Читать книгу The Plotters - Un-su Kim - Страница 7

“If things don’t pick up, I’m in deep shit. Business has been so slow, I’m stuck cremating dogs all day.”

Bear flicked his cigarette to the ground. He was squatting down, and the seat of his pants threatened to rip open under his hundred-plus-kilogram frame. Reseng wordlessly pulled on a pair of cotton work gloves. Bear heaved himself up, brushing off his backside.

“Do you know some people are such morons, they’re actually dumping bodies in the forest? Your job doesn’t end when the target’s dead; you also have to clean up after yourself. I mean, what day and age is this? Dumping bodies in the forest? You wouldn’t even bury a dog out there. Nowadays, if you so much as tap a mountain with a bulldozer, bodies come pouring out. No one takes their job seriously anymore, I swear. No integrity! Stabbing someone in the gut and walking away? That’s for hired goons, not professional assassins! And anyway, it’s not like it’s easy to bury a body in the woods. A bunch of idiots from Incheon got caught dragging a huge suitcase up a mountain a few days ago.”

“They were arrested?” Reseng asked.

“Of course. It was pretty obvious. Three big guys carrying shovels and dragging a giant suitcase into the forest. You think people living nearby saw them and thought, Ah, they’re taking a trip, in the dead of night, to the other side of the mountain? Stupid! So my point is, instead of dumping bodies in the mountains, why not cremate them here? It’s safe, it’s clean, and it’s better for the environment. Business is so slow, I’m dying!”

Bear pulled on work gloves as he grumbled. He always grumbled. And yet this grumbling, orangutan-size man seemed as harmless as Winnie-the-Pooh. That might have been because he looked like Winnie-the-Pooh. Or maybe Pooh looked like Bear. Bear provided a corpse-disposal service, albeit an illegal one. Pets, of course, were legal. He was licensed to cremate cats and dogs. The human bodies were done on the sly. He was surprisingly cuddly-looking for someone who burned corpses for a living.

“I swear, you wouldn’t believe the things I’ve seen. Not long ago, this couple came in with an iguana. Had a name like Andrew or André. What kind of a name is that for an iguana? Why not something simpler, something that rolls off the tongue, like Iggy or Spiny? Anyway, it’s ridiculous the names people come up with. So this stupid iguana died, and this young couple kept hugging each other and crying and carrying on: ‘We’re so sorry, Andrew, we should have fed you on time, it’s all our fault, Andrew.’ I was dying of embarrassment for them.”

Bear was on a roll. Reseng opened the warehouse door, half-listening to his rant.

“Which cart?” he asked.

Bear took a look inside and pointed to a hand cart.

“Is it big enough?” Reseng asked.

Bear sized it up and nodded.

“You’re not moving a cow. Where’d you park?”

“Behind the building.”

“Why so far away? And it’s uphill.”

Bear manned the cart. He had an easy, optimistic stride that belied his penchant for grumbling. Reseng envied him. Bear didn’t have a greedy bone in his body. He wasn’t one to run himself into the ground trying to drum up more business. He got by on what he made from his small pet crematorium and had even raised two daughters by himself. His eldest was now at college. “I stick to light meals,” he liked to claim. “To stretch my food bill. I just have to hold out for a few more years, until my girls are on their own.” Bear spooked easily. He never took on anything suspicious, even if he needed the money. And so, in a business where the average life span was ridiculously short, Bear had lasted a long, long time.

Reseng popped open the trunk. Bear tilted his head quizzically at the two black body bags inside.

“Two? Old Raccoon said there’d be only one package.”

“One man, one dog,” Reseng said.

“Is that the dog?” Bear asked, pointing at the smaller of the bags.

“That’s the man. The big one’s the dog.”

“What kind of dog is bigger than a man?”

Bear opened the bag in disbelief. Inside was Santa. His long tongue flopped out of the open zipper.

“Holy shit! Now I’ve seen it all. Why’d you kill the dog? What’d it do, bite your balls?”

“I just thought it was too old to get used to a new master.”

“Well, look at you, meddling with the instructions you were given,” Bear said with a snigger. “You need to watch your step. Don’t get tripped up worrying over some dog.”

Reseng zipped the bag back up and paused. Why had he killed the dog? When he’d gone back to collect the old man’s body, the dog had been quietly standing watch. With his back to the sun, Reseng had looked down at the sunlight spilling into the dog’s cloudy brown eyes. The dog hadn’t growled. It was probably wondering why its master wasn’t moving. Reseng had stared at the dog, which was now too old to learn any new tricks. No one’s left in this quiet, beautiful forest to feed you, he thought. And you’re too old to go bounding through the forest in search of food. Do you understand what I’m saying? The late autumn sun cast its weak rays over the crown of the dog’s head. It had gazed up at him with those cloudy brown eyes as Reseng stroked its neck. Then he had raised his rifle and shot the dog in the head.

“Pretty heavy for an old man,” Bear said as he grabbed one end of the body bag.

“I told you, this one’s the dog,” Reseng grumbled. “That one’s the old man.”

Bear looked back and forth at the bags in confusion.

“This damn dog is heavy.”

After loading the bodies onto the cart, Bear looked around. The pet crematorium was a quiet place at two in the morning. Of course it was. No one would be coming to cremate a pet at this hour.

Bear opened up the gas valve and lit the furnace. The flames rose, peeling the black vinyl bag away from the two bodies like snakeskin being shed. The old man was stretched out flat, with the dog’s head resting on his stomach. As the furnace filled with heat, their sinews tightened and shrank, and the old man’s body began to squirm. It was a sad sight, as if he were still clinging to the world of the living. Was there even anything left for him to cling to? It didn’t matter. It was over. In two hours, he’d be nothing but dust. You can’t cling to anything when you’re dust.

Reseng stared at the contorted body. The old man had been a general. Throughout the three long decades of military rule in South Korea, he had been working behind the scenes, in the shadow of the dictator, drawing up lists of targets and orchestrating their assassinations. How had he pulled it off? It wasn’t easy back then for former members of the North Korean army to succeed in the South Korean army and harder still to earn a spot in the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. But he’d survived. He’d made it through the first dictator’s twenty years of ironfisted rule, the toppling of the regime, the coup d’etat that followed, and the next ten years under a new military regime. He’d survived the political monkey business and the unrelenting suspicion directed at former North Korean soldiers, and became a general. Whenever someone fell into disfavor with the dictator, this general with two shiny stars on his cap would seek out Old Raccoon’s library. He’d hand over the list with the target’s name on it and, most brazenly of all, use the people’s tax money to settle the bill.

But in the end, his own name had made it onto the list. That’s how it went. The good times came to an end sooner or later and, in order to survive, those who found themselves dethroned had to sort out what they’d done and sweep up the scraps. As always, time had a way of circling around and biting you on the ass.

Once, when Reseng was twelve, the old man had come to the library dressed in uniform. It was a fine uniform. The old man came right up to Reseng.

“What’re you reading, boy?”

“Sophocles.”

“Is it fun?”

“I don’t have a dad, so I can’t really understand it.”

“Where’s your dad?”

“In the garbage can in front of the nunnery.”

The general grinned, stars sparkling, and ruffled Reseng’s hair. That was twenty years ago. The little boy remembered that moment, but the old man had probably forgotten.

Reseng took out a cigarette. Bear lit it for him, took out one of his own, and started whistling birdcalls through a cloud of smoke. On his way out, Bear checked their surroundings again, as if expecting someone to appear suddenly. Reseng watched the bodies of the old man and the dog meld together in the heat.

A surprising number of idiots mistakenly thought they could pull off a perfect crime only if they personally disposed of the evidence. They would lug a can of gasoline to a deserted field and try to burn the body themselves. But cremation was never as easy as people thought. After messing around with trying to set the body on fire, they ended up with a huge, steaming lump of foul-smelling meat. Joke was on them. Any decent forensic scientist could take one look at that barbecue gone wrong and figure out the corpse’s age, sex, height, face, shape, and dentition. A body had to burn for at least two hours at temperatures well above thirteen hundred degrees inside a closed oven in order to be completely incinerated. Other than crematoriums, pottery or charcoal kilns, or a blast furnace in a smelting factory, it was very difficult to produce that kind of heat. That was why Bear’s Pet Crematorium stayed in business. The next important step was to grind the bones. Forensic scientists can determine age, sex, height, and cause of death from just three fragments of a pelvis. So any remaining bone or teeth had to be completely destroyed. Even the most finely ground bones still hold clues, and teeth maintain their original shape even under extreme conditions, including fire. So the teeth had to be pulverized with a hammer and the bone ash safely scattered. It was the only way to disappear your victim.

