“Look at the face again.”
I pointed to the photograph of Yun Guang-min. The same high cheekbones and square face, but in this second family register, instead of being a boy of about twelve, he was a man in his early thirties.
“Imagine the face as a middle-aged man,” I said. “Imagine gray hair, more wrinkles, a grim expression.”
Ernie worked on it for a while, and then his eyes widened. “Holy shit,” he said.
I thanked the records clerk, slid the ledger across the counter, and Ernie and I trotted outside to the lot in front of the Yoju Hall of Records. Ernie fired up the jeep.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “I know the way.”
We wound through back country roads, heading west. The afternoon was once again gray and overcast. At an intersection, one sign pointed north toward Seoul, another pointed west toward Inchon.
Ernie turned toward Inchon and shifted into high gear.
Blackjack dealers looked up from their tables as Ernie and I waded across the carpeted floor of the Olympos Casino. I wanted to talk to the smiling woman’s uncle, question him about the whereabouts of his nephew and niece, and maybe- just maybe-head off the next killing. The door of the cashier’s cage was locked, but I pounded on it and told the cashiers inside that I wanted to talk to Yun Guang-min, the owner of the casino.
Their eyes widened, and they conferred with one another, and while they mumbled, the manager, Mr. Bok, appeared out of nowhere. He smiled and bowed and told me that unfortunately Mr. Yun Guang-min was not available. I asked him why. He said that he was currently engaged in a banquet entertaining honored guests.
“Where?” I asked.
Bok just kept repeating that Yun Guang-min was unavailable.
Ernie was fed up. He reached for Bok, grabbed his shoulders, and while the casino manager’s mouth opened in shock, Ernie reached inside the man’s expensive suit jacket and pulled out a leather-bound notebook. He handed it to me.
Bok struggled to grab it back, but Ernie held him off.
I riffled through the pages. It was an appointment book.
19
I quickly located today’s date. It was almost one p.m. and penciled in for 12:30 was the character for “Yun” and the name of a restaurant: Silla Cho Siktang. Silla Cho, the Silla Dynasty. It ruled southern Korea thirteen hundred years ago, during and after the Three Kingdoms Period. Siktang means eatery. Next to that was an entry I couldn’t understand, written in Japanese hiragana syllables interspersed with Chinese characters. The Chinese characters said “turtle mountain,” although how you pronounced that in Japanese I had no idea.
I pointed at the entry and asked the flustered manager, “What’s this mean?”
“Not your business,” he said and tried once again to grab the appointment book.
The pit bosses were grumbling amongst themselves and glaring at us. One of them picked up a phone. I grabbed Bok by the lapels.
“Where’s the Silla Cho Siktang?” I asked.
His eyes widened. “You must not bother Mr. Yun. His meeting very important.”
“With some Japanese millionaire?” I said.
“How you know?”
I pointed at the Japanese writing. Turtle Mountain I figured was somebody’s name.
“Where is Silla Cho Siktang?” I asked again.
Bok crossed his arms and snorted but Ernie had been rummaging in the side pocket of his jacket. Ernie plucked out a pamphlet printed in blazing color and handed it to me. It was a directory to the meeting halls and restaurants and other services located in and around the hotel and casino. The Silla Cho Siktang was located adjacent to the Olympos, on the other side of the parking lot, on a cliff overlooking the Yellow Sea.
I tossed the pamphlet back to Mr. Bok and thanked him for his cooperation. As we hurried to the front door, Bok was already on the phone.
There was only one bodyguard, standing off to the side beneath the brightly painted archway that was the entry to the Silla Cho Siktang. He was still talking on the phone, to Mr. Bok, I imagined, and he kept saying, “Nugu?” Who?
The guy wasn’t too bright. Ernie poked the business end of his pistol into the ear of the young bodyguard. “Relax, Tiger,” Ernie said. “We just want to talk.” He grabbed the phone from the man’s grasp and hung it up.
I frisked him, found his gun, and relieved him of it. I told him to keep his hands raised, and nothing would happen to either him or his employer. Together, the three of us walked into the banquet hall of the Silla Cho Siktang.
The entire expanse of the main floor was covered with immaculately clean tatami mats. A dozen low tables were arranged in the middle of the hall in a horseshoe shape. Some thirty men sat on silk cushions on the outsides of the tables. They picked with silver chopsticks at tender morsels on porcelain plates. In the center of the mats, a young woman, wearing the traditional embroidered silk dress of Korea, plucked on a kayagum, a straight-backed zither, and warbled songs of love in an ancient dialect.
The men were Japanese. How did I know? Their bodies were more slight than that of the average Korean, the bone structure of their faces less like granite. But mostly, I knew from the buzz of conversation, which I could not understand, and from their clothes. They were dressed casually in woolen socks, pressed slacks and cotton shirts, some with expensive-looking cashmere sweaters pulled over for warmth. Everything about them, from their neatly coifed haircuts to their glittering wristwatches and bracelets, reeked of wealth.
One man wore a suit jacket with a white shirt and tie, and he sat at the center of the head table: Yun Guang-min. I recognized him not only from the family registers we’d just seen, but also from our first visit to the Olympos Casino shortly after Han Ok-hi had been shot, when he’d walked out briefly onto the casino floor surrounded by his bodyguards and glared at me.
Beside him, dressed more casually than any of his countrymen, but with a casualness that bespoke wealth, sat a white-haired man who seemed as at home in this elaborate banquet as if he were having a bowl of noodles in his wife’s kitchen. The way the other men smiled and bowed toward him convinced me that he was “Turtle Mountain,” the boss of these Japanese businessmen, probably here on a sex-and-gambling tour of their former colony-now known as the Republic of Korea.
Young women, also dressed in elaborate chima-chogori, scurried back and forth to the kitchen, replacing dishware laden with mint leaves marinated in soya, boiled quail eggs, and pulverized seaweed flattened into paper- thin sheets, salted and toasted in sesame oil.
Other young women-with even more elaborate make-up, hairdos, and dresses of silk-sat amongst the men, pouring heated rice liquor into tiny cups from celadon jugs.
“Sort of like the Eighth Army chow hall,” Ernie told me.
“Right.” I slipped my shoes off and stepped up onto the raised wooden floor covered with tatami. “Watch him,” I said, indicating the red-faced bodyguard, “and watch my back.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Parley,” I said.
I ambled over. The serving girls stopped what they were doing and gawked. The men gradually ceased their chatter. The player of the kayagum stopped plucking on her zither and slid unobtrusively back, until she was out of the way.
Yun Guang-min and his white-haired Japanese guest were deep in conversation. I stood at the center of the U-shaped array of tables, and waited.
Finally, they stopped talking and turned to look at me.
The white-haired businessman seemed amazed to see a foreigner so close. He frowned, but regained his composure and stared impassively. Clearly, it was up to his host, Yun Guang-min, to handle the situation.
Yun was a small man, neatly contained in an expensive wool suit, immaculately tailored. Gold-rimmed spectacles sat across the bridge of his flat nose and what with his high cheekbones and stern facial features, his expression was about as readable as a carving on the side of a mountain. At the moment, I was angry enough not
