Ernie scampered up cement steps that led into the back door of the building.
The little man ran after Ernie, his face reddening now. “Weikurei!” he shouted again, clenching and unclenching his fingers. I stayed close behind him.
We entered another storage area, this one filled with more crates of beer and soju, these bottles unopened, and then into a large tile-floored kitchen.
It looked like something out of a historical magazine. Heavy iron pans hung from thick metal hooks, an ancient gas stove was covered with a gleaming metal canopy, and two geriatric refrigerators were hooked to rusted transformers, buzzing and wheezing like old men on life support.
“The place is clean, anyway,” Ernie said.
It was that. Old but clean.
A dozen oddly shaped appliances lined a wooden counter, the functions of which I couldn’t fathom, and beyond that, like stout soldiers, a short row of rice cookers. In the next room a huge mahogany dining table was covered with lace doilies. Slanting sunlight revealed swirling mites from a recent dusting. The tall, elegant woman was nowhere in sight.
The enraged man was still sputtering so Ernie stopped and pulled out his badge. This halted him. As he studied the shiny brass in the open leather folder, I spoke to him in Korean.
“Kiga ko-nun yoja,” I said. The tall woman. “Where’d she go?”
He seemed to have trouble speaking, and at the same time he was struggling to swallow. Without answering, he glanced at the doorway leading out of the dining room. I showed him my badge and, speaking softly, I pointed back toward the kitchen.
“Chogi kiddariyo.” Wait there.
When he didn’t move, Ernie shoved him back into the kitchen and slid shut the wooden door.
We headed deeper into the plush environs of Tiger Kang’s.
The place smelled of must and cigarette smoke and spilled liquor. Ernie inhaled deeply, a smile suffusing his lips. He felt exactly the way I did; an old dive, dark, quiet, comfortable and filled with expensive liquor and cheap women. Exactly the type of place we both loved.
I stepped into the entrance foyer. The front door was locked from the inside. A cloak room was filled with thick wooden hangers but otherwise empty. Down the hallway, we ran into a dividing wall of fish tanks bubbling with blue water. Elaborate coral reefs and sunken pirate ships loomed beyond the murk and exotic sea creatures gaped at us in goggle-eyed amazement. On the far side of the tanks, a cocktail lounge opened before us, lit by soft red light and lined on one side with plush leather booths and on the other by a polished mahogany bar. The odor of cigarette smoke was overpowering now and seemed to emanate from every padded barstool and from every brass fixture lining the wall. A few tables in the middle were covered with white linen.
“Have we gone back in time?” Ernie asked.
I didn’t answer. The murmur of soft voices drifted downward from upstairs. We climbed thickly carpeted steps.
“Up here must be where the action is,” Ernie said.
A wrought-iron railing circled the entire second floor and opposite it, every few yards, dim sunlight projected through double sliding doors covered with embroidered silk. The elaborate designs depicted silver dragons and flaming orange tigers and pale blue flowers and bubbling green waterfalls; all elegant scenes of ancient Asia. One of the doors was slid open. That’s where the talking was coming from. We padded down the carpet.
Ernie stood at the edge of the door and nodded to me. I’d go in first. I entered the room, pulling my badge out as I did so, and stuck it forward like a shield.
“Eighth Army CID,” I said. “Black market violation. Nobody move.”
A group of about a half-dozen Korean women sat around a low table, all of them leaning over metal bowls of steaming soup. Mouths hung open. Chopsticks clattered against porcelain.
“Where’s the tall woman?” I asked in English. “The one who just came from the PX?”
Two or three of the women were young and the others not so young, but trying to look that way. Their hair was in disarray and their eyes sleepy but they were all attractive. Very attractive. Ernie entered the room, grinning.
“Yoboseiyo,” he said. “Where’s the stuff from the commissary? Come on. Bali, bali.” Quickly.
None of the women seemed to understand him although I knew that if they were hired as hostesses to the rich and famous, they must speak English, and probably Japanese. I scanned the room. No sign of the contraband.
“Come on, Ernie,” I said. “Let’s keep looking.”
Before he followed me out of the room, he stopped and waved at them. “Goodbye, girls.”
We slid open every paneled door but each room was filled only with flat cushions for sitting and low mother-of-pearl inlaid tables. Downstairs, I lifted the countertop on the end of the bar and searched back there. Nothing. Ernie found a storage room and managed to pry it open. Fumbling around in the darkness, he finally located a light and switched it on.
“Here it is,” he said.
The walls were lined with wooden cupboards holding neatly arranged bottles of liquor, wine, champagne and various decanters filled with liqueurs and aperitifs the names of which I couldn’t pronounce. Some of the containers had the Korean customs import stamp on them, some didn’t.
Atop a raised wooden pallet sat the two cases of soda, the two cases of American beer and about a half-dozen paper bags. I rummaged inside the bags. Stuck between four bottles of Johnny Walker Black Label, I found the receipt from the Class VI Store, dated today, time-stamped less than an hour ago. I lifted it out and shoved it into my pocket.
“Where’d she go?” I asked.
“Hell if I know,” Ernie replied.
We stepped out of the storeroom and back into the cocktail lounge. Someone was waiting for us. A middle-aged Korean woman, tall, full-figured, with an elaborately coiffed black hairdo, her body wrapped in a flower-patterned blue silk dressing robe. She stared at us for a moment, her face dour, the brow wrinkled.
“Koma-ya!” she said. Boy!
A slender young man appeared out of the shadows, wearing black trousers, a pressed white shirt, and a black bow tie. He bowed to the woman.
“Kopi, seigei,” she said. Coffee, three.
He bowed again and backed away.
Then she motioned toward the largest linen covered tables in the center of the room, her eyes never wavering from ours. “Sit,” she said.
“No time to sit, mama-san,” Ernie said. “Where’s the tall woman? The one who brought you the Johnny Walker Black?”
“She go,” she said.
“Where?”
“Not your business.”
“It is our business,” Ernie said, pulling out his badge. “We’re from Eighth Army CID and you’re in violation of Korean import restrictions. We can call the Korean National Police and we will, if you don’t tell us where to find the tall woman with the dependent ID card.”
“Sit!” she said, pointing a polished nail at two upholstered wooden chairs.
Ernie walked forward. “Why the hell should we?”
“Because,” she said, “I am Tiger Kang. I know every honcho at Eighth Army and every Eighth Army honcho know Tiger Kang!”
She pointed her red-tipped forefinger at Ernie’s nose. “And you two are in deep kimchi.”
“We been there before,” Ernie replied.
The boy reappeared, this time holding a tray with a silver pot of coffee and three saucers and cups. He placed them atop the immaculate tablecloth, along with tiny silver spoons, a container of cream and a bowl of sugar. He bowed once again to Tiger Kang and departed. The coffee smelled good. I sat down. So did Tiger Kang. Finally, reluctantly, so did Ernie.
In the Army, when you break a regulation, even a foolish black market regulation, it is tantamount to disobeying a direct order-and, therefore, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, serious stuff. Abusing one’s Commissary and PX privileges by either reselling purchased items or giving a gift of more than twenty-five dollars value to an unauthorized person was a breach of United States Forces Korea Regulation 190-2 and a violation of the Republic of Korea’s customs laws.