Mr. Kill gsaeb-6

by Martin Limon

  “Yes,” she said. “It was about eleven thirty a.m. because I hadn’t yet eaten my toshirak.” She was referring to the square metal tin most Koreans use to carry their lunch. Then Miss Ju blushed, probably embarrassed about how she remembered things in relation to food. I encouraged her to continue.

  “He was a foreigner. The only one I’ve seen all day.”

  “What did he look like?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see his face.”

  The ticketing window was made of opaque plastic with only a few holes in the middle to speak through and a horizontal slot on the counter through which to slide money.

  “If you didn’t see him,” I asked, “how can you be sure that he was a foreigner?”

  “Because of the way he spoke. The way he mispronounced Seoul.”

  Americans say the name of the Korean capital city as if it were one syllable, like the English word “soul.” Koreans pronounce it the way it is written, with two syllables: “So-ul.”

  “That’s it?” I said. “The way he talked?”

  Miss Ju twisted her handkerchief even tighter, blushed a brighter shade of crimson, and said, “And his hands too.”

  “What about his hands?”

  “So hairy,” she said, crinkling her nose, “like a won-sungi.” Like a monkey.

  Then she stared at me, her eyes wide, as if she had realized her mistake, and bowed her head, twisting her handkerchief more ferociously than ever.

  Ernie and I sat in a draft beer hall across the street from the Anyang Police Station.

  “Seoul,” Ernie said. “We’ll never find him there. He’ll just blend in with the crowd.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  Captain Ryu had contacted the head of the Myong Jin Bus Line and they were attempting to locate the driver of the bus that had left Anyang at approximately 11:45 this morning, heading for Seoul. While they did so, Ernie and I decided to get some chow. What we ended up with was beer and unshelled peanuts.

  Captain Ryu came over a few minutes later and told us that he’d managed to reach the bus driver by phone. He remembered the foreigner on his bus but was unable to describe him other than that he was tall and American. Where he had gotten off the bus in Seoul, the driver didn’t remember, even though there were only two possible choices. The first stop was in front of the Hamilton Hotel in Itaewon in the southern reaches of the city, and the second and final stop was at the Central Bus Station in downtown Seoul, both of which were bustling locations frequented by thousands of people every day. Trying to trace a lone G.I. getting off a bus at either one of those spots would be impossible.

  We thanked Captain Ryu for his help, paid for our beer, and left.

  “Where the hell you guys been?” the MP said.

  We were stopped in front of the big arched gate at the main entrance to DivArty headquarters, Camp Stanley. Ernie’d made good time through Seoul, skirting the downtown area by taking the road along the Han River, past Walker Hill. Still, the sun had set by the time we arrived. Floodlights glared out of the darkness. The MP leaned forward, his M-16 rifle held across his chest.

  “You’re the CID agents from Seoul, aren’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “We’ve been expecting you for hours. And now this shit happens at the club.”

  “What shit?” Ernie asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  The MP motioned to his partner, and the rusted wheels of the twelve-foot-high chain-link fence began to roll open. A whistle shrilled, Ernie shoved the jeep in gear, and we drove slowly into the compound.

  Camp Stanley was the home of the 2nd Division Artillery headquarters, more commonly known as DivArty. Two of the division’s artillery battalions were stationed at this camp, the other in a forward position closer to the Demilitarized Zone. When Ernie parked the jeep behind the two-story edifice that was the DivArty Officers’ Club, we could hear a steady pounding, like rhythmic thunder.

  “What’s that?” Ernie asked.

  “Hell if I know.”

  In the long hallway leading into the main ballroom, black-and-white chain-of-command photos hung on whitewashed walls. Crew-cut men wearing pressed green uniforms glared out at the world. I stopped at the last photo, the photo of the colonel who was the current DivArty commander. There wasn’t much to it: pale skin, vapid eyes, thin lips, short gray hair. Even his wire-rimmed glasses were almost invisible. Still, he was doing his best to look terrifying.

  Ernie and I entered the ballroom.

