by Martin Limon
“Will you keep looking for this KMH for us?”
“Yeah. But don’t expect me to stay here late. I got to go out tonight and find some strange.”
Ernie gave Strange his card and told him to call if he figured out who this KMH was. We left the building. The brisk air outside seemed life-giving after the claustrophobic tension that pervaded the Eighth Army Headquarters.
“He seemed awfully helpful,” I said. “He’ll do anything for me.”
“Why?”
“Because I tell him about the strange that I get.”
“What strange?”
“I just make it up. He lives in a fantasy world anyway.”
We strode back to our own little dreamland at the Eighth Army CID Detachment.
Investigators Burrows and Slabem were in the first sergeant’s office. Slabem had his shirt off and Burrows was taping wire to the soft flesh of his pink body.
“I know,” Ernie said. “Don’t tell me. You’re going to pop out of a cake at an electronics convention.”
The first sergeant growled. “Knock off the bullshit, Bascom. Slabem here’s going to get the goods on this guy Lindbaugh so we can bust him for taking kickbacks from this Mr. Kwok out in the village.”
Burrows finished the taping job and Slabem put on his shirt. The first sergeant told them to leave and then he glared at us.
“If you guys got something against Burrows and Slabem I want you to just keep it to yourselves.”
“All they care about is statistics, Top,” Ernie said. “So they’ll look good at the briefing and have a better shot at getting their next promotion.”
“Which you two guys probably won’t get.”
“I didn’t join the Army to get rich,” I said. Actually, I joined to eat regular, but I didn’t tell him that.
“Well, you’re off the Lindbaugh case now. Burrows and Slabem will wrap it up.”
“You mean, make sure it doesn’t explode and involve too many people.”
The first sergeant’s face twisted, as if something rotten had suddenly decided to take possession of his intestines. He held his breath for a while and then slowly exhaled, getting it under control.
His voice was calm and precise: “I’m putting you guys back on the black-market detail. Eight to five. Get out there and get me some arrests.”
“Mayonnaise and instant coffee,” Ernie said and shrugged. “Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.”
Beneath the dingy, unlit neon, a beaded curtain drawn across the open door, stood Mama Lee’s.
It was a nightclub, but there were a series of rooms in the back. The girls who worked here lived here, on display in the front but making their real living out back.
I clattered through the beads into the large main room. The bar was against the far wall and there were about twenty cocktail tables arranged neatly around the room. I went through the back door toward the hooches and heard some murmuring. Mama Lee was in the first room.
Sitting on the floor, she was ensconced comfortably next to a twelve-inch-high table heaped with PX goods. The inventory was typical: freeze-dried coffee, Carnation creamer, Nestle’s hot chocolate, Tang, Jergen’s lotion, almond butter facial cream, maraschino cherries, olive oil, honey, strawberry jam, peanut butter, four bottles of Jim Beam, two cases of Falstaff, and eight cartons of Kent cigarettes.
Two old ladies sat across the table from her, puffing madly on American-made cigarettes, bargaining and waving their hands.
They stopped talking and looked around when I appeared.
“Oh, Geogi,” Mama Lee said, looking relieved. “It’s you.”
The women were well-known black marketeers and old enough to be my mother. I had occasionally been involved in raids in which they had been arrested by the Korean National Police. The raids were just a face-saving gesture for the police. The old women would open up shop in a new location the next day—after splitting some of their profits with the KNPs. Only the GIs caught doing business with them would be shafted: courtmartialed, fined, kicked out of the service.
“She back room isso,” Mama Lee said, waving her thumb toward the rear of the hooches. “You try new girl? Taaksan number one.” She beamed at me with a gold-toothed grin and held her thumb straight up in the air.
“No,” I said, looking at the pile of goods.
The old woman cackled and stared at me. Smoke rushed through her craggy teeth.
“Number ten no sweat,” I said. “All GI taaksan number ten.”
