The Wandering Ghost (33 page)

“And other things.”

“Like what?”

Jill glanced around the Silver Dragon. “Not here. The ville patrol’s liable to double back. Outside. We’ll talk.”

It took her almost as long to walk out of the Silver Dragon as it had taken her to enter. And this time even the band members roused themselves and lined up to shake her hand, as if it were their last chance to meet face-to-face with someone famous.

Outside in the cold February wind, some of the luster faded from Jill’s face. The alley was lit by the yellowish glow of a street-lamp and a smattering of fluorescent rays that leaked out the back door of the Silver Dragon.

“Where you been all day?” Ernie asked.

“Making arrangements.”

“Arrangements for what?”

“For getting at Colonel Alcott’s records.”

I knew it. Ernie didn’t stop to congratulate me for my insight. He continued to question Jill. “What kind of arrangements?”

“You don’t have a need to know.” She thrust back her shoulders. “Tomorrow, you’ll find out. Until then, I need your help.”

“Hey,” Ernie said, “who do you think’s running this show?”

After all, Jill was merely an MP Corporal still on her first tour in the Army. And an AWOL corporal at that. Ernie and I were 8th Army CID agents. Seasoned veterans. At least that’s the way we thought of ourselves.

Jill hooked her thumbs over the rim of her web belt, took a step closer to Ernie, and stared up at him. “In Division,” she said, thrusting a thumb at her chest, “I’m in charge. And if you want to find out who did a number on Private Marv Druwood, you’ll listen to me and do as I say.”

Ernie glared at her, dumbfounded, not sure what to do. If she’d been a man, he might’ve punched her. Jill swiveled away from Ernie and turned to me. “Ville patrol,” she said. “Weatherwax is on duty tonight. You two divert the attention of the KNP and the Korean MP so I can corner Weatherwax and get the info I need. Got it?”

“Got it,” I said.

“Let’s go.”

Jill turned and started trotting down the dark alley. We followed. She twisted through the narrow lanes as if she’d been through them many times before, occasionally pointing at a broken “turtle trap” and hollering at us to avoid stepping into the gaping hole. Ernie stayed a few feet behind, just close enough for me to hear him swearing under his breath, cursing all females. The narrow alley emerged onto a broader lane. Above us neon glared: a startled feline with red eyes. The Black Cat Club.

Ernie groaned. “Not again.”

Down the road, the ville patrol emerged from another night club. We crouched and Jill led us out of their line of sight and then around the back. The gate leading to the hooches behind the Black Cat was open. Ernie and I followed Jill past darkened rooms until we stood at the open back door of the club. The voice of James Brown wailed from the jukebox. Conversation and laughter floated out, on a roiling cloud of cigarette smoke.

Jill peeked into the back door then ducked back out.

“The ville patrol’s in,” she said. “When they come back here to search the men’s and women’s latrines, create a diversion.” She pulled her .45. “While you keep them occupied, I’m going to have a little talk with my old friend, Staff Sergeant Weatherwax.”

Weatherwax was the man who’d shot at Ernie and me in the alleyways of Bongil-chon. Ernie and I wanted to interrogate him, too, but Jill knew all the MPs up here. She’d be able to spot lies easier than we could. Still, I was worried about her state of mind. Was she out to gather information or was she after revenge?

“Take it easy, Jill,” I told her. “All we want is information.”

“Right,” she said. “Right.”

Ernie interrupted. “Here they come.”

Two uniformed Korean men marched down the narrow hallway. The ROK Army MP shouted a warning and then pushed his way into the female latrine. The KNP followed. A black American MP I recognized as Staff Sergeant Weatherwax entered the men’s latrine. Ernie charged forward, plowing his way into the women’s latrine. I followed, standing just inside the door, ready to help if needed.

Behind me, Jill elbowed her way through the swinging door of the men’s latrine.

“
Weikurei
?” Ernie shouted. What’s the matter?

He was acting drunk. Staggering. The Korean cops stared at him, wide-eyed. Inside the open door of a stall, a young woman squatted over a porcelain-lined hole, her skirt up, terror filling her eyes.

“What’s the matter you?” Ernie said. “Why you come GI club?”

The KNP started to shove Ernie toward the hallway. Ernie spun away from him, staggering against the cement wall. Both of the Korean men turned on him.