Reseng took out another cigarette and checked the time. Ten past two. Once the sun came up, he’d be able to finish work and head home. Sudden fatigue settled over his neck and shoulders. One night on the road, one night at the old man’s place, and now one night at Bear’s Pet Crematorium. He’d been away from home for three nights. His cats had probably run out of food … Reseng pictured his darkened apartment, the two Siamese yowling in hunger. Desk and Lampshade. Crazily enough, they were starting to take after their names. Desk liked to hunch over into a square, like a slice of bread, and stare quietly at a scrap of paper on the floor, while Lampshade liked to crane her neck and stare out the window.

Bear brought out a basket of boiled potatoes and offered one to Reseng. Just his luck—more potatoes. The six the old man had given him that morning were still in the car. Reseng was hungry, but he shook his head. “Why aren’t you eating? Don’t you know how tasty Gangwon Province potatoes are?” Bear looked puzzled. Why would anyone refuse something so delicious? He shoved an entire potato into his mouth and swigged a good half of the bottle of soju he’d brought out, as well.

“I cremated Mr. Kim here a while back,” Bear said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Mr. Kim from the meat market?”

“Yup.”

“Who took him out?”

“I think Duho hired some young Vietnamese guys. That’s who’s taking all the jobs these days. They work for peanuts. Everywhere you look, it’s nothing but Vietnamese. Well, of course, there are also some Chinese, some defectors from the North Korean special forces, and even a few Filipinos. I swear, there are guys who’ll take someone out for a measly five hundred thousand won. Nowadays, assassinations cost practically nothing. That’s why they’re all at each other’s throats. Once Mr. Kim’s name made the list, he didn’t stand a chance.”

Reseng exhaled a long plume of smoke. Bear had no reason to lament the plummeting cost of assassinations. The more bodies there were, the better Bear fared, regardless of who carried out the killings. He was just humoring Reseng. Bear took another bite of potato and another swig of soju. Then he seemed to remember something.

“By the way, the strangest thing happened. After I had finished cremating Mr. Kim, I found these shiny pearl-like objects in his ashes. I picked them up to take a closer look, and what do you know? Śarīra. Thirteen of them, each no bigger than a bean. Crazy!”

“What are you talking about?” Reseng said in shock. “Those are only supposed to come out of the ashes of Buddhist masters. How could they come out of Mr. Kim?”

“It’s true, I swear. Want me to show you?”

“Forget it.” Reseng waved his hand in annoyance.

“I’m telling you, they’re real. I didn’t believe it at first, either. Mr. Kim—what’d everyone call him again? ‘The Lech’? Because he’d guzzle all those health tonics and stuff to increase his virility, then bang anything that moved? That’s what killed him, you know. Anyway, how could something as precious as śarīra come out of someone as rotten as he was? And thirteen, no less! They’re supposed to mean you’ve achieved enlightenment, but from what I see, it’s got nothing to do with meditating all the time, or avoiding sex, or practicing moderation. It’s more like dumb luck.”

“You’re sure they’re real?” Reseng still wasn’t convinced.

“They’re real!” Bear punctuated his words with an exaggerated shrug. “I showed them to Hyecho, up at Weoljeongam Temple. He stared at them for the longest time, with his hands clasped behind his back like this, and then he slowly licked his lips and told me to sell them to him.”

“What would Hyecho want with Mr. Kim’s śarīra?”

“You know he’s always chasing skirt, gambling and boozing it up. But that dirty monk’s got an itchy palm. He’s secretly worried what people will say about him if they don’t find śarīra among his ashes when he’s cremated. That’s why he’s got his eye on Mr. Kim’s. If he swallows them right before he dies, then it’s guaranteed they’ll find at least thirteen, right?”

Reseng chuckled. Bear shoved another potato in his mouth. He took a swig of soju and then offered Reseng a potato, as if embarrassed to be eating them all himself. Reseng looked at the potato in Bear’s paw and suddenly pictured the way the old man had talked to the dog, to the pork roasting over the fire, even to the potatoes buried under the ashes. You’d better make yourselves delicious for our important guest. That low, hypnotic voice. It struck him then that the old man must have been lonely. As lonely as a tree in winter, every last leaf shed, nothing but bare branches snaking against the sky like veins. Bear was still holding out the potato. Reseng was suddenly famished. He accepted the potato and took a bite. As he chewed, he stared quietly at the flames inside the furnace. Between the fire and the smoke, he could no longer tell what was old man and what was dog.

“Tasty, huh?” Bear asked.

“Tasty,” Reseng said.

“Not to change the subject, but why the hell is tuition so expensive now? My older daughter just started university. I’ll need to burn at least five more bodies to afford her tuition and rent. But where am I going to find five bodies in this climate? I don’t know if it’s just that the economy’s bad or if the world’s become a more wholesome place, but it’s definitely not like the old days. How am I supposed to get by now?”

Bear frowned, as if he couldn’t stand the thought of a wholesome world.

“Maybe you should think about those pretty daughters of yours and go straight,” Reseng said. “Stick to cremating cats and dogs instead, you know, more wholesome like.”

“Are you kidding? Cats and dogs would have to get a lot more profitable first. I charge by the kilo for cremating pets, and nowadays everyone’s into those tiny ratlike dogs. Don’t get me started. After I pay my gas, electricity, taxes, and this, that, and everything else, what’s left? If only people would start keeping giraffes or elephants as pets. Then maybe Bear would be rich.”

Bear shook the soju bottle and emptied what was left into his mouth. He stretched. He looked worn-out. “So should I sell them?” he asked abruptly.

“Sell what?”

“C’mon, I already told you! Mr. Kim’s śarīra.”

“May as well,” Reseng said irritably. “What’s the point of holding on to them?”

“That so-called monk offered me three hundred thousand won for them, but I feel like I’m getting ripped off. Even if they did come out of Mr. Kim’s garbage can of a body, they’re still bona fide śarīras.”

“Listen to you,” Reseng said. “Going on as if they’re actually sacred.”

“Should I ask him to bump it up to five hundred thousand?”

Reseng didn’t respond. He was tired, and he wasn’t in the mood to joke anymore. He stared wordlessly into the fire until Bear got the hint. Bear gave his empty soju bottle another shake, then went to get a fresh one.

White smoke spewed out of the chimney. Every time he dropped off a body for cremation, Reseng got the ridiculous notion that the souls of those once-hectic lives were exiting through the chimney. A great many assassins had been cremated there. It was the final resting place for discarded hit men. Hit men who’d messed up, hit men tracked down by cops, hit men who ended up on the death list for reasons no one knew, and assassins who’d grown too old—they were all cremated in that furnace.

To the plotters, mercenaries and assassins were like disposable batteries. After all, what use would they have for old assassins? An old assassin was like an annoying blister bursting with incriminating information and evidence. The more you thought about it, the more sense it made. Why would anyone hold on to a used-up battery?

Reseng’s old friend, Chu, had been cremated in this same furnace. Chu was eight years older, but the two of them had been like family. With Chu’s death, Reseng had sensed that his life had begun to change. Familiar things suddenly became unfamiliar. A certain strangeness came between him and his table, his flower vase, his car, his fake driver’s license. The timing of it all was uncanny. He had once looked up the man whose name was on his stolen driver’s licence. A devoted father of three and a hardworking and talented welder, according to everyone who knew him, the man had been missing for eight years. Maybe he had ended up on a hit list. His body might have been buried in the forest or sealed inside a barrel at the bottom of the ocean. Or maybe he had even been cremated right here in Bear’s furnace. Eight years on, the family was still waiting for him to come home. Every time he drove, Reseng joked to himself: This car is being driven by a dead man. He felt that he lived like a dead man, a zombie. It only made sense that he was a stranger in his own life.

