The Wandering Ghost (15 page)

Ernie hissed. “Come steady the cart.”

I ran back and held the sides of the six-foot-long cart while Ernie climbed atop it, stretched to his full height, and grabbed the sill of the window leading into Kimchee Entertainment. I placed my palms beneath the soles of his sneakers and on the count of three, shoved upwards with all my might. Ernie’s body rose and simultaneously his fist broke glass. One of the small window panes. The noise was jarring but brief. We’d already decided that it would be too dangerous to linger in the alley outside of Kimchee Entertainment. No time for jimmying the window. I was still shoving upwards on the bottoms of his feet as Ernie reached in and finally found the latch that unlocked the window. He pried it open and wriggled inside. Now he leaned out the window, stretching his open right hand out to me.

As we’d planned, I lowered the cart to its normal traveling position. Then I climbed into the bed of the cart, reached up and tried to grab Ernie’s hand, but I couldn’t quite reach.

“Jump,” he said.

There were still no signs of life up and down the walkway. The minimal noise we’d made hadn’t disturbed anyone. I took a deep breath, reached out my hand, and jumped. Ernie grabbed my right wrist and then, with his free hand, my forearm. As I kicked my sneakers against the wall and tried to climb, he leaned back with all his might, pulling, until I had a handhold on the sill. I scrambled up the wall as Ernie tugged.Within seconds, I was inside the offices of Kimchee Entertainment.

Ernie stepped past me and closed the window. I searched for something to cover the broken pane of glass. I found a magazine with a beautiful Korean actress on the cover and managed to stuff that into the opening.

Now, anyone walking below would see a trash cart left in an alley and above that a broken window that had been temporarily repaired. Ernie located a low lamp on a desk. I closed the curtain over the window and Ernie switched on the lamp. A soft green glow suffused the room.

“We’re in,” I said.

Ernie motioned for me to keep my voice down. We already knew that at least one nosy old woman lived in this building. If she’d heard us climbing in the window, she would’ve already called the Korean National Police and since they had police boxes all over the city of Tongduchon, someone would be here in minutes. Ernie and I stood stock-still. Listening. If we heard someone banging on the front door, or the heavy tread of boots on cement, we’d have to un-ass the area. Quick. Exactly how that would work, I didn’t know. Hopping out the window wouldn’t be good because the KNPs would station someone at the sides and rear of the building. One thing the KNPs never lack is manpower.

Ernie and I made a plan of sorts. The best thing to do if the KNPs were alerted would be to go deeper into the building, find the stairs or the ladder that led to the roof and from there hop onto the roof of the neighboring building and try to make good our escape.

We waited. Listening. Barely breathing.

The room looked lived-in. Used. The office of an actively functioning business. Three gray metal file cabinets stood against the wall. Probably army-issue, bought on the black market. The desk was made of unimpressive lumber, thinly varnished, and pocked with cigarette burns. In front of the desk stood a low coffee table and hard-cushioned sofa with two matching wooden chairs. In the center of the coffee table sat an enormous glass ashtray filled with butts and next to that an octagonal cardboard box stuffed with wooden matches.

I checked the butts. Korean-made. Not a single
Miguk
or imported cigarette in the bunch. Mr. Pak Tong-i was a thrifty man. So, apparently, were his clients.

On the wall hung numerous framed snapshots, some of them expensive publicity photos of Korean stars I vaguely recognized. Not his clients, I didn’t think. These were faces that belonged on grand stages in Seoul or in front of television cameras. You could bet that none of them had ever performed up here in the hinterlands of TDC. And then there were the lower-quality photos. Photos of bands performing on rickety wooden stages, the backs of short GI haircuts in the audience. Clearly taken in some dive either in TDC or in one of the dozens of other GI villages blemishing the land just south of the Demilitarized Zone. Photos of sequin-spangled strippers stretching insincere smiles, striking awkward poses. Was one of them Miss Kim Yong-ai? I had no way of knowing. More photos of groups of GIs in civvies standing in front of bars or outdoors in picnic areas, always with Pak Tong-i standing in the middle, beaming, his arms around his friends. And a photo of Pak indoors, in front of the flags of the U.S. and South Korea, receiving an engraved plaque from a United States Army colonel in full uniform. The name and the face of the colonel meant nothing to me and it figured they wouldn’t because the Pak Tong-i in the picture looked years younger.

