Unlike the lush gentility of the 8th Army compound, Itaewon was alive with milling people and rows of produce, chickens, hogs, and fish wriggling in murky tanks. Miss Lim’s alley was right off the Itaewon Market, but the noise of commerce shut off abruptly as we slid into the narrow walkway. Ten foot high brick and stone walls loomed over us. I checked the numbers on the gateways to the homes. They didn’t seem to be in order, as if things had changed too much over the centuries for a simple one, two, three, four. Finally I found the gateway to 246-15 and pounded on a splintered wooden gate. Hens squawked as an old woman put on her slippers and shuffled towards us.
“Miss Lim,” I said. “We’re looking for Miss Lim.”
The old woman opened the door. Trusting. We were Americans, not thieves.
“Are you Miss Lim?” I said.
“No. She went to the hospital. Her baby is very sick.”
“Which hospital?”
She spoke to the old woman in rapid Korean and then turned back to me. “The MoBom Hospital in Hannam-dong.”
“Which room does she live in?”
“The one on the end. There.”
Ernie and I walked over. It was just a hovel. Raised foundation, little plastic closet in the corner, folded sleeping mats on a vinyl floor, and a small potbellied stove in the center of the room with rickety aluminum tubing reaching to the ceiling. An officer in dress greens stared at me out of a framed photograph. He looked in his mid-thirties, maybe twenty pounds over his fighting weight, with curly brown hair and a big jolly smile. Gold maple leaves on his shoulder glittered along with his white teeth.
I turned back to the women. “How long has Miss Lim been gone?”
“She came home from work late last night. The baby never stopped crying. She waited until the curfew was over and then left for the hospital.”
“Before dawn?”
“Yes.”
“And she’s been there ever since?”
“Yes.”
The old woman waited patiently, not understanding. I smiled at her, thanked them both, and we turned to go. The woman in the blue shorts and red T-shirt called after me.
“Hey!”
We stopped and turned around.
“Why you GI always make baby and then go?”
I didn’t have an answer for her. Ernie stopped clicking his gum. We turned around and left.
The waiting room of the MoBom Hospital was packed. An attractive young Korean woman with a snappy white cap pinned to her black hair sat behind a counter near the entrance. Behind her was a list of basic fees. It was ten thousand won, up front, to see a doctor. Fourteen bucks.
I told her about Miss Lim and her sick baby and asked where we could find her. She thumbed through a ledger but kept shaking her head. She wanted to know Miss Lim’s full name. I told her she was the woman with the half-American baby. She perked right up.
“Oh, yes. She is in Room 314. The stairway is over there.”
The room held about thirty tiny beds with plastic siding on them. Miss Lim sat next to one of the tiny beds on a wooden chair, her face in her hands. I showed her my identification.
“Hello, Miss Lim. We’re from the C.I.D.”
It seemed that her face was about to burst with redness. She was a plain woman, young and thin with a puffy face that looked even more bloated from crying.
“Is your baby going to be all right?”
“The doctor is not sure yet. I must wait.”
Ernie didn’t like it there. He fidgeted with the change in his pocket and then drifted back towards the door. My signal to wrap it up quickly.
“The money you took from behind the bar. It has already been replaced. I will talk to everyone. Explain your situation. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
Her head went back into her hands, and this time she clutched her red face as if she were trying to bury it in her palms. I couldn’t be sure, but I think her shoulders convulsed a couple of times. I looked down at the baby. It was scrawny. Unconscious. Sweat-soaked brown hair matted against its little head.
We left.
Neither one of us spoke as the sloe-eyed stares followed us out of the hospital.
Ernie zigzagged his jeep through the heavy Seoul traffic as if he were in a race to get away from the devil.
“Well,” he said. “We wrapped up another one.”
“I’m sure they won’t do anything to her,” I said. “I’ll type up the report to make her look as good as possible. Even the 8th Army chief of staff’s got a heart.”
Ernie didn’t say anything. I turned to him.
“Right?”
He shrugged. “If you say so, pal.”
The chief of staff didn’t want to prosecute, but in his capacity as the president of the Officer’s Club council he did demand that Miss Lim appear before the next board meeting and explain her actions. The word we got was that he was upset with her because she could have come to the Club Council any time and they would have helped her out. Thievery wasn’t necessary, according to him.
