Slicky Boys

by Martin Limon

  I leapt forward, ramming my bayonet toward his throat with every ounce of strength I had. His eyes widened as he saw the cruel blade closing in but somehow—miraculously—he swiveled his head. By a quarter of an inch, the bayonet slashed past his skull.

  I charged forward blindly, completely off balance, consumed by rage. Shipton sidestepped and poleaxed me with the butt of his rifle as I passed. I crashed to the snow. Shipton pointed his bayonet down at me for the kill but something rumbled, growing louder, and he looked up.

  Coal struck his cheek, opening a small blossom of blood. An old wooden cart was building up speed, rolling down the narrow pathway toward us. Atop a black pile of soot perched the cross-legged Ernie. Screaming. Chucking chunks of black rock.

  The cart careened across the frozen snow of the courtyard and slammed into Shipton. He went down. Ernie leapt out of the cart, screaming and pummeling him with his bare fists.

  I kicked in the powdery snow, searching for the bayonet.

  Knuckles cracked on bone. Ernie was down. Shipton was up. Where the hell was the bayonet?

  Shipton had his back to me, scrabbling for his weapon. He was standing now, trying with frigid fingers to jam the magazine of live ammunition into its slot.

  My rifle! Where was my goddamned rifle?

  Ernie scrambled to his feet, yelling. With a metallic snap, Shipton’s magazine clicked into place. He pointed the M14 at us.

  Thunder rained down. I looked up.

  Down each pathway more coal carts rolled. Hooded men behind them, crouched and shoving. The carts burst out of the mouths of the narrow lanes and clattered across the courtyard, all heading straight for Shipton.

  He swiveled the Ml4 wildly. A round exploded—but the carts didn’t stop.

  Like a herd of enraged musk ox, the carts slammed into Shipton. He crumpled. The rifle flew into the air.

  With his head down like a bull, Ernie charged. Screaming, he grabbed Shipton’s rifle, slipped in the slush, and crashed to the deck.

  I was up, plowing toward Shipton. He regained his feet amazingly fast, but as he rose I kicked for his face. He dodged, caught my unbooted foot in his chest, and threw me back. I flailed wildly with my arms, lost my balance on the slick ice, and went down again.

  The men who had pushed the coal carts backed up toward the safety of the brick buildings, as if to observe the outcome of the battle between these crazy foreigners.

  Breathing heavily, Shipton braced himself on the edge of an overturned cart. He pulled the .38 from his belt, cocked the hammer, and aimed the barrel at me.

  All over now, I thought.

  His eyes focused, his big paw seemed to tighten around the .38, then something dark leapt out from behind the pile of coal.

  Shipton’s eyes widened. Behind him, I saw Ernie, holding something between them like an offering. The Ml4.

  Ernie thrust upward. Shipton let go his grip on the .38 and it tumbled to the ground.

  Ernie shoved up—and kept shoving—ramming the bayonet deeper into Shipton’s neck. Shipton’s mouth opened in a scream that had no sound. Slowly, like a metal tongue emerging from hell, the spike of the bayonet appeared between his teeth.

  Pushing with all his might, Ernie lifted him higher into the air until Shipton let out a sort of groan and then a growl of agony rattled over the frozen snow.

  Gore bubbled from his throat and flooded out of his nose. Finally, Ernie jerked back on the bayonet and Shipton flopped facedown into the snow, shuddered, and lay still.

  I staggered to my feet, stumbled over Shipton’s body, and picked up the .38. I pointed it at Shipton. His head lay twisted on the ice. Blood poured from his neck and mouth. I felt for a pulse. Then, I dropped the .38 and sat down next to him.

  Ernie was on all fours, breathing heavily, drooping his head, saliva streaming from his lips.

  One of the men who had pushed the coal carts now approached. A few feet away from us he stopped and shoved back his hood. Herbalist So. The King of the Slicky Boys.

  “Are you hurt, Agent Sueño?”

  I surveyed my body. The cuts I’d received all seemed to be superficial. Plenty of blood but no gushing from an arterial wound. My wrist, even if it was broken, could wait until we reached the 121.

  “I’ll live,” I said. “But you’ll find Mr. Ma’s corpse in the Geographic Survey building.”

