by Martin Limon
“Yeah. You think he was suspicious?”
“Of course he was suspicious. He’s a cop, isn’t he?”
“But we’re the investigators assigned to this case for the U.S. side. He’s not going to think we had anything to do with it.”
“Not as long as you keep your trap shut.”
Ernie backed away from the wall, turned the jeep around, and swooshed through the growing blanket of snow. On the way back to the compound, slush and shattered ice ran after our spinning wheels. Frozen ghosts vanishing in the night.
I thought of Cecil Whitcomb and how pale and shriveled his body looked. Just yesterday I’d talked to him, gazed into his eyes, watched as he dispassionately read a note from a beautiful woman pleading for a rendezvous. And I thought of the two women who’d maneuvered us into this mess.
All the shit started with Eun-hi, the sexiest bar girl in Itaewon. For quite some time I’d wanted to get my hands on her flesh. Before it was for lust. Now I had a different motive.
3
Ernie and I were both grateful to the army.
It may sound strange when you consider that the last big case I solved got me sent to the DMZ for six months. Standard price for busting a general. But somehow the army always seems to know best. I learned a lot up there, found out what life is like in the hinterlands of Korea, and learned to accept my fate like a combat soldier, facing one day at a time, accepting the few comforts fortune might provide. And it gave me time to cool off.
After I’d done some investigative work for the 2nd Infantry Division Commander, the Department of the Army had questioned what a CID agent was doing in an artillery battery. When nobody could answer, I was transferred back to Seoul. Fortunately, the old 8th Army Commander had rotated back to the States so there was nobody left at the head shed with a hard-on for me. I was assigned back to the CID Detachment and after a couple of days it was as if I’d never left.
The army is always changing, which might have something to do with why it doesn’t change at all.
What was I grateful for? For having a real life, for having money coming in—not much, but enough—and for having a job to do. I was an investigator and I wore suits and did important work. A status I never thought I’d reach when I was a kid in East L.A.
My mother died when I was two years old, and my father had taken off for Mexico shortly thereafter. My cousins sometimes told me that he was dead, sometimes that he was alive. After a while I figured that they didn’t know whether he was dead or alive and their rumormongering was just another form of childish cruelty. A few years later, they stopped mentioning him—and I stopped caring.
I was brought up by the County of Los Angeles—in foster homes. It was a rough existence but I learned a lot about people, how to read them, how to hide when it was time to hide, and how to wait them out. The mothers were all right. It was the fathers you had to watch put for. Especially when they were drunk.
In the summers I was allowed to stay with my Tía Esmeralda, and she and her son, my cousin Flaco, taught me what it is to be Mexican. They taught me what it is to revere a family. What it is to cling to your honor no matter how painful a prospect that might be, even unto death.
What they didn’t say to me, what nobody said, was that my father hadn’t clung to his. He was a lost man. A man who hadn’t honored his family. I learned a GI phrase later that described it perfectly: lower than dog shit.
Ernie was from a whole different world: the suburbs of Detroit. And he was grateful to the army for another reason.
When Ernie had first landed in Southeast Asia he was an eighteen-year-old pup with wide eyes and a sex drive as big as the monsoon sky. He loved it all: the mad convoys of two-ton trucks swerving around children and sharpened spikes on Highway 1, the dugout bunkers wired with rock and roll and shuddering with the pounding of nightly rocket attacks, the taking of women in broad daylight in muddy rice fields, the dirty-faced kids selling moist clumps of hashish through barbed wire fences.
After a year it was over.
When he went back to the States the place seemed bizarre. Everyone worried about deodorant and cars and mortgage payments. They ignored the fundamental realities of life. Like slaughter. Ernie had to go back to Vietnam. Back to the real world. He did.
But by this time the skinny Vietnamese boys had run out of hashish. All they had for sale were dirty vials of white horse, pure heroin from the Burmese Triangle. The GI’s knew it was a weapon, unleashed on them by the North Vietnamese in their desperate attempt to turn the tide of battle. But they took it anyway.
