The Plotters. Un-su Kim

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