Slicky Boys

by Martin Limon

  I jerked awake, twisting around, struggling to remember where I was.

  Moonlight filtered down, illuminating the coffinlike shape of Riley’s desk. The pot of coffee was full now. Untouched. I could smell its gentle aroma.

  What had awakened me had been a loud noise. A door slamming, as if someone were leaving the building. Or entering?

  All was silent now. No noise, not even the clanging of the rusty pipes of the radiator. The heat was turned off. I was cold.

  I strained to pick up any sound. Nothing. Still, I felt as if there was a presence out there. I reached inside my jacket, pulled out the .38, and clicked off the safety.

  The gun felt heavy and reassuring in my palm. Cold. Loaded with death.

  Footsteps. Slow at first but then faster, with more authority. Heading this way.

  I slid out of the chair and stepped behind a filing cabinet next to the door. If someone entered the room I’d have a straight line of fire. Into the back of his head.

  The footsteps stopped in front of the Admin Office. Hesitated. As if the intruder were peering into the room. Then the footsteps came closer and I pointed the business end of the pistol at the back of a skull. It was fuzzed with close-cropped gray. As I was about to squeeze the trigger, he turned and I saw the wrinkled face. The bleak eyes.

  “Sueño!”

  “Top! What are you doing here in the middle of the night?”

  “Put that goddamn pistol away, will ya?”

  Slowly, I lowered it and stuck it in the shoulder holster. “Sure.”

  He switched on the light. Our eyes blinked.

  “That’s the second time you almost goddamn shot me,” he said.

  I grinned.

  “I thought someone had broken in here.” The First Sergeant looked at me more carefully. “About time you showed up, Corporal.”

  “Look, I can explain that. One of the ration control numbers turned up in Taegu. I had to check it out.”

  “Did it come to anything?”

  “No. Turned out Shipton sold the card and phony ID to some gullible buck sergeant down there.”

  The First Sergeant’s eyes drilled into me. For a minute I thought he was going to start cursing. “I told you to get your ass back here.”

  “Yeah, well, I was on a case.”

  “I don’t give a shit about your damn case. When I tell you to get back here, you get back here! You understand?”

  I could’ve argued with him. I could’ve told him that he’d just put his finger on the trouble with the entire army. The army didn’t care about the cases. Bureaucratic shuffling, the next promotion, how it looks in the newspapers. All those things are more important than the case. More important than catching a murderer. I could’ve told Top all that; I wanted to. Instead, I shut up.

  In the army, taking an ass-chewing is a lot easier than accepting a court-martial.

  “Yes, I understand,” I said.

  Top glared at me, trying to gauge my sincerity. In the end he decided to accept what he got.

  “Don’t let it happen again,” he said.

  I nodded.

  He noticed the perked coffee and walked over and poured himself a cup. As he stirred in the creamer he kept staring at me.

  “You guys must’ve spent a lot of time carousing in Pusan.”

  I walked back over to the chair and flopped down. “Yeah. Carousers. That’s Ernie and me.”

  He kept studying me, not coming to any conclusions but getting more and more suspicious.

  “What the hell did you do down there?”

  “Came close to catching Shipton,” I said. “But he got away.”

  The First Sergeant perched on the edge of Riley’s desk, spreading his fingers, studying his stubby knuckles.

  “I got some bad news for you,” I said. “Ernie’s in the hospital.”

  Top scowled. “I know. The One-two-one notified me. I just came from there.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “In intensive care.” The First Sergeant shook his head. “The asshole should’ve listened to the doctors in the first place.”

  “You’re not taking me off the case again, are you?”

  “No. Stick with it. But the next time I tell you to get back to Seoul right away, you get back to Seoul, you understand me, Sueño?”

  “I understand, Top.”

  “Good.”

  I shrugged on my jacket and left the First Sergeant. I trudged through the thick snow toward the 121 Evac.

