The Wandering Ghost (23 page)

“So what kind of work can she do?” I asked Ernie.

“Law enforcement’s out.”

“You got that right.”

“And all the menial jobs,” he continued, “like being a waitress at a teahouse or washing dishes in a restaurant are out because Koreans take those jobs.”

“So what else is open to her?” I asked.

“You know the answer to that.”

I did. Prostitution. But from everything I’d learned about Jill Matthewson, I didn’t believe she’d stoop to that.

“Besides that,” I asked Ernie, “what else could she do?”

“She could strip. Like Pak Tong-i said, she has big
geegees
.”

“And she has a girlfriend who already knows the business,” I added. “So we have to put that down as one of the possibilities. Still, I don’t think she’d become a stripper.”

“Why not?” Ernie asked. “It pays well.”

“For an American woman it would pay great,” I agreed. “But it would also attract attention. A lot of attention. There’d be advertising. Posters announcing when she was going to perform, that sort of thing.”

Ernie nodded his head. “I see what you mean. So something more low-profile.” Then he thought of it. “Hostess.”

“Exactly.”

Ernie meant a bar hostess in a fancy drinking establishments. A tradition in Korea. No self-respecting Korean businessman wants to sit alone, or even with his pals, and drink the night away without a “beautiful flower” to laugh at his jokes and pour his drinks and light his cigarettes. The fanciest of these drinking establishments were called
kisaeng
houses.
Kisaeng
in ancient Korea were highly trained female performers who were responsible for entertaining royalty. Somewhat like Japanese geisha. Since the Yi Dynasty, however, their job has degenerated to merely acting as the beautiful and charming hostesses to rich businessmen in private clubs. The pay can be fabulous. In the higher-class clubs some of the sought-after
kisaeng
are remunerated out of corporate expense accounts and pull down hundreds of dollars per night. But that’s for the most high-class girls. In most of the dives in and around Seoul, bar hostesses are lucky to pull down the equivalent of ten or twenty dollars a night. As an American, however, and a blonde verging on beautiful, Jill Matthewson could demand top dollar right from the start.

“But there’s jillions of
kisaeng
houses,” Ernie protested.

“Right. But maybe we can narrow down our search geographically.”

“How?”

The bartender checked our half-empty mugs. Much to my surprise, Ernie declined a refill.

“Jill had taken the time to put two thousand dollars together before she left Tongduchon. So she probably took the time to plan her escape. That meant that she had both a low-profile job and a low-profile place to live waiting for her,” I said.

“She’d already been hired?”

“Yes. I think so. That’s one of the reasons she has been able to hide so successfully. An American woman traveling from bar to bar searching for a job would’ve been spotted.”

“So Pak Tong-i set her up with a job.”

“I think so. Both her and his girlfriend, Kim Yong-ai.”

“But the job could be anywhere. And there are a lot of bars in Seoul.”

We both knew that if Jill Matthewson had gone to Seoul and taken work at some obscure nightspot, living in a hooch on the premises, it could take months to find her.

“Maybe not Seoul,” I said. “First, when I searched Pak’s files they were all for work in and around the 2nd Division area, both Eastern and Western Corridors. Nothing in Seoul.”

“Seoul’s not his territory.”

“Right. And with a good-looking girlfriend like Kim Yong-ai, it also makes sense that he’d want to keep her nearby. He wouldn’t want to send her down to Seoul, into the hands of those sharks. Not voluntarily.”

“So not in Seoul. But he wouldn’t want to land them a job in Tongduchon either.”

“No way. Too risky.”

“So he’d find them work in the Western Corridor.”

“Exactly.”

That’s why I’d drawn my map. I pulled it out now.

The newly built highway, Tongil-lo, Reunification Road, runs down the center of the Western Corridor, a fertile valley filled with rice paddies that has been an ancient invasion route for the Chinese, the Mongols, and the Manchurians. It runs from Seoul Station up through Bongil-chon to the city of Munsan. From there, it continues north until it hits Freedom Bridge crossing the Imjin River. Beyond that, civilians are not allowed, not without special permission. But the road continues north into the Demilitarized Zone, until it finally hits the Military Demarcation Line that separates South Korea from communist North Korea in the truce village of Panmunjom. All the way from Seoul to
Jayu Tari
, Freedom Bridge, there are
kisaeng
houses and other bars that cater strictly to rich Korean businessmen. It isn’t unusual to see a small convoy of black sedans cruising north out of Seoul to reach a
kisaeng
house in the countryside. Out of town they can forget the hustle and bustle of the big city and enjoy a relaxing business meeting, the overworked businessman catered to by a bevy of beautiful women. These places are busy during the lunch hour and busy again at night. And more than one wealthy businessman has promoted his favorite hostess to be his well-compensated mistress.