By the end of his hitch in the army, Ernie was strung out.
Back on the streets as a civilian, he was just another junkie and he knew he wouldn’t last long. In a fit of sobriety, he popped into the army recruiter’s office. Two weeks later he was back in boots. Clean. Quieting the aching need in his gut by filling it with liquor. To the point of madness. A fully acceptable pastime, as far as the army was concerned. They even encouraged drunkenness. They considered it whole-some.
Vietnam was over now but he managed to get an assignment to the nearest country available: Korea.
Right away he loved it: the girls, the bars, the poverty. And as an added bonus there was no heroin. The Korean Government didn’t encourage it as the Vietnamese had. To the contrary. Trafficking in heroin in the Republic of Korea was punishable by death.
People argue about the effectiveness of the death penalty but when it’s carried out absolutely, it works. I’d never seen any heroin since I’d been in Korea, I’d never even heard about anyone who was using.
Coming from East Los Angeles, that was a new experience.
When Ernie dropped me off at the CID building it was still dark. I used my key to open the Admin Office, turned on the lamp above Riley’s typewriter, and sat down to churn out the paperwork the army always requires.
As I pecked out my preliminary report, I thought of what I knew about the British soldiers in the Honor Guard. Their pay wasn’t good—probably less than half what an American of comparable rank pulls down—so they often use their ration control plates to buy everything they can out of the American PX and sell it to the Koreans down in the village. Sometimes they barter. Paying their houseboy in the barracks in imported liquor or cigarettes for doing their laundry and shining their shoes. Or buying freeze-dried coffee and hand lotion and tins of preserved meat for the girls in Itaewon who would favor them with those ephemeral charms that a young soldier prizes most.
So maybe this all had to do with some sort of black-marketing scam. Maybe Miss Ku, the gal at the teahouse, wasn’t what she appeared to be. Maybe Cecil Whitcomb had gotten involved in a large black market deal and ripped Miss Ku off and she’d hired someone to take her revenge.
Maybe.
I made a note to check Whitcomb’s ration control records.
Or maybe they’d been in on something together and pissed somebody off and now Miss Ku was in danger. Or already dead.
I made a note to monitor the KNP reports for the next few days. Tonight, so far, there was nothing on a dead female.
When I finished the report, I pulled it out of the typewriter and checked it for spelling mistakes. I wasn’t worried about grammar. Nobody cares about grammar in the army. Only spelling. Spelling is something you can look up. Check out precisely without bending your brain too much. Since I’d been in the army I’d only heard grammar mentioned once. That was in Basic Training when my drill sergeant said, “When I talk, you assholes’d better know what I mean.” Somehow we always did.
Whoever read this report would understand its grim message. It was simple enough. A British soldier had been murdered, by person or persons unknown.
What they wouldn’t understand—what nobody knew but me—is that I would find the killer.
Ernie and I had been involved. Maybe we’d been double-crossed, used to set up an innocent man. Or maybe Miss Ku had been sincere, maybe she just wanted us to deliver a simple note. If that were true, Ernie a
nd I should’ve pressed harder, found out why Cecil Whitcomb was so nervous about talking to us. And why he seemed so passive when he read a love note from a beautiful woman.
Either way, nothing would stop me from getting the people who had done this.
Koreans might be inscrutable to most of the world, but they aren’t inscrutable to me. I grew up in East L.A. speaking two languages, living in two worlds, the Anglo and the Mexican. More worlds than that, really, if you consider the foster homes: Jewish, Polish, Argentinean. So learning a third language, Korean, hadn’t intimidated me. In fact it came fairly easily, especially when the army gave free night courses on the compound and the instructor was young and female and pretty. And living in the Korean world hadn’t bothered me either. Their culture was just another puzzle to unravel, like so many that I’d faced when the County of Los Angeles moved me from home to home.
