Mr. Kill

by Martin Limon

  Runnels sat with his elbows on his knees. “What is it?” he asked.

  “You took the five p.m. Blue Train back from Seoul yesterday.”

  “That’s my job.”

  “You remember that guy you sat next to the first time we questioned you? The guy who disappeared after the train stopped in Anyang?”

  “Yeah. You think he’s the rapist.”

  “You don’t?” Ernie asked.

  Runnels shrugged. “How the hell would I know?”

  “So, yesterday,” I continued, “on the Blue Train from Seoul, did you see the same guy again? Was he on that train?”

  Runnels looked away from me, scrunching his forehead. I held my breath. Ernie held his too.

  “No,” Runnels said finally. “Can’t say I did see him.”

  “Were you looking?” I asked. “Did you get around the train much? Or did you just stay in your seat?”

  “I’ve seen the train,” Runnels said, exasperation in his voice, “too many times. These days I just stay in my seat. Especially when I have a good book to read. The Last Detail, by Darryl Ponicsan. It’s about military life. Real military life. You ought to try it.”

  “Maybe I will. Did you see anybody else you know on the train? Or anything unusual?”

  Runnels thought again. “No. Not that I remember.”

  I checked my notes. “Do you know a guy named Weyworth, Nicholas Q.? He’s a Spec Four and he’s stationed here on Hialeah Compound.”

  “What’s he do?”

  “Supply.”

  Runnels took his time thinking over the question. “No. The name doesn’t ring a bell. I might recognize his face if I saw him, though.”

  “Did you recognize anybody on the train? Anybody who you thought might be stationed on Hialeah Compound?”

  Runnels thought again and shook his head.

  “Did you see anything strange? Anything at all unusual?”

  Again he said no, he hadn’t seen anything that he thought was worth remarking on. Finally we gave up, thanked him, and told him he could return to his bunk. On the way out of the dayroom, Runnels turned and looked back at us. “That guy did it again, didn’t he?”

  “What guy?” Ernie asked.

  “That guy. The Blue Train rapist. He did it again, didn’t he?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Because you guys are here. If he hadn’t done it again, you probably would’ve just stayed in Seoul. It’s about that checklist, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I told you before. The last thing he told me before he walked away was that he had a checklist. A checklist to correct deficiencies. That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”

  Runnels studied our faces, saw nothing, shrugged, and walked in his flip-flops down the dark corridor that led to the open bay that housed two long rows of military bunks.

  The lights of the Kit Kat Club flashed brightly. The midnight curfew was less than a half hour away, but you wouldn’t have known it from the relaxed atmosphere of the customers and waitresses in the G.I. bar. They looked as if they were camped out forever.

  “Curfew must not be such a big deal down here,” Ernie said.

  In Seoul, or especially up north near the DMZ, the Korean National Police will arrest anyone out even five minutes after the midnight curfew. Down here, the G.I.s were only a hundred yards from the main gate of Hialeah Compound. If they ran, they could make it there in a few seconds. And my guess was that down here in Pusan the local cops weren’t as frantic about shutting off all lights and closing down all businesses by exactly twelve o’clock. We were a couple of hundred miles from the DMZ; a couple of hundred miles from the 700,000-man-strong North Korean Army. Life seemed more normal down here. More cosmopolitan.

  Ernie and I strode into the Kit Kat Club.

  Bleary eyes looked at us, some of the hostesses with interest, puffing on their cigarettes. The G.I.s stared at us with dull surprise. Two Americans they didn’t know, near a small compound like Hialeah: that was an event.

  Ernie stepped to the bar and ordered two beers.

  “OB or Crown?” the bartender asked.

  “You have draft?” The bartender shook his head. “Then OB”

  The bartender popped the tops off the bottles for us. I asked for a glass. Ernie didn’t bother.

  “Where’s Nick?” Ernie asked the G.I. sitting next to us.

  “Huh?” The guy’s head was about to droop to the bar.

  “Nick,” Ernie repeated. “Nick Weyworth.”

  “Hell if I know,” the guy said, and allowed his nose to droop even farther toward the suds puddled on the bar.

