by Martin Limon
He stared at us long and hard, searching for a wise remark. When he heard none, he clapped his hands. “That’s all then. Report to the office at zero eight hundred tomorrow.” Outside, Ernie and I trudged toward South Post, neither one of us speaking.
There was still no snow falling, but the temperature had dropped and the drifts and mangled tufts of ice had frozen into crazy shapes that glistened in the moonlight. Freezing wind bit into my sinuses.
Finally, Ernie said what we were both thinking.
“We’re not really going to let Burrows and Slabem handle this thing, are we?”
“Of course not. They’re not the ones who convinced Cecil Whitcomb to show up out in Namdaemun that night. We are.”
“So it’s our responsibility?”
“You definitely got that right.”
“So we’re going after that slicky boy tonight?”
“Sure,” I said. “They’re filing SOFA charges against us now. That means that the slicky boys are nervous, on the run.”
“We gotta keep ‘em that way.”
“Absolutely. Keep ‘em off balance.”
Ernie had left the jeep at 21 T-Car for some fender work, so we had to hoof it. My blue jeans were almost dry. But not dry enough that they didn’t start to stiffen in the frigid breeze blowing out of Manchuria. We crunched across a frozen sheet of snow, heading toward the 121 Evacuation Hospital.
14
THE I2I IS A SPRAWLING COMPLEX WITH A LITTLE snack stand out front—closed and shuttered at this hour—a horseshoe-shaped one-story hospital behind that, and a half dozen warehouses scattered about. We waited outside until just before zero one hundred, one in the morning. All the while I wished I had worn about three more layers of sweaters. Once we started moving 1 was happy about it.
When the army plans for injuries, they think big. The emergency room behind the 121 had not only a helipad but also a huge loading dock and a small fleet of ambulances.
Just let those North Koreans come south. We’re ready for them.
We found a dark spot beneath a naked elm tree near one of the warehouses. We didn’t have to wait long.
A blue-smocked medic emerged at about ten minutes before one. He was average height and average weight and would’ve been difficult as hell to identify because he wore a tight-fitting blue medical cap and a gauze mask over his nose and mouth.
“The masked marauder,” Ernie whispered. He was enjoying this.
In the medic’s hand, nearly hidden behind his body, was a plastic bag stuffed with what appeared to be small boxes and vials.
He slipped out of the floodlight glare behind the emergency room and into the darkness near a line of square metal Conexes. They were padlocked and probably loaded with medical supplies to be airlifted where and when the need arose.
Each Conex was a complete, self-contained unit. Their foundation was two layers of hollow ribbed corrugated metal. The medic knelt in front of one of the Conexes and shoved the plastic sack into an opening in the foundation. From somewhere he grabbed a broom handle and, bending lower, he probed carefully with the stick, shoving the plastic farther beneath the Conex. Soon he had reached in almost all the way to his elbow.
“He’s pushing the bag to the other side,” Ernie said.
I nodded.
The medic placed the broom handle back where he’d originally stashed it, stood, and brushed the snow off his knees. Looking around, he scurried back up onto the loading dock and into the Emergency Room.
“Neat trick,” Ernie said.
“Let’s work our way over to the other side of the Conexes and see what happens.”
“Let’s.”
We searched for another concealed spot, this time farther away because we figured the slicky boy would be tougher to fool than the medic. We finally settled on a row of bushes against the cement-block perimeter fence. I squatted down in the snow. Ernie edged in next to me. We had to hold back the sharp branches with our hands.
“Hope this doesn’t take long,” Ernie said.
My legs had already grown numb when we heard the boots of the perimeter guard crunching toward us. He wore his big gray parka with his hood pulled over his head and an Ml rifle slung over his shoulder. When he walked past, he looked straight ahead, not even glancing in our direction.
About twenty yards away, directly behind the Conex where the medic had stashed the plastic bag, the guard stopped. He slipped off his gloves, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a cigarette. The scratch and hiss of his wooden match was loud in the darkness.
