by Martin Limon
“What about ’em?”
“I want to talk to them.”
“What if they’re busy?”
“They’ll get un-busy. At least for as long as it takes to ask them a few questions.”
Ernsworth thought about it; after a few seconds, he shrugged. “Follow me.”
He opened a low door for us and then led us down a long corridor, turned right, and at a new Quonset hut turned left. We entered an air-conditioned room with rows of impressive-looking equipment, like stainlesssteel refrigerators embedded with the occasional blinking green light.
“All of this stuff is classified,” Ernsworth said. “Don’t be jotting down any nomenclatures or model numbers.”
“That’s not why we’re here,” I replied.
Finally, we reached an open area with canvas tarps spread on the floor. Toolboxes were scattered in disarray and men huddled in groups behind metal panels, peering into copper-and-rubber-wired innards that sparked and blinked and beeped. Ernsworth waited until one man who was reaching deep into a pit of complicated machinery retracted his hand and looked up at us.
“They want to talk to you and your team,” Ernsworth told him. Then he swiveled on his heels and left. The man who stood to face me was a sergeant first class, balding slightly at the front of his short-cropped gray hair, holding a rubber-handled screwdriver loosely in long fingers. His mouth hung open.
Ernie and I flashed our badges.
“Just routine,” I said. “We want to ask you a few questions.”
I pulled out my notebook and started to ask.
On the way back down the mountain, I gazed out the side of the jeep at the magnificence of the city of Seoul. Maybe I was trying to avoid staring at the innocent-looking hookers who appeared every quarter mile or so. Maybe I was thinking about Mrs. Oh on the Blue Train and the crazed look in her eyes as her children glanced back and forth between the adults who surrounded them, wondering what had gone so terribly wrong. The city lay like a pulsating god, spread-eagled across the countryside, stretching from Tobong Mountain rising high above the mist in the north to the sinuous blue of the Han River in the fogshrouded south. I loved this city. I wasn’t sure why. It was so far from my original home, the people were so different from anyone I’d known growing up, but I’d adopted the city now. Had it adopted me? I didn’t think so. The city of Seoul would always turn its back on me. I’d always be an outsider. I’d always be the stranger who, oddly, spoke a little of their sacred language. My love of the city and my love of Korea, I felt certain, would never be returned.
Ernie rounded a corner and honked at two girls walking arm in arm by the side of the road. After overcoming their shock, they both waved gaily.
“What’d you think?” Ernie asked me.
“About what?”
He turned to study me. “You okay?”
“Yeah. I’m okay.”
“So what’d you think about what those Signal Corps twerps had to say?”
“I think they’re telling the truth. They took the Blue Train from Taegu to Seoul two days before Mrs. Oh was raped.”
“Who?”
“Mrs. Oh. The woman who was raped on the Blue Train.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“And everybody on their team has been present for duty every day. There’s no way one of them was on that train.”
“So scratch them off your list.”
“Already done.”
“So, now what?”
“We could work on the black-market detail like Riley told us to.”
“Get serious.”
Ernie hated working the black-market detail. The job consisted of lurking outside the Yongsan Compound commissary and waiting for a Korean dependent wife to come outside with a load of black-market items—Tang, instant coffee, soluble creamer, imported bananas, frozen oxtail—and follow her to the ville and bust her when she sold the duty-free goods to a black-market mama-san. A crummy job. A job that was supposedly designed to protect Korean industries from having to compete with cheap, imported tax-free American goods, but a job that was really designed to keep as many Korean yobos out of the commissary and PX as possible.
Ernie hated the black-market detail, and so did I.
“Where to, then?” Ernie asked.
“Colonel Brace said the Blue Train rapist was a Korean problem,” I replied. Ernie nodded. I continued, “I agree with him. So let’s go have a talk with the Koreans.”
“The KNP Liaison Office?”
“The same.”
When we hit the bottom of Namsan, Ernie stepped on the gas and wound his way expertly through the midmorning Seoul traffic.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Ernie asked. “The Provost Marshal’s going to be pissed.”