Two years had passed since Chu’s death. He’d been an assassin, like Reseng. But unlike Reseng, Chu hadn’t belonged to any particular outfit; instead, he’d drifted from place to place, taking on short gigs. The Mafia had a saying: The most dangerous adversary was a pazzo, a madman. A person who thought they had nothing to lose, who wanted nothing from others and asked nothing of him- or herself, who behaved in ways that defied common sense, who quietly followed her or his own strange principles and stubborn convictions, which were both inconceivable and unbelievable. A person like that would not be cowed by any formidable power. Chu had been that kind of person.

On the other hand, it was easy to deal with adversaries who were backed into a corner and desperate not to lose what they had. They were the plotters’ favorite prey. It was obvious where they were headed. They ended up dead because they refused to acknowledge, right up to the very end, that they could not hold on to whatever it was they were trying to hold on to. But not Chu. Chu had been out to prove that this ferocious world with its boundless power could not stop him as long as he desired nothing.

Chu had been prickly, but his work was so clean and immaculate that Old Raccoon had usually given him the difficult assignments. He’d wanted to make Chu an official member of the library and had warned him, “Even a lion becomes a target for wild dogs when it’s away from its pride.” Each time, Chu had sneered and said, “I don’t plan on living long enough to turn into a cripple like you.”

Despite not belonging to any one outfit, Chu had lasted for twenty years as an assassin. He’d done all sorts of dirty work, taken government jobs, corporate jobs, jobs from third-tier meat-market contractors, no questions asked. Twenty years—it was an impressive run for an assassin.

But then one day four years ago, Chu’s clock had stopped. No one knew why. Even Chu had confessed to Reseng that he didn’t understand why it had happened, why his clock had suddenly stopped after running so faithfully for twenty years. What led up to it was that Chu decided to let one of his targets go. She was no one special, just another twenty-one-year-old high-priced escort. Shortly after, a news story came out about a certain national assemblyman who had leaped to his death. He’d been hounded by accusations of bribery, corruption, and a sex scandal involving a middle schooler. There was no way that a lowlife like him who enjoyed sex with middle school girls had committed suicide to preserve his honor, which he’d long since done a great job of destroying on his own. Every plotter who saw the news must have instantly thought of Chu. And Chu didn’t stop there. He also went after the plotter who’d put out the contract on the escort. But he failed to track the plotter down. Not even the great Chu could pull that off. By then, Chu was a wanted man. It has to be said that plotters spend more time on finding safe hideouts for themselves and ensuring their own quick exits than on planning hits.

The plotters’ world was one big cartel. They had to take out Chu, but not for anything as flimsy as pride. There was no such thing as pride in this business. They had to take him out so as not to lose customers. Like any other society, their world had its own strict rules and order. Those rules and order formed the foundation on which the market took shape, and then in streamed the customers. If order fell, the market fell, and if the market fell, bye-bye customers. Chu had to have known that. The moment he made up his mind to save the woman, he signed his own death warrant. Chu risked everything to save one unlucky prostitute.

It took the meat market’s trackers less than two months to find her. She was hiding in a small port city. The high-class call girl who’d once entertained only VIP clients in four-star hotels was now selling herself to sailors in musty flophouses. If she’d holed up quietly in a factory instead of going to the red-light district, she might have dodged the trackers a little longer. But she’d ended up on the stinking, filthy streets instead. Maybe she’d run out of money. Since she’d had to leave Seoul in a hurry, she would’ve had no change of clothes and nowhere to sleep. Plus, it was winter. Cold and hunger have a way of numbing people to abstract fears. She might have thought she was going to die anyway, and so what difference did it make? It’s hard to say whether it was stupid of her to think like that. She couldn’t possibly have enjoyed whoring herself out in a port city on the outskirts of civilization, sucking drunk sailor dick for a pittance. But she would’ve felt she had no other choice. All you had to do was look at her hands to understand why. She had slender, lovely hands. Hands that had never once imagined a life spent standing in front of a conveyer belt tightening screws for ten hours a day, or picking seaweed or oysters from the sea in the dead of winter. Had she been born to a good family, those hands would have belonged to a pianist. But her family wasn’t all that good, and so she’d been whoring herself out since the age of fifteen.

She must have known that returning to the red-light district meant she wouldn’t last long. But she went back anyway. In the end, none of us can leave the place we know best, no matter how dirty and disgusting it is. Having no money and no other means of survival is part of the reason, but it’s never the whole reason. We go back to our own filthy origins because it’s a filth we know. Putting up with that filth is easier than facing the fear of being tossed into the wider world, and the loneliness that is as deep and wide as that fear.

Old Raccoon had summoned Reseng as soon as the plotter’s file arrived. Reseng found him sitting at his desk in his study, leafing through the document. He assumed it contained the woman’s photo, her address, her hobbies, her weight, her movements, and the names of all the people related to or involved with her in any way—in other words, all the information needed to kill her. It would also state the designated manner of her death and the method of disposal of the body.

“I don’t know why they’re wasting money on this. Says she’s only thirty-eight kilos. Break her neck. It’ll be as easy as stepping on a frog.”

Old Raccoon thrust the file at Reseng without looking at him. Reseng raised an eyebrow. Was stepping on a frog that easy? Old Raccoon had a habit of making cynical jokes to hide his discomfort. But Reseng wasn’t sure whether what bothered Old Raccoon was having to kill a twenty-one-year-old girl—and one who weighed only thirty-eight kilos, at that—or if his pride was hurt at having to accept a low-paying contract, though he knew full well the library needed the business.

Reseng flipped through the file. The woman in the picture looked like a Japanese pop star. It said she was twenty-one, but she didn’t look a day over fifteen. Reseng had never killed a woman before. It wasn’t that he had some special rule against killing women and children; it was simply that his turn hadn’t come around yet. Reseng had no rules. Not having rules was his only rule.

“What do I do with the body?” Reseng asked.

“Take it to Bear’s, of course,” Old Raccoon said irritably. “What else would you do? String her up at the Gwanghwamun intersection?”

“It’s a long way from where she is to Bear’s place. What if I get pulled over while she’s in the trunk?”

“So lay off the booze and drive like a kitten. It’s not like the cops are going to force you to pull over and claim you shot at them. They’ve got better things to do.”

His voice dripped with sarcasm. That was also his way of disguising anger. Reseng just stood there, not saying a word. Old Raccoon flicked his wrist to tell him to get lost, then got up, pulled a volume of his first-edition Brockhaus Enzyklopädie from the shelf, set it on a book stand, and began reading out loud, mumbling the words under his breath, completely indifferent to Reseng, who was still standing in front of him. He had been rereading it recently. When he finished, he would reread the English edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Old Raccoon’s awkward, self-taught German filled the room. As Reseng opened the door and stepped out, he muttered, “No real German would understand a word of that.”

Old Raccoon had long ago stopped stocking his personal shelves with anything that wasn’t a dictionary or an encyclopedia. As far as Reseng could remember, he’d refused to read anything else for the last ten years. “Dictionaries are great,” he’d explained. “No mushiness, no bitching, no preachiness, and, best of all, none of that high-and-mighty crap that writers try to pull.”

The port city where the woman was hiding looked as run-down as a diseased chicken. The once-bustling city that had kept the Japanese imperial forces supplied with war munitions had been in decline ever since liberation. Now it seemed nothing could turn it around. Reseng got off the express bus and headed for the parking lot, where he looked for a license plate ending in 2847. At the very end of the lot was an old Musso SUV. He took the keys out of his pocket, opened the door, and got in. As soon as he started the ignition, the low fuel warning light blinked on.

“Son of a bitch left the tank empty,” Reseng muttered in irritation at the stupid plotter, wherever and whoever he was.

He parked in the motel’s underground parking garage. The plotter had instructed him to use the third space away from the emergency stairs, but a big luxury sedan was already parked there. Reseng checked his watch: 1:20 p.m. The owner of the sedan had either arrived the night before and hadn’t left yet or he was treating himself to a leisurely lunch with his mistress. Reseng had no choice but to park next to the wall. He got out and checked the walls and ceiling. The motel was too old and shabby to have security cameras. Reseng opened the trunk and took out the oversize duffel bag and body bag that had been left there for him.

