Tiger's Tail

by Gus Lee

  “Used my market boys to load. Last job together. They're all Yanks now, selling Corvettes, real estate and photocopiers in L.A.”

  “The Flags got your men and are moving them to Hong Kong—after nearly what? Eight years?”

  “See, that's chinks for you,” he said admiringly, eyes bright. “Loyal to a fucking fault. Chinks and Russkies don't get along, so they circle-jerked. But Asiatics don't give up. Last week, this bull comes in my cell, beats the crap out of me and says if I want the POWs, be in the backyard of Kwan Tai Temple at Shek Wu Hui, New Territories, two weeks from today, the last Thursday in January.

  “I said, what's the rush? Turns out the Flags're spooked by the new Year of the Tiger. In their heads, it's a bad year. They cast their bones and their horoscope shit to get the date. No changing it.

  “Fine, I said. You go for me and I'll give you more money than you can count. He split. Now how the hell was I supposed to get to Hong Kong—or get someone else to go—from here, anus of the world? Then you showed up. Christ!”

  He took a breath. “After twenty-four years, the boys'll be on our side a the Bamboo Curtain. On high ground, old and full a fish phlegm and rickets and that amoebic shit that grows in Manchuria. Gets in your skin.” He glared at the bugs. “Like the fucking Wizard.” Whispering, almost inaudible. I strained my good ear. “See, Captain, he sent a man to rape my wife. Nagol.”

  Bug legs scraped our shoes. I felt a moral chill.

  “Sir, bring ‘em out.” He studied the cell. “Not here. Don't you ever bring ‘em to Korea. Frisco. The Huntington, with clean sheets. No guards or flying, biting roaches. T-bones and Lucky Lagers. Laugh at everything, Captain. They'll look like cow dung, but tell ‘em they look good. Even old Two-Toes would like to hear that. Twigs is ugly as sin, but he don't care.”

  Go to Kwan Tai Temple, an old monastery dedicated to the war god, to deal with Chinese bandits. I had seen bandits on the Yangtze, coming onto our boat, BaBa and Master Wong silent: the bandoleered duchun, bandits, the throat-slitters. BaBa believed God favored me and Ma believed in my tiger sign; it was my job to welcome them.

  I stood stock-still, trying to inflate myself into man-size, ignoring the crying of my baby brothers. The duchun were smelly and ate our food from hatchets. I thought the sharp-knives were gone with Shanghai dongshi, singsong girls, frail, curved-backed gentlemen in long blue gowns, turquoise-garbed Chinese male opera divas, and thick-necked Muslim Chinese warlords eating lamb from their fingers.

  “Do it!” he barked. “Finish my job! Do the best thing of your life! You're a good officer. You won't do me like Uncle Sam. A big Northern Chinese with face to take the boys from the Black Flags, just like I was there. You'll take no crap, kick butt, and get the boys out. They follow orders. You're a West Point Airborne Ranger and they'll follow you through hell itself.

  “You're chink, patient when the thing turns on you— which, as sure as God made little green apples, it will.” He grinned. “With Oriental blood, you won't crap out. You have debt on you bigger'n me.” He liked the idea so much in that fetid cell that I liked it. But I was out of my lane and moving away from Jimmy.

  “Captain, you screwed up once. Been looking for a way to patch it with something good. This is it, son. You get points in heaven for pullin’ out POWs. What you clean-cut West Point sonsofbitches are built for—shit details to save good men.”

  He took a shuddering breath, chains rattling. The huge chest inflated, face beet red, wheezing. His heart hurt—I moved for him.

  He lifted his chin and crowed in a wailing, ear-busting, bottom-lung cry to unseen clouds, the sergeant in the field, bellowing mastery over the battlefield, telling all to screw off as the cups drummed, crying triumphantly to heaven. The guards were returning. I reattached my bandage.

  In time, Patrick McCrail stopped bellowing gratitude for the change in fate. Chest heaving, wet from spit and tears, he launched a smile that made old, dry skin crackle from the newness of it.

  “You're a beautiful man, Captain. A fine-bred Irishman and a credit to the green.” An old man feeling pleasure when none was expected. “I love following tall elephant turds on a long march. Ain't seen sky for seven years plus, but it's a helluva good day in Heaven.”

  “Sergeant Major, where's your wife? Can I help her?”

  He shut his eyes, a child with an old man's facial tic. “She killed herself. Her family understood. I sure as hell didn't.” Clenched jaws, a small voice. “Never took to Jesus; she's buried on a Korean holy mountain. Move on.”

