“Only one of your bodyguards is here,” I said. “Where are the rest? Out looking for your nephew?”
“You’re talking nonsense.”
“Where’s your nephew, Yun?”
“I don’t know where he is.” His face again flushed, his cheeks as red as the snarling dragons carved into the ceiling.
Were they in this together? Could Yun Guang-min have commissioned his nephew to commit the robbery of his own casino so they could split the profits? Maybe he had partners he was trying to steal money from. Was it possible? I didn’t think so. The amount stolen, one or two days’ take, was a drop in the ocean compared to the amount they took from the high-rollers from Japan and Hong Kong. Those guys bet fortunes, sometimes wiping out the entire accumulated wealth of themselves and their families and their corporations. The Olympos was pulling down more money per gambler than any Las Vegas casino could ever hope for. That’s why GIs weren’t welcome. We upset the high-rollers, and the money soldiers could lose was a pittance compared to what most of the Asians dropped before they even started tapping their lines of credit.
No, it wasn’t an inside job. Everything I’d learned so far pointed to the smiling woman and her brother setting out on a quest for revenge against the world. Starting at the logical place. With the uncle who had left their mother to die on the streets.
I was about to ask another question when Ernie lost his temper.
He fired a round into the ceiling.
All of us jumped and plaster, and bits of paint rained down onto Yun’s table.
Now he’d done it. Up until this point, all our rude behavior could be explained by saying that we were gathering information for a murder investigation. Ernie’s unauthorized use of a firearm changed that. He’d taken us over the line.
Yun’s exalted Japanese guest, Turtle Mountain, jumped back in alarm. The bodyguard started to make a move, but Ernie pointed the. 45 at him and shoved the young man back down and forced him face down onto the tatami on the floor.
The Japanese looked bewildered and pale. Concerned. Were they being robbed? A few rose to their feet. Ernie boomed another round into the ceiling.
“Don’t move!” he shouted.
Everyone understood that.
His face twisted in anger, Erin pointed his. 45 at Yun Guang-min. “You let your sister cough her guts up on the
20
streets of Seoul. You don’t lift a finger to help her son or daughter. And now you go dumb on us when your own nephew robs your casino and kills your employee. What kind of shithead are you?”
I’m not sure if Yun Guang-min understood all of what Ernie was spouting, but he must’ve gotten the idea. Yun was a tough guy. He stared right at Ernie, giving him the evil eye, daring him to squeeze the trigger and pop a cap through his forehead.
From the look on his face, I thought Ernie was going to do it. I sidled toward him, hoping to get close enough to deflect his aim if need be. I continued firing questions at Yun Guang-min. The casino owner answered angrily, telling me nothing, claiming he had no knowledge of why this man we called his nephew had robbed him. He had no idea where that man might be now.
In disgust, I backed off. No telling when reinforcements might arrive. Ernie sensed it too. He swiveled his head, and I knew he was anxious to un-ass the area. Yun Guang-min, however, called me over.
I returned to the table, expecting him to relay something useful, finally. Instead, he glanced down at the photo of his late sister and her two children.
“You forgot your photograph,” he said.
I snatched it up. The son of a bitch had pointedly not touched it. His cold eyes seethed with humiliation. He’d pay us back, I thought. The free pass Americans received in Korea had just been revoked.
We took off.
As Ernie and I emerged from under the red arch at the entrance of the Silla Cho Siktang, a group of young men hurried up the main driveway. I recognized two. Young men in dark suits, straight hair slicked back. Yun Guang-min’s bodyguards.
When they saw us, one pointed and shouted: “Yah!”
Ernie reached for his weapon.
I grabbed his arm. “No good, pal. We’re outnumbered.” Three of the bodyguards had already pulled out pistols. “Come on! Let’s go!”
For once, Ernie saw the wisdom of what I was saying. He followed as I ran toward the lobby and the front entrance. Uniformed bell hops stepped backward. We shoved past and raced into the hotel lobby. Ahead, carpeted steps led to the casino. Elevator doors sat open. Clattering plates and flatware in the Olympos Hotel Restaurant and Coffee Shop raised a din.
Yun’s armed bodyguards were only a few yards behind.
“Smooth move,” Ernie said, clanging back the charging handle of his. 45. “Now we’re trapped.”
“No. Not trapped,” I said. “Come on.”
I sprinted into the coffee shop, Ernie right behind me. Fashionably dressed Korean men and women gawked as we darted through the small sea of tables. I bumped into a waitress carrying a tray full of snacks and beverages but Ernie, right behind me, caught the tray in time and handed it back to the surprised woman.
Yun’s bodyguards burst into the restaurant, guns drawn, shouting.
I darted through the swinging doors of the kitchen, sprinted toward the back, and halted at a tiled wall. Ernie bumped into me.
“So now we’re trapped in here,” he said, “rather than out there.”
He crouched behind a big iron stove and aimed at the double doors. Outside men shouted, and a woman screamed.
“There’s a way out,” I said. “I found it when we were here before, when I went to that office.”
“But that was upstairs, on the other side of the casino,”
Ernie said.
“I heard pots and pans clanging,” I said.
A cook emerged from a large storeroom, carrying a huge glass jar with something slimy inside.
“There,” I said.
We dashed into the storeroom. Behind us, the bodyguards crashed through the kitchen doors, shouting, shoving a couple of cooks out of the way.
Wooden shelving lined the storeroom’s four walls.
“Shit,” Ernie said. He turned and said, “Take cover. I’ll blast them when they come in.”
I tugged on his arm. “Over here.”
Hidden behind the last shelf was a door. Before I had a chance to turn the knob, the cook, who had been carrying the big jar, crashed back through the doors of the storeroom. He reeled backward, still clutching the jar, lost his footing, twisted, and fell to the tile floor a few feet in front of us. Bodyguards crashed in after him. The glass jar smashed, and oil and tentacles and squid flesh splashed along the slippery floor. The bodyguards hit the slime and slid, waving arms like pinwheels. Then they crashed onto the floor atop the supine cook. More bodyguards plowed in after, grabbing wooden shelving to maintain their footing, tipping over neat rows of tin cans and glassware.
I pulled open the door, grabbed Ernie by the back of his jacket, and pulled him through, out into a narrow hallway.
“Come on!”
We turned and ran up a stairway, into a parquet-floored hall that was familiar. We were behind the cashier’s cage of the casino. I sprinted up the wooden stairwell leading to Yun Guang-min’s office. Ernie was right behind. As we climbed to the top of the steps, we heard shouting. The bodyguards were in the hallway now.
Would they shoot us on sight? It was dangerous to murder U.S. Army CID agents. But only if someone knew. If you controlled the local police, and if the bodies of the two Americans disappeared into the Yellow Sea-well, how much risk was there in that?
I ran faster.
We crashed into Yun Guang-min’s office, ran behind his teak desk. I knelt and pulled open the fire-escape door, and was hit in the face with a blast of wind and salt spray from the Yellow Sea.