Martin Limon: Buddha's money

In the center of the bare room, keeping her eyes tightly shut, sat a tiny woman wrapped in gray robes. Minute black stubbles dotted the naked flesh of her skull. Across her temple, a cruel purple welt was gradually beginning to bulge. Blood dripped in a thin line from the corner of her mouth.

Ernie was a little bruised up himself but he grabbed some tissue paper, stepped toward the woman and, his face crinkled in concern, dabbed at the red trickle.

Kim barked an order and one of the policemen hustled over to a first-aid cabinet and rummaged around. When the policeman found what he was looking for, he returned to the bald nun, cracked open a capsule, and waved it in front of the woman's nose. Her face crinkled, her head jerked back, and her eyes popped open.

The first thing she saw was Ernie.

Her mouth opened and she let out a scream. So loud it rattled the windows; a roar of anger rose from the crowd outside. The policemen all looked at us accusingly.

Who were we, two foreigners, to upset this virtuous Bride of Buddha?

After Sooki had led us into the catacombs of the Itaewon alleys, we heard screams and scuffling. Somehow, in the dark, we crashed headlong into a mugger in the act of attacking his victim. Ernie lost his footing on the slick cobbled pathway, then so did I. Still, before I went down, I managed to lay a left hook into the culprit's rib cage. Bone crunched beneath flesh. I was sure of it.

He was a big man and definitely knew how to handle himself in a fight. What with Ernie flailing around beneath me and it being so dark and Sooki screaming and me still trying to regain my footing, he landed a few punches and managed to slip away. I followed him through the Itaewon alleys but it was no use. He disappeared in the maze.

The only thing I could say for sure was that the perpetrator was well above average height and weight and probably a black man. Therefore, he was almost certainly a GI. The number of blacks in Korea who aren't GIs is not worth considering.

A lone mugger in our grasp and yet he'd escaped. Ernie and I were the best two CID agents in the country and we knew it. Still, I wasn't looking forward to the snide com- ments from the other agents when we returned to the CID office.

We'd have to capture this guy. No question about that.

What surprised me most was the identity of his victim.

"She's a broad," Ernie told me after he examined her. "I know these things. Hands-on anatomy training I received in 'Nam."

I shook my head wearily. "A GI attacking a Buddhist nun. The CG isn't going to like this."

"Fuck the Commanding General," Ernie said. "I don't like it. I don't like it at all."

We carried the unconscious Bride of Buddha through the village, Sooki leading the way. In about two minutes flat, word spread through Itaewon like poison filtering through blood.

A GI had raped a Buddhist nun.

At least, that's what they were saying. I doubted that the nun had been raped. There wasn't time. But facts have never been known to stop a rumor. A crowd of angry Koreans formed quickly.

We were called names: yangnom sikki. Foreign bastards. And we were spit at and a few people even threw rocks. One business girl bounded out of the crowd that lined the main drag of Itaewon and tried to scratch Ernie's eyes out. While he was shoving her back, a Korean who takes photos of GIs and their girlfriends cuddling in nightclubs snapped a photograph of the scene. He ran away before I could confiscate his film.

A squad of KNPs intercepted us and, wielding their riot batons, escorted us back to the Itaewon Police Station.

When we were safe inside the cement-block edifice, Ernie gave vent to his rage. "Listen to those assholes! You'd think we were the ones who jacked up this Buddhist chick."

"Remember what they tell us in training," I told him. "All GIs are ambassadors for America."

Ernie put his hands on his hips and glared at the growing crowd outside. "Fuck some kind of ambassador."

Curses floated through the open windows.

Captain Kim grabbed a chair, straddled it, and leaned toward the frightened nun, speaking in soothing Korean. What had a nun been doing here in Itaewon? he wanted to know.

After a few deep breaths, the little nun relaxed slightly and started to talk.

She had arrived this afternoon, by bus from Tobongsan, north of the city, and had visited some of the young women who work in the bars, ministering to them about the Path of the Middle Way.

Many of the business girls were devout. And despite what they had to do to make a living, they often made offerings of money and prayer, trying to assuage the guilt that gnawed at their souls.

The nun's name was Choi So-lan. She was a novitiate at the Temple of the Celestial Void.

Sweat beaded the ghostly pallor of her forehead. Eyeballs rolled up in their sockets until only the whites showed. Still, Captain Kim leaned over her, occasionally blasting her with the smelling salts, whispering gentle questions in her ear.

Ernie didn't understand much but he kept quiet, knowing I had to concentrate to follow the conversation and that I'd translate for him later.

There was no thought of rushing her off to a hospital, or having her examined by a doctor. Nobody was cordoning off the crime scene and bringing in lab technicians. Sophisticated crime-detection techniques were for the rich foreign countries. Not for Korea. Not for just a mugging. And certainly not for Itaewon. Maybe some effort would be made if a wealthy industrialist had been the victim. But not for a penniless nun.

The young woman shook her head. Tears squeezed from her tight eyes.

"He hit me. I was walking in that dark alley, leaving the home of a good woman, when suddenly the moon was blocked. For a moment I thought it was a monsoon cloud."

She lowered her head again. Captain Kim kept whispering the soft, soothing words. The nun said, "He shoved me and tried to grab the pouch with the offerings. When I resisted, he punched me and punched me again."

She sat up straighter and seemed to steel herself.

"I am small but I am strong. While he held me, I managed to use my legs and my elbows and I kneed him good. Where a man hurts most. He stumbled and cracked his head against the wall.

"I tried to run away but he was too fast. He caught up with me and dragged me back and now he was really angry. I fought back but it didn't help."

Captain Kim pointed at the felt purse clutched in her hands. "But he didn't take your money?"

"No. I wouldn't give it to him. This is Buddha's money. He tried to grab it but I bit his finger. I bit it hard. I crunched bone." Her pale face dripped with tears. She slipped the pouch inside her tunic.

"Then he was on me again, punching, clawing, grunting like an animal, and I started to lose my mind, fading into darkness, and I screamed again and he punched me again. The next thing I knew, other people were there." She looked around, focusing on Ernie, as if seeing him for the first time. "Him. He was there. He chased the evil cloud away."

Ernie shuffled his feet, nervous from the attention. I'd never seen him this way before. Women like Ernie. Everywhere he goes the best-looking chicks are after him. Something about him. What, I don't know. Usually he takes their attention in stride. But not so the attention of this tiny nun. He looked ill at ease. A schoolboy on his first date.

When I thought about some of the gorgeous chicks he'd been with and compared them to this little, bald, bruised, battered Buddhist nun, it didn't make sense. Of course, most things about Ernie don't make much sense.

That's what makes Ernie Ernie.

He composed himself and reached in his pocket and stepped forward and offered the little nun a stick of ginseng gum. She accepted it but her hands were shaking so badly that Ernie had to unwrap it for her.