Ernie elbowed me, bringing me back to the present. Sometimes he became exasperated by my moods. At a time like this, in the middle of an investigation, I couldn’t blame him. I was sometimes impatient with myself for wallowing in the past or, worse, in a future that existed only in my imagination.
A cement-walled stairwell led upward. Even from the bottom we could see the glow of the bulb shining above. I heard clicking. Someone using a typewriter? But the clicks were too soft, wood on wood, and much too rapid for a typewriter. Then I realized what the sounds were. Ok-hi realized it at the same time.
“Jupan,” she whispered.
Someone, an expert, manipulating an abacus.
I led, holding the flashlight. Ernie followed, holding his. 45. And Ok-hi came last, stepping lightly so her high-heeled leather boots wouldn’t make too much noise on the stairs.
The second floor seemed to be deserted. Still, I took a few steps along the corridor to investigate. Small rooms, open, no doors. I shone the flashlight beam into one. Jam-packed with black-market merchandise, cardboard cases of canned fruit cocktail imported from Hawaii. In the next room, cases of crystallized orange drink were piled almost to the ceiling. The next held boxes of bottled maraschino cherries and about a jillion packets of nondairy creamer. Each room was like that, filled with merchandise taken from the American PX. But these items hadn’t been purchased one by one by a lone GI doing weekend shopping. These items had been bought in bulk, probably straight off the truck that had transported them from the Port of Inchon. That implied someone in procurement was involved in the scam, making the sale and also covering it up in the inventory chain. Both Koreans, who did the actual clerical work, and Americans, who supervised them, had to be involved. Using my flashlight, I checked the dates stamped onto some of the cases. Months ago. By the pristine condition of the boxes and the volume of the product, there was no doubt that this black-market operation was sophisticated, widespread, and had at least the tacit approval of someone high up. A lot of money was involved. Did this have anything to do with the death of Private Marvin Z. Druwood? Or with the disappearance of Corporal Jill Matthewson?
Maybe.
One thing that struck me as odd was the size of the rooms. Obviously, this building had never been designed to be a warehouse. These rooms were tiny and there were dozens of them spread down the hallway. Just enough room for a small bed. Just enough room for a young girl to lie down and for a young GI to slip off his boots and pull down his trousers.
Ernie and Ok-hi waited for me at the stairwell. Ernie pointed upstairs. I nodded. The three of us started to climb.
At the top of the steps I allowed my eyes to adjust to the ambient light from the single bulb that illuminated the long corridor. More rooms, like the ones on the second floor, were jam-packed with made-in-the-USA black-market items. This time mostly electronics: tape recorders, stereo equipment, cheap cameras. One doorway stood open, light flooding out into the hallway. We walked forward and as we did so whoever was working inside stopped clicking disks on the abacus. I strolled to the door, Ernie right behind me, and by the time we arrived I’d shoved my flashlight deep into my jacket pocket.
Inside, an elderly Korean woman wearing the traditional chima-chogori dress with a white blouse and jade-colored skirt stood in front of a cheap wooden desk, staring back at us. Her sandals were made of white rubber and shaped with the toes upturned into a sharp points. Traditional Korean shoes, so made because during the Yi Dyansty the upturned toe was a sign of beauty. Her hands were on her hips. Gray hair stuck out from a round face in blazing disarray. Her nose was flat, her lips were clamped tight, and her black eyes burned fiercely. Defiant. More than just defiant. Her entire posture radiated indignation and outrage at being interrupted in her work.
“Anyonghaseiyo,” I said. Are you in peace?
Behind the woman, a window overlooked the shrine to General Yu Byol-seing.
Her outrage built but, finally, she found her voice. “Weikurei noh-nun?” What’s the matter with you?
The voice was gruff, gravelly, deep. Like the history of this building itself. And apparently she had no fear of us.
Ernie stepped past me, reached inside his jacket, and whipped out his CID badge. “We’re from Eighth Army,” he said, “and you’re under arrest.”