“Do you know any other way of finding the guy who raped that woman?”
“Maybe the KNPs will find him.”
“Like hell,” I said.
“Yeah,” Ernie agreed. “Like hell.”
The Korean police didn’t have access to US Army military compounds. They wouldn’t have a chance of finding him.
When we rolled up to the front gate of Yongsan Compound, an MP was waiting for us.
“You Sueño?”
After I nodded, he turned to Ernie. “You Bascom?”
“Right.”
“Better get your butts out to the Crown Hotel. Like now.”
“What happened?” Ernie asked.
“Something about a USO show and a bunch of hysterical round-eyes.”
“Anybody hurt?”
“Hell if I know. Go find out.”
The MP stood away from the jeep. Ernie performed a neat U, floored the gas pedal, and screeched off into the Seoul traffic.
4
The Crown Hotel is on the main supply route, just a half mile west of the G.I. red-light district known as Itaewon. Probably Marnie Orville and the rest of the girls of the Country Western All Stars didn’t know how close to the center of action they actually were, and they wouldn’t know unless somebody showed them. So far, there hadn’t been time. A blue Hyundai sedan of the Korean National Police sat in front of the hotel, warning light flashing.
Ernie squealed up to the front door, turned off the engine, and we both jumped out of the jeep, showing our badges to the two young cops guarding the front door.
“Odi?” I asked. Where?
He told me the third floor.
We ran past milling hotel staff and ran up the carpeted stairway three steps at a time. In the long hallway, a half dozen doors were open. Marnie Orville stood in front of one of them, screaming at a Korean policeman. Ernie rushed toward her, holding up both his hands.
“Marnie,” he said. “We’re here. What’s going on?”
She swiveled on him, her blonde hair in sleep-ruffled disarray, blue eyes blazing with anger. With one hand she held a bathrobe closed over her full-figured body. With her other hand she kept pointing at the confused cop.
“This son of a biscuit keeps claiming that he doesn’t understand English.”
“Marnie,” I said, “he probably doesn’t. You’re not in Austin anymore. Tell us what happened.”
She took a deep breath, stopped pointing, and used the extra hand to tighten her robe. “Prudence, you okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine, Marnie.”
The other woman crossed the hallway and they embraced.
Now all the women were in the hallway, in various states of undress, and the lone Korean cop seemed overwhelmed by the sheer volume of Caucasian femininity. I showed him my badge and told him that we’d take the report. He nodded enthusiastically, scurried down the hallway, and disappeared into the stairwell.
Marnie spoke first.
“I saw him standing right there.” She pointed at the vase on a table that stood next to the door to Prudence’s room. As she did so, her robe swung open, revealing magnificently curved white flesh. She grabbed the flap and retightened it. “He was kneeling, as if he was looking through the keyhol
e. But he was doing more than that. He was fiddling with the door handle in some way.”
“In what way?” Ernie asked.
“As if he had some sort of tool in his hand,” Marnie said. “Although I couldn’t see it.”
“You were looking through the peephole of your door?” I asked.
“Yes. I thought I’d heard something, like maybe a room-service cart or something, but I knew nobody had ordered anything because we were all planning on going to breakfast together.”
“What did the guy look like?” Ernie asked.
“I only saw his back.”
We continued to question her, about whether he’d been American or Korean, how tall he was, what type of clothing he was wearing, but all Marnie knew was that the clothing was dark and his hair was dark and when she screamed he must’ve taken off because when she built up the courage to look back outside, he was gone.
The Korean staff was not any more helpful. Reluctantly, the manager admitted that there’d been quite a bit of thievery lately, but such a brazen attempt at burglary was something they rarely saw. The KNPs were less tentative. The Crown Hotel, and all the lodging establishments in the Itaewon area, were meccas for thieves. American women, who were assumed to be rich, would be a tempting target.
On one thing all the staff agreed: even from down here in the lobby, they easily heard Marnie Orville’s scream.
