Free The Door to Bitterness by Martin Limon

talk to him. Should we call in the KNPs? No. Too early for that. This could be nothing, a false alarm. Until we had solid information, we didn’t want to bother Lieutenant Won with unnecessary requests for assistance.
    We’d check out the guy ourselves.
    “That’s her,” Suk-ja said, pointing at one of the women sitting behind the front window. “The one I talk to in bathhouse. Paran seik.” Wearing blue.
    I translated for Ernie
    “I go checky checky,” Suk-ja said.
    Once again, Ernie held her back. “We’ll go,” he said.
    I studied the lit window on the third floor. No movement. A fire escape ladder attached to the outer wall ran up to the roof. As in most Korean apartment-type buildings, this one was flat, designed to allow extra space to store earthenware kimchee jars or to hang laundry. There was no movement up there, but it would be an easy jump to the roof of the next building. And from there to the next, and so on. Then down some interior stairs, and whoever had insisted on a room on the third floor of House Number 17 would be walking the streets alone, and safe.
    Ernie saw it too. If the Korean National Police stormed House Number 17, the room at the top provided at least the hope of escape.
    “Are you sure there was only one GI?” Ernie asked Suk-ja.
    “That’s what she say.”
    If this was the right guy, we had to be prepared for the fact that he would be armed. Probably with the pistol the thieves had stolen from the security guard at the Olympos Casino. Ernie pulled out his .45 and jacked back the charging handle. Suk-ja jumped away from the clang.
    “Sorry,” Ernie said.
    Someone shouted. I peeked around the corner of the alley.
    Sailors. Merchant marines. Speaking some sort of gibberish. Not English. Not Spanish. Not Korean. They crowded around the front steps of another house of prostitution. Some smoking, some swigging from brown bottles of OB Beer. All were talking, playing grab-ass. One pulled out a pocket knife and waved it around. The others hooted.
    Suk-ja’s hot breath warmed my elbow.
    “Shila,” she said. Greek.
    I looked down at her. “You understand?”
    “Have to,” she replied.
    “They all stay at one house?”
    “Yes. Sometimes whole ship take one house. Mama-san give, how you say?”
    She slashed her hand as if cutting something.
    “Discount?”
    “Yes. Discount. Maybe all women old and ugly. Then mama-san must give big discount.”
    I studied the sailors again. They were just having fun. Still, it was a rough-looking bunch. Best to steer clear of them.
    “I’ll take the front,” Ernie told me. “You enter there.” He pointed to the house on the other side of House Number 17, away from the Greek sailors. “Go up to the roof. Cut him off if he tries to escape.”
    “No good. What if you run into trouble? It’ll take me too long to run back down the steps.”
    Ernie sighed with exasperation. “Sueño, you aren’t armed. What the hell good are you if the guy starts shooting?”
    He didn’t intend to be cutting, I knew that. Ernie was simply stating a fact.
    “I go up on roof,” Suk-ja said, pointing at her nose. “If he come, I hit him with kimchee jar.”
    Ernie and I looked at one another. It wasn’t a bad idea. If she could just slow the thief down, give him something to think about, we’d be across the roof and on him in no time.
    “Okay,” Ernie said. “But stay low. If he has a gun, you just hide. You arra? You understand?” He swooshed his down-facing palm through the air, like a bird in flight. “You let him run away.”
    Suk-ja nodded, and then, before we could change our minds, she trotted off across the alley to the building next to 17. She disappeared through the front door.
    “Okay,” Ernie said. “Are those Greeks going to be any trouble?”
    “I think they’re preoccupied.”
    A woman’s laughter pealed through the night. As if it were a signal, Ernie and I crouched low and trotted across the fog-shrouded alleyway.
    M aybe it was