The Wandering Ghost (george sueno and ernie bascom)

by Martin Limon

  “Can he get to them?”

  “Maybe. But it’s going to cost me.”

  “We need to know what’s on them,” Ernie said. “That could bring this whole thing together. Once we lay it on the 8th Army PMO’s desk, he’ll order that the records be declassified.”

  Riley sipped on his double bourbon. His thin lips curled as if he were sucking a persimmon. “Do you guys have any idea what you’re messing with?”

  “Honchos,” I said. “They step on little people and don’t expect anyone to fight back.”

  Ernie set his drink down, rose from the cocktail table, and said, “I’m heading back up to Division, Sueno, with or without you. And, this time, instead of being slapped around like a red-headed stepchild, I plan to kick some serious ass.”

  The new evidence Brandy spilled to us centered around something she referred to as “mafia meetings.” She hadn’t told the KNPs about them, nor had she mentioned them to anyone else, including us, because Jill Matthewson made her promise not to.

  “Jill pissed off,” Brandy told us. “She MP, same-same like man, but in jeep she have to carry meikju.” Beer. “She takey, go from black-market honcho place over to… what you call that place? WV something.”

  Brandy pronounced the letter v as something similar to “boo-we.” Koreans have a lot of trouble with v’s and z’s since neither letter appears in their alphabet.

  “WVOW,” I said. The Wounded Veterans of Overseas Wars. They ran the small casino on the outskirts of Tongduchon.

  “Yeah,” Brandy said. “That place. Then she have to go pick up from Pak Tong-i, Miss Kim. Takey back WVOW.”

  It wasn’t a pretty picture but not unheard of in the U.S. Army. Some lower-level officer or NCO-in this case probably Warrant Officer Fred Bufford-is given the responsibility of setting up the meeting. The honcho-probably Colonel Alcott-says something like, “I don’t care how you do it, just do it.” Bufford’s not given any money so he uses the resources he has. That is, MPs, MP jeeps, and whatever influence he might have over the businessmen in Tongduchon. Jill Matthewson picks up beer contributed by a local TDC black marketeer and she also picks up a stripper contributed by Kimchee Entertainment. Why would these men contribute such valuable commodities to a mafia meeting? Because the colonels who run the 2nd Infantry Division exercise huge influence in Tongduchon. They can decide, for instance, if GIs are to be given overnight passes on payday or if an entire battalion of 1,200 men should be restricted to compound. Or which contractor will be awarded a bid to build a new officers’ club annex on Camp Casey. Also, they can decide how to utilize the provost marshal’s finite resources. For instance, should they have MP investigators chase violent criminals or should they assign them to spend their time trying to interrupt the smooth operations of the TDC black market? Faced with this kind of power, Korean businessmen-especially the ones involved in corruption-would contribute to the mafia meeting and contribute gladly.

  So Corporal Jill Matthewson transports the entire load over to the WVOW Club. When everything’s set up, the honchos arrive: staff colonels from the 2nd Infantry Division, every one a full bird. Then, according to Brandy, Jill was forced to stand outside the front of the club, in uniform, and make sure no uninvited guests entered.

  She didn’t like the duty. She didn’t like what was going on inside the WVOW. She didn’t like the additional business girls who were brought over by Pak Tong-i and other local businessmen. And she didn’t like the photographs that were shown to her later, photos taken secretly by Miss Kim Yong-ai. Photos of most of the honchos of the 2nd Infantry Division engaged in various compromising positions with the Korean business girls who tended to be less than half their ages.

  Actually, I’d heard of mafia meetings before. They’re a tradition in the U.S. Army. Staff officers get together during off-duty hours in an informal setting and exchange ideas concerning the best ways to improve operations in the division and the best ways to effectively implement the policies of the commanding general. Nothing wrong with that. But apparently the participants at the 2nd Infantry Division had lost sight of the original intent of the meetings.

  Maybe a male MP assigned to the same job as Jill Matthewson would’ve laughed the whole thing off. Maybe he would’ve slugged down a few bottles of the free beer and grabbed one of the business girls for himself and pulled her into a back room when none of the honchos were watching. Instead of joining the frivolities, Jill had been forced to listen to the complaints of her friend, Kim Yong-ai. And witness her tears.