“Yeah,” Mama Lee said, leaning back in mirth and slapping both her knees. “You right, Geogi. You right.”
I winked at the old women and walked down the hallway to the last room, where Kimiko waited. As Mama Lee had promised when I called, she was there.
We sat on the woven mats, a small table between us.
“You must have spent all your money on the funeral,” I said.
“It was important.”
“Yes,” I said. “It was very important.”
There was an awkward silence. I nodded.
“Miss Pak have no family. Like me. When little, other children make fun sometimes, because we didn’t have …” Kimiko looked at me and groped for the word. “Old people?”
“Ancestors,” I said.
“Yes, ancestors,” she said. “We didn’t have graves of ancestors to visit on holidays. My mother made me promise that someday I would return to the graves of our ancestors in North Korea. When everyone else is with their ancestors, I will visit with Miss Pak.”
“That will be good,” I said in Korean.
Kimiko smiled.
“Kimiko,” I said. “I have a secret. But if I tell you, you must tell no one else.”
“Yes,” she said. “I promise.”
I reached out my hand to hers and we hooked our small fingers together in the Korean gesture of affirmation.
“There will be more Miss Paks, more girls who will suffer, unless you give me the thing you have.”
She was stone white. Silent. “Yes,” she said, finally. “I know. I used it to get what I wanted from them. A burial place for Miss Pak, a nice funeral, and a little money for myself. But they will tire of this arrangement soon. They will demand it from me.”
“That’s why they’ve been following you.”
“Yes.”
“Where do you keep it? Where is it hidden?”
“Here,” she said, and rose to her feet. She padded over to the improvised shelf on which Mama Lee had stacked a cache of her bounty, and from among dozens of green and white little boxes she took one. Back at the table, she extended it to me and I accepted the box of Fuji film.
“You’ll be on your own now,” I told her.
“Yes. I know.”
“Anyonghikeiseiyo,” I said to her. Stay in peace.
“Anyonghikaseiyo,” she replied. Go in peace.
12
At the Moyer Recreation Center on Yongsan Compound I signed some paperwork for the middle-aged doughnut dolly working the front desk and she gave us the key to one of the darkrooms and a thick tome of instructions on how to develop film. We had to buy the various chemicals from the supply room and the entire procedure was almost as difficult as the time Mrs. Aaronson taught me how to bake unleavened bread when I was twelve.
After we figured we had everything mixed right and we were waiting for the first prints to come out, Ernie got antsy.
“I’ll go next door to the snack stand at the bus station and get us a couple of beers.”
“Not supposed to open the door. It could expose the film.”
“You stand in front of the tray. I’ll just crack the door quick and slide out.”
“You sure they got cold ones?”
“Positive.”
“I’ll take two.”
I held my coat open around the film tray and Ernie slid out. The prints were gradually starting to come alive with images.
By the time Ernie got back the prints were clear. We popped our Falstaffs and admired them.
/> “Holy shit. The old creep.”
“Yeah. Yeah.”
Miss Pak Ok-suk was tied up, and the naked Major General Clarence T. Bohler was performing various acts upon her body. Miss Pak’s face looked variously worried and twisted in pain. She was withstanding the abuse like a trouper, though: part of the price she figured she had to pay.
There was one shot where the look of resignation had left her eyes and had been displaced by panic. Bohler was bent over and manipulating something down near her backside. His forearm was around her neck. The photo was slightly blurred; she must have been struggling. From the grip he held her in, it appeared that she was having trouble getting air.
A couple of the photos showed some sort of medallion around Miss Pak’s neck. I went to the front desk, talked to the doughnut dolly, and managed to scrounge up a magnifying glass. Once my eyes had readjusted to the light in the darkroom, I took another look at the print. The chain appeared to be made of gold and the medallion of carved jade. It was a circle surrounding a Chinese character. Ok—jade. Part of her name.
