Ernie paid her out of the envelope Mr. Kill had given us.
I asked to talk to the mama-san. The girl seemed surprised and explained that she wouldn’t be in until five, when the cannon on compound went off.
“Tell her we need to talk to her now.” I showed her my badge. She couldn’t read it or understand it, but just knowing we were some sort of government officials was enough to frighten her. Without hesitation she took off through a door in back. Ernie and I sat alone, quaffing our cold beer.
“You gotta stop being so friendly to these girls, Sueno.”
“Why?”
“They lose respect for you.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You make it too easy for them. Speak their language and all that. You gotta make them work for it.”
“Being mutually unintelligible helps interpersonal relationships?”
“Lets them know who’s boss.”
I was formulating a response when someone burst through the back door. A small woman with a round face and a grey bouffant hairdo, wearing black slacks and a red Chinese blouse. Without slowing down, she barreled around the far edge of the bar.
“Who wanna talk mama-san?” she asked, peering around the small barroom like a bull who’d just entered the ring. Surprised, Ernie turned and studied her. Slowly, he raised his right hand and pointed at me.
She pounded across the wood-planked floor. “What you want?” Her voice was like the scrape of a razor along leather.
“Have a seat,” I said, motioning to an open chair.
“You talk first,” she said. “Then I sit. Maybe.”
Before I could say anything, the cannon went off. In a few minutes, off-duty GIs would be filtering out of the front gate of Camp Humphries and into the village of Anjong-ri.
“You talk,” she said. “Pretty soon I busy.”
I asked her again to sit, this time in Korean. She thought it over, stepped forward, and keeping her butt toward the front edge of the chair, sat down. “You speaky Korean pretty good,” she said. “Who teach you?”
“I study it,” I said. “On compound.”
“They teach Korean on compound?”
“In Seoul, yes.”
She shook her head. “Number hucking ten.” No good. There’s no “f” sound in the Korean alphabet so often it’s replaced with “h.” And in GI slang, number one-or hana-is best and, reasonably enough, number ten is worst.
“Why number ten?” I asked.
“GI speak Korean, all girl lose respect for GI.”
Ernie grinned and sipped on his beer.
I took the bait. “Why lose respect?”
Her eyes widened. “Talk like baby. All girl laugh at them.”
Ernie glugged even more of his beer down, trying to keep from bursting into laughter.
“Okay,” I said. “No more Korean. Only English.”
“That smart,” she said, reasonably.
Then I asked her about Jo Kyong-ja.
Her eyes squinted but she answered. “She long time go.”
“Go where?”
“Seoul. She owe me money. Why you look for her?”
I showed her my badge.
“You MP?”
“No, CID.”
I explained the difference. We handle mostly capital crimes as opposed to misdemeanors and lesser felonies and we’re trained in the latest techniques of forensic science. When I was done, she waved her hand. “MP same same.”
Ernie was thoroughly enjoying himself.
“You want ’nother beer?” she asked, turning to him. When he didn’t answer right away, she shouted to the girl behind the bar to bring two more beers. For a moment I thought she was going to pay for them, but when she demanded money, I realized she wasn’t impressed with our law enforcement status. Ernie pulled out the wad of Korean bills again and the mama-san eyed them knowingly.
“You not GI,” she said.
“What makes you say that?”
“Too much Korean money.”
I was about to steer her back toward the subject of Jo Kyong-ja when a half-dozen GIs pushed through the door. They wore dirty fatigues and the shoulder patch of the local aviation unit, and every one of them, it seemed, had fingers darkened with grease. They marched resolutely toward the bar and the girl pulled out cold OB and set them up all around. One of them kept turning his head toward me and Ernie and the mama-san sitting at the table.
She ignored them, keeping all her attention on Ernie’s envelope of won.
I asked her when she’d last seen Jo Kyong-ja, and she said months ago and that the girl owed her money for the last month’s rent; all the girls who worked in the Yobo Club also lived out back.
“Why didn’t she pay?” I asked.
“She wanna go to Seoul. So she pack her bag, leave at night time, everybody sleep.”
“Did she go with a boyfriend?”
“No. By herself. Probably she take taxi to Pyongtaek. From there take train.”
“Did you try to find her?”
“No.” The old woman pulled out a pack of Kent cigarettes and lit one up. “Too hard find. Anyway, I make money. She gone.”
Ernie leaned toward her. “If she came back to Anjong-ri, would you know it?”
“Course I know. Anybody know Yobo Club mama-san. Anybody tell me.”
The GI at the bar kept swiveling his head, eyeing us suspiciously, clearly jealous that we were involved in such an intimate conversation with the mama-san of the Yobo Club. He chugged down a huge swig of beer, set the bottle down, and rose to his feet.
“Here he comes,” I told Ernie.
We were used to this. In these little GI villages, everyone knows everyone else, and they’re suspicious-and resentful-of strangers. The guy walked up behind the mama-san. I saw that his rank was staff sergeant, and his nametag said Torrelli. He leaned down and put his arm around her shoulder.
“Are these guys bothering you, Mama?”
“No. Okay,” she said, waving her cigarette.
“If they bother you,” he continued, “you let me know, okay, Mama?”
“Yeah. Yeah. I let you know.”
Then he stood to his full height. “Nobody,” he said, pointing a grease-stained forefinger at us, “and I mean nobody, messes with our Mama-san. You got that?”
Ernie rolled his eyes. I was hoping he’d ignore the guy, but instead he said, “What’re you? Her daddy?”
Torrelli stared at him for a while, letting his eyes go lifeless. “Where I come from,” he said, “we eat guys like you for lunch.”
“Well then,” Ernie said, “you can bite me right now.”
Torrelli stepped toward Ernie and Ernie-never one to de-escalate a confrontation-lifted the cocktail table and threw it at him.
– 12-
Mama-san started screeching about the broken glassware. Torrelli backed up, wide-eyed now, wondering what the hell he’d gotten into.
Maybe it was the pressure of the Schultz investigation, or maybe it was the humiliation we suffered when we’d taken Miss Jo into custody and then lost her. Whatever the reason, Ernie’d just about reached the end of his rope. He stepped around the tilted table and over flooding beer and started for Torrelli. I jumped up from my chair and reached for Ernie, grabbed him by the shoulders and held him back. The guys at the bar were up now, all of them gathered around Torrelli.
The Yobo Club mama-san had handled incidents like this before. “Whatsamatta you?” she screamed at Ernie. “You breakey all glass.” Turning to Torrelli she said, “Why you bother mama-san? We talk about something important! We talk about Miss Jo.” Torrelli looked stricken. “You know now,” the mama-san said, wagging her forefinger in Torrelli’s face. “Your old yobo.”
“Is she all right?” Torrelli asked.
“Maybe all right. Maybe no.” The mama-san pointed to the bar. “You sit down, mind own business.”
“Okay, Mama,” Torrelli said, chastened now. Grumbling, he and the other GIs returned to the bar. I helped the mama-san set the table back upright. The first girl we’d encountered hustled out from the behind the bar with a damp cloth and a dustpan, and soon everything was mostly dry, the broken shards were collected and the Yobo Club was once again shipshape.