I stepped forward. Smiling. Nodding. “My
chingu
,” I said, pointing at Ernie. My friend. “
Taaksan stinko
.” He’s very drunk.

The two cops let me step past them and grab Ernie. I started to pull him out of the latrine and into the hall but he resisted. I motioned for the Korean cops to help me. They did, pushing Ernie out the door and down the hallway toward the main ballroom of the Black Cat Club.

I could’ve maneuvered them into shoving Ernie out the back door but I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to search for Brandy again.

The reception we received wasn’t friendly. Two white GIs— drunk white GIs—wrestling with two Korean cops. Not exactly what the soul brothers of the Black Cat Club wanted to see while they were trying to relax and socialize. They reacted with hostility.

Ernie bumped into a group of GIs standing with their arms around Korean business girls. Drinks splashed out of cups. Men cursed. They shoved Ernie and he reeled toward me.

As I held him, I whispered in his ear. “Brandy’s here.”

Ernie sobered. The show was over. Jill had yet to emerge from the men’s latrine. Apparently, she was still having her heart-to-heart talk with Staff Sergeant Weatherwax.

Brandy stood wide-eyed behind the bar, glancing this way and that, searching for a means of escape. The last time we’d seen her she’d spent the early evening in a
yoguan
with Ernie, and then he’d almost been killed at fish heaven by a rifle round aimed his way.

Ernie lunged toward her, ramming into two GIs sitting on stools at the bar. They shouted. Ernie leaned across the bar, stretching out his hand, but Brandy ducked, barely escaping his grasp. She broke for the end of the bar, but I was already moving. I would’ve cut her off easily but by now all eyes in the club were on us. Curtis Mayfield was moaning sweetly from the jukebox. Two men blocked me. I plowed into them; they reeled backward. I’d reached the end of the bar but Brandy kept moving, heading for the front door. In two steps I would’ve had her but a punch to my ribcage threw me off stride and then three more bodies plowed into me. I punched back. As I did so, I heard the big double front doors open and then slam shut. I tried to move forward but more screaming bodies were in my way. Ernie was behind me now, cursing and punching and kicking, and for the first time I stopped worrying about Brandy escaping and started worrying about surviving.

I was just about to grab a chair and hit somebody when the blast of a pistol shot filled the room, followed immediately by an explosion of glass and metal accompanied by electrical sparks and the screeching halt of Curtis Mayfield’s smooth falsetto. Corporal Jill Matthewson stood at the back of the room, holding her .45 in front of her with both hands gripped firmly around the hilt.

“Make a hole!” she shouted.

She moved forward through the crowd until she reached Ernie and me and together the three of us backed toward the front door. The mumbling started again. Cursing now about the jukebox and screaming invective from the old woman behind the bar. But before anyone could retaliate, we were out the door, down the steps, and running.

“What’d Weatherwax tell you?”

We were running through dark alleys, heading northwest, away from the TDC bar district.

“Never mind about that now,” Jill told me. “You saw Brandy? Right?”

“Yes. She hightailed it out the door before we could stop her.”

“Have you ever been to her hooch? Either of you?”

I glanced at Ernie. He shook his head negatively.

“No,” I said.

“Then she’ll think she’s safe there. She didn’t see me.”

“You know where Brandy lives?”

“I sure do.”

After a couple more blocks we slowed to a walk, all three of us breathing heavily. Since Ernie and I were wearing civilian clothes, we scouted out front, watching for KNP patrols. Jill led us to a district of TDC very close to the area Ernie and I had recently become familiar with.

“The Turkey Farm,” Ernie said.

Jill nodded. “Convenient for black-marketing.”

“Brandy was into black-marketing?” I asked.

Jill nodded again. “Up to her pretty little neck.” She held out her hand. “Quiet now. We’re getting close.”

It was a nice hooch. Old but well kept up, with bright blue tile on the roof that must’ve been recently replaced. Moonlight shone down into an immaculately clean courtyard with a metal-handled water pump in the center and neatly tended bushes and a row of earthen kimchee jars.

Ernie and I balanced on top of the ten-foot-high cement-block wall, gingerly placing our hands so as to avoid shards of jagged glass sticking out of plaster. With her .45 pointing at the moon, Jill Matthewson stood in front of the main gate, waiting for us to jump down and open it for her.

