rapidly up the ladder attached to the outside wall.
Ernie fired above the girl, but his bullet hit cement, sending a cloud of dust billowing into the air. She screamed and collapsed to the floor, covering her head, kicking in panic with naked feet.
I pulled myself toward the window sill, stuck my head out, and looked up.
Again, the same shoe. A black oxford, Army-issue. It disappeared over the roof’s edge. I stretched out toward the ladder, swung around, and started to climb. Up on the roof, shoe leather pounded cement.
Somehow, the guy had known we were coming. He had been dressed and ready, and he’d waited until the last moment, until we were too close to cut him off outside, to make good his escape. Had somebody warned him?
I climbed. And when I reached the edge of the roof, I peeked over, then pulled my head back down, remembering what I had just seen. An empty roof, dark, lined with earthenware kimchee jars.
He must’ve already jumped over to the neighboring roof. Would Suk-ja be able to slow him down, or would she just get herself hurt? Suddenly, I regretted having allowed her to help. This was our job, not hers.
Ernie was scrambling up the ladder behind me.
I clambered up onto the roof, helped pull Ernie up, and then we were running toward the far wall. Just as I was about to leap off the edge, onto the neighboring roof, Ernie grabbed me.
“Hold it.” He pointed at a glimmer of light peeking around a brick chimney behind us. I shrugged him off and prepared to jump. I didn’t want to leave Suk-ja over there alone, without help.
“No,” Ernie said. “Look. He’s not there.”
I glanced across the next roof and then at the roof beyond that. No one. Not even Suk-ja.
“He’s hiding,” I said.
“He wouldn’t,” Ernie replied. “He’d keep running. Come on.”
He dragged me back over to the brick chimney. On the other side was an open wooden hatchway. I looked down. Another metal ladder led down into the hallway of the third floor.
“He probably already reconnoitered,” Ernie said. “Knew that we’d expect him to hop from roof to roof, but instead he doubled back. Come on.”
He lowered himself through the hatchway and then let go and dropped down to the creaking floor below. I followed, and we ran down the hallway until we found the stairwell. We flew down to the first floor.
The women in front of the window were up now, terror showing in their eyes, all of them pointing through the light-smeared glass. A dark figure flashed down the street, heading toward the gang of Greek sailors blocking the walkway.
In seconds, Ernie was out on the street, running after him, me right behind.
Twenty yards ahead, I saw the dark figure smash into the unsuspecting Greeks. Men cursed and spun out of the way. A beer bottle crashed to the ground. Someone shouted and threw his hands up. I couldn’t understand a word, but the guttural sounds of cursing were unmistakable. And then our quarry was through the Greeks and past them and already disappearing into the mist.
Ernie didn’t slow down.
One of the Greeks shouted. They all spun, staring at Ernie, who was plowing toward them. The men stepped together and formed a phalanx, as if responding to an ancient instinct left over from Alexander’s army. Before Ernie could dodge them, they walked forward and reached out for him. Momentum rammed his body into the men, who grunted and gave and then held. They began to push back.
I could’ve run around them. Even through the dark and the fog I could still see the figure about thirty yards ahead, gaining speed, turning around a mist-shrouded corner. But the Greek sailors were pummeling Ernie. A knife glimmered in the yellow light of the street lamp.
I veered and rammed into them.
Men screamed and cursed, and I punched and kicked, happy, at last, to be set free. For the past few days, I had been holding everything inside: pining over a lost weapon and a stolen badge; putting up with the sneers of cops who play it safe, who stay on the compound near headquarters, afraid to put themselves at risk in the dark shrouded alleys of Asia. But now I was able to fight, to feel the satisfying crunch of fist on skull. Moving as fast as I could. Acting on instinct alone. Punching, kicking, screaming.
And then there was more shouting and Ernie was pulling me away, even while I still jabbed and cursed, and then my eardrum shuddered with the blast of his. 45.
As if encountering a thunderbolt, the Greeks retreated.
Ernie pointed the. 45 at them and cursed and kept jerking on the back of my coat and we backed off, until finally we were enveloped by the glow of the street lamp in front of House Number 17. Suk-ja was there, reaching for us, pleading with us to follow. The next thing I knew, we were running once again through the endless dark. I was enjoying the trip, feeling light-headed, flushed with the giddy rush of having released so much tension, until suddenly the world became smaller. Pinpoints of light spangled a blanket of fog. The lights faded. The fog closed in on me. A lonely foghorn moaned far out at sea.
And then I was leaning on Ernie and my feet grew numb. Suk-ja was helping. I’m not sure exactly when, but I must’ve collapsed.
Damp cobbles pressed against my cheek. People jerked on my arms, but I couldn’t get up.
I’d been stabbed.
The cut wasn’t deep, and the blade hadn’t hit any vital organs but it hurt like hell nevertheless. The doctor told me it was a slice more than a stab wound. She actually used those words.
“Slice your rib,” she said, pointing at her own rib cage. “Not stab into you lung.”
Her name was Dr. Lim. A bespectacled woman, middle-aged, about the size of your typical twelve-year-old American boy. But the girls at House Number 59, including Suk-ja, bowed whenever she looked at one and backed up in the hallway to make way for her as she passed. They treated her like a visiting potentate. Why? The doc was a savior to the girls in the Yellow House area. Suk-ja told me that she was in charge of the city VD clinic, a clinic that years ago set up business only a few blocks away.
Dr. Lim swabbed my wound with rubbing alcohol, then gave me a tetanus booster and a shot of antibiotic. When I asked her what kind of antibiotic it was, she grew impatient and said, “You be quiet.”
I did. In the Third World doctors are gods. Not to be questioned.
Then she sewed me up. Three stitches. Without anesthetic.
All the while, I lay on the warm vinyl floor of Suk-ja’s room in House Number 59, on a rolled out cotton sleeping mat. Suk-ja, the mama-san, Ernie, and about a half-dozen of the House Number 59 girls looked on, the girls still wearing their flimsy lingerie.
Life is a communal activity in Korea. Everyone believes they have a right to know what’s going on.
Ernie paid Dr. Lim out of his own pocket. After she left, Suk-ja fetched a bottle of Kumbokju brand soju, and she and Ernie and I sat in her room toasting one another, tossing back thimble-sized shots of the fierce rice liquor, talking about the fight, laughing, speculating on who the guy was who got away.
I passed out first.
“You smell like a sewer,” Ernie said.
“You’re not much better.”
The time was oh-dark-thirty. The sun still hadn’t come up, and Ernie and I were winding our way through the walkways of the Yellow House, heading back to House Number 17. Both of us were feeling pretty gamey, what with all the activity of the last twenty-four hours. Now, early in the Inchon morning, unable to perform our morning GI rituals- a shower, shave, and change into clean clothes-we were each becoming more uncomfortable by the minute.
Before we left House Number 59, Suk-ja had done her best to wash me up, bringing a pan of heated water for what Koreans call seisu, scrubbing of the hands and face. But it wasn’t the same as being in the barracks and standing under a luxuriantly hot shower for twenty minutes.
The Koreans consider Americans to be unclean. Most Koreans don’t have much more than one faucet or well outside to provide water for their home, therefore they don’t shower every day. But when they do shower, it’s with a vengeance. At a public bathhouse, they might spend two or three hours, rubbing and grinding and pelting their raw skins until every pore in their bodies is free of grease and grime.
We stood in the dark street in front of House Number 17.
The Greeks were gone. The narrow alley, where one of them had sliced me, was empty and silent. Ernie