As indicated in the file, the motel counter was unstaffed. The clock on the wall pointed to 1:28. Reseng took the key for room 303 from its pigeonhole and went up the stairs. Before opening the door, he pulled on a pair of black leather gloves.

The motel room had seen better days. On the bed was a dirty quilt that he could tell at once hadn’t been washed in years, and on a shelf was half a roll of toilet paper, a metal ashtray, and an old eight-sided box of safety matches. The wallpaper was so faded that he couldn’t tell what color it had once been, and sticking out of the window was an air conditioner shaped like a German tube radio that had to be at least thirty years old; it looked like something awful would spew out of it if he were to turn it on. Glued to a discarded semen-encrusted condom stuck between the mattress and the bed frame was a single pubic hair that could have belonged to either a man or a woman. The glow of the overhead fluorescent was dimmed by a thick layer of dust and long-dead insects trapped inside the light cover. The room looked like a scene from a black-and-white movie in the 1930s.

“How depressing,” Reseng muttered as he set the duffel bag and the black Samsonite attaché case he’d brought with him from Seoul in the corner and sat on the edge of the bed. It was so filthy, he could practically hear the cheers of a billion germs thinking they had just gone to heaven. He put a cigarette in his mouth and took a match from the eight-sided box. They still make these? he thought as he struck the match against the side.

At exactly two o’clock, Reseng called the phone number in the file.

“I’m inside. Room three oh three.”

The man on the other end said nothing for several long seconds. All Reseng heard was the unpleasant sound of the man breathing into the phone, then the dial tone. Reseng stared at the receiver. “Prick,” he muttered. He opened the window, looked out at the narrow alleys winding behind the train station, and lit another cigarette. The red-light district was a quiet place at two in the afternoon.

It took the woman over two hours to show up. As soon as she entered, she glanced indifferently at Reseng and said hello. She had the careless, conceited air typical of women who knew they were beautiful, along with a baby face, a tight little body, the kind of looks that would turn any man’s head, and something in her expression that was hard to pin down, like a faint, gloomy shadow hanging over her, which brought to his mind a picture on a calendar of a fallen ginkgo leaf.

“Take your clothes off,” she said.

She took off hers. It took her less than five seconds to strip off her dress, bra, and panties and stand naked in front of Reseng. He gawked at her. Her unusually large breasts on such a bony torso reminded him of the girls in Japanese porn comics. Her skin looked baby-soft.

He had no idea what had gone down inside the assemblyman’s room. But he couldn’t imagine that she’d actually had anything to do with his death. Her only crime was sucking the clammy, flaccid dicks of aging tycoons with a thing for underage girls. And there was no way she’d made much money from it. The old men would have shelled out a ton of cash to bed her, but the lion’s share would’ve gone to her pimp. She simply had bad luck. But in the end, even bad luck is just another part of life.

“Aren’t you going to get undressed?” she asked.

Reseng kept staring, saying nothing.

“Hurry up already. I’ve got places to be,” she said, clearly irritated.

She looked as arrogant as ever, despite her whiny voice. Without taking his eyes off of her, Reseng slowly slipped his hand inside his leather jacket. Which should he choose, the gun or the knife? Which one was less likely to startle her and make her scream or fly into a panic? When asked, most people said they were more afraid of knives than guns, which made no sense to him. But then, fear is never rational. Reseng chose the gun. Before he could pull it out, the woman’s face stiffened.

“May I put my clothes back on?” Her voice trembled.

“Why?”

“I don’t want to die naked.”

Her eyes met his. They held no trace of anger or hatred. Her weary eyes simply said that she’d learned too much about the world in too short a time; her vacant pupils said she was tired of feeling afraid and didn’t want to see anything anymore.

“You’re not going to die naked,” Reseng said.

But the woman didn’t move.

Reseng softened his tone. “Get dressed, please.”

She picked up her clothes from the floor, her hands shaking as she pulled up her dainty Mickey Mouse panties. When she was dressed, Reseng guided her to the bed by her shoulder and locked the door. The woman took a pack of Virginia Slims from her bag and tried to light one, but her hands shook so hard that she couldn’t get the lighter to work. Reseng pulled his Zippo from his pocket and lit it for her. She gave him a slight nod of thanks and took a deep drag, then turned her head and exhaled a plume of smoke in what seemed like an infinitely long sigh. He could tell she was making an effort to stay calm, as if she’d been practicing for this moment, but her thin shoulders were already trembling.

“I hate having marks on my body. Could you avoid leaving any?” she asked quietly.

She wasn’t begging for mercy. All she wanted was to die without any cuts or bruises. He suddenly wondered about Chu. What was it about this woman that had stopped Chu’s clock? Had her frail body filled him with sympathy? Had she reminded him too much of a girl in a Japanese porn video? Had the mysterious melancholy clouding her features aroused in him a misplaced sense of guilt? No. That’d be ridiculous. Chu wasn’t the kind of guy who would fuck up his life because of some cheap romantic notion.

“You hate having marks …”

Reseng slowly echoed her. The woman’s eyes flickered nervously. He found it hard to believe that she was more afraid of having marks on her body than of dying. Reseng gazed down at the floor for a moment before raising his head.

“You won’t have any marks.” He tried to keep his voice as level as possible.

A startled look came over her face. She seemed to have just figured out what the oversize bag in the corner was for. She must have pictured it, because her entire body began to shake.

“Are you putting me in that?”

Her voice had a nervous tremor, but she managed not to stutter.

Reseng nodded.

“Where will you take me? Are you going to leave my body at a garbage dump or in the forest?”

For a moment, Reseng wondered if he really had to tell her. He didn’t. But whether he did or not, it changed nothing.

“You won’t be buried in the forest or dumped in a landfill. You’ll be cremated at a facility. Though not, strictly speaking, legally.”

“Then no one will know I’m dead. There won’t be a funeral.”

Reseng nodded again. She’d toughed everything else out, but for some reason that made her burst into tears. Why make such a fuss about what’ll happen to your corpse when you’re facing imminent death? She seemed more worried about what she would look like after death than about the death itself. What a thing for someone her age to worry herself over.

She gritted her teeth and wiped her eyes with her palm. Then she fixed Reseng with a look that said she was not going to beg for her life or waste any more tears on someone like him.

“How are you going to kill me?”

Reseng was taken aback. Fifteen years as an assassin, and he had never once been asked that.

“Are you serious?”

“Yes,” she said flatly.

As per the plotter’s orders, he was going to break her neck. Snapping the slender neck of a woman who weighed no more than thirty-eight kilos would be a piece of cake. As long as she didn’t put up a fight, it would be quicker and less painful than might be imagined. But if she did struggle, she could end up with a broken vertebra jutting through the skin. Or writhing in agony for several long minutes until she finally suffocated from a blocked airway, fully conscious the whole time.

“How would you like to die?”

As soon as the question was out, Reseng felt like an ass. What kind of question was that? How would you like to die? It sounded like he was a waiter asking how she’d like her steak cooked. She lowered her head in thought. He could tell she wasn’t actually choosing right then and there, but was instead confirming a decision she had already made for herself.

“I have poison,” she said.

Reseng didn’t get it at first, and he repeated the words to himself: I. Have. Poison. So she’d already thought about suicide. And she’d chosen poison as her way out. He wasn’t surprised. Statistically, men usually chose guns or jumping to their deaths, whereas women preferred pills or hanging. Women tended to prefer a means of death that left their bodies undamaged. But, contrary to what they imagined, the kinds of poisons that were easy to purchase, like pesticides or hydrochloric acid, resulted in very long, very painful deaths, and had high rates of failure.

“It’s the least you could do,” she said, her eyes pleading.

Reseng avoided the woman’s gaze. Break her neck, stuff her in the bag, and get to Bear’s. That was his job. Plotters hated it when lowly assassins took it upon themselves to change the plot. It wasn’t about pride. The problem was that if the plot changed, then the people waiting at their various posts would need new cues, and everyone’s roles would get out of sync. If incriminating evidence got left behind or if things went sour, then someone else would have to die in order to cover it up. And sometimes that someone was you. Changing the assigned plot was not just a headache but a potential death sentence.

