The Ville Rat

by Martin Limon

  Riley thought it over. “I’ll check with Smitty over at data processing. And there’s another possibility.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ll get you a list of deserters.”

  “We still have deserters at Eighth Army?”

  “Not many, but a few.”

  The reason there were few deserters, if any, from the 8th United States Army was not because of an excess of loyalty but because of border checks. There was only one international airport, at Kimpo near Seoul, and everyone going out or coming in was checked and rechecked by the paranoid Korean officialdom. You couldn’t just go and buy a ticket to fly back to the States. Before you boarded a plane, you’d have to prove who you were and what you’d been doing in Korea. And the one seaborne international departure port at Pusan was watched just as carefully. Since Korea is a peninsula, you can leave by sea or by air, but leaving by land is even more restricted. If you traveled north, you would run into the Demilitarized Zone bordering Communist North Korea. There were 700,000 Communist soldiers on the northern side, 450,000 ROK Army soldiers on the southern side, and tens of thousands of land mines in between. Try walking across that.

  So if you deserted from 8th Army, you were stuck in Korea.

  “So you’ll check for me?”

  Riley promised he would. Then he thrust his right thumb over his shoulder. “The provost marshal wants to see you two. Now.”

  I turned to Ernie. “I told you not to mouth off during the ceremony.”

  “It’s not about that.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “You’ll find out.” Riley stormed off.

  We found Colonel Brace outside the conference room, still conferring with the DPCA. When they were finished, he turned to us, crooked his finger, and said, “You two, follow me.”

  Ernie and I followed him down a long, carpeted hallway. Ernie chomped on his gum as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Me, I was bothered by the crooked finger. In Korea, it’s an insult to beckon someone like that. The polite way is the wave downward with your flat palm. I told myself that Colonel Brace didn’t know the Korean custom, that I was becoming too immersed in Korean culture and that I should forget it. Still, it bothered me. We stepped into a small office. Lieutenant Mendelson, the young woman who’d read the award citation, rose from behind a small mahogany desk.

  “You’ve met?” Colonel Brace asked us.

  “Once,” I said. It was when she’d come through the office as part of a JAG conference with the colonel.

  Ernie didn’t answer, just stared at her, chomping his gum.

  “You’ll be working with her,” Colonel Brace told us, “on a case that’s about to go to court-martial. I’ll let her brief you.”

  He started to walk out of the room.

  “Sir,” I said, “I thought we’re assigned to the case up at Sonyu-ri, working with Inspector Gil.”

  He stopped and turned and studied me and then Ernie.

  “Yes,” he said, “you still are. As it happens, the case Lieutenant Mendelson is working on happened right up in the same area. You’ll be assigned to both at the same time.”

  A murder case and something else? Ernie’s face twisted, probably in reaction to our time being wasted by being called back to Seoul in the first place, but I spoke before he could open his mouth. “We’ll need an advance on our expense account, sir.”

  “Yes, of course, see Riley.”

  He burst out of the room as if happy to get away from us.

  Ernie frowned. “Why didn’t you ask for an increase?”

  “Didn’t think of it.”

  Ernie gazed down the hallway wistfully. “That’s why he was in such a hurry to un-ass the area. Thinks he’s getting over on us.”

  Lieutenant Mendelson coughed.

  Ernie turned, as if noticing her for the first time. “Something wrong with your throat?”

  “No,” she said, “I’m fine.”

  “You a smoker?”

  “No.”

  “That’s good,” Ernie said, sitting on a padded vinyl chair. “I hate smokers. Their mouths smell like ashtrays.” He steepled his fingers in front of his nose and studied her. “What is it you want us to do?”

  “Agent Sueño,” she said, motioning with her hand. “Sit down.” When I hesitated, she said, “Please.”

  Nice of her. So I did.