In all, there were nineteen photographs. The rest of the film was blank. Three of them were so blurred as to be useless. The other sixteen were clear. Something had gone wrong. She had died.
There was no way of dating the photos. They could have been taken prior to the night of her death but I doubted it. Bohler’s driver could place him in the vicinity of Itaewon, and these photos would prove his intimate, abusive relations with Miss Pak Ok-suk.
We had enough to arrest him. And once formal proceedings were started, I knew we could get the evidence that would nail the case down. Kimiko would have to testify. It would be the only way for her. Her only chance was to take away the rationale for Bohler needing to silence her.
Ernie finished his beer and opened a second. “So now we know why Kimiko’s been so well paid lately, and getting all those fancy jobs.”
“Sure. Probably through Bohler.”
“And the night she went to the Officers’ Club, that was to let him know what she had on him?”
“And to give him a kick in the balls for good measure.”
“Now we know why he didn’t press charges.”
I popped my second can of beer and we hung the prints up to dry. Using some wrapping paper and an envelope I folded the negatives away and put them into my coat pocket.
We finished our beers, put the eight-by-twelve glossies into a manila envelope, and returned all the equipment we had checked out to the front desk.
The woman said, “I’m glad you boys are getting yourselves a hobby. Every soldier needs one.”
Milt Gorman’s residence wasn’t very far from The Roundup. The fortress he called home was illuminated by the glare of a floodlight. A ten-foot-high stone and mortar wall framed a huge metal gate and the entranceway to a small garage, locked tight behind a roll-down shutter made of corrugated metal.
Ernie rang the buzzer and shouted, “Bobby ohma!” A few seconds later someone opened the front door of the house.
“It’s George,” I yelled. “Here to see Milt.” The front door closed and a pair of slippers shuffled toward the gate. A metal bar slid free and an old Korean woman held the gate open as we entered. She relocked it and led us toward the house.
We took off our shoes in the entranceway and Milt ushered us into a big warm living room equipped with everything money could buy from the PX. Bulbs blinked at us from mounds of stereo equipment. A huge blank faced Japanese-made TV was mercifully turned off. Four or five kids in an adjacent bedroom were watching cartoons on another TV set. One of the boys was bigger and chubbier than the others but somehow he looked younger. His hair was light brown and his nose slightly pointed but his eyes were heavily lidded ovals.
“Some of the neighborhood kids like to come over and watch cartoons with Bobby,” Milt said. “Hell, I enjoy the damn things almost as much as they do.”
The old woman had disappeared into the kitchen. “Ajima!” Milt yelled. “Mekju seigei.” He held up three fingers to no one in particular. We sat down in the comfortable armchairs and in a moment three frosted cans of Falstaff and a large bowl of mixed nuts were in front of us on the coffee table. It and all the other furniture was done in black lacquer with inlaid mother-of-pearl designs. Traditional Korean stuff.
“The place looks great,” I said.
He opened a beer for me. “Beats living in a tent out in the field at Fort Lewis.” He opened one for himself. “The old lady’s out playing bua tu with their friends. Probably be out all night and come back in the morning down about two hundred bucks.” He lifted his can and smiled. “So we can drink all day and night.”
We all took big long swigs on the ice-cold beers. I felt the color coming back to my cheeks.
“Can’t stay long,” I said. “We’re in the middle of an investigation.”
“The CID never sleeps,” Ernie said. He grabbed a huge handful of mixed nuts and stuffed them into his mouth.
“What do you know about General Bohler?” I asked.
“Bohler?” Milt said. “Why would you guys want anything to do with that old fart? He’s dangerous.”
“It’s a long story,” I said, carefully picking out a Brazil nut. “And I don’t have much time for it right now.”
“Okay.” Milt held out his hand as if to stop me. “Say no more.”
Milt finished his beer and the old woman padded into the room with three more. She served Milt first and then us and I hurried and finished mine and handed her the empty. Ernie crushed his can before he gave it to her. Can’t take him anywhere.
