“No way I’m going to stay here,” Jessica replied. “Not hardly. Paco’s being transferred to Tripler Army Medical in Honolulu. I’m just working until then so we’ll have some cash to start out on.”
“You’re following him to Hawaii?”
“What did you expect?”
I’m not sure what I expected. But it was clear that from here on out that Jessica Tidwell, adult, would make her own decisions.
“You’ll say goodbye to your mother,” I said.
“Her, yes. But not to my dad.”
I wanted to ask her why not but thought better of it. That was her decision. Not my business.
“Your mom‘s worried sick about you,” I said. “We’re going to tell her where you are.”
“Just don’t bring her down here.”
“That’s up to her. Not us.”
“I’m not worried about that. She won’t come down here without an escort. Even in the States, she’s afraid to leave the compound by herself.”
“All right then,” I said, “It’s settled. You’re going to watch out for yourself from now on. Be careful.”
“I will.” She turned to Ernie. “Sorry for kneeing you in the balls.”
“Don’t mention it,” Ernie replied.
19
Sergeant First Class Quinton “Q” Hilliard looked great in his papa-san outfit. His silk vest was fire engine red and his pantaloons were sky blue. He also wore a jade pendant around his neck and his pipe was made of hand-carved bamboo.
Ernie shook Hilliard’s hand in congratulations and so did I and then we bowed to the bride. Miss Kwon wore a bright red traditional chima-chogori dress with yellow and green stripes on the arms. A silver tiara sat atop her intricately braided black hair. She bowed back to us and we wished her every happiness. A lot of soul brothers were enjoying themselves with the free-flowing soju, Korean rice liquor, and Ernie mixed with them easily, shaking hands and laughing, patting them on the back.
That was Ernie. He’d fight you or love you with equal alacrity. I’m not sure he saw a difference between the two.
Miss Kwon confided to me that at first she’d seen Hilliard’s pursuit of her as being pressure that was more than she could bear. But later, she realized that he was going as far as he did, and using every power at his disposal-ethical or not-because he truly cared for her. Yes, he was over ten years older than her and yes, he was a foreigner but Miss Kwon’s ancestors were far away in North Korea behind a bamboo curtain that couldn’t be breached and her parents were dead and her foster family of butchers saw her only as a source of income. She was alone in this world. And besides, she told me in Korean, she thought Hilliard was kiowo-yo, cute. I wasn’t sure I agreed with that part but the more I got to know him, the more I realized that he was fundamentally a decent guy.
I wandered over to the table with the soju and poured myself a shot. So far, Miss Kwon’s name hadn’t come up in Captain Kim’s murder investigation. I don’t think he was worried about who had murdered Two Bellies; he was concentrating on the political hot potato of the twenty-year-old murder of Moretti. In the States, some hotshot reporter would be interviewing the relatives of the people who had been murdered in the Itaewon Massacre, printing stories about them crying for the blood of Jimmy Pak and Snake and the other surviving Seven Dragons. But in Korea, there was no such publicity. Under the Pak Chung-hee regime, the press was controlled. And with millions of dollars in United States military and economic aide flowing into the coffers of the government, President Pak stepped on stories concerning a murdered American G.I. He wanted nothing to hurt relations between South Korea and its most important international ally.
Captain Kim was probably feeling the pressure too. My guess was that he wouldn’t come looking for the weapon that had been used to murder Two Bellies and, even if he caught wind of Miss Kwon’s involvement, once he realized she was marrying a G.I. and moving forever to the States, he’d be relieved.
I’d been pondering whether to turn her in. Two Bellies might’ve been a washed-up prostitute but she was a human being, a child of god just like the rest of us. Murdering her wasn’t right. Still, I’d promised Miss Kwon that her secret would be safe with me. I managed to ease my conscience somewhat by telling myself that the case didn’t fall under my jurisdiction-and it didn’t. But mainly I calmed myself during restless nights by remembering Miss Kwon standing on the ledge near the roof of the King Club, staring at the fall below her-at her own death. Miss Kwon would have to live with what she’d done to Two Bellies. And Hilliard, now that he was her husband, would have to help her get through it.
I poured myself another shot of soju.
Some soul sister-Private Wallings, the one who’d blasted us at the EEO office-had dragged Ernie out on the dance floor and he was dancing as if he hadn’t a care in the world. I searched the faces of the other guests, those on the dance floor and those off of it, hoping that Doc Yong would be among them. But, of course, she wasn’t.
After a couple of more shots, Hilliard stepped over to the table and took me aside, leading me out into the open foyer. He placed his hand on my shoulder.
“What about Doc Yong?” he asked me. “How is she doing up there?”
“I can’t be sure,” I said. “Not good according to MI.”
“MI,” Hilliard said. “What the hell does Military Intelligence know?”
Doc Yong had asked me to hold off telling the Korean National Police until she and her friends-the two men and the three women-could make arrangements to flee the country. They couldn’t obtain a passport-those were husbanded carefully by Pak Chung-hee’s military regime-but she could obtain a fishing boat.
I tried to talk her out of it.
She took me by the hand and stared into my eyes.
“My mother was an activist for labor unions,” she said. “So was my father. In the eyes of the people running South Korea at that time, joining a union was the same as being a Communist. The more well known my father became, the more danger he was in. He was assassinated by the Syngman Rhee regime. The leaders of all unions and the leaders of the Workers’ Party, the ones who survived, fled north. But they never forgot me. A North Korean agent operating here in the south contacted the Buddhist nuns and gave them enough money to send me to school. It was because of him that I was able to become a doctor. It was because of him that I am now able to help my people. And it is to him, and the Communist Workers’ Party of the north, that I owe my allegiance”
“But you can’t go up there,” I said, tightening my grip on her hands.
“My ancestors are in North Korea,” she told me. “I’m going to take the photograph of my mother and return to our home village of Simsok-ni. There I can pray at our ancestral burial mounds.”
“But the North Koreans will arrest you,” I said. “In their minds, you’ve been tainted by living down here. The commissars will throw you in a prison camp.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. They need doctors. Anyway if I stay here, I spend the rest of my life in the monkey house.”
“I won’t tell anyone. Neither will Ernie.”
“Someday Captain Kim will find out.”
She was right. Captain Kim was a smart man and a good cop. And now that the case had become public, and both the Korean and the U.S. government were demanding justice, Captain Kim was bound to provide it. Eventually. Still, I tried to give Doc Yong some reason to stay.
“South Korean prisons,” I said, “beat the hell out of North Korean prisons.”
She looked at me with that look again, as if to say I wasn’t too smart.
We spent our last night together. I couldn’t sleep. Before dawn I woke her and promised her again that I would tell no one what I knew and that I would do everything to make sure that she was never punished for her crimes.