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seat. “Yeah, but this time he’s holding my extension.”
    The engine churned. The flimsy canvas enclosure was starting to heat up.
    “I know how you feel,” I told him. “Who wants to go back to the States? Back there, you’re lucky if your monthly paycheck lasts a week. Here we can usually manage to stretch it out to almost four.”
    “And this time there’s something extra.”
    “What’s that?”
    “The Nurse. Since we got back together again, she’s really trying to make it work.”
    “What’s wrong with that?”
    Ernie shrugged. “It cramps my style a bit, but I can live with it. It’s just that she’s taking it so seriously.”
    “She wants to get married,” I said. “What do you expect?”
    “It’s not just that. She acts as if this is her last chance. Her last chance to live any sort of decent life.”
    It probably was, I thought, but I didn’t say so. I leaned back. “Yeah, well, they’ll put the pressure on you.”
    “She keeps a razor in her purse.”
    I looked at him.
    “One of those straight razors, the old-fashioned kind that nobody uses anymore, and she says that if I don’t get my extension through she’ll know it was because I didn’t want to stay with her.”
    He stopped talking. I waited.
    “If I don’t get the extension through,” Ernie said, “she says she’ll kill herself.”
    “Do you believe her?”
    “I do. Her family’s already disowned her for dropping out of nursing school and taking up with a GI. She’d have nowhere to go.”
    I wasn’t sure-if that was true. When the worst happens people always find some path to take. I know. I’d been through it. But I didn’t say so, to Ernie. He believed the Nurse would commit suicide and that’s what was important. And maybe he was right. In Korea, suicide is seen as a romantic act and sometimes a noble one.
    Ernie shook his head. “Anyway, we got an asshole to catch. Where to? The Honor Guard barracks?”
    “Hell, no.”
    “I didn’t think so.”
    He slammed the engine in gear and we rolled forward on the slick roadway. At Gate Number 7 the MP whistled us through and we turned left on the Main Supply Route, zigzagging through the traffic toward the greatest nightclub district in Northeast Asia.
    Itaewon.

5

    T HE WINDOWS OF THE KAYAGUM TEAHOUSE WERE dark and fogged. Ernie pushed through the big double doors and we were greeted by the sharp tang of ammonia. Standing in the entranceway, it took a while for our eyes to adjust to the darkness after being exposed to the dull glare of the morning snow.
    All the chairs were turned upside down atop the tables. A young boy, about thirteen or fourteen, mopped the tiled floor. His mouth fell open and he stopped mopping when we walked in. I went back behind the serving counter with its hot plates and teapots and urns and started rummaging through drawers. Looking for something—maybe a business card or an address ledger—anything that might give us a lead on the woman who had called herself Miss Ku.
    I wasn’t worried about the rules of evidence. If I found Miss Ku, and turned her over to the Korean National Police, they wouldn’t be either.
    Ernie waited by the door.
    In a frail, frightened voice the boy called into the back room.
    “Ajjima! Yangnom wasso.”
    It wasn’t a very nice way to talk. Telling his aunt that a couple of base foreign louts had arrived. But I ignored him and continued to rummage through the drawers.
    What I found mainly were knives and spoons and utensils, until finally I spotted a big hardbound ledger. I thumbed through it. It was dogeared and stained with splashes of tea and coffee, and all the entries were dates and amounts of money recorded in won, the Korean currency. I wasn’t getting very far.
    Someone pushed through a beaded curtain. Apparently this was the boy’s aunt. The same woman who had greeted us at the door the night before last when we had met Miss Ku here. But today the woman looked different. She wore no makeup, her hair