  I exhaled. I'm sorry. What drives the Wizard?”

  “That's a dumb question, sir. He's trying to get rich.”

  “I don't think so. He has other motives. Maps of the DMZ, fantasies about arming Korea. He didn't kill you. I hope he didn't kill my buddy. Where would he hide him?”

  McCrail nodded. “Ya know, guns to him were entertainment. Asked how to use plastique. I told him. A bloody mistake, I'm sure. Wizard likes to save people so he can use ‘em like toilet paper later. Back then, he was tryin’ to turn the provost marshal and his MPs.

  “Look for your buddy in a hooker hooch in Southside Ville, shot full a scag and probably dead. I'm sorry, lad. What else?”

  “Okay.” I rubbed my face. “What can I get you?”

  It was a hard question. He raised his great head and let tears flow freely while he picked his nose. No social pretenses.

  “I'd sure like to touch a Bible.” He looked up. “I hear You, Lord,” he whispered, weeping. “I praise You from the bottom of my black, shitty heart for sending him. You are great. I owe You big.”

  I stilled my face. Fate had hammered on this man every time he had stepped foot in Asia. America had forsaken him, his comrades and his cause, and what he missed was touching a book no one thought much of anymore. But anyone would go nuts down here. “Roger that, Sergeant Major.”

  “You ought to read it. Unload that crap you ‘re carrying around. I owe you one, Cap'n. I just hope no one's gonna cheat us.”

  He spoke liltingly in brogue. “What am I sayin'? You're the bloody Inspector General and a JAGC to boot and ya can make birds sing in spring.” He smiled crookedly, eyes bright, teeth yellow.

  “My boys deserve a fuckin’ day in the sun.” The great white brows at parade rest, his devils appeased. He winked. “Go get it for ‘em. They're waitin’ for me cuz I said I'd come. You understand a promise like that, don't you, Captain?” The tower was silent.

  He glared. “You know we got eighty-one hundred sixty-eight Korean War MIAs? Yes, sir! It's like ten fucking regiments unaccounted for. Well, shit, sir. Four a them bastards are comin’ home.”

  Eight thousand men, missing for a quarter of a century.

  He took a breath. I expected him to crow. He sang a deep-voiced melody that came from his heart and played with the muscles in my eyes. He was singing me a wish.

  May the road come to meet my step, may the wind be at my back, may a soft rain fall on my fields, might I always be in the palm of his God's hand. It was a song of Chinese rivers.

  “Michael Patrick Murphy's Irish blessin',” he said, breathing hard. “Benediction for a parish before it took to its horses.” He grinned almost boyishly. “Poetic, ain't it. Tell me, lad. Tell me true. What's the sun like?”

  I thought of spring days on the Plain of West Point, the broad Hudson a cut of blue paradise through the dark rock. “Hot, round and steady. Soft and easy in San Francisco, angry as hornets in Georgia. The clouds in fall, up the Hudson, are like pillows for the gods, and grass lawns smile upward.”

  His eyes were closed. “God, lad, yes. God bless ya.” He cleared his throat. “Here's to ya comin’ back to me fine green tavern to share another tot.” His eyes popped open and he shuddered.

  “Afore ya leave, can ya be killin’ that fat bug that's feedin’ on me neck. God knows, I hate ‘em. Ate those little wee cracklin’ bastards for dinner at Tangyuan. Now they're pay in’ me back, they are.”

  19

&
nbsp; HOGACIDE

  City lights of all skylines remind me of San Francisco. Driving through Seoul made me miss Cara. The City bore her indelible impression. I saw her profile, loving her face.

  Her laughter merged with the fall of artificial rain inside the tropical bar in the Tonga Room's indoor pool on the downslope of Nob Hill. The band played mercilessly nostalgic slow tunes. “Our Winter Love,” “Stranger on the Shore,” ” Theme from A Summer Place” “Perfidia.”

  I could not dance with her without feeling the deliberate need to take her to bed. It was how she fit against me, the warmth of her breath, her scent, her beguiling eyes, her own desire.

  “You're too much.” I kissed her ear, her slender neck. “Too beautiful, too sexy, too wonderful. Too stunning.”

  “Oh, baby.” She held me tightly, uncaring of the world. “You're crazy. And smart. I only know law and the trivia.” Her lips on my ear. “You're idealistic. You know the significata.”