“She has a fine set of lungs,” Ernie said.
Finally, the women of the Country Western All Stars calmed down. They made pledges to one another never to set foot outside their rooms unless they called one another to meet in the hallway. They also made us promise to be back as early as we could and ride with them to tonight’s show. Marnie swore that she was going to contact the USO and make them move the group to a different hotel.
“One with better security,” she said.
The Korean National Police Liaison Office was located on the main Yongsan Compound, not far from the 8th Army MP station. Separating the two was a circular lawn with flagstone walkways that led like spokes in a wheel to a venerable old oak tree that, it was said, had been growing on these grounds since the days of the Chosun Dynasty. Even the Japanese Imperial Army, when they’d established this headquarters some time after 1910, had never bothered the tree. Occasionally, atop the gnarled roots, I spotted gifts: knotted garlands of flowers or polished stones or elaborately crafted creatures made of colored paper, probably left by Korean workers as a wish for a loved one to get well or for good luck.
I pulled a penny out of my pocket and tossed it toward the tree.
“What the hell’s that for?” Ernie asked.
“Fortune and prosperity.”
“You playing poker tonight?”
“No. I’m hoping the Blue Train rapist doesn’t strike again.”
Ernie studied me as we walked toward the big double doors of the KNP Liaison Office. “If the rapist doesn’t strike,” Ernie said, “Colonel Brace is going to look pretty smart. And you’re going to look pretty stupid.”
“Okay by me.” As long as I didn’t have to look at any more confused and frightened children and violated women, I’d be happy.
As we entered the Liaison Office, a blue-uniformed police officer rose from behind a desk. He was a young Korean, and his face was sternly set.
“Lieutenant Pong,” I said to him.
He asked me in Korean if I had an appointment. I told him no but it was about the Blue Train investigation. This made the young man squint and, if possible, stare at us even more sternly than he had before. He left his desk and walked down a squeaking wooden hallway. A few seconds later, he returned and told us Lieutenant Pong was waiting.
Lieutenant Pong sat behind a large desk, studying stacks of pulp fastened with brass studs. Draped attractively from a varnished pole was the white silk flag of the Republic of Korea with the red-and-blue yin–and-yang symbol in the middle. We’d worked with Lieutenant Pong before. He was a tall man, slender, and he wore roundlensed glasses and kept his black hair combed straight back on the sides. His khaki uniform was pressed so neatly that if you rubbed your thumb against one of the creases, you’d slice your skin.
“Where have you been?” he said in English.
I shrugged. “Assigned to other cases.”
“Other cases?” Lieutenant Pong was flabbergasted. To him and to the other officers of the Korean National Police, no case could rate a higher priority than the rape of a virtuous woman on a public conveyance by a big-nosed foreigner. Murder, embezzlement, burglary—among Koreans, those things were routine; but when national pride was at stake, those other things could wait.
Ernie sat on one of the upholstered chairs and draped his right leg over the armrest. Gazing unconcernedly around the room, he pulled a toothpick out of his shirt pocket and used it to pry into the gaps between his teeth.
I ignored him. So did Lieutenant Pong. Pong showed me a folder containing various reports in hangul, in language too difficult for me to comprehend, but I did manage to make out that these were the forensic reports from car number three.
“Nothing more than we already knew,” Lieutenant Pong told me. “Strands of hair cut short. Rich brown in color but too curly to belong to a Korean.”
“Any blood samples?”
“Yes. Blood type B. Matching Mrs. Oh.” Lieutenant Pong glanced sourly at Ernie. For his part, Ernie seemed totally preoccupied. He kept prying the toothpick deeper into his molars, studying the photograph on the wall of President Pak Chung-hee and, beneath that, the elegant bronze replica of the Maitreya Buddha perched on a polished pedestal.
“Anything more?”
“We did find another blood type. A-positive. Rare among Koreans.”
