I knew it. They knew it. Everybody knew it. But it would also make the CID Detachment look better, because they’d be sweeping a supposedly insoluble case under the rug without raising any more uncomfortable questions about the activities of the slicky boys.
Maybe Burrows and Slabem were right. Despite all our efforts, Ernie and I had been unable to come up with anything. Cecil Whitcomb was dead. Nothing was going to bring him back. The chances of us finding Miss Ku in Seoul, a city of eight million people, were narrow to nothing. And the chances of us finding the leader of the slicky boys, Herbalist So, much less convicting him of a murder, were probably less.
Maybe the best thing was to back off for a while. Let the universe flow on and see what happened.
After all, we’d already tweaked the nose of the King of the Slicky Boys. It was his move.
When the Honor Guard flag detail fired the cannon and lowered the colors at the close of the business day, Ernie and I hustled back to the barracks, changed, and made a beeline for the Class VI Store.
In the old brown-shoe army there were five classifications of supplies: Classes I through V. So when the army set up liquor stores, some joker decided to call them Class VI stores. That’s what they had remained ever since.
We bought a case of beer and a bottle of Jim Beam and a case of orange soda and two cans of peanuts and a jar of pickled Polish sausages.
“Supplies for a week,” Ernie said.
We flagged down a PX taxi and gave him orders to take us to Itaewon. When we pulled up in front of the Nurse’s hooch, she was already there waiting, holding the gate open for us.
A long cotton kimono showed off her curves. The Nurse had broad shoulders for a woman, but a small waist and round breasts. Roundness described her best. Strong but soft and round. Ernie was a lucky man. I doubted that he really understood that, though.
As we entered, the Nurse bowed and grabbed one of the packages out of the crook of my arm. Through powdered snow, she waddled on straw slippers across the small courtyard.
Red tile, upturned at the edges, topped the hooches that were constructed of varnished wooden beams. The smell of charcoal smoke and kimchi, pickled cabbage and turnips festering in earthen pots of brine, filled the cold air.
An old woman carrying a perforated briquette to refuel the underground ondol heating system bowed to us as she passed.
“Ajjima,” the Nurse said to me. The landlady.
Ernie and I nodded our heads in greeting.
At the front of her hooch, the Nurse stepped out of her slippers and up onto the narrow wooden landing. She slid back the paper-paneled door and motioned with her upturned palm for us to enter.
“Oso-oseiyo,” she said. Please come in.
Her unblemished face flashed a full-lipped smile. Long black hair shimmered and swooshed forward as she bowed once again.
Ernie placed his hand on her shoulder and spoke gently. “Do you have any chow?”
“Most tick I get.”
“Good. And pop a couple of wet ones while you’re at it.”
She did as she was told and soon we were sipping on cold beer and sitting on a cushion on a warm vinyl floor. The Nurse brought in a heated hand towel for each of us so we could wipe off our faces and clean the backs of our necks and scrub our hands. I felt cozy. As cozy as I had since the Whitcomb case began.
Ernie sipped on his beer. “A whole day wasted.”
“Maybe not completely,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“The word that we want to talk to the King of the Slicky Boys is out. Maybe it will shake something loose.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” Ernie didn’t sound hopeful.
The Nurse brought in a black lacquered tray, inlaid with a white mother-of-pearl crane fluttering its wings. She unfolded the short legs and placed it in front of us. Soon the small table was piled with bowls of hot bean curd soup, a pot of steaming white rice, and plates of diced turnips in hot sauce, spiced bean sprouts, and a roast mackerel staring with blind eyes into eternity.
Ernie rolled up his sleeves and dug in. So did I.
In Korean fashion, we didn’t talk while eating. The theory is that it’s barbaric to ruin the enjoyment of a good meal by talking about things that might start vile juices rumbling in your stomach.
As we packed away the grub, the Nurse hovered about us, not eating, herself, replenishing the various dishes when needed.
Most of the business girls weren’t nearly as traditional as the Nurse. She was doing it to give Ernie good face. And she was doing it to show him that she’d make a good wife. A great wife.
It was hard to believe they were the same couple I’d known a few months ago, when they were on the outs. Then the Nurse had barged into a nightclub in Itaewon sporting a warrior’s band around her forehead, brandishing a heavy cudgel, and caught Ernie flirting with another girl. She’d smashed glassware and almost cracked the table in two with the heavy blows from her club. It had taken three strong men to drag her off him.
That wasn’t their only altercation, either. Love, between Ernie and the Nurse, was a many splintered thing.
But lately they’d been more sedate. Maybe it was her threat to commit suicide if Ernie left her. Maybe it was that he’d finally come to his senses and was falling in love with a good woman.
After we finished eating, the Nurse cleared the plates and Ernie and I resumed talking about the slicky boys. As she wiped off the last of the sticky grains of rice from the small table, she glanced up and interrupted us.
“You want to talk to slicky boy?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I know slicky boy,” she said. “He retired now. Old man. Very famous in Itaewon. Everybody say before he number hana slicky boy.”
Number one. The best. She pointed her thumb to the sky.
“He’s retired?” Ernie said.
“Yes. Sometimes can do.”
Ernie and I glanced at one another.
I leaned forward. “We want to see him.”
“I show you then.” The Nurse rose and slipped on a heavy coat and a muffler.
I downed the last of my beer, grabbed my jacket, and stepped out into the cold winter night. Ernie followed, but stopped at the outside byonso before we left.
The Nurse led us past the Statue Lounge and Kim’s Tailor Shop and down a narrow lane that led into a valley filled with a maze of hovels.
We passed a white sign: OFF LIMITS TO U.S. FORCES PERSONNEL. Being caught in an off-limits area was the least of our worries.
After a few minutes, we arrived at a dilapidated wooden building. The Nurse bounced down a short flight of stone steps, stopped at what must’ve been the basement level, and pounded on a wooden door the color of soot.
In less than a minute a man opened it.
I guessed his age to be in the late forties or early fifties. The short-cropped hair above his square face was flecked with gray. He was a sturdy man, broad-shouldered but very short.
“Kuang-sok Apa,” the Nurse said. Father of Kuang-sok. “These men wish to talk to you.”
He looked slightly surprised.
“They are good men,” the Nurse said. “The tall one speaks Korean. They only want to learn about your illustrious career.”
The man bowed slightly, then motioned us inside.
The Nurse smiled and waved at us and trotted off through the snow. Ernie ignored her. I don’t know why he didn’t treat her better. But it wasn’t my business. Not at the time, anyway.
We followed the old man inside. He closed the door.
I wondered why the Nurse had called him “Father of Kuang-sok,” and noticed that he walked with a slight limp.
He was dressed in baggy black trousers and a soiled, heavy-knit sweater of gray and bright red. We took a couple of steps down to a cement-floored room illuminated by a naked bulb hanging from a bare rafter. When I exhaled, my breath billowed in the cold air. There was equipment here- wrenches, hammers, nails, old pipes-and I realized that this man must be the custodian for the building.