Slicky Boys

by Martin Limon

  Then it dawned on me what must’ve happened.

  Once Shipton had tricked Mr. Ma and me into entering the Geographic Survey file room, why hadn’t he just disappeared down the hallway, left us searching for him in the dark like a couple of dimwits? Why had he come back and attacked? He must’ve known that I’d be armed—and attacking us for no reason was too big a risk. He’d attacked because he wanted to delay us. Or kill us. When that hadn’t worked, he’d set the fire. It was clear to me now. It was a diversion.

  Strange had told me that after the Geographic Survey people completed their final list of possible tunnel sites, they would pass the documents on to the 8th Army Commander. That’s what had happened. When Shipton couldn’t find what he wanted in the Geographic Survey files, he realized the papers must’ve been moved earlier than scheduled.

  Shipton had killed Ma—and would’ve killed me too—so he wouldn’t be interrupted while continuing his search. And now he’d set a fire to pull the Honor Guard soldiers away from their posts. The Headquarters building was unguarded.

  I started to run.

  The men responding to the alarm were too busy, too fascinated with the flames for me to bother asking for their help. It would’ve taken too long to explain what was wrong, what I needed. Shipton would work fast. I couldn’t risk delay.

  The corridors of the 8th Army headquarters building were dark. A red lamp glowed in the carpeted foyer.

  A few yards in, I stopped and peered down the hallway. Nothing. I stood for a moment, listening. No sound. I crept forward.

  The commander’s office was back in the corner of the building, in a position of honor. I’d never been inside, but I’d heard about it. Plush furniture, valuable paintings, an outer office with a gorgeous Korean receptionist, a small conference room next door.

  I stopped in front of the big double-door entrance to the commander’s office. A replica of the 8th Army cloverleaf patch, bigger than a basketball, had been carved with loving care into varnished teak.

  Everything was quiet. No sign of Shipton. He must be inside.

  He had to be.

  I stepped forward, grabbed the brass handle of the door, and pulled it open.

  In the receptionist’s office, moonlight filtered in through open curtains, glistening off leather chairs and gleaming coffee tables.

  I slipped my finger into the trigger housing of the .38 and took another step forward.

  The noise was like a great ripping of wood. I swiveled instinctively but saw nothing. I tried to locate the sound. It seemed to be everywhere and nowhere. I had only a split second to look up but as I did, I realized that the sound I had heard was plywood sliding above me, and the heavy darkness that crashed into me was Shipton.

  He had dropped on me from the ceiling.

  40

  THE KILLER REPLACED THE PANEL IN THE PLYWOOD ceiling and dragged the tall Mexican into the 8th Army Commander’s office. After leaning the CID agent’s limp body against a file cabinet, he knelt and felt for a pulse. Still strong. This man who’d been hounding him—this Sueño— would regain consciousness soon.

  Prying one of the bayonets off the rifles the Honor Guard soldiers had left, the killer ran the sharp tip along the agent’s neck. Flesh rippled beneath the gleaming blade. Waste him now, he decided. Take no chances.

  Something made him hesitate.

  Angel and Chuy. Two ranch hands from Matamo-ros—perched on the edge of the corral. He could still see them. Watching.

  This Sueño had proved to be the same type of Mex. Watching. Always watching.

  And the killer remembered the woodshed. The door slamming behind him. The foul reek of cheap rye whiskey. His father turning, slowly, hatred filling his eyes. Unraveling a black leather belt from his emaciated waist. Swinging the huge silver buckle, slapping the weight of it into his palm.

  And he remembered the crying, the pleading—the way his little boy whimpers seemed to enrage his father. And most of all he remembered the relentless battering.

  After his father had left the shed, the boy who was not yet a killer staggered out, covering his eyes, trying to hide his injuries, into the bright noonday sun. Into the pitiless stares of Angel and Chuy.

  It was their eyes he couldn’t stand. Always watching. Always knowing. Their faces showing nothing. Like two vultures feeding off his soul.

  When his father died, the killer inherited a pile of debt and a worthless ranch. But he was big now. And strong. After he’d disposed of everything that had ever belonged to his father, he disposed of two more things: Angel and Chuy.