Reseng looked at the woman. She was still gazing at him, pleading—not for her life, but for this one last thing. Could he grant it to her? Should he? Reseng furrowed his brow.

If she took poison, it would remain in the ashes even after cremation. And if traces of her DNA were found in his car or on his clothes and poison was detected in a sample of her ashes, there would be compelling evidence of foul play. But that sort of thing happened only in the movies, and was rare in real life. Plotters weren’t perfectionists, they were just pricks. Poison, broken neck—it made no difference. The woman would be cremated either way, and her ashes would sink quietly to the bottom of a river.

“What kind of poison?” Reseng asked.

She took a packet from her purse. He held out his hand. She hesitated before giving it to him. He gave the cellophane packet a gentle shake and held it up to the light. There was a loose white powder inside.

“Cyanide?”

She nodded, her eyes never once leaving his.

“How much do you know about cyanide?”

She tipped her head to one side, as if she didn’t understand the question.

“I know you die if you swallow it.” Her voice sounded half daring and half annoyed. “What else is there to know?”

“Where’d you get it?”

“I stole it from a friend of mine who was planning to kill herself.”

Reseng smiled. To her, it probably looked like a smirk, but in truth it was closer to pity. His lips tended to curl whenever he didn’t know quite what to say.

“If this friend of yours bought it off the Internet or from a drug dealer, then there’s a good chance it’s fake. And if it is, you could have a real problem on your hands. But even if it is real, death by cyanide is not the romantic death you think it is. Nor will you die in seconds. I’m guessing you think this is one of those suicide pills that spies take to die instantly, but those contain liquid cyanide, not this solid stuff.”

Reseng flicked the cellophane packet onto the floor like a cigarette butt. She scrambled for it, panicked, as if it were precious to her, then looked up at him dubiously.

“It won’t kill me?”

“Two hundred and fifty milligrams is enough to kill most people. But it’s extremely painful. Your muscles get paralyzed, your tongue and throat burn, your organs melt, and it can take anywhere from minutes to hours until you eventually die of asphyxiation. Some people take longer, and some actually survive. Not only that, you don’t leave a very pretty corpse behind.”

The woman’s shoulders slumped. Her face filled with despair. She turned to the window; she’d stopped crying or even shaking. She just stared blankly at the sky, her eyes unfocused. Reseng checked his watch: 4:30. He had to get out of there before it got dark. Once the sun went down, the alleys would be crawling with prostitutes, their faces freshly painted, and johns drunk on booze and lust.

“Lucky for you, I have the perfect thing.”

Reseng gestured at the attaché case. The woman turned to look.

“Barbituric acid. Peaceful way to go. Doesn’t hurt like cyanide or rat poison, and won’t leave you looking messed up or ugly. It’ll be just like falling asleep. A scientist back in the mid-nineteenth century, Adolf von Baeyer, came up with barbiturates while working on sedatives and sleeping pills. He named it after his friend Barbara. It’s still used as a sedative. It’s also been used for hypnosis, as a tranquilizer, and even has hallucinogenic properties. Other drugs, like barbital and ruminol, were based on it. It’s used for euthanasia all over the world.”

The woman made a face at his long-winded explanation, but she nodded.

“I’ll give it to you if you answer something for me,” Reseng added. “Then you’ll get the peaceful death you want.”

She nodded again.

“Do you remember a tall man who was hired to kill you?”

“Yes.”

“Why did he let you live?”

She shifted her weight from side to side and pressed her hand to her forehead. As she recalled the events of that day, her expression kept changing from wonder to horror and back again.

“I honestly don’t know. He stared at me for almost half an hour and then left.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes. He just sat there quietly and looked at me.”

“He didn’t say anything?”

“He said, ‘Stay away from your regular places. Don’t go back. If you’re really lucky, you might just survive.’ That’s what he told me.”

Reseng nodded.

“Is he dead?” she asked.

“He’s still alive, but probably not for long. Once you’re on the list, your chances are shot.”

“Is he going to die because of me?”

“Maybe. But not only because of you.”

Reseng checked his watch again. He gave the woman a look to indicate that time was up. She didn’t react. He opened the briefcase and took out a pill bottle and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

She watched him silently, then asked, “If you cremate me in secret, no one will know I’m dead, right? My mother will spend the rest of her life waiting for me to come home.”

Reseng paused in the middle of taking the pills out of the bottle. The woman started crying. He was relieved she wasn’t crying loudly. He waited for her tears to stop. Was it her quiet weeping that had stopped Chu’s clock? After five minutes, he rested his hand on the woman’s shoulder to tell her they couldn’t delay any longer. She brushed his hand away in irritation.

“Can I write my mother a letter?”

Reseng gave her a pained look.

She added, “It doesn’t matter if she never gets it.”

Her eyes were still brimming with tears. Reseng checked his watch again and nodded. She took a pen and a small appointment book out of her bag and began to write on one of the pages.

Dear Mom,

I’m sorry. I’m sorry to Dad in heaven, too. I meant to save up money and go to school and get married, but it didn’t work out. I’m sorry I died before you. Don’t worry about me. Dying this way isn’t so bad. The world’s a rotten place anyway.

A tear fell on the word heaven, blurring the ink. She signed it, then tore the page out and handed it to Reseng.

“Pretty handwriting,” he said.

What a dumb thing to say. Reseng had no idea why he’d said it. The woman put the appointment book back into her bag. He assumed she was reaching for a handkerchief next to wipe away her tears, but to his surprise she took out a makeup pouch. She gave him another look to indicate that she needed a little more time. He raised his hand to tell her to go ahead. During the more than ten minutes she spent carefully reapplying her makeup, Reseng stood and stared, one eyebrow raised. What sort of vanity was this? She finished touching up her face and put her makeup away. The click of the bag closing sounded unusually loud.

“Will you stay with me until I’m gone? I’m a little scared,” she said with a smile.

Reseng nodded and offered her the pills. She stared at them for several seconds before taking them from his palm and swallowing them with the glass of whiskey he poured for her.

Reseng tried to help her to lie down, but she pushed him away and stretched out on the bed by herself. She rested her hands on her chest and stared up at the ceiling. It didn’t take long for the hallucinations to start.

“I see a red wind. And a blue lion. Right next to it is a cute rainbow-colored polar bear. Is that heaven?”

“Yeah, sure, that’s heaven. You’re on your way there now.”

“Thanks for saying that. You’re going to hell.”

“Then I guess we won’t be seeing each other again. Because you’re definitely going to heaven, and I’m definitely going to hell.”

She let out a small laugh. A single tear spilled from her smiling eyes.

Chu held out another two years after the woman died.

Like the sly jackal that he was, like the insane thorn in the side of the plotters that he was, Chu stayed one step ahead of the frenzied, persistent hunt. Rumors spread about trackers and assassins falling prey to Chu, too blinded by the promise of reward money to watch their own tails while tailing him, and those same rumors got twisted up and blown out of proportion and kept the denizens of the meat market entertained for some time. Reseng wasn’t surprised. Those third-rate hired guns and aging bounty hunters accustomed to nothing more challenging than chasing down runaway prostitutes were no match for Chu and never had been. But there was no way of knowing whether any of the rumors floating like wayward soap bubbles around the meat market were true. Most deaths in their world, of trackers and assassins alike, never surfaced. At any rate, maybe the rumors were true, because Chu could not be caught.

About a year after he’d gone underground, Chu went on the offensive. He hunted down several plotters and killed them, along with several contractors and brokers. At one point, he sauntered right into the midst of the meat market and smashed up a contractor’s office. But the plotters he targeted had nothing to do with the botched call girl job. In fact, they were closer to amateurs—low-rate plotters hired by cheap contractors for onetime gigs. No one understood why Chu picked them, other than the fact that he stood no chance of getting anywhere near the people who actually operated the gears of the plotting world.

