Meanwhile, Freddy and the club employees got wind of the situation and for some reason decided to take up a collection in won, the Korean currency; change it into U.S. dollars at the cashier’s cage; and replace the money in the brandy snifter. Why they did this I didn’t know. One reason could have been to keep the heat off the club. Those bar inventories looked too precise to account for normal human activity. Bartenders sometimes spill liquor or open the wrong can of beer, or a customer sends a drink back because it isn’t what he ordered. Inventories shouldn’t come out even, down to the last ounce of liquor and the last can of beer. Not real inventories. But when you’re pulling a scam, you might decide to make everything balance out perfectly so you don’t attract attention. So you won’t have a couple of nosy C.I.D. agents wandering around your club.
Or maybe they had collected the money for some other reason. I didn’t know. But most important, I couldn’t figure who had stolen the money in the first place.
I looked at the cashier. “Who took the money out of the brandy snifter?”
She put her head down and stared at the floor. Slowly she began to shake her head. I tried again.
“Where did all this extra won come from? Did you take up a collection?”
Still she said nothing, as if she were tremendously ashamed, and just kept shaking her head.
I stood up. I knew I wasn’t going to get anything here. Ernie stood up and threw his empty beer can into the wastebasket, and we walked out into the hallway.
Ernie said, “They’re trying to cover something up.”
I said, “You got that right.”
Two cute young Korean girls, bundled in sweaters and scarves, bounced down the hallway towards the main exit. Lunch hour waitresses, just heading home.
I stopped them and spoke in Korean.
“Young lady. Who is the head of the union here?”
They both stopped abruptly, breathless and wide-eyed.
“Mr. Kwon. The bar manager.”
I thanked them; they giggled and continued on their way.
Ernie looked after them. “Nice legs.”
“That’s all you could see of them.”
“That was enough.”
We wandered down the red carpeted hallway, took a couple of lefts, and found the bar manager’s office. Mr. Kwon stood up when we walked in. He was a tall man for a Korean, close to six feet, maybe in his mid-fifties, and he had the scholarly air of someone who works with books and ledgers all the time. Not like most of the bartenders I was used to back in the States. He wore slacks and a white shirt with a black tie. His hair was oiled and combed straight back. I tried to imagine him in the white pantaloons and tunic of the ancient Korean with his hair long and knotted on the top. He looked like a Confucian scholar caught in modern times.
His eyes widened slightly. “Yes?”
“It’s about the money you collected,” I said, “to replace what was missing from behind the bar. Why?”
Mr. Kwon sighed and indicated the chairs against the wall across the small cubicle. “Have a seat,” he said.
We sat. And waited.
“This morning when Miss Pei came to me and told me the money was missing, we decided to take up a collection and replace it.”
“We?”
“The Korean employees here. It is not good to leave something shameful like the disappearance of money unattended to. This is our home. We take care of it.”
“But Miss Pei had already told one of the Americans. The assistant manager.”
“A mistake. We should not have bothered you about this matter.”
“Who took the money?”
Mr. Kwon looked down for a second and then up at me. “The money is back now. There is no reason to worry about who took it.”
“Maybe not. But I need to know. Otherwise, I won’t know whether to worry or not.”
“And besides,” Mr. Kwon said, “now that the chief of staff is interested in this matter, you are nervous and if you don’t find out the truth it could be bad for you.”
Bingo. I wasn’t hardly admitting it to myself. If this had been the Enlisted Club and the money had been returned and none of the 8th Army honchos had known about it, I wouldn’t have bothered to look any further. As it was, the first sergeant would be breathing fire if we didn’t wrap this thing up.
Ernie jumped in. “Don’t you worry about the chief of staff. You just tell us who stole that damn money.”
Mr. Kwon looked at him steadily. “One of our waitresses stole it. Miss Lim.”
Ernie said, “Why haven’t you turned her in?”
“We will take care of it. Our own way.”
There was something about this situation that was bothering me. If they had a bad apple among them who was embarrassing everybody by stealing the army-navy football pool money, I could understand their trying to get rid of her quietly in order to save face for the entire Korean staff. But what I couldn’t understand was why they would donate their hard-earned money to cover for her. Their chances of getting their donations reimbursed were nil. So why not just admit the thievery, run her out of town, and forget it? Were they that embarrassed that they’d shell out cash to avoid the wrath of the 8th Army chief of staff? I knew I wouldn’t. Of course, years of doing without in East L.A. had taught me to be somewhat parsimonious. But the Koreans had risen from the ashes of a devastating war less than two decades ago. They were even thriftier than I was. It didn’t make sense.
“What is it about this Miss Lim,” I said, “that makes you want to protect her?”
Mr. Kwon shifted in his seat and then looked back at me. Maybe he decided that we weren’t going to give up so he might as well lay it on the table.
“We know why she stole the money,” he said. “She had a baby and the baby is sick and she had to take it to the hospital.”
“What about her husband?”
“She’s not married.”
I waited. Mr. Kwon continued.
“There was an officer here. Not a good man. I warned her. She stayed with him while he spent his year in Korea. He told her that he would divorce his wife and return for her and the baby. After he left for the States, he wrote to her maybe two or three times, sent her a little money, and then stopped writing. I’ve seen it many times. I’ve seen many young Korean girls with their hopes too high. They are blinded by their love for the United States.”
“Not their love for the GI?”
“No.” Mr. Kwon’s face didn’t move.
Ernie pulled out a stick of chewing gum, unwrapped it, and after a few chomps got it clicking. He didn’t believe that line any more than I did. Shooting for sympathy. With a half-American baby yet.
“Where does this Miss Lim live?”
Mr. Kwon sighed again. He lifted the phone on his desk, dialed, barked a question, and then wrote something on the notepad in front of him. After he hung up the phone, he ripped the paper off the pad and handed it to me.
“Do you read Korean?”
“If you write it clearly.” It was an address.
“This is where Miss Lim lives?”
“Yes.”
I thanked him; we stood up and left the room. He looked after us as we walked down the long hallway. Maybe it was his resigned manner. Maybe it was the ancient cast of his features. But something told me that he’d been through this before.
Unlike the lush gentility of the 8th Army compound, Itaewon was alive with milling people and rows of produce, chickens, hogs, and fish wriggling in murky tanks. Miss Lim’s alley was right off the Itaewon Market, but the noise of commerce shut off abruptly as we slid into the narrow walkway. Ten foot high brick and stone walls loomed over us. I checked the numbers on the gateways to the homes. They didn’t seem to be in order, as if things had changed too much over the centuries for a simple one, two, three, four. Finally I found the gateway to 246-15 and pounded on a splintered wooden gate. Hens squawked as an old woman put on her slippers and shuffled towards us.