The Line

by Martin Limon

  I motioned to Ernie. It would be up to him to isolate Sergeant Colson so we could have a private conversation with him. Luckily, Colson wasn’t much of a pool player. He lost the first game, replaced his cue in the rack, and slapped a coin at the end of the line of coins on the edge of the table. As he stood alone sipping his beer, watching the green felt action, Ernie sidled up to him.

  They spoke. Colson eyed Ernie curiously. Apparently he wasn’t buying anything Ernie had to say. Ernie reached into his jacket and pulled out his identification. When he flashed it, Colson seemed shocked, nervous. Ernie kept talking, apparently reassuring him that there was nothing to worry about. A couple of other guys noticed their conversation. Soon there was a small group surrounding Ernie, and two GIs stepped up to me.

  “You with him?” one of them asked, pointing his thumb toward Ernie.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Better get him out of here.”

  “Why?”

  “We don’t like REMFs coming up here and asking questions.”

  “Did Colonel Brunmeyer tell you to say that?”

  Neither man answered, but the way they shuffled their feet answered my question. Voices were raised now. I didn’t have much time.

  “And what about Johnny No-Go?” I asked. “Do you really think he was murdered by Teddy Fusterman?”

  Both GIs looked away. One of them hooked his thumbs into his front belt loops.

  “You don’t,” I said. “So if somebody around here would answer our damned questions, maybe we could find out who did murder No-Go.” I sensed I was making headway as they shifted their gazes to the floor. “I visited his parents today,” I told them, “and his kid sister. You can’t even imagine what it’s like for them.”

  But it seemed they could. The more talkative of the two said, “We don’t know nothing. Nobody saw anything until those two guys spotted the body. That’s all we know.”

  Ernie had managed to turn the tide. The little gang of GIs surrounding him was now listening intently. A couple were even laughing softly.

  “So why does the colonel want you to keep quiet?”

  “JSA business is JSA business. We don’t need nobody on the outside butting in.”

  “Are you going to put it to the North Koreans?”

  Again they looked uncomfortable.

  “But there’s no reason to,” I said, “if Teddy Fusterman goes away for life for the murder. Why not be nice to the NKs? Treat ’em like pals.”

  The GI shook his head, confused.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Not your business,” he said, mimicking the cadence of Korean bar girls.

  Just then someone shouted. I swiveled and saw Ernie push past two GIs, who reeled backward from the impact. He started to sprint for the front door, but one of the men reacted quickly and was about to collar him. I stepped away from my interlocutors and grabbed the back of the GI’s shirt just as his forearm arced toward Ernie’s neck. He jerked back, and his forward momentum had been slowed enough for Ernie to make his escape through the beaded door curtain. I jerked the GI backward and tossed him to the floor, then followed Ernie out through the still-rattling beads. Behind me, a poorly aimed beer bottle smashed against wood.

  -13-

  Just as I surged through the exit, one of the JSA GIs raced after me. Ernie landed a roundhouse kick to his midsection and the GI groaned and went down. Then we were running up the street, probably a quarter mile before we slowed and looked back. A few of the GIs were milling about in front of the Lucky Seven Bar, but they were mostly just posturing and jacking their jaws. None of them seemed inclined to form a posse and come after us.

  “Nice fellows,” Ernie said.

  “What’d Colson tell you?” I asked.

  “He told me to perform an impossible biological task.”

  “Did you?”

  “Not yet. Maybe when I’m more limber.”

  “Yoga might help.”

  Still looking back to make sure we weren’t being followed, Ernie and I walked deeper into the village of Paju-ri. When we were sure no one was behind us, we started to breathe easy again.

  In a back alley, I inquired at an open-fronted kagei as to where I might be able to buy military supplies. The proprietress shook her head, so Ernie took the opportunity to load up with three double-packs of ginseng gum. After he paid her, he asked again in a nice way, using English that I doubt she understood. There must have been something about his boyish charm that helped her to open up. Her wrinkled face smiled beneath her white bandana, and she pointed down the street and told us in Korean to turn left past the grain warehouse. Ernie thanked her and unwrapped a stick of ginseng gum as we left.