  A small man, hands on his hips, wheeled on us. I recognized the face, the same one I’d just been looking at in the chain-of-command photo. Instead of a green uniform, he was wearing a straw hat, an embroidered cowboy shirt, and tight blue jeans held up by a long-horned brass belt buckle.

  “Where in the hell have you two been?” Spittle erupted from his tight lips.

  The thunder surrounded us now, rattling the walls of the huge ballroom. Benches were filled with row after row of G.I. s in fatigue uniforms, some of them wearing cowboy hats similar to their commander’s. Most of them held cold cans of beer in their hands. It was their combat boots that were causing the thunder. They were stomping them on the wooden floor, in a cadence that threatened to shake the building apart.

  The thin-lipped commander approached me.

  “She refuses to go on,” he said, pointing at the stage. “That obstinate woman is willing to let my troops sit here cooling their heels, and she won’t make a move to do her duty until the ‘detectives from Seoul,’ as she calls them, show up. And I’m assuming you’re the detectives from Seoul.”

  It hadn’t required great powers of deduction to figure out who we were. Ernie and I are required to wear civilian clothes while we work. That way no one will know our military rank and, theoretically, we can’t be bullied by someone of higher position. But according to the 8th Army Supplement to the Department of the Army regulation, we’re not allowed to wear just any civilian clothes: we’re required to wear coats and ties. This is 1974. No one wears coats and ties, not unless he’s forced to. With our short haircuts, Ernie and I are like blinking advertisements: “Here comes the Criminal Investigation Division.”

  “Yes, sir. We’re the detectives from Seoul.”

  “Then get up there,” he said, pointing once again at the stage, “and get that woman and her band off their butts and out there entertaining my troops.”

  I nodded to the colonel, and Ernie and I made our way past the thundering crowd, climbed up a short flight of steps, and pushed through musty velvet curtains. A naked bulb shone at the end of a short hallway. Ernie passed me and stepped first through the open doorway.

  Five women looked up at us. All of them blondes. Each woman wore tight blue jeans and a tighter red-and-whitechecked blouse. Straw cowboy hats had been pinned expertly to the back of their elaborate coiffures.

  One of them pushed back her Stetson. “You don’t look like much,” she said.

  “Kinda scrawny,” another added, “but you’ll have to do.”

  They broke into raucous laughter.

  After making us swear that we wouldn’t leave before the show ended, Marnie Orville led her Country Western All Stars out on stage. One of them strapped on a guitar, and two more took up positions behind an electric bass and a steel guitar, respectively. Finally, a woman with straight long blonde hair sat behind the drum set. Marnie, the tallest and most voluptuous of the five women, fiddled with the keyboard, glanced at her fellow musicians, and nodded to the Korean man standing next to hemp ropes on pulleys. As he pulled back the curtains, spotlights were switched on out front and Marnie stomped her boot. Electric amps hummed and the band clanged to life, belting out some country tune that I’d never heard before.

  The G.I. s in the audience leaped to their feet, roaring their approval. Ernie covered his ears. He stepped toward me and shouted in my ear.

  “Why’d you promise all that to her?” he asked.

  “I was being coerced. I had to get them out
on stage,” I shouted back.

  “Now we’re her slaves.”

  I shrugged. “Weren’t we anyway?”

  He crossed his arms and frowned at the five women gyrating before us. “Hayseed heaven,” he said.

  “You stay here,” I told Ernie, “keep an eye on the girls and their equipment.”

  “What do you think I’m doing?” Ernie asked.

  I worked my way backstage and then out behind the Officers’ Club, where the van and the equipment truck were parked. Four Korean men-two drivers and two men to load and unload the equipment-squatted between the vehicles, smoking and murmuring among themselves. A flood lamp illuminated the scene. As I approached, they stopped smoking and stared at me above glowing embers.

  “Anyonghaseiyo,” I said. Are you at peace?

  The men nodded, bemused by my use of the Korean language. As I continued using their native tongue, their eyes grew wider and then they were smiling. In a few minutes, we were old pals. The eldest driver and leader of the group was named Mr. Shin. He offered me a cigarette, which I politely refused, and then he started telling me about their adventures of the last few days, driving five white women from their hotel in Seoul to the nether regions near the heavily armed Demilitarized Zone that divides North and South Korea.

