Slicky Boys

by Martin Limon

  Hideyoshi and his fleet took heavy losses, but in the end the Japanese landed successfully farther upriver. The Shogun’s forces swallowed Korea whole, causing untold destruction and death. It might’ve happened a long time ago but the Koreans still remembered it, as they remembered every crime perpetrated on them by the Japanese.

  In memory of the great battle, the ROK Navy’s Central Headquarters was stationed here at Heing-ju, on the cliffs overlooking the blue expanse of the Han River Estuary. Lieutenant Commander Bo Shipton had been given a plum assignment—liaison officer to the ROK Navy, the only American serving with them at this headquarters. It was from here that he had gone AWOL three months ago. So far, no one had been able to tell me why.

  Technically, Shipton was no longer AWOL. Thirty days after jumping ship his status had been changed. The U.S. Navy now officially classified him as a deserter.

  The ROK Navy headquarters building was a rambling, single-story brick building with an elegant facade of inlaid brass and teak. A single pole stood out front. From it, the Korean flag fluttered in the breeze off the Han River. An expanse of lawn, brown and stunted now in the icy winter wind, spread toward the cliffs and dropped off into gray mist.

  Ernie pulled in near the end of the parking lot and turned off the engine. I looked at him.

  “You going in?”

  “Too much brass. You take it.”

  “Okay.”

  He settled back in the canvas seat and pulled out a flat, brown paper sack stuffed with magazines from Scandinavia. Long legs, blond hair, pale skin.

  “What’s the matter, pal?” I asked. “Getting kinky on me?”

  “No. Just need some shit to tell Strange.”

  That’s Ernie. Always prepared.

  I climbed out of the jeep and headed across the gravel parking lot toward a huge double door with brass handles in the shape of anchors. Two sailors dressed in black with white caps and white leggings raised their rifles and came to attention as I approached. One checked my identification and I told him I was here to talk to someone about the former U.S. Liaison Officer, Lieutenant Commander Beauregard Shipton.

  Some quick words were whispered into an intercom, the door was opened, and I was waved in.

  The carpeted hallways were paneled with varnished oak and hung with painted scenes of historic Korean sea battles. In a glass case a metal astrolabe, one of the earliest in human history, invented by some ancient Korean scholar, glistened. I was trying to decipher the brass plaque below it when a Korean lieutenant in a dress naval uniform hurried down the hall, all smiles, holding out his hand.

  “Good afternoon. You’re here about Shipton?”

  “Yes.”

  It turned out he was Lieutenant Lee, the Public Affairs Officer, and spoke excellent English. He took me back into his office and after checking my identification he told me the usual: that they had already given a full statement to the U.S. authorities concerning the disappearance of Lieutenant Commander Shipton, and they didn’t see anything more they could add.

  “I want to speak to the people Shipton worked with,” I said.

  “That would be Commander Goh, his former supervisor. Unfortunately he is very busy.”

  I explained why we were after Shipton; about the three murders. And I told Lieutenant Lee that if I didn’t receive cooperation immediately more innocent people could be killed.

  His eyes narrowed at that and there was some more hushed conversation on an intercom. Lieutenant Lee was clicking back on his intercom when a stout man in a naval officer’s uniform stormed into the room.

  He had a craggy, square face and broad shoulders, and his chest was loaded with ribbons. The Public Affairs Officer stood up immediately and bowed.

  “This,” Lieutenant Lee said, “is Commander Goh.”

  Goh’s hard eyes studied me, the creases around his nose and mouth tight, as if he were having a terrific bout of indigestion. His Korean was gruff. Guttural.

  “Shipton rul allago shipyo?” he said. You want to know about Shipton?

  I nodded. “Nei. Allago shipoyo.” Yes. I want to know.

  “Kurum. Kapshida.” Well, then. Let’s go.

  The Public Affairs Officer seemed perplexed—maybe by my speaking Korean—but he made no effort to stop us. I followed Commander Goh down the carpeted hallway.

