James Church - Hidden Moon

I had to admit, this was another mark in Min’s favor-irony. He was good at it, almost masterful. Anyone looking at a transcript of his remarks could never accuse him of anything. But anyone who heard him could not mistake what he felt.

“You, on the other hand”-his eyes settled on my shirt-“are naked in that regard. Well, I usually don’t give a damn what you do once you leave this building, but before you go out the front door on this investigation, especially this investigation, you will find your own badge somewhere in your desk amidst all the wood shavings and you will put it on. Am I clear?”

There was a silence that seemed best unbroken. Min rarely pressed anymore on the badge, a small portrait of one or the other of the Leaders. I never wore it when I was on duty. I rarely had it with me off duty, either. The failure to wear it on a regular basis went into my file every once in a while, but no one followed up. I was the grandson of a Hero of the Republic, the flesh and blood of a revolutionary from the glorious struggle against the Japanese. In the years I grew up in his house, this national hero, my grandfather, told me stories about the early days, about events and people. He had a great store of rumors. I learned plenty, and I remembered details. Even now, half a century later, a number of still-important individuals didn’t care to have those details repeated.

Displaying the pin was not so much the problem; it had nothing to do with politics. The problem, frankly, was putting it on every morning. I didn’t like the little holes it left in my shirt or the way it pricked my finger. So it stayed in my desk drawer in a relatively honorable location near the front. I made a show of considering Min’s request, put my hands in my pockets and rocked back on my heels.

“Anything else I should know?” I probably should have rephrased what came next. “Like, for instance, what you aren’t telling me?”

Min massaged his temples. The battle of the badge had been fought again, to no avail. He cut his losses, as he always did, by letting it drop. “You know what I know, Inspector.” This was another lie, but it was only of a bureaucratic sort, nothing malicious or personal. The file Min had been waving over his head was practically empty. If it had three pieces of paper in it, I would have been surprised. The Ministry didn’t know much more, or they wouldn’t have assigned us the case. If it was really so sensitive, they would have handled it themselves, putting together a special squad under the Minister’s direct supervision in a concerted attempt to keep the State Security Department from moving in and taking the case away from us.

“One last thing, Inspector.” Min adopted a tone that meant he hoped I would accept what he said without comment and go off to do as he instructed. It was a forlorn hope, but he clung to it. “The Minister wants a solution by the end of the month.”

“That’s not so far away.” I looked around for a calendar. There was none. The chief inspector thought the photographs were too posed and the colors unreal. “You ever seen cheeks that red?” he would ask. We soon learned it was a rhetorical question.

Min sat back and closed his eyes. He knew I didn’t work well with deadlines. “Just be glad this didn’t happen in February. We’d have even fewer days to solve it.”

“Are we done?”

“I am.” Min smiled, a little grimly, the sort of thing a man with his eyes closed will do. “I’m done. You are just getting started. I want daily reports.” There was no sense giving orders if he couldn’t see their effect; his eyes opened, reluctantly. “Daily means every day, incidentally. We’ll finally get to use those new forms the Ministry distributed in January. They have to be filed in multiple copies, so press hard when you fill them out. But not too hard, or the paper will tear.”

“What if I fill out a batch for you right now: ‘Nothing to report.’ It could save time. This is category three, trust me.”

“Solve this, Inspector, all will be merry, they will sing your praises. The Ministry wants it solved. Screw it up, and I will be instructed to write your transfer order, in multiple copies, to someplace cold and lonely.”

This wasn’t much of a threat. He would sooner slit his wrists than transfer me. But it was all he could think of at the moment, I could tell. “Is this the new management style we keep hearing about? Very effective.” I grinned at him, but he wasn’t about to let me break the mood. He looked somber, almost painfully so. “Alright,” I said, after deciding there was no way around it for the moment. “Only one thing I need.”

“What’s that?” Though he long ago accepted his limitations, at heart, Min is not really a placid man. He usually hides behind a bland mask; except for a wrinkled brow or fluttering eyelids, his face rarely shows what he is thinking. Money is the exception. When the subject comes up, almost imperceptibly, his eyes narrow until they are slits. It is animal-like, something a tiger might do while watching a deer walk across an open meadow. You imagine evil things, watching his eyes disappear.

“Inspector, you were about to say something?” The eyes were practically gone.

“Me? Yes. And it was this.” I blinked to gain enough time to remember. “I know we are in straitened circumstances… ”

“Get where you’re going, O.”

“Money; I’ll need some.”

“Why?” Ever so slowly could the chief inspector speak, so that even a single word consumed a large amount of time and space.

“You asked the key question yourself, don’t you remember?”

“What?” More time, more space.

“Where did a bunch of crooks get silk stockings?” It seemed harmless enough for me to walk through the markets, looking for stockings. “If we can answer that, we’ll have a good place to start. Somewhere, a twinkling star is warning me not to touch this case, but you say the Ministry wants it solved. Alright, we have to start somewhere, and a good place to start is the stockings the bank robbers-if that is what they were-had over their faces. I’ll need to do research on stockings, who sells them, what types there are, I mean, quality, place of origin, size, maybe color for all I know, whether they had split up a pair or two pair between them or were working from odd lots. I’ll have to buy some, once I figure out where they’re available. You can’t expect me to afford shopping for silk stockings on an inspector’s salary.”

“Out.”

On a breezy early April day, just after the last of the Chinese dust has blown off toward Japan and the skies have cleared to a newly scoured blue, the prettiest place in Pyongyang is along the banks of the Taedong River. Some people might argue and say it is prettier in the small hills behind the Moranbong Theater, where the dogwoods bloom against the stones of the old fortress walls. Nice enough, but there are usually too many schoolchildren there learning to draw. The girls chatter and laugh; the boys run after each other. A few sit seriously, holding their brushes over the paper, observing the scene. Some actually paint something, and smile shyly if you nod in encouragement. If you’re in the mood, watching the children is fine. But to me, the riverside is better, quieter, more serene. There aren’t many benches, so I am always glad to find one unoccupied. I don’t like to sit with strangers.

The lack of seating-other than on the grass, which grows in patches this time of year-is the result of too many bureaucrats with too little to do. Almost forgotten in the General Bureau of Urban Planning was a small unit of landscape architects looking for ways to justify their existence. Out for a morning stroll, one of the architects stumbled over the benches along the river. Several memos were dispatched claiming that riverside benches made for clutter, interfered with the natural beauty of the spot, and so forth. One of the memos landed on the desk of the People’s Culture Commission director, the man who had authorized, at some cost to his small budget, the benches along the river to begin with. He had justified the decision on the grounds that without benches no one would walk on the riverside path. I knew this, because I had to go back and look at the memos when everything landed on my desk.