  I listened, not asking any questions, taking it in.

  Inside the Camp Stanley Officers’ Club, guitars continued to clang, women shouted, men roared.

  A half hour later, the music subsided and Ernie and I joined the band in their dressing room. I pulled out my notebook, sat on a stool, and started to ask them about the complaints they had alerted us to. Before we could finish, their break was up and they returned to the stage. G.I. s were already clapping their hands and stomping their feet again. When the curtain opened, the audience, on cue, went mad.

  Ernie stayed backstage while I returned to Mr. Shin and the loading crew. After the final set, Ernie emerged from the back of the Camp Stanley Officers’ Club. He pulled me aside.

  “They want me to take them to a nightclub,” he told me.

  “Who?”

  “Marnie and the other girls.”

  “We’re calling her Marnie now? Not Miss Orville?”

  Ernie ignored the remark.

  “What about the time?” I asked. We had only an hour and a half until the midnight curfew, equipment to inventory and load, and a long ride back to Seoul.

  “They’re counting on me,” Ernie said, “to work something out.”

  “We could get in trouble behind this,” I said.

  Ernie grinned. “Trouble I can handle. Especially when it’s packed in tight blue jeans.”

  3

  By the next morning, Staff Sergeant Riley had already collected much of the information I’d asked him to collect concerning the Blue Train rapist. He shoved the printouts across his desk. I sipped on my coffee and started going over them.

  “Where’s Ernie?” he asked.

  “Last night,” I replied, “he worked late on a case.”

  “What case?”

  “The case you said the Provost Marshal was so hot on. Theft from the Country Western All Stars.”

  Riley squinted suspiciously. “Ernie has a lead?”

  I ignored him and continued to shuffle through the paperwork.

  Staff Sergeant Riley is a paper-pusher. Nothing more. Still, he likes to pretend that he’s giving orders when he’s only relaying them, and he pokes his nose into every case that interests him, which is most of them. Ernie and I tolerate him because he has extensive contacts throughout the 8th Army headquarters complex and he often saves us a lot of legwork.

  Yesterday, before we’d left the office, I’d asked Riley to contact the American military units that are located near the route of the Blue Train. Specifically, Camp Ames in Taejon, Camps Henry and Walker in Taegu, and Hialeah Compound in Pusan. What I wanted was a list of who was on temporary duty to Seoul, who was on emergency leave, who was absent without leave, and who was on regular in-country leave. Once I had that, maybe I could start to narrow down the identity of the mystery man who’d hopped off the Blue Train in Anyang.

  “You’re not looking too well,” Riley told me.

  “I’m not feeling too well either.”

  “What in the hell did you two guys do last night?”

  While I continued to peruse the list of names, I told him. As I spoke, Miss Kim stopped her typing.

  The five women of the Country Western All Star Review were Marnie, Kristie, Prudence, Shelly, and the bass player, whose name I couldn’t recall at the time. During the breaks in the show, Ernie had shown them his Criminal Investigation badge and his. 45, and for some reason they took a liking to him. Maybe it wasn’t so much his personality as the fact that they felt adrift in a sea of G.I. s who were fawning all over them and an ocean of Koreans they couldn’t understand. Ernie listened to their problems. There were many, the pilfering of a microphone and a cowboy boot and an electric guitar being the least of them.

  They complained about the food they had to eat in the hotel. They’d asked the waiter for something lighter than the greasy American breakfast that was served, and what they received instead was roast mackerel, white rice, and a bowl of clam bouillon.

  “For breakfast,” Marnie said, crinkling her nose. Marnie Orville was the voluptuous one. The one who sang most of the numbers, the one who owned the equipment, and the one who had arranged the USO tour.

  The other girls chimed in, complaining about the food and how they couldn’t eat the kimchee; although they realized it was made of fresh vegetables and it was good for you, but they couldn’t tolerate the garlic smell on their breath.

