by Martin Limon
The U.S. was funneling millions of dollars in military and economic reconstruction aid into Korea. Moretti had three two-and-a-half ton trucks at his disposal and three G.I. drivers. He also had access to U.S.-made building supplies being shipped into the Port of Inchon and the authority to hire and fire Korean construction crews. A lowly tech sergeant was given that much authority because things were nutso at the time, everything had to be done right now, and there weren’t enough trained engineers to go around. The 8th Army Engineering staff did provide Moretti with blueprints and a list of approved Korean engineering firms to help him build and repair buildings. According to the report, Moretti set about reconstructing Itaewon with a zeal that few G.I.s exhibited. After the first brick hut was built, he moved out to Itaewon and supervised reconstruction work twenty-four hours a day.
Meanwhile, the Korean people were desperate for shelter. Shacks made of scrap metal and charred lumber went up overnight. Some of them were used as bars, more of them as brothels, catering to American G.I.s—the only people in the country at the time with disposable income. Itaewon was put off limits by 8th Army health authorities because of the lack of sanitation and the fear of communicable diseases such as tuberculosis and, of course, syphilis and gonorrhea. But that didn’t stop G.I.s from sneaking out there. Eighth Army headquarters was only a half mile away. A short walk down the MSR and a G.I. would be in paradise. For a few black-market items, like cigarettes or soap or shoe polish, he could take his pick from amongst a small sea of destitute young women. The MPs did their best to enforce the off-limits restrictions but no one could stop the G.I.s from reaching Itaewon. As the buildings started to be rebuilt and plumbing and sanitation and electricity gradually began to be restored, the 8th Army health authorities put certain facilities back “on-limits.” G.I.s could go there without fear of being arrested by MP patrols.
Most of the buildings approved to be put back on limits were buildings built by Technical Sergeant Flo Moretti.
There was plenty of opportunity for Moretti to line his pockets. The MP investigator checked to see if Moretti had bought money orders from the one approved bank at 8th Army headquarters. This would’ve been the easiest way to send money home, but there was no record of Moretti ever making such a purchase. He was honest. And he was doing his best to reconstruct the country he’d been ordered to rebuild.
But then Moretti did something stunning. He decided to erect an orphanage, smack dab in the middle of the red-light district of Itaewon. The streets of Seoul were littered with children who, in the madness of war, were either orphaned or abandoned by their parents. The investigator mentioned this project above all the others that Moretti had going at that time because, he believed, this orphanage had led to Moretti’s death.
Or supposed death. There were questions.
The MP investigator identified himself in the upper left corner of all his documents as Cort. That’s it, just Cort. Cort interviewed everyone Moretti had known, including workmen who had to lay down their picks and shovels while a ROK Army MP translated his questions. Although he used precise, direct, and unemotional language in his report, Cort had been caught up in this investigation. The portrait he painted was of an honest man struggling to stay afloat in a swirling sea of corruption, doing his best to provide shelter for people who were desperately in need.
Cort was particularly meticulous in his reconstruction of the assault on Moretti. He interviewed everyone who’d been there, he took samples of the blood spatters and compared them to Moretti’s blood type, and he searched long and hard for the weapons used.
But when the body stayed missing, I believe Cort went a little nuts.
* * *
The ivory body before us was topped by a tangled mass of thick red hair.
She wore sheer black panties and matching brassiere and lay sprawled on the twisted sheets of Corporal Francisco Bernal’s unmade bunk. Her tongue lolled pink across rouged lips. Ernie checked her pulse, staring all the while at the voluptuous curves of her freckled flesh.
Ernie dropped her wrist. “Heart’s still pumping. Looks like Corporal Bernal had himself a truly fine evening.”
“With stolen money,” I said.
The redhead shook her curly locks. They rustled past pink ears and then her eyes opened. Blazing green. She sat up suddenly, her breasts swinging wildly with the movement.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
Ernie crowbarred a grin. “Good morning. Let me guess. You must be Miss Motor Pool of 1973.”
