by Martin Limon
When my eyes popped open, Ernie was grinning down at me.
“Didn’t know you could climb so fast,” he said.
I shook my head. “Neither did I.” I tried to sit up.
Ernie placed his hand on my chest. “Lie down. The medics are on their way.”
I lay back down.
“What about the truck?” I asked.
“It’s gone. Don’t worry, you’re safe.”
Suddenly, I realized I was angry. I wanted to find and prosecute the guy who tried to kill me. “Did you get the license plate number?” I asked.
“I did better than that,” Ernie said. He grinned again and reached to the ground and lifted something up, twisting it to show it to me. It took a second for my eyes to focus, then I realized what it was. A dented and rusty piece of metal with numbering on it. Ernie’d done better than jot down the license plate number. He’d ripped the whole thing clean off the back of the truck.
“You guys smell like shit!” Riley screamed. “Get the hell out of my admin office.”
“Go plow a minefield,” Ernie told him.
The medics had checked me out at the scene, given me some vision tests, and asked me a few questions like who’d won the World Series last year and things like that. The specialist four in charge said he thought I was okay, but standard operating procedure said I should go to the 121 Evac Hospital. But by then I felt okay. Ernie’d helped me dust off most of the garlic leaves and I sat on a stool in the open-fronted store with a can of guava juice that the owner insisted I drink. When I tried to pay, he waved off the money.
Ernie didn’t seem enthusiastic about driving me over to the 121 Evac emergency room and sitting around all day waiting for the results of a bunch of damn tests, so I told the medics that I’d go on sick call tomorrow, which seemed to satisfy them. On our walk through Samgakji my legs were a little wobbly, but I believe that was more from fear than from the lingering effect of a concussion. We climbed in Ernie’s jeep and drove back to the 8th Army CID office, where we were greeted so warmly by Staff Sergeant Riley.
Miss Kim held a lace-edged handkerchief to her nose and studied me with a worried expression. “Byongwon ei kaya-ji,” she said. You should go to the hospital. By speaking Korean, she was purposely excluding Riley and Ernie from our conversation.
“Nei-il,” I told her. Tomorrow.
She accepted my decision but still seemed worried about it.
Colonel Brace entered the admin office, something he rarely did. Riley shouted “Ten-hut!” and stood at rigid attention. Ernie and I were already standing.
“At ease,” Colonel Brace said. Then he approached me. “You all right, Sueño?”
“Fine, sir,” I replied.
He sniffed the air. “You smell like garlic.”
“So Sergeant Riley was just pointing out.”
“According to the MPs, you were hit by a truck full of the stuff?”
“I wasn’t actually hit. I managed to get out of the way.”
“Good. What were you two doing in Samgakji anyway?”
Ernie told him about our lead on a guy who had apparently witnessed the murder of the woman found dead near the Sonyu River. He left out all the stuff about black marketeering. No need to confuse him.
“That’s the one up by Camp Pelham?” Colonel Brace said.
Ernie nodded.
“Good. Keep working that. And this Threets thing—stay close to Lieutenant Mendelson. I don’t want you two bogarting out on your own.”
“We’re just reporting the facts as we find them, sir.”
“But we’re much too close to game time to be changing our strategy now. The court-martial’s the day after tomorrow. Better to concentrate on the Sonyu River murder case. Do you have any suspects?”
“Not yet, sir.”
He gazed at the top of my head. “Have someone take a look at that knot, Sueño.”
“Yes, sir.”
He nodded, turned, and strode out of the room.
Riley sat back down behind his desk. “You heard the man. Get your butts in gear on that Sonyu River murder.”
“You plowed that minefield yet?” Ernie asked him tauntingly.
Miss Kim gazed at me one last time, then hurried out into the hallway toward the ladies’ room. When she came back, she held a clean towel with which she wiped the bruise on my head, then applied a couple of adhesive bandages and what the Koreans call mycin, antibiotic ointment. I thanked her and asked if she could call Inspector Gil’s office for me. She did. I heard her talking to Officer Oh, explaining what had happened and giving her the license number off the plate that Ernie had snagged. When she was done, she made me sit down on the best chair in the office and fixed me some Black Dragon tea.
After she returned to her typing, Ernie pulled up a straight-backed chair next to me. “How much you figure this Ville Rat makes?”
I thought about it. There were just over fifty US compounds in Korea, each with a GI village outside its gates. Most had at least one bar that catered exclusively or mostly to black GIs. Some places had more than that, like Camp Casey, the 2nd Infantry Division headquarters, which had both Samgakji and Tongduchon. That was at least fifty bars or nightclubs that might want to order Colt 45. If the Ville Rat made 500 won profit, or one dollar, on each can and sold only one case per month to each bar, that was twenty-four dollars times fifty, which was over a thousand a month. And that wasn’t counting the cognac. Still, maybe I was being overgenerous in my estimate.
I told Ernie, “If he hustles, five hundred US dollars a month.”
“Maybe three or four times that,” Ernie said.