I jotted that down in my notebook. In basic training, when a G.I. is issued his first set of dog tags, imprinted on them are his name, his service number, his religion, and his blood type. Although we couldn’t be certain that this sample had been left by the rapist, an A-positive blood type would be a clue that might provide another link to a suspect, once we found one.
“So the perpetrator was cut in some way,” I said, “or maybe scratched?”
“Neither, that we can be sure of. The blood type was obtained from other material.”
I realized what he meant. Not blood: semen.
This was difficult for Lieutenant Pong to talk about. Despite the fact that Pong was an experienced cop, there are certain things that Koreans have trouble talking about in a formal setting, sex being one of them, poverty another. They’re particularly leery of talking about such intimate subjects with a foreigner. It has to do with their 3,000-year history and their highly developed sense of national pride. By talking to an American about how Mrs. Oh had been subjected to so many indignities by this foreigner, in Lieutenant Pong’s mind, all Koreans were losing face. Ernie’s nonchalant attitude wasn’t making it any easier. That’s why I pointedly didn’t bring Ernie into the conversation.
“There must’ve been plenty of hair and fingerprint evidence in that bathroom,” I said. It was, after all, a public bathroom. “So this might help us narrow our search, but it won’t do much in helping us win a conviction.”
Lieutenant Pong agreed. “We’ll have to rely on other evidence for that.”
Now that the difficult part was over, Lieutenant Pong pulled a sheet of paper out of a folder and slid it across his desk. It was a drawing of a face.
“From Mrs. Oh?” I asked.
“Yes. It was very difficult for her to try to remember the face of the rapist—she had her eyes closed during most of the assault—but she did her best.”
Ernie slid his leg off the edge of the chair and leaned toward the drawing. He stared at it in astonishment and then barked a laugh. He continued to laugh, holding his stomach, and finally said, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Lieutenant Pong’s face flushed red, but he said nothing.
The drawing showed a man with devilish upturned eyes, thick eyebrows, a heavy five-o�
��clock shadow of a beard, and a nose so huge it was almost as big as a banana. In other words, the extreme caricature of a Westerner through Korean eyes.
Ernie held the drawing up to the light and studied it again. “This doesn’t look like anybody I know,” he said.
“She was frightened,” Lieutenant Pong replied.
“I’ll say. I would be too if something like this came at me.”
“Okay, Ernie,” I said. “We get the point.” I took the drawing from him and slid it back to Lieutenant Pong. “I think it would be better if we didn’t use this.”
Lieutenant Pong shoved the drawing back into his desk. The echo of Ernie’s laughter subsided and Lieutenant Pong composed himself. He straightened his shoulders and said, “Now, how about you? What have you come up with?”
I glanced away. “Not much.” He stared at me quizzically. “I’ve eliminated a few suspects,” I continued, “and identified a couple more I want to talk to.”
“When will you talk to them?”
Ernie snorted. We both looked at him, and then I turned to Lieutenant Pong and said, “Maybe never. Eighth Army is not admitting that the rapist was a G.I. They’re saying this is a KNP problem.”
Lieutenant Pong stared at me for a long time, as if he were having trouble deciphering my words. Ernie spoke up. “The honchos have screwed us again. They’re not letting us go to Pusan to investigate.”
Once again Lieutenant Pong was flabbergasted. Finally, he managed to say, “Why?”
“Because they don’t want to admit,” Ernie said, “that a G.I. would rape a Korean woman on a train.” He splayed his fingers and spread his hands out to the side. “That’s it. We’re out of it. It’s up to you to catch this guy.”
Ernie rose to leave.
I rose with him. “I’m sorry,” I said.
As we left, Lieutenant Pong remained sitting, staring after us.
Ernie and I spent the rest of the day in his jeep, parked in the back row of the lot outside the Yongsan commissary, pretending to be interested in busting someone for blackmarketing. Actually what we did was buy Styrofoam cups of PX coffee from the snack stand, return to the jeep, and shoot the breeze about Marnie and the girls of the Country Western All Stars.