“So why was this woman gossiping about him?” Ernie asked.
“Huh?”
“Talk. Why did she talk about him?”
“Oh. Because she get mad. He take her room, but then choose another girl to stay there with him. She no like. She want to get clean clothes take to bathhouse, but this man he busy all time with other girl. Too much boom boom. Mama-san say she no can go in, maybe he get taaksan angry.”
“Was this guy wearing a suit like us?” I asked.
“I don’t know. She no say.”
“What’s this woman’s name?”
“I don’t know. But she new. That’s why she got room top floor.” Suk-ja raised a hand above her head. “Away from customer.”
“Where’s House Number Seventeen?” Ernie asked.
“I show you.”
“No. Just tell us.”
Before Ernie could grab her, Suk-ja scurried away, back into House Number 59. She glanced over her shoulder and said, “Chom kan man.” Just a moment.
“Looks like she’s going with us,” Ernie said.
I nodded.
In a few minutes, Suk-ja emerged, wearing blue jeans and sneakers and a pullover wool sweater. Her hair was tied back in a tight ponytail. But what was most surprising was that she had slipped on a pair of black, horn-rimmed glasses that looked extremely attractive on the smooth oval of her unblemished face. Had she been carrying a book and a slide rule, I would’ve sworn she was a college girl.
“Bali,” she said. Hurry.
We trotted after her through a narrow, fog-filled alley. Ernie kept his hand on the hilt of his. 45. I kept my eyes on shadows, suspicious, waiting for one to move.
Ernie held Suk-ja back.
We stood in the mouth of an alley gazing up at House Number 17. It was a ramshackle gray building made of rotted wood planks broken out in pustules of peeled paint. The fog hovered low to the damp, flagstone-covered lane. Behind the brightly lit plate glass window on the first floor a few women shuffled about. They seemed to be older, some slightly overweight. One wore pajamas.
“Kuji,” Suk-ja said.
I’d learned the word on the streets, not in my Korean language class. Some would translate it as “dirty,” but that wasn’t quite right. “Squalid” came closer. In brothels, as in everything else in human life, there are hierarchies of quality.
Ernie caught my attention and motioned with his eyes. Most of House Number 17 was dark. But on the third floor, a dim light shone.
Ernie and I’d discussed it on the way over here. This guy Suk-ja had heard about in the bathhouse could be a GI, but maybe not. He could’ve had something to do with today’s robbery, but maybe not. Either way we wanted to talk to him. Should we call in the KNPs? No. Too early for that. This could be nothing, a false alarm. Until we had solid information, we didn’t want to bother Lieutenant Won with unnecessary requests for assistance.
We’d check out the guy ourselves.
“That’s her,” Suk-ja said, pointing at one of the women sitting behind the front window. “The one I talk to in bathhouse. Paran seik.” Wearing blue.
I translated for Ernie
“I go checky checky,” Suk-ja said.
Once again, Ernie held her back. “We’ll go,” he said.
I studied the lit window on the third floor. No movement. A fire escape ladder attached to the outer wall ran up to the roof. As in most Korean apartment-type buildings, this one was flat, designed to allow extra space to store earthenware kimchee jars or to hang laundry. There was no movement up there, but it would be an easy jump to the roof of the next building. And from there to the next, and so on. Then down some interior stairs, and whoever had insisted on a room on the third floor of House Number 17 would be walking the streets alone, and safe.
Ernie saw it too. If the Korean National Police stormed House Number 17, the room at the top provided at least the hope of escape.
“Are you sure there was only one GI?” Ernie asked Suk-ja.
“That’s what she say.”
If this was the right guy, we had to be prepared for the fact that he would be armed. Probably with the pistol the thieves had stolen from the security guard at the Olympos Casino. Ernie pulled out his. 45 and jacked back the charging handle. Suk-ja jumped away from the clang.
“Sorry,” Ernie said.
Someone shouted. I peeked around the corner of the alley.
Sailors. Merchant marines. Speaking some sort of gibberish. Not English. Not Spanish. Not Korean. They crowded around the front steps of another house of prostitution. Some smoking, some swigging from brown bottles of OB Beer. All were talking, playing grab-ass. One pulled out a pocket knife and waved it around. The others hooted.
Suk-ja’s hot breath warmed my elbow.
“Shila,” she said. Greek.
I looked down at her. “You understand?”
“Have to,” she replied.
“They all stay at one house?”
“Yes. Sometimes whole ship take one house. Mama-san give, how you say?”
She slashed her hand as if cutting something.
“Discount?”
“Yes. Discount. Maybe all women old and ugly. Then mama-san must give big discount.”
I studied the sailors again. They were just having fun. Still, it was a rough-looking bunch. Best to steer clear of them.
“I’ll take the front,” Ernie told me. “You enter there.” He pointed to the house on the other side of House Number 17, away from the Greek sailors. “Go up to the roof. Cut him off if he tries to escape.”
“No good. What if you run into trouble? It’ll take me too long to run back down the steps.”
Ernie sighed with exasperation. “Sueno, you aren’t armed. What the hell good are you if the guy starts shooting?”
He didn’t intend to be cutting, I knew that. Ernie was simply stating a fact.
“I go up on roof,” Suk-ja said, pointing at her nose. “If he come, I hit him with kimchee jar.”
Ernie and I looked at one another. It wasn’t a bad idea. If she could just slow the thief down, give him something to think about, we’d be across the roof and on him in no time.
“Okay,” Ernie said. “But stay low. If he has a gun, you just hide. You arra? You understand?” He swooshed his down-facing palm through the air, like a bird in flight. “You let him run away.”
Suk-ja nodded, and then, before we could change our minds, she trotted off across the alley to the building next to 17. She disappeared through the front door.
“Okay,” Ernie said. “Are those Greeks going to be any trouble?”
“I think they’re preoccupied.”
A woman’s laughter pealed through the night. As if it were a signal, Ernie and I crouched low and trotted across the fog-shrouded alleyway.
Maybe it was the wood creaking beneath our feet. Maybe it was just nerves. Whatever it was, Ernie sensed something and halted, holding me back with his arm. Listening.
We were crouched in the third floor hallway of House 17, swatting at fleas, our feet squishing into damp carpet. The place reeked of urine and garlic and sex.
A grunt. A man’s voice. And then a high female squeal of pain.
When we’d entered downstairs, through the front door of House Number 17, several overly made up women accosted us, clawing at our sleeves, cooing, promising us various sorts of sexual delights. Ernie tried to shush them as best he could, and while he was busy, I pulled the mama-san aside and spoke to her in Korean. We were here to see our chin-gu. An American man. I described him, then told her that we thought he was staying up on the third floor.
“Isang han saram,” she said. A strange guy.
“How so?” I asked.
“He stay in room all day long,” she told me. “No come out. Order food from Chinese restaurant, make boy leave noodles outside door. My girl, he won’t let her come out. I think she taaksan tired.”
Robbing casinos must be good for the libido.
After a few more questions, I determined that the guy had checked in alone. He’d had no visitors, and he’d arrived on foot at about noon. Since carefully choosing room 33 on the third floor, and choosing a girl to accompany him, he hadn’t emerged. There was no phone in the room-the Yellow House doesn’t go in much for phones-and no one else had visited.