You couldn’t figure out what he was thinking. Not that anyone was trying. Ernie just fit into a crowd: he didn’t make anyone nervous.
It was me who made people nervous. 1 was big and noticeable and people always wondered what I was doing there. And while they were wondering about me, I was wondering about Ernie.
Worried about what was going on behind that noncommittal gaze. That gaze that lingered on every woman’s rear, head rotating behind his pointed nose like radar homed in on a target. The calculating mind behind the blue eyes was scheming. I spent a lot of time worrying about Ernie.
The taxi sped on. The city was everywhere. Building after building, sign after sign, an endless jumble of streets, alleys, and overhangs. People were crammed into buses full to bursting, jostling each other on the packed sidewalks, and riding bicycles piled six feet high with goods of all descriptions.
I looked at the girls: their dresses, their coats, their hairdos. My eyes jumped rapidly from one to another, each with straight black hair to her waist.
A Gl bus drew alongside, bearing the spare, stenciled markings of the U.S. Army. It didn’t stop for civilians. The Korean populace stood at their own bus stops, patiently waiting while the drab green bus sped by them, stopping only for Gls, or Korean women frantically waving their Military Dependent identity cards.
The Korean buses were packed. Heads and arms pushed up against the steam-smeared windows in a flesh-colored jigsaw puzzle. I spotted a pretty girl. She stared blankly ahead.
Large and green, Namsan loomed over everything, standing just south of the city’s center. The “South Mountain” was about halfway between the King’s Palace and the Han River. Radiating from it in all directions were millions of buildings and houses and the skyscrapers of the downtown business district.
“It wasn’t anything like this my first tour,” 1 said. “There weren’t hardly any buildings over two stories tall. And there weren’t hardly any girls asking more than ten dollars for an overnight.”
“The two must be related,” Ernie said.
Another two blocks and we came to an abrupt halt. Ernie fumbled with some coins and gave the driver the exact change indicated by the meter.
“Shit, pal,” I said. “You’re not going to embarrass me and not tip this guy?”
“Hell no, I’m not going to tip him.” He picked up his bag. “These guys don’t know what a tip is. Korean custom.”
Across the street we entered Yongsan Compound, headquarters of the Eighth United States Army. A block past the gate, we passed through the Moyer Recreation Center and went straight to the snack stand. I ordered a hot dog and a medium Coke and Ernie had the same.
The buns were steamed, the dogs hot, and we piled them high with mustard, sweet pickle relish, and onions. They didn’t last long. Then we looked at each other, hesitated… and got up to order two more. It had been a long ride from Pusan.
“How was the teenybopper?” I said.
Ernie shrugged. “She did what I told her to do.”
My voice husked down a few decibels. “What did you tell her to do?”
“Routine.” Ernie leaned back in the vinyl-covered seat and pushed his pelvis forward a little. “Had her work on my joint for a while. She wasn’t very good but she tried real hard. I like watching them while they try to figure out what to do with it.” He crossed his arms and stared straight ahead. His blue pupils threatened to melt the thickest part of his round wire-rimmed glasses. “That’s what brought me back,” he said.
“Brought you back? I thought that was the first time you’d ever seen her.”
“I mean back in the Army. Back here.” He twisted his head towards the window.“The American girls, they want you to talk. They want you to understand them. Even with all this stuff back in the States about free love, I never yet ran into one that didn’t claim she was old-fashioned.”
“Weren’t getting enough nooky, huh?”
“I could have,” he said. “I just didn’t want to talk to them.” He looked back out the window. “It’s better here, where you just pay them.” He leaned back, pushed his hands into his jacket pockets, and tilted his head against the hard metal siding of the snack stand. “The price in the States is too high.”
He closed his eyes. I thought of the college courses I had taken courtesy of Uncle Sam. The ones I had signed up for were mostly on the Orient: Asian history, Asian languages, the anthropology of the Far East. The friends I had made were mainly veterans, and there weren’t many of them. I had drunk a lot and tried to talk to some of the girls just out of high school but it hadn’t worked. It never had. But now it wasn’t working for a different reason.
“Come on,” I said, checking my watch. “It’s game time.”
Bile percolated up my throat and pumped gas into the hollow of my chest. I popped the last of my antacids and swore.
‘They found her at zero four hundred this morning,” the first sergeant said. ‘The body was badly burned but the neighbors are certain that it’s the young girl by the name of Pak Ok-suk who lived in that hooch.”
The first sergeant sipped his milky brown coffee, grimaced, and placed the porcelain mug in the center of his immaculate desk. Down the long hallway an ancient radiator whistled and clanged while the snow outside swirled in a howling wind from Manchuria.
Ernie Bascom fidgeted in his chair and tucked his tie into his trim belt line.
“So far, the Korean National Police don’t have much information on Miss Pak other than that she was a registered prostitute and her hometown was Yoju. The neighbors claim that she had an American boyfriend, actually a number of American boyfriends, but that for the last two or three months it had been the same guy. The KNPs didn’t get much of a description of him: under six feet, light brown hair, average weight, early twenties. Could be a million Gls. He’d been living with her, bringing her stuff out of the PX to black-market. Routine. They never seemed to have any fights, except around payday, when she pushed him a little, and no one noticed whether or not he came to her hooch last night. Normally he arrived around six P.M., after work. There were no other bodies found in the hooch, just hers, and by the time the neighbors were awakened by the flames, it was too late to save her. No one else was hurt since they were able to get out in time.”
The first sergeant rattled the paperwork in front of him and took another sip of his coffee. Ernie sat perfectly still, leaning back in his chair, his right ankle crossed over his left knee, a Caucasian Buddha in baggy coat and tie.
“All of this would be just routine-a fire starts in a business girl’s hooch out in Itaewon, she’s burned to death in her sleep, and life goes on-if it wasn’t for the findings of the Itaewon fire marshal. The girl had been bound hand and foot, trussed up, actually, and some sort of bonfire had been built under her body. So it was clearly arson and apparently murder. She might have been dead before the fire started. The neighbors heard no struggle or fighting that evening and were unaware of anything unusual until they smelled the fumes coming from her hooch. Strange enough by itself, but things sort of get worse when we get to the final entry in the fire marshal’s report. Upon examining what was left of the girl, they discovered that a large wooden stake had been shoved inside her body. This, taken with the unusual, trussed-up position they found her in and the bonfire that had been prepared, led them to believe that it had been some sort of ritualistic killing. It almost seems as if the girl had been skewered and prepared for roasting.”
Ernie reached in his coat pocket and fumbled for a stick of gum. The bile in my stomach hit my head and threatened to burst it. Last night’s booze or this morning’s killing, I wasn’t sure which.
The first sergeant cleared his throat and continued. “The young lady’s close association with American servicemen, of course, casts immediate suspicion on Eighth Army personnel. The story didn’t break in time for the Seoul morning papers but we expect the afternoon editions to be screaming about it. We’ll have to wait and see if the Koreans broadcast the details of such a grisly murder on TV. What makes this case even worse than if a Gl had just murdered a Korean woman is the way the assailant did it. The corpse was treated as if it were a beast. And I know you two guys have read your Eighth Army training manuals and know that Koreans are particularly sensitive about any implications that they should be treated in any way less than human. Being called an animal, something nonhuman, is the supreme insult to a Korean. We can expect the TV and radio people to whip up a frenzy of anti-Americanism over this one.