Jill Matthewson would fit into this world like a goddess dropped from the sky.

“So we search every
kisaeng
house and high-class Korean bar,” Ernie said. “From Munsan down to the outskirts of Seoul.”

“Not exactly,” I said.

“What do you mean?

“I think we can narrow the search further.”

“How?”

“If you were on the lam from the honchos of the 2nd Infantry Division, what would you be worried about?”

“Them finding me.”

“And if you were as smart as Jill Matthewson . . .”

“What do you mean ‘if’?”

“I mean
since
you are as smart as Jill Matthewson, you’d want a backup plan in case they found you.”

“Right.”

“You’d want to still have a chance of getting away if they stumbled onto your location.”

“Right.”

“So you’d have to plan a second escape.”

Ernie studied the map I’d drawn. Then he saw it. “You’d want to be close to Seoul. If you had to run, you’d have a better chance of disappearing if you could get lost in the crowd in a city of eight million people.”

“Right. You wouldn’t want to be stuck up north in Munsan, near the DMZ. There’d be nowhere to go.”

That was an exaggeration. There’d be some places to go but the options for escape into the teeming metropolis of Seoul would be better if you could locate yourself at the southern edge of the Western Corridor.

Ernie glanced again at the map, at the southernmost city within the 2nd Division area of operations.

“Byokjie,” he said.

Because of its nearness to Seoul, it had a plethora of
kisaeng
houses. In the two years since Tongil-lo had been completed, making the drive from Seoul to the countryside more convenient, they’d sprung up like sunflowers after a summer rain.

“Byokjie,” Ernie said, almost reverentially. Then he brightened. “We ain’t there yet?”

Byokjie was nothing more than a good-sized intersection. Reunification Road, all four lanes of it, ran north and south along the edge of miles of fallow rice paddies. Bright headlights zoomed by in the darkness. Another road, this one two lanes, stretched from Uijongbu in the east and ran west until it smacked right up against Tongil-lo, forming a T-shaped intersection. The little village of Byokjie, sitting along the stem of the T, was lit up by floodlights. The small collection of buildings was what you’d expect: a
sokyu
sign for the gas station, a tire warehouse, a mechanic’s workshop, and then a few noodle stands. All of the establishments were still open, hoping for late-night business. A well-lit sign next to a large bus stop listed the connecting runs between here and numerous farming villages, all of them home to some people, adults or students, who commuted into Seoul every day.

The cab driver who’d driven us from Bopwon-ni asked us where to stop.

“
Kisaeng
,” Ernie said.

The driver laughed and waved his hand. “
I kuncho manundei
,” he said. In this area there are a lot of them.

And there were. We had him cruise slowly east from Byokjie, along the road that headed toward Uijongbu. Every few meters, hand-carved wooden signs and even a few signposts made of marble were engraved with the names of exclusive entertainment establishments. Each had its own gravel-topped driveway that led off the main road and up into the tree-covered hills. Occasionally, a dark sedan drove up one of the gravel roads.

“Take your pick,” Ernie said.

After I spotted more than two dozen signs I said, “We need your jeep.”

“That we do.”

I ordered the driver to continue eastward toward Uijongbu, promising once again that because he had to leave his authorized area of operations in Bopwon-ni, we’d pay him double meter.

An hour and a half before midnight we returned to Byokjie, this time in Ernie’s jeep. Methodical as usual, we cruised down the road, Ernie pulling over each time he saw a signpost. In this manner I jotted down the names of the various
kisaeng
houses and located the turnoffs on our map. After a few of these stops, Ernie said, “This is going to take forever.”

“You’re right. But one of those
kisaeng
houses back there, the Koryo Forest Inn, seemed to have more business than anybody else.”

“And?”

“So we reconnoiter.”