  He made a couple of turns past busy offices with typewriters clattering away and gorgeous young Korean secretaries serving tea to bored-looking Korean officers. He pushed through a door with a large window in it that looked out toward another vast expanse of lawn behind the building, striding straight for the cliffs.

  For a moment I thought he was going to keep going and see if I’d follow him over the edge. Instead, Goh veered toward a massive bronze statue of an ancient Korean warrior in metal helmet and brass-plated vest. Just beneath the huge sword leaning against the warrior’s leg, the commander stopped abruptly.

  “Yi Sun Shin,” he said, gesturing toward the statue.

  I knew who he was. The Korean admiral who’d invented the ironclad, sulphur-spewing kobuk-son—turtle boats. With his daring tactics and guerillalike forces, he had almost single-handedly stopped the invasion of Hideyoshi’s naval forces through the straits and isthmuses of the islands off the southern coast of Korea. Even in Japan, his military genius is revered.

  “Yes,” I said, speaking in Korean. “He’s very famous.”

  Commander Goh nodded. Satisfied.

  He turned and clasped his hands behind his back and stared across the Han River below us.

  “So you’ve come about Shipton,” he said in Korean.

  “Yes. We have reason to believe that he’s killed three people.”

  Commander Goh nodded. “He’s a very disturbed man.”

  “You knew him well, then?”

  “Very well. We worked together every day. We traveled together around the country to inspect naval fortifications. After work I showed him what life was like in our teahouses and in the floating world of the night.”

  The military elite ran this country. They had money and they had prestige. And when they decided to visit a kisaeng house or some other place of pleasure, you can bet they received the very best. For a moment, I envied Lieutenant Commander Shipton. To run with them. Why would anyone go AWOL from a setup like that?

  “What went wrong?” I asked.

  Commander Goh breathed deeply of the salt air and took a few steps closer to the cliff. Twenty or thirty yards below, the churning waters of the Han River Estuary lapped against jagged rocks. He studied the low-lying fog.

  “Shipton became very friendly with us. We all liked him. He even started to speak some Korean. Not as well as you, Agent Sueño, but he was progressing.”

  He paused and gazed at distant clouds hovering over the Yellow Sea. The old habits of a sailor.

  “One of our admirals had a daughter. She was a very well brought up young woman with a good education, but maybe she wasn’t the most attractive girl in the world. So the family was having trouble finding a suitable husband for her. It was decided that since she wasn’t going to find the very best of Korean husbands, she could settle for an American. She was introduced to Shipton.

  “Besides,” Goh said, turning away from the water, “the admiral and his family had dreams of emigrating to America.”

  He raised and lowered his broad shoulders.

  “None of this, of course, we told to your previous investigators, Agent Sueño. We thought it would do no good. Now that he’s killed—killed again—we must tell you the full truth.”

  “Killed again?”

  “Yes.” He swiveled his craggy face toward me. “Can you keep what I’m about to tell you out of your report?”

  “I don’t know. It depends on what it is.”

  His expression didn’t change but he nodded. “We cannot afford for any of this to ever come out.”

  “It will be kept strictly confidential,” I said. “Classified. No one outside of our investigative ser
vices will ever see it, unless it needs to be used in a trial.”

  “But you will try him for these three murders he’s recently committed?”

  “Yes.”

  He seemed to reach a decision. “You won’t need what I’m about to tell you for that.” He glanced at my hands. “I notice you don’t take notes.”

  “I have a good memory.”

  “If I’m to tell you what I know about Shipton, it must never come up in his trial and it must never come up in your official reports.”

  “You’re protecting this Korean admiral, the father of Shipton’s fiancee.”

  He looked at me steadily. “Yes.”

  It was a tough bargain, but I needed all the information I could gather if I was to have a chance of finding Shipton. We already had him pegged for three homicides. Maybe the evidence would be questionable in a high-class stateside trial, but for a military court-martial, here in 8th Imperial Army, it was plenty. I could get by without what Commander Goh was about to give me.