“How much clout does Bohler actually have downtown?” I asked.
“Clout isn’t the word,” Milt said. “Anybody who holds the position of Chief of Staff owns the town. Everybody here—the mayor, the chief of police, even me, we’re all dependent on the money that comes from Eighth Army.”
“Not just the payrolls,” I said.
“Of course not. There’s a lot of Korean workers on the compound, but in addition to their paychecks, they manage to squeeze a lot of materiel out of the base: leftovers from the mess halls, used supplies that can be written off the property book. And occasionally there’s even out-and-out theft,” Milt said. “As long as it remains a tolerable percentage, the Army just writes it off. It’s cheaper than the expense of trying to chase it down.”
“And the Koreans know what the percentage is,” Ernie said. He was getting drunk.
“Yeah … building contracts, the cleaning contracts, the maintenance contracts. It’s endless.” Milt made a helpless gesture. “And the big shots here have their chopsticks in every pot and they got to pay off the bigger guys down in Seoul. Hell, a lot of the money probably filters all the way to the top.”
“Probably most of it,” Ernie said.
“And if a commander tried to clamp down on it all,” I said, “what would happen to him?”
“Not too much.” Milt shrugged. “Depending on how hard he pushed. They might make life miserable for him, but mainly they’d just wait for him to finish his tour and be replaced by another guy.”
“One who might be corrupt.”
“Naw,” Milt said. “Most of the COs aren’t corrupt. Not in any big way anyway. It’s just that they’ve got a choice. If they fight it, they won’t win and they might be risking their military careers. If one pushed too hard, they’ll find a way to cope with him.”
“Like?” I said.
“Whatever,” Milt said.
“But the smart ones just ignore it,” I said. “Pretend it’s not happening.”
“Exactly,” Milt nodded. “If he plays along, they treat him like a king. They give him awards and plaques and have ceremonies for him. And if any one of his Korean workers gets too greedy or doesn’t live up to his responsibilities and embarrasses the commander, the Koreans in power will have his ass.”
“Self-policing,” Ernie said.
“Yeah. Exactly.”
The old lady brought in three mor
e beers and picked up the empties. Ernie forgot to crush his can this time.
“I suppose,” I said, “it wouldn’t be anything for them to set him up down in the ville with a little dolly.”
“Whichever one he chooses,” Milt said. He leaned back in his chair and took another sip of his beer.
“Would he have to pay her?” Ernie asked.
“The commander don’t have to pay for nothing in Itaewon,” Milt said. “Oh, she might hustle a little money from him and some stuff from the PX, shit like that. But she’d better not gouge him and piss him off. The Koreans’d have her little butt.”
Milt sighed, staring off into space at the beauty of it all. He suddenly seemed to realize something. “Hey, you guys don’t have something on General Bohler, do you?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
He sipped his beer for a moment and then looked at me. “What’d you find out, George?”
“Nothing much, really. Except that Bohler is a pervert.”
“We all knew that.”
“No, a real pervert,” I said. “Chains, whips, all the basic equipment.”
“Everybody’s got to have a little fun,” Milt said. “Gets boring fucking with the troops all day.”
“There’s more to it than that,” I said. “He’d been seeing a Miss Pak, recently deceased. He’s the last person that I know of to see her alive.”
“George, you’d better forget about it.” He sat forward in his chair. “The Army’d back him up all the way to the presidential palace. They’d find something to charge you with and burn you both. Don’t mess with this. It’s officer stuff. And if you really piss them off, they’ll let the Koreans have you for lunch.”
13
Ernie was particularly morose. Maybe it was the early hour. Maybe it was the fact that we were sitting in a canvas-covered jeep, it was cold, there was no heater, snow was on the ground, and we were freezing our balls off. Or maybe it was something else. I asked.
“Why so glum, chum?”
Ernie tightened his arms across his chest and grunted.
“The Nurse?”
He shifted in his seat and turned slightly away from me.