After Chu trashed the office and stole a ledger that he couldn’t possibly have had any use for, a group of men turned up in Old Raccoon’s library. One of the men was Hanja. Though he looked like any other boss of a security company, he ran a corporate-style contracting firm, making money not only from government agencies and corporations but also from whatever he could gain from the black market. The meat-market dealers were nothing but small-time hoodlums to Hanja, so the fact that they were at the same meeting showed just how rattled and pissed off Chu had made everyone. Hanja sat on the couch, looking like he’d just taken a bite out of a giant turd.

When Old Raccoon took his seat, the meat-market dealers all started talking at once.

“I’m losing it, I tell you. What the fuck does Chu want anyway? We have to know what he wants if we’re going to sweet-talk him, or trick him out into the open. Either way, let’s do something, dammit.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying. Why isn’t that lunatic talking? Someone cut out his tongue or what? If it’s cash he wants, he should say he wants cash. If his feelings got hurt, he should say so. If he’s angry, he should say he’s angry. But he’s gotta say something. He can’t just bust in, smash everything to shit, and leave.”

“I swear, he’s cost me an arm and a leg. He’s killed three of my guys already. And it doesn’t stop there! I had to pay to get rid of their bodies, as well. Fuck, man. Bear’s the only one benefiting from this. But why is Chu only going after my guys? There are way worse guys here than me.”

“Look in a mirror lately? Who here is worse than you?”

“Hey, did any of you write him an IOU? You have to pay cash. Cash! Chu hates IOUs!”

Old Raccoon sat in the middle, looking amused. Why? Especially considering that Chu could walk in at any moment and shove a knife in his stomach.

“The scholars of the Joseon dynasty had a saying,” Old Raccoon said with a smile. “‘There’s no telling which way a frog or King Heungseon will leap.’ They could just as easily have been speaking of our predicament.”

“What do you think Chu is up to?” Choi the Butcher asked. Choi hired out illegal Chinese immigrants of Korean descent as cheap labor.

“How would I know what that lunatic is thinking? Maybe he wants to slit my throat. Or yours.”

“Let’s offer a reward.” Hanja, who’d been sitting quietly in the corner, finally spoke up. “To whoever provides information to help us find him. That’ll get people moving. Detectives will want a piece of the action, too.”

“Money? Are we all pitching in equally?” Choi asked.

“Fuck no.” Minari Pak, whose office had been trashed by Chu, gave Hanja a sidelong glance and grumbled. “Some people in this room do a hell of a lot more business than the rest, so what’s this crap about equal? Don’t you know how much damage he did to my place.”

Hanja silenced them with two words.

“I’ll pay.”

He wasn’t showing off. He just wanted to put an end to the meeting. The other men looked annoyed at Hanja’s cockiness, but it was obvious they were relieved.

“The saying goes that kindness starts with having a full larder, and that must certainly be true of our generous and wealthy friend here.” The sarcasm in Old Raccoon’s voice was unmistakable as he looked at Hanja.

Hanja smiled broadly at Old Raccoon and said, “What can I say? Unlike you, I’m not picky. If you ask me to do a job, I do it. I work hard. In earnest. And in silence.”

Ironically, the overthrow of three decades of military dictatorship, a return to democratically elected civilian presidencies, and the brisk advent of democratization led to a major boom in the assassination industry. During the era of dictatorship, assassinations were clandestine operations carried out by a small number of plotters, hit men expertly trained by the government or the military, and highly experienced and trustworthy contractors. In fact, there wasn’t even enough action to call it an industry. Those who knew about the plotting world or were involved in it were few, and there was never that much work. The military, for the most part, had no interest in plotters. Those were untroubled and unenlightened times when you could pack a troublemaker into your jeep with their whole family watching, lock them away in the basement of a building on Namsan Mountain, beat them until they were half-crippled, and send them back home, without hearing a peep out of anyone. Why bother with a highly skilled plotter?

What sped up the assassination industry was the new regime of democratically elected civilian administrations that sought the trappings of morality. Maybe they thought that by stamping their foreheads with the words It’s okay, we’re not the military, they could fool the people. But power is all the same deep down, no matter what it looks like. As Deng Xiaoping once said, “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is white or black as long as it catches mice.” The problem was that the newly democratic government couldn’t use that basement on Namsan to beat the crap out of loudmouthed pains in the ass. And so, in order to avoid the eyes of the people and the press, to avoid generating evidence of their own complex chain of command and execution, and to avoid any future responsibility, they started doing business on the sly with contractors. And thus began the age of outsourcing. It was cheaper and simpler than taking care of it themselves, but best of all, there was less cleanup. On the rare occasion that the shit did hit the fan, the government was safe and clear of it. While contractors were being hauled off to jail, all they had to do was look shocked and appalled in front of the news cameras and say things like “What a terrible and unfortunate tragedy!”

The boom really took off when corporations followed the state’s lead in outsourcing to plotters. Corporations generated far more work than the state, and the contractors’ primary clientele shifted from public to private. As the jobs increased, small, lesser-known start-ups began to crowd in, and washed-up assassins, gangsters, retired servicemen, and former homicide detectives, who were tired of working for peanuts, swarmed to the meat market. And, like an alligator, Hanja waited just below the surface, eyeing the scene closely and observing the changes, biding his time. While Old Raccoon faded out of relevance, unable to perceive the shifting tides, this dandy with a Stanford MBA secretly cultivated his own team of plotters and mercenaries under the cover of a perfectly legal security company.

The principles of the market hadn’t changed since it first sprang into being. Whoever provided a better service at a lower price was the winner. Hanja knew that. While Old Raccoon was cooped up in his library, reading encyclopedias and reminiscing about all the goodies that had fallen into his lap back in the days of dictatorship, and the meat market’s third-rate contractors were too blind with greed over the scraps to do their work properly and were being hauled off to prison, Hanja was building his modern network of businessmen and officials, recruiting experts from every field, and employing high-quality plotters. He transformed the once-messy, free-for-all plotting world into a clean, convenient supermarket. You half-expected to be beckoned inside by beautiful models hired to wave and smile and say “Right this way!” and “Who can we kill for you today?” So, no matter how big a stink the meat-market dealers made, Hanja now ruled this world.

The long, boring meeting ground on with no decisions made other than to offer a bounty. It was less a meeting than a gripe session about Chu. Reseng stepped outside to have a smoke. As he was taking a deep drag, Hanja joined him.

Reseng offered him a cigarette.

“I quit. I can’t stand things that stink anymore.”

Reseng raised an eyebrow in amusement.

Hanja took a gold-plated case out of his suit pocket and offered him a business card.

“Call me. Let’s have dinner sometime. We’re family, after all.”

Reseng stared at Hanja’s long, pale fingers before taking the card. Hanja left without rejoining the meeting. Why did Hanja say they were family, when they didn’t share a single drop of blood between them? There was just the fact that they’d both grown up in Old Raccoon’s library. But they’d never lived there at the same time. By the time Reseng had arrived at the library, Hanja was attending university in the United States.

The bounty was posted, but still Chu hadn’t been caught. More rumors sprang up, swirling through the air like falling leaves and disappearing underfoot. Old Raccoon refused to join the hunt. He stayed in his study all day, reading his encyclopedias. So Reseng did nothing, either. The thought of going up against a man like Chu was too much. He had recurring nightmares of running into him. It was always a narrow dead-end street, Reseng trembling at one end and Chu, the brutal assassin, blocking his escape at the other. Reseng knew he was no match for Chu—not in his dreams or in his waking life. The only way someone like him could ever defeat Chu would be by chucking a dagger at him from behind, like the idiot prince Paris.

That summer the rain was incessant. People joked that the monsoonal front had hunkered down right in the middle of the peninsula and was going on a bender. As with any slack season, Reseng passed the time by starting his mornings with a can of beer, listening to music, staring out the window, and playing with Desk and Lampshade. When the cats fell asleep, their heads resting on each other’s bodies, Reseng lay down in bed to read. Books about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, books about the once-powerful descendants of Genghis Khan who’d roamed freely over the steppes but went into a sudden rapid decline when they settled behind fortress walls, and books about the history of coffee, syphilis, typewriters. When he grew bored of thumbing through pages dampened by the humid air, he tossed the book to the other side of the bed, knocked back another can of beer, and fell asleep. Just another ordinary summer.

