Somehow they already knew we had the nun's attacker in custody.
A rock whistled through the air, launched high into the gray monsoon sky. Ernie watched it soar, reach the top of its arc, and sail down and clatter harmlessly against the blacktop in front of us.
'Incoming,' he said.
'Yeah,' I agreed. 'Prepare for heavy swells.'
We exited the compound by a side gate where no demonstrators had yet gathered. Crossing quickly over the big stone block that composed the sidewalk, we reached the jumbled stalls and shops of Itaewon. Leather bags and sneakers and jackets hung from wooden rafters in mad disarray. Signs touting espresso shops and beer halls peeked out of the swirling collage, punctuated by an occasional obstetrics clinic promising help for venereal disease or pregnancy.
'There it is again,' Ernie said. 'The smell.'
I knew what he was talking about. The aroma of spiced cabbage fermenting in earthen pots. Raked earth, damp from the monsoon rain. Bubbling septic tanks waiting to be drained. Perforated charcoal briquettes, smoldering out their last red gasp.
I breathed in deeply. 'What's that?' I asked.
'What's what?'
'Smoke.'
'Charcoal?'
'No,' I said. 'More than that.'
I gazed above the skyline, about a half mile ahead to the bar district. A steady plume of black smoke rose into the gray sky, like a signal from Apache renegades.
'Something's on fire,' I said.
Ernie and I started to trot. Tongues of flame flickered into the sky.
'The yoguan,' I shouted. 'It's on fire!'
'Which one?'
'The one we were in this morning. The one where we stashed Lady Ahn.'
24
The first splats of monsoon rain slapped into my forehead as we ran toward the yoguan. Children in stiff- necked school uniforms scurried out of our way and a cabbage vendor wheeled his cart frantically to evade our onslaught. But the obstacles in the road meant nothing to me. All I could see was Lady Ahn. The high contours of her cheekbones, the stony set of her eyes, the pursed lips as she gazed down upon a world that had never quite met her exquisite royal standards.
She had become an obsession with me. But it was an obsession that made me happy to be young and male and alive. An obsession that I had no desire to break.
The rust-flavored wetness of a sudden monsoon sprinkle moistened the cobbled road. I slipped, quickly regained my footing, but Ernie surged past me. Up ahead the flames shot out of windows and engorged themselves in a brighter red.
Possibilities flashed through my mind. Maybe the fire was just a freak happenstance. Maybe it had nothing to do with Lady Ahn or with the skull or with Herman the German or with the kidnapped Mi-ja.
Maybe. But I didn't think so. I'd been a cop too long. Things didn't happen by coincidence.
As I ran, I steeled the inside of my gut. Lining it with iron. The same protective covering I'd used every time life presented me with a kick in the ribs.
Nothing good could come of this.
The Itaewon Fire Department was already on the scene, their fat red tanker truck wedged into the alley leading to the yoguan. Ernie clambered over it, ignoring the shouts of the firemen, and I followed.
The top floors of the yoguan were burning pretty good. Outside, the woman who had rented us our rooms stood screeching at the top of her lungs, pointing that there were more people upstairs.
Ernie didn't even slow down. He charged into the blackness of the front door.
But I hesitated for a moment, gazing up, searching for the small window of Lady Ahn's room. The window was totally engulfed in flames, more than any other spot in the building. The conflagration had started there. Of that I was sure. If she was still in that room, we were too late. I squeezed down the side alley, heading for the back entrance.
I kicked old boxes stuffed with trash out of the way and shoved open the wood slat doorway. The smoke wasn't bad back here.
Before I reached the second floor, however, the smoke was too thick to continue. Footsteps pounded down the stairway. Something black loomed above me, then burst out of a cloud of ink.
Ernie, tugging on an old woman wrapped in a long cotton dress.
I heard the swoosh of fire hoses; water started cascading against the walls above us. Outside, as if the rusty old fire station apparatus had primed something, the heavens opened and rain pelted down with a fury. As the old woman coughed and retched I sat her down on the varnished floor near the back door and shouted at her in Korean.
'Is there anyone else upstairs? A young woman?'
She gazed up at me, her eyes blank with fright. 'They took her.'
'Who did?'
'Those men. Those foreigners. She fought with them. She wouldn't let them in. They broke down the door. She fought them. I think it was she who started the fire.'
'And these men took her out before the flames grew?'
'Yes.'
'Where did they go?'
'Out back. The alleys. She was struggling so hard that they all had to hold her.'
Ernie was bent over, leaning against the wall, spitting and wiping his eyes with the back of his hands. I slapped him on the back a few times to clear his lungs.
'Ragyapa's taken Lady Ahn,' I said. 'Come on!'
Ernie hacked and spit up some phlegm. 'Son of a bitch!'
We rushed out into the narrow maze of alleys behind the yoguan, pushing past the gawkers watching the fire. The rain fell in steady sheets.
A group of men carrying a struggling woman must've left some sort of trace. We scurried like rats in a maze, twisting and turning, having no idea which way they might've gone. Through the mist, light glowed inside the homes we passed. Rain splattered on tin roofs. The soil beneath our feet rapidly turned into a muddy quagmire.
I stopped two pedestrians and shouted questions at them. We were drenched, our faces still covered with soot, our eyes enflamed with a frantic madness. The first person could only stutter. The second insisted he knew nothing.
We ranged up the hill, getting farther and farther away from the main nightclub district of Itaewon.
Finally, beneath the canvas awning of an open-front grocery store, I spotted a Korean policeman. He wore a long raincoat and a plastic hood pulled over his cap, and he was hunched over, listening intently to a woman who gestured wildly. We ran up to them. The KNP was so absorbed in the woman's story that he didn't glance over at us. I could make out most of the woman's rapid Korean.
A group of men-foreigners, she thought-were wrestling with a woman. The woman was bruised and bloodied and kept shouting for help. But there were no men around in these rain-drenched alleys. No one who could help the poor woman. I'm only a housewife, she said. I have children. What could I do?
I interrupted the tirade.
'Where did they go?'
Both the policeman and the housewife stared at me. I pulled out my badge.
'Odi kasso?' I shouted. Where did they go?