  He’d gutted them. Using a hacking blade he found in the toolshed. And left their bodies in a thicket of mesquite.

  The killer shook his head, bringing himself back to the business at hand.

  He poked gently into the soft flesh below the chin of the CID agent. A bubble of blood rose to the surface, burst, and started to trickle toward the collar of the black shirt.

  This agent—this Sueño, this dreamer—had been like Angel and Chuy. Always watching. Always knowing. Waiting patiently to witness the beating that would surely come.

  Suddenly, the killer slapped his knees and rose to his feet, his decision made. He’d kill this agent slowly, like he’d killed Angel and Chuy, like he’d killed Whitcomb. He’d watch the silent knowledge in Sueño’s eyes change to surprise at his great prowess. And then to terror.

  Always terror.

  When I came to, I was no longer in the receptionist’s office but in the 8th Army Commander’s office itself. I finally made it, I thought. The corridors of power.

  A green lamp glowed above a work counter. Bo Shipton hunched over it, shuffling through papers, his narrow eyes glancing up occasionally at me. His big paw clasped my .38.

  Muscles rippled through his arms and shoulders as he worked. He wore a plain dark brown poplin shirt and dark khaki work pants. Good camouflage for a thief. With his short haircut and his neatly shaved mug, he could’ve easily passed for a military officer in civvies putting in some late hours.

  He must’ve dragged me in here and propped me against this cabinet. I wasn’t tied up, which was a nice touch—but he didn’t have any rope, so maybe he was less generous than I thought.

  Neither of us spoke for a while. He was too busy, I was too stunned. Finally, the ringing in my head subsided and I started to lift myself up.

  “Don’t move!”

  The voice was a low growl. Raspy. As if his throat was lined with gravel. I remembered the field tracheotomy I had read about in his records. The tube of bamboo he’d stuck in his own windpipe. His jawline was jagged and rippled with scars; reconstructed after the wounds he received in Vietnam.

  “If you move,” Shipton said. “I’ll shoot you right now.”

  Keeping the gun on me, Shipton edged toward the safe. He swirled the combination dial back and forth until the ball bearings clicked. He grabbed the handle, twisted, and swung open the heavy door. He riffled through the papers inside, found a blue folder marked TOP SECRET, and carried it back to the lamp. He pulled a tiny camera from his pocket. When he was finished photographing its contents, he stuffed the folder back into the safe, closed it, and locked it shut.

  He stepped toward me.

  “Sueño,” he said, lingering on the word. “You’re a Mex. And like all Mexes you hang out in las cantinas and you take money to do low jobs. You and your partner, Bascom, were the only CID agents greedy enough to bring Whitcomb to me. ¿Entiendes, cabrón?”

  His Spanish came out in a flat drawl. An Anglo trying to impress somebody.

  “Stick to redneck American,” I said, rubbing the cut above my collar. “Your Spanish is for shit.”

  Shipton’s big body tensed. “You’re a lowlife,” he said. “On the take.”

  “It was a few bucks for a favor. At least I never killed one of my own girlfriends.”

  He raised the gun. “I could pull this trigger right now. End it all.”

  My bowels just about unraveled. When the gun
didn’t go off, I thought I might have a chance.

  “Too many guards around here, Shipton. A gunshot would make it real hard for you to get away.”

  He smiled. “You’re right. Besides, it would be less enjoyable. And I owe you one.”

  “Owe me for what?”

  “For killing Miss Ku.”

  “Are you mad? I never touched the girl.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe it was your partner then. Doesn’t matter. That’s why I killed that Itaewon bitch he was shacked up with. I would’ve offed him too if she didn’t have so many noisy neighbors.”

  “They know how to treat a thief.”

  The scars on the side of Shipton’s head swarmed toward his eyes like a school of hungry fish. “You got a sharp mouth for a lowlife, on-the-take CID asshole.”

  He lowered the gun and slid it behind his waist.

  “Get up!” he said.

  I rose unsteadily. I ached all over but especially in my right hand, which was shooting thunderbolts up my arm.