  “She stripper,” Brandy told us indignantly. “Not supposed to be business girl. But honchos grab her while she dance. She say stop but they no stop. Pretty soon her clothes off, she on floor, and they do her same-same business girl.”

  Ernie didn’t laugh although for a moment his eyes twinkled as if he wanted to. But quickly he realized that the distinction between a dancer and a prostitute was an important one, at least to the women involved. In a Confucian society, status and position in society is everything. And when it’s violated, especially when it’s violated by foreigners, the loss of face hurts almost as much, and sometimes more, than any physical abuse suffered.

  You could bet that the young Korean business girls at the mafia meetings didn’t really want to be there either. Poverty and neglect had forced them into their world of shame. But at least when they walked into the WVOW, they knew what to expect. Kim Yong-ai, according to Brandy, was outraged by her treatment. But who could she complain to? Not Pak Tong-i; he was beholden for his living to the powers that be. Not the Korean National Police; they worked hand in hand with the honchos at the 2nd Infantry Division and certainly knew about, and maybe even participated in, the mafia meetings. And she couldn’t complain to the 2nd Infantry Division Military Police, they were the ones who had set up the party. Miss Kim Yong-ai had no one in the world to complain to. No one, that is, except Corporal Jill Matthewson.

  I thought of the two thousand dollars Jill and Miss Kim had paid Pak Tong-i and I asked Brandy about it. “Did Jill ever mention money to you?”

  “Money? No. I just know she pissed off. So was Kim Yong-ai.”

  “So what were they going to do about it?” Ernie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Brandy answered. “Next thing, they karra chogi.” They ran away.

  What Brandy told us was something I should’ve figured for myself. It was a missing link that stitched a lot of disparate elements together, that showed us how Corporal Jill Matthewson and the stripper, Kim Yong-ai, and the booking agent, Pak Tong-i, and the honchos of the 2nd Infantry Division were tied together.

  It had all the elements that so often lead to crime. Money: two thousand dollars that suddenly appeared to pay off Kim Yong-ai’s debts. Sex: the daily sexual harassment of an American female MP and the forced sexual degradation of a Korean stripper. Power: the wrath of the 2nd Infantry Division power structure that someone would have the temerity to disappear and cause them embarrassment. An embarrassment that rose not only as high as 8th Army headquarters but all the way to the United States Congress.

  9

  It was too dangerous to drive Ernie’s jeep back into the Division AO. The MPs would’ve taken note of the unit designation and jeep number stenciled on the bumper. Instead, Ernie left it in the care of a buck sergeant with grease-stained fingers at the Camp Red Cloud motor pool, promising him a free pizza dinner at the Papa-san Club upon our return.

  Staff Sergeant Riley made us promise once more that we’d be back at 8th Army headquarters for duty Monday morning. “Tonight and Sunday,” he said. “That’s all the time you’ve got. If you don’t find Matthewson by then, you’re back in Seoul where you belong.”

  We agreed. Then he nodded goodbye to Brandy and drove his sedan back to Seoul.

  In front of the Camp Red Cloud main gate, Ernie, Brandy, and I waved down a kimchee cab. Brandy gave directions to a village east of here known as Koyang. We traveled on back roads, avoiding the MSR. Our goal was to dodge all 2nd Infan
try Division checkpoints, to sneak back into the 2nd Infantry Division area of operations without being noticed.

  Koyang was a small cluster of buildings, one of which featured the Chinese characters for sokyu-“rock oil”-overhead: a gas station. The little town also had a noodle shop and a transshipment point for produce. We climbed out of the cab, shivered in the cold February wind, and after we paid the driver, we watched him make a U-turn and speed back toward Uijongbu.

  The shadows of quivering poplar trees began to grow long; evening would soon be upon us. Ernie and I checked our pockets. We each had about forty bucks on us, plenty to last us until we returned to Seoul Monday morning.

  Brandy entered the noodle shop, chatted with the owner, and within five minutes another local cab pulled up, ready to transport us north to Bopwon-ni. Legal Hall Village. We climbed in and the little sedan sped north. The two-lane road followed a meandering valley. Fallow rice paddies spread on one side and elm-covered hills rose on the other. Swaths of snow clung to the hills although, since we’d arrived, there’d been no new snowfalls. Unusual for February. Atop many of the hills were burial mounds and atop one of them was an elaborate stone-carved statute of an ancient king of the Yi Dynasty.

  “It’s like another world back here,” Ernie said.