So Mr. Pak Tong-i did more than just book entertainment for the nightclubs that stuck like barnacles to the outside of U.S. Army compounds. He also maintained contact with army officers on base. “Community relations,” 8th Army calls it. Exactly what services Pak Tong-i performed, I didn’t know but whatever it was, he’d received awards for it.

Ernie wandered into a side room. When he returned he thrust his thumb over his shoulder. “Nice setup,” he said. “
Byonso
.” Bathroom. “And a little bedroom with a cot and next to that a stand with a hot plate and a brass teapot.”

So far, no alarm had sounded. We were starting to breath easier. Finally, I noticed the odor in the room. Thick. As if somebody’d left food out.

“Any refrigerator in there?” I asked.

“No. No sign of food.”

Maybe Pak Tong-i ordered out. Hot food delivery—both Chinese and Korean—is cheap in Korea and always readily available. But I didn’t see any sign of empty bowls or used chopsticks.

“You check the desk,” I told Ernie. “I’ll take the files.”

Both of us carried small, army-issue flashlights and Ernie kneeled down under the desk, determined to be meticulous and start his search from the ground up. I opened the top drawer of the first file cabinet.

It was a mess. There didn’t seem to be any particular order to the files, either in the English alphabet—a, b, c—or the Korean
hangul
alphabet—
ka, na, da
. Papers were shoved in willy-nilly. Contracts, payment vouchers, receipts—all of it in a huge hodgepodge stuffed into random folders. The Korean names on the folders, apparently the names of entertainers, did not correspond to the paperwork they contained. I worked quickly through the drawers, from file cabinet to file cabinet, trying to grasp the method of organization, quickly coming to the realization that there was none.

What I did notice was that there was no folder with the name Kim Yong-ai, the stripper who’d become Jill Matthewson’s friend. I went back and checked more carefully, even peeking beneath the rows of folders in case the file had slipped down. Finally, I was sure. There was no folder for Kim Yong-ai despite the fact that Pak Tong-i himself had told us that she had been one of his most productive clients. There was no sense delaying my conclusion any longer. Someone—almost certainly not Pak Tong-i—had gone through these files. The mystery person had searched everything, taken everything out, and then thrown the documents back into any old folder and stuffed the entire mess back into the cabinets, totally unconcerned about keeping the records straight for future use or, for that matter, hiding the fact that he’d been here.

Also, whoever had been here before us had stolen Kim Yong-ai’s file. Had they stolen anything else? Only Pak Tong-i would know.

Ernie stood up from behind Pak Tong-i’s desk. He had reached the same conclusion. “Somebody’s been here before us,” he said.

Shining both our flashlights in the open drawers, we found the usual accumulation of pencils, paperclips, pens. In the top drawer an accounting ledger. I pulled it out and set it on the blotter. Then we checked the side drawers. An address book. Since all the entries were written in
hangul
, Ernie handed it to me. I thumbed through it. Pages torn out. All Korean names, no American names that I could see. But the
kiyok
section—the Korean
k
sound—was missing. Therefore, no entry for Miss Kim Yong-ai. The accounting ledger held the names of what were probably nightclubs and other entertainment companies. Figures listed in Korean
won
, none in dollars. Again, no American names. The ledger was neat. Like something prepared for display—or for the tax collector.

The rest of the drawers held nothing of interest. A pair of rubber pullover boots, an expensive Korean straight razor with shaving gear, and a half-used bottle of American-made mouthwash.

Who had preceded us? The Korean National Police? The 2nd Division MPI? Some gangster trying to collect money? Or could it have been Corporal Jill Matthewson herself? She’d been a cop after all. Maybe she’d come to retrieve Kim Yong-ai’s files for some reason.

I didn’t have enough information. The logical thing to do—the only thing to do—was to keep gathering facts.

Ernie held the beam of his flashlight pointing upward beneath his chin. His eyes were dark hollows. “One place we haven’t searched,” he said.

“Where?”

The office was tiny. Only two rooms and a
byonso
. I thought we’d already covered everything. But Ernie shined his flashlight on the wall directly behind Pak Tong-i’s desk. In the darkness, I hadn’t noticed. A door made of some sort of gray synthetic material, not wood, was set flush into the wall.

