“Got it?” Ernie asked.
“Got it,” I replied.
“And his keys?” Ernie asked.
“I left them in his top desk drawer.”
Ernie climbed behind the steering wheel. “He’ll be so hung over tomorrow, he won’t remember if he left them there himself or not.” Then he turned to me. “Where to?”
I retrieved the Arenas file and, using my flashlight, quickly thumbed through it. After a couple of minutes, I found what I was looking for. “There’s a bar in Songsan-dong called the Star Mountain Club.”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“That’s where Staff Sergeant Arenas’s yobo used to work.”
“They didn’t throw her in jail too?”
“No. Since she cooperated with the prosecution, the KNPs gave her a pass. Probably because they knew she had no real connection to Communist spies.”
“You’re assuming a lot.”
“Maybe. But if they thought she had a real connection, they would’ve never let her go.”
Ernie started the engine. “So where’s Songsan-dong?”
“On the other side of Uijongbu. We’ve been there before.”
“That village outside Camp Stanley?”
“That’s the one.”
“I like that place,” he said. “Nice and decadent.”
We rolled out onto the main road, turned left, and passed the VFW. No commotion. Apparently, our departure was going as we’d hoped. Unnoticed.
– 22-
Songsan means Star Mountain. Looming above Camp Stanley, it’s a pointed peak that would provide a layer of protection from incoming artillery in case of war. The peak slants down to a narrow plateau, upon which two artillery battalions and the 2nd Infantry Division Artillery headquarters are stationed, and from there the mountain continues to slope downhill. The narrow pathway leading out of Camp Stanley’s back gate was steep and lined with neon-signed bars and nightclubs jammed together like dominoes. Heaven, in other words, to an American GI. We parked the jeep at the base of the hill, about a hundred yards from the compound itself, and walked up slippery steps, passing soul music and rock and roll blaring out of open doorways. About thirty yards from the base’s back gate stood the Star Mountain Club.
I entered first. Ernie followed shortly after.
The joint was for older soldiers, with slightly more sedate music, soft lighting and upholstery a few millimeters thick on all of the seats. The women working the bar were older, too-some in their thirties, a few probably in their forties. A couple of NCOs sat at the bar, and one guy lounged in a booth with his yobo-or at least, his yobo for the evening. The far end of the bar was wide open, so Ernie and I sat down. We ordered ourselves OB.
Time was of the essence, so I got straight to the point. “Where’s Miss Lee?” I asked the waitress who brought us the drinks.
“Who?”
“Miss Lee Suk-myong. She works here, doesn’t she?”
The woman looked startled. “Miss Lee? She long time go.”
“She doesn’t work here anymore?”
“No. Long time tonasso-yo.” She left a long time go.
“Long time,” I repeated, “like one month ago, two months ago?”
The woman thought about it. “Not last payday, maybe payday before that one.”
Two months ago, maybe less.
“Where’d she go?” I asked.
Her forehead crinkled. “I don’t know,” she said. Then she looked at me more closely. “Why you wanna know?”
“When I was in the States,” I told her, “my chingu told me he steadied her before. He told me she is a good woman.”
Chingu means friend. It’s not uncommon for a GI to have a steady yobo, to return to the States after his tour is up, and then recommend her to a friend who’s on his way to Korea. If she’s proven to be reliable and not a thief, some guys will look her up and, if she’s available, move right in.
“You too young for her,” the woman told me.
I shrugged. “Young woman, old woman, what’s it matter?”
This seemed to please her. She grinned and said, “You wait.”
At the end of the bar, she conferred with two of the other hostesses who were chatting and smoking. Life can be boring, even in a sex bar, and after listening to the barmaid, the three women engaged in animated conversation.
Finally, the barmaid returned. “Maybe not sure, but somebody say she move to TDC.” Tongduchon, the city outside of the 2nd Infantry Division headquarters at Camp Casey.
“There’s a lot of clubs up there,” I said.
“Yes,” she agreed. “Taaksan.” Many. “Maybe she get job at Cherry Girl Club.”
“Is she a cherry girl?” Ernie asked.
The woman laughed with just a hint of bitterness and waved her cigarette. “Long time ago she cherry girl. Same time Yi Sing-man president.” The Syngman Rhee regime had been deposed by a military coup in 1962, more than eleven years ago.
We thanked her and rose to leave. Ernie left a generous tip: five hundred won. Almost a buck.
“Now who’s spoiling them?” I asked.
Ernie patted the envelope with the expense money Inspector Kill had given us. “My days of being a Cheap Charley are over.”
“For the time being,” I said.
The city of Tongduchon was about a twenty-minute ride up the road. That is, it would have been twenty minutes if it weren’t for the 2nd Infantry Division military checkpoint. That took over fifteen minutes to clear; there was a long line of vehicles waiting to get through. When we reached the front of the line, we showed our emergency dispatch, but just our regular military ID instead of our CID badges.
The MP eyed us suspiciously, keeping his M-16 rifle pointed skyward. Then he gazed at the bumper of the jeep, which was stenciled in white with the 21 T Car unit designation. He brought the dispatch back.
“You can’t drive a military vehicle while wearing civilian clothes,” he said.
“Why not?” Ernie asked.
He seemed flummoxed by the question. Finally, he said, “This is Division. I don’t know what you all do down in Eighth Army.”
“There’s nothing that says we can’t drive a jeep in civilian clothes,” Ernie said, “as long as we can identify ourselves and the vehicle is properly dispatched.”
We’d been through this before.
The MP motioned to the ROK Army MP not to move the barricade. He returned to his field radio and made a call. The radio buzzed and clicked and the MP kept his voice low so we couldn’t make out what he was saying. Finally, he switched off the radio, returned to us and said, “Destination?”
Before Ernie could argue with him, I said, “Camp Casey.”
He nodded and said, “They’ll be expecting you at the front gate. Check in there. The Duty Officer wants to talk to you.”
“Why?” Ernie asked.
“To make sure your heads are screwed on right.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
The MP ignored him, turned away, and motioned for the ROK MP to pull back the crossed metal stanchions.
“It means they want to show us who’s boss,” I told Ernie.
He gunned the engine and we sped off.
“Butthole,” Ernie said.
We didn’t check in at the Camp Casey front gate.
We were still a hundred yards from it when we parked in a side alley. Just off the main road ahead, neon was punctured by silhouetted GIs parading from nightclub to nightclub in packs of three or four, as if buttressing one another in their quest for debauchery.
“What’s the name of the club again?” Ernie asked.
“According to the gal at Star Mountain, it’s called the Cherry Girl Club.”
“How could I forget?” asked Ernie rhetorically. “Do you know where it is?”
“No idea.”
“So we search.”
And search we did, navigating past the drunken GIs who barreled down crowded lanes like pinballs in a brightly lit machine. Korean business girls in shorts and miniskirts pressed against beaded curtains, beckoning to passersby to enter their dens of sweet iniquity. Old women fished onion rings and sliced yams out of bubbling vats, slapping the oily concoctions onto folded wads of newspaper and collecting a few coins from half-drunk GIs. MP patrols shoved their way through the milling crowd, checking one bar after another for miscreants, overwhelmed by the boisterous humanity that threatened to envelop them.