G.I. Bones

by Martin Limon

  “How they do that?”

  “Forensic evidence.”

  I could tell by the puzzled look on Snake’s face that he didn’t understand the word forensic. But anyway, I was bluffing. The bones of Mori Di might prove two things: one, that he’d been tortured before his death and, possibly two, that he’d been alive when his tormentors bricked him up in the basement of the Grand Ole Opry Club.

  After thinking it over, the worry vanished from Snake’s face and he laughed. For me, that cemented his guilt. He’d reviewed the crime scene mentally and decided there was no way—forensic science or not—that I could pin anything on him.

  “Anyway, I got to go,” Snake said. “You find up who killed Horsehead and Water Doggy. Then everything OK.”

  “Screw you, Snake,” I said. “I want Miss Kwon set free and the bones of Mori Di delivered to me immediately. That’s the deal.”

  Snake turned back to the gurney and leaned down. “You stupid?”

  I didn’t answer but waited.

  “Why I bring you here?” Snake waved his arms around the clinic we were in. And then I realized where I was: Doc Yong’s clinic, the Itaewon branch of the Yongsan County Public Health Clinic.

  Snake leaned in closer. His hot breath, laced with the stink of nicotine, covered my face like a wet glove. “You think Snake come beg you do something?” he asked. “No way. Never hachi. I have something you want, Snake already got it, so you have to give me what I want. You find up who kill Horsehead and Water Doggy. After you find up, you tell Snake, then I take care everything. You alla?” You understand?

  When I didn’t reply, Snake went on. “Once Snake have what Snake want, then you get what you want.”

  He pulled something black and long out of his back pocket and tossed it atop my chest. I writhed in panic. For a second, I thought it was a snake; and then I relaxed. The metal disc at the end felt cold against my chest. It was a stethoscope.

  “You bali bali,” Snake said. You hurry. “She strong woman, stubborn too, like you. But if no eat, all the time have boom-boom, then pretty soon die.

  The faceless men behind Snake started to laugh. Their laughter grew louder and then Snake left the room and his men followed. Even after the footsteps of Snake and his thugs faded, I could still hear them laughing.

  What Snake had that I wanted was Doc Yong. “Boom-boom” is G.I. slang for having sex.

  I strained at the leather straps that held me. They wouldn’t budge.

  I’m not sure how long I lay tied to the gurney. Maybe a couple of hours. I was dozing off again when I woke to the sound of someone fiddling with the door to the clinic. The door opened and amber light from a streetlamp streamed in. Then, whoever had entered, shut the door again. I strained to see but I was tied too flat to be able to get a good look.

  Footsteps pounded toward me in an uneven rhythm: first a clump and then a step and then another clump.

  A round face peered down at me. Miss Kwon. She placed her forefinger to her lips, warning me to be quiet. Then in the dim light she studied the leather straps that held me. With the hand that wasn’t holding her crutch, she systematically released them. Finally, I could sit upright.

  “How did you know I was here?” I asked.

  “I watch,” she said. “I see you talk Jimmy Pak. I see Jimmy Pak become taaksan angry.” Very angry. “Then I see they follow you. I know something bad happen. When I no see you later, I come here find up.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Her English was improving. Most of the business girls, even the ones with only a middle-school education, studied English in school. Once they arrive in Itaewon, they pick up the language fast as they gain the confidence to use what they already know.

  “You gonna help Doc Yong?” Miss Kwon asked.

  “How’d you know about that?”

  “Anybody in village know already.”

  Maybe Snake hadn’t been trying to keep it a secret.

  I stood and found my shirt and jacket hanging on the back of a chair. My wallet was still in my pocket and none of my money or identification had been taken. My shoulder holster was there with the .45 untouched. Snake and his boys had wanted to communicate, not to rob me. My head pulsed with a dull ache that seemed to radiate from my skull, slice through gray mush, and finally stab into my spine.

  I buttoned my shirt and asked Miss Kwon, “Where are you going now?”

  “Back to hooch.”

  “To Hilliard?”

  Her eyes crinkled in confusion.

