That time I see Miss Yun and her children.”
“Why’d you take her picture?” I asked.
“Miss Yun made me much money for many years. Always ask GI take picture. Some say no. Most say yes. When she young, many GI like her very much. So when she ask me to take picture of her and her children, how can I say no? I take photo, give each one copy. Keep this one myself. Here.” He handed me a copy of the photo. “I have negative.”
Ernie was already restless. He didn’t like nostalgia. He didn’t like reminiscing about old times, and it was clear that both Jimmy and I were doing exactly that, even if it was someone else’s old times.
“This big man,” I said. “Sergeant Garner. Tell me about him.”
“Lifer,” Jimmy said. A career enlisted man. “He come back and forth Korea many times. Always yobo Miss Yun.”
“Yobo,” meant lover. In GI slang, it meant to shack up.
“Are the two kids his?”
“No. Not his. They too good-looking. He know they not his. That why he all the time… kullasso.”
“Angry?”
“Yes. He don’t want pay photo. This one Miss Yun order. When he no pay, she tell me she sorry. She no have money.”
“But Garner was a senior NCO. He had money.”
“He stingy. Still, Miss Yun tell me he feed her children.”
“So she stayed with him.”
Jimmy nodded.
“When did you last see her?”
“When I took photo.” He pointed to the one of the withered Miss Yun standing with her almost-grown children in front of the Buddhist temple. “TB,” Jimmy said.
“That’s what killed her?” I said. “Tuberculosis?”
“I hear that. For sure I don’t know.”
Ernie crossed his arms, turning in a circle in the rouge-lit room, staring at the photos. Finally, he waved his arms.
“Why do you do this, Jimmy? Keep all these old photos of GIs and business girls?”
Jimmy shrugged. “Got to.”
I thanked Jimmy for his help, and we all left his lab. He said goodbye to his wife, and I helped him carry his motor scooter out to the street. He putted off down the hill, leaving us behind.
Ernie and I walked to the main road. We waved down a cab and headed back to 8th Army’s Yongsan Compound.
In the cab, Ernie was quiet. I kept staring at the photograph Jimmy had given me, of Miss Yun and her two children standing in front of the temple. It bothered me. The teenaged, half-American girl Yun Ai-ja was smiling, the beginnings of that unnerving leer.
14
The rising sun sent a dull glow over the mountain tops. Fog clung to fallow rice paddies. The engine of Ernie’s jeep churned as we swerved around the occasional ox cart trundling down the road. I cupped my hands to capture the warmth radiating from under the dashboard.
“ASCOM City,” Ernie said. “It figures. After the asshole ran away from us at the Yellow House, he probably caught a cab and headed straight to Pupyong.”
ASCOM City. The village outside the main gate of the 8th Army logistics compound known as the Army Support Command (ASCOM). Both were located on the outskirts of the town of Pupyong, twelve miles southeast of downtown Inchon.
The asshole Ernie was referring to was Private First Class Rodney K. Boltworks, formerly assigned to Charley Battery, 2nd of the 17th Field Artillery, now absent without leave. Also, the young man we suspected of participating in the robbery of the Olympos Casino, and the man who’d run from us when we almost collared him in Mi-ja’s room in Brothel Number 17 at the Yellow House.
“He would’ve had to hide somewhere in Inchon until the curfew was over at four a.m.,” I said. “Catch a cab to Pupyong. He’s probably been holed up in ASCOM City ever since.”
“With a pocketful of stolen money and no place to go.” Ernie grinned. “I couldn’t think of a better hideout myself.”
ASCOM City was a notorious GI Village. High crime rate, high VD rate, rampant black-marketeering, and no one figured to bring the place under control any time soon. There were a couple of thousand GIs assigned to the ASCOM support complex, and plenty of soldiers on TDY who were there temporarily for various reasons. The village started at the front gate. Every bar and brothel and chop house and hooch was jammed into ten acres, cobwebbed with winding footpaths, with little or no space for motorized vehicles. The military police patrols were conducted on foot. On a payday night, the nightclubs were crowded with half-crazed GIs, and the MPs and the Korean National Police were outnumbered forty to one.
How had we figured Boltworks was there? Ration control records.
Staff Sergeant Riley, the Admin sergeant at the CID Detachment had been monitoring them for us. Boltwork’s Ration Control Plate, or RCP, was still valid: we purposely hadn’t closed it out. For whatever reason, he’d decided to go onto the ASCOM compound and make some purchases. Two quarts of Johnny Walker Black Scotch Whiskey, one case of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, one jar of non-dairy soluble creamer, a 16-ounce jar of freeze-dried coffee, one pound of sugar, two cartons of Kent cigarettes, a large container of powdered instant orange juice, hand lotion, moisturizing cream, and two packets of nylon pantyhose. All prime black market purchases. Riley had cadged the list from a contact at the 8th Army Data Processing Unit.
When he saw the items, Ernie said, “He’s shacked-up with a business girl.” I agreed.
Ernie pulled the jeep off the MSR and rolled toward the main train station in downtown Pupyong. Even at this early morning hour, long lines of commuters were waiting to catch the next train into Seoul. We turned right, and three quarters of a mile ahead, we saw the main gate of the Army Support Command.
Ernie slowed to a crawl. Across the street from the high brick fences of the military compound, stood a sea of ramshackle buildings, none of them taller than two stories, with myriad alleyways leading down into the dark. Unlit neon lined the road: the Black Cat Club, the Yobo Bar, the Red Dragon Eatery, Mama Lee’s Chop House.
“Lovely,” Ernie said.
He meant it. He’d rather spend a week in ASCOM City than bask on the sands of China Beach, at Vung Tau.
According to 8th Army regulations, we should’ve checked in with the commander of the MP detachment of the ASCOM compound, to let him know we’d be operating in his area. However, Ernie and I had complied with that rule in the past, and all we’d received for our efforts was a bunch of long-winded speeches from pompous MP officers warning us not to mess with their troops. Bullshit we could live without.
Ernie cruised out past the sleepy village until we were seeing rice paddies again. Then he hung a U and turned right down the first cramped road leading into ASCOM City. This was the only route wide enough for kimchee cabs, and already a couple were parked in front of a small granary, their engines idling, waiting for the next GI miscreant who’d spent his night immersed in sin. Ernie parked behind the two cabs.
It would’ve been interesting to sit here and see who emerged, bleary-eyed and hung over, but we didn’t have the time. The smiling woman’s brother had killed twice already: the blackjack dealer at the Olympos, and Jo Kyong-ah, the retired black marketeer. My biggest worry was that he would kill again. Ernie and I talked it over.
“The first killing was a mistake,” Ernie said. “The casino owner made a dash for the fire-escape hatch, our man pulled the trigger. Maybe Han Ok-hi stepped into the line of fire and took the bullet for her boss. So he knows he’s toast. The KNPs are going to catch him eventually. Maybe not today, but soon. Once they do, his only choices will be hanging, or a life-sentence in a Korean prison.”