  Shipton grabbed two rifles, M14’s, the type the Honor Guard uses, both with shiny, stainless steel bayonets glimmering in the green light. He loosened the carrying strap on one and slung it over his powerful shoulders. The other he pointed at me.

  “Out the back, Dreamer,” he said.

  We stepped into the commander’s conference room. In the far wall was a door locked by a long brass bolt. Shipton jerked it back, pushed the door open, and shoved me through. I missed the first stair and fell facedown into the snow.

  Shipton poked me with the bayonet.

  “Move,” he hissed.

  I lifted myself up and staggered along the big brick wall of 8th Army Headquarters.

  Behind us, the flames at the Aviation building crackled. Men shouted. All activity was centered down there. We were moving away from all that, into the shadows.

  No chance to run away. He’d pop me in the back before I made three steps. Best to keep him talking.

  “Why’d you kill Whitcomb?”

  “Keep moving.”

  “Is it because he saw you that night in J-two?”

  “You’re a real sleuth, aren’t you?”

  “How long you been working for the North Koreans?”

  He jabbed me again with the bayonet. “Shut the fuck up.”

  We turned a corner, and in the distance I spotted a shadowy figure pushing a cart. Coal delivery. The workman wouldn’t be much help. Anyway, he moved away, not even glancing in our direction.

  “You better hope nobody shows up,” Shipton said. “If they do, I’ll shoot you and end it quick.”

  But for some reason he had decided not to shoot me right away. I considered asking why but thought better of it. Instead, I concentrated on finding a means of escape. Anything. A loose brick, an old piece of pipe, anything I could use as a weapon. The M14 in Shipton’s hands was loaded. I’d heard the rifle’s bolt clack forward before we left the Headquarters building. The odds against me were long, but I wasn’t dead yet.

  He poked the tip of the bayonet into my back.

  “Over there,” he said.

  With the blade, he motioned toward a gap between two buildings. When the narrow pathway opened up, we were standing in the center of a small, courtyardlike space with the backs of four brick buildings facing us. Four more narrow pathways ran off like spokes from a wheel, all of them uphill, giving the impression that we were in an enclosed bowl. Once, the Japanese Imperial Army had used this space as a garden. But with typical American efficiency we’d black-topped it over.

  It was like the spot in Namdaemun where Cecil Whitcomb had died. In the center of things but isolated: Shipton’s method of operation. Ice crunched beneath my stockinged feet. My toes were frozen—I’d left the boots back in the Headquarters building—but I hadn’t even noticed the discomfort until just now. Too many other things to worry about. The snow had stopped falling and a few stray trails of footsteps crossed this small field of frost.

  “Hold it right there,” Shipton said. I had reached the center of the courtyard. “Turn around.”

  I turned.

  Before I could react, he popped the magazine out of the MI4, ejected the live round from the chamber, and tossed the weapon to me. It slipped out of my grasp, clattering to the snow, and as I bent to pick it up he whipped the other rifle off his shoulders and pointed it at me. He clanged a round into the chamber.

  I hefted the M14 in my hands. He had bullets, I didn’t. But at least I had the bayonet.

  “Go ahead,” Shipton taunted. “I’ll even give you a chance. The same one I gave Whitcomb.”

  Some chance. To die with a knife in the gut or a bullet through the head. I braced the rifle butt against my hip. Pain roared from my wrist.

  “Too bad you’re hurt,” he said. “Makes it less challenging.”

  “I’ll kick your ass anyway.”

  His eyes widened. “Is that what you said to Miss Ku?”

  What the hell was he talking about? Why did he think I killed Miss Ku? But if he didn’t kill her, who did? No time to think about that now. Only time to find a way to stay alive. I had to get under his skin somehow. Force him to make a mistake.

  “You really cared for her, eh?” I said. “The way you cared for the admiral’s daughter?”

  His face didn’t flinch.

  “Not an admiral,” Shipton said. “Not yet, but she was an officer’s daughter, all right. I thought maybe she wouldn’t be like those bitches in Vietnam, just using GI’s while they’re still fucking their old boyfriends. But I was wrong.”

  “They’re not all like that, Shipton. Only the ones who hook up with you.”