  “She didn’t understand a word you said,” I told him.

  “Sure she did,” he replied. “I speak the universal language.”

  “You mean love?” I asked.

  “No. I mean being open to the possibilities of the universe.”

  “You been smoking that shit again?”

  “I’m high on life,” Ernie said, grinning.

  He loved Paju-ri.

  The old man was happy to see us.

  “You buy?” he asked, pointing at the web belts and ammo pouches and rubberized rain parkas arrayed on the tables in his store.

  I shook my head, then mimicked a man digging with a shovel. “You have?” I asked.

  His smile beamed wider as he nodded and motioned for us to follow him into the back room. It was dimly lit with rotted wooden walls, probably built with cheap material just after the end of the Korean War. Places like this existed outside just about every military camp in the country. In the States, we might call them Army and Navy Surplus stores. In Korea, they were considered black market operations, since they dealt in military supplies often pilfered from American compounds. They stayed open because they fulfilled a need, because there was a demand for their inventory. With South Korea not manufacturing much domestically in the way of consumer goods, rural communities could make good use of the canvas and plastic and sturdy metal tools that overflowed from US bases like fruit from a cornucopia. Even GIs bought items here. If your equipment was lost, stolen, or otherwise destroyed, it was cheaper to purchase a used replacement on the black market than something new from the military. The Army doesn’t play around in this respect: every soldier is responsible for his own equipment, and if he loses it, even during the most hectic field maneuvers or the most trying weather conditions, the expense is on him.

  The old man switched on a naked bulb that hung from a rafter. Next to a pile of rubber overshoes and a mound of camouflage netting sat about a dozen entrenching tools. Most were older models, clearly used—their wooden handles worn and their digging blades too rusted at the hinges to fold. Some probably dated back to the Korean War. I shuffled through them quickly, tossing aside the ones that weren’t of use to me. After checking them all without finding what I was looking for, I turned to the old man and said, “Seiro-nun kot issoyo?” Do you have any new ones?

  Ernie was watching the elderly proprietor closely and saw what I saw. The shift of his eyes away from us, a furtive shake of the head.

  Ernie grabbed the old man by the upper arm and said, “New ones. You arra? New ones.”

  The old man looked up at Ernie, terrified. He probably thought he was being robbed. I took pity on him and pulled out my CID badge, waving it in front of his nose and speaking in Korean as I did so. Show us the new ones, I told him, and we won’t bother you further. A shakedown by government officials was something he could deal with, something he was used to—just part of doing business; nothing dangerous like a robbery. The old man visibly relaxed and then nodded enthusiastically. We followed him to the front counter. He knelt down in the darkness and reached far back in a shelf, and for a moment I thought he might come back out with a shotgun. Instead, he stood up and dro
pped two pristine-looking Army-issue entrenching tools onto the counter. He slid them toward us.

  As I examined the newer models, the old man shone a flashlight up and down the sturdy wooden handles and along the cutting blades. I spotted something just below the fat adjusting nut and gasped. Ernie grabbed the entrenching tool for a closer look. He screwed the nut into the fully locked position until two scratched-in letters revealed themselves.

  “Initials,” he said. “T.F. Teddy Fusterman.”

  “Just like he said.”

  “But how’d it get here?”

  I turned to the old man and questioned him in Korean. At first, he was reluctant to divulge the shovel’s provenance. But when I showed him my Criminal Investigation badge again and then reminded him for good measure that theft from a US military compound was not only a crime, but a breach of national security in the eyes of the Korean government, he began to quake in fear.