  “I'm perfect for you. ‘Significata’?”

  Her face on mine. Arousal tempered by agitation. “Caro, I want you to be the last man in my life.”

  I smiled. “I accept. But we need sleep.” I held her tighter. “Think of it, Cara: four hours’ sleep, all in a row.”

  “We sleep enough, Caro. I love to talk all night.”

  “I thought I charmed you in other ways.”

  “Oh, baby, I love that, too. But I love your brain. Your fidelity. Your stability. And your wonderful, sweet butt.”

  It was dusk, my wonderful, sweet butt hurt. Chindo hounds howled all over camp, and my uniform smelled like the Naktong sewer system, overpowering the pharmaceutical garlic.

  I had left my sunglasses with Major Foss for fingerprinting.

  “It was Patrick McCrail,” I said. “We got a new client. He says Jimmy may be in the Ville in an area called Southside.”

  Levine was pale, eyes red. Magrip killed beers. Pabst cans littered the floor. He didn't like the warm bottom of a can and probably stiffed rude waitresses.

  Levine bit out the words. “James Buford is dead. Jeep accident last night on east post.”

  Magrip crushed a can and threw it, opening another with a savage punch of a church key. “Bullshit. They killed him.”

  “That was Willoughby on the phone in Yongsan,” said Levine, “as you left with Min. Said Jimmy was being buried. I came back by taxi. It was held at Casey's post chapel.”

  I was on the river at Chingshan, watching China burn. Peasants buried unboxed dead on high ground in a black dawn. The high, sad wailing of children crossed the brown water as it lapped the hull, laughing rhythmically at bad-luck Chinese sailors.

  I was a boy, but I felt the souls of my dead brothers, struggling in the soft, loess mud. Dzai jian, see you again, Hu-chien, Strong Tiger. Dzai jian, Hu-hau, Good Tiger. I was seven, holding the tiller so Ma and BaBa could weep.

  “A ROK Army doctor,” she said, “found him in an irrigation ditch off Pusan Alley. He estimated death to be near midnight. Cause was spinal fracture, traumatic head injuries, smoke inhalation, and burns. The med called Bethanne Buford. I talked to Carlos Murray. Burial will be at Arlington.”

  My heart sputtered. I saw him, heard him, the slow, courtly cavalier, imagined him slipping my watch from my wrist with a laugh that would make the devil pause. I had a premonitory flash that he was alive. I shook my head and exhaled: denial. Carlos and his wife would be with Bethanne. Beth would tell the kids.

  Boys, Uncle Jack tried real hard, but Daddy's dead.

  “I'm very sorry, Jackson,” said Levine.

  I had just inherited three sons. A small white box. Inside was a brass urn with Jimmy's name, DOB, and DOD, along with the death cert. I tried to read it, but my eyes glazed over. I touched the urn.

  Ah, Jimmy, the bastards got you before I could find you.

  Out of respect, I tried to say a silent prayer for him and his family, using his words of faith. They rang hollow without mystic choirs and cherubim gliding into pink sunsets. The room was tropically hot, memories sweated out by the pressure of the urn, his big personality inside a jar, the hideous, blood-sucking, carrion insects exultant, his little boys weeping.

  Our efforts were futile. The devil owned the deck, ran law offices and killed innocent children. I felt the host of ancient Chinese gods, ranked by petty human needs, answering to incense and paper offerings, amused by our suffering, making us bend down to them in weakness, bathing in our fears.

  Well, screw all of you.

  “Where's my ring?” Levine passed it to me. I put it on.

  “I go now, dae-wi” said Min softly. “So sorry.”

  Prove that Jimmy's death was murder. The Wizard had done this to Jimmy. Get evidence. Support McCrail's verdict on him.

  I took a breath. “Stand fast. What'd the computers say?”

  “I didn't run it.” She saw my face. “I should have stayed.”

  “Yes, you should have,” I snapped. “Need me for anything?”

  “Nothing,” said Levine, looking at me as if I were far away.

  I took overcoat and briefcase. “Min. Let's go.”

  I released the magazine of the Browning. A round in the chamber and a full load. I slammed it home and safetied it, comforted by its metallic coldness, and put it in my belt. We drove east. I turned on Min's headlights. I tried to think, brains swimming in tangled emotions, rampant with sour, fogging pain. Think. Don't feel.

  Pusan Alley was a lonely country gravel road used by perimeter patrols at the Siberian end of a wasteland camp. The ground sloped south into an irrigation ditch which served a dead, ugly field.

