What she said was true but it just made Ernie angry. He wadded up the army blanket and tossed it at them in disgust.
I crouched down so I was at eye level with the women. “The night she died, where did she go? Who was she going to see?” No answer. “Did somebody come here and meet her or did she go out on her own?”
Still no answer.
“I’m going to find the man who killed her,” I said. “Whoever that is, he will be punished. But I need your help.”
After a long silence, one of the huatu players said, “That night, Two Bellies go out, nobody know where go but she dress up like she got big business. You know, important business. She no tell us what kind business she got.”
“Do you know where she went?” I asked.
“Itaewon, somewhere. She no take handbag. If she gotta go long way, she take handbag.”
So that was something. The night of her death, Two Bellies was operating close to home. I had another question for them but I had to phrase it delicately.
“That night, when Two Bellies went out,” I said, “do you think she was going out to have fun? Or was she going out, somewhere, to make money?”
The talkative woman barked a sardonic laugh. “Two Bellies never go anywhere have fun. She only go out make money.”
“Did she go alone?” Ernie asked.
The women stared at him warily for a moment. Finally, one of them said, “She say somebody follow her all the time. She no like.”
“Who?” I asked.
The women shrugged. I studied the circle. Nothing but blank faces.
“So someone had been following her,” I said. “A man or a woman?”
They all laughed. I wasn’t sure what I’d said that was so funny. Finally, the talkative one spoke up again. “If it man,” she said, “then Two Bellies no mind. She likey.”
The women cackled with glee. I figured it was best to leave them laughing. At least we’d learned something. Not much, but something.
We retreated back across the courtyard and ducked through the small gate out into the Itaewon street.
Doc Yong helped me research the Golden Dragon Travel Agency. From her clinic she made a few phone calls for me, received a few evasive answers, and eventually we formed the same working hypothesis: The Golden Dragon Travel Agency was owned, or at least controlled, by the Seven Dragons. A few of the women who’d been treated in her clinic freelanced part time for Japanese sex tours.
She gave me their names and addresses and Ernie and I wandered around the village searching for them.
The day was overcast, the wind growing colder by the minute but still, in this late afternoon, dozens of young women were parading back and forth to the bathhouses in the Itaewon area: cleanliness was a virtue close to the Korean heart. Their straight black hair was tied up over their heads with brightly colored yarn or metal clasps and against their hips they held plastic pans filled with soap and scrubbing implements and skin lotion and shampoo. Most of them wore only shorts and T-shirts and their goose-pimpled flesh and shapely figures were on display.
The girl we finally found was called Ahn Un-ja. She was slender, probably weighing in at less than ninety-five pounds, and she was frank with us, saying that many of the Japanese businessmen liked diminutive girls like herself. We asked her about the Golden Dragon Travel Agency and she admitted that she sometimes worked for them but she was afraid to say more. Ernie kept wheedling for more information and finally she told us why she was so frightened.
“Horsehead get angry,” she said.
We thanked her, promised we wouldn’t mention her name to anyone, and left.
Sergeant First Class Quinton Hilliard, the man who liked to call himself Q, was holding court at the King Club. This time he was complaining to a few of the cocktail waitresses, who were hovering around him, that the band never played any soul music. The band was a group of teenage Korean rock musicians who probably knew five chords and six songs between them but that didn’t seem to matter to Hilliard. If they weren’t up on the latest James Brown or Marvin Gaye, he considered their lack of knowledge to be a personal affront.
We were leaning against the bar. Ernie hadn’t taken his eyes off Hilliard since we walked in.
The young cocktail waitresses were all smiling and cooing around Hilliard. For his part, he sat at his table like the godfather of Itaewon, lapping up the phony adulation.
“Ignore him,” I said. “We have more important things to do.”
Ernie grunted before saying, “How’s Miss Kwon doing?”
“Doc Yong says better.”
“That son of a bitch likes to throw his weight around.” Ernie glared at Hilliard. “Everybody knows the club owners have to kiss his ass. Otherwise he’ll sic Eighth Army EEO on them. That’s why the waitresses are treating him like that. If he accepts one free drink,” Ernie said, “I’m busting him.”
Accepting gratuities for performing-or not performing-your military duties is against the Uniform Code of Military Justice. However, it’s a difficult charge to prove. If I could prove it, I’d be able to bring half the honchos at 8th Army up on charges.
“Forget it, Ernie.” I dragged him out of the King Club.
Once we were out on the street, Ernie said, “All right,” and shrugged my grip off his elbow. “Where to now?”
“Mrs. Bei told me that Jimmy Pak was in his office tonight.” Mrs. Bei was the manager behind the bar at the King Club and was tuned into the scuttlebutt that pulsed through Itaewon. Also, she was grateful to Ernie and me for having tried to save Miss Kwon. The attempted suicide had caused the local KNPs to blame Mrs. Bei for Miss Kwon’s ill-considered act; they were threatening her with charges and fines for not properly counseling the “hostesses” who plied their trade in the King Club. So far, Mrs. Bei confided in me, she’d had to shell out over 30,000 won, more than sixty bucks. If the girl had died, the King Club would’ve been closed by the Korean authorities and it would’ve cost her ten times that much to re-open.
I would’ve preferred to talk to Horsehead but I had no idea where to find him. We settled for another charter member of the Seven Dragons. Jimmy Pak was the long time owner of the UN Club, probably the classiest club in Itaewon. It sat right on the corner of the Itaewon main drag and the MSR and was always busy, filled with some of the most gorgeous women Itaewon had to offer. Civilian tourists, diplomats, and foreign businessmen who occasionally found their way to Itaewon, usually ended up partying in the UN Club.
Neon glittered brightly in the dark night. Korean business girls and American G.I. s jostled one another in the busy pedestrian thoroughfare. The wind had picked up and flakes of snow swirled haphazardly through the crowds, landing on brick walls and cement steps and cobbled lanes and beginning to stick, to form drifts in the midwinter cold. If the Armed Forces Korea Network weather report was accurate, we could expect more precipitation moving south down the peninsula, out of Manchuria, closing in on Seoul.
As we shoved through the double doors of the UN Club, a boy in black slacks, white shirt, and bow tie bowed to us and said, “Oso-oseiyo.” Please come in.
The place was packed and there were no empty tables but we didn’t muscle our way to the bar as we usually did. Instead, we walked up narrow varnished steps that led to a chophouse upstairs. The joint served hamburgers with oddly flavored meat patties and fat french fries and sliced cucumbers instead of pickles. The menu also featured other delicacies such as ohmu rice-steamed rice wrapped in an omelet-which the G.I. s considered to be Korean food but which was actually viewed by the Koreans as a form of yang sik, foreign food.
Western influence, Japanese influence, Chinese influence and the Korean ability to adapt in order to survive; all these factors made it difficult for me to look back in time and discern which parts of the culture that swirled around me were authentic Korean and which parts had been tacked on recently. I worked at it, constantly. But the Koreans were a puzzle to me. Who they were. What they wanted. And although I discovered and snapped into place a new piece of the puzzle every day, I felt sometimes that the picture was becoming more blurry. Maybe I was doomed to be confused. Maybe a foreigner can never understand Asia or the Asian mind. But I’d keep trying. Especially now. For Moretti’s sake, so we could find his bones and return them to his family. And for Ernie’s sake and my own sake. So we’d have a shot at not having to return to a Korean jail. Which would be good.