“Downtown woman with a figure like a lingerie model.”
“But not skinny.”
“No,” Ernie agreed. “Not skinny.”
The cab slowed at the booth to pay the toll for going through the tunnel and Ernie hung back, swerving toward the extreme right lane reserved for military and government vehicles. When the PX taxi entered the tunnel, we followed.
Namsan tunnel stretches about a mile through Namsan Mountain in the southern section of Seoul and, along with the Pusan-to-Seoul Expressway, it is the pride of the country. Both projects had been completed just a few months ago and high-rise buildings were popping up throughout downtown Seoul. President Pak Chung-hee had recently proclaimed that the Seventies would be the decade when Korea would begin to take its rightful place amongst the great economic powers of the world. After the devastation of the Korean War a little more than twenty years ago, the country had gotten off its back and was now rising. On paper, things looked better. Unfortunately, this new economic prosperity hadn’t spread to everybody. In fact, in the red light district of Itaewon it had spread, as far as I could tell, to exactly nobody.
When we emerged from the tunnel, I spotted the cab. “There,” I said, “she’s taking the Myong-dong turnoff.”
Honking and bulling his way through the tightly packed traffic, Ernie stayed with her. Then we were in narrow downtown streets. Myong-dong was the area of Seoul famous for the Cosmos Department store, chic boutiques and, at night, upscale nightclubs and Scotch Corners, the fashionable term for barrooms.
The PX taxi seemed bulky down here, surrounded by all the smaller Hyundai sedans. Ernie had no trouble following. We passed through the fashionable area and entered a section of town that had not yet been selected for gentrification. Most of the buildings were the brick and cement slab three- and four-story buildings that had been slapped together haphazardly after the war. Sandwiched between them were tin-roofed shops and eateries supported by walls of rotted wood. Finally, the cab veered into a narrow lane that rose upwards at a slight incline and after about a hundred yards ended in a cul-de-sac at the top of a hill. Ernie didn’t turn into the lane but came to a stop just past it. As the cabs behind us honked, he said, “I’ll circle around the block.”
“Okay.” I hopped out.
We’d done this before, plenty of times. Once we were close, Ernie would either find a place to park or circle the area while I followed on foot. The pedestrian traffic was practically wall-to-wall but composed mainly of working people hustling to and from small factories or hauling loads of charcoal briquettes or hemp sacks on wooden A-frames strapped to their backs. Vendors with large carts lined the walkway, shouting for passersby to stop and enjoy some fried meat dumplings or a nice warm bowl of cuttlefish soup.
At the mouth of the alley, I peered at the PX cab parked on a slant in front of a double iron gate in a stone wall. There was a small courtyard and beyond that a brick building that loomed above the others in the area, three stories high. A huge sign, faded now, had once been painted in bright red letters on the highest floor on all four sides. I could still make it out: Tiger Kang’s.
No wonder this woman looked so elegant. She was a kisaeng. I’d heard of the place before. Tiger Kang’s had once been the most famous kisaeng house in Seoul, a playground for the rich and powerful.
Kisaeng are female entertainers and their tradition is at least as old, and probably older, than the ancient geisha tradition in Japan. But the polished skills of plucking the twelve-stringed kayagum or performing the swirling drum dance or composing sijo poetry are reserved now for specially trained students. The so-called kisaeng of Tiger Kang’s-and of the other joints that were popping up all over the city-were reduced to pouring scotch and lighting cigarettes and laughing at rich men’s jokes. Still, it was work. Maybe not the most honest work, but it paid well.
Ernie came running up behind me.
“Where the hell’d you park the jeep?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I pushed one of the carts out of the way.”
“That will make friends and influence people.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” he said. “An international ambassador for peace.”
The iron gate was open and apparently the tall woman had gone inside. The white-gloved PX cab driver was busy hauling the grocery bags out of the trunk and handing them inside.
“Tiger Kang’s?” Ernie asked.
“That’s right.”
He whistled softly. “An upscale bust for once.”
“We haven’t made the arrest yet,” I said. “We have to sneak inside somehow and witness the money exchange.”
“Don’t sweat the small stuff, Sueño. You worry too much. She brought the stuff here, that’s enough. The sale is implied.”
“What if she lives here?”
Ernie paused. “You mean maybe she’s a kisaeng herself?”
“Right. She could claim that she brought the stuff here for her personal use. Not to sell.”
“Hell with that. If she knocked back all that beer and liquor, she’d be as fat as the kitchen god. We bust her anyway. Let the JAG office figure it out.”
He was right. We’d come this far, might as well get credit for the arrest. If JAG dropped the charges, that was on them. Mrs. Wrypointe could fuss at the Judge Advocate General and leave us alone. Still, it would be better if we waited awhile, to give them a chance to unpack and start exchanging money.
The last of the grocery bags were passed through and the iron door clanged shut. Ernie went back to check on the jeep.
At the bottom of the incline, I waved the PX cab driver to a halt. He blanched. Actually, it wasn’t his fault. All he did was transport a passenger to her destination. Still, in a society totally controlled by the military and the police, any run-in with a cop was enough to worry a Korean. Especially when he held one of the few unionized jobs in the country-working for the American PX-and a compensation package with decent benefits. I wrote down the driver’s name and cab number and chatted with him a while. No, he didn’t know the passenger, he’d never seen her before. And no, he’d never driven a fare to Tiger Kang’s before either. In fact, she’d had to direct him here or he would’ve had trouble finding it. I asked him how much his tip was. He reached in his pocket and showed me. A crisp, US five dollar bill. Exorbitant. He thought so too. I thanked him for his cooperation and told him he could leave.
Five minutes later, Ernie returned.
“Everything all right?” I asked.
“I gave the cart lady a thousand won.” Two bucks US. “She was all smiles.”
“Everybody’s a big spender,” I said.
“Except you,” Ernie said.
He always accused me of being cheap but I didn’t think I was. Thrifty, yes. But that was because I knew what it was like to be poor, and hungry.
We climbed up the hill and approached the iron gate of Tiger Kang’s. Ernie stood with his back against it. “Ready?” he asked. I shoved my notebook into my jacket pocket and said, “Ready.”
At first there was no answer but Ernie kept pounding. Finally, we heard footsteps on the other side of the wall and the door creaked open. The chubby face of a Korean man peered out. Without asking permission, Ernie shoved his way in.
“Weikurei?” the man said. Why this way?
Ernie ignored him and crossed the small courtyard. A rusty bicycle leaned against a cement brick wall. No outhouse, I noticed, so they had indoor plumbing. And no garden. This area was strictly used for storage. Two to three dozen wooden crates were piled against the back wall filled with empty brown OB Beer bottles. Next to that were smaller crates of crystalline Jinro Soju bottles, bereft now of their fiery rice liquor. A metal pail held a few empty bottles of imported scotch.