Martin Limon - G. I. Bones

Desultory crooning drifted out of the front door of the Grand Ole Opry Club. I recognized the voice: Buck Owens, in stereo.

“How about the Grand Ole Opry Club owner?” I asked Two Bellies. “Did he know Mori Di?’

Two Bellies shook her head vehemently. “No. Woman own now. Her daddy long time ago own bar. Long time ago, he die. Now she run place.”

“How about the other owners of the other nightclubs?” Ernie said. “Did they know Mori Di?”

“Of course they know. They all know.”

The nightclub owners Ernie was referring to were stalwarts of the local community. Whenever they were seen inside their own nightclubs-which was seldom-they were close shaved, slickly coifed, and clad in a suit and tie. They had formed an important organization with much influence here in the southern Yongsan District of Seoul: the Itaewon Club Owners’ Association. And they had influence at 8th Army. More than once I’d seen one owner or another glad-handing with the brass at the 8th Army Officers’ Club or shooting a round of golf at the 8th Army golf course.

“Who was Snake?” I asked.

Two Bellies eyes widened. “How you know?”

“Never mind. Who was he?”

“I no talk.”

“Why? What are you afraid of?”

Two Bellies took a step backwards. Ernie positioned himself to grab her but I waved him off.

“How about Horsehead?” I asked. “Or Dragon’s Claw Number One?”

Two Bellies’s eyes glistened in the neon glow. She began stepping backward, stumbled, and then righted herself, waggling her forefinger at us.

“You no talk Two Bellies. You no tell nobody Two Bellies talk to you.”

As if realizing suddenly that she stood in a public alleyway, Two Bellies glanced at the wary eyes lining the road. None of the business girls made a move. Two Bellies hugged herself over her ample paunch, turned, and started click-clacking her way down the cobbled road.

I shouted a question. “What about the night Mori Di was murdered? Were you there?”

She kept walking, waving her hand in the air. “Two Bellies no know nothing.”

“Should I stop her?” Ernie asked.

I thought about it. We could stop her halfway down Hooker Hill. Embarrass her. Maybe get a little more information but we’d probably get even more information if we waited until we could catch her alone.

“No,” I said finally. “Let her go. She told me plenty.”

We turned and gazed up at the Grand Ole Opry Club.

“So what’s next?” Ernie asked. “We roust the Club Owners’ Association?”

Ernie was always in favor of direct action.

“Maybe. But not yet. First, let’s take a look inside the Grand Ole Opry.”

“You’ve seen it before.”

“Only the bar. I want to inspect the entire building, from top to bottom.”

Ernie rolled his eyes. “All you’re going to find is business girls and booze.”

We climbed the cement steps of the Grand Ole Opry Club.

As I pulled open one of the double doors and turned to let Ernie enter first, one of the shadows across the street shifted suddenly. The shadow had been tall, like a G.I. I looked again. Three business girls who’d been standing there were now gone.

Many American G.I. s are ashamed to let people know that they frequent Hooker Hill, so they lurk in the back alleys, bashful about emerging into the neon-spangled light of the nightclub district. Sometimes they’re ashamed because they’re in a position of authority, officers or senior NCOs. Other times its because they’re married and have a photograph of their wife and children hanging in their wall locker or displayed prominently on their desk at work.

But this shadow had moved fast. Too fast.

I skipped down the cement steps and sprinted across the road.

A wooden gate started to swing shut. I shoved it open. A business girl fell backwards on her butt. I didn’t wait to ask her questions. I ran across the courtyard and sidled down a narrow slit between the hooch and a cement-block wall. For a moment I was blind. But finally, moonlight revealed that another gate, in the wall behind the hooch, was open. I went through it.

Behind me, footsteps pounded. Ernie. He almost plowed into me.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Movement,” I replied. “Too quick to be just somebody worried about being embarrassed.”

We stared down the dark cobbled lane. Liquid trickled through an open drain, reeking of ammonia. Ernie ran one way, I ran the other. More intersections, more narrow pathways. Lights peeped out from homes behind high walls. Pots and pans clanged; radios blared; children laughed. Charcoal smoke wafted out of underground flues, irritating me like smelling salts up the nose. Periodically, I stopped and listened. No sound. No footsteps.

Finally, I returned to the hooch across from the Grand Ole Opry. Ernie was waiting. Moonlight glistened off the perspiration on his forehead.

“Paco?” he asked.

“Maybe.”

The frightened business girls didn’t know the G.I.’s name but said he was dark, like me, except darker. We showed them the photo. Curled fingers rose to trembling lips. They were afraid they’d be in big trouble. I told them to relax.

Did they know where he was now?

They shook their heads negatively.

Did they know his name?

No.

Had they ever seen him before?

Again they shook their heads.

How long had he been watching us?

Since we’d arrived with Two Bellies.

Ernie and I weren’t new to Itaewon. We knew a lot of people and were aware of the obvious hiding places. G.I. s had tried to hide from us before and hadn’t been able to pull it off. Yet, after three hours of searching, we hadn’t found Paco Bernal. Most likely, someone was helping him. Someone who had the means and connections to keep him hidden from us and that someone, almost certainly, was a Korean.

Ernie and I returned to the Grand Ole Opry to check it out.

It was like most of the nightclubs in Itaewon except not quite so rowdy. Most of the customers were older G.I. s, career noncommissioned officers: lifers. When Ernie and I were sitting at the bar, I heard a lot of words dragged out in slow country drawls.

“This place is dead,” Ernie said. He swiveled on his barstool, stared at the half-empty ballroom in disgust, and tossed back some more suds from his brown beer bottle.

The business girls who occupied the rooms upstairs worked in the more lively nightclubs along the strip-the nightclubs that specialized in live bands and rock and roll and go-go girls. None of which could be found here at the Grand Ole Opry Club.

Surreptitiously, Ernie and I slipped into the back hallway, past the latrines, and climbed the cement stairs. Although we received some surprised looks from the occasional startled resident, we searched the building from top to bottom. Afterward, we examined the other clubs: The King Club, the Seven Club, the Lucky Seven, the UN, and the 007. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for exactly; I was just looking.

Two hours before the midnight curfew, we climbed the highest hill overlooking Itaewon. A full moon rose red into a black sky. According to the lunar calendar, this was the time of year the Koreans call Sohan, the small cold. A storm cloud crossed the moon. A few splats of snow fell on the ground and then a few more on my forehead. At the top of the hill, we reached a small Buddhist shrine that had been here as long as anyone remembered, since before the Korean War, since the ancient days when the village of Itaewon had been nothing more than cultivated fields of rice and cabbage and turnip. A tile roof, upturned at the eaves, sheltered a bronze bell. I switched on my flashlight and examined the shrine, the stone foundation, and even the raked gravel surrounding it. With bent knuckles, Ernie bonged the bell.