  “All right, then,” I said. “No notes. No recordings. And what you tell me will never appear in an official report.”

  “Or a trial?”

  “Or a trial.”

  He let his breath out slowly and turned away again, as if searching for strength in the distant sea.

  “The girl’s name was Myong-a. Her family name isn’t important. She spoke English well, and she and Shipton liked each other immediately. It seemed as if she did something for him. Shipton had been a lonely man. He left his family years ago and had never returned home. He spoke of his mother only when asked and of his father not at all. But Myong-a was a bright girl. She knew how to make him smile and make him laugh, and it seemed that he was forgetting the horrors of the war he had left behind.”

  A fisherman and his son rowed slowly on a splintered prow down the river, heading for the verdant waters of the estuary. As they slipped out of the fog Commander Goh watched them, and when they were once again covered in mist he resumed his speech.

  “What Shipton didn’t know, and what most Americans don’t know, is that we Koreans are a very practical people. Marriage, to us, is primarily an economic union, a union designed to continue the growth and prosperity of the family. Love, if it comes at all, comes later and grows slowly. Marriage proposals don’t usually start with love for us. But they did for Shipton.

  “Myong-a, however, was a spirited young woman, and as such she had been in love with a Korean man, one of her former classmates at middle school. A man who wasn’t suited for her. A common laborer. Even though she was planning on marrying Shipton and leaving the country, she—foolishly and to the shame of her father—continued to see this man, “Shipton, although somewhat befuddled by your American notions of love, was also observant and shrewd. It didn’t take him long to realize that not all of Myong-a’s devotion was directed toward him.”

  Commander Goh opened his palms toward the heavens. “Shipton followed her, waited to see what she was planning to do, and broke in on them while she was in a room in a cheap yoguan with her young man.”

  He shook his head, his eyes crinkling, as if he were fighting back tears.

  “He killed them both! Why? So foolish. So rash. And then he was gone. We never saw him again. The National Police found the bodies, but when they discovered the identity of the girl we were notified and we immediately assumed jurisdiction of the investigation.”

  Korea had been under virtual martial law since the Korean War. A few strings, pulled in the right places, and the navy could have what it wanted. Even a murder investigation.

  “Why didn’t you notify us?” I asked.

  “Ah, don’t you see? This became a personal matter. Between the officers here at Navy Headquarters and Shipton. We wanted to catch him before he somehow slipped out of our country. We wanted our own revenge.”

  “But you failed?”

  “Yes. Lieutenant Commander Shipton is a very resourceful man.”

  “And as a consequence, three more people are dead.”

  Commander Goh’s eyes burned into mine. “Would you have been able to stop him, Agent Sueño?”

  I thought of our own contacts on the Korean economy. Slim to none. If the ROK Navy investigators hadn’t been able to find Shipton, we were unlikely to.

  “No,” I said. “We probably wouldn’t have.”

  The commander nodded. “So don’t put the blood of these new victims on our hands.”

  Bureaucratic shuffling. Even when the entrails of sweet young ladies are being sliced out of their soft bodies. I thought of the Nurse and I got mad. Mad at their arrogance, their willingness to keep things covered up, their overbearing desire to have their integrity protected, no matter what the cost. Even at the cost of blood.

  “If the blood is not on your hands, whose hands is it on?” I asked bluntly.

  “Shipton’s.”

  He was right, but he was also wrong. With more manpower, maybe we would’ve stumbled onto Shipton by now. Maybe Ernie and I would’ve been less gullible. Maybe we would’ve been more likely to protect Miss Ku and the Nurse. But I was too angry to argue. It was useless now. I only wanted one thing. To bring Shipton down.

  “I want everything your investigators have uncovered.”

  “They will brief you.”

  “Now,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “Now.”