“You see any movement?” Ernie asked.

“No.”

All the hooches were dark.

“She’s in there,” Ernie said.

“How do you know?”

“I smell her. Brandy’s close and she’s overwhelming.”

Actually, I thought Ernie might be right. Not about how he sensed her but about the fact that Brandy must be home. There were shoes lined up in front of the hooch, women’s shoes spangled with sequins. But they weren’t neatly aligned. One pair lay on its side, as if it had been rapidly kicked off. And earlier, as we had approached the main gate down a dark alley, I thought I’d glimpsed a dimming of light. As if someone was listening and when they’d heard the tromp of combat boots, they’d clicked off the electric light. A lace curtain breathed in and out inside the hooch, pulsating through the narrow opening left by the partially closed sliding door.

“She’s watching us,” I whispered.

“Yeah. And we make good targets perched up here.”

With that, Ernie hopped down into the courtyard, hitting the ground and rolling as he did so. I kept my eyes riveted on the door. Movement? Or was it my imagination? As Ernie hurried to unbolt the front gate, I leaped down into the courtyard, jarring my knees and ankles, rolling, and quickly coming to a squatting position. The sliding door that a second ago had been partially open was now completely shut.

I ran forward, keeping my head down.

When I reached the low wooden porch in front of the hooch, I leaned forward, grabbed the sliding door, and pulled. It trembled but didn’t open. Inside, a metal lock rattled.

Ernie and Jill ran up behind me.

“Someone’s in there,” I said. “They just locked the door.”

Ernie stepped past me and kicked the door in. Oil paper and fragile wooden latticework shattered. He reached in, unlatched the door, and ripped it off its hinges.

Jill Matthewson shone her flashlight inside.

Ernie and I entered, he found the overhead bulb and switched it on. The entire room was bathed in light. No Brandy. An expensive armoire with mother-of-pearl inlay, silk-encased comforters folded in a corner, a hand-painted porcelain pee pot, a dressing table with a mirror and various lotions and cosmetics. No sign of anything masculine. This, I guessed, was Brandy’s refuge from the world of GIs.

But these observations were made primarily to avoid focusing on the first thing I’d seen. It sat in a corner by itself, still partially encased in wood framing, cradled atop straw, glowing like an endless sky of blue and green.
Chon Hak Byong
. The Thousand Crane Vase.

I kneeled and examined it. The flock of white cranes floated into the celadon sky, their black eyes pointed toward heaven. Except for one, on the upper bulge of the vase. His eyes stared straight out. Straight into the eyes of the observer. And this crane’s feet were deformed. Deformed into a shape that appeared to be a Chinese character:
bok
. Good luck. Very probably the name of the artist. I was sure this magnificent piece of art was the same vase that had been stolen by gangsters from the burning inferno of the grain warehouse just yards from here in the heart of the Turkey Farm.

Wood bumped against stone.

“Out back,” Ernie shouted.

He ran out the front door and zipped around the edge of the hooch. I continued deeper into the dwelling, into the cement-floored kitchen and exited a side door. The three of us—Jill, Ernie, and myself—met at the narrow opening between the back of the hooch and the cement-block wall. Brandy stood atop a short ladder, trying to get a handhold on the top of the glass-covered wall. Jill shone her flashlight on Brandy’s cute round butt.

Brandy turned, her shoulders slumped, and she gingerly retreated down the ladder. Staring at the three of us she said, “Ain’t no bag, man.”

A few minutes later, the four of us sat in a circle on the floor of her comfortable hooch, under the glow of a bright electric bulb, facing one another. The story Brandy told us was interesting and, I had to assume, laced with lies.

She claimed to be holding the Thousand Crane Vase for a friend. Who was this friend? She wasn’t at liberty to say. She knew nothing about the fire at the grain warehouse in the center of the Turkey Farm other than that she’d heard about it and it was a great tragedy, but she had no idea how such a thing had happened. And also, she was unaware that the Thousand Crane Vase had been stolen by gangsters. She thought that it might’ve been a different vase. When I pointed out to her that it was the same vase and I explained why, she thought that her friend must’ve been very careless in paying good money for a vase that had been stolen.

“How much did he pay?” Jill asked.

Brandy shrugged. “I know nothing about these things.”

Ernie asked her about
mulkogi chonguk
, fish heaven.