Nightmare Range

by Martin Limon

  “Okay,” Ernie said. “The OWC has a case of the jaws. So what? They’ve had it before. What are they going to do about it?”

  Strange leaned back and puffed on his cigarette holder as if he were actually smoking, which he wasn’t. “How about a little hot chocolate?”

  Ernie glared at him, sighed, and pushed himself up from the table. As he stalked away, Strange said, “Don’t forget the marshmallows.”

  I studied Strange. He was pleased with himself for having commanded our attention. A GI’s life is controlled, from the moment he wakes up in the morning until the moment he goes to sleep at night, by the officers appointed over him. They can leave him alone if they want to—leave him alone to do his job, leave him alone to live his personal life—or they can mess with him constantly. Having been in the Army for the better part of a decade, Ernie and I had each experienced both levels of control and there was no question about it, being left alone was better. This is why we were listening to Strange so intently, out of respect for the heat that the OWC could bring down on us.

  Ernie returned with the hot chocolate. Strange frowned at the steaming concoction, picked up the little metal spoon and bounced the two marshmallows in the hot liquid, making sure they both became completely soaked. Then he levered one out of the mug, stuck out his tongue, and slid it wriggling into his mouth. Ernie and I grimaced. Strange had the odd talent of being able to make the most mundane action appear obscene.

  The marshmallow muscled its way down his throat. Burping slightly, he turned and smiled. “What the Officers’ Wives’ Club is going to do,” he said, “is bust you two down.”

  “Bust us down? For what?”

  “For not busting enough yobos. But not right away,” he added. “They’ll give you a chance to get off your butts and start enforcing the ration control regulations.”

  Ernie groaned.

  “Who’s the OWC point man?” I asked.

  Strange stirred his chocolate, watching the last marshmallow start to sink. “Who else?” he asked. “The Chief of Staff.”

  “Colonel Wrypointe?”

  “Bingo. His wife just got elected president of the OWC.”

  Millicent Wrypointe. I’d run into her before. When she shopped she actually wore her husband’s rank insignia on the lapel of her blouse. One day, when I was in the Commissary’s accounting department checking purchase records, she’d barged through the big double-doored “Employees Only” entrance and asked, “Are you CID?”

  When I’d nodded, she literally pulled me out onto the Commissary floor. In aisle number seven she pointed at a gaggle of Korean women loading up on a shipment of frozen ox-tail. The Commissary manager had taken the ration limit off. Usually, the shopper was limited to two packets of any given meat item per day. This batch of sliced ox-tail, however, had arrived from the States late because of a power outage on the refrigerated transport ship. If the Commissary didn’t sell it quickly, the meat would spoil.

  Mrs. Wrypointe pointed at the women loading up their shopping carts. “You have to do something!”

  When I explained why the ration limit had been lifted, she exploded. “Nobody can eat that much meat. They’re going to sell it on the black market.”

  I nodded. “Probably.”

  “That’s a crime. You’re a law enforcement officer. Do something!”

  “I’d have to follow them off compound and catch them in the act of making the sale,” I told her. “Right now, I’m working on another case.”

  “Then send someone else.”

  “I’ll notify the Provost Marshal,” I told her.

  She studied my face. “But you don’t think he’ll do anything, do you?”

  I shrugged. “We’re short on manpower.”

  She pointed to the silver eagle rank insignia on her lapel. “Do you know who I am?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I replied.

  Her face reddened. When I made no further comment, she said, “My husband’s going to hear about this. There’s no excuse for this. None whatsoever!”

  She’d stormed away, marching resolutely down the aisle, bumping into two Korean women who were so busy fumbling through the frozen ox-tail that they hardly noticed. As it turned out, I never heard about the incident again. Nor did I hear from Mrs. Wrypointe. Not, that is, until today.

  “Has Colonel Wrypointe discussed this with the Provost Marshal?” I asked.

  “Not yet. He’s getting his ducks in a row. Two clerks in his office are working overtime putting charts and graphs together, all pointing to the fact that black marketing has been exploding. He’s going to brief the Commander, explain the OWC concern, and put the pressure on the Provost Marshal to allocate more manpower to the black market detail.”

