Martin Limon: The Ville Rat

“That’s what they tell me, and if he wasn’t so weird with the silences and explosive at other times, the Koreans would give him a lot of respect. But they don’t, because they don’t trust him. He’s too erratic.”

“What exactly do you suspect him of?”

“I’ll deny it if anyone asks officially, but I’ve suspected him for a long time of moving stuff on the side.”

“Off the books?”

“Yes. He takes long trips to the Port of Inchon. I believe he’s developed a contact there.”

“Someone who can get the stuff through customs.”

“Yes. Easy enough as long as the inspector can at least pretend that it’s military materiel.”

“What’s he been moving?”

“I don’t know for sure.”

“What do you suspect?”

Mills paused. “Malt liquor,” he said.

“Colt 45?”

“Right. And California brandy. Stuff that can be substituted for cognac.”

“Do you have proof?”

“I haven’t looked for proof.”

“You want to keep your fingerprints off it,” I said.

Mills didn’t answer.

“Where does Demoray live?” I asked.

“Supposedly at the Nineteenth Support Group senior NCO barracks. But I’ve heard he has a place off-post.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know exactly. Maybe somewhere in Itaewon.”

Ernie and I drove to the Itaewon Police Station. A sleepy-looking desk officer looked up at us as we entered, surprised at first, but his face then returning to resigned resentment. I showed him Inspector Kill’s calling card. It was printed in English on one side and hangul on the other. I told the duty officer to call him. He stared at me wide-eyed, disbelieving. I showed him my badge and told him again. He lifted the phone. After many rings somebody answered. I could hear the word yoboseiyo . Hello. When the duty officer started talking, I realized that he hadn’t called Inspector Kill at all, but rather Captain Kim, the commander of the Itaewon Police Station.

I snatched the receiver from his hand.

“Captain Kim,” I said, “we have to find someone here in Itaewon. Lives are at stake.” His English was not nearly as good as Mr. Kill’s, so I repeated what I’d said in Korean. He asked what I wanted him to do. “We have to go through rental records,” I told him, “find a GI named Demoray who rented a home here in Itaewon.”

There was a long silence. Then he asked me in English, “Do you know what time it is?”

Actually, I didn’t. All I could think of since I’d stared into the barrel of Rick Mills’s shotgun was death. My own death and the death of Miss Hwang on the banks of the Sonyu River and the death of the little kisaeng . I looked around. It was dark outside. No traffic.

“Myotsi?” I asked the duty officer. He looked at his wristwatch. “Yoltu-shi iship oh-bun.” 12:15 a.m.

“Okay,” I said into the phone. “This morning, at first light, I need a detail hitting every bokdok-bang , Korean real estate broker, to check their records and find the hooch rented by a GI named Demoray.”

And then it dawned on me. He might’ve rented the place using a false name. The Korean real estate agent wouldn’t care, as long as he was paid in cash.

Captain Kim didn’t commit himself. He said we’d talk about it when he came in to work this morning. Suddenly, I felt foolish. We didn’t have time to find Demoray the regular way, with shoe leather and traditional police work. I had to figure out a way to find him now.

Ernie and I walked up the main drag of Itaewon, now lined with dark neon: The UN Club, the Lucky Seven Club, the Seven Club, the King Club. A few yards off to our left, I knew, up Hooker Hill, was the Grand Old Opry Club, Sam’s Place, and beyond that, down the steps in front of the movie theater, the 007 Club. Lonely yellow street lamps guided our way.

“He’s out here somewhere,” Ernie said.

“Yeah, and if you were a demented son of a bitch with plenty of money and you wanted to rent a place where you could hide women you’d purchased from human traffickers, where would you go?”

“I’d go to someplace isolated.”

Itaewon was the opposite of isolated. It sat in a southern suburb of a city of eight million people. Behind the main drag of nightclubs, the hooches were jammed up like poker chips in a pile.

“So if you don’t have isolation,” I said, “where else can you hide?”

“I don’t get you,” Ernie replied.

“Think of Edgar Allen Poe. ‘The Purloined Letter.’”

“You read too much,” Ernie said in disgust.

“If you can’t hide something away from others of its kind, you hide it in the midst of a multitude of its kind.”

“So you hide abused women,” Ernie said, “amongst other abused women.” He thought about it. “In a whorehouse.”

“Not just any whorehouse. But the worst of the worst.”

We turned up Hooker Hill.

We walked through the lonely back alleys of Itaewon, searching for lights inside windows, but there weren’t any. Occasionally we paused and listened. No shouts, no whimpering, just silence. Methodically we walked up and down the hills, turning toward the whorehouses we’d heard about, realizing that we didn’t know where they all were, but still everything was silent.

Finally, we stopped.

“Maybe he doesn’t live in Itaewon,” Ernie said.

“Maybe not. In the morning we’ll ask Inspector Kill to organize a task force to search for Demoray.”

“What did Mills say about Sonyu-ri again?”

Before we left, I had the presence of mind to ask him about his Non-Appropriated Fund operation up north near Camp Pelham, outside of Sonyu-ri. He told me that for years some of the Korean businessmen in the area had been hosted at the meikju changgo , the beer warehouse near Camp Pelham, to a poker game sponsored out of the illicit funds from the Central Locker Fund.

“That was Demoray’s job?”

“Yes. He transported kisaeng up there to serve the food and drinks.”

“One of them escaped,” I told him, “and was killed for her effort.”

Mills shook his head, truly repentant. “It’s gotten out of hand,” he said. “I knew it would one day.”

By the time we left, I almost felt sorry for him, but not enough to stop me from deciding to turn him in. Rick Mills had known what was going on and could’ve saved a life if he’d reported it.

Ernie studied the quiet Itaewon night. “Let’s try one more alley. If we don’t find anything, then we might as well go back to the compound.”

I agreed with him. We stalked up the narrow pedestrian lanes, brick and stone walls on either side, observing the moonlit night, listening for any sound. Nothing.

Finally, we gave up and returned to Ernie’s jeep and drove slowly toward Yongsan.

“There’s one last place we can try,” I said.

Ernie groaned again.

“Eighth Army Billeting,” I told him.

The duty NCO wasn’t happy to be rousted out of his cot. He was a thin man with a heavy five o’clock shadow and a sweat-stained green T-shirt behind the dog tags chained to his neck. We flashed our badges. He rubbed his eyes.

“Somebody rob a bank?” he asked.

“Demoray, Master Sergeant,” Ernie said.

The guy looked up at him and silently turned and pulled out a metal drawer from a filing cabinet that lined the back wall. He shuffled through folders and asked, “D-E-M?”

“Right,” Ernie replied.

They guy stopped, pulled out a folder, and said, “Building N402, Room Five.”

“Where’s that?”

“On Main Post. In the row behind the JUSMAG Headquarters.” Joint US Military Advisory Group.

“Thanks.”

We ran back to the jeep.