  The big double doors of the Intensive Care Unit blared in stenciled red: Authorized Personnel Only.

  When you want to do something in the army, don’t ask for permission. I didn’t.

  The room was dark, with only little red lamps on the nightstands next to the beds. I scanned the charts rather than trying to make out the bandaged faces. Ernie was third bed on the left.

  When I leaned over him, he seemed to be asleep.

  I stood there for a moment, silently. He was hooked up to tubes. One eye cranked open.

  He croaked. I didn’t understand but I knew he was trying to say something. He shook his head from side to side, then lifted his arm, grabbing the tube in his mouth.

  As he pulled, an endless plastic serpent emerged from his throat. Finally, it popped free and he rotated his jaw as if to get the muscles working again.

  “Son … of a bitch . . . busted … my spleen.”

  His voice sounded as if he’d been wandering through the desert for three days.

  “You mean to tell me,” I said, “that you’ve been running all over Texas Street, chasing after a half-crazed killer, with your insides rattling around?”

  Ernie grinned. “I guess I have. Give me some . . . water,”

  It didn’t sound like a good idea. If they were feeding him intravenously it was because they didn’t want anything in his stomach. He saw my hesitation.

  “Just enough to . . . rinse . . . my throat.”

  There wasn’t any water on his bedstand. I tiptoed across the aisle, found some next to another guy’s bed, poured a little into a small paper cup, then sipped it to make sure it was water. I held the cup to Ernie’s lips. He sucked greedily until it was all gone. Then he leaned back and convulsed his throat as if enjoying the full magnificence of the life-giving fluid.

  “Did you catch him in Taegu?”

  “False lead,” I said. “He was there but sold the ration control plate to some dumb buck sergeant.”

  “Clever.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Now he knows we’re onto him.”

  Ernie groaned. I don’t know if it was from pain or from thinking about Shipton.

  The skin around his nose and mouth twisted, his stomach moved like a rising bowling ball beneath the sheets, and suddenly blood and water squirted from his mouth. I ran around the bed and grabbed a towel, and now he was retching yellow bile and I handed him the towel and ran out of the ward.

  Down the hall a sleeping medic sat behind a counter. I yelled, “The guy in the third bed, Intensive Care, he’s vomiting up blood!”

  The medic pressed a button, jumped up, and a few seconds later three people in green smocks and I stood around Ernie’s bunk. He’d stopped throwing up but his breath still sounded bad.

  One of the medics turned to me.

  “You didn’t give him any water, did you?”

  “A little.”

  The medic’s chest puffed out and he was about to read me my rights as a prisoner or the riot act or something when we heard a knock against the bedside table.

  “Get the . . . fuck away from me.”

  It was Ernie, growling. Somehow, he’d yanked out his tubes, tumbled off the bed, and pushed away the medic who was trying to restrain him. From the locker behind his bunk, he grabbed his socks. The medics kept jabbering away but Ernie put on his shirt and his blue jeans, then reached for his shoes and his jacket. He turned to me.

  “You ready, pal?”

  “You should stay here, Ernie. You’re not well.”


  “We have to catch that asshole Shipton.”

  He slid on his shoes, raised his arms and put on his jacket, and started down the hallway. The medics ran after him. One grabbed his arm; Ernie swiveled and punched him in the nose.

  The medic howled and grabbed his face, and I ran in front of him and his buddies and held my hands up.

  “Sorry. Sorry. He’s not himself.”

  “He can’t do this,” one said. “He’ll be busted down a stripe for sure.”

  “I know. I know.”

  Ernie bounced around on the balls of his feet for a few seconds, eager to throw another punch. Suddenly his fist fell, his head rolled, and he collapsed in a heap.

  I helped the medics take off his clothes and we hoisted him back onto the bunk. One shot him up with some sedative and another stuck the rubber tube back down his throat.

  When I left, he was snoring soundly.

  37

  THE KILLER LURKED IN THE ALLEYS OF NAMDAEMUN-SI, the Great South Gate Market, checking the eyes of strangers.