For a moment his bronze face was illuminated in the glow of the flame. I looked at Ernie. He nodded. This was the guard we had paid the twenty thousand won.
The guard took a deep drag, coughed, stomped around a bit, and before he was through with his cigarette tossed it down in the snow behind the Conex.
After he trudged off toward his remaining rounds, the night became quiet again.
Finally, I heard it. Not much more than a scratching. Suddenly there was a thump and Ernie elbowed me. He pointed.
There, along the wall, about ten yards past the Conex, I saw it. A dark spot in the snow. I couldn’t believe it. The cement block wall was almost ten feet high and it was topped by metal spikes and coiled barbed wire. Yet somehow, in a matter of seconds, someone had climbed it, making no more sound than a cat crossing a coffee table.
I stared at the blank spot in the snow and started to doubt my judgment. Nothing moved. Was it just my eyes playing tricks on me? Or was there actually a human being lying there?
Suddenly it moved.
Like thought, the shadow drifted across the snow and came to a halt behind the Conex. There was some sound now. Plastic rubbing on metal? An instant later, the shadow was moving back toward the wall.
Ernie elbowed me again. “Let’s go.”
We were up and moving but my legs were so knotted that I stumbled twice and had to shove myself back up with my arms. Ernie was ahead of me, running at full tilt. Shouting.
“Halt! Halt! Halt or I’ll shoot!”
He didn’t have a gun, but what the hell. If the ploy worked, good.
Apparently the ploy did.
The shadow had reached the wall and Ernie was coming on fast. As the thief started to climb up, he glanced back and in the moonlight I saw a face. A young Korean man. Calm. Not worried. For a split second he seemed to evaluate Ernie’s threat.
The delay wasn’t long, but it was enough.
By the time the slicky boy started to pull himself up, Ernie was only a few feet from him. Still, the thief scaled the wall amazingly fast and had a handhold on one of the metal spikes before Ernie grabbed his foot.
Ernie tugged and the slicky boy strained upward. His body stretched taut, and for a moment I thought his leg would snap off until suddenly something popped and Ernie reeled backward, holding an empty boot in his hands.
I hit the wall running and, as the slicky boy rose, I managed to grab hold of his waist, hug, and pull down with all my weight. Ernie was up now and we both had the thief and suddenly the slicky boy’s grip gave and we all fell backward onto the hard-packed snow.
The air burst out of me but I rolled and felt myself on top of the slicky boy, and Ernie howled in pain.
“My thumb! My goddamn thumb!”
The slicky boy punched and kicked but I was in too close for his blows to have much effect and my weight was too much for him. As I reached for my handcuffs behind my back, his thumbs gouged my eyes.
I jerked back from the sharp nails and, in less than a second, he was up and heading for the wall again.
I bounded up. I caught him while he was still on the ground and plowed forward, ramming him face-first into the cement block wall.
My shoulder thudded, his head cracked, and we both fell in a heap at the foot of the cement block.
I couldn’t move, but he wasn’t moving either. Pain shot down my shoulder into my fist. Using my good hand, I grabbed hold of my handcuffs, rolled the slicky
boy over, and secured his wrists behind his back.
Ernie cursed softly.
“What is it?” I asked, trying to catch my breath.
“Dislocated my goddamn thumb.”
I checked my hand. The fingers were still moving. Just a shoulder bruise. It would heal.
I checked the slicky boy. He was young, probably in his late teens. Thin, almost emaciated, but I knew from our tussle that he was as muscular as hell. A red welt on his forehead had started to puff up like a golf ball. His eyes fluttered and opened. He moaned.
I sighed with relief. He’d be all right.
I crawled over to Ernie. He held out his hand to me. The side of the palm was grossly distorted, bone jutting out beneath the skin at an odd angle.
“Yank on the thumb,” Ernie said. “Pop it back in place.”
I nodded toward the Emergency Room. “I can take you over there. Get a shot of Novocain first.”