  Those who pose a threat to national security in South Korea are not treated well. Criminals alone were sentenced to long terms in austere prisons, but anyone perceived to be weakening national defense could expect the harshest of punishments. Even execution by hanging. Stealing a single entrenching tool wouldn’t warrant that, but if I pressed the issue and complained to the KNPs, the resulting embarrassment in itself would be enough for the Korean courts to come down hard on this virtually defenseless businessman.

  Perspiration appeared spontaneously on the man’s forehead. I pushed him for an answer. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and, stuttering, began to explain. One of his regular suppliers, he said, was a Korean man who worked on the US military compound. He was a contract trash collector, and he and his crew picked up north of the Imjin at Camp Greaves, Four-Papa-One, and Camp Kitty Hawk. It was there, at Camp Kitty Hawk, just yards from the JSA, that the trash collector had found the entrenching tool. It had been shoved deep into a trash drum, covered by refuse. Whoever had hidden it there probably hadn’t realized that the Korean trash collectors routinely checked for items they could recycle, including aluminum cans and beer bottles. Or ones they could repair, like broken Stateside appliances. Or things that were still fully serviceable, like the entrenching tool. They later sold these outright on the Korean black market to shop owners like this man in Paju-ri.

  I asked for the supplier’s name. He gave it to me, and I jotted it down in my notebook using hangul. I then showed it to him to confirm that I’d spelled it correctly. He nodded, but I sensed by the confusion in his eyes that he wasn’t really sure. Decades before, when he had been of school age, the Japanese Empire had annexed Korea and made it illegal to teach the Korean language in school. Only Japanese had been taught. As a result, many people his age could barely read and write their national language.

  When I asked him how much for the entrenching tool, he simply bowed and told us there was no charge. The pervasive influence of the Korean National Police. Still, I knew he had paid for it, and I didn’t want him absorbing the full financial loss. I thrust five thousand won on the counter, about ten bucks. Hesitating at first, he finally accepted the money.

  When we left, he must have been happy to see us go.

  “How about fingerprints?” Ernie asked as we drove back to Seoul.

  “We can try,” I said, “but whoever crammed that entrenching tool into the trash probably wiped it down beforehand.”

  “At least we know it wasn’t a North Korean. Camp Kitty Hawk is south of the JSA; there’s no way a Commie could make it down that far.”

  “Well, somebody could’ve lifted it from the crime scene and taken it down to Kitty Hawk.”

  “Why?”

  “Either to cover up their own crime or hide the fact that a North Korean did it.”

  “Why would anybody want to help the North Koreans?” Ernie asked.

  “To prevent war,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah. That.”

  “The fact is,” I said, “we don’t really know how this entrenching tool ended up with that black market papa-san. All we have is his testimony. We can’t be sure who took it there or whether it’s Teddy Fusterman’s. A lot of GIs must have the initials TF.”

  “You worry too much, Sueño. This’ll get Fusterman off.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

  We locked the entrenching tool beneath the fold-up panel on the floorboard of the jeep beneath the passenger seat. It barely fit next to the jack and crowbar and two red flares that resembled sticks of dynamite. Ernie padlocked the steering wheel and we stared up at the bright lights of Myong-dong.

  With our blue jeans and sneakers and embroidered nylon jackets, we weren’t exactly dressed for the sojourn. However, the outfits provided us good cover. The local sophisticates would figure that we were just a couple of bumpkin GIs, drunk and out of our element. And maybe that was what we were—aside from the drunk part, which Ernie planned to remedy.

  “Let’s stop at that pochang macha,” he said.

  “For what?” As if I didn’t know.

  “For some pig’s blood dumplings,” Ernie said sarcastically as he trotted off.