On the last day of September, during a heavy rainfall, there was a knock on Reseng’s door. When he opened it, Chu was standing there, drenched. He was so tall that the beads of water dripping off the brim of his cap seemed to hang in the air for a long time. He had a large camping backpack, a rolled-up sleeping bag, and a shopping bag filled with beer and whiskey.

“Having a drink with you was next on my bucket list,” Chu said.

“Come on in.”

Chu stepped through the door, shedding drops of rain and startling Desk and Lampshade, who scrambled to the very top of their cat tower and huddled inside. Chu had lost a lot of weight. Lanky to begin with, he was now just skin and bone.

Reseng offered him two hand towels. Chu took off his cap and set his backpack on the floor. He dried his face and hair and brushed the water from his leather jacket.

“No money for an umbrella?” Reseng asked.

“Accidentally left mine on the subway. Didn’t want to waste money on another.”

“Since when do dead men worry about money?”

“Good point,” Chu said with a light laugh. “Dead man or not, I still don’t want to waste money on an umbrella.”

“You want a change of clothes?”

“No, I’m fine. I’ll dry off soon enough. Besides, I doubt your clothes would fit me. You’re too short.”

“I’m average. You’re just tall.”

Reseng took out a space heater and put on a pot of coffee. Chu turned on the heater and warmed his hands over it. The cats, unable to resist their curiosity, poked their heads out to inspect Chu. He wiggled his fingers at them. The cats seemed intrigued but didn’t leave the tower.

“They won’t play with me.” Chu looked disappointed.

“I told them never to play with bad guys.”

Reseng handed Chu a cup of coffee. Chu gulped it down. Then he put the damp towels on the floor and shivered. Reseng refilled the cup.

“How much is my bounty?” Chu asked.

“Hundred million.”

“You could buy a Benz with that. Hey, I’m gifting you a Benz.”

Reseng snorted. “What an honor. If I kill you, I get cash and glory. For taking down the world’s greatest assassin.”

“Who cares about glory? Cash is all that matters.”

“Why not die quietly on your own terms?”

Chu paused briefly in the middle of emptying the shopping bag. “What’s the point? It’s easy money; you should take it. Besides, I never did anything nice for you.”

“That’s true,” Reseng said. “You never did.”

Chu looked disappointed. “But I paid for more meals than you.”

“Did you? How come I don’t remember any of those meals?”

“So unfair.”

Reseng got ice cubes, whiskey glasses, and some beef jerky from the kitchen while Chu placed the bottles on the table. There were two six-packs of Heineken, two bottles of Jack Daniel’s, a fifth of Johnnie Walker Blue, and five bottles of soju.

“That’s an odd combo. You drinking all of that?”

“It’s my first drink since going on the run.”

Chu lined the cans and bottles up neatly.

“If I were you, I would’ve gotten drunk every day. Must get boring having to stay hidden.”

Chu smiled. He filled a whiskey glass with Jack Daniel’s and knocked it back. His large Adam’s apple bobbed up and down with each swallow.

“Oh yeah, it’s been too long,” he said, wiping his lips. He looked like he had just reunited with an old friend.

He added two ice cubes to his glass and filled it halfway, then stared at the ice for the longest time before smiling mysteriously.

“I was too scared to drink,” he said, his thick eyebrows quivering.

“I didn’t know guys like you got scared,” Reseng said as he opened a Heineken.

“It’s a dumb move to get drunk without someone to watch your back.”

Chu emptied the glass and chewed on an ice cube. The sound of the ice grinding and cracking between his teeth put Reseng’s nerves on edge. Suddenly, Chu shoved the glass into Reseng’s hand. Reseng hurriedly set down his Heineken. Chu filled the glass two-thirds full with Jack Daniel’s and added two more ice cubes. The alcohol sloshed as he tossed the ice in.

“Drink up,” Chu said, gazing at him. “Jack is a real man’s drink.”

Chu’s commanding tone got on Reseng’s nerves.

“Alcohol companies made that up to sell alcohol to fake men like you.”

Chu didn’t laugh at the joke. Instead, he kept staring at Reseng as if he wanted him to hurry up and drink. Reseng stared down at the glass. It was a lot of alcohol to swallow in one shot. He fished the ice cubes out and dumped them on the tray. Then he gulped the whiskey down.

Chu looked satisfied. He stood up, looked around the room, and went over to the cat tower. Timid Lampshade went back inside and refused to come out, but curious Desk tiptoed closer to Chu and sniffed at his hand. Chu gave the cat a scratch behind the ears. Desk seemed to like it; she lowered her head and purred.

Chu played with the cat for a while before coming back to the table, picking up his glass, and sitting on the edge of the bed. He flipped through the books strewn around on the bedspread.

“Did you know I didn’t like you at first? Every time I went to Old Raccoon’s library, you were reading. That annoyed me. I’m not sure why. Maybe I was jealous. You seemed different from the rest of us.”

“I never read. I was only pretending to when you were there. So I’d look different.”

“Well, you did. You looked—how should I put it? Kind of soft.”

“You were in the library a lot, too. I bet you read as much as I did.”

“I hated reading. But I bet even I could handle this one.”

Chu was holding The History of Syphilis.

“That’s not what you think.”

Chu flipped through a few pages and laughed. “You’re right. It’s not my speed. Why are there no damn pictures?” He tossed it back on the bed and picked up the one next to it, called The Blue Wolves. “Wolves? You planning to quit and raise wolves instead?”

Reseng smirked. “It’s the story of eight of Genghis Khan’s warriors. Plenty of animals like you in that book. It took the Blue Wolves just ten years to build the largest empire in the world.”

“What happened to them after?”

“They moved into a fortress and turned into dogs.”

Chu looked intrigued as he flipped through a few pages of The Blue Wolves, but he seemed to struggle to understand the sentences and soon lost interest. The Blue Wolves landed with a thunk on top of The History of Syphilis.

“So what’s this I hear about you killing the girl?” Chu asked.

Reseng’s earlobes turned hot, and he didn’t respond. Instead, he picked up the bottle and filled a glass a third of the way with Jack Daniel’s. Chu’s eyes followed him closely. Reseng gazed at the glass for a moment before drinking. It tasted sweeter than the first glass.

“Where’d you hear that?” Reseng asked. His voice was calm.

“Here and there.”

“If you heard it while on the run, then I guess that means everyone knows.”

“Lot of crazy rumors in this business.” Chu raised an eyebrow, as if to ask why it mattered where he’d heard it.

Reseng looked Chu straight in the eye. “Did Bear tell you?”

“Bear is a lot quieter than he looks.”

Chu was taking care to defend Bear, which almost definitely meant that Bear was the one who’d told. There were plenty of places where word could’ve gotten out, but Bear had no reason to take risks for Reseng’s sake. Around here, no one took foolish risks or went out of their way when it came to Chu. Least of all Bear, with his two daughters, whom he’d struggled to raise on his own. Reseng understood. Had it been a detective sniffing around, Bear would have taken it to the grave. All the same, he couldn’t help feeling annoyed. When word leaks out, it doesn’t have to travel far before you end up in a plotter’s crosshairs.

“Did you really think you could save her?” Reseng asked, not backing down.

“No, of course not. I’m not the type to save anyone. I’m too busy trying to keep myself alive.”

“So there’s nothing strange about what I did. You’re the strange one.”

“You’re right. I’m the strange one. You did what was expected of you.”

What was expected … Those words made Reseng feel both relieved and insulted. Chu moved over to the table and poured more alcohol. The bottle was already almost empty. Chu emptied his glass again, opened the second bottle, and poured himself another glass. He gulped that one down, as well.

“I wanted to ask you something,” Reseng said. “Did you ever go back to see her?”

“Nope.”

“Then why let her live? Did you think the plotters would pat you on the shoulder and say ‘It happens to all of us’?”

“To be honest, I have no idea.”

Chu drank another glass of whiskey. For someone who had gone without any alcohol for two years, he was having no trouble consuming an entire bottle all by himself in less than twenty minutes. His face was turning red. Did he really think he was safe in Reseng’s apartment?

Chu asked, “Have you ever met any of the plotters who’ve given you orders?”

“Not once in fifteen years.”

