Miss Kim picked up the little felt pouch in both hands, holding it as if it were a sacred artifact.
'It say, 'Choi So-lan,'' she answered. 'Everybody talk about her. Last night some GI knuckle-sandwich with her.'
Miss Kim balled her small fist and swung it sharply through the air.
'That's right,' Ernie said. 'And me and my partner here, George Sueno, we were just about to kick his ass when he ran away.'
I knew what Ernie was doing. Gathering brownie points. To help him in his long-standing campaign to invade Miss Kim's panties.
Miss Kim looked up at him. 'May I open?'
'Sure. Why not?' Ernie answered. 'All that's in there is Buddha's money.'
Ernie studied Miss Kim's red-tipped fingers as she fumbled with the leather drawstring of the purse. A bubble of saliva formed on his lips. Ernie has two fetishes: manicured hands and unshaven armpits. Both drive him to distraction.
Miss Kim turned the purse upside down and a handful of bronze coins and wads of crinkled bills clattered atop her desk. The last thing out was a jade amulet. While Miss Kim fondled the amulet, Ernie counted the money.
'Three thousand five hundred and eighty won,' he said. 'About seven dollars U.S. This is what that little nun risked her life over?'
Miss Kim nodded vehemently. 'Oh, yes,' she replied. 'It is Buddha's money.'
She held the jade amulet up to the light. A calm-looking Buddha, his eyes half closed, sat on a floating cloud. One leg was folded beneath him in the lotus position and the other leg pointed down. The lowered foot held back a snarling demon who was trying to claw his way up toward heaven.
The workmanship seemed exquisite to me. This amulet had to be worth a lot more than the three thousand five hundred and eighty won that the little nun had collected from the business girls in Itaewon.
'What is it?' I asked Miss Kim.
She cooed softly while fondling the pale green amulet in her long fingers. 'The Buddhist nun who give this to Ernie, she really like Ernie.'
'How do you know?'
'If she no like, she no give him this.' Miss Kim pointed to the figure at the top of the amulet. 'This is Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future. Below is Mahakala, the Lord of the Demons. This jade amulet, it will protect Ernie. Make sure nobody hurt him.'
Ernie snapped his gum. 'Good. I could use a little protection.'
Reluctantly, Miss Kim handed the amulet back to Ernie.
'You take very good care of this,' she said.
'Are you kidding?' Ernie said. 'I take good care of everything.'
We walked up Itaewon's main drag, past the unlit neon signs and the flatbed trucks unloading beer and ice. A light smattering of rain filled the morning air, but not enough for us to bother with a raincoat or an umbrella. The work- ers were half naked, the muscles of their shoulders and arms steaming with exertion.
Clusters of Korean women lined the sidewalk, some of them arranging flowers, others holding a black-and- white blowup of a face I recognized: Choi So-lan, the Buddhist nun who'd been attacked by the American GI.
'They're turning her into a saint,' Ernie muttered.
'Looks like it.' I was worried that some of the demonstrators would recognize us from the photo in the Korean newspapers, so I kept Ernie moving through the big double doors of the Itaewon Police Station.
The waiting room was jammed with citizens inquiring about their loved ones who'd disappeared after last night's riot. Ernie and I pushed through the crowd and demanded to speak to Captain Kim.
The surly Desk Sergeant shook his head. 'No way, he's busy.' When he saw that Ernie was about to jump over the counter, the Desk Sergeant slipped me a sheaf of brown pulp. 'He say give you this,' he said.
It was the official police report on Mi-ja's kidnapping.
Deciphering it from the Korean was difficult without my dictionary, but I managed to pick up the main points.
Sooki had been brought in for questioning and asked about the man who paid her to deliver the messages to us. As I suspected, she had little to add to what she'd already told us. She was paid, told to do a job, and that was it. The description of the man who'd paid her was clear enough. Big, burly, turban on his head. Ragyapa. The same guy I'd seen last night in the Temple of the Dream Buddha.
The most interesting part of the report was the interrogation of the caretaker of the temple. He had been bound and held against his will by Ragyapa and his thugs. The kidnappers were Buddhists, the caretaker said, but they were followers of an obscure sect. Definitely not worshipers of Maitreya, the Buddha of the Vision of the Future.
I explained all this to Ernie.
'Then who are these assholes?'
'The caretaker can't be sure. But he traveled outside of Korea in his youth and he made a guess.'
'Which is what?'
'They're Mongols,' I answered.
'Mongols? You mean like in the Mongol hordes?'
'Exactly. They worship a five-skulled deity known as Mahakala.'
'The same dude who's in that amulet the little nun gave me,' Ernie said.
'Right. His official title is Lord of the Demons.'
Ernie pulled out another stick of ginseng gum and stuffed it into his mouth. 'The Lord of the Demons. Good. About time he arrived in Itaewon. Don't know what's keeping him.'
9
Ernie eased the jeep through the swirling Seoul traffic. Herman the German sat in the front seat-because he was too fat to fit in the back-and gave directions: Mukyo-dong, the high-rent boutique and nightclub district in downtown Seoul. Herman was bruised and battered from the beating the Mongol thugs had given him last night in the Temple of the Dream Buddha. But he stared stolidly ahead into the rain. Unmoving.
The time limit until the full moon had been gnawing at me all day. The almanac we kept on the bookshelf in the CID office told me how long we had: five days. Five more days and four more nights until the full face of the moon rotated once again toward the earth.
As I thumbed through the slick pages of celestial calculations I remembered the carved stone calendars of the ancient Mexicans. When I was a child in East LA, I'd seen pictures of these calendars in books and read about their amazing accuracy. I asked my schoolteacher about these wonders, but my questions irritated her. Their accuracy wasn't proven, she told me, and it would be better if I stuck to my textbooks instead of reading about ancient calendars and UFOs and the like.
Later, I found out how wrong she'd been. The calendars were accurate. And useful to the people who'd created them. But I resented the years I'd been allowed to believe that nothing of value had ever been produced in the country of my ancestors.
The jeep rattled through the rain of Seoul, swerving in and out of speeding traffic. With the tips of his fingers Ernie kept a light touch on the steering wheel, and chewed nonchalantly on his wad of gum. I forced my mind back to the job at hand.
Actually, I was surprised the kidnappers had given us five days. But at the time we'd made the deal, they hadn't known that the KNPs would be breathing down their necks. If they believed that we'd betrayed them to the cops, Mi-ja might already be dead. But I was hoping that their greed for the jade skull would keep her alive. Nothing to do now but search for the skull, wait for further word, and hope for the best.
I leaned forward and spoke to Herman.
'This Lady Ahn, what kind of setup do you have to contact her?'
'She contacts me. Last time we talked, she scheduled this meeting.' He glanced at the watch on his hairy