  “To Q?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “To Q.”

  She turned and hobbled out of the clinic.

  I sat with my head on the front edge of the Admin sergeant’s desk, snoozing a little, mostly suffering from nightmares. I must’ve dozed off into an even deeper sleep when suddenly a doorknob rattled, the overhead fluorescent lights blazed to life, and a voice barked out, “What the hell you doing here, Sueño?”

  Staff Sergeant Riley strode toward me, his polished low quarters clattering on the wood-slat floor. I sat upright, rubbing my eyes.

  “You’re late,” I said.

  “The hell I’m late. I’m an hour early. What’d you do? Sleep here last night?”

  “No sleep,” I said. “I was reading this.”

  I pointed to the stacked files of the Moretti Serious Incident Report.

  “You opened my safe?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I have classified documents in there. That’s why not.”

  “I’m not interested in those.”

  Besides, I’d relocked the safe. But I didn’t bother to explain that to Riley. He was just being his usual self. He stepped past me to the service counter and busied himself making a four-gallon urn of over-strengthed java to jump-start the staff of the 8th Army Criminal Investigation Division at the beginning of their workday.

  When he was finished and the coffee was perking, I said, “I need something from you, Riley.”

  He sat down behind his desk. “Will it get Mrs. Tidwell off our backs?”

  “Not hardly.”

  “Then don’t bother telling me. You ain’t getting it.”

  I told him anyway. He listened, frowned, and the flesh of his narrow forehead wrinkled.

  “How the hell am I going to find something like that?” he asked.

  “You know everybody in the headquarters. Tell them to search their records.”

  “Christ, Sueño, what do you need this for?”

  “To save a life.”

  I told him about Doc Yong. I told him about Snake.

  “You mean Mr. Lim?” he asked. “The big construction honcho?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “You’re out of your gourd, Sueño. The 8th Army commander thinks Lim walks on water.”

  “Well, he doesn’t and I’m going to prove it.”

  Riley shook his head. “Is Bascom going to help you with this nonsense?”

  “Of course,” I said. “And so are you.”

  “What’s this gal’s name again?”

  “Doctor Yong In-ja.”

  “And Mr. Lim’s holding her?”

  “That’s right. But in the ville they call him Snake.”

  “‘Snake,’” Riley repeated. “And the guy you want me to find out about is called Cort?”

  I nodded.

  “Didn’t he put his full name in the SIR?”

  “No,” I replied. “Just Cort.”

  Riley shook his head. “Sloppy work.” Then he picked up the big black telephone on his desk. “Maybe Smitty’s in early.”

  While Riley called, I continued to study the SIR. Snake said that in the SIR I’d find some clue as to who had murdered Horsehead and Water Doggy. How he knew that, I had no idea. Maybe he was just making it up, trying to get me to try all angles to solve the case. Or maybe there was something here. I went over the notes I’d made during the hours that I’d pored through the multiple folders and stacks of papers that constituted the More
tti SIR.

  After helping myself to a cup of Riley’s coffee, I concluded that there was only one item in the SIR that might have a bearing on the murders of Horsehead and Water Doggy: the list of valuables that had been turned over by the refugee families to Mori Di for safekeeping. The names on the list were the names of aggrieved people who’d been robbed and—in some cases— killed in the Itaewon Massacre. People who had every reason to seek revenge on Horsehead and Water Doggy and on the Seven Dragons in general. But many of these people had either been slain in the massacre or had passed away from natural causes in the intervening two decades.

  And then it dawned on me. Most likely, few of these people were still alive. But what of their children? They had been taken to an orphanage in the mountains. According to Cort, he’d traveled to the Buddhist temple there to interview the nuns who’d saved them. Maybe, if I compared the list of orphans with the list of people whose valuables had been stolen, I’d come up with a lead. Even if I didn’t, it would be something to show to Snake. Something that, just maybe, I could use to run a bluff. But I had to work fast. As soon as Ernie walked in, I told him what we had to do.

  “But I’m restricted to compound,” Ernie said.

  In the excitement, I’d forgotten about that. “This is an emergency,” I replied. “Staff Sergeant Riley will authorize it.”

