The doors and windows near the building that housed Kimchee Entertainment were closed and shuttered. Midnight curfew had taken full effect. No one walked down the pedestrian lanes, no vehicles rolled down the narrow road. Neon lights were shut off. No sound from television sets or radios seeped out onto the street because all broadcasting stopped, by order of the government, when the midnight curfew began.
Ernie’d already appropriated a trash cart he’d found at a dead-end dump. He rolled it beneath the second- story window that belonged to the offices of Kimchee Entertainment, tilted the cart on its end, and leaned it against the wall.
I scurried to the narrow asphalt road that ran in front of Kimchee Entertainment and peeked around the corner. Empty. No one moved. I studied the roadway right and left. No delivery trucks, no white jeeps belonging to the curfew police, no vehicles of any kind. And no pedestrians. All windows and doors lining the street were closed and dark.
I took a deep breath. The night air was already beginning to cleanse itself. Less odor of burnt diesel. More of the sharp, clean aroma of rich earth and vegetation, the smell that had originally lured mankind to this lush peninsula.
Ernie hissed. “Come steady the cart.”
I ran back and held the sides of the six-foot-long cart while Ernie climbed atop it, stretched to his full height, and grabbed the sill of the window leading into Kimchee Entertainment. I placed my palms beneath the soles of his sneakers and on the count of three, shoved upwards with all my might. Ernie’s body rose and simultaneously his fist broke glass. One of the small window panes. The noise was jarring but brief. We’d already decided that it would be too dangerous to linger in the alley outside of Kimchee Entertainment. No time for jimmying the window. I was still shoving upwards on the bottoms of his feet as Ernie reached in and finally found the latch that unlocked the window. He pried it open and wriggled inside. Now he leaned out the window, stretching his open right hand out to me.
As we’d planned, I lowered the cart to its normal traveling position. Then I climbed into the bed of the cart, reached up and tried to grab Ernie’s hand, but I couldn’t quite reach.
“Jump,” he said.
There were still no signs of life up and down the walkway. The minimal noise we’d made hadn’t disturbed anyone. I took a deep breath, reached out my hand, and jumped. Ernie grabbed my right wrist and then, with his free hand, my forearm. As I kicked my sneakers against the wall and tried to climb, he leaned back with all his might, pulling, until I had a handhold on the sill. I scrambled up the wall as Ernie tugged. Within seconds, I was inside the offices of Kimchee Entertainment.
Ernie stepped past me and closed the window. I searched for something to cover the broken pane of glass. I found a magazine with a beautiful Korean actress on the cover and managed to stuff that into the opening.
Now, anyone walking below would see a trash cart left in an alley and above that a broken window that had been temporarily repaired. Ernie located a low lamp on a desk. I closed the curtain over the window and Ernie switched on the lamp. A soft green glow suffused the room.
“We’re in,” I said.
Ernie motioned for me to keep my voice down. We already knew that at least one nosy old woman lived in this building. If she’d heard us climbing in the window, she would’ve already called the Korean National Police and since they had police boxes all over the city of Tongduchon, someone would be here in minutes. Ernie and I stood stock-still. Listening. If we heard someone banging on the front door, or the heavy tread of boots on cement, we’d have to un-ass the area. Quick. Exactly how that would work, I didn’t know. Hopping out the window wouldn’t be good because the KNPs would station someone at the sides and rear of the building. One thing the KNPs never lack is manpower.
Ernie and I made a plan of sorts. The best thing to do if the KNPs were alerted would be to go deeper into the building, find the stairs or the ladder that led to the roof and from there hop onto the roof of the neighboring building and try to make good our escape.
We waited. Listening. Barely breathing.
The room looked lived-in. Used. The office of an actively functioning business. Three gray metal file cabinets stood against the wall. Probably army-issue, bought on the black market. The desk was made of unimpressive lumber, thinly varnished, and pocked with cigarette burns. In front of the desk stood a low coffee table and hard- cushioned sofa with two matching wooden chairs. In the center of the coffee table sat an enormous glass ashtray filled with butts and next to that an octagonal cardboard box stuffed with wooden matches.
