I stopped when we got out in the hallway and put my finger up to Freddy’s nose. “I’m in the middle of an investigation, Freddy, in a government-owned facility. If you try to interfere, I’ll arrest you.”
Freddy stared at me, his thin brown mustache quivering with rage.
“You’re an idiot, George.”
Ernie passed us on his way to the cashier’s cage, his Falstaff still in his hand. “That’s what everybody tells him. Doesn’t do any good, though. He’s still the same.”
The middle-aged bespectacled woman in the cashier’s cage stood up as we entered. I went right to work. The total amount of operating funds for the club was posted on the side of the safe and signed by the Yongsan Director of Personnel and Community Affairs. The total was eight thousand Five hundred dollars in U.S. money and fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of Korean won. Any monies above that would be cash receipts and would have to be accounted for with a form called the Daily Cashier’s Record.
The big safe was open, and the money was neatly arranged. With Freddy and the cashier standing there watching us, we counted it quickly. It was all there with the addition of the two hundred seventy-three dollars and eighty-five cents taken in by the bar and the six hundred forty-seven dollars taken in by the kitchen during the just completed lunch hour.
There was only one problem. Instead of fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of won, the Korean operating bank had nineteen hundred seventy-five dollars’ worth of won and the U.S. dollar operating bank was depleted by exactly four hundred seventy-five. It all balanced out, but they had too much Korean money and hot enough U.S. money. And the difference was exactly the amount found in the big glass brandy snifter.
“You took up a collection, didn’t you, Freddy?”
“Not me.” Freddy put his hand to his chest and took a step out of the small office. “I don’t know nothing about it.”
“Or maybe you didn’t want to know nothing about it.”
“What the employees do with their own money is up to them. I had nothing to do with it.”
Ernie snorted.
Freddy turned and fled back to his office.
Talk about standing up for your staff.
The situation didn’t look too serious. Apparently what had happened was that Miss Pei noticed that the football pool money was missing from the brandy snifter, informed the new assistant manager, and he told the chief of staff, who is also the head of the Club Council, about the missing money when he came in for lunch. The chief of staff, of course, got on the horn and told the C.I.D. to get down here right away. Hot stuff. Money missing from the army-navy football pool. Some of it his.
Meanwhile, Freddy and the club employees got wind of the situation and for some reason decided to take up a collection in won, the Korean currency; change it into U.S. dollars at the cashier’s cage; and replace the money in the brandy snifter. Why they did this I didn’t know. One reason could have been to keep the heat off the club. Those bar inventories looked too precise to account for normal human activity. Bartenders sometimes spill liquor or open the wrong can of beer, or a customer sends a drink back because it isn’t what he ordered. Inventories shouldn’t come out even, down to the last ounce of liquor and the last can of beer. Not real inventories. But when you’re pulling a scam, you might decide to make everything balance out perfectly so you don’t attract attention. So you won’t have a couple of nosy C.I.D. agents wandering around your club.
Or maybe they had collected the money for some other reason. I didn’t know. But most important, I couldn’t figure who had stolen the money in the first place.
I looked at the cashier. “Who took the money out of the brandy snifter?”
She put her head down and stared at the floor. Slowly she began to shake her head. I tried again.
“Where did all this extra won come from? Did you take up a collection?”
Still she said nothing, as if she were tremendously ashamed, and just kept shaking her head.
I stood up. I knew I wasn’t going to get anything here. Ernie stood up and threw his empty beer can into the wastebasket, and we walked out into the hallway.
Ernie said, “They’re trying to cover something up.”
I said, “You got that right.”
Two cute young Korean girls, bundled in sweaters and scarves, bounced down the hallway towards the main exit. Lunch hour waitresses, just heading home.
I stopped them and spoke in Korean.
“Young lady. Who is the head of the union here?”
They both stopped abruptly, breathless and wide-eyed.
“Mr. Kwon. The bar manager.”
I thanked them; they giggled and continued on their way.
Ernie looked after them. “Nice legs.”
“That’s all you could see of them.”
“That was enough.”
