Slicky Boys (36 page)

“Where’s the commissary?”

The man pointed and we were out the door.

A row of black Ford Granada PX taxis stood in front of the Hialeah Compound Commissary. We checked to see if any of them were already loaded with goods and waiting for a customer to return, but none were.

I showed the drivers the photograph of Shipton. But nobody recognized him or remembered a cab waiting for a fare. Either Shipton hadn’t arrived yet or we’d missed him completely.

Ernie kept watch outside while I went in. Without bothering to check with management, I interrupted each one of the Korean cashiers right in the middle of her work, flashed my badge, and showed her the photograph. Each woman shook her head until I reached aisle number seven.

“Yes,” she told me. “He go. Maybe fifteen, twenty minutes ago.”

“Did he say where?”

Her forehead crinkled. “No.”

“Let me see his card.”

“No can do.”

The ration control punch cards here were dropped into locked metal boxes with two padlocks on the top. If they operated like they did in Seoul, the Ration Control representative would have the key to one lock and the store manager would have the other.

“What did he buy?”

“Everything.”

“Everything?”

“Every ration item. Also a lot of oxtail and bananas.”

Prime black market stuff.

“Did he say anything? Anything at all?”

“No. He very quiet. Pay cash.”

“Any hundreds?”

Bills of fifty dollars of higher have to be recorded on a sheet of paper with the serial number listed and the name and social security number of the presenter. Another of the unbelievable steps 8th Army takes in their attempt to stop black-marketing. Not that it works.

“No,” the cashier said. “just twenties.”

“Did you see a cab outside waiting for him?”

She shook her head emphatically. “No way. I’m too busy for that.”

She glanced down the line of waiting shoppers and my eyes followed her. The women behind loaded carts stared at me with dull, resentful eyes.

I smiled, waved at them, and ran out the door.

Ernie stepped out of the shadows.

“Shipton’s already been and gone,” I said, “with a big load. Only thing to do now is try to find the taxi.”

I jumped into the cab on the end of the line and told the driver to get his dispatcher on the radio. The little box clicked and buzzed and when a Korean voice came on the line, the driver handed the mike to me, pointing at which button I should push.

“This is Agent Sueño,” I said. “Criminal Investigation Division. Do you speak English?”

“Yes,” a crackling voice said tentatively.

“We’re after a man who picked up a PX cab, probably at the main PX. Then he went to the package store and then the commissary. He is a big man, light brown hair, and wearing a wool cap.”

Suddenly I caught myself. If Shipton was in a PX cab right now, he might’ve had the driver turn his radio up. He could be listening to this conversation.

I switched to Korean, hoping Shipton didn’t speak it well enough to follow me, and told the dispatcher that I’d made a mistake. I told him I wanted him to inquire on a general broadcast if anybody had a passenger who fit that description but I wanted him to use only Korean (which he normally would have anyway) because I didn’t want the man to know we were after him.

He told me he understood. I heard conversation in the background, chatter amongst the other dispatchers, then he came back on the line.

“We can speak English,” he said. “Man no can hear.”

My heart sank. “He’s already out of the cab?” Once Shipton hit the streets, we could lose him again.

“No. He’s in the cab, but cab too far away to pick up signal.”

“Where in the hell is he going?”

“To Texas Street.”

Texas Street. The nightclub and red light district that ran along the strip right in front of the Port of Pusan, catering to sailors of every nationality. Less than a half mile from the train station district, near the little
yoguan
we’d stayed in.

“Do you have an address?”

“No. Driver just say he go Texas Street.”

“I want to talk to that driver. Now!”

“No can do. Too far away.”

“If we take another cab down there, when we get in range, we’ll be able to talk to this driver, won’t we?”

“Yes,” the dispatcher answered. “That’s fastest way. It’s cab number one-four-five. Pak-si is the driver.”

“Good. We’re leaving now.”

I glanced at our driver. He was about forty, heavy lines in his face, and he looked worried. I spoke back into the mike. “Explain the situation to our driver. Tell him we want to find Pak-si and find him
fast.”

I handed the mike to the driver. He and the dispatcher chatted away for a few seconds. Ernie sat in the front seat. I climbed in back.

After his conversation with the dispatcher, the driver didn’t seem any less worried than he had been but he backed the cab up and put it in gear. We slid past the line of shoppers loading bagfuls of groceries into the trunks of the waiting cabs.

Once we passed through the main gate of the compound and were out on the broad roadways heading into downtown Pusan, Ernie patted the driver on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry,
ajjosi.
My partner and me, we’re
taak-san
number-one policemen. We catch bad guy, no sweat.”

The worried man nodded, flashed a wan smile, and turned back to the road.

I patted the 38 under my coat and wished I felt as confident as Ernie.

Chasing a murderous Navy Seal. On Texas Street in the red light district. Not the best way to round out your morning.

33

I
T DOESN’T SNOW AS OFTEN DOWN SOUTH IN
P
USAN
, but there’s more rain and it can still get awfully cold. The roads were slick, and fat clouds swept into the city off the choppy gray waters of the Straits of Korea.

When we were halfway to Texas Street the driver clicked on his radio and tried to contact Pak-si. No dice. About a mile farther on he tried again: This time the little speaker in the metal box crackled to life. The two drivers spoke so rapidly I didn’t catch most of it but I did learn that Pak-si had already dropped off his fare and was returning to Hialeah Compound. I told our driver to set up a rendezvous point. I had to talk to Pak-si.

