When the bartender realized who we were and why we were there, it was as if he’d resigned himself to some horrible fate. He didn’t invite us in and so I started questioning him on the low porch that ran along the front edge of the hooch. What had he seen on the night Ernie and I sneaked into the basement of the Grand Ole Opry? Had he discovered the hole we’d made in the wall? Did he look inside and see the bones of Mori Di? Who’d come in that night and taken those bones and then replaced them with the corpse of Two Bellies? Had she been alive when she’d been brought in? Who, exactly, had done the killing?
He didn’t answer any of my questions, not at first, but he promised that he would, just as soon as he changed clothes. As Noh Bang-ok rose to his feet, I asked him why he’d left Itaewon. His eyes widened, making his forehead wrinkle much as the old woman’s forehead had.
“Because,” he replied, as if talking to a child, “I was afraid.”
He turned and walked back into the hooch. Ernie and I stood in the courtyard. With my eyes, I motioned for Ernie to go around back to make sure that the bartender didn’t try to slip away from us.
Then the old woman, still looking worried, slipped off her shoes, climbed up on the wooden platform and entered the hooch. She waddled back into the darkness and seconds later she screamed again.
Ernie and I were inside the hooch before the sound faded. He entered through the back door, me through the front. In a small bedroom we saw the bartender kneeling on the vinyl-covered floor. The old woman was clutching him, still screaming. Blood poured from the young man’s wrist. He held his arm up for us to see. A huge gash leered at us.
I applied first aid as best I could and soon a neighbor who owned a cab was helping us bundle the young bartender into the back seat and telling me in Korean that he was taking him to the big hospital downtown. Ernie and I ran back to the jeep parked in front of the Gold Mountain Temple and managed to follow the cab across slippery, snow-covered roads to the hospital.
By the time the bartender had been checked in and attended to by a physician, Ernie and I were surrounded by angry relatives. Apparently, he was part of a large clan here in Mapo. The snow outside was falling faster and we weren’t about to obtain any useful information from him now.
I knew the wound was superficial, inflicted to avoid being taken to the KNP station. Noh Bang-ok would live. But Ernie and I didn’t contact the local Korean cops and have him arrested because they would contact the Itaewon cops and something told me that the Itaewon cops weren’t too interested in investigating the murder of Two Bellies. KNPs have a habit of sticking together. If we talked to the local cops, they might end up arresting us instead of the Grand Ole Opry bartender, on trumped-up charges like hounding him and forcing him to become distressed and attempting to commit suicide. Best for us to say goodbye to Mapo.
Ernie and I fought our way outside. Ernie fired up the jeep and we wound through the narrow streets of the city of Mapo until we reached the main highway. A wooden sign pointed toward Seoul.
Ernie bulled his way into the flow of traffic and stepped on the gas.
The lobby of the White Crane Hotel was almost as big as an airplane hangar. The floor was carpeted in a red design that spread from the long sleek front desk toward a mock waterfall and a circular stairway leading up to chic restaurants and boutiques with French names. A European pianist wearing a tuxedo with tails tinkled out soft tunes on an enormous grand piano.
“This joint stinks,” Ernie said.
He was referring to the scent of roses permeating the air.
G.I. s weren’t welcome. I felt as out of place as a gorilla shuffling through a fashion show.
All the customers were Asian: a few Chinese from Hong Kong but mostly whole regiments of Japanese tourists. The not-so-rich Japanese tended to migrate in herds, arriving in heated buses. The rich ones traveled in sleek black sedans with white upholstery driven by white-gloved chauffeurs.
“I thought America ruled the world,” Ernie said.
“Americans only think they rule the world,” I answered.
We sat on frail metal chairs in a tea shop with a clear view of the entrance to the hotel. Flurries of snow drifted by sporadically-not enough to clog traffic. Not yet. When we first arrived from Mapo, we cased the joint, tipping a bellhop to find out if Mr. Ondo Fukushima had checked in. The bellhop said his suite was ready but he had not yet arrived. Then we ate chow in a workingman’s chophouse across the street and returned to wait.
“Where do you think she met him?” Ernie asked. He was referring to Jessica Tidwell.
“Probably somewhere south of Seoul,” I answered, “in Suwon or Taejon. The driver takes her down there, hooks her up with Fukushima and together they attend a few afternoon meetings, maybe a formal dinner, and then they drive up to Seoul.”
“Or check into a hotel down there and don’t bother to come out for a couple of days.”
I shrugged. “Anyway, this is the only lead we have. We wait here until they arrive.”
“Terrific,” Ernie said. He shifted his butt on the tiny chair and sipped unhappily on scented oolong tea.
It was almost midnight now. If Ondo Fukushima and Jessica Tidwell didn’t show up soon, they wouldn’t at all.
Ernie elbowed me. “Check out the armored battalion.”
A line of five black sedans pulled up outside the plate glass entranceway of the hotel. The liveried doormen scurried up and down the row, swinging doors open. Burly Japanese men in expensive suits and highly polished shoes emerged first. Their hair was slicked back, and if communication devices had been plugged into their ears, I would’ve thought they were Secret Service. One of them barked an all clear, and from the central sedan a diminutive Japanese man emerged wearing a pin-striped suit in a shade of green so dark that it glowed.
“The head honcho,” Ernie said.
As he strode through the door, his immaculately coiffed bodyguards arrayed themselves around him like a phalanx of ancient Greek warriors protecting their king.
Behind them, high heels clicked on marble.
Jessica Tidwell wore the same skimpy blue dress that had been crumpled on the floor of Paco Bernal’s room, but it was cleaned and pressed now. The freckled flesh of her decolletage peeked over the silk material like the prow of a sailing ship. Jessica scurried behind the formation of men, keeping her head down, ignored but nevertheless making it clear that she was a woman following her master.
Ernie snorted in derision.
“Come on,” he said. “Enough of this freaking tea. It’s showtime.”
Ernie and I had discussed how we’d approach Jessica. Our fondest hope was that the yakuza chief would treat her like a worthless woman and make her follow far behind. He hadn’t let us down. If we could, we’d move her away quietly, out the door, and into the army-issue jeep waiting around the corner.
At least that’s how I hoped things would turn out.
Instead, as soon as I moved forward and put my hand on Jessica’s elbow, two of Ondo Fukushima’s thugs stopped in their tracks and turned on us. Ernie slipped his hand beneath his coat, not pulling his . 45 but making it clear to the men he was armed. I tugged on Jessica’s elbow.
“Let me go,” she said.
“Don’t make trouble,” I told her. “We’re taking you home.”
“Like hell.” With her free hand she reached inside the purse strapped to her shoulder. She pulled out a wad of blue bills, ten-thousand yen notes. “This is what he paid me,” she said. “More than a thousand bucks.” In a falsetto voice, she said, “You change money, G.I.?” Then she reverted to her regular voice. “But I have to stay with him for the whole weekend.”