  I waved down one of the hostesses. “Weyworth isso?” I asked. Is Weyworth here? “Nick Weyworth.”

  “You buy me drink?” she asked.

  I nodded. Ernie stared at me, surprised.

  The bartender took his time mixing some colorful concoction and finally slapped it on the bar. “One thousand five hundred won,” he said. Ernie whistled.

  I reached deep into my pocket, pulled out the money, and took my time counting out two thousand-won notes, the equivalent in U.S. dollars of about four bucks. The bartender returned with my change. I pocketed it and turned back to the hostess. Through a straw, she was demurely sipping her drink.

  “Show me,” I said.

  Her eyes widened.

  “Show me Weyworth’s yobo hooch.” His girlfriend’s house.

  “I finish my drink.”

  “No,” I said. “You don’t finish your drink.”

  Ernie stepped next to the woman, grabbed the frothy red drink out of her hand, and set it carefully on the bar. “Kapshida,” he said. Let’s go.

  She looked up at us with her heavily lined eyes, trying to make up her mind. Finally, she shrugged, stood up, and spoke to the other women seated against the wall.

  “Jokum itta dora wa,” she said. I’ll be right back.

  She grabbed her coat and sashayed toward the door.

  The three of us wound through a couple of hundred yards of narrow pedestrian lanes. Sewage ran through open stone-lined gutters reeking of ammonia and filth. High walls made of brick and stone lined either side of the passageway, studded on top with brass spikes or shards of embedded glass. An occasional streetlamp glowed yellow at the intersection of two lanes, but mostly we were guided by the dim silvery rays of a half moon. Finally, the hostess crouched through a door in a larger wooden gate. Ernie and I followed. The hostess hollered, “Jeannie Omma, issoyo?” Is the mother of Jeannie here? Apparently a child was involved.

  We stepped into a courtyard of swept dirt. Kimchee pots lined one wall. A byonso—an outhouse—behind us smelled of lime and human waste. Across the courtyard, light glowed behind a latticework door stretched with oil paper. The door slid open and a woman’s face peeked out. “Nugu-syo?” she said. Who is it?

  As soon as she saw the hostess, with Ernie and me looming behind her, she slid shut the door. A metal latch clicked into place.

  Weyworth’s hooch wasn’t much. Just a large ondolheated room with a cement-floored kitchen on the side.

  “I’ll check the back,” Ernie said.

  As he marched off into the darkness, the hostess who’d brought us here surreptitiously retreated toward the entranceway. I ignored her until I heard the door in the large gate shut. I stepped up to the latticework door and knocked. The wooden frame rattled.

  “Weyworth,” I said. “I need to talk to you.”

  When there was no answer, I said, “I’m Agent Sueño from Seoul. You won’t be able to hide from us, might as well talk now.”

  Words were mumbled inside and clothes rustled.

  Ernie returned at a trot.

  “No way out the back,” he whispered. “The only exit is through the front here and that side door off the kitchen.”

  We could keep an eye on both exits from where we stood.

  I stepped closer to the door. “Last chance,” I said, “or we’r
e kicking the door in.”

  More frantic mumbling, something being dropped, a heavy object of some sort, and then a shadow appeared in front of the oil paper. I backed up, keeping my hand on my hip where my .45 would’ve been if I’d been armed. That’s one thing that Ernie and I hadn’t thought of: to check out weapons from the Pusan MP station. Suddenly it seemed like a tremendous oversight.

  Ernie stepped to his right, into the darkness. I stepped to my left.

  The oil-paper door slid open.

  Yellow light flooded into the courtyard. Ernie and I tensed. A face peeked out, the same woman who’d peeked out earlier. This time, I caught a good look at her. She was cute, young, maybe in her early twenties, with a bemused expression and braided pigtails hanging down from either side of her round head.

  Ernie stepped forward, grabbed the edge of the door, slipped off his shoes and stepped into the hooch. The woman screeched. Ernie shoved her aside.

  I followed him into the hooch.

  Ernie searched the kitchen and the tiny storeroom out back.

  “Nobody here,” he said, returning to the main room.