“How? They’ll spot our jeep as soon as we drive up.”

“So we park in Byokjie, at the gas station, and hoof it back there.”

Ernie sighed. “You really are nuts, you know that Sueño?”

I didn’t answer.

Ernie pulled the jeep into the enormous gas station and parked at the edge of the gravel lot. I talked to the attendant, flashed my CID badge, and told him we would be back for the vehicle in an hour. He didn’t argue and I purposely didn’t give him a tip. As long as he thought I was here on official business, he wouldn’t dare complain. A nice thing about living in a police state is that people support local law enforcement. Whether they want to or not.

“It’s cold up here,” Ernie said.

“Hush.”

We huddled in the tree line on the edge of the forest, gazing across a parking lot filled with compact black sedans. Most of them were Hyundais, made in Korea, but a few were imported Volvos and BMWs. Rich crowd. White-gloved chauffeurs, slim young Korean men all, stood in clumps, bundled up against the cold, smoking and joking.

The front of the Koryo Forest Inn looked like an ancient palace. A gate painted in red lacquer and carved with the faces of fierce, green-eyed dragons. Beyond the gate, water trickled over rocks in a lush garden and beyond that loomed the raised, varnished floor of the inner sanctum of the Koryo Forest Inn.

“Nice place they got here,” Ernie said. “But expensive.”

We were used to paying a hundred and fifty
won
, about thirty cents, for a bottle of OB beer in the dives we frequented. Here, in the Koryo Forest Inn, they probably wouldn’t stoop so low as to tell you how much they were charging for booze. And no self-respecting businessman would lower himself to ask. The bill was presented, it was paid out of the company expense account, and that was it. Guys like me and Ernie, who wanted to see a price list before ordering, were not welcome.

“So what’s your plan?” Ernie asked.

“The usual,” I answered. “We go in. We ask questions.”

For once, Ernie Bascom was intimidated. “What if they charge us?”

“For what?”

“For talking to a hostess. I heard they slap a ten thousand
won
charge on you the minute she sits down.”

“So we won’t sit down. Come on.”

I pushed through the underbrush and walked between two parked cars. By the time the chauffeurs noticed me, I was already underneath the hand-carved wooden portal of the Koryo Forest Inn, Ernie right behind me.

Stunted trees, raked gravel, koi luxuriating in ponds, all lit by hanging Chinese lanterns. We followed the flagstone steps to the elevated porch and as I was about to slip off my shoes, two beautiful young Korean women, decked out in full regalia—jade hairpins, silk-embroidered
chima-chogori
—stepped forward and bowed.

In unison, they said in lilting, singsong voices, “
Oso-oseiyo
.” Please come in.

When they rose from their bows their heavily made-up eyes widened.

“
Ohmaya
,” one of them said, raising her cupped fingers to her mouth. Dear mother. An expression of shock.

The other hostess had more presence of mind and scurried off into a side hallway. I stood on the lacquered wooden floor in my stocking feet, speaking to the remaining hostess.

“
Yogi ei Miguk yoja ilheissoyo?
” I asked. Has an American woman been working here?

She stared at me without comprehension, still in shock at seeing a long-nosed foreigner plopped down right here in the midst of the opulent Koryo Forest Inn.

Ernie had reached the landing now.

“So they haven’t seen a big nose before,” he said. “Who gives a damn.”

He stepped forward into the main hallway.

The surprised woman found her courage. She scooted in front of Ernie, blocking his path, and bowed. “
Andeiyo
,” she said. Not permissible.

Ernie kept moving. She stood her ground.

“
Andei
,” she said again. “
Sonnim issoyo
.” Not permissible. There are guests.

Ernie understood that part. He pushed past her saying, “Screw your high-class
sonnim
. I’m a guest, too.”

Ernie had recovered from his initial reticence. And the way the two young women reacted to our presence had made him determined to make sure that everybody on the premises was aware that their cozy little pleasure dome had been defiled by the presence to two
Miguks
.

The entrance hallway ran through the building to another garden out back. But to the right, the sound of laughter and low male voices floated down a long varnished corridor. The odor of fried shrimp followed the voices like an oily cloud. Ernie pointed his nose toward the sound and pounded his way down the hallway. Light filtered through the first oil-papered door. He slid it open and stepped into the private room.