  Riley, mumbling to himself and cursing, was still working the telephone and waved us away, not hearing a word we’d said. We ran outside to the jeep. I noticed a bandage on Ernie’s hand. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “I’ve taken up competitive needlepoint.”

  After we pulled out the main gate and turned east on the MSR, another thought struck me. Even if I obtained the information I needed, once I went up against Snake and his thugs, I was going to need backup. But 8th Army wasn’t going to deploy a squad of MPs to go after their top civilian contractor. He didn’t even fall under 8th Army jurisdiction. I was going to need help from someone. I told Ernie to pull over and let me out in front of the Itaewon Police Station. He waited outside, engine running.

  When I marched into his office and sat down and told him what I wanted, Captain Kim looked at me as if I were mad.

  “I need a search warrant,” he replied.

  “So get one.”

  “From who?”

  “From a judge.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You gonna tell judge, say Snake slicky Korean woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Say Snake slicky Korean woman doctor and you think he gonna believe you after Snake already told judge he didn’t slicky Korean woman doctor?”

  “Snake already told him?”

  “He will. Who you think work for Snake?”

  I knew the business girls did, and the bartenders and the waitresses. The owners of the small record shops and sports equipment outlets and food stands in the environs of Itaewon had to cough up a tribute to the honcho of the Seven Dragons. But judges, too? Clearly, Snake’s influence was more pervasive than I thought.

  “How about you?” I asked.

  It was a risky thing to say but I was desperate. Captain Kim’s entire body tensed. I was sure he was going to spring at me from across his desk and I prepared to pop him with a left while he was still on the fly.

  Instead of attacking, he took a deep breath. Slowly, he relaxed.

  “You don’t know,” he said finally. “Americans don’t know. Here, everybody gotta make money. Extra money. If don’t make extra money then can’t buy house, can’t send children to school, after too old to work, no have nothing. Everybody gotta do. So, I make money too.”

  Captain Kim stared at me defiantly. I knew that the salaries of Korean cops—and the salaries of most civil servants—were miserably low. And the ROK government, and even the Korean taxpayer, winked at the fact that the cops and other people in government were expected to supplement their income by doing favors for people, like busting them for some small infraction and then collecting the fine on the spot or expediting paperwork that had mysteriously become stuck in bureaucratic channels. They were expected to do those things—everyone was allowed to make a living—but they were also expected to act in a humane way, a way that wouldn’t cause innocent people to suffer unduly. But the rich received their due. In Korea, as everywhere else, money talked. But loud enough to suppress a kidnapping accusation?

  “If I go talk to Snake now,” Captain Kim said, “he hide woman, we never find. But, if you do what he tell you to do, bow low to him, do everything he say, then he relax.”

  Captain Kim stared into my eyes, wondering if I understood. I did. No official action could be taken. Not without a judge’s order and since Snake was involved, a judge’s order was unobtainable.

  “Then I’ll do what he says,” I told Captain Kim. “Quickly. And then I’ll present him with what I’ve found. Then I’ll make my move.”

  “When people fighting,” Captain Kim said, “I don’t need judge.”

  He meant that if there was an altercation at Snake’s mansion, or anywhere else in Itaewon, he could order his cops to move in without a search warrant.

  A great boxer works best in close. He can lean in on his opponent and hammer him with hooks and methodically batter his ribs and his torso. But in order to get in close, I had to offer Snake something he wanted, the identity of the people who’d murdered Horsehead and Water Doggy, or at least some sort of credible evidence pointing in that direction.

  And Captain Kim, in his own oblique way, was offering to help. Or at least I hoped he was.

  * * *

  Ernie’s jeep purred down the two-lane highway lined on either side with frost-covered rice paddies. Kids in black school uniforms skated on patches of water frozen between ancient mud berms. In the distance, straw-thatched farmhouses, smoke rising from narrow chimneys, stood in cozy clumps. Behind them rows of hills rose blue in the distance, capped with white, everything shrouded in a shawl of gray mist.

