Ernie smiled and waved at the sleepy young women gawking at us.
A few, timidly, waved back.
15
Pak Mi-rae knew all about the retired black marketeer, Jo Kyong-ah, who’d been murdered in the city of Songtan.
“She treat somebody bad,” Miss Pak said. “Me, I never treat nobody bad.”
To her, punching out a GI who owed her money didn’t qualify.
We sat in a large hooch near the front gate. Pak Mi-rae boiled water in a brass pot and poured us cups of freeze-dried coffee. We were cops. It was best to humor us. We sat on her warm ondol floor and used a foot-high table with folding legs. The table and the four armoires surrounding us were made of polished black lacquer inlaid with expensive mother-of-pearl designs. Miss Pak’s bed was Western-style, with a hand-embroidered silk comforter hiding the wrinkled sheets. The place reeked of perfume. No sign of any man living there.
Ernie told her about the GI and his partner who’d robbed the Olympos Casino in Inchon and murdered a blackjack dealer. She knew about that too. Then he told her that we believed the GI’s partner had murdered Jo Kyong-ah.
She thought about that for a while, stirring too much non-dairy creamer into her coffee.
“The GI’s name is Boltworks,” Ernie said. “Rodney K. He made a few purchases on ASCOM compound two days ago. He’s dangerous, and we believe he’s armed, with the pistol stolen from the security guard at the Olympos Casino in Inchon.”
Ernie wasn’t holding back on his English. Pak Mi-rae understood it as well as we. Her pronunciation and grammar, and liberal use of slang, was far from perfect, but we didn’t have to talk down to her. And I didn’t have to speak Korean. She’d probably been speaking English since she was a teenager, when she’d first arrived in some GI village to start work as a business girl.
She stared at her coffee cup, then ladled more sugar into it.
She knows something, I thought. Ernie sensed it too.
“We only want him,” Ernie said. “We’re not here to bust anybody for black marketing or anything.”
She continued to stir, and then I noticed her hand was shaking. Behind us, I heard whispering. Quickly, I stood. Ernie too, instinctively going for his. 45. But the whispering wasn’t coming toward us, it was receding from the hooch, along with footsteps. I slid open the door of the hooch and, as Ernie was about to step past me with the weapon, Pak Mi-rae leapt at him. Screaming.
“Ka! Bali ka!” Go! Go quickly!
I tried to pull her off Ernie but she had dug her claws into his coat and held on like a snow leopard. We heard the front gate open, and then slam shut. With a fierce tug, I ripped Pak Mi-rae off of Ernie, and we rushed into the courtyard. We both remembered our shoes and skidded to a halt, but when we looked for them under the porch they were gone.
“Shit!” Ernie shouted. He stared at Pak Mi-rae standing in the doorway to her hooch and, without thinking, pointed his. 45 at her. She cowered.
“Where are the shoes?” he shouted.
She retreated from the doorway.
“No time,” I said. “Come on!”
In our stocking feet we ran across the courtyard, fumbled with the lock of the front gate, and burst into the alley, running full tilt, not sure which way to go.
“Did you see him?” Ernie shouted.
“No.”
“Then where?”
“We’ll never find him in this maze,” I said. We stopped, looking around at the gaping mouths of dark, empty lanes. The morning fog had started to lift, but the sky was still a dark gray. “The MSR,” I said. “That’s where he’ll go.”
“How do we get there?”
I didn’t know. Not exactly. I knew only the general direction. North, toward the long brick walls of the ASCOM compound.
We ran through the maze, past shuttered bars and quiet nightclubs, always heading north toward larger and larger alleyways. Finally, a curving pathway led sharply up an incline, past Han’s Tailor Shop and Miss Goo’s Brassware Emporium. Ernie stepped on a rock and hopped up and down, cursing. I kept going. Then we were on a sidewalk, and the walls of the ASCOM compound were across the street, and the MSR spread east and west in front of us. Two kimchee cabs sat about ten yards over. Ernie and I each chose a cab and ripped open the doors.
“Migun,” I shouted in Korean-GI.
“Kumbang.” Just a moment ago.
“Odi kasso?” Where did he go?
Both drivers pointed straight ahead. East, toward the Pupyong Train Station.
Ernie and I jumped into the lead taxi. “Bali ka!” I shouted. Go quickly.
The driver glanced down at my stocking feet, but didn’t comment. He started the engine and slammed it in gear. We lurched forward, shouting to go faster. He did. In a few seconds we were past the village, speeding into the still quiet edge of Pupyong proper.
And then, up ahead, we saw a kimchee cab. Ernie spotted it first.
“There!” He pointed, and the driver saw it and stepped on the gas. As we closed in, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a rumpled five-dollar MPC note. Too much. Way too much. And cops in Korea-at least Korean ones- have the right to commandeer any vehicle they want any time, as long as it’s used for police business. I shoved the fiver back in my pocket. The driver would have to derive his satisfaction from doing his civic duty.
Ernie was shouting and pounding the back seat. “Faster! Faster!”
The driver understood, but the cab in front of us had realized it was being followed. It lurched right, toward the front of the Pupyong Train Station. Before it had rolled to a complete stop, the back door popped open and someone was out and running. Blond hair, short crew cut, stocky build. Civilian clothes that were a blur. Dark pants. Darker jacket.
“Boltworks!” Ernie shouted.
Our driver screeched up behind the other kimchee cab, and for a terrifying second, I thought he was going to smash into the rear bumper, but somehow he stopped in time, and Ernie and I were out of the cab, dashing flatfooted across cement, startling men in suits carrying briefcases. Ernie bounded up, trying to see over the growing crowd of morning commuters. I spotted it first. Not the blond head of Boltworks, but the dark-haired heads of Koreans being jostled out of the way.
“Over there,” I shouted. “Heading for the trains.”
The sign overhead had a fist with a finger pointing east.
Beneath that, in hangul and English, the sign said: Seoul. If he hopped on a train, I knew we’d never find him in that teeming city of eight million.
We had just rounded the corner, running flat out, heading for the tracks lined with passenger cars, when a shot rang out.
Ernie and I flung ourselves to the ground. Ernie’s. 45 was out now, pointing ahead. All around us people screamed. Some threw themselves to the ground. Others ran back toward the front of the station.
Ernie was waving and shouting, “Get down! Get down!”
The train to our right, crammed with passengers, started to roll forward. Two cars ahead, we saw him. Private First Class Rodney K. Boltworks, pistol out, right arm wrapped around the neck of a struggling woman.
All I could think was how nicely she was dressed. Polished black shoes, naked legs, expensive knit wool skirt and matching jacket, and a beige overcoat that fell to her ankles. Her leather briefcase lay partially open on the cement platform, and her polished nails were clutching Boltworks’ forearm, as if she were trying to loosen his grip so she could breathe. Thick-rimmed glasses were tilted at an angle across her flat nose. Her silky black hair swung
