Afterwards, Ernie and I drove back to Uichon and asked the night duty officer at the Korean National Police Station to help us find the mama-san and the girls who worked the encampments in this area. The guy was adamant. He would give us no information, not without clearing it with his superiors. And since it was already past the midnight curfew, we would have to wait until morning to talk to the commander of the Uichon police station.
There was no place else to go, so Ernie and I sat down on the wooden benches and waited. And slept, until just before dawn.
Twenty minutes after we’d been woken up, the police station commander walked in. He was a young lieutenant named Cheon, rail thin, his khaki uniform pressed to a sharp crease. Most likely college educated. Probably a graduate of one of Korea’s military academies. As he listened to Ernie and me explain what we wanted, he was even less happy than Captain Lewis had been. No Korean cop likes to admit that, right under his nose, underage Korean girls were being herded out into the bushes to have sexual relations with American GIs. We asked him about the mama-san and where we could find her. She was the only lead we had to the smiling woman and the AWOL GI known as Bolt.
Cheon pondered our request, probably trying to decide if he should just kick us out of his office. But if he did that, we would go to our superiors, they would contact his superiors, and then the shit would roll downhill, soiling both him and his little fiefdom. Less embarrassing to deal with the situation here, at our level, cop to cop. I had already worked through this line of reasoning but I waited for Lieutenant Cheon to figure it out.
He did.
Cheon grabbed his cap and told the desk sergeant he’d be back in a few minutes. Ernie and I followed him out the front door of the Uichon police station.
The sky was brighter now, though still gray. The air was clean and sharp and cold, laced with the tang of growing things, sliced, and piled and festering in green sap.
Somehow, amidst all this open countryside, the people of Uichon had constructed a slum. Arable land in Korea has always been precious. Although the peninsula is fertile and blessed with many lush river valleys, it is also ridged with mountain ranges and spotted with hills. Land that can be used for farming is scarce and conserved fiercely, even here in Uichon. Living space for humans is packed into constricted areas. The main drag of Uichon, with the two-lane MSR running down the middle, only stretched a block and a half. Behind that front line of buildings, the alleys dropped off into muddy pedestrian lanes. We tromped through one that headed downhill.
Lieutenant Cheon led the way, stepping across mud puddles, hopping deftly from a flat stone to a leftover slat of lumber, keeping his highly polished boots as clean as possible. Ernie and I tried to follow in his footsteps, but we were less successful. Soon, my trousers were spattered with mud.
A man pushing a cart filled with hay trundled past us, smiling a gap-toothed smile and bowing to Lieutenant Cheon. It was still too early for children to be up and about and on their way to school, and many of the homes behind the rickety wooden outer walls were dark. Occasionally we heard the scratch of wooden matches or the clang of a metal pot or the growl of an old man rising, clearing his throat.
Lieutenant Cheon stopped at a wooden gate that had been stained black with grease. He pounded his fist and shouted, “Irrona-ya!” Wake up!
He pounded repeatedly, until the splintered gate opened a crack.
A woman wrapped in a heavy wool sweater, so frail she looked made of sticks, peered up at us. I recognized the eyes. The same phlegm-filled orbs we’d seen last night while crouching in the reeds outside the concertina wire that surrounded Charley Battery. Those eyes looked worried when she saw Ernie and me. More worried when she recognized Lieutenant Cheon.
She pulled the wooden gate open. We entered.
This hooch was more like what we were used to in Itaewon. Muddy courtyard with nothing but a rusty pump handle. A chicken coop with no chickens, and three hooches on a raised platform, the wood rough and rotting. One of the oil-papered sliding doors was open and inside lay a jumbled pile of blankets. One naked foot stuck out from beneath the coverings.
“Better tell them to wake up,” I told the old woman in Korean. “We’re going to talk to everybody.”
Ernie and I found two wooden stools. We sat on the flagstone edge of the courtyard beneath a tile-roofed overhang. The business girls came out, looking younger than ever. In the gray morning light, their naked faces showed pocks and blemishes invisible in moonlight. One of the girls had a milky eye, another a lame left foot. Gradually, this home for wayward girls was beginning to seem more like a hospice for the handicapped rather than a brothel for our brave American soldiers.
I took a deep breath and held it, trying to control myself. Pity doesn’t help in a murder investigation.
One by one the business girls studied the sketches, and one by one they stared at the mama-san in worried concern, unsure of what to do or say. By now, the old woman had slipped on pajama-like black trousers and a tunic and squatted in the courtyard beside us puffing on a stale-smelling Turtle Boat brand cigarette.
I kept asking questions. The business girls stared, as if they didn’t understand.
Lieutenant Cheon growled at them. “ Iyagi hei. Bali iyagi hei!” Speak. Speak quickly!
He didn’t like loitering in a whorehouse for foreigners any longer than he had to. But his instructions made the girls grow more reticent. They were frightened now, like a pack of chipmunks cornered by a wolf.
I caught Ernie’s attention and, out of Lieutenant Cheon’s line of sight, rolled my eyes.
Ernie understood. Soon he was talking to Lieutenant Cheon, his arm around the man’s shoulder. Then he was walking him toward the courtyard gate. Together, they ducked outside.
10
The girls breathed a sigh of relief.
The mama-san stared after the two men, her eyes squinting into tight wrinkles. Her only reaction was to puff even more smoke up from the foul-smelling tambay.
“Ajjima,” I said. Aunt. “Who is this person?”
I pointed at the sketch of the smiling woman.
The old woman stared at the drawing. She continued to puff on her cigarette. Finally, she spoke.
“I knew her mother,” she said. “Long time ago… so many men that time, chase me and chase her mother. No woman that time look better than us.”
“You were jinhan chingu,” I said. Best friends.
She nodded. “Nei. Jinhan chingu. We all time together. All time take man, best man. Man with most money.” She pointed at the top of her shoulder. “How you say?”
“The man with the highest rank,” I answered.
“Yes.” She waved her cigarette in the air. “Always top honcho. That’s who we take. We catch him and we make pay.”
She clenched her hand into a bony fist.
When this woman was young, the Korean War had been in full swing, and the country was swarming with foreign military officers, all of them away from their wives, all with extra combat pay and few opportunities to spend it.
“Sajin issoyo?” I asked. Do you have photos?
She smiled at that. Then she barked rapid commands in Korean to one of the girls. This girl was well-trained. She hopped up and scurried to a storage room next to the hooches. While she was inside, the mama-san barked more directions, and after a few minutes, the girl brought out a brown cardboard box wrapped with pink string. She set it in front of the mama-san and backed away.
The mama-san stared at the box for a while, still puffing on her cigarette. Then, with trembling hands, she reached forward and untied the pink knot. When she opened the box, a small cloud of dust and dried moth’s wings puffed out. It smelled of ancient secrets. All buried now. Forgotten. Except for a few ugly things, of which this wicked old woman proceeded to speak.
The Uichon mama-san told me that about three months ago, the smiling woman had come to her looking for a job.
