Martin Limon - Slicky Boys

Lee stared at me with heavily lidded eyes, trying to pretend that he was extremely bored. “Why you fucking with me, Geogie?”

Ernie shot him a warning look. Lee ignored it. Some of these bar owners in Itaewon were hard-ass little brutes. I’d seen them jump into brawls with GI’s twice their size, get knocked down, and bounce back up and slug somebody else. We weren’t going to intimidate Lee. He had gone along so far only because he didn’t want us to actually sic the Korean National Police on him. That would cost him money.

I thumbed through the ledger but didn’t find it right away.

“Where’s Eun-hi?” I said.

His face didn’t move much but a veneer of knowing condescension passed over it, like a shadow crossing the moon, then disappeared. He thought I was just another horny GI trying to hit on Eun-hi. He wasn’t far from wrong so I didn’t bother to set him straight.

He riffled through the ledger, found the proper entry, and shoved it toward me.

“Here,” he said.

Ernie leaned forward and looked at the photo with me. It wasn’t very flattering. Eun-hi’s face looked puffed and plain, not at all like the knockout we saw parading around the U.N. Club every night. I breathed deeply, wincing once again at the foul stench of the U.N. Club. If I hadn’t noticed that before, maybe I’d never noticed that Eun-hi wasn’t all that attractive either. It didn’t matter. I was sober now. I’d find out for sure this morning.

“Is this address correct?”

Lee glanced at it. “Yeah. Maybe. Unless she move.”

I committed it to memory.

“All right, Lee.” I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “Make sure that girl gets her card right away.”

His face didn’t move. “You guys want a drink?”

Ernie and I looked at each other. Lee knew we were CID agents and he was a smart businessman. Keeping the police happy was part of his job. At night, with a lot of other GI’s watching us, we never accepted gratuities. Ernie didn’t wait for me to answer.

“Yeah. Double bourbon. And one for my pal here.”

Lee deftly poured the drinks, set them in front of us, and folded up the ledger and put it away. Ernie and I lifted our shot glasses and tossed them back.

On the way out, we saw the skinny waitress sitting in a rickety chair, hugging herself, bare legs crossed, glaring at us.

“Looks like you made another friend,” Ernie said.

We pushed through the door and stepped into a slap of cold air.

“Yeah,” I said. “So far this morning we’re on a roll.”

We turned up the hill and trudged past a quiet row of shuttered nightclubs. Behind them lurked a jumbled sea of upturned shingled rooftops. Hundreds of business girls and pimps and hustlers lived back there, in the maze of narrow alleys and shadowed courtyards that is the heart of the bar district known as Itaewon.

Eun-hi was in there somewhere. She knew something. Whatever it was, we’d find out.

Eun-hi’s Hooch was in a narrow alley in the catacombs behind the Itaewon main bar district. We ducked through a doorway cut into a big wooden gate and entered a slender courtyard lined with sliding, paper-covered doors. Upstairs, a balcony with more rooms and hallways wound off out of sight.

Young women squatted on the raised walkway near the kitchen. Steam billowed from the concrete room and the scent of boiling onions filled the air. Pots and pans clanged.

When the girls saw us they let out gasps of surprise and covered their naked faces with splayed fingers.

“Ajjima!” one of them said. “Sonnim wasso!” Aunt. We have guests.

An elderly woman waddled out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on an apron strapped around her waist. She gawked at us. They weren’t used to seeing GI’s at this time of morning. Not on a workday.

“Ajjima,” I said. “I spent the night with Eun-hi but I left something in her room. I came to pick it up.”

She squinted. “You spent the night with Eun-hi?”

“Part of it.”

“What did you leave?”

I did my best to act embarrassed. “Underpants.”

The girls laughed.

‘Yes, yes. Go ahead.” The elderly woman waved her hand toward the stairway behind us. I thanked her and we turned and climbed up the steps.

The splintered wood slat floors creaked beneath our shoes. As we turned the corner we ran into the cement block outer wall on one side and a long line of doorways on the other. We walked forward slowly. Each room was quiet. Not a sound.

“They’re all getting their beauty rest,” Ernie said.

“But which one belongs to Eun-hi?”

“Take your pick.”

Ernie stopped and pounded on a door. When there was no answer he pounded on another. A little farther down the hall a door creaked open.

“Nugu-seiyo?” Who is it?

A sleepy-faced girl, wrapped in a flowered robe, gazed with half-closed eyes into the hallway. I walked down to her quickly.

“I’m looking for Eun-hi.”

Clutching her robe across her chest, she waved impatiently.

“That door.”

Ernie pointed at one. “This one?”

“No. Next one.”

Ernie walked over and pounded on the door. No answer. He tried to open it. Nothing. The girl in the doorway waited, the cold air starting to wake her up.

“She’s not there,” I said to her. “Do you have a key?”

She shook her head. “Ajjima have.”

Something creaked, squealed wildly, and finally snapped. The girl and I both swiveled our heads. Eun-hi’s door was wide open. Ernie grinned at us sheepishly.

“Cheap lumber,” he said.

By now a couple more heads had popped out of their rooms. Still no Eun-hi. Ernie and I entered the hooch.

It was a small room. Tiny, to be exact. Just enough space for a Western-style bed and a stereo set and a standing closet jammed with jumbled silk.

The bed was a mess. The embroidered comforter and the stained sheets had been twisted and tossed every which way. Wads of tissue paper sprinkled the room.

“Looks like somebody had a nose-blowing contest,” Ernie said.

I turned back to the curious young women peering in the door and held out my hands. “Where’s Eun-hi?”

They conferred amongst each other, chattering away in Korean, thinking I wouldn’t understand. They mentioned a name: Suk-ja. I interrupted them.

“Eun-hi told me that she might be over at Suk-ja’s hooch.”

They stared at me blankly.

“Can you tell me where she lives?”

They conferred a little more, figuring I must be okay if Eun-hi had told me about Suk-ja. One of them started talking.

Suk-ja was an independent business girl and didn’t live here in the house with ajjima. Eun-hi often left early in the morning, after whatever GI she had policed up the night before returned to the compound, and visited Suk-ja. The girls were wide awake now and gave me good directions. Suk-ja’s hooch was just around the corner. But in these catacombs you could get lost in less than a hundred yards.

I asked them why Eun-hi was visiting Suk-ja so early in the morning. One of the girls shrugged.

“Jinhan chingu,” she said. Best friends.

Suk-ja lived on the top floor of a three-story brick walk-up. Ernie whispered to me as we climbed the cement stairway.

“We need to make a quick impression on her,” he said.

I thought of the sliced remains of Cecil Whitcomb’s body.

“I think you’re right.”

When we reached the door I prayed the girls had given us the right information. Ernie leaned against the far wall, raised his foot, and leapt forward. The door crashed inward. I rushed past him, into the tiny room, and two startled women sat up in terror.

Eun-hi was naked.

Suk-ja, a tall, extremely thin woman, wore a sheer pink nightgown as if to camouflage her protruding ribs. Large brown nipples stuck out from her flat chest like bullets. Her cheeks were sunken, the planes of her face sharp and angular. She was the first to recover from the shock. Her lips tightened. Her eyes narrowed.