her down on the raised varnished floor and cooed over her. One brought her a glass of warm barley tea.
When Herman finished with the charcoal, I stood in front of him.
'Spill it, Herman. What the hell were you into this time?'
'Nothing.'
Ernie, hands on his hips, strode behind Herman and booted him in the butt. Herman didn't jump as I'd expected him to but turned slowly, tears building until his eyes looked like boiled eggs.
'What'd you do that for?' he asked.
'For not talking to my partner. For not spilling it all.' Ernie jabbed his pointed nose into Herman's round one. 'Your little girl has been kidnapped. You came to us for help. If you don't start talking there's no way anybody's going to find her. So talk!'
For a moment I thought Herman might slug Ernie, but instead he rotated his torso back toward me.
'A skull. Carved in jade,' he said. 'From some old king. That's what she told me it was. Worth a lot of money, too.'
'Who's 'she'?' I asked.
'The chick,' Herman said. 'The tall chick. The one with the big yubangs.'
Yubang. Breast. Another important word.
Ernie raised one eyebrow. 'What's this chick's name?'
'Lady Ahn.'
'Lady Ahn?'
'Yeah. That's what she calls herself.'
'And these guys were looking for that antique?'
Herman nodded.
'How do you know?'
'They told me.' He held up his arm. Fresh round burns had been seared into the flesh above his elbow. I hadn't noticed them before. 'They told me they wanted it.'
'What'd you tell them?'
'I told them the truth. I don't have it.'
'Who does?'
'Lady Ahn. I'm meeting her tomorrow to set up the transfer. So I can get it back to the States for her.'
'Hold baggage?'
Herman nodded.
I saw the connection now. An antique dealer with a particularly precious piece she wants to smuggle out of the country. The Korean Ministry of the Interior won't let dealers take some pieces out, especially the ones classified as national treasures. Maybe this jade skull Lady Ahn had was one of them. And even if she received Korean permission to ship it to the States, once it arrived at a U.S. port of entry, a fat customs duty would be slapped on it. Military hold baggage wasn't checked as closely. In fact, it's hardly checked at all. A cursory sniff for drugs and that's about it. The perfect way to ship a prize antique out of the country.
'And once this skull arrived in the States, Lady Ahn was going to buy it back?' I asked Herman.
He nodded. 'With a nice markup.'
'So you were getting ready to arrange the transfer,' I surmised, 'but before you received the piece some guys visited you and did this.'
Herman nodded again.
'And when you couldn't produce this jade skull, they took Mi-ja.'
Herman let his head droop.
'You ought to get a job, Herman,' Ernie said. 'Earn an honest living. Then this shit wouldn't happen to you.'
Herman raised his head and glanced back and forth between us. 'We have to get her back.'
'No sweat,' Ernie said. 'We grab this jade bullshit from this chick with the big yubangs, hand it over to these tough boys, and they'll give you Mi-ja back.'
'But I don't know where the jade is at.'
Ernie shrugged. 'So we'll find it.'
A bell tinkled outside. I heard a kickstand snap open and click against the pavement. A Korean boy in black shorts and a damp T-shirt pushed through the small door in Herman's gate.
'Chunghua yori chapsuseiyo,' he said in a singsong voice. Please eat Chinese food.
The boy trotted past us, carrying a large tin box slashed with red ideograms. My regular attendance at Korean language night classes allowed me to read it: The Virtuous Dragon Dumpling House. The boy set the box down on the wooden platform in front of the hooches, slid back the metal sides, and pulled out a large plate of steaming dumplings. As he laid out plastic bottles of soy sauce and vinegar and a few paper-wrapped pairs of wooden chopsticks, Slicky Girl Nam roused herself from her grief.
'Uri an sikkyoso,' she said. We didn't order this.
'Sonmul,' the boy said. A gift. 'Ohton chingu sikkyosoyo.' A friend ordered it for you.
Slicky Girl Nam nodded. One of the old women squatted near the plate, grabbed a small table, unfolded the legs, and started to arrange the chopsticks.
The boy splashed past us, ducked through the gate, and hopped on his bike. In a few seconds, I heard the swishing rubber of his tires wheeling away. I turned back to Herman.
'Tell me more about the guys who broke in here,' I said.
'They were foreigners.'
'Foreigners? Not Korean?'
'Right. But not Americans, either.'
Ernie was growing impatient with the slow plodding of Herman's thought processes. 'Then what the hell were they?'
Herman shrugged. 'I don't know.'
'What'd they look like?' I asked.
'Sort of like Koreans, but maybe darker. They all smelled funny, too.'
'Like what?'
'Like maybe incense.'
'How many of them were there?'
'Maybe a half dozen. I fought 'em but they hit me a few times.' Herman rubbed his head.
Ernie was completely disgusted. He knew I had the patience to continue the questioning, so he strode over to the old women and the dumplings.
'Okay,' I told Herman, 'a half-dozen dark Asian men break in here, demand a jade skull, and when they don't get it they torture you and kidnap your adopted daughter. Is that what happened?'
'That's what happened. When they left I followed them, but I was still dizzy. I lost them in the alleys.'
'How long did you search?'
'Almost an hour. Until I found you guys.'
'You never saw any of these men before?'
'No.'
'And you don't have any idea how to get in touch with them?'
He shook his head sadly.
'I think what we have to do, Herman,' I put my hand on his shoulder, 'is talk to this woman antique dealer you were working with. She should be able to give us some sort of lead.'
A shriek filled my ears.
This one was high-pitched like the others, but male. I turned and saw Ernie sitting on the raised wooden floor, kicking back with his feet, trying to get away from the plate of dumplings as if he'd just seen the flickering tongue of a cobra. I ran over, Herman huffing right behind me.
One of the dumplings had been bitten in two. A sliver of meat lay next to it. The old women held their cupped fists to their mouths, looking like frightened schoolgirls. Slicky Girl Nam's mouth hung open. A croaking sound leaked out.
'What is it?' I asked.
