We passed the office the men had emerged from and turned right down another hallway, this one much shorter than the first. We passed a busy kitchen on the left, then pushed through a swinging door into what appeared to be a community dressing room. On raised platforms, oil-papered floors were festooned with flat cushions. On a few of them sat young women in front of huge mirrors. None seemed surprised by our entrance. Apparently, there was plenty of traffic in and out of this dressing room. One of the women I recognized: Miss Lee Suk-myong.
The man who had crooked his finger at me said, “Miss Lee!”
Then he held out his open palm face-up, as if leaving me to her. The three men turned and stalked out of the dressing room. The woman put down a thin brush and turned to look at me, eyes wide.
“Miss Lee Suk-myong?” I asked.
She nodded silently.
“May I talk to you?”
She nodded again. Then she rose from the cushion, walked to the edge of the raised floor and sat down, spreading her silk skirt in front of her like a huge flower. It was an elegant move, practiced. She gazed at me expectantly.
“Hector Arenas,” I said.
She winced.
“You knew him?”
She nodded. So far, I’d spoken nothing but English.
“You were his yobo.”
She sighed and then said, “For a little while.”
“How long?” I asked.
She thought about it and then said, “Maybe four months.”
“You speak English well,” I said.
“Before, I worked in bar in TDC. Montana Club.”
“Difficult work,” I said.
She nodded. “Very noisy.”
I pictured the Montana Club, country western music cranked up to the highest volume humanly possible.
“Do you work here now?”
“Yes. Now I start. No more Cherry Girl Club.”
“Why not?”
She scrunched her shoulders together. “I don’t like.”
“You don’t like Americans?” I asked.
“They okay. But too much trouble.”
“Trouble like me and my partner showing up today?”
“Yes.” She waved her hand. “I want forget.”
“Forget what happened to Arenas?”
“Yes.”
And forget the time she spent in a Korean jail. But I didn’t mention that.
“So the man who drove you here, the man in the nice suit, is he your boyfriend?”
She shrugged. “No.” But she said it tentatively, as if she wasn’t sure.
“But he got you this job here?”
“Yes.”
“So he has a lot of money?”
She didn’t answer.
“Is his name Nam?”
Again she didn’t answer.
“He’s the man who used to take Arenas out to places like this, to kisaeng houses. He’s the one who they say introduced him to somebody from North Korea.”
Her eyes were tightly shut now.
“Am I right?” I asked.
After a long pause, her eyes popped open and she stared up at me.
“You dummy,” she said. “Everything dummy.” She raised her hand to indicate the vast world around us. “You go now. You know nothing.”
I leaned toward her. “Miss Lee, when Arenas was on trial, did they tell you to say that he had sold things to a North Korean?”
“You know nothing,” she repeated. “Everything they say, not me.”
“They?”
“American soldier, he say.”
“What was his name?”
“I don’t remember.”
“What did he look like?”
“Big man, like you. But how you say . . .” She curled her arms in front of her chest like a bodybuilder flexing.
“Stronger,” I said.
“Yes. Big.”
“He told you what to say?”
“Yes. If I no say, no get out of jail.”
“And Arenas, he never sold anything to a North Korean?”
“No.” She searched for a word, her English reaching the limits of her vocabulary.
“Say it in Korean,” I prompted.
“Bandei,” she said.
“Opposite.”
“Yes, opposite. Arenas see that somebody else talk to North Koreans.”
“Who?”
She looked at me as if I were stupid. “Who you think?”
“Nam?”
“No, not Nam. He just businessman. Make money.”
“Then who?”
She twisted her lips, staring at me in exasperation. And then I knew who she was talking about. “The big American?” I asked. “The man with the muscles?”
She nodded, as if relieved.
I stopped and absorbed that for a while. She’d just accused Captain Lance Blood, a commissioned officer in the United States Army, of accepting money from a North Korean agent in exchange for information. This was an entirely new level of shit hitting the fan. If Miss Lee was telling the truth, Lance Blood and his boys from the 501st were not only railroading GIs into Leavenworth, but they were doing so to cover their own espionage. Their own betrayal of their oath of enlistment and their own acts of treason.
For a moment I wavered, feeling the knot in my head; less painful now, but still throbbing.
I considered arresting Miss Lee, or at least taking her in for questioning. But then I remembered I had no jurisdiction. She was a Korean civilian, not a GI. Taking her into custody would be illegal, and might taint any future prosecutions. I decided to contact Mr. Kill. He’d know what to do. Still, for all the effort Ernie and I had put in, I wanted something tangible.
“Will you write that down for me?” I asked. “What you just said.”
She shook her head negatively and hugged herself as if she were suddenly cold.
“We’ll protect you,” I told her.
Once again she looked at me as if I were an idiot.
“If you’re worried about someone hurting you,” I said, “then why are you telling us this?”
“No matter,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter?”
“No more,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”
I was confused. “What exactly doesn’t matter?”
She spent a few seconds planning her English sentence and then she said, “It doesn’t matter if you know. Doesn’t matter. No more.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant. Maybe she meant she’d just broken up with Nam and nothing mattered to her anymore, so she’d sold him and the entire operation out. Or maybe she meant that the people involved were beyond prosecution.
I was about to press her further, but apparently the thugs who’d allowed me back here had decided I’d had enough time with Miss Lee. They came up behind me and said it was time to leave. She scurried off. I could’ve resisted and had Ernie back me up, but what was the point? For whatever reason, they’d allowed me to talk to Miss Lee, and she’d dropped a bombshell. Were these guys involved? Maybe not, but they weren’t about to let me spend more time with a girl who made money for them by the hour. Fisticuffs weren’t likely to change that, and they might even make things worse.
The smart move was to notify Mr. Kill. He had jurisdictional authority-and plenty of it.
I tipped an imaginary hat to the three dour-faced gentlemen and found Ernie waiting in the hallway. We trotted down stone steps to the parking lot.
“You find her?” Ernie asked.
“Yeah.”
“What’d she say?”
“First,” I said, “let’s get the hell out of here.”
Ernie could tell that whatever she’d told me had freaked me out. He didn’t ask more questions. We jumped in the jeep; he started it up and drove us away, gravel spitting out from behind our wheels.
– 25-
At the yellow sign in front of the river embankment, Ernie turned left. By then I’d briefed him.
“She says it didn’t matter,” he said. “What the hell does that mean?”
“I’m not sure.”
Ernie veered left, taking the sharp turn with more authority now that he knew what to expect.
“It doesn’t sound good,” he said.
“No. Did you bring a gun?” I asked.
“I should’ve. You’re always the one talking me out of it.”