“I know.”
“That alley could be a dead end.”
“You’re too negative, Sueno.”
Maybe I was. But Ernie didn’t give me time to think about it. He peeked around the corner again, waved for me to follow, and trotted out onto the dark path. The KNPs didn’t seem to notice. They were probably watching the roofs or checking the narrow walkways in front of them. But as soon as I emerged, someone shouted and then a whistle blew and it was as if the entire police force of TDC had zeroed in on my back. We ran. Ernie jogged to his left at the next alley and I followed. It was narrow, maybe six feet wide, lined by brick and wood and cement block walls on either side, protecting small courtyards and homes. The only illumination was from moonlight. The homes on either side were dark and there were no street lamps. I couldn’t tell where I was stepping.
Korean sewers run underground, covered by stone blocks with fist-sized vents, lowered into place, not cemented. These blocks are sometimes lifted out for one reason or another or, more often, crushed by something heavy rolling over them. So you never know when a gaping hole may appear in an otherwise level flagstone walkway. These thoughts surged through my mind as I peered into the darkness, moving cautiously, hoping not to crash into a hole and break my leg.
No similar doubts plagued Ernie. He ran flat-out down the middle of the alley as if he were sprinting on a groomed track at the U.S. Olympic trials.
Ernie twisted and turned like a jackrabbit evading hounds. The warren of homes we passed stretched from the western edge of Tongduchon toward the east. Where we were exactly, I didn’t know. Neither, apparently, did the KNPs. At intersections I slowed, glanced backward, and saw nothing coming at us through the darkness.
Finally, after a sharp turn, I almost plowed into Ernie.
Breathing heavily, he gazed down a slope at the shuttered environs of the TDC bar district. The lanes were a little wider here, with shops and bars and coffeehouses, their neon signs switched off.
“Anybody following?” he asked.
“I think we lost ’em.”
I bent forward and placed my hands on my knees, trying to regain my breath.
Ernie pointed. “There’s an alley off to the left, behind that line of bars. It leads to the railroad tracks and beyond that the main gate.”
“We can’t go there,” I said.
GIs passing through the main gate of Camp Casey this late would be arrested by the MPs for curfew violation and turned over to their unit commanders in the morning. With our 8th Army CID badges, Ernie and I were amongst the elite few in Korea who were exempt from the midnight to four curfew. The MPs wouldn’t arrest us but they would note the time of our arrival in the duty log. Under the circumstances not an entry we wanted made.
And the KNPs would almost certainly be waiting for us in front of the main gate. Even though they hadn’t been able to identify us specifically, the Korean cops knew-by our height and by our clothing-that we were foreigners. And only one type of foreigner lived in Tongduchon: American GIs.
“So where to?” Ernie asked.
In the Seoul bar district of Itaewon, our home turf, there were plenty of business girls and nightclub owners who would take us in. At least until curfew was over. But up here we were strangers. Mostly. Ok-hi and Jeannie knew us. But the Silver Dragon was on the far side of the bar district.
I was about to respond to Ernie’s question when he shoved me against the wall.
“White mice,” he whispered.
A few yards in front of us an American-made jeep, painted white, cruised by slowly. We stepped back farther into the shadows of a recessed gateway. Crossed beams from the jeep’s headlights caressed the brick in front of us. We held our breath. The lights never faltered. They continued illuminating the brick wall, skipped over us in our dark enclave, and moved on.
When the sound of the jeep’s engine faded, we started to breathe again. It figured that the curfew police would patrol the bar district more diligently than they patrolled other parts of town. Trying to make it all the way to the Silver Dragon was too risky. So where could we go? There was only one other person in town that we knew.
“The Black Cat Club,” I said. “It’s closer. And some of the girls have hooches out back.”
“Maybe they’re busy.”
“Maybe. But maybe Brandy lives there.”
Brandy, the buxom bartender at the Black Cat Club.
“You asked for her address earlier,” Ernie said. “They wouldn’t give it to you.”
“Maybe it’s because she lives right there. On the premises.”
Ernie snorted, unconvinced. “Well, the Black Cat Club is safer than standing out here all night,” he said. “Which way?”
I pointed right. Together we slouched through the shadows.
The back of the Black Cat Club was as dark and as silent as a Yi Dynasty tomb. The double-doored wooden gate was barred from within and the stone wall protecting the back courtyard was topped with shards of broken glass embedded in cement.
“Looks like they don’t welcome visitors,” Ernie said.
“At least Koreans don’t keep a big dog behind the wall,” I said. “Our choice is to pound on the gate and make a racket until someone wakes up and comes out to talk to us, or else climb the fence.”
“Raising a racket doesn’t sound like a good idea.”
The curfew police could pass by at any time. And if we made too much noise, a neighbor with a phone- although phones were rare in Tongduchon-might call and turn us in. Better to climb the fence. I cupped my hands in front of me. Ernie didn’t hesitate. He stepped into my cupped hands and I hoisted him over the wall. Once inside, Ernie opened the small door in the large metal gate. I ducked through and he shut the door behind me.
It was your typical Korean courtyard lined with maybe eight hooches, sliding oil-papered doors facing inward, earthenware kimchee jars against the walls, and a rusty water spigot in the center of the courtyard with a plastic pail hanging from the valve. More hooches on the other side and then, I supposed, the back door of the Black Cat Club. We were about to slip past the hooches when the sound of human voices-harsh whispers-floated across tile roofs. Ernie waved his hand to signal danger and we crouched.
“Somebody’s awake.”
That didn’t seem too surprising to me what with the noise we’d made climbing the wall and opening the front gate.
“I have to convince them not to call the police,” I said.
Ernie nodded. I edged through a passageway between the line of hooches and the stone wall, then emerged into another open area that led to a door with a brightly painted wooden sign bearing a picture of a black cat. I was about to reach for the handle when the back door of the Black Cat Club burst open. Ten men emerged, all of them in various stages of undress, some with silver picks wedged in their hair, others with silk stockings knotted tightly over their skulls. Moonlight glistened off black flesh. Lips twisted into scowls. Cudgels were raised: a baseball bat, a pump handle, an army-issue entrenching tool.
“Hold it!” Ernie shouted.
He stood behind me, his. 45 out, pointing at the group of men.
“What you doing here?” one of the men asked. “T-shirts ain’t allowed.”
A few of the men guffawed. None of them seemed concerned about Ernie’s. 45.
“Looking for Brandy,” I said. “We need to talk to her.”
“People need a lot of shit,” the same man said. “Don’t mean they get it.”
He was one of the tallest of the men and, clearly, their leader. I was trying to think of a way to talk my way out of this confrontation but there were a lot of hard feelings between black GIs and white GIs. In the early seventies, the good fellowship of the civil rights movement had long been forgotten. Black GIs no longer waited patiently for the white power structure of the U.S. Army to reform. They were fighting back. Demanding equal promotions, an equal shot at choice assignments. Actually, I agreed with them. But there was a whole other element of the black experience-aside from the legitimate aspirations-that I, as a cop, had to deal with. The draft had been stopped a couple of years ago. To fill the ranks the army had lowered enlistment standards and young men with juvenile records a mile long-and even adult felony convictions-were being allowed to join up. The thinking
