Martin Limon - The Door to Bitterness

This one folded in the shape of a turtle.

I unfolded it. It was written in hanmun, Chinese characters, and said only: Hyodo. Filial piety.

I remembered the words because they were the first two Chinese characters my Korean language teacher had written on the chalkboard. The basis, she’d told us, upon which Confucian society is built.

In Korean, I asked, “Who gave this to you?”

“She said American man come. Tall American man. Dark hair. Like you.”

“What did she look like?”

“Korean, but not Korean. Light-colored hair.”

“Half-American?”

“I think so.”

“Smiling strangely?”

His eyes widened. “How you know?”

I asked him if he’d seen Ernie or any other American GIs. He said no. GIs seldom found their way into this dirt-floored mokkolli house and when they did, it was late at night and they were too drunk to know where they were.

Suk-ja and I thanked him and walked out the door.

Next door to the Seven Dragon mokkolli house was a noodle shop with a parking area for cabs. Unchon Siktang the sign said: Driver’s eatery. The cabbies could catch a quick bowl of steaming noodles while one of the young men out front hosed down their cabs and washed them off. There were three of these young men, all wearing rubber boots that reached almost to their knees. I asked each of them if they’d seen any GIs in the area today. None had.

We entered the noodle shop.

A stout woman with a bandana over her hair said she’d seen a GI approaching through the back alley. Maybe he was heading for the mokkolli house next door but she couldn’t be sure. I described Ernie to her, and she said yes, that was what he looked like.

“What happened to him?” I asked.

“Back there.” She pointed. “He stop for a few minutes. Waiting. Then black car pull up. Window open. He lean in. Talk. Then he raise both hands to sky, like praying.”

“Praying?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“Then what did he do?”

“He get in car. They go.”

“Did you report this to anybody?”

“Report? No. Why report? I no want trouble here at Unchon Siktang.”

I asked her a few more questions, and then jotted down her name and told her we’d be talking to her again soon.

“Abduct?” Captain Kim pronounced the word awkwardly. “You mean somebody take go?”

“Yes. In a black Hyundai sedan. Ernie’s hands were raised, as if somebody inside the car was holding a gun on him.”

Captain Kim studied my face. “Maybe your gun.”

I nodded.

“That’s why you feel so bad.”

I nodded again.

“This woman, Miss Na, you know her full name?”

I didn’t. And that made it impossible for us to check to see if she’d actually returned to Korea as Ernie had been told in the note. Was this a setup? Had somebody known about Ernie’s old flame, and then used her name to induce him to meet them at a certain place and time? Captain Kim told Suk-ja and me to sit down and try to relax while he made a few phone calls.

I used the phone at the other desk and finally got through to the Charge of Quarters at the barracks where Ernie and I lived. I waited as he wandered down the hallway and checked with the houseboy. No, Ernie wasn’t in, and nobody’d seen him since this morning. I called the CID Detachment. Riley was in catching up on paperwork. I told him what I suspected.

“Ernie’s been abducted?”

“Maybe. Don’t say anything yet. I can’t be sure.”

“Sure you’re sure. It’s this case you been working on. That nutty broad is smarter than you and Bascom put together.”

I told Riley where I was and told him, if Ernie showed up, to have him find me immediately. And I made him promise not to tell anybody. Not yet. Not until I was sure.

When I hung up the phone, Captain Kim was staring at me. Then he told me about the news from Yoju.

If Ernie thought there was any way to escape without being shot, he would’ve tried it.”

“Maybe not,” Suk-ja said. “Maybe he want go.”

This was possible, although I didn’t want to admit it out loud. Ernie was crazy enough to think he could turn the tables on whoever had the nerve to try to take him captive.

Captain Kim said that near the outskirts of Yoju, at the burial mounds, a huge crowd had gathered for the traditional Chusok ceremonies. Mr. Yun Guang-min, the owner of the Olympos, had gone there this morning in his chauffer driven Hyundai sedan. That made sense, because his ancestral home was Yoju and he, like everyone else, was visiting the burial sites of his parents in order to pay his respects. Only one guard traveled with him and the chauffeur.

Along the route, Mr. Yun saw a warm chestnut stand on the side of the road, and he made his driver stop. He loved chestnuts and bought enough to feed a small army. He explained to anyone listening that, when he was young, his family had been too poor to afford them, no matter how much he craved them. He laughed and said that all his relatives teased him about how crazy he was for warm chestnuts.

The chestnut vendor shot the bodyguard in the chest. The vendor was a woman, her hair covered with a bandana. While her partner waved his automatic pistol around, she ordered the driver out of the car, took his keys. Her male accomplice forced Mr. Yun into the driver’s seat, and she and the accomplice climbed in back.

The vehicle made a U-turn and headed northwest, in the general direction of Seoul.

The KNPs had the sedan’s license plate: a bulletin had been issued. With the roads jammed on Chusok, it was unlikely the sedan would be spotted.

Had the black Hyundai been the same car that Ernie climbed into?

I thought so. The smiling woman and her brother were going for two victims. They were going to make sure that this would be a Chusok to be remembered.

Martin Limon

The Door to Bitterness

Would it do any good to notify 8th Army? No. They had no way of doing a better job than the Korean cops. In fact, if a pack of cowboy MPs barged in while I was trying to save Ernie, they’d only get somebody killed.

I was on my own on this. And I had to find him.

“Where would they have taken Mr. Yun?” I asked Captain Kim.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“It’s Chusok,” I said, trying to think it through. “Like all Koreans, they want to visit their ancestors. Their ancestors are in Yoju, the same as their uncle, Mr. Yun.”

Suk-ja crinkled her nose. “They no like them.”

She was right. She was exactly right. The smiling woman and her brother had been ostracized by their own family. They wouldn’t want to worship ancestors who had turned their backs on them. So who would they worship? The one ancestor who hadn’t turned away. Who had stood by them always. Their mother.

Where was she buried?

Probably, she hadn’t been. The Uichon mama-san had told me the smiling woman carried with her a white box wrapped with black ribbon. That almost certainly contained the ashes of her deceased mother. To worship her, all they had to do was set the box on a table and bow.

At the murder site of Jo Kyong-ah, the black marketeer, she’d been forced to bow in front of a table partially cleared. Had the smiling woman and her brother forced Miss Jo to bow to the box containing their deceased mother’s ashes?

When Specialist 5 Arthur Q. Fairbanks was executed, the killer had set a cardboard-like paper against the pump handle and forced Fairbanks to bow three times. A photograph of Miss Yun, the mother? And then another person had entered the courtyard. His sister carrying the white box containing their mother’s ashes? Then Fairbanks was killed.

I pulled out the photo Jimmy had given me. Miss Yun Yong-min, her daughter, and her son. Such a pathetic little family. Three people, all alone in the world. If I was correct, there was no set site for the smiling woman and her brother to pay homage at the shrine of their deceased mom. They could’ve taken Ernie and Mr. Yun anywhere.