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

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Freezing outside an Asian brothel in the middle of the night with a cold rain blowing in off the Yellow Sea is enough to make even the most dedicated investigator ponder the worth of a career in military law enforcement. Fabulous pay and benefits. Fun, travel, and adventure. Three hots and a cot. And if President Ford was to be believed, a raise that would bring my corporal’s pay all the way up to four hundred and fifty dollars per month by the end of this fiscal year.

Wow.

The wet pellets slapping my face suddenly didn’t sting so badly. Still, I shuffled deeper into the shadows beneath an overhanging eave.

My name is George Sueño. I’m an investigator for the Criminal Investigation Division of the 8th United States Army stationed in Seoul, Republic of Korea. Tonight my partner, Ernie Bascom, and I were after an M.P. gone bad. Last we heard, he was shacked up inside Building Number 36 in this maze of narrow alleys known as the Yellow House. Down the lane, light flickered out of large plate-glass windows. Behind those windows sat groups of Korean women in flimsy negligees, waiting for the foreign sailors who periodically invade this port known as Inchon on the western coast of Korea on the edge of the Yellow Sea. Merchant marines from all over the world — Greece, the Philippines, Japan, Holland, Sweden, and even the United States — are regular customers here.

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