Then she raised her forefinger to her neck and sliced it across her neck.
“Chukin-da,” she said. Kill.
I explained to Ernie the options the Seven Dragons had when deciding how to dispose of Tech Sergeant Moretti’s body. Their ability to cover things up only extended to the cops the Seven Dragons had on their payroll in and around Itaewon; it didn’t extend to a mobile ROK Army surveillance patrol. Cort monitored U.S. and ROK Army blotter reports every morning but nothing had been reported. The remains of Technical Sergeant Flo Moretti had vanished. They might be interred in one of the buildings.
“Do you think there might still be old treasures there?” Ernie asked. “Family heirlooms, things like that.”
“No. I’m sure that’s all long gone. But the body is different. Nobody would want to touch that. As long as it was well hidden, they’d leave it where it was. I believe that it’s right here.”
I pointed to a spot on the building plans. Ernie studied the sketch.
Two Bellies had told us that within days of the Seven Dragons kicking out the nuns and orphans, Mori Di’s headquarters had been transformed into a bar and brothel. And since at least one of the Seven Dragons seemed to like American country-western music, they’d renamed the place The Grand Ole Opry Club.
“They slicky beer,” Two Bellies told me. Slicky, G.I. slang for steal.
Military two-and-a-half-ton trucks, laden with pallets of American-made beer, had backed down the alley behind the Grand Ole Opry Club. They unloaded case after case of beer, all of it imported at U.S. taxpayer expense and pilfered directly from the PX supply line. To streamline the delivery process, the Seven Dragons knocked a hole in the wall through which they shoved a ramp and slid the cases down from the back of the trucks into the basement for storage. The work had been expertly done. Bricks lined the delivery chute. To support the ramp, a portion of the wall had been extended out, forming a narrow room with an angled roof. There was no opening into that room. It had been walled-in using bricks. The entire construction had been the first modification made to the original building, the plans of which Ernie stared at intently.
“You think Moretti’s in there,” he said, pointing to the angled space beneath the loading ramp.
“I think it‘s possible. It would make sense for the Seven Dragons to hide him there. It would be safe, away from prying eyes, and they wouldn’t have to take the chance of transporting the corpse out of Seoul.”
“Wouldn’t it stink?”
I shrugged. “Not so much. Not sealed behind brick.”
I imagined a desiccated corpse, sitting in the darkness, fading away to bones.
Then Ernie looked up at me. “Oh, no. I know what you’re thinking.”
We had no jurisdiction in Itaewon. Officially, everything we did had to be done with the approval of the Korean government. Years ago an agreement had been signed so American MPs could police the ville but our jurisdiction extended only to our own personneclass="underline" G.I. s, the occasional American dependent, or U.S. civilian workers who happened to wander out there. But we couldn’t promulgate our own search warrant.
“You’re nuts, Sueno,” Ernie said.
“It could be done.”
One thing I’d learned here at 8th Army is that if you really want to do something, don’t ask for permission. If we presented a proposal to search the Grand Ole Opry Club to the provost marshal he would almost certainly say no. If we went ahead anyway, we’d be not only searching without a warrant but we’d also be directly violating an order. If, on the other hand, the PMO liked the idea of us searching the Grand Ole Opry Club, he would forward our request up the chain of command. There, it would be staffed to the ROK-U.S. governmental affairs committee, reports would be filed, questions answered, and great minds would cogitate. After a few weeks, if we were lucky, we’d receive an answer. Almost certainly no. But if by some chance the answer were yes, it would already be too late. By then, the rumors about a pending search of the Grand Ole Opry would have leaked out of 8th Army headquarters like rice wine from a broken soju bottle. Nobody keeps a secret for long in 8th Army headquarters. And if any hint reached Itaewon concerning a search, what we sought would either be moved or, more likely, destroyed.
Ernie kept staring at me. “You’re nuts,” he said again. “This is just a hunch. You don’t know for sure there’s anything there.”
“You’re right. But it makes sense, you have to admit that.”
“Maybe.” Ernie kept shaking his head, jiggling the copies of the building plans. And then he began to laugh. “Sueno, you never cease to amaze me. Why can‘t you just worry about getting your twenty years in like everybody else?”
“Moretti,” I told Ernie, “didn’t get the chance to retire.”
Ernie shook his head, a sardonic smile on his chops, knowing I was putting all the pressure on him I could. Finally, he set the paperwork down.
“Sueno, do you have any idea how embarrassing this is going to be if you’re wrong? A couple of Eighth Army CID agents knocking down walls, looking for old bones?”
I nodded.
“We could end up on the DMZ, trudging through snow in the middle of the night, searching for North Korean infiltrators.”
I nodded again.
Ernie rolled his eyes, rubbed the back of his neck, and said, “How would we pull it off?”
I told him.
The members of about a dozen families-men, women, and even children-stood in front of the building that had once been Mori Di’s headquarters but now belonged to the gang of criminals known as the Seven Dragons. Wind laced with stray flakes of snow blew down the narrow Itaewon roadway, a roadway that would later become known by G.I. s as “Hooker Hill.” It was the middle of the morning, about nine or ten, and what had started with a small group of men loudly complaining to one another had grown into a crowd that the nuns estimated at a hundred people.
The ragamuffin Korean civilians wielded clubs and hoes and sickles and broom handles and any sort of weapon they could get their hands on. All of them were screaming, blood in their eyes. In most cases, every bit of wealth that their family retained, whether in the form of gold or jewelry or ancient artwork, had been entrusted to Technical Sergeant Flo Moretti. And with him gone, along with their wealth, and with no economic prospects in sight, all these Korean families could forget about any chance of a future, of education for their children or of being able to afford to set up a business. Instead, they faced poverty, misery, and-possibly-slow and agonizing starvation.
Every person in the mob was prepared to fight to the death.
When faced with this band of desperate people, the Seven Dragons were, at first, caught off guard. Within minutes, they regrouped. By now, the Seven Dragons had attracted dozens of shiftless young men to their ranks. Once these men realized what was going on, they armed themselves with knives and cudgels and prepared to attack.
While this fight was brewing in the middle of Itaewon the American MPs were back on the compound. Since most G.I. s work during the day outside of Itaewon, the MPs didn’t bother to patrol the ville until after regular duty hours. The KNPs were in Itaewon but not where the crowd was gathering. They were at their comfortable heated police station, staying put. The Seven Dragons must have warned them off. They’d known this fight with the families who’d entrusted their wealth to Mori Di was inevitable and wanted it to end quickly and decisively.
The nuns told Cort that the Seven Dragons envisioned a shining era of postwar corruption opening before them. They had money; they had power; they had influence and they didn’t want a lot of whining men, women, and children yapping at their heels, threatening their corrupt empire. They wanted to settle the issue now-in blood.
The families threw themselves at the front door of the Grand Ole Opry Club. Using improvised battering rams, they knocked it down. But the Seven Dragons were ready for them. As the mob poured in, from the wooden rafters above, men rained bricks down upon their heads. Still the crowd surged forward. At the far end of the open room, the Seven Dragons had locked the big double doors and barred them with metal rods. The crowd surged up against the doors, pushed against them, but could go no further. In confusion, the crowd turned back on itself but by now more people had pushed into the huge room and were milling around like cattle. Bricks kept falling.