Jade Lady Burning Read Online Free PDF Page A

after getting a few stitches in his hand from the butcher knife she took to him, he moved back into her hooch. But he kept the mattress in his barracks. Prudent guy, that Ernie.
    When they’re not fighting they spend a lot of time talking about injections. It’s Ernie’s favorite word. The Nurse meticulously explains all the preparations necessary for giving an injection, even mimicking the hand movements, and then performs the act, keeping her face stonily serious, while Ernie watches the imaginary needle pop in his arm.
    Every couple has to have a hobby.
    Lately Ernie’s been seeing a lot of Miss So. She’s got long straight black hair and a serious expression—he’s got a thing for serious expressions. But one thing she has all over the Nurse is that she wears glasses.
    Ernie wears glasses. Round, wire-rimmed jobs with thick lenses, and girls who wear glasses just about drive him mad. Miss So seems to have injected herself into his soul.
    She’s one of those chicks who hang around Itaewon, wearing the latest stateside outfits, because she’s fascinated by the American GIs. She’s been watching American movies for so long and listening to the music and studying English in school that she’s got some sort of idea that all the wise, punk-ass, jitterbugging GIs hanging around the ville are actually worth a damn.
    Anyway, she’s not a professional so she has to watch herself. Mainly she hangs out in the rock-and-roll clubs where fewer straight business girls work and a few more of the strays wander in from time to time. Her running partner is her sister, who’s a year or two younger than she is, taller, doesn’t wear glasses, and doesn’t look anything like her.
    Ernie tried to set me up with her once but it didn’t work out. I think I’m too serious for her. She likes guys who are bubbling over with enthusiasm and can barely contain themselves over something indecipherable, like maybe just being alive. I get enthusiastic about books and things, or a particularly knotty investigation, or just getting laid.
    Definitely not her type.
    Not that I hold any grudges. There are plenty of other girls in Itaewon. Like Miss Oh, the cocktail waitress who works at the King Club.
    She was a big help to me on my last investigation, after she got tired of bonging me on the head with her cocktail tray. She’s tall, slender, with flowing black hair, and a figure than can make grown men cry. At least she’s brought me to tears a couple of times.
    I try not to push her too hard. I know she’s got something going with one or two of the guys who run the local Club Owners’ Association here. Got to pay her dues. So I just see her occasionally, when we both have time. If I wander into the King Club, have a drink, and she’s a little brusque with me, I get the message. If she lingers at my table and asks me to buy her a drink, then I know I’m in. But Miss Oh would have to wait until at least nightfall.
    There would be nothing for us until then so Ernie and I decided to take advantage of the first sergeant’s loose reins. Ernie went over to South Post to do some jogging, and I rolled up my gi and made it to the twelve o’clock tae kwon do class.
    Mr. Chong, our instructor, had been holding classes at the main gym on Yongsan Compound for the last couple of years, ever since he’d won the Korean national title in the tae kwon do middleweight division.
    It’s the most competitive division, mainly because almost everyone in the country is a middleweight. He’s a calm man, with a sculpted body, extremely precise in his movements, and as quick as a cobra when he wants to be.
    I’d no more want to meet him in a dark alley than walk through an impact area during a Second Infantry Division field exercise.
    “You’re late again, George.”
    We were in the locker room, changing into our white outfits.
    “Yes, I’m sorry. They had me working.”
    Mr. Chong finished tying his long black belt around his trim waist and walked over to