled off the main road, zigzagged through alleys, and suddenly we were cruising down the main drag of the district known as Texas Street.
How it got its name I wasn’t sure. The street’s real name wasn’t Texas. In fact, most streets in Korea don’t