The redhead’s eyes darted around the room. “Where’s Paco?”
Ernie gazed at me blankly.
“Paco’s short for Francisco,” I said.
Ernie nodded; his smile broadened once again and he turned back to the redhead.
“That’s what we were going to ask you. Seems there’s been a theft at Colonel Tidwell’s residence.”
She snorted. A dainty yet dismissive sound. Then she bent over and started groping for something, shoving her clothes out of the way. “Where are my cigarettes?”
Her tone was impatient, as if she were dealing with incompetent servants who weren’t responding fast enough.
Ernie grabbed a small black purse off a scratched footlocker and rummaged inside. He found a pack of Kools and tossed them to her along with a lighter. While she fumbled with her cigarette, Ernie searched through the contents of the purse and pulled out a military dependent ID card. He studied it for a moment, his eyes growing wider, and then he whistled softly.
The redhead ignored him, apparently accustomed to people being impressed by her pedigree.
Ernie tossed the card to me.
I snatched it out of the air. Still watching the redhead, I tilted the laminated surface toward the dim light of the floor lamp.
Her name was Tidwell, Jessica H.
Paco—Corporal Francisco Bernal—was preparing himself for a world of hurt. Regardless of who had actually stolen the thousand dollars, Paco would be blamed, as the instigator. And from the evidence I could see in front of me, he’d also be charged with statutory rape.
I gazed at seventeen-year-old Jessica. She was still bleary eyed but sitting on the edge of the bunk now, sucking on her cancer stick, puffing smoke into the air in a way that she must have imagined appeared sophisticated. She wasn’t concerned with being half naked and having two army cops leering at her. She had to have copied the safe combination from the slip of paper hidden in her father’s wallet and sneaked the key to his home office. But I started questioning her from a different angle.
“Why did Paco take the money?” I asked.
She stared at me through a puff of smoke, not shocked by my question but thinking things through. “He didn’t take the money,” she said. “He borrowed it.”
Ernie crossed his arms and leaned against a rickety chest of drawers, keeping his grin firmly in place, enjoying the show. One question had saved us a lot of work.
“Only a loan?” I asked.
She dimpled her cheeks and crossed her eyes, letting me know that she was pleased that the moron had understood.
“When does Paco plan to pay this thousand dollars back?” I asked.
Jessica let out a sigh of exasperation. “Before the end of the week. He needs it for an investment.”
“What type of investment?”
Suddenly Jessica realized that she’d said too much. She inhaled nervously.
When she didn’t answer, Ernie spoke up. “Maybe buying and selling a little weed? Or some hash? Something that the kids at the high school need?”
She lowered her glowing cigarette. “Paco’s not a pusher.”
“But he is a dealer,” I said.
She didn’t answer but looked away and continued to smoke.
A photo atop a footlocker showed Corporal Paco Bernal in green uniform and garrison cap. He was a full-cheeked Hispanic man. Dark. Handsome. A smile that could break teenage hearts.
I knew him. Of fifteen hundred enlisted men assigned to
8th Army headquarters, only two of us were Chicanos from East L.A., Paco and myself. I didn’t know him well. We’d had only one or two casual conversations, asking one another if we had mutual acquaintances back in the barrio. We didn’t. My cop instincts had picked up a devious side to Paco Bernal but I never thought he’d go as far as this. A thief and a defiler of young women, he was shaming the Latino world.
“By the way,” Ernie asked, “where is the dear boy?”
Unconsciously, Jessica patted the sheet beneath her and gazed down.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“But he was here last night when you fell asleep?”
She raised the cigarette to her lips and nodded slowly, lost in thought. “Are you his only girlfriend?” Ernie asked.
Instead of growing angry she said, “I don’t know. Why would I care about that?”
Ernie persuaded Jessica Tidwell to put on her clothes. After finishing her cigarette, she combed her hair and pulled herself together.
