Jade Lady Burning (26 page)

Two of the policemen had left the group and were coming in my direction, trotting. As soon as I got into the shadows of the narrow alley, I ran. The surface of the alleyway was uneven and I had to be careful not to twist my ankle. The alley wound around at weird angles and then took a sharp left. I was in front of the brightly lit back door of the Key Club and slowed to a walk to get my breath back before entering.

Something leapt out of the shadows and grabbed me.

“Jesus!”

“
Yoboseiyo
,” it said. A young girl. She couldn’t have been over eighteen, heavily made-up with mascara and powder, and rouge rubbed all over her cherubic face.

“You wanna catch me?” she said. She wrapped her arms around my elbow and bicep. Bleary-eyed, eyelids half closed, she waited for her answer.

“No,” I said and pulled away. “I go Key Club.” She stumbled after me but kept her grip on my arm.

“
Yoboseiyo
,” she said again. “
Yoboseiyo.
” She wouldn’t let go.

Footsteps of police were coming down the alley. I stopped. Her head lolled down on my injured arm, but her grip was still tight. There was no time to fight her off and, if I did, the KNPs would have me. I grabbed her hair and tilted her face up to mine.

“
Agashi,
” I said. “We go Key Club, I buy you drink, then we go short time most tick.”

Her face brightened. “Short time?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said, as I pulled her toward the door. She nodded happily and followed, leaning into my side as we walked up into the club, never releasing my arm from her vice-like grip. I could hear the KNP coming as the swinging doors slammed shut.

We staggered toward the bar and I realized that her death grip was making the pain in my arm a whole lot worse. There were a few GIs playing pool and about fifty girls scattered around the place. They all stared at us as we hobbled across like two survivors of the Bataan Death March.

The women looked younger than any group I had seen before. The legal age for prostitution in Korea is eighteen. I didn’t believe that most of these girls were that old.

I sat down at the bar. She just stood at my side, still clinging to my arm. She seemed to be struggling to stay awake. I ordered a beer for myself and a drink for her. Hers came in a cocktail glass, was colored bright red, and had no alcohol in it. The cost was three times what I paid for my beer.

The barmaid pushed the brown OB bottle in front of me. “You want a glass?” she asked. I said yes. She seemed surprised.

The glass had dust on it and I had to pour the beer myself. Not as much class as the Lucky Seven Club.

I managed to get her to sit down on the stool next to me and held up my beer glass for a toast. Her eyelids opened a little bit. She was trying to figure out what I was doing. The barmaid was standing there, watching us, and said something to her in rapid Korean. The girl just leaned down and slurped some of the liquid out of the glass.

I said, “Cheers,” smiled at the barmaid, and took a long drink.

“I go banjo,” I said. The girl just sat there, staring at the bright red liquid in her glass. I looked at the barmaid. She nodded and I crossed the floor to the small door marked WC.

I didn’t have to take a leak but I was checking for windows. There was a small one with bars across it, but it only led to a cement wall.

This latrine had toilet paper, the Key Club did have some things going for it. I ripped off a little and dabbed at the fresh blood seeping from my left hand. I threw that in the commode and then wadded up a bunch of toilet paper and stuffed it into my jacket pocket. Now the Key Club was out of ass wipe, too.

I walked out and, instead of returning to the bar, headed directly for the front door. I didn’t open it, but the swinging doors were a little off center and there was a slight opening with a cold draft coming through.

I could see a KNP standing outside. He reached toward someone, probably a partner, and traded cigarettes and matches, performing the ritual of lighting up and preparing for a long wait.

The back door was already covered by the other policemen. I was trapped.

I returned to my seat at the bar and woke up my girlfriend. She opened her eyes as wide as she could get them and asked reflexively, “We go short time?”

I took another pull of my beer and looked at her for the first time. She was wearing exceedingly tight hot pants that seemed to be molded like plastic wrap to her. Her legs were bare, no nylons, and a few bruises spotted the otherwise creamy brown skin. Inscribed on her T-shirt above the nipples was an advertisement for American Express travelers’ checks. Her cheeks were a little pudgy and her straight black hair was cut short, accenting the roundness of her face.

She was actually very cute and would have been an attractive young lady had it not been for all this.

I didn’t answer but reached out, took her arm, and pulled it toward me to look at her wrist. She came awake immediately.

“Whatsamatta you?” She yanked her arm back and became shrill. “You no touchey Judy, okay?” She wagged her finger at me and stood up. I half expected her to punch me. The she looked over at her cherry red drink, reached for it, and downed it in one gulp. She turned back to me, fully coherent now.

“You wanna catchey Judy, get short time now, or you wanna catchey ‘nother girl?” She waved her arm around the room.

“Where’s your room?”

“Upstairs,” she said.

I finished my beer. “Let’s go.”

On the way up I watched her pretty backside sway back and forth—soft, youthful. And I thought of the raised scars on her wrist, like high mud rows between rice paddies, and the neat circular burn marks from flaming cigarette butts put out on her skin.

When we got to her room, we took off our shoes and entered. There was nothing but a rolled-up mat on the floor and a small table covered with cosmetics and a little mirror. Some of her clothes were hanging from nails in the wall and the rest were wadded up and piled in the corner.

She started to unroll the mat but I walked to the window. We were on the second floor and there was a drop of twenty feet to the alley below. I turned to her. “How can I get out of here?”

She just looked at me.

I said, “I no can go. Korean policemen front door and back door. How I get out?”

“No can do,” she said.

I reached in my pocket, pulled out a ten-dollar bill, and handed it to her. She folded it and stuck it inside her hot pants. “Let’s go,” she said.

