The Line

by Martin Limon

  Ernie and I glanced briefly at one another.

  “And you want us there . . . why, sir?”

  “So you can make it official with your Criminal Investigation report and arrest the culprit.”

  “We can’t arrest North Koreans, sir. That’s definitely outside of our jurisdiction, and in any case, we’re officially barred from this investigation.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “Eighth Army rules can always be bent. Leave that to me.”

  With that, he turned and disappeared back into the darkness.

  Ernie looked at me. “Is he serious?”

  “As a freaking heart attack.”

  The next morning at the CID office, Staff Sergeant Riley said, “Only one black-market arrest yesterday?”

  Ernie shrugged and returned to reading Riley’s copy of the Stars and Stripes.

  “You should’ve had more than that,” Riley said. “I know you’ll do better today.”

  “We will?” Ernie said. “Why’s that?”

  Our policy was to make as few black-market arrests as we could get away with. The alleged purpose of the ration control regulations was to make sure that tax-free American-made products didn’t flood the Korean market. The unfair competition—with transportation costs funded by the American taxpayer—theoretically made it difficult, if not impossible, for fledgling Korean companies to gain a toehold in the consumer market. This was the official rationale. But the real reason the 8th Army honchos put such an emphasis on curtailing the black market was much more visceral: flat-out racism. The men and women who ran 8th Army didn’t like seeing the wives of enlisted men—almost all of them Korean or from other third-world countries—descend on their PX, their commissary. The checkout lines grew longer and the desirable consumer goods were gobbled up, leaving less merchandise available for “real” Americans. As Ernie used to say, we were just tools of the power structure. By making fewer black-market arrests than we were actually capable of, we’d turned ourselves into blunt instruments, which might have been a petty form of protest, but a form of protest nevertheless.

  No matter what we did—or didn’t do—black marketeering continued unabated. It was an easy way to double or even triple your money, and almost everyone involved had someone relying on them financially. Maybe a younger brother struggling to get through high school or elderly parents who could no longer afford to put a roof over their heads. There was no social security or welfare system in Korea. So the incentive to turn an illicit buck was strong. Undaunted, Eighth Army continued to shovel against a tide of unbridled capitalism, and for the most part, Ernie and I were the only ones getting wet.

  “Today is end-of-month payday,” Riley continued. “A clean slate on everybody’s monthly ration limit. So after hubby brings home the loot, wifey will stuff her patent leather purse full of money and hit the bricks. The yobos will be all over the PX and commissary.”

  “Let the good times roll,” Ernie said.

  Ernie hated the PX. When he was forced to shop, he’d pile up about three months’ worth of soap and shoe polish and toothpaste and rush out as soon as possible. And even though he spent so little time inside, he’d complain about the perky announcements over the intercom. “‘Good morning, shoppers.’ What do they think I am? A freaking shopper? They can stuff it.” Then he’d pause and take a deep breath, trying to calm himself. “This place is loaded with crap. What would anybody want this stuff for?”

  I didn’t have an answer.

  The military package liquor store—unofficially called the Class VI—was a different matter. Ernie could browse the shelves in there for hours. Studying the labels, meditating on the difference between a blended scotch and single malt or the relative merits of virgin sugarcane honey versus raw molasses in the manufacture of Caribbean rum.

  At the counter in back of the CID office, I pulled myself a cup of hot coffee from the large silver urn. Miss Kim ignored Riley and Ernie’s banter, as per usual, focusing on her typewriter. I carried my coffee toward her desk and sat down.

  “Anyonghaseiyo?” I said. Are you at peace?

  “Nei,” she said, smiling. “Anyonghaseiyo?” Yes. Are you?

  She was always stylish, wearing colorful cotton dresses that were modest but still managed to highlight her magnificent figure and show off her long legs from the knee down. A little over a year ago, she and Ernie had dated. Miss Kim seemed to think that the two of them were headed in a serious direction. At first, she ignored the comments that Riley and a few of the other law enforcement agents let slip. But eventually they became too much for her to pretend they weren’t valid. She confronted Ernie with her suspicions and, to his credit, he didn’t deny his infidelities. And he made no promises to her that the two of them would be anything more than friends. It was a friendship with what Ernie hoped would be continuing privileges. But right then and there, Miss Kim ended those privileges—and the friendship. She’d barely spoken to Ernie since, which was awkward since they still worked in the same office. However, that didn’t seem to bother Ernie. Nothing ever seemed to bother Ernie.

  “Sorry to interrupt your work, Miss Kim,” I said. “But I have a question.”

  “Yes?”

  She placed her hands in her lap and waited.

  “Have you ever heard of an orphanage in the city of Taean?”

  “Taean?” she asked.

  “Yes. In Chungchong-namdo.”

  I suspected that Corrine Fitch might be using this trip to Korea to research her own past. She’d mentioned Taean; if there was an orphanage there that had operated around her time of adoption, that might explain her interest.

  “I’ve heard of it,” Miss Kim replied. “But if there’s an orphanage there, I wouldn’t know.”