Ernie and I interviewed some of the other guys in the barracks. A few of them had seen Paco come in last night with Jessica. She was drunk and stumbling but Paco appeared sober. None of them had seen him leave. His full issue of uniforms was still hanging in his wall locker, so he must’ve been wearing civvies when he left. And his little traveling bag was still there, so he probably left wearing only the clothes on his back—with a thousand stolen dollars tucked safely in his pocket. One item was missing from his field gear, his bayonet.
After we notified CID headquarters about the incident, the search for Paco Bernal began. Despite a military police all-points bulletin, no trace of him was found on base, so we expanded our search to include Seoul’s international airport at Kimpo. No Francisco Bernal on any of the manifests. We also checked the military embarkation point at Osan Air Force Base. Again, no sign of Paco. There are only a half-dozen international embarkation points from South Korea. We contacted them all. While conducting these checks, we passed along an edict from the 8th Army commander: If found, Corporal Francisco Bernal was to be arrested and detained.
Jessica Tidwell was whisked away to the 121st Evacuation Hospital for an examination in the emergency room. Her mother met her there. Colonel Tidwell, we were told, was still conducting business as usual in the J-2 office at the opulent headquarters of the 8th United States Army. He didn’t call and ask us any questions or order us in for an interview but we knew he’d read our blotter report.
Back at the CID office, I started typing up that blotter report, trying to keep it as neutral sounding as possible. I figured the Tidwell family had suffered enough embarrassment. Word of the latest Jessica Tidwell incident spread through the 8th Army headquarters complex like wildfire. I heard words like “goddamn Mexicans” and “beaners” and “greasers” and did my best to keep my temper in check. Paco had placed Chicanos at the forefront of bigotry. I cursed him silently and swore that I’d find the son of a bitch. Which exactly matched the sentiments of Colonel Brace, the 8th Army provost marshal.
Ernie and I stood in front of his desk at the position of attention.
“You two are off the black-market detail until further notice. Understood?” We nodded. “I want this Corporal Bernal found and I want him found now. Any questions?”
Neither Ernie nor I had any. We saluted and left.
Just before we exited the building, the cannon went off signifying the end of the duty day. We waited until the last notes of the retreat bugles sounded and then jogged across the small parking lot to Ernie’s jeep. We didn’t have to talk about where we were going. Both of us knew. The same place either one of us would go if we’d just stolen a thousand dollars.
Itaewon.
Ernie and I hit Itaewon fast and hard.
Our plan was to start our search with the brothels and business-girl hooches farthest away from the main drag, the ones most well hidden, where a G.I. who’d just stolen a thousand dollars worth of greenbacks might feel safe.
Itaewon was somewhat more cosmopolitan than the other G.I. villages in Korea. That is, neither the 21st Transportation Company nor the 121st Evac nor the 8th Army Honor Guard had their own nightclub or bar staked out for them and them alone. G.I.s from various units mingled freely, if not always harmoniously, and unlike the compounds out at Kunsan or up north at Tonduchon or just south of the DMZ at Munsan, the various infantry or artillery or combat engineer units didn’t have their own little enclaves. So Corporal Paco Bernal could be anywhere in Itaewon. Our strategy was simple: cover as much ground as possible before Paco Bernal became aware that we were in the village looking for him.
Of course, our entire search could be futile. Paco Bernal could be halfway to Pusan by now. But I was betting that he’d stay on familiar ground. Not only to be near his home turf and contacts— and to make whatever deal he’d planned—but also because G.I.s, although they won’t admit it, are afraid of traveling in Korea. For the most part they don’t speak Korean and don’t understand Korean customs and can’t read the street signs and when they wander too far from military compounds, they feel lost. So I believed that Paco Bernal was here in Itaewon—somewhere.
Itaewon was alive at this hour, preparing industriously for the busy evening to come. The front gates of the courtyards were mostly open; business girls coming and going from the local bathhouses or gathering around a low table in the mama-san’s hooch, chatting, chopsticks flashing, stuffing rice and vegetables into their mouths as sustenance for the long night’s work ahead. The smell of fermented kimchee and soap suds and hairspray was everywhere: in the open hooches, wafting from the balconies of upstairs apartments, and emerging from behind the sliding wooden doors of closetlike rooms. When Ernie and I approached the business girls, it was the same story: headshakes, denials that they knew Paco Bernal after gawking at the black-and-white photo from his personnel records that I held in front of their curious eyes.
