Slicky Boys by Martin Limon Page A

here any minute. I slapped her.
    Her soft cheeks rippled with the force of my blow. When she recovered she opened her eyes, stared at me, pursed her lips, and spat in my face.
    I slapped her again and turned her around and twisted her arm behind her back and lowered her slowly to her knees on the sleeping mat. Once my knee was propped securely on her big round butt, I wiped my face with the back of my hand and pushed a little harder on her wrist.
    “I’ll break it,” I said.
    She started to whimper.
    Suk-ja growled something to her but I didn’t catch it. Ernie twisted her around and slammed her face up against the wall.
    I leaned harder on Eun-hi. “Who told you about the Kayagum Teahouse?”
    “I told you before,” Eun-hi said. “A woman. A Korean woman.”
    “How did you know her?”
    “I didn’t know her. She came in the U.N. Club, in the afternoon. Told me to talk to you. She gave me money, so I talked to you.”
    “How much did she give you?”
    “Ten thousand won.” She said it without hesitation. Twenty bucks.
    “Have you seen her again?”
    “No. Never again.”
    “She told us she was a student at Ewha.”
    “Humph. No way.”
    “She’s not a student?”
    “Only stupid GI think so.”
    I shoved a little harder on her wrist. “How do you know?”
    “The way she talk. Her eyes. She business girl just like me.”
    I’d totally fallen for the elegant lady routine. But it wasn’t the first time I’d been fooled.
    “When is she coming back?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe never.”
    “Do you know anybody who knows her?”
    “No.”
    I didn’t know what other questions to ask. What more could I do?
    Doors slammed downstairs. Loud, urgent voices. I looked at Ernie. He nodded. I bent toward Eun-hi.
    “If you see her, you’d better tell me. You understand?”
    She didn’t answer.
    We let go of the girls and stepped back. I expected them to embrace, to comfort one another, but instead Suk-ja grabbed her razor and Eun-hi reached behind a small dresser and pulled out a leather strap.
    Apparently we weren’t the first GI’s to give them a hard time. We backed out of the room.
    Outside, Emie and I trotted down the hallway, stepped onto a balcony, and climbed down the rusty fire escape. It squeaked and groaned under our weight but held. The last ten feet we dropped to the cobbled roadway. We rushed through another alley, barely wide enough for our shoulders, emerged between a row of nightclubs, and slid down the ice-covered hill to the Main Supply Route.
    Once we arrived back at the jeep, Ernie unchained it and started it up and we both breathed a little easier.
    “You think she was telling the truth?”
    “I think so. She hit the money she was paid right on the button. Without hesitation.”
    “Maybe that’s how much she charges for a short time.”
    “Might be. Awfully expensive, though.”
    Ernie jammed the jeep in gear.
    “Worth it,” he said. “Especially if you get that skinny-ass Suk-ja thrown in as a bonus.”
    He swerved into the onrushing traffic, forcing a three-wheeled truck piled high with about half a ton of garlic to slam on its brakes. The driver cursed.
    We sped toward the compound and didn’t even look back.

7

    A FTER STOPPING AT MY ROOM SO I COULD CHANGE into my coat and tie, we went straight to the Honor Guard barracks. It took about two minutes for someone to call the British Sergeant Major. He stomped down the hallway, fists swinging at his sides, square jaw thrust out.
    “Been waiting,” he said. ‘Took your own bloody time.”
    “Sorry, Sergeant Major,” I said. “We had a couple of other people who had to be questioned.”
    He crossed his arms. Khaki sleeves were rolled up tightly around bulging biceps. Red hairs stuck out beneath his elbows like copper wires.
    “Been asking a few questions myself,” he said. ‘Two blokes matching your descriptions were seen near the arms room yesterday, at the same time as Whitcomb. The armorer tells me that you three had a