  “Do you think you could find out if there are any? And send me the names and locations? I believe this one operated during the Korean War, but it might not be there any longer. If it isn’t, maybe there are some old records.”

  “You want to look someone up?”

  “Yes.”

  Miss Kim was very quick on the uptake. If she’d gotten the chance to earn something above a high school diploma, I knew she would’ve gone far. Unfortunately, the Korean War had hit her family hard, as it had millions all over the country. Her father had been a soldier in the South Korean army and had been lucky enough to survive until the armistice was signed in July of 1953. But during the war, while combat still raged, his unit had been cut off from resupply and many of his fellow soldiers died of malnutrition. Miss Kim didn’t talk about it, but from other stories I’d heard, many soldiers had survived by eating frogs and lizards—until the reptiles and amphibians became scarce. When her father returned from the war, he’d been frighteningly emaciated and in generally terrible health. In those days, few people had enough money to see a doctor, but he’d eventually gotten an appointment at a free clinic set up by the United Nations. His prognosis was bleak: starvation had caused irreparable damage to his internal organs. The doctors gave him medicine to ease his suffering, but he died only a few months later. Miss Kim was an only child. Since then, she and her mother had barely gotten by—that was, until she’d graduated from high school and landed a secretarial job on the 8th Army compound. The US military was one of the few employers that provided health insurance, a steady paycheck, and even a retirement plan. Her mother had no marketable skills—other than taking in laundry—and in any case was now too sickly to work. As a result, Miss Kim held on to this tedious administrative job at 8th Army CID as if it were a lifeline out of the ninth circle of hell. Which, to her, it was.

  “I’ll make some phone calls,” she told me. “Off base, to some of the children’s welfare organizations. Maybe one of them can tell me.”

  “I’d really appreciate it.”

  Miss Kim’s cultured tone could open doors that my broken Korean usually couldn’t. She stared at me quiz
zically. “There’s a young man,” she said “who says he knows you.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “I don’t remember his name, but he started showing up every day at noon. He says he loves to play badminton.”

  “Oh,” I said, “Porter.”

  “Yes. That’s his name.” She studied me. “He’s odd.”

  “Odd? Why?”

  “He plays badminton poorly.”

  “Oh, that’s all?”

  “Partly. But he always wants to be on my team.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ve dropped to third place in our division.”

  “You mean when I see you guys outside playing every day, you’re participating in a tournament?”

  “Tournament?” she said, deftly thumbing through her onion-skinned English–Korean dictionary, her polished forefinger running down the right page before coming to a halt. “Yes,” she said, “a tournament.”

  “What’s the prize?” I asked.

  “No prize,” she said.

  “Then what?”

  “Pride,” she said, as if it were obvious.

  “So you don’t want Porter to play on your team?”

  “Not all the time,” she said. “We do, what do you call it?” She swirled her forefinger in a circle.

  “Rotation,” I said.

  She looked that word up, too. When she found it she said, “Yes. Mr. Porter is welcome to play with us but he must follow the rotation.”

  “I see. That way it’s fair.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you don’t want to have to explain that to him.”

  “No. It’s very embarrassing. He always wants to be on my team.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll talk to him.”

  She placed her cool palm atop my hand. She almost certainly realized that Porter was sweet on her. “Be kind,” she said.

  “Of course,” I promised.

  While we’d been talking, Riley had received a phone call that I’d ignored—he received dozens of phone calls during the day—but now I realized his voice had risen.

  “You’re shittin’ me,” he said. Then, “They’ll be right there.”

  He slammed the phone down.

  “Bascom! Sueño!” he shouted even though we were just a few feet away from him. “Hat up! Evelyn Cresthill has gone missing. Again.”

  We jumped in the jeep and headed for the on-post quarters of Evelyn Cresthill. Within minutes, we reached the South Post housing area. Major Bob Cresthill answered the door.

  “You two,” he said, eyes wide.

  “Yes, sir,” I replied. “We thought you’d be at the Soyang construction site.”

  “We got back late last night. I was about to get ready and go to the office. What is it?” he asked irritably, not inviting us in.

  “What happened to your wife?”

  “Who the hell knows?” He shook his head several times. “Last night when I came in, the house was empty. I went over to Madge Bronson’s place and Jenny was there again. I begged Madge to keep her one more day because I have to work this morning. We’re finally wrapping up the project. She said okay, but I can tell you she’s at the limits of her patience. Can’t say that I blame her.”

  He glared at us as if we were personally responsible for his childcare problems.

  “Did your wife leave a note or say anything to Mrs. Bronson about where she was going?”

  “Not a word.”

  “How about to Jenny?”

  “She just told Jenny to be good and not give Madge any trouble.”

  “Did she tell Madge when she’d be back?”

  “Yeah. It was supposed to be last night, sometime early enough to get Jenny home so she could get a good night’s sleep for school today. As you can see, she didn’t make it.”

  The Seoul-American school had opened an hour ago.

  “That’s why you called it in.”

  “That and what she left in the bedroom.”

  “Can we see?”