  “Why don’t we just check out a couple of shotguns from the arms room?” Ernie asked. “Then we kick Snake’s door in, shove both barrels up his nose, and let him know we mean business instead of going to all this trouble.”

  I’d already thought of that option and I’d rejected it. First, it would be a pretty difficult door to kick in. His home was situated atop a row of hills between Itaewon and the gently flowing Han River. There were mansions up there, all of them surrounded by ten-foot-high granite walls topped with shards of broken glass embedded in mortar. In addition to those routine security precautions, Snake also had a small army protecting his household. So kicking his door in, as Ernie suggested, would require the backup of your average-sized infantry battalion. I didn’t even bother to float the idea past the provost marshal. I knew what he’d say: The alleged kidnapping of one Korean national by another Korean national was clearly a problem for the Korean National Police. Who would he refer the information to? Lieutenant Pong, the KNP liaison officer at 8th Army, one of the men who, I suspected, was involved in the power struggle now playing itself out in the barrooms and back alleys of Itaewon. And the man who still hoped to charge Ernie and me with the murder of Two Bellies.

  We were some twenty-five miles due east of Seoul now, heading for a mountain called Yongmun-san. Ernie downshifted through a patch of black ice. Either side of the road was lined with country folk waiting at the first bus stop we’d seen in over a mile. Some of the women balanced bundles of laundry atop their heads, others carried packages wrapped in red bandannas. The men wore sports coats without ties or, if they were older, the traditional silk vest and pantaloons of a retired Korean scholar, although I doubted there were many scholars out here. Everyone worked on the land.

  I pulled an old map out of one of the folders in the SIR. It was dated September 24, 1952, issued by the Army Corps of Engineers, and stamped For Offi cia l Use Only. An inverted swastika, the symbol for a Buddhist temple, was stenciled in blue ink on the side of Yongmun Mountain. In the past twenty years, the mount
ain hadn’t changed, neither had the location of the Temple of Constant Truth, but the roads had altered considerably. Where there had been none, two-lane highways ran; where there had been only a dashed line on the map twenty years ago, indicating a gravel-topped path, there was now a modern four-lane paved thoroughfare. U.S. tax dollars at work so men and equipment could be quickly transported where needed in case of a resumed attack on the Republic of Korea by the forces of the Communist North.

  It took a few wrong turns and a lot of questions shouted at startled farmers before Ernie and I found the narrow road that wound up the side of Yongmun Mountain to the nunnery. About halfway up to the craggy peak, we came to a halt in front of a walled fortress that seemed to have been transported here from out of the middle ages. Crows fluttered amongst stone ramparts. A wooden-slat bridge crossed a gully through which a half-frozen stream trickled and beyond that loomed a gate hewn from oak. Both massive doors stood wide open.

  “A castle with a moat,” Ernie said, climbing out of the jeep.

  I imagined that twenty years ago, to a band of frightened and half-starved orphans, this nunnery must’ve looked like a fairy castle. We waited out front, at the edge of the bridge, until finally someone came out to greet us. She was a shriveled Buddhist nun, bald, wrapped in gray robes. She bowed to us and I bowed back and then I told her in Korean about the orphans who’d come here twenty years ago and about Cort and about the reason we’d come.

  When I finished my long speech in my rudimentary Korean, the wrinkled woman stared at me calmly and said in English, “Why don’t you come in and have a cup of tea?”

  Ernie and I glanced at one another, grinned, and accepted gladly.

  * * *

  During and after the Korean War, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of Korean orphans were adopted by families overseas. Even years after the war the practice was still going on. Unwanted children were left at the doorsteps of churches or temples, transferred to adoption agencies, and sent overseas to grow up speaking English or Dutch or German or French. But the old nun told us that they had kept the children who’d been dumped on their doorstep after the Itaewon Massacre and raised them right here at the Temple of the Constant Truth, raised them as Koreans and sent them to the public school in the village in the valley below Yongmun Mountain. And when they’d come of age, they’d been told the full story of how they’d been brought to the nunnery. Of course, some of them had been old enough at the time to remember but some had to be schooled as to what had happened to their parents.