Martin Limon: The Ville Rat

“But you know your way around.”

We’d both been in the country for going on three years. I was the only American in law enforcement who could speak Korean and Ernie had a knack for communicating with the druggies and the business girls.

Ernie grinned. “I guess we do.”

I plopped a shiny hundred- won coin onto the counter of the Red Dragon Tea House, paying to use their phone. It was a big, bulky job, painted pink, and it sat on a hand-knitted placemat.

I dialed. It took me fifteen minutes to get through to the 8th Army exchange. A Korean woman’s voice said in English, “Extension please.” I told her the number. Ten seconds later a gruff voice answered, “Eighth Army Criminal Investigation, Staff Sergeant Riley speaking.”

“Riley,” I said.

“ Sueno! Where in the hell are you?”

“Doing what we were told to do.”

“You’re supposed to get your asses back here, right now. The provost marshal hasn’t decided whether or not you’re going to be assigned to the case.”

“What’s the holdup?”

I could almost hear the veins popping on Riley’s neck. “That’s none of your freaking business,” he yelled. “You get your asses back here and you get them back here now !”

I thought of the beautiful, red-robed woman floating faceup in the Sonyu River. I took a deep breath. “Ernie’s jeep broke down.”

“Don’t give me that shit!”

“It’s in the shop now. I’ll keep you posted.”

“Don’t give me that shit , Sueno. You get your butts back here and you get them back here-”

I hung up.

When I returned to the table, Mr. Kill said, “You have the clearance to stay tonight?”

I nodded. “They agreed wholeheartedly.”

Mr. Kill paid for the coffee and the tea. He left the shop first.

The main drag of Sonyu-ri stretches about two hundred yards from the front gate of something called RC-4, Recreation Center Four, all the way to the front gate of Camp Pelham. Ernie and I killed the next couple of hours on RC-4 at the tiny Quonset hut that housed the base library, and later at the RC-4 snack bar that featured a hot grill and a scratchy-sounding jukebox. RC-4 also housed a movie theater, a military credit union, a gym, and a small arts and crafts center. The idea was to have all the recreational facilities serving the scattered military compounds near the Demilitarized Zone in one place. A green army bus pulled up in front of RC-4 every hour or so, and GIs and any dependents-usually Korean wives-disembarked and made a beeline to the main attraction on RC-4, the post exhange. Once they loaded duffel bags full of freeze-dried coffee, soluble creamer, maraschino cherries, instant orange juice, cigarettes, and canned meat products, they climbed back on the bus and returned to whatever compound they’d come from.

“Free enterprise is a wonderful thing,” Ernie said.

He was actually referring to the black market. With the Korean economy still hurting, there was a huge unfulfilled demand for imported American products. A GI, or more often his Korean wife, could sell almost anything they bought in the PX at twice what they paid for it.

We finished listening to a song called “Mandy” by some Stateside singer, swallowed the last of our cheeseburgers and coffee, and headed toward the front gate of RC-4. Already the sky was dark. On either side of the narrow two-lane highway, neon began flickering to life.

Ernie inhaled deeply. “Do you smell it, pal?”

“Smell what?”

“Kimchi fermenting in pots,” he replied. “Honey buckets on their way to the field. Brown OB bottles chilling on ice.”

“You can’t smell cold beer,” I said.

“I can,” Ernie replied.

He exhaled and we strode into the Sonyu-ri night.

Our first stop was the Red Dragon Nightclub. The sound system was turned up so loud that we could hear the rock and roll from ten yards out. Scantily clad Korean women held the bead curtain parted and waved us in with polished nails. Ernie led the way, forced to duck a little to pass through the curtains. Both he and I were several inches taller than most of the GIs in the room, and a few looked up from their pool game, glancing in our direction. We took seats at the bar.

“You buy me drink?” one of the girls asked Ernie.

He stared at her as if she was out of her mind.

“You Cheap Charley GI?” she asked.

“That’s me,” Ernie replied. “Cheap Charley to the max.”

“Where’s your compound?”

“Itaewon,” Ernie said.

“You come from Seoul?”

Ernie nodded. There was no point in trying to hide it. Division GIs could spot a GI assigned to 8th Army headquarters in Seoul from ten kilometers away. For one thing, we didn’t spend all our time in the field, in the dirt and mud and snow, and we were soft, in their eyes, from all our luxurious rear-echelon living. “Rear-echelon motherfuckers” was what they called us, when they were being kind.

“Why you come Sonyu-ri?” she asked.

That’s what these bar girls were, little intelligence-gathering machines. Despite the hot pants and the halter tops that barely covered their bosoms and the heavily made-up faces, they were always gathering data and calculating odds, looking for ways to make money. I didn’t blame them. There were no safety nets in Korea. Once a young girl was of age and hadn’t made the cut to get into high school, the chances of her finding a job were slim to nonexistent. Her family needed her out of the house. But despite all this, many of these girls still sent money home to help support their parents and brothers and sisters. More than two thousand years ago, Confucius had demanded filial piety. Most of the business girls here at the Red Dragon Nightclub were still listening.

Ernie answered her question with another question.

“What’s your name?”

“Cindy,” she said.

“Your Korean name?”

“Not your business.”

“How much you want for an overnight?”

“Twenty dollars,” she said, without hesitation.

Ernie feigned falling off his stool. “Twenty dollars? You think I’m a newbie?” New to Korea.

“No, you rich GI from Seoul. Make lotta money.”

“How I make lotta money?”

It went on like that, the banter back and forth, and once the other business girls figured Cindy had Ernie cornered, they turned their attention to me.

I asked the one standing next to me, “The girl last night, did you see her?”

She didn’t understand and so the taller girl next to her translated. When she was done, they both turned to me. “What girl?”

“The girl wearing the hanbok .” Korean clothes. “All red. Did you see her?”

They turned away from me and conferred for a few seconds, whispering, and with the loud rock music I couldn’t understand what was being said. But the concerned looks on their faces told me that they weren’t completely baffled by my question. Finally the taller one turned to me and said, “We no see.”

“Who did see?” I asked.

The shorter girl glanced quickly toward the door, her eyes aiming across the street and about ten yards to the left.

The taller girl shook her head in opposition. She grabbed the shorter girl by the arm and pulled her away. I was left alone at the bar, sipping on my bottle of OB beer. I decided not to finish it. Instead, I elbowed Ernie and we rose to leave the Red Dragon Nightclub. Cindy escorted us to the door and, as we left, instead of saying goodbye, she once again called Ernie a Cheap Charley.

There were two bars across the street, so we tried them both. The first was a dead end, but at the other we found a barmaid willing to talk. She was an older woman, maybe in her mid-thirties, and went by the name of Angela. She spoke English with a voice ravaged by tobacco.