“Don’t you wonder?” Chu asked. “Who’s telling you what to do, I mean. Who decides when you use the turn signal, when you step on the brake, when you step on the gas, when to turn left, when to turn right, when to shut up and when to speak.”

“Why are you wondering that all of a sudden?”

“I was standing there, looking at this girl who was just skin and bones, and I suddenly wondered who these plotters were anyway. I could have killed her with one finger. She was so scared, she just sat there frozen. When I saw how hard she was shaking, I wanted to find out exactly who was sitting at their desk, twirling their pen, and coming up with this bullshit plan.”

“I would never have guessed you were such a romantic.”

“It’s not about romance or curiosity or anything like that. I mean that I didn’t realize until then just what a cowardly prick I’d been.” Chu sounded on edge.

“Plotters are just pawns like us,” Reseng said. “A request comes in, and they draw up the plans. There’s someone above them who tells them what to do. And above that person is another plotter telling them what to do. You know what’s there if you keep going all the way to the top? Nothing. Just an empty chair.”

“There has to be someone in the chair.”

“Nope, it’s empty. To put it another way, it’s only a chair. Anyone can sit in it. And that chair, which anyone can sit in, decides everything.”

“I don’t get it.”

“It’s a system. You think that if you go up there with a knife and stab the person at the very top, that’ll fix everything. But no one’s there. It’s just an empty chair.”

“I’ve been in this business for twenty years. I’ve killed countless guys, including friends of mine. I even killed my protégé. I gave him baby clothes at his daughter’s first birthday party. But if what you say is true, then I’ve been taking orders from a chair all this time. And you broke a defenseless woman’s neck because a chair told you to.”

Chu downed another glass. As he caught his breath, he poured more whiskey for Reseng. Reseng ignored it and took a sip of his Heineken. He was tempted to blurt out that he hadn’t broken her neck, but he swallowed the words back down with a mouthful of beer.

Instead, Reseng said, “You can’t shit in your pants just because the toilet is dirty.”

Chu sneered.

“You’re sounding more and more like Old Raccoon every day,” he said. “That’s not good. Smooth talkers will stab a guy in the back every time.”

“Whereas you sound more and more like a whiny brat. Do you really think this tantrum you’re throwing makes you look cool? It doesn’t. No matter what you do, you won’t change a thing. Just like you changed nothing for that girl.”

Chu unzipped the top of his jacket to reveal the leather gun holster under his arm that had been refashioned into a knife holster. He took out the knife and set it on the table. His movements were calm, not the slightest bit menacing.

“I could kill you very painfully with this knife. Make you shiver in agony for hours, blood gushing, steel scraping against bone, until your guts spill out of your body and hang down to the floor. Do you think you’ll still be mouthing off about empty chairs and systems and claiming that nothing has changed? Of course not. Because you’re full of shit. Anyone who thinks he’s safe is full of shit.”

Reseng stared at the knife. It was an ordinary kitchen knife, a German brand, Henckels. The blade was razor-sharp, as if it had just come off the whetstone. The top of the handle was wound tightly with a handkerchief. Chu preferred that brand because it was sturdy, the blade didn’t rust easily, and you could buy it anywhere. Other knife men looked down on the brand as a lady’s knife that was good only for cooking at home, but in fact it was a good knife. It didn’t chip or break easily the way sushi knives did.

Reseng peeled his eyes away from the knife and looked at Chu. Chu was angry. But his eyes lacked their usual venomous glint. The whiskey he’d guzzled must have gotten to him. Reseng thought about his own knife in the drawer. He tried to recall the last time he’d stabbed someone. Had it been six years? Seven? He couldn’t remember. Could he even get the knife out fast enough? If he made a move for it, Chu might grab his, too. And if he did manage to get the knife out of the drawer in time, could he hold his own against Chu? Did he have any chance at all of being the victor?

Unlikely. Reseng took out a cigarette and started smoking. Chu held out his hand. Reseng took out another cigarette, lit it, and passed it over to Chu, who inhaled deeply and leaned his head way back to stare at the ceiling. He held the pose for a long time, as if to say, If you’re going to stab me, do it now.

When the cigarette had burned halfway down, Chu straightened up and looked at Reseng.

“The whole thing’s fucked-up, isn’t it? I’ve got all these goons coming after me, hoping to get a taste of that reward money, and meanwhile I have no idea who to kill or what to do. To be honest, I don’t even care if there is anything at the top. It could be an empty chair, like you say, or there could be some prick sitting in it. Won’t make any difference either way to a knucklehead like me. I could die and come back in another form and I still wouldn’t understand how any of this works.”

“Will you go to Hanja?”

“Maybe.”

“Don’t.”

“Then where am I supposed to go instead?”

“Leave the country. Go to Mexico, the United States, France, maybe somewhere in Africa … Lots of places you could go. You can find work in a private military company. They’ll protect you.”

Chu gave a furtive smile.

“You’re giving me the same advice I gave that girl. Am I supposed to thank you now?”

Chu downed his whiskey, refilled it, downed it again, then emptied the rest of the second bottle into his glass.

“Aren’t you going to drink with me? It’s lonely drinking by myself.”

Chu wasn’t joking. He really did look lonely sitting there at the table. Reseng drank the glass of whiskey Chu had poured for him. Chu opened the Johnnie Walker Blue and poured Reseng another shot. Then he raised his glass in a toast. Reseng clinked his glass against Chu’s.

“Oh, that’s much better,” Reseng said, sounding impressed. “I like this Johnnie Walker Blue stuff better than that ‘real man’s,’ or whatever, Jack Daniel’s.”

Chu seemed genuinely amused. He didn’t say much as they worked on the rest of the bottle. Reseng didn’t have anything to say, either, so they drank in silence. Chu drank far more than Reseng. When the bottle was empty, Chu stumbled into the bathroom. Reseng heard the sound of pissing, then vomiting, then the toilet flushing several times. Twenty minutes passed and still he did not come out of the bathroom. All Reseng heard was the tap running. His eyes never left Chu’s knife where it sat in the middle of the table.

When Chu still hadn’t come out after thirty minutes, Reseng knocked on the door. It was locked and there was no answer from inside. He got a flat-head screwdriver to pry it open. Chu was asleep on the toilet, hunched over like an old bear, and the bathtub was overflowing onto the floor. Reseng turned off the water and helped him to the bed.

Once he was stretched out flat, Chu started to snore, as if he were getting the first good sleep of his life. His snoring was as loud as he was tall. It was so loud that even Lampshade timidly poked her head out from inside the cat tower, crept down to the bed, and started sniffing at Chu’s face and hair. Reseng sat on the couch and drank several more cans of beer, then fell asleep watching Desk and Lampshade enjoying their new game of swatting at Chu’s hair and walking across his chest and stomach.

When Reseng awoke in the morning, Chu was gone. His big backpack was gone, too. All that was left was his kitchen knife with the handkerchief wrapped around the handle, lying in the middle of the table like a present.

A week later, Chu’s body arrived at Bear’s Pet Crematorium.

By the time Old Raccoon and Reseng got there, it was raining hard, just like on the day of Chu’s visit. Bear held an umbrella over Old Raccoon as he got out of the car.

“Is it done?” Old Raccoon asked.

Bear looked surprised at the question. “I haven’t started yet.”

Chu’s body was in a toolshed. Bear had refrigerators for storing bodies, but they were small, meant for cats and dogs. He didn’t have anything big enough to fit all six foot three of Chu. Old Raccoon unzipped the body bag. Chu’s eyes were closed.

“I counted twenty-seven stab wounds,” Bear said with a shiver.

Old Raccoon unbuttoned Chu’s tattered shirt and counted the stab marks himself. Other than the one that had entered at the solar plexus and pierced a lung, most of the wounds hadn’t proved fatal. The assassin could have killed him easily, but instead he’d taken his sweet time, dancing around the vital spots, playing with Chu like a lion cub toying with an injured squirrel. Chu’s right elbow was broken, the bone jutting through the skin, and his left hand was still locked tight around a knife. It was the same style and brand as the kitchen knife he had left on Reseng’s table. Reseng tried to remove the knife from Chu’s grip.