Ernie was right, of course, but the crowd of MPs and other 8th Army officials who’d been milling around in the courtyard where the VD Honcho had been killed left no doubt as to who they thought was responsible: Me.
It was a brothel. Not surprising. Spec 5 Five Arthur Q. Fairbanks, the VD overseer, had been out in Itaewon early in the morning, trying to track down a woman who had reportedly infected five American GIs with gonorrhea. All he wanted to do was take her into the local health clinic. The U.S. government would pay for the antibiotics and the medical bills, a worthy investment if it helped keep our servicemen in fighting trim.
Why early in the morning? Because at night, these girls were almost impossible to find, and Spec 5 Fairbanks, by all accounts, was dedicated to his job. The Korean women present told the KNPs that Specialist Fairbanks had been talking to the infected business girl, explaining to her that the U.S. government would pay for everything, when a man in a ski mask entered the hooch. He stood just under six feet and wore a raincoat, nondescript slacks, and rubber-soled shoes. Some girls said the skin of his hands was white, some said brown, but they all agreed that there were tufts of black hair on his wrists. The man motioned with his pistol for Fairbanks to step into the courtyard, while all the business girls, most still in their pajamas or nightgowns, crouched on the edges of the horseshoe-shaped raised floor, with the open doors of their hooches behind them.
Fairbanks was terrified, the girls said. He began to cry and plead for his life. The man motioned with his weapon for Fairbanks to kneel. He did. The girls were ordered into their hooches. Some peeked through rips in the oil-paper doors.
The masked man reached into his raincoat and pulled out a stiff sheet of paper. Maybe cardboard. He set it on the ground and leaned it against the iron pump. Then he stepped back and ordered Fairbanks to bow to the paper. They weren’t sure what language he spoke, they couldn’t hear, but Fairbanks understood and did what he was told. He prostrated himself in front of the paper three times. While this was going on, someone joined them. Whoever it was slipped in through the front gate and stood next to the masked man in the raincoat. No one could see because of the angle from the hooches to the front gate, but they heard footsteps and a whispered, urgent conversation. They were too far away to make out what was said.
When the seibei ceremony was over, the masked man ordered Fairbanks to remain kneeling. Then he walked around behind Fair-banks and aimed the. 45 at the back of Fairbanks’ head and pulled the trigger.
16
Some of the young girls who witnessed this were so traumatized they’d been hospitalized.
After the killing, the assassin calmly replaced the pistol in the pocket of his raincoat, retrieved the piece of cardboard, and walked back out through the front gate with the other person.
Ernie and I spent the entire morning with the KNP crime-scene technicians, gathering evidence and then we spent the afternoon and into the evening listening to Captain Kim at the Itaewon Police Station interrogate witnesses.
Why did everyone believe that the. 45 used in the crime was my weapon? Because it was the same type used in the shooting of Han Ok-hi in Inchon and Jo Kyong-ah in Songtan. The masked gunman matched the general description of the second bank robber who’d shot Han Ok-hi.
Why Fairbanks? Why kill Fairbanks?
That was what I kept asking myself.
And if it was the same gunman-this man called Kong, the brother of the smiling woman-why didn’t he leave something behind to identify himself as he had at the killing of Jo Kyong-ah?
I puzzled over this all through the tedious gathering and recording of evidence, the tear-filled interviews at the Itaewon Police Station. Late in the afternoon, the answer occurred to me.
At both the shooting of Han Ok-hi at the Olympos Casino in Inchon and at the assassination of Spec 5 Fairbanks in Itaewon, there’d been witnesses. No witnesses had been available when Jo Kyong-ah was murdered. So my weapons card had been left behind in the byonso, to make sure we knew who was doing this.
Why did they want us to know? What was his motive for all this carnage? And still the question remained: Why Fairbanks?
There had to be a connection between the Olympos Casino, the black marketeer Jo Kyong-ah, and Spec 5 Arthur Q. Fairbanks. I just wasn’t smart enough to see what it was.
I shouted at the bartender. “OB tubyong. Bali!” Two bottles of Oriental Beer. Quick!
Ernie stared at me. I felt uncomfortable under his gaze but I knew why he was staring. It wasn’t like me to be impolite. Even to a young man behind a bar.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
He nodded and sipped on his beer. When the bartender arrived with our drinks, I tipped him heavily, which was unlike me too. Ernie was about to comment when we both smelled a warm, perfumed body. We turned.
Her face was too heavily made up, and she was wearing a sequined bikini with tassels hanging from a g-string. At first I didn’t recognize her. Then I did.
“Suk-ja,” I said.
She smiled broadly. “You no forget.”
“How could I forget?” Then I turned to Ernie. “She helped us at the Yellow House in Inchon. She works at Number 59.”
“Oh, yeah.”
It wasn’t surprising that we hadn’t remembered her right away. At the Yellow House, Suk-ja had first worn see-through pink lingerie. Later, she’d changed into blue jeans and a pullover sweater and sneakers. Her face had been washed and she’d worn black, horn-rimmed glasses, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She’d looked more like a college co-ed than what she truly was. Now she’d transformed herself again. The glasses were gone, her face was heavily made-up. A curly hairdo fell to her shoulders. Most impressively, she was wearing the barely legal outfit of an Itaewon stripper. The make-up I could live without, but in that skimpy outfit, her figure looked fabulous.
“First I do show,” she said. “Then you buy me beer.
Okay?”
She pointed at me and I nodded vigorously. “Okay.”
She smiled and scurried back to the stage.
Watching her, I felt guilty again. One mad rush of sexual desire and, just like that, I’d forgotten about the murdered body of Specialist Five Arthur Q. Fairbanks. For a few seconds anyway. When Suk-ja disappeared behind the stage, guilt rushed back to replace the excitement.
The rock band started up with an out-of-sync rendition of “Satin Doll.” Mercifully, Duke Ellington wasn’t around to hear it. Suk-ja appeared on stage to a round of guffaws and proceeded to strut her way through her act. GIs were hooting, as were the Korean business girls, and then Suk-ja was almost naked and dodging grasping hands. Finally, the song ended, and she was off the stage. Twenty minutes later, the Suk-ja I had known at the Yellow House, in blue jeans, ponytail, and horn-rimmed glasses, sat next to me on a barstool.
17
We had a few more drinks.
Drunkenly, Ernie kept telling me not to blame myself. But the more he said that, the worse I felt.
Suk-ja ordered another plate of yakimandu. Using her polished fingernails, she raised a dumpling, dipped it in soy sauce, and popped it in my mouth. This time I ate.
I sat up in bed.
I was on a soft mat, and I could feel the heated floor beneath. A window was slightly open. An almost full moon shone. A soft hand touched my shoulder.
“What’s the matter, Geogi?”
It was Suk-ja. We’d left the Seven Club together right before the midnight curfew and rented this room in the Seven Star Yoguan, a Korean inn.
“Miss Yun,” I said.
“Nugu?” Who?
“Miss Yun. The woman who is the mother of the man who executed Specialist Fairbanks. And the man who murdered Jo Kyong-ah, and the same man who shot Han Ok-hi.