  Farmers shoved wooden carts loaded with fat cabbages and winter turnips into a bewildering maze of canvas-covered corridors. Squatting over an open coal stove, an old crone fried pindae-dok, fragrant pancakes made of flour and garlic and green onion. Workmen waited for the sizzling delicacy, stomping their boots in the crusted snow.

  When he was satisfied that he hadn’t been followed, the killer strode deeper into the catacombs of the market. Merchants in bloody aprons pounded hatchets on wet boards, wailing out the prices of their fresh catch from the sea. In the distance, dogs yipped. Their barking grew louder.

  Behind a plywood partition, a small kennel was hidden from the regular flow of pedestrian traffic. A Korean man crouched in front of one of the bamboo cages, scratching behind the ear of a frisky mutt. The man’s face was like brown leather stretched across a craggy ridge of granite; his body hard, from years of training as an agent of espionage in the secret enclaves of Communist North Korea. He stood and turned slowly—warily—as the killer approached.

  “Kei sago shipo,” the killer said. I want to buy a dog.

  The Korean nodded. “We have the best stock.”

  “It must be a pup but old enough to mate.”

  “We have just the thing. And since it hasn’t yet mated, the meat will be most beneficial to the health.”

  The obligatory code words over, the Korean squatted back down and pulled the large pup out of its cage.

  “You have been busy,” he said.

  It was not an accusation, merely a statement. The killer didn’t answer.

  The Korean said, “Your mission is too important to be endangered by some personal vendetta.”

  The killer’s face hardened. “The mission is important to you. To me, only the money is important.”

  “If you want your money, you will not jeopardize this mission.”

  The killer took a step forward. “The Americans killed a woman who was mine.”

  The Korean cocked an eyebrow. “Are you sure it was they who killed her?”

  “The ROK Navy long ago gave up on me. It could only have been them.”

  The Korean turned back to the dog and shrugged. “Perhaps.” He found a loose leather thong and deftly tied it around the back legs of the pup. “But now,” he said, “since you returned the favor and killed their woman, this ‘nurse’in Itaewon, they are after you with more fervor than ever.”

  The killer shrugged again. “It will do them no good.”

  The Communist North Korean yanked the knot tight and lifted the dog by its hind legs, tying it to a wooden crossbar. The puppy whined, its front paws barely touching the ground. The Korean rose and turned back to the killer.

  “Do you eat dog meat?”

  The killer shrugged. “Meat is meat.”

  The Korean tied another leather thong around the dog’s snout and ratcheted the crossbar higher, until the pup’s front paws scratched wildly in the air.. Canine eyes whirled with panic, the muffled screams of the dog slicing through the cold morning air. The Korean jerked down on the front paws and the joints of the back legs cracked. Ignoring the animal’s frantic yipping, he glanced back at the killer.

  “You Americans love dogs, they say. Certainly you will enjoy this meat.”

  They stared into one another’s eyes. Suddenly, the killer stepped forward, a knife appearing from the folds of his coat. He squatted and, with one swift movement, sliced the sharp blade across the pup’s throat. Blood exploded onto dirty ice.

  Ignoring the Korean, the killer slashed vertically up the dog’s quivering torso, reached in, and peeled back the hide. The knife continued to probe. Guts snaked onto the pavement like steaming serpents.

  The killer carved and peeled until what had once been a pup was nothing but a hanging lump of raw meat. He carved off a chunk of flank, rose, and offered it to the Korean.

  The Korean smiled but shook his head. “I prefer mine cooked.”

  The killer gazed into the Korean’s eyes and popped the still bloody dog flesh into his mouth. Chewing with the big, knotted muscles of his jaw, his eyes never wavered from the eyes of his Communist handler.

  The Korean didn’t flinch. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a slip of paper, and handed it to the killer. On it were etched four numbers.

  “Memorize this and destroy it.”