  Lieutenant Mendelson explained the case and the information she wanted us to gather. I’d heard about the incident, but not in any detail. It sounded ugly and sordid. A black soldier in Charley Battery, 2nd of the 17th Field Artillery, had shot a white senior NCO—the chief of Firing Battery, commonly referred to as the “chief of smoke.” The wound had been serious but not life threatening, and the victim had been transferred to the 121st Evacuation Hospital in Seoul. The accused perp was a young soldier by the name of Clifton Threets, rank of private first class. He was being charged with attempted murder and violation of the Civil Rights Act, since the murder was seen to be racially motivated.

  “I thought that case was wrapped up,” Ernie said, “witnesses and everything.”

  “It should be,” Lieutenant Mendelson said, “but the officer appointed to defend him is claiming self-defense because the chief of smoke had been discriminating against Threets and assaulting him on a regular basis.”

  “In the Second Division?” Ernie said, raising his eyebrows. “I’m shocked.”

  Lieutenant Mendelson studied him, still trying to figure him out. Her eyes sparkled as she did so. Regaining control, she fell back on her paperwork. “Here’s the report,” she said, shoving it across the desk. “Read it and ask some questions while you’re up there, about this alleged harassment.”

  I picked it up. “Has the Division provost marshal been informed?”

  “Yes. And since it’s coming down from the Eighth Army head shed, you’ll have full access to all Division facilities. Colonel Brace is looking out for you. That way, you can work on the other case without being harassed by Division.”

  Ernie snorted a laugh. “That’ll be the day.” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When he’s ‘looking out for us.’”

  “Well, he is.” She seemed shocked by our attitude. But she was young, a new officer, and thus far in her military career she probably had always been treated well. Most often, newly minted lieutenants had no inkling of the abuse that enlisted men could sometimes be subjected to. I saw no point in going there.

  “Anything else, Lieutenant?” I asked.

  “No, that will be all.” Then she smiled. “And please call me Peggy.”

  I nodded. “Peggy it is,” I said.

  Ernie saluted her with two fingers.

  She started to raise her hand to return the salute but then thought better of it.

  Outside, I tried to hand the report to Ernie. “Don’t palm that off on me,” he said.

  “The colonel’s trying to help us,” I said.

  “Fat chance.”

  “You’re too cynical.”

  “No, I’m not. There’s something behind this.”

  “Maybe.”

  “No maybe about it.”

  “Should we ask Riley?”

  “Forget it,” Ernie said. “If Riley knows anything, which he probably doesn’t, he’ll be in on it too.”

  “Anyway,” I said, “we have to get back to Division.”

  While at the CID office I’d made a call to Mr. Kill’s office in downtown Seoul. He wasn’t in, but a message had been relayed that he wanted to meet us at the Munsan police station at noon.

  “We can make it if we hurry.”

  “We’ll make it,” Ernie told me. “But first we have to talk to Strange, get him to do some research for us.”

  Ernie unlocked the padlock of his jeep an
d I climbed into the passenger seat. “Strange? Why Strange?”

  “Colonel Brace is helping us work with the KNPs on a case that could prove embarrassing to Eighth Army. Smoothing the skids for us up at Division.” He shook his head. “That’s just not how things work. Something’s wrong.”

  “What makes you think Strange can find out anything?”

  “He’s a pervert. He knows everybody in Eighth Army and everybody knows him. Besides, he’s in charge of Classified Documents. All he has to do is lift up the cover sheet and peek.”

  A pervert in charge of secrets. It made perfect sense when you thought about it.

  We went to find Strange.

  -5-

  The Munsan police station was an impressive building for such a small town. Like other Korean National Police stations, it was constructed of sturdy cement block and the flag of the Republic of Korea—a red and blue yin-yang symbol centered on a background of pure white—fluttered from a pole on the roof. What differentiated it was the square footage out back. It was two or three times larger than most police stations, probably because of its proximity to the Freedom Bridge and, a few miles beyond that, the truce village of Panmunjom, where representatives from the two opposing governments in the Korean War and their respective allies met regularly for talks. Along the DMZ in recent years, North Korean commandos had machine-gunned American GIs standing in chow lines and even blown up a barracks on an American compound. The South Koreans suffered even greater casualties, with over a hundred dead in one particularly bad year. In this area, crisis could erupt at any moment, making a large police presence necessary.