  “Thereby giving us less time to investigate real crime.”

  “They don’t care about real crime,” Strange said, “unless it happens to them.”

  “When is this briefing going to be held?” I asked.

  “Tomorrow. Zero eight hundred. Prepare for heavy swells.”

  After devouring the second marshmallow, Strange seemed to be finished with his hot chocolate. He turned to Ernie, waiting patiently for his dirty story. Ernie told him one, making it up as he went along.

  I stood up, walked back to the serving line, and pulled myself another mug of hot coffee. All I could think about was the rape case we’d been working on. Sunny, an innocent business girl out in the ville, beat up, tortured, and then raped by three American GIs who were still at large. And so far we had no leads.

  When I returned to the table, Strange was gone.

  “Where’d he go?” I asked Ernie.

  “Who the hell knows? He thinks I screw half the women on Yongsan Compound.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Not yet.”

  That night, Ernie and I ran the ville.

  We strolled past neon and the open doors of nightclubs where mini-skirted young women cooed with pouting lips and crooked painted fingers, beckoning us to enter. At the top of Hooker Hill we hung a right and then a left until we were strolling through a dark alley lined on either side with ten-foot-high walls made of brick and cement. At one opening we paused and Ernie pounded on the double wooden gate. Rusty hasps rattled.

  “Nugu seiyo?” someone said from inside. Who is it?

  “Na ya,” Ernie replied. It’s me.

  His Korean was getting better. The door opened.

  We stepped into a floodlit courtyard of flagstone circling a garden of scraggly rose bushes. An old woman closed the door behind us and then padded on plastic sandals up to the raised wooden porch that led into the complex of hooches. We slipped off our shoes, stepped up onto creaking wood, and walked down the dimly lit hallway. The place was quiet. Most of the young women who lived here had already left for the night, for their jobs as waitresses or hostesses in the dozens of bars and nightclubs and dance halls that comprised the red light district of Itaewon. The sliding paper door of the third room shone with golden light. The old woman slid it open.

  Like a cloud, the odor of urine and rubbing alcohol rolled out of the room. On the floor, amidst a rumpled comforter, lay Son Hei-suk, or Sunny, as the GIs called her. She was a young woman, maybe eighteen, but she seemed younger because of her open smile and her naïve way of laughing at anything a GI said. Most of the American soldiers treated her gently, teasing her like a younger sister, but two nights ago while she was pulling a shift as a hostess at the Lucky Seven Club, three Americans who nobody recognized coaxed her outside the club, apparently to help them buy some souvenirs at the local Itaewon Market, supposedly to send back to their families in the States.

  Sunny never returned.

  A farmer pushing a cart full of turnips found her the next day before dawn, near the Han River, unconscious, bleeding, barely alive. The Korean National Police were called, a surgeon at the Beikgang Hospital reset her broken left arm, shot her full of antibiotics, and used twenty-three stitches to sew up tears in her vaginal and anal areas.
The waitresses and hostesses and whores who lived in this hooch had chipped in to pay her hospital bill and have her carted back here by taxi. No family members had been notified. Sunny, when she regained consciousness, begged that they not be.

  Ernie set the PX bag full of painkillers and antibiotic cream and an electric heating pad on the floor. The old woman said she’d take care of it for us. We sat on the warm vinyl floor and watched Sunny. She snored softly. Gently, the old woman poked her shoulder. Slowly, Sunny roused herself awake. Groaning, she rolled over. Big brown eyes popped opened. She focused on us and raised her head slightly. A pink tongue licked soft lips and then she said, “You catch?”

  Ernie shook his head. “Not yet, Sunny.”

  “I told you,” she said, “one GI big, curly brown hair. ’Nother GI skinny, short white hair …”

  “Shush, Sunny,” Ernie said. “Don’t get excited again. We have your description. We wrote it all down.”

  “Then why you not catch?”

  Ernie looked down. “It’s not that easy.”