  “The boys in the front row,” Marnie said, “would have to move back twenty feet.”

  I doubted that a hand grenade would’ve made the boys in the front row move back twenty feet, but Ernie let her talk. She was lonely, as were all the girls. It might seem strange, considering the rabid attention they were getting from stagestruck G.I. s, but once their show was over and they’d been driven back to their hotel, there was nothing for them to do but sleep and get up and then get ready for another show.

  It was a half hour before midnight by the time we reached the Grand Hotel in Uijongbu. We could’ve made it back to Seoul before curfew, barely, but the Grand Hotel had a nightclub in the basement and the girls of the Country Western All Star Review couldn’t wait to see what a Korean nightclub looked like. Ernie’d been there before, and he led us down carpeted steps. The joint was plush, with an orchestra of middle-aged men, a lead singer in a white dinner jacket, and three or four beautiful Korean women belting out old favorites for the mostly older crowd that sat at round tables covered in white linen.

  Ernie talked our way past having to pay the cover charge, claiming that the Country Western All Star Review was in Korea on some sort of cultural exchange and therefore deserved diplomatic immunity. He never sold it, but the tuxedoed manager finally tired of arguing with him and let us in. A few minutes later, between numbers, Ernie spoke to the Korean MC, who studied our table and then nodded enthusiastically. After sipping one round of drinks, the women of the Country Western All Star Review were coaxed up on stage, and soon they were singing and dancing to some old country standards that the orchestra knew. The Korean audience clapped along, delighted.

  I’d already told Mr. Shin and his crew to return to the hotel in Seoul. Marnie was worried about the safety of the equipment, but I knew better than to impugn Shin’s integrity. The only problem was that once midnight came and went, we were trapped in the basement of the Uijongbu Grand Hotel until the nationwide curfew ended at four in the morning. Out on the streets, the only things that moved were military patrols with orders to shoot to kill. Still, we were cozy down there, with everything our hearts could desire.

  Until about two-thirty in the morning, everything went great. Korean men kept sending bottles of locally made Oscar champagne to our table, and the American ladies danced as often as they
wanted to. But by the time three in the morning rolled around, everyone was exhausted. Heads started drooping to the white linen tablecloths, and some people even spread out on the leather booths in the back. I was one of them. I’d tried not to drink too much. Ernie, however, had let himself go. He drank not only two liters of OB beer, along with plenty of glasses of Oscar, but also a straight shot or two of Suntory whiskey. Not that I was counting.

  Just before four a.m., I persuaded one of the waiters to bring me a steaming hot cup of coffee. MJB instant, but it did the trick. I shook everyone awake and loaded four of the women into Ernie’s jeep. That left Ernie and Marnie without a ride, so I hailed a Korean cab driver and arranged for him to transport Ernie and Marnie back to the Crown Hotel in Seoul at double the meter reading-the standard rate, since he had to leave his prescribed area of operations. The cabbie made better time than I did, and when we finally arrived at the Crown Hotel on the outskirts of Itaewon, the ladies of the Country Western All Star Review, exhausted but pleased, each gave me a hug and a kiss goodnight. Ernie, apparently, had already retired upstairs with Marnie.

  He was a big boy and could take care of himself. I restarted the jeep and drove back to 8th Army compound.

  “That asshole,” Riley told me when I finished the story. “Always dipping it where he shouldn’t.”

  I glanced at Miss Kim. Her face was red and she was typing furiously on her hangul typewriter. When she realized I was looking at her, she stood abruptly, snatched a tissue from a box, and marched out of the admin office, heading down the hallway toward the ladies’ latrine.

  “What’d they tell you about the missing equipment?” Riley asked, apparently not noticing Miss Kim’s discomfort.

  “They think it’s a pattern,” I told him. “Something goes missing after almost every performance, almost like somebody hunting souvenirs. And they believe they’re being watched.”

  “Being watched?” Riley scoffed. “Of course they’re being watched. Five good-looking round-eyed women. What did they expect?”

  “They didn’t expect Peeping Toms. Faces flash in front of windows, according to them, and then disappear.”