  No emotion showed on Mr. So’s face. He barked swift orders to the hooded men behind him. Two grabbed a cart and shoved off, heading for Geographic Survey.

  I studied So’s face, thinking of how he’d manipulated me. How he’d manipulated all of us.

  “The slicky boys have their compound back,” I told him, gesturing toward Shipton’s body. “No more North Korean agents to worry about. No more Whitcomb. The Eighth Army honchos will be satisfied. Everything can go back to normal.”

  The leathery features of the Emperor of the Slicky Boys didn’t move but somewhere, maybe it was at the corners of his mouth, I thought I saw a trace of a smile.

  He turned back to his men. “Kaja!” Let’s go.

  They grabbed their carts and rumbled into the night.

  Ernie and I lay in the snow like two victims of a plane crash. A few minutes later, a pair of heavy boots pounded toward us. An MP skidded to a halt.

  “Jesus Christ!” he said. “What in the hell happened to you guys?”

  Ernie rolled over—groaning—and flipped him the bird. “Dick,” he said and passed out.

  41

  THE JEEP ENGINE PURRED ALONG THE COUNTRY HIGHWAY. Ernie had the heater turned up full blast and insisted on driving, telling me that he was feeling a lot better. We wound through rising foothills terraced with frozen rice paddies. Farmhouses huddled in companionable clusters, their thatched straw roofs frosted with ice.

  Last night, the MP’s had taken us over to the emergency room at the 121 Evac. After he stopped the bleeding, the medic on duty put a brace on my forearm saying that nothing was broken, just a few nasty ligament tears. He patched up all the cuts and bruises Shipton had perpetrated on me, and stitched up a few more.

  “Just meat,” the medic told me. “It’ll heal.”

  He gave me a shot of antibiotics to ward off infection and a tetanus shot for the rat bite. Finished, he stood back and gazed proudly upon his handiwork. From the shoulder down I looked like something constructed by Dr. Frankenstein. Nothing I couldn’t hide inside a coat, though. Except for the brace.

  Ernie was supposed to stay in the hospital to allow his spleen rupture to finish healing, but after all he’d been through, no one had the nerve to tell him again he couldn’t leave.

  While Mr. Ma and I were struggling with Shipton, a Korean janitor at the 121 Evac had woken Ernie and told him that I was in trouble. After he’d sneaked out of the hospital, the slicky boys hid him under a canvas tarp and wheeled him in a coal cart over to the Headquarters complex.

  On 8th Army compound, Slicky King So had his thumb on the pulse of everything.

  After the medics patched Ernie and me up, they released us from the emergency room and I made a few early morning phone calls. Things were beginning to become clear to me. I explained to Ernie, but despite my protestations that I could take care of the problem myself, he had insisted on coming along.

  Maybe I was all wet. Maybe there was something else behind this. But since last night, when Shipton told me that he hadn’t killed Miss Ku, I hadn’t been able to think of anything else.

  I’d always been troubled by the circumstances of her murder.

  Miss Ku had been tortured, as if someone had been trying to pry information out of her. And she must’ve been abducted, because you can’t torture someone in the little alley behind the Tiger Lady’s kisaeng house and not have anybody notice.

  So if Shipton hadn’t been the one who killed her, who had?

  Using old-fashioned deductive logic, I’d been eliminating each possible suspect.

  Except one.

  One of the things that still bugged me i
n this case was that the ROK Navy had never notified us about Shipton being wanted for the murder of the daughter of an admiral. If they had, maybe we would’ve picked him up earlier and none of this shit would’ve happened.

  Also, when Ernie and I went to the ROK Navy Headquarters in Heing-ju, this admiral—the father of a murdered daughter—hadn’t even bothered to come out of his office and talk to me. I know if my daughter had been killed, and some investigator was offering to help, I wouldn’t have missed the chance to talk to him.

  The other thing that nagged at me was Commander Goh’s language ability. When he’d first seen me, he’d spoken in Korean. I’d responded and we had a long conversation. But when he walked out to the jeep before we left, he immediately spoke to Ernie in English. How had he known that I speak Korean and Ernie only speaks English?