I checked the butts. Korean-made. Not a single Miguk or imported cigarette in the bunch. Mr. Pak Tong-i was a thrifty man. So, apparently, were his clients.
On the wall hung numerous framed snapshots, some of them expensive publicity photos of Korean stars I vaguely recognized. Not his clients, I didn’t think. These were faces that belonged on grand stages in Seoul or in front of television cameras. You could bet that none of them had ever performed up here in the hinterlands of TDC. And then there were the lower-quality photos. Photos of bands performing on rickety wooden stages, the backs of short GI haircuts in the audience. Clearly taken in some dive either in TDC or in one of the dozens of other GI villages blemishing the land just south of the Demilitarized Zone. Photos of sequin-spangled strippers stretching insincere smiles, striking awkward poses. Was one of them Miss Kim Yong-ai? I had no way of knowing. More photos of groups of GIs in civvies standing in front of bars or outdoors in picnic areas, always with Pak Tong-i standing in the middle, beaming, his arms around his friends. And a photo of Pak indoors, in front of the flags of the U.S. and South Korea, receiving an engraved plaque from a United States Army colonel in full uniform. The name and the face of the colonel meant nothing to me and it figured they wouldn’t because the Pak Tong-i in the picture looked years younger.
So Mr. Pak Tong-i did more than just book entertainment for the nightclubs that stuck like barnacles to the outside of U.S. Army compounds. He also maintained contact with army officers on base. “Community relations,” 8th Army calls it. Exactly what services Pak Tong-i performed, I didn’t know but whatever it was, he’d received awards for it.
Ernie wandered into a side room. When he returned he thrust his thumb over his shoulder. “Nice setup,” he said. “Byonso.” Bathroom. “And a little bedroom with a cot and next to that a stand with a hot plate and a brass teapot.”
So far, no alarm had sounded. We were starting to breath easier. Finally, I noticed the odor in the room. Thick. As if somebody’d left food out.
“Any refrigerator in there?” I asked.
“No. No sign of food.”
Maybe Pak Tong-i ordered out. Hot food delivery-both Chinese and Korean-is cheap in Korea and always readily available. But I didn’t see any sign of empty bowls or used chopsticks.
“You check the desk,” I told Ernie. “I’ll take the files.”
Both of us carried small, army-issue flashlights and Ernie kneeled down under the desk, determined to be meticulous and start his search from the ground up. I opened the top drawer of the first file cabinet.
It was a mess. There didn’t seem to be any particular order to the files, either in the English alphabet-a, b, c-or the Korean hangul alphabet-ka, na, da. Papers were shoved in willy-nilly. Contracts, payment vouchers, receipts-all of it in a huge hodgepodge stuffed into random folders. The Korean names on the folders, apparently the names of entertainers, did not correspond to the paperwork they contained. I worked quickly through the drawers, from file cabinet to file cabinet, trying to grasp the method of organization, quickly coming to the realization that there was none.
What I did notice was that there was no folder with the name Kim Yong-ai, the stripper who’d become Jill Matthewson’s friend. I went back and checked more carefully, even peeking beneath the rows of folders in case the file had slipped down. Finally, I was sure. There was no folder for Kim Yong-ai despite the fact that Pak Tong-i himself had told us that she had been one of his most productive clients. There was no sense delaying my conclusion any longer. Someone-almost certainly not Pak Tong-i-had gone through these files. The mystery person had searched everything, taken everything out, and then thrown the documents back into any old folder and stuffed the entire mess back into the cabinets, totally unconcerned about keeping the records straight for future use or, for that matter, hiding the fact that he’d been here.
Also, whoever had been here before us had stolen Kim Yong-ai’s file. Had they stolen anything else? Only Pak Tong-i would know.
