Maybe that’s what all this was about. Maybe the robbery of the Olympos Casino, in the minds of the smiling woman and her brother, hadn’t been a robbery at all. Maybe they had just decided to claim their inheritance. An inheritance from an uncle who should’ve, by Korean custom, taken care of them from the day they were born. And maybe their desire for money was not so they could splurge on the finer things in life, but to buy their mother a burial plot that would give her the respect in death that she was never afforded in life.
Maybe, if you looked at it their way, this entire crime spree-starting with bopping me over the head and proceeding to murder after murder-could be seen as an act of filial piety of unparalleled proportions. I might be wrong. But if I was right, the smiling woman and her brother would be here tonight.
The cab’s shock absorbers groaned as we bounced over a muddy ridge. We were north of Kimpo International Airport, even farther north of the port city of Inchon. In churning waters beyond rocky cliffs, the theoretical demarcation line between North and South Korea ran through the center of the Han River Estuary. A few of the small islands on the northern side, I knew, were patrolled and heavily fortified by the northern Communist regime.
The wind was whipping up. A few splats of rain fell onto dirt.
“Andei,” said the driver. No good.
He was right. If the wind blew in rain clouds off the Yellow Sea, these dirt roads would turn to mud in a matter of minutes.
The driver slowed, wanting to turn back.
“Jokum to,” I said. A little farther.
He sighed and kept driving.
The road started to rise more steeply. Lightning flashed over the Yellow Sea. I spotted the outline of grave mounds dotting the hills.
The driver stopped, backed up, and started to turn around.
“All right,” I said. “All right.”
I climbed out. Suk-ja too.
“You go back,” I said. “I have to find Ernie and I have to move fast.”
I paid the cab driver. More rain spattered his windshield.
He wanted to get out before the roads turned to mud. I told Suk-ja to climb inside.
“No. I go with you.”
“No!” This time I shouted. “I have to go quickly and quietly. I can’t slow down and worry about you.”
In the reflected glow from the headlights, I saw her face fall. She lowered her eyes.
“Okay, Geogi. Sorry I bother you.”
“No bother.” I patted her on the shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
She glanced at me, eyes flashing with anger. Then she climbed back in the cab, and the driver rolled forward. I stood watching them until the headlights reached the main road. The cab turned and sped off around a bend out of sight.
The roiling clouds came fast, pushed inland by a stiff breeze. All about me was becoming darker. The only light came from the swirling beam of a distant lighthouse, and the occasional flash of lightning over the water.
I walked uphill, toward the grave mounds.
The cloud cover broke for a few seconds and, as if to light my way, a Chusok moon, as full as the calm face of a Buddhist saint, shone.
When I was a kid in East L.A., the worst part was not having parents. Poverty, hunger, all those things you can stand- but without parents, you’re nothing.
Some of my foster parents were all right, some not so right. But I always knew that I lacked something fundamental that other kids had. A place to belong. A person to love you. A spot that was all yours and yours alone in this vast empty universe.
That’s what ancestor worship was all about. Why the Koreans made such a big deal about it. It told them who they were, where they belonged, how they fit into this gigantic puzzle we call human life. I envied them their dedication, and although I usually didn’t admit it to myself, I longed to join them.
But I had no place in it. Before I was old enough to start school, my mother died in childbirth, along with the sibling she was laboring to bear. Shortly afterwards, I’m told, my father ran off to Mexico, never to return.
At Suk-ja’s brother’s house, they’d set up two photographs of the ancestors of her nephews and nieces. I envied those kids. At least they knew who their parents were.
I would never know mine. Not personally. But somehow, whenever I was in trouble, I felt that my mother was near.
Walking beside me.
The grave mounds rolled like an undulating sea to the cliffs overlooking the confluence of the Han and the Imjin Rivers. There was movement behind one of the mounds, of that I was sure. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and I could differentiate one shadow from another. Occasionally, I could even hear the sound of murmuring voices, floating out to me on the salt-tanged wind.
I was freezing-cold and damp. The rain had fallen intermittently, coming in squalls of sudden pellets, but I’d been out here long enough to be soaked. My teeth chattered.
How I wished I had a weapon. If I hadn’t been so stubborn, I could’ve checked out a replacement pistol from the CID arms room. But that would’ve entailed filling out paperwork, and walking it from Staff Sergeant Riley’s office to the First Sergeant’s office and then the Provost Marshal’s Office, facing smirking clerks all the way. I not only didn’t have the time, I didn’t have the stomach to run such a humiliating gauntlet without punching somebody square in the nose. So I lived without. A decision I now regretted.
Crouch-walking through the mud, I edged closer to the high mound near the edge of the cliff.
Someone screamed. A male. Anguished. And I recognized the voice: Ernie.
I was at the side of the mound now. A human figure lay against it. The head bobbed forward occasionally. Ernie? Tied up?
Standing in front of him was a man. Standing still. Waiting. Kong, the son. Brother of the smiling woman.
Almost certainly he was armed. There were twenty yards between us. How to cover that without being spotted and gunned down? Only one way. Lightning.
When it flashed again, I would be blinded. But so would the man standing over Ernie. Before he could spot me or take aim, I’d be on him. That was my only chance.
The tall shadow stepped forward and once again Ernie screamed.
I crouched, flexing my knees, waiting to spring. No lightning. The wind picked up. More rain, but no flash.
All around me loomed burial mounds. Some had stone urns on top for burning incense. Others supported statuettes, likenesses of the dead in the cold ground below. Their stone eyes seemed to be watching. Smiling. Amused at my puny efforts.
The wind howled. More droplets of rain. It dribbled down the back of my neck. I worked my way forward.
A flash and lightening filled the world. I was on my feet, moving, trying to pick up traction in the sloshing mud. I ran. In the flash, I’d seen someone near Ernie, lying face down, unmoving, looking for all the world like a corpse. Was it Uncle Yun Guang-min?
And then my vision cleared, and I saw him: Brother Kong, in all his glory. His arm at his side, holding something long and heavy. He turned his startled eyes toward me. His hand came up, the barrel of the. 45 still not pointing directly at me. With a great leap, I was on him. Punching, ripping, kneeing, screaming.
Ernie shouted. What, I didn’t know. The gun lay in the mud now and the wide-eyed man beneath me stared up into a fist plunging toward his mouth. I punched him again and again. Blood ran, out of his nose, and mouth, and ear. He stopped struggling. His head lolled to the side. I could now hear what Ernie was saying.
“Untie me, goddamn it! Untie me!”
I grabbed my. 45, shoved it in my pocket and stood, legs wobbly. The man didn’t move. He was out cold. I turned, staggered forward, and knelt beside Ernie.
The red light of the Chusok moon peeked out from behind storm clouds. I could see that my assumptions had