  The mountains were cold and dark, witnesses to war. This was deep in Korean soul, shaman country.

  We got out with big flashlights and unfolded entrenching tools. Snow covered any skid marks. Min found a cracked tree and hints of a boxed burn area on a snowy hill. The road turned hard above it. The jeep had lost the turn in the ice, gone off the road, hit the slope toward the ditch, struck the tree—and burst into flame.

  Min held the flashlights as I carefully shoveled snow.

  No wide, digging, swerving treads. No sharp rock or steel rebar to puncture the tank or gas line or rip a hot wire. And Jimmy didn't smoke. He had small kids and drove like Don Knotts. He had died here, near midnight in the Korean winter. He could've been meeting or following someone. Or been chased. A jeep flying off the road would have shattered the tree; it was cracked. I studied the trunk: axe marks. The light glared on the snow. Burn patterns on the ground revealed carelessly tossed accelerants. I walked the hillside. This was no accident scene; it was theatrics.

  Jimmy had been killed and dumped on an arson stage. I was a JAGC, but I had learned in the ultimate human courtroom that God pretends to appear only when you're dying, and not when you kill. Murder chases out all deities. Jimmy was my proof.

  Min fired up the heater. I tried to read the ROK doctor's signature on the Death Cert. “Can you read this?”

  “Dae-wi, this fake-oo.” He made a face. “Cheatah cheatah punkin eatah.” He paused. “Liar liar pant burn big-oo-time.”

  “You're saying this was forged?”

  He nodded emphatically.

  Second Med Battalion was at north camp, close to the water reservoir and the support services helipad, hard-standed with portable, perforated steel plank flooring for winter. Huey medevac rotors were tied down, tarped and dusted in snow. This was a full division facility with smoothed plywood surgical suites, ample lights, backup batteries, and reserve generators. I stepped into a camouflaged GPL—general purpose, large—tent with a thousand cots, crates of body bags and two thousand olive drab stretchers in stacks. This was 57F graves registrars, undertaker country.

  A quiet night in emergency: two stabbings, six contusions and a broken wrist from Ville brawls, and fifty-three troopers who suspected they had clap. The stab victims moaned, the bruised complained about MP brutality, the clap paranoids whined, and old medics muttered, “Aw, quit yur bitc
hin'—this ain't the Nam.

  “And chump, didn't I tell you not to Savoy? Bro, those girls got VD.” Behind him, on a board, was a bar graph showing VD rates by the clubs. Savoy was the big leader; Vegas was the tail. The bars were represented by red condoms.

  “Where'd you get this?” asked a tall, lean doc named Purvis with a nearly beautiful face and flawless black skin. He read the certificate through metal-rimmed reading glasses. Behind him worked a small, stethoscoped ROK Army major. Casually, Major Purvis sprayed me with a can of air freshener. “What,” he asked, “hit a fertilizer truck on the MSR?”

  I blinked in the mist. “Something like that.”

  The Inmingun invasion was projected to produce seventy percent line casualties. While diplomats traded manly insults, ROK and Yank doctors worked together daily in preparation for hard times. Army physicians of all nations were realists.

  I told him the document's history. “I need to talk to the ROK doc who signed this certificate last night.”

  Purvis showed it to his colleague.

  “I Major Koo, number-two surgeon, First Brigade, White Horse Division.” He saw my i trousers from the Naktong masquerade. He sniffed, shrugging. I bowed to the modest national standard. The Japanese occupation had required low bows. “Captain Kan, IG.”

  Major Koo, respecting authority, bowed again, lower. I returned it and introduced Min. Major Koo ignored him, studying the paper.

  “Captain Kan, this paper is bolo—fake. ROK doctors not sign death paper on U.S. soldier. Only U.S. doctor do this. Slicky boy can steal paper. Next door, have thousand blank DC. This,” holding it up, “is not a signature. Is a mark, not name.”

  He waved his hand, looking to Purvis for help.

  “Graffiti,” said Purvis.

  Major Koo nodded. “Graffiti.”

  “Thank you. You have a Captain James Thurber Buford, DOA? Or a John Doe casualty? Buford is thirty, white male, six-three, one ninety, blue eyes, brown hair. No scars or marks.”

  They checked the logs. No record. “Chaplain did a memorial service for Captain Buford today at post chapel. Maybe a DOA went someplace else? A battalion aid station. Somewhere.”