A shadow loomed out of the darkness. I raised my fists and was about to punch the approaching figure and then I realized who it was. Ming.
“What are you doing?” I asked, lowering my fists.
“She’s gone,” he said. “When you came, I hid.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Something’s not right.”
“Is this her office?”
“Yes.”
“Why would she leave?” I asked.
Ming shrugged. He didn’t have a reply to that. We walked back toward the byonso but now a double door just beyond it was open. I stepped toward it and discovered it was the loading area that led to a storeroom. It was piled high with wooden crates filled with brown OB Beer bottles and the smaller crystalline containers of soju.
But there was no truck backed up to the door. One of the doors swung open on its hinges, creaking, as if someone had just departed. I stepped outside. A dark alley stretched before us, lined with walls of brick and cement block.
“She’s running,” I said. “Come on.”
“Better we wait here,” Ming replied. “I think maybe I shouldn’t have brought you.”
I had no time for him. I was already trotting down the alley.
There was only one reason Madame Hoh would’ve decided to drop her claim-if she had already begun to pursue the resolution of that claim in a different way; a way that she wanted to keep secret. A way that wouldn’t stand scrutiny from an agent of the 8th United States Army Criminal Investigation Command.
I had already reached the end of the alley when I saw them, emerging from a cross street. Four men, until a fifth stepped from a shadow behind me. Two of them held clubs. The others had unusually large fists. Brass knuckles, I thought. They were all slender young Korean men. In the dim yellow light from the bulb in back of the Inn of the Crying Rose, I could see their grim expressions, their square faces and high cheekbones.
I was toast, I thought. Unarmed. Alone. But I also knew the worst thing I could do was hesitate. I didn’t slow my stride. Instead, I marched straight at them, tossing back the edge of my coat as if reaching for a weapon. I shouted, “Freeze! Eighth Army CID!”
Somehow, I don’t think they were impressed.
— 10-
I plowed into them like I knew what I was doing. The guy directly in front of me with a cigarette dangling from his lips stared up at me wide-eyed and leapt out of my way. The two on either side of him didn’t back up but closed in. I landed a straight left to the jaw of one, pushed the other down, and started running. My goal was to make it back to the well-lit main drag of Mia-ri. The problem was this road didn’t lead back to it but veered off farther away. Still, I figured there’d be a cross street up ahead where I could hang a quick left, if I ever made it that far. Their feet pounded behind me.
As I passed trash cans I knocked them into the middle of the road. Unfortunately for me, Koreans have been recycling for centuries, and there wasn’t much detritus to slow down my pursuers, just fish bones and apple peels and wilted cabbage leaves. I concentrated on speed. But running was for the little guys, never my forte. Instead, I usually chose to stand and fight but this time the odds were much too long. I spotted an intersection up ahead and churned forward, hearing the maddening clatter of footsteps behind me. Sweat poured into my eyes.
I was a few steps from the road when one of the thugs landed on my back like a ravenous predator and wrapped his forearm around the front of my neck. Struggling to breathe with his weight bearing down on me, I bent forward as fast as I could, tossing him in the air. He flew straight over and then down, smashing on the cement with a crack that, even in my panicked state, I hoped wasn’t his neck. Two more thugs hit me, and I lost my footing and went down. I rolled on the filthy road, coming to a halt spread-eagled on the pavement. When the first one came at me, I lifted myself up and butted my head into his stomach. Clutching his arms, I was able to regain my feet, and then I pushed him into the other guy and started punching until another guy appeared at my side, and something poked into my left arm. I decided to punch him too. Both men went down but that’s when things got bad.
The rest of the herd was on me now. Kicks rammed into the back of my thighs, but covering my head with my forearms, I moved blindly, punching as I twirled toward the cross street, fighting my way to the safety of a soot-smeared brick wall. Just a few yards ahead, I spotted the bright lights of Mia-ri, which gave me hope. I lunged at one of the attackers, hitting him and knocking his head so hard he reeled backward, and I pushed past him and through their line and started to sprint once again for civilization. The bright lights were no more than ten yards away when it seemed as if two one-hundred-pound sacks of rice landed on my back. I collapsed to the ground, rolling from the kicks, and I managed to wedge myself between crates of empty liquor bottles that had been stacked against a wall in the alley. I grabbed splintered wood, yanked the top crate free from its stack, and threw it as hard as I could at the thugs. The crate swirled through the air, and crystalline bottles flew out and crashed to the dirty blacktop. The hoods backed off enough for me to push myself up against the wall and stand, then I was running through them again, only a few yards now from the main drag. They took more shots at me, but I stumbled into the glare of flashing neon. Through sweat-smeared eyes I saw people were staring at me, their mouths open in horror. Half-crawling, I dragged my body fully into the light.
Grumbling and cursing, the thugs backed away, leaving me to collapse face down in front of a growing crowd of scantily clad cocktail hostesses and red-faced Korean businessmen. Some of the men pointed and laughed, figuring this was part of the adventure of their night on the town. Still, no one was punching me or kicking me anymore, for which I felt inordinately grateful. Briefly, I wondered where Ming was and then I passed out.
“What the hell happened to you?” Ernie asked.
“What do you think happened?” I said.
“You head-butted a rhinoceros?”
“No. I finally decided to have a little plastic surgery. Alter my nose; tighten the wrinkles around my eyes.”
“You look divine, dahling,” Ernie said.
I lay in an elevated bed at the 121st Evacuation Hospital. Earlier this morning when I roused myself from a pain-killer-induced haze, I took inventory of my body parts. Everything seemed to be working, although everything hurt. The nurse told me I’d been shot full of antibiotics, and I’d received almost a dozen stitches in various parts of my body. They’d been monitoring for internal bleeding, but so far there didn’t appear to be any.
“Can I leave now?” I asked.
“Not until the doctor says it’s okay.”
“When will that be?”
“Morning rounds,” she said primly and walked out.
I returned my attention to Ernie. “Where’s Ming?”
“Who?” Ernie said.
“The Chinese guy I went to Mia-ri with. What happened to him?”
Ernie looked puzzled. “According to the KNP report, they found you alone, face down on the main drag of Mia-ri, passed out. At first they thought you were just drunk and then they saw the blood.”
“Nice of them to be so observant.”
“They called the MPs, who called an ambulance, and they carted you back here.”
I sat up. “What time is it?”
“Zero nine hundred,” Ernie said.
“How long have I been here?”
“Since just after curfew.”
“That long? And what took you so long to get here?”
“Nobody told me about it until I walked into the office this morning.”
Normally, the MPs would’ve found Ernie whether he was in the barracks or out in the ville to tell him his partner was in the hospital. Apparently they were still pissed about Dexter being locked up.