  We marched silently back into the headquarters building.

  They showed me photographs of the two bodies. The young woman laying naked in an alley, her neck snapped. The young man with sliced arms, razorlike cuts to the legs and torso, a deep killing gash in the center of his chest below the sternum.

  A couple of Korean sailors in dungarees were standing next to the jeep, goofing off from a work detail. Ernie was leaning out of the jeep, showing them the pictures in the magazines, pointing and making comments that had them laughing uproariously.

  It was good to see his spirits lifting.

  When he saw me coming, he folded up the magazine and handed it to one of the sailors. The sailor tried to refuse but Ernie insisted and also presented both of them with a couple of sticks of gum. They chomped happily with their big square bronze jaws.

  “Took you long enough,” Ernie said.

  “You should’ve gone in there with me. Some of the secretaries are finer than moon goddesses.”

  “Yeah?”

  Commander Goh strode quickly across the lawn. Both sailors snapped to attention, saluted, bowed, and got back to work. Commander Goh ignored them and stopped at our jeep.

  “You also are an investigator?” he asked, staring at Ernie. His English was accented but understandable.

  “Yes,” Ernie said.

  Commander Goh shook his forefinger at me and resumed speaking in Korean.

  “He, too, must abide by our bargain. Silence on the murder of the daughter of one of our brother officers.”

  “Kokchong halgossi oopsoyo,” I said. You have nothing to worry about.

  He nodded, took another hard look at Ernie, turned, and strode away.

  “Who was that asshole?” Ernie asked.

  “His name’s Commander Goh. He wanted to make sure you and me are operating on the same sheet of music.”

  “Why?”

  “Let’s get out of here. Then I’ll tell you.”

  The two sailors in faded dungarees waved as we drove off.

  I filled Ernie in on what I’d learned. About how the ROK investigators had followed Shipton around the country, how he’d eluded them by only minutes in a couple of spots, but eventually he’d disappeared entirely from their radar screens. They figured he was receiving help. Possibly from one of the organized crime syndicates in the country.

  Ernie frowned. “The slicky boys?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so. They’re not the only hoodlums in the country.”

  If Shipton was receiving help, he would’ve been a natural for mobsters to use to obtain phony identification and buy black market item
s out of the commissaries and the PX’s. And that’s what we could’ve been checking out all this time, but the ROK Navy hadn’t notified us. I complained about that, but it didn’t seem to bother any of the stoic Korean investigators. The fact that a kisaeng and a business girl had been slaughtered cut no ice with them. And they were only vaguely disturbed by the murder of a British soldier.

  As usual, Ernie summed up the situation.

  “So we still don’t know where in the hell he is?”

  “You got that right.”

  “So what’s our next move?”

  I pulled out the slip of paper the Chinese girl had given me this morning.

  “Eighth Army Data Processing,” I told Ernie. “We live in an age of computer punch cards.”

  Ernie shifted into low gear, gunned the engine, shifted back into high, and swerved around a farmer riding a rickety wooden buggy pulled by a flea-bitten pony.

  “Fuck a bunch of computers,” he said.

  31

  THE NCO IN CHARGE OF THE DATA PROCESSING Unit was a nervous type with thick glasses and a habit of biting on his lower lip and brushing back his brown-and-gray mustache.

  “This’ll be hard,” he said. “Four numbers. All bogus. And they could’ve been used anywhere in country.”

  “Start your search in Seoul first,” I said, “and spread out from there.”

  “Not normal procedure,” he insisted. “And we have other batches to run. I’m already working everybody overtime.”

  “I’ll call the Provost Marshal, if you want, and have him call your boss.”

  “No.” He waggled his nervous fingers. “That won’t be necessary. Three murders, you say? Yes. That’ll get priority.”

  “We thought so, too.”

  He scurried off toward the clattering machines busily processing punch data cards. Ernie and I walked back into the waiting room and poured ourselves overly cooked coffee into white foam cups.