  Ernie and I pushed through the metal-reinforced front door. A young cop in a khaki uniform rose to his feet and shouted a formal greeting. Behind a low railing, Ernie and I stood for a moment. The room smelled of fermented cabbage and cheap Korean tobacco. A sad-looking elderly couple sat on a bench, looking as if they’d been waiting there since they were young. A slightly older police officer, a lieutenant, emerged from a back office and, as if he was expecting us, motioned for us to follow. As we marched down a cement hallway, he said in halting English, “Inspector Gil soon be here.” He ushered us into a small conference room with eight straight-backed chairs arrayed around a rectangular wooden table.

  “Please, sit,” he said.

  After he left the room, I sat. Ernie paced.

  Two minutes later, a young woman in KNP uniform entered holding a stainless-steel tray. On it was a metal pot of hot water and four porcelain mugs. She set the tray in front of us, and without ever looking directly at us, bowed and backed out of the room.

  “She likes you,” Ernie said. “I can tell.”

  The tray held a few Lipton tea bags and a small jar of Folgers freeze-dried coffee. The water was steaming. I poured myself a cup and used a tin spoon to stir in the coffee. Ernie followed suit, stirring some sugar into his.

  We sipped and waited, but not for long. Before I finished my coffee, Inspector Gil Kwon-up, Mr. Kill, barged into the room.

  “I found him,” he said.

  “Found who?”

  “Come, I’ll show you.”

  We set our mugs down and followed Mr. Kill out of the room. Outside, he motioned to his right. “It’s not far. We can walk.”

  We passed wood-planked storefronts with hangul writing that said things like grain storage and agricultural implements and seasonal loans. On the other side of town, I knew, were about a million eateries and makkoli houses, purveyors of rice wine, catering to the needs of the thousands of ROK soldiers stationed in the military compounds dotting the hills along the Imjin River. There were even a few kisaeng houses for the officers. But we were in the more utilitarian part of town.

  A half-mile on, Mr. Kill turned left into a narrow pedestrian pathway. It was muddy and just wide enough for us to walk single file, occasionally dodging old women with huge bundles of laundry balanced atop their heads. Inspector Gil pulled a sheet of paper out of his jacket pocket. He showed it to me: 113 bonji, 47 ho. An address. The walls on either side of the walkway were made of brick and cement block and occasionally wood. Every few feet, rotted panels in recessed gates were slashed with numbers in various styles of handwriting and various shades of paint. The Korean address system makes sense. Bonji is the neighborhood and ho is the number, but sometimes the sequence is off due to the constant tearing down and building up of new residences. We found number 46 and number 48, but no 47 ho. Mr. Kill asked a middle-aged woman stepping carefully through the mud if she could direct him to number 47. She pointed toward a narrow alley. It was there, in the darkness, about twelve feet in.

  Mr. Kill stepped up to the gate and pounded on grease-stained planks. Nothing happened. He pounded again. Finally, from within, a woman’s voice said, “Nugu-seiyo?” Who is it?

  “Kyongchal,” Mr. Kill answered. Police.

  Urgent whispering. Cautious footsteps. Finally, the gate creaked open. Mr. Kill ducked inside. Ernie and I followed.

  The courtyard was much like the pathway outside, composed of moist dirt. But there was an iron pump in the center surrounded by a circle of rocks. Beyond that was a low porch fronting a row of oil-papered sliding doors. In front of an open door sat a man in a khaki uniform, just reaching down to slip on a highly polished pair of black combat boots. As we walked across the courtyard, he looked up at us. I recognized him. Kim. The Korean contract gate guard who we’d seen in front of Camp Pelham working with the MP known as Specialist Four Austin.