“Maybe.”
Rent for a Western-style apartment in Seoul ran the equivalent of $250 per month. If he lived in a Korean hooch, with no central heating, with an outdoor toilet and only enough electricity to support a single bulb, rent would be half that. Food was cheap in Korea, and besides, the Ville Rat was skinny. He wouldn’t eat much.
“So he’s making a good living,” Ernie said.
“Seems like it.”
“Enough to pay two garlic truck drivers to commit murder?”
“I doubt those two guys drive a garlic truck full-time.”
“No. The truck was probably stolen just so they could use it to splat you against the wall.”
“Why not you?”
“I’m sure they would’ve taken us both out if they could, but figured that killing one of us’d be enough to warn the other one off.”
“Off of what?”
“The Sonyu River killing.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure,” Ernie said. “Apparently, somewhere along the line, we struck a nerve.”
But where, exactly? That’s what we weren’t sure of.
-9-
“What a waste of garlic,” Ernie said.
Ernie and I occasionally frequented a joint in Itaewon that specialized in dengsim gui, roast flank steak. The thinly sliced meat was placed on a brazier in the center of the table and side dishes were served—cabbage kimchi and diced turnip in hot sauce and small saucer-sized plates of fresh garlic. Most people roasted a clove or two to add flavor to the meat, but Ernie emptied the plate onto the grill and popped the burnt garlic into his mouth like peanuts, washing them down with shot glasses of soju rice liquor, and before we’d finished our meal Ernie’d polished off two or three plates of garlic, much to the surprise of our waitress.
The next day, Ernie would show up at the CID detachment in his neatly pressed uniform, clean shaven, shoes polished, hair combed—looking like the squared-away soldier in a recruiting poster—but as he paraded around the office, people would start sniffing the air. “What’s that smell?” someone would say. Oblivious, Ernie went about his business, caring not one whit that his pores were emitting the odor of the pungent herb he’d so gleefull
y consumed the night before.
Which explained his current air of bereavement. The garlic truck was a burnt-out shell.
“How do you know this is the right truck?” I asked.
Mr. Kill guided us around to the front. A singed license plate matching the one Ernie had snagged was still legible. About twenty yards away, across a beach of rough pebbles, the Han River flowed serenely. We were about two hundred yards north of the Chamsu Bridge in an area that at night would be dark and isolated. Someone had poured gasoline onto the truck, set it on fire, and hoofed it back to the main road where a confederate presumably stood by to whisk the arsonist away. In which direction? Into the heart of the city of Seoul, or south across the bridge to the Seoul-Pusan Expressway that could carry them almost anywhere in country? We had no way of knowing.
“Will you find the owner of the truck?” I asked.
“We already have,” Mr. Kill told me. “A produce shipping company. One of their oldest and most reliable drivers was waylaid after picking up a load of garlic. Two toughs he’d never seen before threatened him with a knife and dropped him far in the countryside. He had to walk back to civilization, but even then he was too frightened to report the theft to the police.”
“But he’s talking now?”
“We convinced him.”
“Do you believe his story?”
“Yes, he’s a family man who’d have nothing to gain by murdering an American CID agent.”
“Glad to hear it,” Ernie said. “Can he identify the thieves?”
“He’s with the sketch artist now. But they stuck a knife to his throat. He was too panicked to be very observant.”
I knew Mr. Kill would do everything possible to glean any clues this truck might yield, but we both knew that he’d probably hit a dead end. The guys who’d tried to kill us seemed professional. It was unlikely we’d find them soon.
Mr. Kill read my thoughts. “I have another lead,” he said. “Remember the calligraphy we found in Miss Hwang’s sleeve?”
Miss Hwang. We knew the victim’s name now. A nice name. Probably not her real name, but a nice name nevertheless.
“I remember,” I said.
“We’ve been talking to teachers of calligraphy. Most are private and give lessons in their home, but there aren’t many anymore. It’s a dying art.”
“One of them knew Miss Hwang?” Ernie asked.
“No. Better than that. One of them, Calligrapher Noh, gave lessons to an American.”
“There must be plenty of Americans who study calligraphy,” I said.
“Not many. And certainly not many who are GIs. Come, I’ll let you talk to Noh.”
Mr. Kill hopped into the front seat of his sedan, Officer Oh driving. Ernie and I followed in the jeep.
The road wound up one of the oldest and most crowded hills in Seoul, near Chongun-dong, just below the ramparts of the ancient stone wall built to protect the capital city during the Chosun Dynasty. The homes up here were tightly packed, hidden behind wood or brick walls, with narrow lanes just wide enough for a wooden pushcart. Officer Oh parked her sedan, blocking most of the road, and Ernie edged his jeep up tightly behind her. We climbed out and trudged up flagstone steps the last few yards. At an indentation in the stone wall, Mr. Kill stopped and pressed a button. An intercom buzzed and soon a voice said, “Nugu-seiyo?” Who is it?