Had they seen him before? Yes, around the village.
Did he have a girlfriend out here? Not that they were aware of.
Did they know where he was now? Heads shook vehemently. They hadn’t a clue.
Ernie and I kept prowling through the back alleys of Itaewon, down narrow pedestrian lanes, around sharp corners defined by ten-foot-high brick and stone walls. The sun started to go down. Sodium streetlamps, spaced every twenty yards or so, switched on. Still, no sign of Paco Bernal.
Finally, at one hooch, a business girl stood up from scrubbing her face above a metal pan beneath a running faucet in the middle of a stone-paved courtyard. She turned to us and said, “You looking for Paco?”
“Yeah,” Ernie replied. “You seen him?”
“No, but anybody say. Two MP in Itaewon lookey-lookey everywhere for some G.I. called Paco. We hear. Anybody know.”
She squatted back down and resumed scrubbing her face.
Ernie stuck another stick of ginseng gum in his mouth and chomped viciously. “So much for the element of surprise,” he said.
The bars and brothels and nightclubs of Itaewon—and the people who work in them—have an intelligence system that beats 8th Army’s hands down. Once word of our quest leaked out, it spread and kept spreading until the news was traveling so fast through the village that Ernie and I could not possibly hope to keep up. Paco Bernal, wherever he was, would be alerted—if he hadn’t been already—and he’d probably kara chogi, take off. Bali bali, quickly.
The sun was completely down now and along the main drag, neon flashed to life.
Ernie took defeat stoically. “He’ll show up eventually. Where the hell’s he going to go?”
For a wanted G.I., there’s no escape from the Korean Peninsula. Not with Communist North Korea guarding the DMZ to the north and the South Koreans guarding every port of international embarkation. Ernie figured Paco would squander the thousand bucks he’d stumbled into and then, after a few days, come crawling back to the army compound begging for mercy. We’d seen it happen before; G.I.s committing a crime, living big in the vi
llage, and then—when the money ran out—finally coming to their senses. And probably that’s what would happen to Paco. Maybe. But one thing worried me. Why had he taken his bayonet—eight inches of sharpened steel—off compound with him?
What was Paco Bernal afraid of?
Now that we’d searched for Paco above and beyond the call of duty, Ernie wanted to find booze, broads, and excitement—not necessarily in that order. I agreed. There was no point in searching any further. Paco Bernal, wherever he was, would have been alerted. The better strategy now was to prowl the village and wait, like two coyotes watching a rabbit hole. We sauntered downhill toward the nightclub district.
Itaewon on this winter evening fairly sparkled with neon: red, blue, yellow, and green. Some of it spinning, some of it flashing, but all of it calling sweetly to the young American G.I., like the song of an ancient siren, beseeching him to enter an abode of pleasure, to spend his money, to enjoy the secret delights that make the nerve endings of a young man’s skin tingle, like slender fingers with long red nails scratching gently across his chest.
Business girls stood in the shadows, shivering in skimpy dresses and short skirts, their eyes lined with black, their red lips pouting, calling to every man who passed; they stood in shoes with platforms so high that you were worried they’d fall over, their faces seeking, always seeking, for some strange creature to rescue them from the frigid night.
I wanted to find someone who’d been here in Itaewon back in the winter of 1953, someone who’d lived through the events recorded in Cort’s Serious Incident Report, and maybe, with luck, someone who’d actually known Mori Di, the G.I. who ended up in the bed—at least spiritually—of a lovely Korean fortune teller by the name of Auntie Mee.
I mentioned my thoughts to Ernie. He chomped pensively on his ginseng gum. “Who in the hell’s been here in Itaewon long enough to know about all that Mori Di stuff? It’s been twenty years, ancient times.”