“That lightweight shit? It don’t work on me. Hurry up. Do it now.”
I grabbed the thumb, jerked back on it, and felt it slide, bone on bone, until it crunched into place. Ernie let out a howl, recoiled away from me, and rolled in the snow, cursing.
After a few seconds the swearing subsided and he looked up at me, his eyes watery.
“Thanks, pal,” he said. “I needed that.”
He. held his hand up and wiggled all the fingers including the thumb. “Back in tip-top shape.”
I walked to the slicky boy and sat him up. He kicked at me and spat.
“Nice talk,” Ernie said, rising to his feet, still wiggling his fingers, pleased, I guess, they were all working. “Why don’t we kick his ass here? Nobody’s watching.”
I’m not sure if the slicky boy understood or not. The stonelike ridges of his face didn’t move. I stuck a fist in his face.
“You want that? You want us to hit you?”
When he didn’t respond, I said the same thing in Korean. “Choa hani? Deirigo shippo?”
I questioned him, but it didn’t do any good. He wasn’t talking.
We picked up the plastic bag of pharmaceuticals and dragged the slicky boy over to the Emergency Room. I used their phone to call for an MP jeep. While we waited, the medics stood around gawking at us. I tried to figure which one we had seen out on the platform, stashing the drugs, but it was useless. The only ones I could eliminate for sure were the nurses. Emie was watching them.
When the MP’s arrived, we shoved the slicky boy in the back and took him over to the Liaison Office of the Korean National Police.
When he saw the KNP symbol above the door his eyes widened, he tried to swallow, and for a minute I thought he was going to throw up. But he still said nothing.
Ernie and I sat in the waiting room for about forty minutes. During the entire time we heard no screams and no thuds of a body being flung up against the wall. I think the KNP methods were more subtle than that. I would’ve liked to witness their interrogation techniques—as long as I wasn’t the subject of the interrogation.
Lieutenant Roh, the night duty officer, emerged from the back room and sat down next to us. He was a frail man with straight black hair that hung over his eyes, and round-lensed glasses that made him look more like a mathematics professor than a cop. He tapped the tips of his splayed fingers together.
“He’s a slicky boy. That’s for sure.”
“Did he admit to the theft?” Emie asked.
“No,” Lieutenant Roh said. “He will deny. Deny all the way.”
“But we’ve nailed him, right?”
“Yes. Still, he will not talk. Not about the slicky boys.”
“Why not? He could get a lighter sentence, couldn’t he?”
Lieutenant Roh considered that. “Possibly. But if he mentions anything about his superiors, it would be suicidal.”
“They’d kill him?” Ernie asked.
“Of course. And anyway, while he’s in prison, they will take care of his family.”
I leaned forward. “Listen, Lieutenant Roh. I need to find the slicky boy honcho. To talk to him. I have to ask him some questions.”
“Why?”
“It’s complicated. Certainly, this young slicky boy can give us some sort of lead.”
“No. He will give you nothing.”
“Then how can we contact the King of the Slicky Boys?”
Lieutenant Roh studied me for a few seconds. When he spoke, he spoke softly.
“You must not continue in this, Agent Sueño. All Koreans respect Americans. Even the criminals do. We realize how much you’ve helped our country, and we realize how important it is for you to stay here so we won’t be conquered by the North Korean Communists. Still, if you continue to disrupt their operations, the slicky boys will kill you.”
I said nothing.
“What I’m most worried about,” Lieutenant Roh added, “is that it might already be too late.”
He stood up and walked out of the room.
15
MAYBE IT WAS BECAUSE WE DECIDED TO BE GOOD soldiers for once. Or maybe it was because Lieutenant Roh’s warning the previous night put the fear of God into us. Whatever the reason, we actually spent the entire day working on the black market detail.