  I knew what he meant. Even though we were only some twenty miles north of Seoul as the crow flies, there was a mountain range between us and Seoul and smaller ranges of hills on either side of this valley. Few modern amenities existed back here. Telephone and electrical lines paralleled the road and that was about it. Gazing in any direction, one could imagine that he’d been transported back in time to the ancient kingdom known as the Land of the Morning Calm. The sun sank behind the hills to the west, darkening straw-thatched roofs.

  There were few military installations in this valley. No U.S. bases and only one or two small ROK Army compounds specializing in communications. Although we were only fifteen or so miles south of the DMZ, we were tucked snugly between the two main invasion routes known as the Western Corridor and the Eastern Corridor. We were slipping into 2nd Infantry Division territory stealthily. And if the KNPs interviewed either one of our cab drivers, neither would be able to give them our entire route.

  I still didn’t know how Brandy had hooked up with Staff Sergeant Riley. I asked and she told us.

  “When you come look for me last night, taaksan trouble.” A lot of trouble. “All kimchee business girl, all GI soul brother, taaksan kul-laso.” Very angry. “Why I bring MP T-shirt Black Cat Club? they ask me. I say you not MP, you CID.”

  I’m sure that calmed them down.

  “So I go checky-checky KNP police station. Nobody outside. I wait. Pretty soon, GI car come. Not jeep. Not tank. Not big truck.”

  “It was a sedan,” Ernie said.

  “Right. So must be Eight Army. Skinny GI get out, crooked teeth, I go talk to him. He like me. He buy me drink before go in KNP station, pretty soon he tell me everything about you two guys, so I tell him I need to talk to you so he let me hide in back of GI car.”

  “That’s Riley,” Ernie said. “Spills anything to a pretty face.”

  “After a drink or two,” I added.

  As we sped along the narrow country lane, we spoke freely, assuming that the driver couldn’t understand English. A safe assumption. The dark shadows of night continued to roll in and by the time we reached Bopwon-ni, the small town was bejeweled with shining light bulbs. No neon. But at the main intersection there was a teahouse and two-story beer hall. SSANG-YONG, the sign said, A Pair of Dragons. It portrayed two enormous reptiles entwined in battle. We ordered the driver to pull over, paid him, and climbed out of the cab.

  Inside the beer hall, the odor of salted octopus assaulted our nostrils. It was a nice fishy smell, interlaced with the sharp tang of red pepper powder and raw nakji, squid, another specialty of the house. The three of us each ordered a mug of draft OB. We turned down the raw squid, which most of the other customers were pecking away at with their chopsticks. In order to save face, I instead ordered a plate of anju, dried cuttlefish with a pepper sauce dip and a couple dozen unhusked peanuts on the side. Koreans believe that it’s unhealthy to drink alcohol on an empty stomach and bar owners capitalize on this belief by overcharging for plates of sliced fruit and dried cuttlefish and other snacks. Not to mention the raw squid.

  While we nibbled, I studied the crowd. Most of the heavy drinking was being done by Korean businessmen in suits. They had bottles of Scotch in the center of tables and were busy toasting one another, round glasses raised to red faces. At other tables there were young Koreans, college-age, sipping slowly on beer. And a few women in groups, none alone. At the pool tables, at least a dozen men in ROK Army fatigue uniforms. The patches on their left arms showed a globe with a lightning bolt running through it, which led me to believe that they were probably assigned to one of those communication compounds we’d passed.

  Not a GI in sight. Nor a Korean business girl. The influence of foreigners had yet to defile the Pair of Dragons beer hall. Therefore, Ernie and I caught a lot of stares. But most of the gawking was reserved for Brandy. Not for her pulchritude. Here, in a Confucian society, she was stared at for her brazenness. For her huge Afro hairdo, for nonchalantly sitting with two foreign men, for guzzling draft beer rather than sipping something more ladylike, like a glass of pineapple juice or a cup of ginseng tea. She created quite a stir. After we finished our beers, I suggested we leave before one of the drunken Korean businessmen said something to her, she snapped back, and Ernie became involved.

  To avoid trouble we had to keep moving.

  Outside, we flagged down another cab. This one drove us east from Bopwon-ni, down dark country roads, through quiet straw-thatched farming villages. The three-quarter moon still loitered in a dark sky. Then, just as we all were about to become drowsy, we reached our first ROK Army checkpoint.