  Nobody except a little girl who was squatting next to an inlaid mother-of-pearl armoire. She had a face and hairstyle just like her mother’s, except for her coloration. She was very light-skinned and her hair was dirty blonde.

  “This must be Jeannie,” I said.

  The little girl’s eyes widened. Blue fading to green. Her mother stepped away from us and clutched her arms in front of her ample breasts. She wore only a set of PX thermal long johns, no bra underneath. The woman reached into the armoire, pulled out a winter coat, and wrapped it around herself. She squatted down next to Jeannie and placed a protective arm around her.

  “Weyworth not here,” she said.

  “Weyworth?” Ernie said. “Don’t you call him Nick?”

  The woman didn’t answer.

  “Where’d he go?” I asked.

  “He go someplace,” she said, waving her free arm. “I don’t know. All the time big deal, he gotta do. Business, he say. Where, I don’t know.”

  “You moolah?” Ernie asked. Moolah is the Korean word for “I don’t know” or “I don’t understand.”

  “Yeah,” she replied. “I moolah.”

  “What time does he come back?” I asked.

  “Now?” she replied. “Maybe don’t come back until morning time. After curfew.”

  “He catchy girlfriend?” Ernie asked.

  The woman knotted her slender fist. “He catchy girlfriend, then most tick he catchy knuckle sandwich.”

  “So he’s doing business?” I said, more gently.

  She nodded warily, worried now that she might have revealed too much.

  Ernie knelt to the warm ondol floor; I did the same. He smiled at the woman and then he smiled at Jeannie. Both of them were still nervous. I guessed from the age of the girl—about four—that Weyworth wasn’t the father. G.I.s pull a one-year tour in Korea. There hadn’t been time for him to sire this beautiful four-year-old child.

  “Who’s Jeannie’s daddy?” Ernie asked.

  The woman didn’t get angry. “Long time ago,” she said, “’nother G.I.”

  “Picture isso?”

  I knew what Ernie was doing. He was trying, in his own way, to relax Jeannie and her mother. And showing pictures was something few Korean business girls could resist. Especially pictures of old boyfriends, and especially if those boyfriends had left them with a child.

  She rummaged beneath silk-covered comforters in the bottom of the armoire and pulled out a thick photo album. She set it on the floor and flipped quickly through the pictures. Jeannie slid closer to her mother. Finally, Jeannie’s mother found a photo of Jeannie on Beikil, her Hundredth Day celebration. In ancient times, so many infants succumbed to childhood diseases that it was thought wise to wait a hundred days, until their chances of survival looked somewhat promising, before welcoming them into the human family.

  Jeannie’s mother turned the photograph toward Ernie and then me. The infant Jeannie was dressed in a brightly colored silk suit, surrounded by ripe fruit and fat dumplings. Ernie and I oohed and aahed and told Jeannie what a beautiful baby she’d been. Jeannie buried her face beneath her mother’s armpit, embarrassed by the attention. Then Jeannie’s mother flipped the pages to a photo of herself, a few years younger, wearing a colorful chima-chogori, the traditional Korean dress with a high-waisted skirt and a short vest. She looked beautiful, and I told her so.

  “Ipuh-da,” I said. She beamed with happiness.

  Some Koreans are trained to hide their emotions, but not all. By now, Jeannie’s mother was delighted, and all thought of Weyworth had been banished from her mind. Ernie and I studied the photograph, paying particular attention to the G.I. standing next to her. He wore a dress green uniform with three yellow stripes sewn on a well-pressed sleeve. A buck sergeant. His nameplate said Bermann.

  “Did you get married?” Ernie asked.

  She shook her head. “Supposed to. But he change mind. Go back States.”

  An old story.

  Jeannie’s mother filled the silence by saying, “The only thing he teach me is how to smoke, how to drink … ” Then she hugged Jeannie, adding, “And how to make baby. Tambei isso?” she asked. Do you have a cigarette?

  Ernie and I both shook our heads.

  “Next time I’ll buy some,” Ernie said.

  She smiled at that.

  “Where is Weyworth now?” I asked.