  Pochang macha literally translates to “linen-covered horse cart.” In ancient times, merchants would wander from village to village with a cart pulled by a horse or ox, their shelves loaded with exotic products otherwise unavailable to the isolated farmers of the Korean hinterlands. Wares like cut glass or metal pans or nails or textiles milled in modern factories. The concept had since changed. Pochang machas now sold food and drink, rather than durable consumer goods. The carts were on large rubber wheels, but instead of being pulled by a beast of burden, they were pushed by the owner or his or her spouse, and their activities were required to be formally licensed by the city. They wandered through the massive metropolis of Seoul and set up in narrow alleys, often near bus stops or train stations. On rough benches, protected from the elements by a canvas awning, tired businessmen would jolt back a few shots of soju, the country’s fiery rice liquor, often accompanied by snacks to settle worried stomachs. Favorites included pig gut stew and diced bean curd bubbling in red pepper broth, which the owner cooked right there over a charcoal stove bolted to the center of the cart.

  Ernie had no time to eat. He handed the proprietor a few coins and returned with a half-liter bottle of Jinro soju. He popped the cap with his teeth and offered me the first slug.

  “You go ahead,” I told him.

  He did. Glugging back a mouthful, grimacing, blowing out air, and then chugging another.

  “You on the wagon?” he asked.

  “Have you ever known me to be on the wagon?”

  “You were when Leah Prevault had you toeing the line.”

  I looked away. “She was worried about my health.”

  “And now she’s gone. So you can drink as much as you like.”

  I went silent at this. Captain Leah Prevault was a psychiatrist who’d been stationed at the 121st Evacuation Hospital in Seoul. We’d worked with her on more than one case, and she and I had become acquainted. One thing had led to another, and suddenly we were breaking every non-fraternization rule in the book. When she was transferred, it had been tough to say goodbye. She was now at Tripler Army Hospital in Honolulu, and we corresponded pretty much constantly. She’d even managed to swing some temporary duty orders and return to Seoul about two months ago, ostensibly working on the backlog of patients that had built up at the 121 but also spending time with me. Eventually, though, she’d had to return to Honolulu, and I wondered if the occasional reunions weren’t more painful than not seeing her at all.

  “Sorry,” Ernie said. “Guess I hit a nerve.”

  “Never mind,” I said. “So Evelyn Cresthill and this Korean mystery woman get out of the PX cab right about here.” The huge edifice of the Shinsegae Department Store loomed above us. “Where do they go?”

  Ernie sipped on the soju, glancing around at t
he shops and the neon as he pondered the question. Pedestrians, mostly middle-aged women with shopping bags and young couples clinging closely to one another, streamed past us.

  “The driver, Young Kim,” Ernie said, “he told us they planned to go to a nightclub.”

  “Yeah. Somewhere beautiful, with music.”

  “Two unescorted ladies,” Ernie said. “Sitting alone at a table. If there were plenty of gentlemen around, it wouldn’t be long until they had company.”

  “Gentlemen?” I said.

  “Yeah. What else? They’d want guys with money. Not a bunch of dumb gigolos.”

  “Are you sure? Evelyn couldn’t have much money, not since her husband closed down their joint bank account. But maybe the Korean woman did.”

  “I don’t think so,” Ernie replied. “She sounds like a recruiter to me. Camped out in the O’Club, waiting for prey.”

  What Ernie said made sense, but I wanted to hear his take on it. “What do you mean, ‘recruiter’?”

  “A recruiter,” Ernie repeated. “Targeting pretty young white women. Some Korean businessmen, and definitely Japanese ones, will pay a lot for a blonde.”

  “Evelyn Cresthill has red hair.”

  “Close enough,” Ernie replied with a shrug.

  “You think this Korean broad was trying to show Evelyn the ropes?”

  Ernie nodded.

  “In return for what?”

  “A piece of the action.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Or maybe it’s worse.”

  Ernie waited.

  “Evelyn didn’t come home. If she’d just spent the night with a rich businessman, the next morning she’d at least head back to check on her daughter, even pick up some fresh clothes?”

  “But she didn’t,” Ernie said.

  “No.”

  “So maybe the Korean broad isn’t just a pimp.”