Pak was talking again, but the connection went bad and I missed the first part of what he said. "… so let's not get off track over private feuds."
"This isn't a private feud. It's moral. It's philosophical. It's about lofty ideals and people who are so eager to serve the revolution that they step on friends, family, even little children." I paused at that thought, but I didn't want to follow it through. "My brother doesn't know the first thing about murder investigations, only about murder, and he doesn't care. Someone has transferred him onto the case to get to me.
Guess what? It won't work."
I heard Pak clear his throat. "Just get in here. We'll have a cup of tea and see what the tea leaves say."
"I have a better idea. How about you push me on the swings?" I didn't have the heart to tell him what I'd learned at the morgue, that tea was unhealthy in large doses.
"Then you have to push me down the slide."
Pak was sitting under the willow tree near the swing set when I got there. "No one around at the moment. You realize, not meeting in the office is going to get the listeners annoyed. They hate dead time."
"Yeah, well, I'll make it up to them. I'll read aloud from a book of poetry some afternoon. Meantime, we've got a problem."
Pak laughed out loud. "A problem." He laughed again, a long, rolling laugh, so that pretty soon I joined in. The two of us, sitting by a rusty swing set, laughing. A few people walked by, but no one stopped.
"Good, we both feel better now." I grinned. "You want to know what the problem is?"
Pak put on his sunglasses. "Sure. I don't have enough problems. I need another one to round out my hand."
"The corpse is a Finn. He was moved to that eighth floor room from somewhere else. Someone doesn't want an autopsy. His being a Finn means something to that particular someone. Maybe that's why they messed with the labels in his clothes. And I'll bet you anything this is all connected to the kid whose throat was cut near that black Mercedes with the scanner. You know, the car that ended up in the ditch." I wasn't sure this was the time to tell Pak about my conversation with the two farmers on the side of the road.
"That's it? That's what you have?" Pak snorted. "You're just dumping stray facts on me. All beads, no string."
"Wrong image. Don't think of beads. Think of trees."
Pak groaned. "Here we go. Wood, I should have known."
"I'm not talking about wood, I'm talking about trees. You ever seen tree roots? They go everywhere. No pattern. Same thing with branches, when you think of it. But they all work together. One thing about you, Pak, you always look at facts as mechanical. Each one has to fit in a certain place."
"I do that, don't I, Inspector? Try to see how things fit. That's how we solve cases. It's standard operating procedure. Proven, tested, gets results. Or after all of these years, do you have a better idea?"
"Facts are organic. They don't have to fit, they just have to work together.
Think about it. A car doesn't go out of control at high speed, blow a tire, and then end up in that ditch without getting pretty banged up. I know that ditch. I saw it." I paused to see if Pak would react. If he did, the sunglasses hid it pretty well. "That car was planted there, same as the body in the hotel. What do you know about the eighth floor of the Koryo?"
"Meaning?"
"The hotel manager told me it was hard to rent on that floor. I'd guess that's where some of the central monitoring closets are. It may even be a floor that Military Security has taken over. Can't we check that?"
"Maybe. Maybe not. But why would they plant a body there? And whose body is it?"
I ignored the second question. "Maybe whoever did it was part of an out-of-town unit. What if it wasn't planned but was a big mistake, a screwup by someone who didn't check what he didn't know? Those rooms on the eighth floor are never rented unless the hotel is full. It hasn't been for weeks. It's slack. The manager is worried that if word gets out about a dead body in his hotel, it will ruin the Koryo's reputation and he'll lose business. That's why he told me about the eighth floor. He wanted to tell me the murder didn't happen in his hotel. Only he couldn't say it directly."
"So we need an autopsy, something that might show the victim was dead before being moved to the room."
"Kim is going to block it every way he can; the warrior woman at the morgue made that abundantly clear. But she let me go through the effects bags, on the sly. The Finn's trouser cuffs had pine needles in them. I took some. That gives us a place to begin."
"Good, you start with the pine trees on the west coast, I'll start on the east coast, and we'll work toward the center." Pak's head brushed the low-hanging willow branches as he stood up. "You done with this organic approach to crime solving? I've got paperwork up to here."
"They were short, fresh needles, not dry. Don't ask me what that means yet. I don't know. Also, I got two sets of keys from the Mercedes crash. Why two sets? The wallet of the driver had been stripped."
"So what's the connection? What does two sets of keys get us?"
"Do you want to know how those facts fit? Or how they work together?"
"I
don't give a damn."
"Maybe they get us some more information on the cars that are part of this."
"Maybe. But people lose keys. Maybe this driver needed to carry a spare. Don't give me a maybe." Pak gave one of the swings a push. "I'm supposed to go to the Minister and say, 'Maybe we've solved the case.
There were two sets of keys. I know because one of my best men stole them from the morgue.' Give me a fact, would you! And I don't want to hear about roots."
"We know the guy's a Finn."
"You keep saying that. What's this thing with you and Finns, anyway?"
Pak wasn't mad at me; he was just behind in figuring out what was going on. At this point in a case, when we still had only loose facts and not much else, he tended to get cross.
"One more thing." I owed it to Pak to tell him what I knew, or thought I knew. "I had to talk to a couple of farmers."
Pak took his sunglasses off, very slowly, the way he does when he senses bad news. "Meaning?"
"One of them was the uncle of the boy who was killed. Long story.
Anyway, they're on our side. I told them to call Li Min Sung if they wanted to check up on me." I smiled, without much conviction. "We need a little help from somewhere."
Pak nodded. "Good, now we have the floor lady at the Koryo and a couple of farmers working for us. And on the other side, Kim and his band of snakes." There was a pause. "You want to tell me about Chong?"
Before I could open my mouth, Pak held up his hand. "Never mind.
That's all I needed to know, and I don't want to know any more." He shook his finger at me. "I'll make a couple of phone calls. Can you please stay out of trouble for three or four hours until I get us some protection?
The Minister likes you, but then, he doesn't have to put up with your wood chips. If I can get through to him, he'll throw up a shield for us, though how much good it will do against Military Security is anybody's guess."
"I could start checking pine trees in the city, if you want." Pak didn't respond. I could see he was thinking of something else. "No, forget it. I'm not working with my former brother. I'm not going to talk to him. The only reason he's on the case is to lead us over a cliff, I'm warning you."
I dreamed of a plain, flat to the horizon, As if the mountains had crumbled To dust around us; we were mad With sorrow; and howled at the moon to Bring back the soft rolling hills That had echoed with our laughter.