  At the time, it seemed like mere coincidence. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

  The highway rose higher into the mountains. Ernie passed an overloaded country bus, flashed his headlights, and sped into a tunnel carved into the side of a granite cliff.

  Despite all that had happened to him recently, he honked the horn and hooted at the echo, laughing in the darkness like a demented child.

  The calls I had made this morning were to set up an appointment with Commander Goh at ROK Navy headquarters. As it turned out, that would be impossible. Today, all the brass would be attending a reenactment of one of Admiral Yi Sun Shin’s victories over the forces of the Japanese Shogun Hideyoshi in 1592. The entire celebration, complete with replicas of the old sailing vessels, was being held on the coast of Kanghua-do, an island across a narrow inlet west of Seoul.

  When we emerged from the tunnel, a natural harbor curved like a half-moon around the choppy gray waters of the Yellow Sea. A long wooden pier extended from the shoreline. Nearby, a parking lot was chock-full of military vehicles.

  An elegant Japanese junk with folded sails lay low in the menacing waves. Closer into shore bobbed the iron-plated shell of the Korean kobuk-son, the turtle boat, the world’s first armored ship.

  Ernie guided our jeep through the village. Near the pier, the streets were lined with men in white pantaloons and brightly colored vests, sporting stovepipe horsehair hats tied atop their heads. The women drifted like flowers in their chima-chogori, flowing silk gowns.

  “Looks like they’re about to have a party,” Ernie said.

  “And we’re going to ruin it.”

  The citizens of Kanghua waved as we cruised by. They don’t see many foreigners out here.

  We’d made sure to wear our civilian coats and ties. We were on official business and besides, I had a hunch a lot of people would be looking us over before the morning was through.

  Ernie pulled up in the parking lot and backed the jeep into an open slot. We strode out toward a group of ROK Navy brass gathered at the base of the pier. All wore their black dress uniforms and gold-rimmed caps. Below them on the beach, sailors in dungarees hustled about near the turtle boat, preparing for their mission.

  As we approached, the faces of the Korean officers turned toward us. Near the center stood a tall, gray-haired man with more gold on his brim than anyone else in the crowd. Two stars on his shoulders. An admiral.

  In front of him, talking earnestly, stood Commander Goh.

  I stopped three feet in front of them, flashed my identification, and spoke in Korean. “I’m Inspector Sueño,” I said. “Eighth Army CID. Here to ask a few questions of Commander Goh.”

  The admiral’s mouth almost fell open—the American military was not often seen in these remote areas. Ernie positioned himself a few feet away from me, hands on his hips, making sure that everyone understood that he wasn’t intimidated by all this rank.

  “Wein irri issoyo?” the admiral said. What is it you want?

  “There was a murder,” I said in Korean. “The daughter of an admiral, Commander Goh told me. But I’ve checked into this murder more thoroughly. It wasn’t the daughter of an admiral who was killed.”

  Commander Goh took a step away from the admiral. I continued talking.

  “Lieutenant Commander Shipton is dead. He was killed by Agent Bascom here"—I nodded toward Ernie— “last night, during the commission of a crime.”

  Air seemed to escape from Commander Goh. He edged farther away from the admiral. I stepped closer.

  “The woman who was murdered,” I said. “She wasn’t the daughter of an admiral. She was the daughter of a naval commander. She was your daughter, Commander Goh. It was your daughter who was killed by Shipton.”

  He lowered his head, for what seemed a long time. Finally, he looked back up and spoke in English. Maybe hoping some of his fellow officers wouldn’t understand. He spoke loudly. Forcefully. Unashamed.

  “Yes. Myong-a was my daughter. Our little baby. Our only child.” He shook his head, fighting back demons. “She was given over to a foreigner. He was a strong man, and I hoped that he would make her a good husband. But she had already changed her mind about him when she went back to her old boyfriend. Myong-a had seen the evil in him. She had walked away from his evil.”

  The admiral patted him on the shoulder, told him he didn’t have to go on. Goh shrugged him off, ignoring him. A tremendous insult in a society that reveres hierarchy.

  “Myong-a was afraid to tell Shipton that she would not marry him. Why didn’t she come to me? I would have protected her. But she didn’t want to cause trouble. Myong-a didn’t want to hurt my chances of being promoted to admiral.”

