Martin Limon: The Door to Bitterness

Captain Won ran his fingers through his hair.

“Anjo,” he said roughly, and pointed at two metal chairs in front of his table. He’d used the non-honorific imperative form of the verb “to sit” and, inside the cage, two of the female cashiers tensed slightly. They knew an insult when they heard it.

Ernie sat.

He hadn’t noticed the insult. His Korean is rudimentary, and besides, he’s not into honorific verbal conjugations. Ernie’s a more direct person. If you slap him, he’ll punch you right in the nose and proceed from there to kick your butt. More often than not, subtlety escapes him. I, however, considered making a fuss over the way Lieutenant Won had just spoken to us.

Eighth Army offers free Korean language lessons on base. Very few GIs take advantage of them; they’re busy chasing women and running the ville. But I go every Tuesday and Thursday night. And during my free time, I continue to study the language on my own, picking up, on the streets of Seoul, words and slang that don’t appear in my textbook. Fluency, I hope, will help me in my job. But sometimes it just seems to make it harder. Like in this case, when I realized we’d been insulted.

Given the tension in the room, I decided not to react. There was too much I wanted to find out about what had gone on little more than an hour ago in this casino that was making these employees act so strangely. Nevertheless, to warn Lieutenant Won not to push his luck, I kept my eyes on him as I sat down, moving deliberately.

Lieutenant Won chose to ignore my reaction and continued to speak gruffly. He demanded our identification. Ernie handed him his military ID card and his badge, and I handed him the temporary replacement paperwork for mine. He stared quizzically at mine, probably not even understanding the neatly typed sheets, but he made no comment. He wrote down our names and ID numbers in a notebook. Everyone watched. This was a show for them, to let the employees of the Olympos Casino know that the Korean National Police were not going to take any guff off Americans. Maybe in his own way Lieutenant Won was trying to help us. From the look of the male pit bosses, and even in the eyes of the blue-clad female dealers, violence against a foreigner wasn’t completely out of the question.

When he was finished, Lieutenant Won spoke in English.

“Not good.”

We waited.

He shook his head and spoke again, “Two bad men. Very bad. They come in casino, they show badge. Your badge.” He pointed at me. “You, Sueno. Casino manager he look at badge, say Geogie Sueno. He write down. Here.”

Lieutenant Won slid a notepad across the desk. The letterhead of the Olympos Hotel and Casino was emblazoned across the top, and on the clean white sheet were handwritten notes, all in scribbled Korean. One word was written in English. My name: Sueno.

“This guy showed my badge?”

Lieutenant Won nodded.

“To the casino manager?”

He nodded again.

I paused, thinking it over. Until now, I had assumed-I think correctly-that the smiling woman was working with confederates. That she led me into that alley where a man- or two men-were waiting, and they had been the ones who’d knocked me out and stolen my weapon and my badge. Were these the same two guys who’d robbed the Olympos Casino? Or had the smiling woman sold the badge and the. 45 to a different set of thieves who’d used them here in Inchon? Somehow I doubted that the badge and the. 45 had been sold. Why? Because illegal arms trafficking in Korea is a dangerous proposition. The Korean government believe such a trade is a threat to their national security and, as such, the punishment is death. More likely that the smiling woman and her confederates planned from the beginning to use the. 45 and the badge on their own. They were after a big score-a much bigger score than they’d ever find in Itaewon. My badge and my. 45 were just a means.

Could I prove any of this? No. Not yet. But it was the theory I was working with for now.

Then I remembered something.

“My photograph,” I said. “It’s on the badge. Was it switched?”

Lieutenant Won shook his head. “No. Casino manager checked. Not switched.”

“If my photograph was on the badge, then how was the casino manager fooled?”

“Man who rob casino,” Lieutenant Won said, “he look like you.”

Ernie clicked more loudly on his ginseng gum.

“He was an American?” I asked. Or maybe I should’ve said Chicano. But the distinction between Anglos and people of Latin American descent is not one that Koreans usually draw. To them we’re all wei guk in. Outside people.

“Maybe American,” Lieutenant Won answered. “Seems like. But he wore… what you call?”

Lieutenant Won ran pinched fingers across his eyes.

“Sunglasses,” I said.

“Yes. Sunglasses.” Lieutenant Won turned to Ernie. He flashed a grim smile. “And the man who come with him, he look like you.”

Ernie and I gazed around the large room. The casino employees still huddled in small groups, looking for all the world like frightened deer in the middle of a forest.

I turned back to Lieutenant Won. “The casino manager allowed these two men to enter the cashier’s cage?”

Captain Won nodded.

“Why?” Ernie asked. “The cashier’s cage would’ve been locked, and there must be an alarm system of some sort. Normally, the cashiers would keep the door locked, sound the alarm, and wait for the police.”

Captain Won held up his hands. “Wait. I bring manager. You talk to him.”

A thin, nervous Korean man with thick glasses and a toadying manner was introduced to us as Mr. Bok, the manager of the Olympos. He stood while we questioned him, speaking English and, when his nervousness overtook him, falling back to Korean. He was the type of man who had risen to his current position by ingratiating himself to customers. Never contradicting them, always submissive. A good policy when you’re in the process of cleansing people of all their money. Slowly, painfully, Mr. Bok stammered the story of what happened.

While we talked, one of the female employees brought a metal tray with four steaming cups of tea. Mr. Bok didn’t drink, Captain Won already had a full cup, but Ernie and I both accepted. The young woman kept her head bowed as she served us, her black hair hanging straight down, hiding her face. She never looked at us. Then she backed away, obviously relieved to be leaving the presence of two foreign louts.

In Korea, serving foreigners is never a savory task. But under these conditions, with the hatred of Americans palpable in the room, it would be particularly objectionable. What sin had this young woman committed to make such an onerous duty fall on her? Probably, she was the newest on the payroll. Sin enough.

When Mr. Bok finished relating his tale, and Ernie and I ran out of questions, we examined the interior of the casino cage. Three frail Korean women, wearing the same uniforms as the dealers, sat quietly on wooden stools in front of empty cash boxes. The two thieves had grabbed the bundles of Japanese yen, Korean won, and U.S. greenbacks and stuffed them into a single canvas bag before fleeing. The women’s hands were still shaking, but Ernie snapped his questions at them anyway. They understood English well enough and answered, glancing at Lieutenant Won occasionally, as if for approval.

There was a back door to the cashier’s cage. I twisted the knob and found it open. While Lieutenant Won and Ernie and the three cashiers conversed, I slipped through the doorway.

A long hallway. Not carpeted, but tiled with brown parquet. I turned left and walked about ten yards to the end of the hallway and opened the door. Another walkway, empty, apparently leading back toward the main building of the Olympos Hotel. In the distance I heard the clanging of pots and the gruff shouts of men toiling in a kitchen. I turned and walked back about twenty yards, passing the door that led to the cashier’s cage. At the opposite end of the hallway a narrow passage led up a steep flight of wooden steps. A sign above the entrance said CHULIP KUMJI. Do Not Enter.