  He opened the door wider and we followed him down the hallway to the master bedroom. He motioned toward the top of the dresser. On it sat a white paper napkin and in the middle of that a wedding ring. The diamond glistened in the overhead light.

  “And her passport’s gone,” Cresthill said. “Plus two of her favorite dresses.” He pointed toward naked wires hanging in the closet. “Along with a Pan Am travel bag she likes to use. I wouldn’t be surprised if our checking account’s been cleaned out.”

  “Much in it?” Ernie asked.

  He shrugged. “Only a couple hundred bucks.”

  More than an infantry private made in a month, but we didn’t say anything.

  Major Cresthill promised to call us if his wife contacted either him or Jenny. We thanked him and walked next door to confirm his story with Madge Bronson. She told us that Evelyn Cresthill came to her home about noontime yesterday—shortly after Ernie and I had talked to her—and asked Madge to pick Jenny up from school. She promised she’d be home that evening early enough to take Jenny home and tuck her into bed, but she hadn’t shown up. Mrs. Bronson wagged her forefinger at us as she said, “Evelyn Cresthill dumped her daughter on me a second time and had the nerve not to come back. If you see her, you tell that woman that I’m through being taken advantage of. I’m nobody’s doormat.”

  “We’ll pass that along,” I promised.

  On the way back to the jeep, Ernie whistled softly. “Think Evelyn Cresthill’s abandoned her family for good?” he said.

  “Maybe she had no choice,” I said. “The gampei might’ve threatened her.”

  “They’d do that?”

  “They’ve probably already made appointments with big shots to be entertained by a Western woman. Rather than lose face, I don’t think they would hesitate to do whatever got her back.”

  “She should’ve come to us.”

  “I don’t think she trusts Eighth Army much. Besides, she probably thinks she can work this out on her own.”

  “Good luck with that,” Ernie said.

  We stopped at the Honor Guard barracks and checked with Captain Randy Quincy. He claimed that since the last time we talked to him, he’d had no contact with Evelyn Cresthill.

  “Are you sure you haven’t seen her?” Ernie asked.

  “Scout’s honor,” he replied, holding up two fingers.

  -22-

  Per our usual routine, we parked our jeep next to the old lady who sold pindaedok from her rolling cart a block behind the downtown Jongno headquarters of the Korean National Police. When Ernie handed her another two thousand won, she bowed and beamed a wrinkled smile.

  “Parking’s adding up,” he said, checking his fold and stuffing it back into his pocket.

  Officer Oh met us in the lobby and escorted us upstairs. Once again, Mr. Kill waved us to the seats opposite him across the wooden coffee table. This time, Officer Oh joined us. She pressed her knees tightly together and adjusted her skirt, her spine not even touching the back of the chair. I explained that Evelyn Cresthill had disappeared again, and that we believed she might’ve voluntarily returned to the gampei.

  “I wouldn’t call it voluntary,” Inspector Kill said.

  “What do you mean?”

  In response, he nodded toward Officer Oh. During past encounters, she had typically been quiet, not doing much more than serving coffee and tea, driving Mr. Kill’s police sedan, and handing him reports. But it seemed he was grooming her for greater things.

  Officer Oh said, “To the gampei, Evelyn Cresthill is valuable in more ways than one. Not only are they making money from her by using her as a hostess for very rich men, but they are also”—she paused and studied her notes—“putting their t
humb in the eye of the American forces.”

  “Why would they want to do that?” I asked.

  “To showcase their power. To prove to competing mob groups that they’re not afraid of the United States.”

  “And therefore not afraid of the Park Chung-hee regime,” I added.

  “Exactly,” she said.

  “How long will they hold her?” Ernie asked.

  “I don’t think they’ll let her return this time. Our sources say that she surprised them by running home the last time. They won’t make the same mistake again. When they realized she was gone, they used their spies on base to find her phone number. They called her and told her that if she didn’t return, and do as they wished, her daughter would be abducted.”

  “They’d do that?” I asked.

  “The threat might not have been serious.”

  “But Evelyn Cresthill wouldn’t know that,” Ernie said.

  Officer Oh nodded.

  I turned to Mr. Kill. “Aren’t these gampei playing a pretty dangerous game? Just so they can pimp an American woman? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Mr. Kill nodded. “On the surface, no, it wouldn’t make sense.”

  Ernie and I glanced at one another. I turned back to Mr. Kill. “And under the surface?”

  He reached for his breast pocket, as if he wanted to pull out a cigarette, and then thought better of it and stopped himself. He nodded toward Officer Oh.

  She straightened herself and spoke. “We believe,” she said, “that these gampei might be under the influence, or trying to gain influence, with the North Korean regime. If the American forces have to start worrying about their women and children being kidnapped and sold into sex slavery, they will hesitate to bring them here.”

  “Which will damage our commitment to the defense of South Korea.”

  She nodded. “And ultimately cause all foreigners to be afraid to come to South Korea, which will greatly damage our economy.”

  “Evelyn Cresthill,” Mr. Kill said, “could be the first victim in a brutal campaign.”

  “So this time, you don’t think they’ll let her go?” I asked.