I followed her down the hallway and up another flight of stairs until we came out on the roof. “Which way?” I asked.

She just waved to the buildings on either side. Both were almost the same height as our building but there was about a tenfoot space between each.

“How?” I said. She shrugged. I looked around. There were no fire escapes or footholds to use to get down.

I weighed going back to her room and waiting them out. But that wouldn’t work. After curfew, when most of the GIs had left, the police would make short work of finding me.

There was an iron grating that had been left up on the roof to rust. I paced it off but it wasn’t nearly long enough to cover the gap to the next rooftop. There was nothing I could use to span the space. Actually, it was about twelve feet and, looking across, it looked very close. A twelve-foot jump. I could make it. It’s just that if I missed, it would be a three-story drop. Just a matter of confidence, I told myself. If it were twelve feet paced off on the ground, it would be no big problem. It was just the fear of the abyss below.

Judy seemed to sense what I was planning to do. I thought of the KNPs below. This might not work. They might spot me or be waiting for me even if I made it to the building next door. I handed her the film.

“You hold this for me?” I asked. “I don’t want to break it.”

“When you come back?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Ten dollar,” she said.

“Five.”

She shrugged her narrow shoulders and slipped the roll of film into the snug front pocket of her hot pants.

I got back against the far side of the building, ran across the roof as fast as I could sprint, pushed off from the top of the cement parapet, and leapt into space.

The parapet had been higher than I thought, and rising up the three feet or so to breach it had taken away most of my forward momentum. I was hurtling through the air, halfway between the two buildings and the edge still seemed a long way away. I hit the ledge of the opposite building flush on my stomach.

I thought it had killed me and I almost blacked out, even as my body began to slide down the side of the building. I grabbed on to the ledge with my elbows and stopped myself. It bit into my chest, and I kicked and found a toehold, pushed up with my foot, and managed a better grip so I could pull up. Struggling for every inch, I shimmied up onto the roof.

I lay there for nearly a minute but still couldn’t breathe. After a while I was getting some air. My hand was bleeding again.

I found the stairwell in the center of the roof and walked carefully down the steps. It was a small apartment house, and the pungent aroma of kimchi and fish became stronger as I descended toward street level. I encountered no one. When I got to the front door, I lay prostrate and peered around the corner. The policemen were still standing in front of the door but Judy had just walked out of the club into the cold night, still in hot pants and T-shirt. She started talking rapidly to the police. I prepared to make a run for it, but by then the policemen were laughing. One of them came forward and offered her a cigarette. The other one good-naturedly lit it and, while they were enjoying themselves, I walked out of the building, down the alley, and onto the large road.

I was glad I had taken that toilet paper. I had the entire wad gripped tightly in my left hand inside my jacket pocket. I felt some blood seep slowly out and I gripped the soggy paper harder, trying to stanch the flow.

Along the road, past rows and rows of clubs and bright lights, GIs swarmed everywhere. I became less worried about the KNPs. As long as the blood didn’t seep through my jacket—

I wanted to go on the compound, to the dispensary, and get some stitches in my hand. I didn’t think the MPs were looking for me. I was pretty sure it was just the KNPs. As far as the Army was concerned, my only offense was being AWOL, and that probably hadn’t even been reported yet. Even if it had, nobody wastes any time looking for U.S. Army deserters in Korea. There’s nowhere for them to go. Eventually they’ll either turn themselves in or come to no good end. But the KNPs were looking for me pretty hard. I had to figure it was to protect General Bohler. The mayor and the chief of police must have put out the word that I had to be apprehended, prevented from snooping around anymore.

If I told my story, no one would believe me. Just another jealous enlisted man trying to make an officer look bad. But the powers in Itaewon definitely didn’t want me out here unattended. Somehow they knew about the film and figured I had it.

There was a steady stream of ROK military vehicles traveling down the Main Supply Route, heading toward Yongsan Compound and the ROK Army headquarters beyond. Riding in one of them would be safer than hoofing it. I stepped out into the street and waved one of them down. The cab was made of sheet metal rather than canvas and painted a dark green. The soldier on the passenger side slid one pane of the divided window forward.

I spoke to them in Korean. “I’m sorry to bother you,” I said, “but I have to get back to my post right away. Can you help me?”

“We are on our way to the Ministry of National Defense,” the young man said. He was a ROK Army lieutenant.

“There is an emergency in my unit. They need a translator right away.”

“Have they caught an intruder?” The lieutenant sat up, suddenly interested.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I can’t talk about it.”

“Get in,” he said, and opened the door for me.

The ROK lieutenant shifted into the back to make room for me in the passenger seat. I ducked into the front seat, hiding my hand in my pocket.

Then I felt it. A dull thud behind my left ear. Dazed, I just sat there, wondering what it was. Then I felt it again, this time to the back of my head.

Just before I passed out I glimpsed something in the rearview mirror. A Korean National Policeman, grinning.

16

“T
hese guys aren’t too happy with you.” It was the first sergeant.

“That’s funny,” I said. “I thought we hit it off quite nicely.”

We were talking through an iron grating.

I was in the holding cell in back of the Itaewon Police Department. It was a charming place really. The room was about thirty feet square with a cement floor and two huge wooden platforms, the living quarters for the inmates, elevated about three feet high on either side of the central aisle. Broadcasting its presence from the rear was the
byonso.

They say learning is best accomplished when the tactile senses are employed. The fetid waves of aroma pulsating out of the
byonso
left the meaning of the word indelibly impressed on my cerebral cortex.