  The strong lines of Goh’s face started to melt before my eyes.

  “And after she died, her mother became sick. She died only a month ago, willing death to come to her, refusing medication.”

  The officers stood frozen, hushed and embarrassed. Ernie shifted his hips, fondling the handcuffs at the small of his back, snapping his gum. The only person in the crowd who wasn’t impressed with Commander Goh’s story.

  “So I am like you now, Inspector Sueño,” Commander Goh said, looking straight at me. “I too am an orphan.”

  “And the rest, Commander Goh,” I said. “Tell us the rest. Tell us about the kisaeng in Seoul. Tell us about Miss Ku.”

  He continued to stare at me, his face unchanging. He said nothing.

  “The ROK Navy investigation had failed,” I said. “Shipton had completely disappeared. But then, you heard about the murder of a British soldier in Namdaemun. You recognized it right away as the handiwork of Shipton. Who else would’ve wanted to kill—or been capable of killing—a foreigner in such a brutal manner? When you found out that Agent Bascom and I were assigned to the case, you had us followed. We led you to the Tiger Lady’s kisaeng house.”

  He took a step backward.

  “You killed her,” I said. “You killed Miss Ku. Didn’t you?” When he didn’t answer, I continued. “She had known Shipton. She had slept with him. When she told you that she didn’t know how to find him, you didn’t believe her.”

  I longed to smash the side of his big square head with my metal brace. I was enraged by it all. By all the killing.

  “You sliced sharp knives into her fingernails. And then you ripped them off. When she still didn’t talk, you kept torturing her. And when you finally realized she knew nothing, you murdered her. Dumped her in the alley. Murdered her in a way that would make us believe that Shipton had done it.”

  The admiral had had enough. He barked an order. Two of the younger officers stepped between me and Commander Goh. Another laid his hand on Ernie’s elbow. Ernie flinched as if he’d been buzzed by high voltage wire, hopped back, and punched the Korean officer with a right cross to the nose.

  All hell broke loose. Goh backed away, out of my line of sight. Officers shouted, grabbing me and Ernie, and we shoved back, trying to break free.

  Down below, someone fired a gun.

  The oars of the turtle boat churned into the choppy waters, and the long-necked prow of the antique ship headed past the breakers toward the Japanese junk, the grimacing
head of the turtle glaring at its doomed prey.

  A deep voice boomed through the melee.

  “Shikkuro!” Shut up! It was the admiral.

  Everyone stopped and looked at him and then followed his eyes.

  Commander Goh had slipped away from the crowd and was backing down the pier toward the sea. He stopped, reached inside his coat, and pulled out a German Luger.

  Ernie shook himself free and ran to the far side of the wooden pier, taking cover behind a post. He pulled out a .45.

  I pulled my .38. Holding it in my good hand, I ran to the other side of the pier.

  Commander Goh backed away from us, waving the Luger from side to side.

  Ernie’s gum clicked rapidly. “There’s nowhere for you to go,” he said. “You’re trapped.”

  “I will go to the sea,” Commander Goh said in English. “Where a sailor always goes in time of trouble.”

  The three of us strode down the pier. Commander Goh walking backward, Ernie and me following. All with pistols drawn.

  A horn, like the bellow of a dragon, sounded below. The turtle boat was picking up speed, moving alongside the pier, heading toward its victim, the Japanese junk.

  There were no sailors visible; they were all inside, hidden beneath the iron shell. Protected.

  Commander Goh glanced down at the metal plating floating low in the water. Oars peeked out of portholes just above the waterline. Huge metal spikes stuck straight up into the air. Sharpened, to discourage boarders.

  Commander Goh kept backing up. Only a few yards of wooden pier were left.

  I started to sweat, trying to control the shaking of my hand. It wasn’t working.

  On the other side of the pier, Ernie seemed relaxed. He’d killed a man last night. He was ready to kill another today.

  Behind us, the admiral’s voice barked. I glanced back. Where the pier met the shore, a row of Korean MP’s had taken firing positions.

  “Put the gun down,” I told Commander Goh. “You’ve hurt enough people.”