“Brandy was into black-marketing?” I asked.
Jill nodded again. “Up to her pretty little neck.” She held out her hand. “Quiet now. We’re getting close.”
It was a nice hooch. Old but well kept up, with bright blue tile on the roof that must’ve been recently replaced. Moonlight shone down into an immaculately clean courtyard with a metal-handled water pump in the center and neatly tended bushes and a row of earthen kimchee jars.
Ernie and I balanced on top of the ten-foot-high cement-block wall, gingerly placing our hands so as to avoid shards of jagged glass sticking out of plaster. With her. 45 pointing at the moon, Jill Matthewson stood in front of the main gate, waiting for us to jump down and open it for her.
“You see any movement?” Ernie asked.
“No.”
All the hooches were dark.
“She’s in there,” Ernie said.
“How do you know?”
“I smell her. Brandy’s close and she’s overwhelming.”
Actually, I thought Ernie might be right. Not about how he sensed her but about the fact that Brandy must be home. There were shoes lined up in front of the hooch, women’s shoes spangled with sequins. But they weren’t neatly aligned. One pair lay on its side, as if it had been rapidly kicked off. And earlier, as we had approached the main gate down a dark alley, I thought I’d glimpsed a dimming of light. As if someone was listening and when they’d heard the tromp of combat boots, they’d clicked off the electric light. A lace curtain breathed in and out inside the hooch, pulsating through the narrow opening left by the partially closed sliding door.
“She’s watching us,” I whispered.
“Yeah. And we make good targets perched up here.”
With that, Ernie hopped down into the courtyard, hitting the ground and rolling as he did so. I kept my eyes riveted on the door. Movement? Or was it my imagination? As Ernie hurried to unbolt the front gate, I leaped down into the courtyard, jarring my knees and ankles, rolling, and quickly coming to a squatting position. The sliding door that a second ago had been partially open was now completely shut.
I ran forward, keeping my head down.
When I reached the low wooden porch in front of the hooch, I leaned forward, grabbed the sliding door, and pulled. It trembled but didn’t open. Inside, a metal lock rattled.
Ernie and Jill ran up behind me.
“Someone’s in there,” I said. “They just locked the door.”
Ernie stepped past me and kicked the door in. Oil paper and fragile wooden latticework shattered. He reached in, unlatched the door, and ripped it off its hinges.
Jill Matthewson shone her flashlight inside.
Ernie and I entered, he found the overhead bulb and switched it on. The entire room was bathed in light. No Brandy. An expensive armoire with mother-of-pearl inlay, silk-encased comforters folded in a corner, a hand-painted porcelain pee pot, a dressing table with a mirror and various lotions and cosmetics. No sign of anything masculine. This, I guessed, was Brandy’s refuge from the world of GIs.
But these observations were made primarily to avoid focusing on the first thing I’d seen. It sat in a corner by itself, still partially encased in wood framing, cradled atop straw, glowing like an endless sky of blue and green. Chon Hak Byong. The Thousand Crane Vase.
I kneeled and examined it. The flock of white cranes floated into the celadon sky, their black eyes pointed toward heaven. Except for one, on the upper bulge of the vase. His eyes stared straight out. Straight into the eyes of the observer. And this crane’s feet were deformed. Deformed into a shape that appeared to be a Chinese character: bok. Good luck. Very probably the name of the artist. I was sure this magnificent piece of art was the same vase that had been stolen by gangsters from the burning inferno of the grain warehouse just yards from here in the heart of the Turkey Farm.
Wood bumped against stone.
“Out back,” Ernie shouted.
He ran out the front door and zipped around the edge of the hooch. I continued deeper into the dwelling, into the cement-floored kitchen and exited a side door. The three of us-Jill, Ernie, and myself-met at the narrow opening between the back of the hooch and the cement-block wall. Brandy stood atop a short ladder, trying to get a handhold on the top of the glass-covered wall. Jill shone her flashlight on Brandy’s cute round butt.
Brandy turned, her shoulders slumped, and she gingerly retreated down the ladder. Staring at the three of us she said, “Ain’t no bag, man.”
A few minutes later, the four of us sat in a circle on the floor of her comfortable hooch, under the glow of a bright electric bulb, facing one another. The story Brandy told us was interesting and, I had to assume, laced with lies.
She claimed to be holding the Thousand Crane Vase for a friend. Who was this friend? She wasn’t at liberty to say. She knew nothing about the fire at the grain warehouse in the center of the Turkey Farm other than that she’d heard about it and it was a great tragedy, but she had no idea how such a thing had happened. And also, she was unaware that the Thousand Crane Vase had been stolen by gangsters. She thought that it might’ve been a different vase. When I pointed out to her that it was the same vase and I explained why, she thought that her friend must’ve been very careless in paying good money for a vase that had been stolen.
“How much did he pay?” Jill asked.
Brandy shrugged. “I know nothing about these things.”
Ernie asked her about mulkogi chonguk, fish heaven.
Brandy seemed shocked that we’d been shot at. “Who would do such a thing?” she asked.
I pointed out to her that she probably knew exactly who, since her handwriting matched the writing on the phony note that had set up the appointment. Now she seemed offended. It couldn’t be her handwriting, she claimed, since she hardly knew how to write.
Finally, Jill questioned her about Marv Druwood.
Brandy had no idea about who was at the grain warehouse that night or what had happened to Private Marvin Druwood.
Without warning, Jill leaned forward and slapped Brandy.
Her full cheeks quivered and then turned red; she held the side of her face. I expected tears to well up but instead Brandy’s eyes spit venom.
“You know who was there,” Jill said. “Otis told you.”
Otis. Sergeant First Class Otis. The desk sergeant who’d confided in me about the Turkey Farm and hinted at irregularities in both the disposal of Marv Druwood’s body and in the 2nd ID provost marshal’s ration control procedures.
“Otis, he no want you,” Brandy said. “He want me.” She jabbed her thumb between pendulous breasts.
Jill’s face turned crimson. “You little bitch. You know who killed Marv. You know!”
Jill flung herself on Brandy and the two of them rolled on the floor for a moment, scratching and butting heads, until Ernie and I ripped them apart. Ernie held Brandy while I escorted Jill outside the hooch. In the courtyard, Jill straightened her uniform. Inside, Brandy nursed cuts and bruises. We confiscated the Thousand Crane Vase. Brandy cursed as we left and swore revenge. Actually, we should’ve arrested her. But as fugitives ourselves, what were we going to do with her? We couldn’t turn her over to the 2nd ID MPs nor to the Korean cops because they’d arrest us at the same time.
As we stalked through dark alleys, I wanted to ask Jill about Sergeant First Class Otis and his role in all this. Jill knew more than she was telling me. But she was fuming, and I knew this was the wrong time.
When we reached the bar district, we paused. Ernie and I set down the vase. It was heavier than it looked. The time was half past eleven. In thirty minutes, curfew would start. Jill told us to hide the vase at Ok-hi’s hooch at the Silver Dragon. Tomorrow, we’d meet up and then enter Camp Casey and take possession of Lieutenant Colonel Alcott’s ration control records.
“How?” Ernie asked.
“How what?” Jill replied.
She was still distracted by her confrontation with Brandy.
“How in the hell are we going to bust onto the compound and confiscate the records?”