  Her eyes widened. She looked at me and then back at Ernie. “But they GI. You GI. You supposed to catch.”

  “We’re trying,” I said. When she continued to stare at me, I said, “They’re new here in Itaewon. Nobody we talked to at the Lucky Seven recognized them. Not the Korean women working, not the GIs we found who’d been there that night. Everybody agrees on one thing, they’re not stationed in Seoul. One girl said one of them had a jacket with ‘Second Division, Second to None’ embroidered on the back. So far, that’s all we have to go on.”

  Ernie spread his hands. “There are twenty-seven compounds and thirty thousand GIs in the Second Infantry Division,” Ernie said. “We’re looking but we thought maybe you’d remember something more.”

  Sunny’s stared at the ceiling, not at us, as if seeing something far beyond this little room. Although her facial features didn’t move, moisture, like water welling up from a spring, started to ball in her eyes. One by one, the tears fell.

  We waited a little longer. The old woman brought in some seaweed soup and tried to coax Sunny to eat. She refused.

  Ernie and I rose to leave. As we stepped out onto the porch, Sunny called after us.

  “Smoke.”

  We turned.

  “One GI call ’nother one,” she said. “ ‘Smoke.’ ”

  “Anything else, Sunny?” I asked.

  She shook her head. And then the tears were flowing again. The old woman scowled at us and slid shut the door.

  The next morning, Colonel Brace, the 8th Army Provost Marshal, called us into his office. He let us stand, completely ignoring us, while he puffed on his pipe and studied the folder in front of him—an old ploy that lifers use to let you know that, compared to them, you’re lower than dog shit. Finally, he looked up at us.

  “Your black market statistics are abysmal,” he said.

  “A lot of crime out in the ville, sir,” Ernie said. “It’s been taking up most of our time.”

  “I know what you’ve been working on,” Colonel Brace said. “And I know how much time you’ve spent on the black market detail and it hasn’t been enough. From today forward, you drop all other investigations and concentrate on black market activities.”

  “We’ve got a woman out in the ville who was raped and beaten,” Ernie replied, “by a gang of Division GIs who we haven’t been able to identify yet.”

  “A prostitute, isn’t she?” the Colonel asked.

  “A hostess,” Ernie replied.

  Colonel Brace raised one eyebrow. “There’s a difference?”

  “If you met her, sir, you’d realize there is. She’s an innocent kid with no family to speak of who came to Itaewon because she had no other choice.”

  Colonel Brace shrugged. “Probably,” he said, “this ‘innocent kid’ believed she hadn’t been paid enough and started a hassle with our servicemen.”

  “They broke her arm, sir. And she received twenty-three stitches for her trouble.”

  Colonel Brace glared at Ernie and then at me. He wanted to say something but instead he puffed on his pipe, not happy with us contradicting him. Most of the other CID agents would never dare. “I appreciate your concern,” he said finally. “I’ll have Staff Sergeant Riley forward your report up to Division MPI.”

  Ernie sighed. We both knew that the 2nd Infantry Division Military Police Investigators hated criticism of their troops, especially when it came from rear echelon pukes like the 8th Army CID. They’d see the rape of an Itaewon “business girl” as nothing more than their self-sacrificing soldiers letting off a little steam. The case would not only be ignored but probably suppressed.

  “Meanwhile,” Colonel Brace continued, “Eighth Army has other priorities, especially with these black market stats spiraling out of control. Now listen to me, the both of you. From this moment forward, you are assigned to the black market detail and the black market detail only. You’re both capable of increasing your arrest rate. I know you are because I’ve seen you do it before.”

  He was waiting for us to say “Yes, sir!” or shout something gung-ho or at least nod. Neither of us did.

  Colonel Brace frowned and stood up, leaning across his desk. He said, “I want you to put the fear of God into those yobos in the PX. I want them to be afraid to even think about black marketing. Do you understand me?”

  This time we both nodded. He asked if we had any questions.

  “How about an increase in our petty cash allowance?” Ernie asked.