Inspector Kill identified himself and another, louder buzz sounded as we pushed our way through the gate into a well-tended garden. On the far side of the garden, an elderly man in traditional white pantaloons and a blue silk vest waited for us on the raised porch. Inspector Kill bowed to Calligrapher Noh and the man bowed back, but his timing was off. I realized he was blind, relying on the white cane in his hand for both support and navigation. We slipped off our shoes and stepped up on the varnished wooden floor. The man, hearing our approach, turned and led us down a short hallway. At the end, he slid back an oil-papered door and we entered what appeared to be the study of a scholar from the thirteenth century. The floor was warm and covered with layers of rice paper. The old calligrapher lowered himself behind a mother-of-pearl writing desk that stood only about two feet high. Waving his cane, he motioned for us to sit opposite him on the flat seat cushions provided. Behind him were shelves stuffed with scrolls and codices and even a few bound books, all of them dusty, as if they hadn’t been touched in years. He had a wispy grey beard and wrinkled eyes that, though sightless, smiled at us.
Ernie leaned toward Mr. Kill and said, “He can’t see at all?”
“Some. Light and shadow. But in his youth, when he could see, he was a very famous calligrapher, so students still seek him out.”
After a few pleasantries, Calligrapher Noh said in Korean, “You want to know about the American.” Mr. Kill said yes and the old scholar began to talk.
It was somewhat less than a year ago that the man appeared at his front gate. He just knocked on the door and said something in English that the scholar didn’t understand. Calligrapher Noh called his niece on the phone because she’d studied English in school and the American told her he wanted to become a student of calligraphy. Tuition was agreed upon, and from that day forward the American showed up every Tuesday night, spent an hour taking instruction, and left an envelope of money after each lesson. Apparently, the old scholar’s niece would come over every morning, count the money, and made sure it was deposited in his bank along with the tuition from his other students.
“Did your niece,” Mr. Kill asked, “or any of your other students ever see this American?”
“Never. He dealt only with me. As a student, he wasn’t bad. He paid attention to technique, ink preparation, paper quality, maintenance of the writing brush, and he was obsessed with the details of stroke order and the proper grip.” The old man frowned.
“But there was something about him,” I said, interrupting. “Something that worried you.”
“Yes. He was obsessive, which can be good, but isn’t good when carried too far. When I criticized the first characters he attempted, he became angry, asked me how I could know they were wrong if I could not see them.”
“How could you know?” Inspector Kill asked gently.
“From the sound of the brush on the paper, whether he was pressing too hard or too lightly, allowing too much ink to sink into the parchment, and by the amount of time he spent turning the brush at a curve or when blotting a stop.”
“If he didn’t trust your instruction,” I asked, “why did he come to you?”
“I asked him the same thing.”
“He could speak Korean?”
“No. Mostly I taught by demonstrating to him, holding his hand, making sure the grip was correct, and listening. He had potential, but after the third or fourth lesson, when I realized that he lacked the patience to become a true artist, I called my niece. She spoke to him and translated my words.”
“What did he do?”
“He said nothing. Just set the phone down, sat still for a long time, and left.”
“He quit?”
“Yes.”
“Did he pay you for the last lesson?”
“Yes. The next day, my niece told me that he’d paid double.”
“So money was no problem for him?”
“No.”
“How did you know he was a soldier?”
“At the entranceway, when he took off his shoes, I heard the heavy clump of combat boots. And on his first visit, he brought me a gift.”
As was customary for Korean students when they first visited a teacher. He slid it across the writing desk. A bottle of imported Hennessey cognac.
Ernie lifted and examined it. “No customs stamp,” he said. “No import duty paid. Straight out of the Class Six.”
“If we encounter this man,” I asked the old scholar, “how will we be able to identify him?”
&nb
sp; “Well, I can’t tell you what he looks like, other than I believe he’s tall and thin from the sound of his footsteps and the way he moved carefully through the house, but what most set him apart for me was his silence.”
“Silence?”
“Yes. Whenever I corrected him, by guiding his hand or showing him the correct technique, he would sit very still for a long time. So long I almost wondered if he’d managed to slip away. I heard him sliding his fingers across his face or his head, and then finally, after I’d almost forgotten what we’d been doing, he would reach out and, as if nothing had happened, we’d start over.”
“Silence?” I said.
“Yes, prolonged silence. The silence of a man trying very hard to control himself.”
“Do you have any idea why he struggled so much to maintain control?”
“Yes. It’s subtle, but I noticed an odd difference in the way he handled the inkstone and the brush.”
“What do you mean?”
“When he used his left hand, his motions were fluid. His right hand, the one I guided for his brush strokes, was capable but not as capable as his left.”
“How could you tell?”
“The motions were slower, more hesitant. More studied.”
“So you believe this man was originally left-handed?”
“Yes. Once when he was having trouble with a stop and a slash to the right, I told him to try it with his other hand, his left.” The old calligrapher clasped his narrow fingers, clutching them briefly at the memory. “This was the longest silence of all. I thought he would explode.”
