“Tone oopshi,” one of the old mama-sans went so far as to say. He doesn’t have money.
Still, the girls liked Ernie and his playful attitude-they weren’t much more than kids themselves-and he seemed to have an ample supply of ginseng gum, which he handed out to the red-tipped fingers of the laughing young prostitutes. I kept him moving up the hill. Finally, we stopped at a stand that had a supply of Jinro soju bottles, and Ernie bought a half-liter. The vendor popped the top off and Ernie downed about a fourth of the fiery rice liquor on the first swallow. He gasped and handed the bottle to me. I wiped off the lip and took a modest sip. My throat convulsed. Rotten stuff. I handed the bottle back to Ernie. He took another large swig.
“Easy, pal,” I said. “We have a long night.”
“Maybe you have a long night. I’m going to have a drunk one.”
Ernie always acted like the things we saw didn’t faze him. He would hold everything at bay for a while but finally, as if a dam broke, he’d go on a bender. If he was going to get drunk tonight there was nothing I could do to stop him. Besides, now that I’d managed to hold down the shot of soju I’d taken, it was starting to warm my stomach and feel pretty good. I took the bottle from Ernie and held it a little longer this time.
We rounded the corner to the Inn of the Crying Rose, the bar Mr. Ming had brought me to before. It was dark, the neon sign turned off, looking sad and forlorn amongst all the blinking neon surrounding it. I tried the wooden door.
“Locked,” I said.
“Try knocking.” Ernie pounded on it. While we waited for an answer, he drank down the last of his soju. Then he pounded again, and we gave up and walked to a dark crack between the buildings.
“Can you fit through that?” Ernie asked.
“Sideways,” I said.
Ernie motioned with his open palm. “After you.”
I slid into the narrow passage first. The ground below was muddy and pocked with rocks and broken glass and other types of filth I didn’t want to think about. Finally, I popped out in back of the building. Ernie appeared right after me, brandishing his empty bottle of soju.
“Let me at ’em,” he said.
The alcohol was already doing its work.
The back door of the Inn of the Crying Rose was locked just as tightly as the front. “Looks like she closed up shop,” Ernie said.
“Apparently.”
We went back around to the front but this time took the long way, walking down to the end of the block, turning toward the main drag, and then doubling back.
“This is where they caught you?” Ernie asked.
“Back a few blocks,” I said. “I had to run up here and then with all these people walking around, they left me alone.”
“We could go back there and try to find ’em,” Ernie said.
“Maybe later,” I said.
He whooshed a left hook into the air. “I’m ’bout to knock me somebody the hell out.” The booze was hitting him hard because we were tired. After returning to the barracks this afternoon and cleaning up, we’d gone right back to work.
I stopped in a noodle shop near the Inn of the Crying Rose. When I started asking questions, the owner waved his hand in front of my face and refused to answer. I tried a ladies’ boutique a couple of doors down that was just closing up for the night. This time, the well-dressed owner was more willing to talk.
“She sell everything,” she told me in heavily accented English. “Go away. Say her brother come back. Want her leave Mia-ri.”
“Her brother came back from where?” I asked.
She shook her head. She didn’t know. She also didn’t know where the woman known as Madame Hoh had gone.
“Maybe you ask owner.”
“The building owner?”
She nodded.
“Who is it?”
She pointed across the street. The man who owned the noodle shop.
Ernie and I sat down and ordered a bowl of noodles. We were famished. When Ernie was about to order a bottle of soju to go with it, I told him to wait.
“Wait for what?”
“Let’s get this job done first,” I said. “Then we can kick out some jams.”
“I’m ready to kick out the jams right now,” he replied.
But he went along with my program. A rotund teenage girl, probably the owner’s daughter, served us two bowls of kuksu, steamed noodles with scallions and some sort of sea life floating around. We ate quickly. After slurping down the last of the broth, I told Ernie the plan.
He nodded enthusiastically. “And then we can drink, right?”
“Right.”
When it was time to pay up, I flashed the girl my CID badge and demanded to see the owner. Her eyes widened but without a word she turned and fled to the kitchen. In less than a minute, the owner, the man who had waved his hand negatively before when I asked about the Inn of the Crying Rose, strode up to the counter.
“Over here,” I said in English, pointing at the area beside our table.
The man hesitated.
“Bali,” I said. Quickly.
He scurried over. Apparently the waitress had told him about our badges. He stood narrow-eyed, staring down at us.
“How long had they been selling it out of the bar across the street?” I said in Korean.
“Selling?”
“Don’t act dumb. You know what they were selling. I asked you how long?”
He shook his head.
I sighed elaborately. “You must’ve known.”
“I knew nothing.” He was getting worried.
“Everybody knew,” I said, “The whole neighborhood knew. How is it possible you didn’t know?”
“I didn’t know,” he said stubbornly.
Ernie slammed his fist on the table, the empty bowls rattled, and he leapt to his feet. “What kinda bullshit is this?” he said, glaring at the smaller man. I stood also, sticking out my arm as if to hold Ernie back.
“You say you didn’t know about it,” I said. “Then show us. Give us the keys.”
I held out my open palm. The man looked confused. “Do you want us to call the Korean National Police?” I said.
That seemed to make the decision for him. He whipped off his apron. “Jom kanman,” he said. Just a minute.
Within seconds he returned with a set of keys clutched in his fist. We followed him outside and down the two doors to the Inn of the Crying Rose. I held a penlight for him as he shuffled through the keys. Finally, he located the right one and stuck it in the lock. He turned, and the door popped open. Together, we entered.
It was quiet in there, and musty.
“Where are the lights?” I asked in Korean.
“In the back,” he replied.
We made our way past empty booths and cocktail tables with chairs upturned on top of them. Finally, we reached the bar.
“What were they selling?” he asked.
“It’s better you don’t know,” I said. “Why did she leave in such a hurry?”
“Something to do with her brother,” he told me.
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know. Her hometown. She didn’t tell me where it was.”
Koreans, through accent and mannerisms, can always tell what part of the country another Korean is from. “What part of the country?” I asked.
“The east coast, I think. Kangwon-do.”
Ernie slid open the beer cooler. “Shine that light over here,” he said.
I did. Empty.
“Nothing but tin,” he said. The shelves behind the bar were similarly bereft of any liquor.
The owner found the lights and switched them on. They weren’t bright, just a low red glow suffusing the main ballroom. I groped my way toward the back, past the empty storeroom, and finally to the door that opened onto the office. I stepped inside, to a small wooden desk, and searched the drawers. Empty, except for a few wooden matches, some awkwardly-sized Korean paper clips, and two broken pencils.