  To my surprise, Colonel Brace didn’t flat out turn the idea down. Instead, he said, “What is it now?”

  “Fifty dollars a month.”

  “Tell Sergeant Riley to increase it to a hundred.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  With that, we were dismissed.

  On the way out the door, Colonel Brace said, “I’ll be monitoring your results.”

  Staff Sergeant Riley sat behind his desk. “How’d it go?” he asked.

  Neither one of us answered. Ernie told Riley about the increase in the petty cash allowance and then headed for the coffee urn. I plopped down in the gray vinyl chair in front of Riley’s desk.

  “Smoke,” I said.

  “What?”

  “That’s the nickname of one of the GIs who raped Sunny.”

  “That business girl out at the Lucky Seven Club?”

  “She’s not a business girl, she’s a hostess.”

  Riley shrugged. “Same difference.” He shuffled through paperwork and then paused. “Smoke. Isn’t that a term that’s used by the field artillery?”

  That’s when I remembered. Each company-sized unit in the field artillery has an NCO who’s in charge of laying and firing the guns. His official title is Chief of Firing Battery but what GIs usually call him is Chief of Smoke—or just “Smoke.”

  When Ernie returned with his coffee I ran the idea by him. He frowned. “But according to Sunny, these guys were young. A Chief of Smoke is usually an older guy.”

  “All Americans look the same to a Korean,” Riley said. “They can’t tell our ages.”

  Miss Kim, the statuesque administrative secretary, glanced up from her typing, a prim frown on her lips. When she noticed me watching, she turned away and resumed her typing.

  “Maybe Sunny’s wrong about their ages,” Ernie said, “of at least one of them, this guy called Smoke. Or maybe he’s just a baby-faced guy who got promoted fast.”

  “None of the faces Sunny told us about,” I said, “could be described as babies. They’re all monsters to her.”

  “Still, it’s worth checking out,” Riley said. “There are four artillery battalions in the Second Division, with three batteries each.” He lifted the phone and dialed. Within seconds he was chatting with a buddy of his at 8th Army personnel, asking for a print out of every GI assigned to Division artillery. Riley said, “Thanks,” and slammed down the phone. “I’ll have the printout before close of business today.”

  “Good.
Another thing you can get for us.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The blotter report from the MPs up at Division.”

  “Why would you need that?”

  “Once GIs start raping women and kicking ass, they have a tendency to keep doing it.”

  “Okay,” Riley said. “I’ll get that too. Meanwhile, you guys better get some black market arrests.”

  “Screw that,” Ernie said.

  “Don’t piss off the Provost Marshal,” Riley warned. “He’s serious about this. The shit’s rolling downhill big time.”

  Ernie sipped again on his coffee, left the half-empty mug on Riley’s desk, and rose to his feet. Together, we headed outside.

  Ernie and I sat in his jeep, sipping PX coffee we’d bought in the snack stand in front of the commissary. It was hot and tasted about as acidic as your average quart of battery fluid. We were watching customers, mostly Korean women, flow out of the commissary, trotting behind male baggers who pushed huge carts laden with freeze-dried coffee, soluble creamer, mayonnaise, concentrated orange drink, bottled maraschino cherries, and just about anything else that was imported and therefore highly prized on the black market. After the groceries were loaded into the trunk of one of the big black Ford Granada PX taxis, the women tipped the baggers and climbed into the back seat.

  “Which one should we bust?” I asked.

  “Let’s finish our coffee first.”

  “Okay by me.”

  We sipped on our coffee for a while and then Ernie said, “Whoa!”

  I glanced up and realized immediately what had gotten his attention.

  She was a tall Asian woman, with a willowy figure and raven hair piled high atop her head. She wore a long blue dress that clung to her curves like wet tissue paper moistened by a tongue. Silver earrings dangled from the side of her heart-shaped face and her slender arms were lined with bracelets.

  “Who’s she?” Ernie asked.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “Never seen her before.”

  Ernie poured his remaining coffee out the door of the jeep and tossed the empty cup into the back seat. He started the ignition.