The woman’s face registered surprise, the liver spots on her face expanded like an exploding universe, and then she began to laugh. Uproariously. Bending over, holding her stomach. Tears came to her eyes.
Despite myself, I had to smile. So did Ok-hi.
Ernie became more angry. “You think this is funny?” He put away his CID badge and pulled out his. 45.
I grabbed his arm. “Wait, Ernie. Let’s talk to her before we blow her away.”
Ernie balked, his face still red, but slowly he slipped his. 45 back into its holster.
The old woman continued to laugh.
Ok-hi started laughing, too, holding her right hand modestly in front of her mouth. Then I smiled and even Ernie smiled and within a few seconds we were all laughing along with the old woman. Suddenly, she stopped. Gradually, we stopped, too.
“You Eighth Army,” she said. “CID. You come here arrest Chilmyon-jok Ajjima.” She pointed her forefinger at her nose. “Maybe you arrest me you gotta arrest everybody in TDC. All KNP and, how you say, sichang?”
“The mayor,” I said.
“Yeah. Mayor. And you arrest all honchos on Camp Casey. After that, then you arrest Chilmyon-jok Ajjima.”
She began to laugh again.
We laughed along with her but she’d just confirmed what I’d been thinking ever since we walked into this building. The black-market activities in Tongduchon were not only widespread but sanctioned by the powers that be, both Korean and American. Would this old woman’s testimony stand up in a U.S. Army court-martial? Not a chance. No military prosecutor in the world would have the temerity to put her on the stand. Military courts-martial are decorous affairs. A bunch of American officers, lined up, wearing dress green uniforms, each judge trying to look more severe than the other. The honchos don’t like riffraff appearing in front of them. Certainly not someone known as the Turkey Lady.
Ernie sobered up first and asked the old woman the question that we’d really come to ask.
“Where was Druwood when he fell?”
The Turkey Lady stared at Ernie blankly for a moment and I was prepared for the usual criminal response that always added up to something like “I know nothing.” I was already planning my counter move. But, as it turned out, I didn’t need to threaten her.
“Come on,” the Turkey Lady responded. “I show you.”
We left the little office with its couch and its coffee table and walked back into the hallway. We were halfway down the corridor when I stopped dead in my tracks.
“What the hell is this?”
The Turkey Lady stopped, as did Ernie and Ok-hi.
I shone my flashlight into a room less than half the size of all the others.
“That new girl room,” the Turkey Lady said.
“New girl room?”
“Long time ago, when new cherry girl come Turkey Farm, maybe she don’t like sleep with smelly GI. She don’t like have boom-boom.” Sex. “So house mama-san make her sleep in this room.”
“It’s too small to sleep in,” Ernie said. “You can’t even sit down.”
“Yeah. Pretty soon she tired, pretty soon she tell mama-san she want sleep in her own room. Then GI come, no sweat.”
“And if she gutted it out?” I asked. “If she didn’t ask for a larger room?”
“Then mama-san knuckle-sandwich with her. Maybe papa-san, too.”
The Turkey Lady told us all this in a matter-of-fact tone, the years, and maybe the repetition, having leached away any emotion the story might’ve once held for her. Had she once been a “cherry girl” banished to this narrow closet? I wanted to know but there were too many things I wanted to know and we had work to do. Besides, the reason I’d stopped everyone here was not because of the small size of the room but because of what it contained. I shined my flashlight on an open, crate-like framework with a matting of straw at the bottom. Inside the cheap packaging stood a vase. Greenish blue. Celadon, the type manufactured most perfectly during the Koryo Dynasty, more than seven centuries ago. Intricately painted white cranes floated skyward on a blue green background. Wispy clouds, like knotted strings of fluff, glided heavenward. The glow of the flashlight made the delicate porcelain seem not like a solid object but like a dreamscape of jade shading off into infinity. For a moment, I thought I heard the wings of the white cranes flapping but actually it was only Ok-hi, and even Ernie, gasping for breath.