  Keeping his eyes on me, he stepped in a slow semicircle, checking all the pathways leading into our private coliseum of death. Not a sound. No one. Only the distant hollers of men battling the fire. Shipton looked back at me.

  “What’s the spirit of the bayonet fighter?” he asked.

  It wasn’t a question I was expecting. I knew the answer. Everyone who’d been through basic training knew the answer.

  When I was silent, however, he raised his rifle. “What’s the spirit of the bayonet fighter?”

  I stared into the black hole of the bore. “To kill,” I answered.

  That seemed to satisfy him. “And what are the two types of bayonet fighters?”

  The rifle was still pointed at my head. I had no choice but to go along with his sick fantasy. “The quick and the dead,” I answered.

  “That’s right.” He lowered the rifle. “The quick and the dead, Dreamer. Now, let’s see what type you are.”

  Hope rushed through my body like an electric shock. Maybe he was crazy enough not to shoot me. At least, I’d have a chance. I gripped the rifle butt tighter, ignoring the pain in my right arm.

  Keeping his eyes on me, he popped the magazine out of his M14 and ejected the round from the chamber. Run, I thought. Before I could make a move, he shuffled forward in the snow, holding the bayonet pointed straight at my eyes. He jabbed.

  I backed up, but the tip of the blade caught my forearm. Blood started to trickle.

  “You’re an oaf, Sueño,” he said. “I thought all you Mexes could knife-fight.”

  That’s why he was after me. Why he followed me into the CID building at night and why he wrote “Dreamer” in blood on the wall of the Nurse’s hooch. Not just because I had been assigned to his case, but because I’m Mexican. He was from the south of Texas. His prejudices were probably inbred.

  “Go fuck yourself, Shipton,” I said.

  I backed up faster now. He followed. We circled each other, bayonets pointed.

  He moved like a cat, smooth, agile—as if he’d been born to bayonet fighting. Throw him off stride, I thought. Make him angry. Do something.

  “Mexicans are too tough for you, Shipton. Did they know how weak you really are? Is that what you’ve been trying to hide from all your life?”

  He didn’t respond, but the features of his scarred face hardened into s
tone. With a yell that curdled my chilled blood, he hopped forward, jabbing the bayonet at my solar plexus. I moved to my side, not backward as he expected me to, and thrust out with a jab of my own.

  I missed him completely. He parried easily, then swung the butt of his rifle around in an arc toward my head. I saw it coming and dodged. The wooden stock slammed into my shoulder, knocking me backward.

  Even though my socks were soaking wet, somehow I kept my footing, but he was on me now—jabbing, thrusting, parrying. It seemed as if he had three blades on the tip of his rifle. It was all I could do to stay on my feet and keep moving away. The bayonet slashed into my wrist, into my forearm, and every time I tried to make a counterthrust, my damaged right arm failed me. Even if I’d found an opening in his awesome assault, I wouldn’t have been able to take advantage of it.

  He came at me remorselessly, slashing with the bayonet, not plunging it forward for the kill, but slicing along my wrists and my arms as I tried to fend off the blows. Blood splattered in the snow. He bounced back, smiling.

  “Trickier than Whitcomb,” he said softly. “But still not worth a damn.”

  He closed in and slashed again. I grabbed at his bayonet with my fingers but the sharp blade bit into bone and slid free. He swiped at my arms and, with the blood flowing and my flesh shredding, he cut into my shoulder, then backed off. I leaned against a wall, gore gushing down my side and leg.

  “You better think of something quick,” he suggested. “Pretty soon you won’t be able to lift your arms.”

  As he came at me again, I stepped away from the wall and backed off, protecting myself as best I could. He jabbed and sliced at will. Sweat blinded me. Loss of blood was making me dizzy.

  He was playing with me now, taking his time to kill, enjoying himself. Cutting me on the hands and arms as he’d cut the Nurse, and Whitcomb before her.

  His piercing green eyes watched me, knowing every move I made before I made it. As if he were searching into my soul. Searching for terror.

  Something rattled and crashed.

  Shipton hesitated. It was a mistake.

  Sometimes when you’re terrified, there’s also a sense of rage. A rage you’re hardly aware of at the time. How could he do this to me? How could he do it to the Nurse?