  The killer glanced at the paper, soaking up the information. When he had it locked in his memory, he popped the paper into his gory mouth and swallowed it whole.

  “Only a few days,” the North Korean said, “and the operation will be ready.”

  The killer nodded.

  “There have been inquiries,” the North Korean said. “Discreet but unmistakable. Someone is planning to set a trap for you.”

  The killer stared at him, chewing slowly, waiting.

  “When you go in, this man, this Sueño, he will come after you.”

  The killer snorted with contempt. “Let him.”

  “Do not be overconfident. We cannot eliminate him now. That would only alert the Americans, make our job more difficult. You must ensnare him in his own trap. Once you have the documents we need, killing him will be of no consequence. But make sure that no one realizes that it was our work.”

  The killer growled. “I am not an amateur.”

  He swallowed the last of the dog meat, turned, and vanished back into the endless maze of the Namdaemun Market.

  38

  STRANGE HAD A HABIT OF ARRIVING AT THE OFFICE early. So do a lot of NCO’s who have no life outside their work. He stumbled into me at the back entrance of 8th Army headquarters, snapped his head around, and almost poked me in the eye with his cigarette holder.

  “What happened to you?” he asked.

  “Long night.” I took him by the elbow and guided him toward the Distribution Room. “Let’s talk.”

  He held a cup of snack bar coffee in one hand and fumbled for his keys with the other. Once inside, I shut the door behind us.

  “I need everything you’ve got on the recent security violations.”

  He placed his coffee on a desk and sat down. “You guys finally starting to take this stuff seriously, eh?”

  “Let’s just say I’m taking it seriously.”

  He fiddled with the empty plastic in his mouth. “Had any strange lately?”

  I took a quick step forward, leaned across the desk, and lifted him by his khaki lapels halfway out of his chair.

  “I have a serial killer on my hands,” I said, “and people I know and love have been killed, and I’m not going to put up with any more of your shit. You start giving me the information I want and you start giving it to me right now!”

  I didn’t think Strange’s gray pallor could grow any grayer but somehow it did. The stained cigarette holder tumbled from his lips.

  “Okay,” he croaked. “Okay.”

  After that, things went a lot smoother. I asked the questions, and he answered. When he didn’t know something he
picked up the phone and called one of his buddies in the far-flung network of army security wienies.

  The picture I put together was composed of suspicions and anomalies that would never stand up in a court of law. But these guys knew their business and they took it seriously. What they had wasn’t enough for them to pass along an official report to the head shed, but it was enough for me.

  I ran my theory about the tunnels and the nuclear devices being placed beneath the DMZ past Strange. He had no direct knowledge of it, but it didn’t seem too farfetched to him. Even if it wasn’t true, it was the type of scheme the North Koreans would believe in—and would want to check out.

  On the wall of Strange’s office hung a large map of Korea. We charted the places that had been hit by Shipton. His method of operation seemed pretty straightforward. Somehow, he obtained inside help—maybe a combination to a filing cabinet or a copy of a key to a door—and then, either by putting on a uniform and impersonating an American officer or by using his commando skills, he gained access to the information he wanted. Each place he had hit was a potential gold mine for certain types of information: orders for heavy equipment, disposition of explosives, personnel records for mining engineers, acquisition of contract excavators.

  Shipton knew exactly what he was after and he’d gone about it systematically. We were looking for any missing pieces of his puzzle, the parts Shipton still needed to fill in. If we could figure them out, we might be able to anticipate his next move.

  Strange shook his head. “Looks like we’re too late. He’s already put it all together.”

  “Except for one thing,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “The actual location of the tunnels.”

  Strange ran his finger across the map until it pointed to an area here, at 8th Army Headquarters, in the south of Seoul.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “Geological Survey.”

  “Have they reported any security problems?”

  “Not a one.”

  I lifted his clipboard off his desk and thrust it at him. “They’re about due for their annual security inspection, aren’t they?”