  Mr. Kill greeted him politely, bowing slightly. Then he pulled out his badge and told him in Korean that we had a few questions. The man nodded. I noticed he had bags under his eyes and he looked tired; the kind of fatigue that comes not from losing a night’s sleep, but from four or five decades spent clinging to the lowest rungs on the economic ladder in a country ravaged by a brutal, endemic poverty. The woman who I assumed to be his wife scurried about her business, splashing water into a pail and sloshing it on the cement floor of the walk-in byonso.

  Mr. Kill spoke in rapid Korean, getting to the point without any nonsense or preamble. I followed most of it. The gate guard nodded occasionally, shook his head at other times, and finally spoke in a slow, gravelly voice. Ernie waited near the gate, hands in his pockets.

  When we were done, Mr. Kill thanked the man, turned, and started to step toward the gate.

  As he did so, the gate guard spoke again. “Chotto matte.”

  Mr. Kill stopped and turned. It was Japanese, but even I knew what it meant. Wait a moment. Until 1945, while Korea had been colonized, Japanese had been the official language of the country. Older people had learned it in school when they were young. These days—and even then—it was the hated language of occupation. In my months and years here in Korea, I couldn’t remember ever having heard it spoken. Even Mr. Kill seemed surprised.

  Gate guard Kim continued to speak in Japanese to Mr. Kill. He knew from our first encounter that I could speak Korean and didn’t want me to understand. Mr. Kill frowned as he listened. Finally, the gate guard stopped talking, and without acknowledging him further, Mr. Kill turned and ducked through the small opening in the gate.

  Ernie glanced at me, raising one eyebrow. He knew something strange had happened. We followed Kill outside to the muddy lane.

  When we reached the main road, Mr. Kill slowed enough for me to catch up.

  “Did you understand,” he asked me, “the Korean part?”

  “Most of it.”

  It had been a routine set of denials. The gate guard said he didn’t know who the woman in the red dress was, he didn’t know where she’d come from or how she’d gotten there, and when she asked the American MP for help he’d told her to get lost. He claimed the woman spoke to the MP in broken English but she hadn’t spoken to him at all.

  “But then,” I said, “gate guard Kim spoke Japanese to you.”

  “Yes.” Mr. K
ill’s mouth was lined with anger.

  “What did he say?” I ventured.

  “He said that the woman claimed that someone was after her.”

  “An American?”

  “She didn’t say. She was hysterical. Not giving much coherent information, just glancing back over her shoulder and begging the American MP for help.”

  “That was it?”

  “Then he went on, using Japanese, a language I don’t like listening to very much. He said that it didn’t matter what these whores did for their foreigners. If they ended up dead, it was better for us, because then Korea would be purified.”

  “He said that?”

  “Yes. And he said he applauded the man who killed her. He only regretted that her body had been left in the Sonyu River.”

  “Why?”

  “According to him, she defiled the water.”

  Ernie and I slurped our noodles, using both a flat spoon and chopsticks. Mr. Kill had already finished his bowl and leaned back contentedly, staring at the sea of short black haircuts surrounding us.

  We were in a busy chophouse with picnic-like tables and movable two- or three-man benches. The place was packed with Korean soldiers in dark-green fatigues, all of them with their hats pulled off because they were indoors and most of them shouting and gesticulating at one another, laughing and enjoying their food and the raucous company. The place was as noisy as a Cape Canaveral launch pad.

  There were no menus, only large hand-printed signs papered to the wall: bibimbap, mae-un tang, naengmyeon, and dubu jjigae baekban, amongst other delights. Sturdy waitresses wearing long cotton aprons and with their hair tied severely in white bandannas plowed through the crowd with huge, round trays laden with steaming metal bowls and plastic plates of cabbage and turnip kimchi. No elegant china in this place. When the boys blocked their way or got too grabby, fat female elbows jabbed callused knuckles and muscled ribs.

  Mr. Kill pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket, smoothed it on the rough wooden surface, and started to talk. He almost had to shout to be heard, which is why I think he chose this place, so no one could eavesdrop. I finished my noodles and shoved the bowl aside. Ernie did the same.