I had time to solve this case. The request for an extension of my tour of duty in-country had been approved for another twelve months. I didn’t have to worry about money or food or a place to sleep. The army took care of that. Other than an occasional hassle at work, I had nothing else to do except drink beer and chase women and I could set that aside for a while. I’d catch the son of a bitch who killed Cecil Whitcomb.
And I’d make sure he rotted in prison. Or in hell.
“George! Wake up!”
I raised my head, my hands cold on the-sharp edge of the metal typewriter.
“You sleep here all night?”
It was Riley, the Admin Sergeant, the guy who’d first told us about the murder last night. He let go of my shoulder. I shook my head and wiped drool from the corner of my mouth.
'Yeah. I guess I did.”
“Better get your ass washed up. The First Sergeant’s on the way in and you know he won’t tolerate a sloppy troop.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
I stood up. Riley pulled a disposable razor out of his desk drawer and tossed it to me.
“Here. Use this.”
I caught it and grunted. “Thanks.”
Down in the latrine I washed up and managed to shave without cutting myself. After I finished, I dried my face with towels of coarse brown pulp. By the time I walked back into the Admin Office, Riley had a pot of coffee brewing. He handed me a cup. I thanked him and sipped on it gratefully.
“Better prepare for heavy swells,” he said. “The First Sergeant had one hellacious case of the ass last night.”
My head hurt so I said it softly. “Fuck the First Sergeant.”
“I wouldn’t,” Riley said. “Not even with your dick.”
The door slammed, heavy footsteps pounded, and a low growl reverberated down the hallway.
“Sueño! You in here?”
I didn’t answer. I guess he took that for a yes.
“Get your ass in my office!”
I finished drinking my coffee, set the cup down, and grinned at Riley.
“I hate to see the old boy so worked up before breakfast.”
“That son of a bitch doesn’t eat breakfast. He gets all his nourishment by chewing ass.”
I walked down the hallway, concentrating on keeping my chest thrust out and my shoulders back. I knew I put up a good front. I’d been working on my technique for years. But inside I felt completely alone.
4
IT WAS A DARK ROOM. WITH SOMBER RED CURLICUES in the wallpaper and a painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe, her halo radiant behind a shawl of purple silk. A tall priest dressed in black gazed down at me, warning me with his eyes to keep quiet. The room smelled of must and baby powder. Old women cried and twisted lace handkerchiefs with crablike fingers.
My mother didn’t look like herself. No flushed complexion, no smile ready to break out beneath laughing eyes, no movement in her arms or legs. She lay still on the bed and for a moment I thought she was a stranger, a stranger made of wax.
The priest pointed and nodded his head. I leaned across the damp sheets of the bed and kissed my mother’s face. The flesh was cold. I pulled away quickly. Her eyes remained tightly shut but her lips fluttered, like the wings of a dying butterfly.
“jorge,” she said. “jorge mío.”
They took me out of the room.
A few hours later the priest woke me and told me my mother was dead.
I cried for three days. The First Sergeant and I sat in uncomfortable silence. He puttered with paperwork and occasionally walked up and down the hallway to see if the secretary was in yet. I remained immobile on the hard wooden chair. His little coffeemaker gurgled in the corner and I was tempted to walk over and pour myself a cup, but I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction.
We were waiting for Ernie.
The First Sergeant didn’t want to waste his breath on just one maggot, he wanted to have us both here for the ass chewing. I knew his game. Keep me here, callousing my butt, so I’d get the message: You can’t be trusted to be let out of my sight or you’ll wander off and get lost again.
It was a game a lot of sergeants and officers play. Somehow it makes them feel good. Maybe their parents played it on them, I don’t know. And feeling good is more important to them than productivity. I was dying to get on with the investigation; time could be everything. The people I needed to talk to could disappear in a few hours like the morning mist. But I wasn’t going to beg.
