Martin Limon - The Door to Bitterness

Suk-ja nodded, and then, before we could change our minds, she trotted off across the alley to the building next to 17. She disappeared through the front door.

“Okay,” Ernie said. “Are those Greeks going to be any trouble?”

“I think they’re preoccupied.”

A woman’s laughter pealed through the night. As if it were a signal, Ernie and I crouched low and trotted across the fog-shrouded alleyway.

Maybe it was the wood creaking beneath our feet. Maybe it was just nerves. Whatever it was, Ernie sensed something and halted, holding me back with his arm. Listening.

We were crouched in the third floor hallway of House 17, swatting at fleas, our feet squishing into damp carpet. The place reeked of urine and garlic and sex.

A grunt. A man’s voice. And then a high female squeal of pain.

When we’d entered downstairs, through the front door of House Number 17, several overly made up women accosted us, clawing at our sleeves, cooing, promising us various sorts of sexual delights. Ernie tried to shush them as best he could, and while he was busy, I pulled the mama-san aside and spoke to her in Korean. We were here to see our chin-gu. An American man. I described him, then told her that we thought he was staying up on the third floor.

“Isang han saram,” she said. A strange guy.

“How so?” I asked.

“He stay in room all day long,” she told me. “No come out. Order food from Chinese restaurant, make boy leave noodles outside door. My girl, he won’t let her come out. I think she taaksan tired.”

Robbing casinos must be good for the libido.

After a few more questions, I determined that the guy had checked in alone. He’d had no visitors, and he’d arrived on foot at about noon. Since carefully choosing room 33 on the third floor, and choosing a girl to accompany him, he hadn’t emerged. There was no phone in the room-the Yellow House doesn’t go in much for phones-and no one else had visited.

I handed the mama-san a red Military Payment Certificate note. That’s what the U.S. Army uses as currency overseas rather than greenbacks. She stuck the crisp five dollar bill into her withered decolletage. Then she winked at me and waved Ernie and me up the stairs. What was she thinking? That we were here to bust her customer? If so, she didn’t much give a damn.

In the hallway outside of room number 33, Ernie waited a few more seconds. Listening. Then we heard another squeal. Louder this time. More desperate. Whoever the girl was, and whoever this guy was, he was hurting her. I didn’t like it. Neither did Ernie.

Without warning, Ernie took three steps forward and kicked in the flimsy wooden door.

I charged in past him, unarmed, but ready to dive head first into whoever was there. Ernie crouched in the doorway, pointing his. 45 straight ahead and shouting, “Freeze!”

A blast sounded, and I dove toward the foot of the bed. The blankets were wrinkled and damp but there was nobody on the mattress.

Then I heard Ernie’s. 45 behind me. It barked once, twice.

When I raised my head, I saw that the window was open. A naked Korean woman cowered in front of it, her arms crossed over her chest, tears streaming from tightly clenched eyes. To her left, a shoe-clad foot stepped rapidly up the ladder attached to the outside wall.

Ernie fired above the girl, but his bullet hit cement, sending a cloud of dust billowing into the air. She screamed and collapsed to the floor, covering her head, kicking in panic with naked feet.

I pulled myself toward the window sill, stuck my head out, and looked up.

Again, the same shoe. A black oxford, Army-issue. It disappeared over the roof’s edge. I stretched out toward the ladder, swung around, and started to climb. Up on the roof, shoe leather pounded cement.

Somehow, the guy had known we were coming. He had been dressed and ready, and he’d waited until the last moment, until we were too close to cut him off outside, to make good his escape. Had somebody warned him?

I climbed. And when I reached the edge of the roof, I peeked over, then pulled my head back down, remembering what I had just seen. An empty roof, dark, lined with earthenware kimchee jars.

He must’ve already jumped over to the neighboring roof. Would Suk-ja be able to slow him down, or would she just get herself hurt? Suddenly, I regretted having allowed her to help. This was our job, not hers.

Ernie was scrambling up the ladder behind me.

I clambered up onto the roof, helped pull Ernie up, and then we were running toward the far wall. Just as I was about to leap off the edge, onto the neighboring roof, Ernie grabbed me.

“Hold it.” He pointed at a glimmer of light peeking around a brick chimney behind us. I shrugged him off and prepared to jump. I didn’t want to leave Suk-ja over there alone, without help.

“No,” Ernie said. “Look. He’s not there.”

I glanced across the next roof and then at the roof beyond that. No one. Not even Suk-ja.

“He’s hiding,” I said.

“He wouldn’t,” Ernie replied. “He’d keep running. Come on.”

He dragged me back over to the brick chimney. On the other side was an open wooden hatchway. I looked down. Another metal ladder led down into the hallway of the third floor.

“He probably already reconnoitered,” Ernie said. “Knew that we’d expect him to hop from roof to roof, but instead he doubled back. Come on.”

He lowered himself through the hatchway and then let go and dropped down to the creaking floor below. I followed, and we ran down the hallway until we found the stairwell. We flew down to the first floor.

The women in front of the window were up now, terror showing in their eyes, all of them pointing through the light-smeared glass. A dark figure flashed down the street, heading toward the gang of Greek sailors blocking the walkway.

In seconds, Ernie was out on the street, running after him, me right behind.

Twenty yards ahead, I saw the dark figure smash into the unsuspecting Greeks. Men cursed and spun out of the way. A beer bottle crashed to the ground. Someone shouted and threw his hands up. I couldn’t understand a word, but the guttural sounds of cursing were unmistakable. And then our quarry was through the Greeks and past them and already disappearing into the mist.

Ernie didn’t slow down.

One of the Greeks shouted. They all spun, staring at Ernie, who was plowing toward them. The men stepped together and formed a phalanx, as if responding to an ancient instinct left over from Alexander’s army. Before Ernie could dodge them, they walked forward and reached out for him. Momentum rammed his body into the men, who grunted and gave and then held. They began to push back.

I could’ve run around them. Even through the dark and the fog I could still see the figure about thirty yards ahead, gaining speed, turning around a mist-shrouded corner. But the Greek sailors were pummeling Ernie. A knife glimmered in the yellow light of the street lamp.

I veered and rammed into them.

Men screamed and cursed, and I punched and kicked, happy, at last, to be set free. For the past few days, I had been holding everything inside: pining over a lost weapon and a stolen badge; putting up with the sneers of cops who play it safe, who stay on the compound near headquarters, afraid to put themselves at risk in the dark shrouded alleys of Asia. But now I was able to fight, to feel the satisfying crunch of fist on skull. Moving as fast as I could. Acting on instinct alone. Punching, kicking, screaming.

And then there was more shouting and Ernie was pulling me away, even while I still jabbed and cursed, and then my eardrum shuddered with the blast of his. 45.

As if encountering a thunderbolt, the Greeks retreated.

Ernie pointed the. 45 at them and cursed and kept jerking on the back of my coat and we backed off, until finally we were enveloped by the glow of the street lamp in front of House Number 17. Suk-ja was there, reaching for us, pleading with us to follow. The next thing I knew, we were running once again through the endless dark. I was enjoying the trip, feeling light-headed, flushed with the giddy rush of having released so much tension, until suddenly the world became smaller. Pinpoints of light spangled a blanket of fog. The lights faded. The fog closed in on me. A lonely foghorn moaned far out at sea.