“What is it?”

“A soundproof room,” Ernie answered. “For listening to music without bothering the neighbors.”

I stared at the door, at the almost invisible hinges.

Ernie placed his flashlight in my free hand and I aimed both beams at the door. Then he grabbed the metal handle.

“On the count of three,” Ernie said. “One, two, three.”

He pulled. It wouldn’t budge. Then Ernie placed both hands on the handle, propped the bottom of his right shoe against the wall, leaned back, and tugged with all his might. The door groaned, held, and then popped open.

It was dark inside, a space not much bigger than a closet. Something moved and at the same time the odor of rotted meat hit my nostrils. As I recoiled, something heavy and flesh-filled plopped sickeningly, with a massive thud, onto the floor. I jumped back, wanting to scream, and gazed down at the thing that lay at my feet.

When I was growing up in East L.A., I knew all kinds of kids— Anglo, black, Mexican—but one thing I realized early on was that Mexican kids are brave. Ridiculously brave. Accepting any sort of ill-considered dare—either to fight someone bigger than them or climb the highest tree or swing by a rope from a power line—was a point of honor. Backing down in front of the other kids was unthinkable. They’d either complete their mission or die trying.

Only two things frightened the tough little
vatos
of East L.A.:
la
migra y las brujas
. Immigration and witches. Immigration because, for the most part, their parents were in the United States illegally and they’d been taught to shy away from anyone wearing a uniform. And
las brujas
, the witches, because they represented the power of the ancient world. The world from which their families had fled.

The word witches is misleading. Actually,
las brujas
are female shamans, like the Korean
mudang
. Their power arose from the ancient religions of the Aztecs and the other tribes that populated the Valley of Mexico and its environs since before the beginning of time.
Las brujas
were experts at healing and herbal remedies and mystic spells, and they were rumored to be able to transport themselves into realms denied to normal mortals. And denied for good reason. For one glimpse of these parallel universes—and at the faces of the entities that live there—would drive most men mad.

Did the Mexican
brujas
and the Korean
mudang
evolve from the same traditions, hoary with age? From somewhere in Siberia or along the Bering Strait? No one knew. Probably no one would ever know. But I was aware that both groups of women held positions that were similar. Positions within society of awe and respect, positions of power.

So when Madame Chon told me that her daughter’s spirit was hungry and wandering and needed a ritual performed to help it find its way home, that made sense to me. I’d heard such things before. The Catholic Church performs exorcisms to cast out demons but the rites performed by
las brujas
are designed to communicate with the dead, to find out what they want, to share jokes with them, even to make deals with them. I knew how profoundly people believed in such things. So I had no doubt that Madame Chon would never rest until—as the
mudang
ordered—Jill Matthewson was brought to her to participate in a ceremony to communicate with the dead.

Even if I didn’t believe that Chon Un-suk’s spirit was hungry— and I didn’t—I knew that her mother’s spirit was. Hungry for rest. Hungry for reassurance that her daughter was well taken care of. And I understood that hunger. Since the day my mother died and left me alone, I’d been hungry myself. Hungry for someone who would love me without reservation. Hungry for someone I could love in the same way.

I saw her from the back bedroom, down the hallway, sitting on the couch in the front room, dressed in a beautiful black silk dress, her hair covered with a black lace mantilla. At that moment, as always, I was hungry for her embrace. Hungry for her kiss. Of course, she’d already been dead for five years. I was growing up, tall for my age, about to start middle school. My foster parents told me it was a dream, that I’d been taking a nap and I’d been disoriented. Others said it must’ve been someone else, not my mother. Maybe one of the older girls who was staying with the same foster parents. But none of those orphan girls owned black silk dresses or anything as old-fashioned as a lace mantilla.

A priest was summoned to the house. He started to perform an exorcism but I screamed so loudly that he had to stop. The neighborhood women tried to calm me, to explain to me that this ceremony was for the best and that I should listen to the wise words of the priest. I would have none of it. Every time the priest sprinkled holy water around the room, I started to scream again. Finally, he lost patience, picked up his vestments and his chalice, and left. I didn’t want him to chase my mother away. She’d come back, for the first time since she’d died, and I didn’t want anyone to force her to leave.