Besides, it wouldn’t do any good. He was looking forward to this—in fact he had to wipe his mouth occasionally with the back of his hand because saliva was dripping out— and a First Sergeant with a case of the ass cannot be denied. Not in the army I know.
It was about one minute to eight when Ernie popped through the door.
“About time you got here,” the First Sergeant said.
Ernie ignored him, walked over to the coffeemaker, and poured himself a cup. He hunched over the little counter while he twisted open the sugar jar, scraped some granules off the bottom, and shook a smattering of flakes into his cup. He peered into the jar, trying to loosen the remaining crust.
“Why don’t you invest in some more sugar, Top, and a little cream? You can’t keep drinking this stuff straight. Too toxic. Rot your gut.”
The First Sergeant stood behind his desk, his fingertips resting lightly on the immaculately white blotter, glaring at Ernie. He wasn’t a tall man but he was husky and if it wasn’t for a potbelly that was just beginning to grow, he would’ve appeared muscular. Closely cropped streaks of white hair bookended the sides of his gray crew cut.
Blood rose through his thick neck and settled in slack jowls.
“Bascom,” he said, “are you through dicking around with that coffee?”
“Just about.”
Ernie clinked his spoon inside the metal cup, slurped on the hot java, and topped it off with just a dash more coffee. Like a potentate about to attend a ceremony, he paraded over to his chair, set his cup down on the cigarette-scarred table, and took his seat.
The First Sergeant leaned over his desk and looked at us both. His voice came out low and menacing.
“Where were you two last night when you were supposed to be on call?”
Ernie sipped on his coffee. I usually let him handle the First Sergeant. He had a knack for it.
“Eating chow,” he said.
“At eleven-thirty at night?”
“Sort of a Continental thing with us. We like to eat late.”
The First Sergeant looked at me. I didn’t move.
“You were out boozing it up,” he said, “and running the ville. And when I tried to get in touch with you, you were nowhere to be found.”
“We left a number,” Ernie said.
The crisp blotter crinkled under the First Sergeant’s fingers. “A number where nobody speaks English!”
“Mama-san was out,” Ernie said. “Her daughter’s a sharp cookie, though.”
“But she doesn’t speak English!”
Ernie’s eyes widened. “Of course not, Top. She’s Korean.”
“I know that, go
ddamn it, but when I have to make a call to get ahold of you guys and when I finally get through, I expect to be able to speak something other than that kimchi-eating gibberish.”
“When in Rome,” Ernie said, “and all that shit.”
The First Sergeant took a deep breath. He seemed to be mulling over something, some course of action. He leaned forward.
“All right, you two. From here on out, whenever you’re on call I expect you to be in the barracks. Not out in the ville, not in some soju house drinking rice wine, but in the barracks. And you’ll check in with the Charge of Quarters every hour unless you’re actually in your goddamned room asleep. You got that?”
Ernie sipped on his coffee, looked at the First Sergeant, and nodded.
“No sweat, Top.”
The First Sergeant looked at me. I nodded.
He’d forget about this latest decree in a month or two and besides, we were only on call every sixth day and we could pay the CQ to call us at the Nurse’s hooch if we had to. Not a problem.
“All right,” the First Sergeant said. “Now that we have that out of the way. What’d you find out on this Whit-comb case?”
Ernie didn’t move, but something in his manner made it obvious that he was through talking. The technical side of things was my responsibility. Ernie was strictly a people person.
“What we found out was in my report,” I said.
The First Sergeant stared, waiting. I continued.
“This guy, Lance Corporal Cecil Whitcomb, a member of the British contingent of the United Nations Honor Guard, was stabbed to death in the Namdaemun district of Seoul at some time between ten and eleven o’clock last night.”
“How did they fix the time of death?”
“The testimony of local residents. There was quite a bit of traffic prior to ten but nobody saw anything. The body was discovered just after eleven.”
“How can a GI be knifed to death in downtown Seoul and nobody see it?”
