For a young Amerasian man in a Korean prison, life would be unendurable hell.
“He’d choose hanging,” I said.
“Right. So now, before we catch him, he decides to have a little fun. And, who knows, maybe he’ll decide to have a little more.”
“But why kill Jo Kyong-ah?”
“That part,” Ernie said, “I haven’t figured out yet.”
I thought about the way Jo Kyong-ah’s body had been left. Face down, the back of her neck bruised, spread out in front of a short-legged table. Despite the information I’d received from the Uichon mama-san and from Haggler Lee- and from the man Haggler Lee had introduced us to last night-I still had no lead that might help us find the younger brother. There were only possibilities. Find the smiling woman. Or find PFC Rodney K. Boltworks, his partner in crime.
Thanks to Sergeant Riley, we at last had a lead on Boltworks. So we sat in the jeep in the heart of ASCOM City, contemplating our moves.
“The KNPs?” Ernie asked.
“Maybe,” I said. “See if there’s been any incidents.”
You’d think someone who’d just committed a serious crime like armed robbery, narrowly escaping the law, would need to hide. Keep a low profile, stay out of trouble. But every cop knows that when a criminal is hot, on the run and being pursued, he often does something to draw attention to himself. Maybe from stress, maybe from stupidity. No matter- it happens.
Ernie and I climbed out of the jeep and walked twenty yards to the modest, white-washed building flying the flag of Korea out front. The sign said: PUPYONG CITY POLICE STATION, WESTERN BRANCH.
The KNPs weren’t happy to see us. They had enough trouble in this little corner of the world. When we asked about incidents, the desk sergeant rolled his eyes. Then he shoved a cloth-bound ledger across the counter and opened it to the most recent entries. I started studying it, and he went back to his paperwork.
There were no civilians in the station, just three cops and the desk sergeant. They were all bleary-eyed and half asleep and didn’t seem too impressed to see a couple of 8th Army CID agents.
Ernie stuck his nose over the ledger. “It’s all written in Korean.”
I pulled out my notebook.
Ernie elbowed my left arm. “What you got?”
“A fight between a business girl and a GI. At a joint called the Asian Eyes Bar. Not last night, but the night before.”
“Names?”
“Only one. The woman’s name is Pak Mi-rae. The GI disappeared before the KNPs arrived.”
“Descriptions?”
“A Korean business girl and an American GI. The KNP didn’t bother.”
ASCOM City was swarming with people of roughly the same description: American soldier, average height, average weight, light brown or dark brown hair, no identifying marks. Korean prostitute, dark brown or black hair, dark brown or black eyes, approximately five-foot-three inches tall, one hundred and fifteen pounds. Name: Miss Pak, Miss Kim, or Miss Lee. And-as the GIs would say-cute foreign accent.
So there was nothing to tie this incident to PFC Boltworks except for one thing. Ernie said it.
“Same night our man Bolt bought all that shit out of the PX.”
We thanked the desk sergeant and found our own way out.
Two eyes were painted on a sign over the bar. Female eyes. Asian. Below the eyes, the sign said-predictably enough-Asian Eyes Bar.
The joint was located in the middle of the nightclub and brothel district known as ASCOM City. The walkways were paved with rough cobblestones. The buildings were packed tight. There was no room for a delivery truck to back in. All the supplies, like crates of beer and huge blocks of ice, must’ve been hauled in the old fashioned way: strapped to someone’s back.
The bar district of ASCOM City sat in a depression half a mile long and a quarter mile wide, probably on top of what had once been ancient rice paddies. To reach either the road to the west, where the police station stood, or the MSR to the north, where the long walls of the Army Support Command Compound were located, you had to climb a gradual incline of a good twenty feet. Since we were in the well of a depression, the morning fog sat thick and sluggish. The overcast sky launched a splat of rain that hit the cobbled roads, an explosion of rust-flavored dirt. More splats followed. And more puffs of dirt.
“I expect a wolf to howl,” Ernie said.
But none did. No one else howled either. The GIs were either snug in their hooches with their Korean yobos or already back on the compound.
I tried the front door of the Asian Eyes Bar.
It was barred tightly from the inside. I was careful not to rattle the door too loudly. We didn’t want to wake anyone.
Not yet. Ernie and I reconnoitered.
One side of the building was flush up against the next bar, a joint called the Playboy Club-the establishments in ASCOM City don’t worry much about trademark infringement. I squeezed through a brick-lined passage. In the rear of the building, the sign also read ASIAN EYES BAR. Up and down the alley were the backdoors of other saloons. GIs could enter one place in the front, and if they didn’t find sufficient titillation, they could exit out the back, cross the alley, and immediately enter through the back door of another, equally raunchy dive. I imagined this alleyway at night, neon-lit, teeming with business girls and drunk Americans. Cigarette smoke, laughter, blaring rock music erupting out of the back doors. Not an area that an MP patrol would want to spend a lot of time in. At the moment, however, it was deserted, except for a rat who scurried into a subterranean drainage ditch.
The back door of the Asian Eyes Bar looked flimsy, easier to bust through, but no sense getting rough. After all, we had no reason to think Boltworks might be here. This was just a place to start our investigation, because we had to start somewhere. We wanted to talk to these people about the disturbance between a Korean woman and an American GI that had occurred the night before last. We had no reason to believe that the GI was Boltworks. Nevertheless, Ernie backed up, preparing to kick the door in.
“Why don’t we just knock?” I said.
His eyes widened: the thought had never occurred to him.
I pushed past him and pounded my fist on the back door. One thing about Korean businesses is that they’re virtually never deserted. Either the family that owns the enterprise lives on the premises, or they leave someone behind to protect it against burglars. I pounded for almost five minutes, until chains rattled inside and the door popped open. Ernie pushed it aside, and we strode into darkness.
“Kyongchal. Bul kyo, bali!” I said, announcing ourselves as police and ordering the lights turned on immediately.
Somebody did.
One of the benefits of operating in a police state is that civilians do what you tell them to do. Usually.
To the left of the hallway were byonsos, toilets, both men’s and women’s. Toward the front, a bar ran along the wall. A passageway opened into a larger area, red vinyl booths surrounding round cocktail tables covered by upturned chairs. In the middle of this main ballroom was a tiny dance floor. There was no stage, but refrigerator- sized stereo speakers were mounted along the wall every few feet. Near the dance floor stood an aquarium. Orange and white and purple fish swam serenely through green water. A blue glow filled the room. Behind us, harsh white bulbs lined the top of the bar.
“Kids,” Ernie said.
There must’ve been a half dozen of them, both boys and girls. Not children exactly. Probably middle-school age, or just old enough to start high school. But these kids weren’t students. They were staff here at the Asian Eyes Bar, responsible for the cleaning and bartending and serving and whatever else had to be done around the place. Possibly distant relatives of the owner, maybe just extra mouths to feed, from large rural families forced to sell them into indentured servitude. I wasn’t going to bother to ask, because one thing’s for sure: on personal matters-matters that cause shame-a foreigner never received a straight answer.
The oldest was a skinny boy. Straight black hair hung over his sleep-crusted eyes. He glared at us with a full- lipped sullen stare.
