Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 49, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2004

Dubrovnik was fast and had the added incentive of knowing he was about to be locked up. Just when he was about to pull away from me, another figure leapt out of the darkness. Dubrovnik tried to dodge this new phantom but the shadow wrapped its arms around his shoulders.

Ernie.

How the hell had he gotten all the way over here? Then I remembered. Ernie knew the maze of the Yellow House probably as well as Dubrovnik did.

But Ernie’s lunge was too high. Dubrovnik shoved it off and kept moving, turning and slapping at Ernie’s grasping fingers. While they struggled I closed in, but Dubrovnik was gaining distance. And then Ernie and I were both panting down the alley, giving chase to the crooked M.P. who had now become a rabbit.

Dubrovnik darted into an open door.

As we crashed in after him I noticed the number atop the opening: 47. Each brothel in the Yellow House area was licensed and therefore numbered. We sprinted up the first flight of concrete block stairs into a foyer with varnished wood-slat flooring. Korean women stood around in various states of undress.

“Odi?” Ernie asked. Where?

One of them pointed toward a short flight of broad wooden steps that led down to the display area behind another plate-glass window. Dubrovnik must be around the corner. Trapped.

Before we could consult on the best way to take him, Ernie leapt down the flight of stairs. Sitting and squatting women screamed and scooted out of his way but before I could react, Dubrovnik exploded from behind a mother-of-pearl inlaid chest and landed a punch solidly on the back of Ernie’s head.

Ernie’s knees buckled, he reached for his neck, but he didn’t go down. Dubrovnik swiveled, realizing that the man he had just punched wasn’t the first man who’d been chasing him. When he saw me standing at the top of the flight of steps, his shoulders sagged and for a moment a look of resignation spread across his swarthy features. I smiled and reached for my handcuffs. But then Dubrovnik seemed to brighten, and before I could lunge forward he took a step backwards, stiffened his body, and leapt through the huge, gleaming, shimmering pane of glass.

Women screamed.

Amongst the hail of crystal shards which followed Dubrovnik into the alley, he somehow managed to roll upon impact. Like a circus acrobat, he bounded immediately to his feet. Once again he was off and running. By now Ernie had recovered and was already clawing his way toward the wicked-looking glass blades sticking up from the edge of the window. He was disoriented and I knew he’d hurt himself so I grabbed his shoulders and held him.

“What the hell you doing? He’s getting away.”

“Out the door,” I said, “so we don’t get cut.”

Ernie let me drag him back to the main foyer and brace him as we descended the cement stairwell. When we reached the brick-paved alleyway, Dubrovnik was nowhere to be found. A few yards past Building 47, we asked a few of the women huddling in open doorways if they’d seen him but they argued amongst themselves and pointed in four different directions.

We’d lost him.

Our next stop was the home of someone who we suspected was Dubrovnik’s accomplice. A clerk who worked at the U.S. Army’s Port of Inchon Transportation Office. His name was Lee Ok-pyong, a Korean national. Although he worked for 8th Army, Lee fell squarely under the jurisdiction of the Korean National Police. Not us.

Technically, we shouldn’t have been talking to him. Our original plan was to arrest Dubrovnik, interrogate him on compound, gather all the information we could, and then, accompanied by the Korean National Police, arrest Clerk Lee and assist in the KNP’s interrogation. The more information we could gather first, the more productive that interrogation would be. But now, with Dubrovnik on the fly, our plan had changed.

“We shouldn’t even be doing this,” I told Ernie.

“Screw it. If Dubrovnik makes it over here and him and this guy Lee compare notes, they’ll be able to get their stories straight. We’ll never bust anybody.”

The crime was diversion of U.S. Government property. PX property to be exact.

The way the scam worked was that Clerk Lee Ok-pyong filled out two bills of lading. One with the actual amount of imported scotch and cigarettes and stereo equipment to be delivered, and the other with a larger amount that would actually be loaded onto the truck. For security reasons, each truck was escorted by an armed American military policeman. But since both Dubrovnik and the Korean driver were in on the scam with Lee, there was nobody to complain about the phony paperwork.