Five minutes later, we sat at the curb of a huge circular intersection with a statue in the middle. It was a granite replica of men and women striving forward together in an heroic effort to fight back the Communist hordes who had surrounded this city in the winter of 1950.

These big round traffic circles dotted the flat topography of the city and were responsible for a lot of accidents. Whoever the genius was who had designed them should’ve been run over by a speeding kimchi cab.

“Are you sure he’s coming?” I was becoming impatient.

The driver clicked on his radio, spoke briefly to Pak-si, and turned back to me.

“Maybe five minutes.”

Ernie climbed out of the cab and trotted through the rain to a little open-front store displaying the usual soft drinks and dried cuttlefish and discs of puffed rice. He bought three bottles of Bacchus D, a concoction of fruit drink and painkiller designed to ward off headaches, and came back and offered some to me and the driver. As soon as we twisted the caps off the little brown bottles and drank them down, another bulky Ford Granada with a plastic light atop pulled up behind us.

Our driver hadn’t turned on his meter—police business—but I handed him three dollars anyway. He nodded, started his engine, and sped out of there as fast as he could.

We climbed into the cab with Pak-si. He was a younger driver with straight black hair and a brown, leathery face and one eye that seemed to have been damaged in some way.

“Kapshida!”
I said.
“Bali!”
Let’s go! Quickly!

“Where?”

“To wherever you dropped off the man with the hat.”

He revved up the engine and started to click on the meter, but Ernie showed him his badge and held up the palm of his hand.

“Kongja,”
he said. One of the few Korean words he knew, but one of his favorites: Free.

Pak-si’s face soured but he drove resolutely forward, fighting his way into the flow of circling traffic.

On the way I interrogated him.

He told me that a man had come out of the PX with two large bags and he had helped him load them in the trunk of the cab. I flashed the photo. He glanced at it, then turned his concentration back to the road. Yes, that was the man.

After leaving the PX, they’d gone to the package store and after that to the commissary.

A routine black market run. Nothing the drivers weren’t used to.

I asked him if the man had acted strange in any way. If he’d seemed nervous.

No, Pak-si said. He was very relaxed.

After loading up at the commissary the man had told him to take him to Texas Street. This was a little unusual because most of the Hialeah Compound GI’s did their black-marketing close in, at some of the joints near the compound. Still, going to Texas Street wasn’t unheard of. If a guy has a girlfriend who works one of the clubs on Texas Street, he might deliver the goods to her hooch. That’s what Pak-si expected, but that’s not what happened.

I asked him what did happen.

Pak-si’s passenger seemed to know the back alleys of the Texas Street district well. He guided Pak-si to a residential area on the hills behind the nightclubs and had him stop in a narrow alley.

“Did you help him unload?”

Yes. And he carted all the stuff into the home of an old woman who obviously wasn’t his girlfriend but must be a black market mama-san.

I asked Pak-si how long he’d been driving a PX cab. He told me eight years. If he’d never been to that joint before, it couldn’t be a usual selling spot for Hialeah GI’s. He agreed with that. It was the first time he’d ever been to the place and seen the old woman.

Pak-si pulled off the main road, zigzagged through alleys, and suddenly we were cruising down the main drag of the district known as Texas Street.

How it got its name I wasn’t sure. The street’s real name wasn’t Texas. In fact, most streets in Korea don’t have names. Only districts are named, and they are divided into smaller compartments called
dong
and
bonji.
Then
ho,
the actual address numbers. I had to believe that the nickname Texas Street came into existence because at night, when the place was crawling with business girls and drunken sailors, it reminded Koreans of what they thought the Wild West must’ve been like.

Now the district was quiet, and the unlit neon signs dripped with rain. Almost all the doors of the dozens of nightclubs were bolted. Only a few were open, beaded curtains rustling in the wet breeze from the sea.

Pak-si turned up another alley and then down another and another. I put my hand on his shoulder and told him to pull over before he reached our final destination, so we could walk up. He turned down one more street and found a spot to park against a high stone wall.

“Go up there,” he said. “And turn right. Second door on the left.”

We thanked him.

Did he have to wait, he asked.

No. All I had left were twenties and a ten and two bucks. I handed him the two bucks. He shrugged. Easy money.

As soon as we climbed out of the cab, he released the brake, shifted into neutral, and rolled back down the hill.

We walked up the road and peered around the corner. Nothing moved.

“You think he’s still here?” Ernie asked.

“Probably not. He seems to have a habit of moving fast. But let’s not take any chances.”

I pulled the .38 out of the holster. “You go in first. I’ll come in behind you.”

“Right.”

The walls were too high to see anything. When we reached the doorway in the metal gate, Ernie kicked it in, which was sort of unnecessary since it was unlocked anyway. It crashed back on itself with a great bang. Ernie ducked through the door. I was right behind him.

A tiny old woman in a sweater and a long gray dress emerged from the hooch and stood on the narrow wooden porch.

“Migun isso?”
I asked. Is there a GI here?

“Oopso,”
she said.
“Imi kasso.”
Not here. He already left.

We searched the little room anyway and checked out back. No sign of a six-foot-two Navy Seal. Plenty of PX goodies, though.

“How much did you pay him?” I asked the old woman.

“Not your business.”

I showed her my badge. “We could have you arrested.”

“Go ahead.”

She was a pugnacious little crone.

“Where’d the American go?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know.”

“How did he find you?”

She raised and lowered her narrow shoulders. “Girls on Texas Street. They know me.”

“Which club?”

“Any club.”

“When’s the American coming back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Has he been here before?”

“First time.”

“What’d he look like?”

“Big. Like you. But light skin. Like him.” She pointed at Ernie.