We busted three housewives and one buck sergeant. All for buying coffee and cigarettes and liquor and other sundry items and selling them in Itaewon for about twice what they paid for them on post. Resale of duty-free goods is a violation of military regulations. Also of Korean customs law and the Status of Forces Agreement. All four suspects were taken to the MP station and booked. We figured the sum total of the take came to about $346.57.
U.S. goods black-marketed in Korea per year are estimated to run about ten million dollars. From that vast sea of contraband, we’d siphoned off at least a couple of ounces.
The problem was that we weren’t any closer to finding Cecil Whitcomb’s murderer.
From what Riley told us, Burrows and Slabem had done nothing all day other than review our reports and insist on interrupting Lieutenant Pak down in Namdaemun, demanding a conference so they could be briefed on his lack of progress. Typical bureaucrats. Laying a foundation of paperwork to cover their butts when they failed to solve the case.
I knew it. They knew it. Everybody knew it. But it would also make the CID Detachment look better, because they’d be sweeping a supposedly insoluble case under the rug without raising any more uncomfortable questions about the activities of the slicky boys.
Maybe Burrows and Slabem were right. Despite all our efforts, Ernie and I had been unable to come up with anything. Cecil Whitcomb was dead. Nothing was going to bring him back. The chances of us finding Miss Ku in Seoul, a city of eight million people, were narrow to nothing. And the chances of us finding the leader of the slicky boys, Herbalist So, much less convicting him of a murder, were probably less.
Maybe the best thing was to back off for a while. Let the universe flow on and see what happened.
After all, we’d already tweaked the nose of the King of the Slicky Boys. It was his move.
When the Honor Guard flag detail fired the cannon and lowered the colors at the close of the business day, Ernie and I hustled back to the barracks, changed, and made a beeline for the Class VI Store.
In the old brown-shoe army there were five classifications of supplies: Classes I through V. So when the army set up liquor stores, some joker decided to call them Class VI stores. That’s what they had remained ever since.
We bought a case of beer and a bottle of Jim Beam and a case of orange soda and two cans of peanuts and a jar of pickled Polish sausages.
“Supplies for a week,” Ernie said.
We flagged down a PX taxi and gave him orders to take us to Itaewon. When we pulled up in front of the Nurse’s hooch, she was already there waiting, holding the gate open for us.
A long cotton kimono showed off her curves. The Nurse had broad shoulders for a woman, but a small waist and round breasts. Roundness described her best. Strong but soft and roun
d. Ernie was a lucky man. I doubted that he really understood that, though.
As we entered, the Nurse bowed and grabbed one of the packages out of the crook of my arm. Through powdered snow, she waddled on straw slippers across the small courtyard.
Red tile, upturned at the edges, topped the hooches that were constructed of varnished wooden beams. The smell of charcoal smoke and kimchi, pickled cabbage and turnips festering in earthen pots of brine, filled the cold air.
An old woman carrying a perforated briquette to refuel the underground ondol heating system bowed to us as she passed.
“Ajjima,” the Nurse said to me. The landlady.
Ernie and I nodded our heads in greeting.
At the front of her hooch, the Nurse stepped out of her slippers and up onto the narrow wooden landing. She slid back the paper-paneled door and motioned with her upturned palm for us to enter.
“Oso-oseiyo,” she said. Please come in.
Her unblemished face flashed a full-lipped smile. Long black hair shimmered and swooshed forward as she bowed once again.
Ernie placed his hand on her shoulder and spoke gently. “Do you have any chow?”
“Most tick I get.”
“Good. And pop a couple of wet ones while you’re at it.”
She did as she was told and soon we were sipping on cold beer and sitting on a cushion on a warm vinyl floor. The Nurse brought in a heated hand towel for each of us so we could wipe off our faces and clean the backs of our necks and scrub our hands. I felt cozy. As cozy as I had since the Whitcomb case began.
Ernie sipped on his beer. “A whole day wasted.”
“Maybe not completely,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“The word that we want to talk to the King of the Slicky Boys is out. Maybe it will shake something loose.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” Ernie didn’t sound hopeful.
