The Door to Bitterness Read Online Free PDF Page B

hatch. A fresh dent. More than a dent really, an angry scratch.
    As if from the claw of a dragon.
    “This one, he missed,” Lieutenant Won said. “Other one,” he turned back to the blood on the floor, “is still in her body.”
    “And where is she now?” I asked.
    “Ambulance take hospital,” Lieutenant Won said.
    Back in the casino, the three nervous cashiers remained in their cage, perched on wooden stools like exotic birds with fluttering blue wings. The four of us—me, Ernie, the angry Lieutenant Won, and the obsequious Mr. Bok—walked past the cashiers and crossed the carpeted casino floor toward the front entrance.
    We had almost reached it when the backdoor of the cashier’s cage clanged open. The four of us stopped, turned, and stared back at the cage.
    Like leopards, three men glided out. Two were young Koreans, tall, muscular, wearing suits and ties, their black hair slicked back. Between them stood an older man, his gray hair streaked with white. His face was pasty, as if he spent a lot of time indoors, and his cheeks sagged. The three-piece suit he wore was made of finely tailored wool. The way he stood, motionless, made me think that he was a mortician, come to escort a body to the nether realms. He stared at me. Not at Ernie, not at Lieutenant Won, not at Mr. Bok, but at me. For what seemed a long moment, his craggy face remained impassive. Something ugly passed between us. Then, as quickly as the mortician and his entourage had appeared, they turned and slipped back through the doorway.
    “Who was that?” Ernie asked.
    “The owner.”
    “Of the entire casino?”
    Lieutenant Won nodded.
    “We need to talk to him,” Ernie said.
    “Not possible,” Lieutenant Won answered.
    I started to protest, but Lieutenant Won held up his open palm to silence me.
    “Finish,” he said.
    Four Korean cops converged on Ernie and me and motioned toward the door. One put his hand on Ernie’s elbow, and Ernie shoved him away. Immediately, the three other cops went for their nightsticks, but before they could move, Lieutenant Won shouted an order. They stopped, glaring at us. Ernie and I glared back.
    The small pack of Korean cops watched warily while Ernie straightened his coat. Then he turned and the two of us walked out of the casino and trotted down the steps. Under our own power.
    “Shangnom-ah!” Ernie shouted.
    Another kimchee cab swerved in front of us, horn blaring, and Ernie slammed on his brakes and cursed again. We were winding our way through the heavy midday downtown Inchon traffic, heading for the Huang Hei Medical Center, the hospital where the young female blackjack dealer had been taken. The one who’d been shot.
    Korean curse words Ernie had down pat. “Common lout” is what shangnom means. Rough talk in the Korean lexicon. He turned to me.
    “Why the hell do you want to go to the hospital anyway?”
    “I want to see,” I said.
    “See what? She’s a dealer in a casino. Young, female, twenty-two years old. Her name is Han Ok-hi. She was shot with a bullet that appears to be .45 caliber, from a gun that is probably yours. What else do you want to know?”
    For a moment I thought I’d punch him. For the first time since I’d met Ernie Bascom, in all the months we’d worked together and arrested bad guys together and run the ville together, I had an overwhelming urge to lean across the gear shift and punch him flush upside his Anglo-Saxon head.
    But I didn’t. Instead, I held onto my knees and stared straight ahead. It’s a trait, part of Mexican-American culture, I’m told, to become very quiet when confronted or angry. To do nothing but think—or better yet, to let your body decide whether to strike or wait and let it pass.
    Ernie glanced at me and then glanced again, quickly returning his attention to the swirling traffic, maybe seeing something in me that he hadn’t seen before.
    For the rest of the ride, he kept his mouth shut.
    The nurse at the reception desk, with her