  The driver slowed, turned off his headlights, and we stopped while armed Korean soldiers peered into the cab. Both of the young men did a double take when they saw Brandy but then they regained their stern expressions and demanded everyone’s ID. The cab driver fished out his license first and then Ernie and I showed our regular military ID cards-not our CID badges. Finally, Brandy handed over her Korean national identity card. I figured it would be unlikely that these two Korean soldiers, out here standing alone in the frigid night, would go to the trouble of notifying the 2nd Infantry Division of our presence. The ROK Army and the 2nd Infantry Division coordinated major troop movements at the Division level but they didn’t cooperate on day-to-day routine. As I suspected, the Korean soldiers barely glanced at our IDs before waving us on. What they were concerned with were North Korean commandos. Not a couple of GIs with a Korean woman who was marked both by her hairdo and by the company she kept, as a business girl.

  After we drove on, I mentally started to list the people who might have a reason to murder Pak Tong-i. I started with Jill Matthewson. Would she have a motive? To retrieve her two thousand bucks? Maybe. To make sure that-if he knew where she was hiding-he wouldn’t reveal her secret? Maybe. How about the stripper, Kim Yong-ai? Maybe the same two motives. And maybe another one: Pak Tong-i had been instrumental in her degradation. He’d taken her to the mafia meeting and then done nothing to protect her from what Brandy described as gang rape. And the amulet that sat in my pocket indicated that Mr. Pak and Miss Kim had had a thing going. How could he allow his own girlfriend to be abused like that? Certainly Miss Kim had a motive.

  How about someone in the 2nd Division Provost Marshal’s Office or the provost marshal himself? Pak Tong-i knew about the free black-market goods and the free women, and maybe someone had heard that one of Pak’s strippers had taken some photographs. Where were the photos now? With Kim Yong-ai, according to Brandy. But someone had searched Pak’s office. Were they looking for those photos? Were they willing to kill to obtain them? Or were they looking for the whereabouts of Corporal Jill Matthewson and Kim Yong-ai? />
  Maybe the Korean National Police had murdered Pak Tong-i. Maybe they’d been questioning him, asking him about the whereabouts of Kim Yong-ai or Corporal Jill Matthewson. Maybe he’d refused to tell them. Maybe.

  I was using the term murder in its legal sense. I’m no doctor but it appeared to me that Pak Tong-i had died of a heart attack. Still, if an intruder broke into his office, frightened him, questioned him, maybe tortured him, and this had caused a weak heart to burst, then he would be responsible for his death. According to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, it would be murder.

  Maybe gangsters had murdered Pak Tong-i. Maybe he hadn’t turned the two thousand dollars over as promised. Maybe they came to collect and Pak no longer had the money or refused to pay.

  Maybe the mystery man who’d witnessed my interrogation at the Tongduchon Police Station had murdered Pak Tong-i. Why? All he had told me was that powerful people were somehow involved in this case. Who they were or why they were involved? That, he failed to mention.

  Finally, I admitted to myself that I had no idea who had murdered Pak Tong-i. I didn’t have enough information. Maybe I’d never have enough information. Our goal up here was still to find Corporal Jill Matthewson, not to solve a Korean civilian’s murder. But something told me that before we found her we’d have to solve not only the murder of Pak Tong-i but also resolve the mysterious death of Private Marvin Z. Druwood. And, incidentally, we’d have to put to rest the wanderings of Miss Chon Un-suk’s hungry ghost.

  The little cab bounced over a hill and then, spread out before us like a sudden gift from the gods, lay the neon-spangled city known as Tongduchon.

  The main reason Ernie and I had decided to risk coming back was to find Corporal Jill Matthewson. The second reason was because of what Brandy had promised us: a rendezvous. With a man who knew Pak Tong-i and claimed to have information on the whereabouts of Jill Matthewson and Miss Kim Yong-ai. He’d contacted her early last night, while she was tending bar at the Black Cat Club. Of course he hadn’t come in himself, no self-respecting Korean man would enter a GI nightclub. Instead, a boy came in, a raggedy street urchin, and he’d asked for her by name, Bu-ran-dee. When Brandy acknowledged who she was, the boy handed her a note and waited hopefully for a gift of food or money. When Brandy had read the note she asked him who had sent it but, frightened, he scurried back into the street.