  “Somewhere,” she said, reaching for a pack of cigarettes in the armoire. “Somewhere, I don’t know. Maybe down on Texas Street.”

  Texas Street was the notorious bar-and-red-light district along the Pusan waterfront. This late, there’d be no time for him to return from Texas Street before the midnight curfew hit.

  “Why is he staying on Texas Street all night?” Ernie asked.

  “Business,” she said.

  “Business with who?”

  “I don’t know. Not G.I. How you say? Shi-la.”

  “Greek,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said, nodding vigorously. “Greek.”

  “In a Greek bar?” Ernie said.

  What with so many merchant marines flooding Texas Street—many of them from Greece—there were special bars set aside for them so they wouldn’t have to mingle with Americans or other English-speaking sailors.

  Jeannie’s mother lit her cigarette, puffed, and snuffed out the wooden match. “Yeah,” she said. “Someplace he call some funny name. Mean ‘makey-love’ in Greek language.”

  “Eros,” I said.

  Jeannie’s mother’s eyes lit up. “Yeah. That’s it.”

  An MP patrol gave us a ride to Texas Street. Ernie and I sat crouched in the back of the jeep, our knees almost touching our faces. The two MPs sat in the spacious seats in front. One of the MPs remembered me.

  “Hard-to-pronounce name. Sueño, right?”

  “You got it.”

  He’d made the ñ sound correctly, like the ny in canyon. “I should’ve thought of that before.” He popped his forehead with his open palm.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  The MP’s name was Norris, and he’d been on duty when Ernie and I made an arrest on that previous trip down here about a year ago.

  “A guy asked about you,” Norris said. “Or at least I think he was asking about you. He mispronounced your name.”

  Rain spattered against the windshield as we rolled over the broad, deserted Pusan roads. I leaned forward as far as the cramped space would allow. “So, who was this guy who came looking for me?” I asked.

  Norris turned his face toward me slightly so I could hear better over the sound of the swishing tires. Mistladen wind slapped against the canvas sides of the jeep.

  “A sailor,” he told me. “Some sort of foreigner. I don’t remember his name; I have it written down in one of my old notebooks, because he went so far as to show me his passport.”

  “How’d you kno
w he was looking for me?”

  “He described you. Tall. Dark hair. And an investigator. He said he had a message for you.”

  “Did he tell you what the message was?”

  “No. He approached us one night while we were out on patrol, just sitting in the jeep smoking and shooting the shit. Not many ships in port that night. Still, he’d lurked around in an alley, watching us, and when he thought no one was paying attention, he came up and started talking.”

  “He could speak English?”

  “Not very well. He wasn’t Greek, but from somewhere in Eastern Europe. I forget what country.”

  Eastern Europe implied the Communist bloc. This story was getting weirder.

  “Then what did he say?”

  “He said he had a book he wanted to sell and you might be interested. And no, he didn’t tell me what kind of book. Only that it was old, an antique, like that.”

  Ernie and I glanced at each other, neither of us having a clue as to what Sergeant Norris was talking about.

  “Also, there’s one more thing,” Norris said. “He said you’d understand the book he was trying to sell.”

  “I’d ‘understand’?”

  “Yeah. You’d be able to read it.”

  “Was it in Korean?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t tell us exactly.”

  We reached Texas Street and rolled slowly through the narrow alleys lined on either side with dark neon signs. The bars and the eateries and the hot-bed yoguans were shuttered and locked. Wind swept through the lanes like lost souls howling for one more breath of life.

  We climbed out of the jeep and thanked Norris and his comrade. Norris promised to dig out his old notebook tomorrow and provide me with more information.

  As they drove off, Ernie snapped a two-fingered salute.

  The MP patrol had dropped us off two blocks from the Greek bar known as Eros. We didn’t want them to take us right up to the front door, because we wanted to reconnoiter the joint first. The streets of the half-mile square area known—even to Koreans—as Texas Street were empty now, almost a half hour after midnight. Plastic covers rattled in metal holders as unlit neon was being battered by a cold wind blowing in off the bay. The wind carried a salty mist. I stuck out my tongue and rubbed the salt along my lips.